Before Angelo Mai's publication of the Vatican Palimpsest in 1822 the de Re Publica was known to modern scholars only from the tantalizing fragments and paraphrases scattered about in Late Latin authors, ranging in extent from the Somnium Scipionis, the famous definition of uera lex preserved by Lactantius and the portion of Cicero's preface to Book v quoted by St Augustine to the incomplete sentences gleaned from Nonius, Priscian, and Isidore. Although the Palimpsest enabled men to form a better picture of the plan and scope of the whole treatise, it has nevertheless remained fragmented, and this for several reasons.

Going through the literature of late antiquity, of, say, the third and fourth centuries A.D., one is likely to discover very easily three different concepts of Indian geography.

(1) In literary—not in scientific—texts which belong to the classical tradition, India is usually thought of as the country of two big rivers, namely the Indus and the Ganges. This India does not include the region south of the Vindhya mountains, in spite of the fact that the commercial relations between South India and the Roman empire had been particularly close during the first and second centuries A.D. India, according to this literary tradition, was accessible by land, by following the course of Alexander's campaign, whereas Indian trade in the Roman period actually followed the passage provided by the monsoon, which had been discovered in the late Hellenistic period. Many details of that classical or rather classicistic conception of India can be gathered from Philostratus' Life of Apollonius, written early in the third century A.D., as well as from the History of Alexander, falsely attributed to Callisthenes.

In early summer of the year 334, only a few weeks after his crossing into Asia Minor and perhaps only a week or two after his first victory in Asia at the river Granicus, Alexander was in Sardes making arrangements for the future government of the satrapy of Lydia, the second of the Persian satrapies to be annexed in this way. Besides appointing in each case a Macedonian to be satrap in place of the former Persian official, and besides making certain special arrangements in each province, at Sardes he appointed a (probably) Greek officer Nicias to be in charge of the financial administration of Lydia. This appointment has always been recognized as a particularly interesting one, because it provides the earliest evidence suggesting an administrative experiment undertaken by Alexander, if it is true, as is usually thought, that he was introducing here something new into the government of the empire in Asia, something which is usually described as ‘the separation of the financial administration from the jurisdiction of the satraps’, or words to that effect. The object of considering it here again (it has been often considered already) is to try to make sure whether this really was an innovation; and if so, what light it throws on Alexander as an administrator in general.

A. 1, 573–4. urbem quam statuo vestra est; subducite navis;

Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur.

Servius says agetur means regetur, a purely ad hoc translation, as Conington observed, and one which is not supported by the remarks of A. J. Bell on the passage (A.J.P. (1919), pp. 198—200). But Conington's own translation is quite as ad hoc. He says that agere is a ‘variety’ for ducere ‘regard’. But it does not follow diat because άγω can mean ‘regard’, ago can do so too. Conington's parallel, 10, 108, Tros Rutulusne fuat, nullo discrimine habebo, is not helpful, as habeo is frequently so used. But there is no example, as far as I know, of ago in this sense.

Thucydides 11, 45, 2. , .

It would be imprudent for a commentator on this famous passage who wishes to suggest that its importance for an understanding of the position of women in Athens is greatly exaggerated to offer more dian a tentative view of its significance, and die remarks below should be taken in this light.

Anyone that attempts to tackle the question of the role of experiment in Greek science must first come to terms with the extensive modern literature on the subject, and what strikes one first about this literature is that ever since the Novum Organum of Bacon (1620) much of it has been highly polemical in tone. Bacon's judgement is well known: ‘Atque ex philosophiis istis Graecorum, et derivationibus earum per particulares scientias, jam per tot annorum spatia vix unum experimentum adduci potest, quod ad hominum statum levandum et juvandum spectet, et philosophiae speculationibus ac dogmatibus vere acceptum referri possit.’ Against Aristotle in particular Bacon adopts a different line of attack, for he concedes that in some of Aristotle's works references to experiments are to be found, but accuses Aristotle of twisting the data of experience to fit his preconceived opinions.

In the last number of these Proceedings (no. 189, n.s. 9, p. 2) Miss Joyce Reynolds discussed this well-known inscription, which is dated in A.D. 2/3 and is incised below a relief of a man reclining on a couch, cup in hand. It was found in the Sanctuary of Apollo at Cyrene in 1925; for a bibliography, see Miss Reynolds's article. The text she prints at the beginning reads as follows:

(ἔτους) λγ´ ἐπὶ ἱερἑως Παυσανἰα Φιλίσκω φύσει δὲ Εὐφάνευς

vacat παυσαμένων πάντων τῆς ἀνείας Λούκιος ᾿Ορβιος Λουκίου πυλοκλειστὴς τὸν

λυσιπόλεμον

ἡνίκα Μαρμαρικοῦ λῆξεν πολέμοιο κυδοιμὸς γήθησεν Βάττου πολλὰ πόλις μερόπων

τῆμος ἀν[α]

γλύψας κατακείμενον ἡδυπο 〈πο〉 τοῦντα Λεύκιος εἰνοδίωι θῆκε παρὰ προθύρωι

κλεῖ[δα] πύλης διέπων 'ωραι φίλαι οὗ χάλις ἔοχεν Παυσανίαν ίερῆ καιρόθ̣ι παυσάμενον

The last sentence raises acute difficulties. It has driven Adolf Wilhelm and Louis Robert to the desperate assumption that we have here one of the rare cases of a spondee standing in place of the penultimate dactyl of a pentameter. Wilhelm read καιρούς and Robert καιρῶν both imagined that the words meant the same as ἀνιῶν παυσάμενον. The authority of these two eminent scholars should not prevent us from seeing that the suggestion is ridiculous.

The word cursus may seem to be keeping strange company with slaves and freedmen. It does not refer here to the cursus publicus, but to the system of promotion in the sub-equestrian regions of the Imperial administration. Cursus implies movement, advancement, promotion. No bureaucracy can function efficiently without order and opportunity in its lower as well as its higher ranks. If a cursus did not exist it would have been necessary to invent one. It is necessary to affirm this of the lower ranks of the Roman bureaucracy in the early empire precisely because it has so often been denied or ignored. The impression gained from reading many works on the Imperial administration is that of fervid equestrian movement from post to post and province to province at the top, with a static substratum of Imperial slaves and freedmen providing stability and continuity below. Such an account is to some extent true. But that it is not true enough is largely the fault of the evidence.