‘Υμέων δ’ εἷς μὲν ἕκαστος ἀλώπεκος ἴχνεσι βαίνει,
σύμασιν δ' ὑμῑν χαῦνος ἔνεστι νόος.
Plut., Sol. 30, 2 Diod. ix, 20, 3. Diog. Laert. I, 52.
6 κοῦφος Diod., Diog.

There seems to me to be a strong antithesis between the two lines; individually the Athenians are as clever as foxes, collectively they are fools. If so, both the logical and the syntactical balance would be improved by emending χαῦνος to χηνός. But there are two difficulties. First, the corruption would have to be very early, since apparently the standard Hellenistic text read χαῦνος. Secondly, I have found no ancient reference to the folly of the goose except for an entry (which I cannot locate) in Dindorf's Thesaurus, s.v. χήν- ‘Apud Plutarch, vero χηνὸς ἀφρονέστερος, proverb., quoniam stolidum prae multis aliis est hoc animal.’

(a) vi, 6, 2. τὴν γενομένην ἐπὶ Λάχητος καὶ τοῦ προτέρου πολέμου Λεοντίνων οἱ Έγεοταῖοι ξυμμαχίαν ἀναμιμνῄσκοντες τοὺς Άθυηναίους ἐδέοντο σφίσι ναῦς πέμψαντας ἐπαμῦναι.

Does Λεοντίνων belong in sense with πολέμου or with ξυμμαχίαν? Elsewhere, πόλεμος with the genitive means ‘war against…’ or ‘war conducted by…’, from the standpoint of the opposing party. The campaign of 427, from the point of view of either Segesta or Athens, was a war about Leontini, but not πόλεμος Λεοντίνων. On the other hand, Λεοντίνων ξυμμαχία is straightforward Thucydidean Greek for ‘alliance with Leontini’. Moreover, the war referred to is adequately defined not only as ἐπὶ Λάχητος but also as τοῦ προτέρου, and additional specification is otiose. The resulting expression τὴν γενομένην ἐπὶ Λάχητος…Λεοντίνων…ξυμμαχίαν is comparable in structure with VIII, 2, 1 τὴν ἐκ τῆς Σικελίας τῶν Άθηναίων μεγάλην κακοπραγίαν.

10. τί δ' ὅντιν' εἴπε; μηδὲν ἐντραπῆς. τὰ δὲ
ῥηθέντα βούλου μηδὲ μεμνῆσθαι μάτην.

She knows that the true answer to 1055 will be ‘yes’, and that it must lead to the discovery of the parricide and incest. ‘Waste not a thought on what he said…' twere idle’; so Jebb, like everybody else construing μάτην with μεμνῆσθαι. But at that rate this final word of the couplet is superfluous and falls flat. Manifestly μάτην must go with ῥηθέντα. As a hyperbaton this would be far too harsh and pointless; here, surely, is a clear case of accidental transposition in the ends of consecutive lines. For Jocasta will have spoken with feeling, here as everywhere else, and said τί… ἐντραπῇς· μάτην | ῥηθέντα βούλου μηδὲ μεμνῆσθαι τάδε.

In the Odyssey Epeius is twice mentioned by Odysseus as the maker of the wooden horse—and Odysseus should know—so I hope it is not unreasonable to call Epeius a carpenter. In the Iliad this aspect of his talents is not mentioned; he appears as a competitor in two of the events in the funeral games of Patroclus, and there is no other mention of him in Homer. It is in his capacity as athlete that I want to talk about him today.

In the first place he appears as the central figure in a short but dramatic and amusing incident, the boxing match. Leaf says that he seems to be the representative of brute strength, and more recently Fernand Robert has called him a ‘brute ridicule’ and made other, and similar, disparaging remarks about him, even going so far as to say that the event in which he takes part is an ‘épreuve méprisée’. This seems to me not only to be unfair to Epeius but also to indicate a misunderstanding of what Homer tells us. First, there is no evidence of any contempt for boxing.

‘The shape of the whole of Britain Livy, the best of the older school, and Fabius Rusticus, the best of the moderns, have compared to an elongated scutula or a battle-axe.’

So runs the context in which these words are situated. On the surface all is plain, but when one asks further ‘what shape has Tacitus in mind?’ serious difficulties are met. Editors usually get round these by analysing the words separately and deciding on parallels from Strabo that vagueness was all that was needed, and that though Tacitus links the words with vel they need not be strikingly similar.

But this is impossible: first, Tacitus must have had in mind objects of mutually similar shape; secondly they must have had a clearly recognizable shape, which conveyed a very definite picture to the minds of those for whom Tacitus wrote. Thirdly why did Tacitus prefer oblongae scutulae vel bipenni to the descriptions of ‘the many writers who have spoken of the geography of Britain’? Tacitus does not claim that Livy and Fabius are most correct, only that they are eloquentissimi.

The play has given rise to diverse interpretations. The greatest divergence of opinion is about the attitude of Sophocles to the matricidal vengeance. At one extreme we have a robust Homeric Sophocles, untroubled by the squeamishness of Aeschylus; at the other, an Aeschylean sensitiveness to the moral implications of the vengeance and a presumption that the Furies are only waiting for the play to end to begin their pursuit of Orestes. Adherents of the former view can point to certain epic features which Sophocles has introduced, but the constant reminiscences of the Oresteia are far more striking. This paper assumes (what will be in part substantiated) that Sophocles wrote with the Oresteia constantly in mind and expected the better-educated among his audience to be reminded of it. It will be concerned particularly with the Sophoclean treatment of the Furies and will suggest that this is of fundamental importance to the interpretation of the play.

I, 16, 12. sed senatus consulta duo iam facta sunt, odiosa, quod in consulem facta putantur, Catone et Domitio postulante, unum, ut apud magistratus inquiri liceret, alterum, cuius domi diuisores habitarent, aduersus rem publicam.

odiosa to whom? To the magistrates and the consul's satellites and Pompey? That is Billerbeck's explanation, more respectable than the silence of modern commentators. But odiosa, without qualification, can only mean generally unpopular, i.e. in the senate, among the boni. But how, asked Malaspina four centuries ago, should those decrees have been unpopular because they were directed against a highly unpopular consul? ‘consul odiosissimus’ to Cicero and his boni M. Pupius Piso, Pompey's legate and tool, assuredly was. Witness among other passages I, 13, 2 (esp. seiunctus ab optimatibus) and I, 14, 6 (esp. mirum in modum omnis a se bonos alienauit). And Malaspina might further have enquired why stringent, intrusive measures against bribery should have been welcome per se in an assembly composed largely of persons who had bribed, were bribing, or expected to bribe their way to office. Modern apparatus do not even mention quae for quod, a once popular reading cited from a MS. belonging to Faernus. It seems no more than a palliative. For a cure I suggest ‹ideo minus› odiosa.

In an article in the Classical Quarterly (January and April 1953), Mr G. E. L. Owen sought to show on grounds of style and content that the Timaeus and Critias probably precede the Phaedrus and certainly precede the Parmenides and the Theaetetus. His arguments need to be balanced by certain considerations which may be stated here very summarily:

1. ‘Stylometry.’ It is true that Cornford took no account and Taylor little account of Billig on Platonic clausulae (Journal of Philology, 1920) or of Kaluscha's work (Wiener Studien, 1904). But the most that either of these scholars can be said to have established is the priority on ‘stylometric’ grounds of Timaeus and Critias to Sophistes, Politicus and Philebus. They do not prove (and Kaluscha does not support) the priority of Timaeus and Critias to Parmenides and Theaetetus.