‘It is probable that Englishmen are right in counting Porson the second of English scholars, but many judges on the Continent would give that rank to Markland. He is the only one except Bentley who has been highly and equally eminent in Greek and Latin; and I believe that Bentley did him the honour, extravagant I admit, to be jealous of him.’

No judgment of Markland's scholarship will be better founded than this, written by A.E.Housman in 1920. The surmise of Bentley's jealousy gives it special colour, but there is little record of what passed between the two men. In 1718 Markland, then a newly elected Fellow of Peterhouse, represented the Regent Masters when the Caput of the University voted to deprive Bentley of his degrees. It is not known whether Markland himself thought Bentley's conduct contumelious, and within a few years, when Markland published his first book, he was writing with proper deference to the age's greatest scholar.

This paper should have had a longer and more explanatory title. I am not overmuch concerned with the interesting general question of the influence exerted by the Atthis of Androtion on subsequent accounts, primarily of course on that of the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia: the specific problem I wish to discuss is the use of documents in these chapters of AP, and the possibility that they were transmitted by Androtion. Jacoby in his introduction to that author (n. 86) treats it as ‘fairly certain’ that ‘A. supplied the documents for the reform of the constitution in 412/1 B.C. (AP 29–33) in detail and evidently with approval as a kind of model constitution’. He was not alone in this opinion, which needs examination. The argument is necessarily speculative, a weighing of probabilities, and the only statement for which I claim certainty is that Wilamowitz was wrong in one detail.

In the first excitement of the publication of AP some eminent scholars, headed by Wilamowitz and Köhler, acclaimed the data found in AP as authentic documents which could be used to ‘correct’ Thucydides. The counter-attack by Ed. Meyer concentrated on the argument that official documents are not the best guide to what actually happens in a revolution: that is, Meyer still accepted the documents as authentic, but he upheld the narrative of Thucydides against them. To the best of my knowledge it was not till 1907 that the question was raised, by Judeich, whether any authentic documents would have survived the restoration of democracy.

The Eighth Nemean has never been reckoned among Pindar's more difficult odes. It has its own problems, as does every other ode, yet beside the Seventh Nemean, for instance, or the Second Pythian, these problems pale into insignificance. But although the significance of the central myth has generally been recognized, scholars have failed, I believe, to appreciate the overall cohesion of the ode and the single-mindedness with which Pindar pursues his argument. I should like to offer a personal appreciation of this poem, to demonstrate its striking unity of design and its impressive economy. The text is based on that of A.Turyn.

In 162 read for . The sphere of reference of the verb is confined to water: 54 (Musgrave, L) (a reference to the ritual : see Denniston on El. 791), El. 157 (cf. ‘having washed’, Hom. Od. 4.750, 759, 17.48, 58).

In noua fert animus mutatas dicere formas
corpora:
di, coeptis (nam uos mutastis et illa)
adspirate meis primaque ab origine mundi
ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen.
illa P.Lejay ex Erfurtano Amploniano 1 saec. xii: illas codd.

In spite of several valuable contributions to the understanding of this proem that have appeared in the last few years, it does not seem to me that modern exegesis has as yet taken all the points that Ovid has contrived to pack into it. This is an astonishingly brief introduction to an epos over 12,000 lines long; and that very brevity ought to put us on our guard. We should expect that not a word will be wasted; and with so little sea-room we should further expect that the reader, though he may be playfully tantalized, will not be actually misled. That was a risk Ovid could not afford to take. Unfortunately his editors have taken it for him by printing and justifying the nonsense which his copyists have made of the second verse of the poem. By so doing they have set a stumbling-block before the feet of the reader on the very threshold, just where the going should be smooth and the omens fair.

1. talis Atlantiaco quondam ballaena profundo
cum uento motuue suo telluris ad oras
pellitur.

Mosella 144–6

In his exceptionally flattering notice of The classical text (C.P. 71 (1976) 185–7) Professor Shackleton Bailey questions my approbation of what might be called Madvig's Principle: that the transmitted text must be demonstrably faulty before a critic ventures to emend it. His reservations are just; and this passage of the Mosella neatly exemplifies the point on which he puts his finger. I see no way of proving that Ausonius did not write what the manuscripts offer; yet I think it more than probable that ‘uento’ is a corruption due to the adjacent ablatives and that the original reading was the more exquisite and euphonious ‘uenti’. If so, we have a pleasingly recherché, though hardly obscure or difficult, instance of the ἀπὸ κοινοῦ construction: a hybrid, it would seem, of the two kinds discussed by Housman at Manil. 4. 726, that in which ‘substantiuum ad duo adiectiua pertinens secundo demum adiungitur’ and the slightly commoner sort in which ‘duorum genetiuorum medium nomen ponitur’. This is one of those cases in which one cannot possibly be sure that one is not, as even Heinsius was apt to do, offering to improve the author rather than his copyists, but–utrum in alterum abiturum? (There is, after all, something to be said on occasion for rules of thumb.)

(i) On Statius Theb. 9.248—50

talis agit sparsos mediisque in fluctibus heros

frena manu pariter pariter regit arm a, pedumque

remigio sustentat equum.

249 sq. pedumque … equum Pω: pedum se (quem Housman) … equus Jortin

Klotz rejected both Jortin's and Housman's conjectures on the grounds that they were ‘contra sensum non minus quam contra metricam Stati’. It will be my purpose in this note to demonstrate that Klotz knew what he was talking about when he said that the conjectures fail to accord with Statius's metrical practice.

In this paper I shall review some common expressions of scepticism or disbelief, as they are used in Greek literature. I shall argue that these are frequently not at all what they purport to be, and express not disbelief but some quite different attitude. I shall then try to show how this applies to some apparent expressions of scepticism about myth or religion in Euripides.

Suppose someone tells me a powerful real life story about a Cabinet Minister or the President of the United States. I might respond with a number of expressions which purport to cast doubt on its truth— ‘incredible’, ‘fantastic’, ‘I don't believe it’, ‘I can't believe it’, and so on—but in fact simply comment on the striking, surprising, shocking or truth-is-stranger-than-fiction aspects of the story, and no more deny its truth than would, e.g., ‘amazing, Holmes!’ Indeed, ‘I can't believe it’ generally means that the speaker does believe it, for good or ill. Again, suppose I say ‘I can't believe that a Parliament House will be built in Swansea’.

‘The core of practically every problem in textual criticism is a problem of style, and the categories are still far less settled than those of textual criticism. And there is the further danger that the editor in making his recension may fall into the habit of forgetting his responsibility for being continually alive to the author's style. Here I may be allowed to end by recalling a remark of Richard Bentley's in his note on Horace, Odes 3.27.15, nobis et ratio et res ipsa centum codicibus potiores sunt. This remark has always tempted some scholars to misuse it, and it will always continue to do so; but it is true.’ (P.Maas, Textual criticism (1958) 40 f.)

That there were interpolations in Petronius' text was recognised early, although it was not until Eduard Fraenkel's more scientific, if controversial, views on Petronian interpolation were communicated and published in K.Müller's first edition of the Satyricon (1961) that an attempt was made to classify and date more serious and unnoticed interpolations.

Mr A.G.Lee's acute consideration of my remarks on the maxim (PCPS n.s.21 [1975] 63—4) arrives at an important conclusion. This maxim, one of the basic rules of ancient and, with suitable qualification, modern scholarship, was first formulated in the fifth century B.C. I should be happy to believe that he is right, and that credit for a valuable idea should be given to a sophist whose identity can no longer be ascertained (cf. Dr N.J.Richardson, ibid., 65ff.). My reason for venturing to raise the matter again is a feeling that the premisses of his argument are not quite beyond dispute.

In discussing the anecdote about Agathon Mr Lee says that the use of the verb is surprising, since would be expected. Perhaps I am insensitive to nuance, but I confess to being unable to follow him at this point. ‘To cause to disappear’ seems to me at least as good as ‘to strip’ in the context of the anecdote. Certainly LSJ suggest that the verb is common in several closely related senses in Attic authors of the classical period.