The Melian Dialogue is too eccentric to be explained solely in terms of its immediate context. It will here be maintained that it represents primarily a stage in Thucydides' struggle to reconcile his admiration for the Athenian empire with his feeling that empire was somehow immoral. This essay is thus necessarily concerned with his general views on empire; for which the last speech assigned to Perikles is important evidence.

I. THE DIALOGUE AND ITS CONTEXT

The Dialogue falls into two parts which overlap. The first, dealing with the reasons why Athens found it necessary to suppress the independence of Melos, ends roughly at v, 105, 2: it is this part that seems so remote from real life and raises the main problems. The second, roughly from v, 102, dealing with the prospect that Melos might be saved by Spartan help or by mere luck, is comparatively plain sailing: the possibility of Spartan intervention is a real topic, in no sense out of place at such a conference.

For three-quarters of the way the editor of the Letters to Atticus has Sjögren in front of him; his main business should be to apply what he can of knowledge and intelligence to materials already collected. But when he starts on the last four books he has to take new bearings.

The paradosis in these books becomes thinner. The Δ family remains, but the more valuable family Σ is often reduced to its least estimable members, R and R's close and even poorer relation, P. It is some compensation that in XIV–XVI Turnebus' reports of the Tornesianus (Zt) can be added to those of Lambinus (Z1) and Bosius (Zb and Zβ).

The term ‘tragic history’ was coined in the 1890's by Eduard Schwartz. It was supposed to denote a certain Hellenistic type of historical writing with a twofold inspiration—tragic drama, for its scale, arrangement, and emotion, and literary criticism of the Peripatetic persuasion, for certain theoretical assumptions. The term was vague in the extreme, and being applied to works of writers no longer extant—from Duris to Posidonius—could not well be otherwise. Nor was it possible to prove, or else disprove, the alleged relevance of the critical works of the Peripatetic school, for there is no information on Theophrastus' De historia, and very little on Praxiphanes' work with the same title; and the master himself, Aristotle, seems to deprecate the course of action which his school is said to have commended. Vagueness and unfounded assertions remained awkward features of most subsequent discussions, whether they accepted Schwartz's original submission or not. In two recent papers F. W. Walbank has sought to break the spell. His result is radical: discard the term ‘tragic history’ altogether. This is not yet proven; but he has done much to rid the argument of mis-leading assumptions. In that process, however, he has perhaps discarded too much and, I think, has slightly mis-stated the most important piece of evidence we have—if tragic history is supposed to have a peripatetic nuance. Aristotle's Poetics is the only piece of evidence of which the context is known. But the context is notoriously difficult and the following remarks are concerned with these difficulties.

When Aeschylus wrote, no distinction between morals and politics had yet been drawn. But in our day the moral and the political element in the Oresteia have usually been examined separately. Thus, for example, Professor Dover, in his thoughtful paper on ‘The Political Aspect of the Eumenides’, makes no attempt to connect this aspect with the moral issues raised in the earlier part of the trilogy. And Sir Richard Livingstone, in his paper on ‘The Problem of the Eumenides’, denied, if I understand him correctly, that any real link exists: ‘The last 350 lines of the Eumenides’, he says bluntly, ‘are not an integral part of the trilogy. They are a loosely connected episode, stitched on its outside.’ If he is right, we may properly ask what motive was so strong, what need so urgent, as to induce the poet thus to botch the conclusion of his masterpiece. And if he is wrong, we should try to prove him wrong by making clear the nature of the link. To explore these alternatives is the chief purpose of the present paper.

In vv. 129–62 the author of the Ciris is trying to explain why Scylla, the daughter of Nisus, fell madly in love with Minos. In places the text is gravely corrupt and consequently the sense is very obscure. As far as can be made out with any probability the gist of what is said is as follows. Long ago, probably while still a little girl, Scylla was taking part in a sacrifice in Juno's temple. More interested in her own sports than in the solemnity which is going on she runs here and there playing with a ball. The ball drops from her hands. Without thinking where she is and with clothes flying to the wind she chases the ball and in so doing has the misfortune to touch (and ipso facto to violate) the shrine of the goddess (sacraria divae, v. 154). There is some uncertainty amongst those present as to what has happened and Scylla is able to take an oath by the name of the goddess that she did not in fact touch the shrine, thus adding perjury to sacrilege. Slow and tortuous indeed is the vengeance of the gods and it is Cupid who is its instrument and prompter. Apparently Cupid is always ready to punish an indiscreet word (vv. 158–9), Cupid it is who sharpens the anger of Juno (v. 138), and Cupid volunteers his services when the time comes to punish Scylla (vv. 160–2). The punishment is that she should fall in love with Minos, the enemy of her country, with all the disasters thereby entailed. Such is an outline of this curious story.

It is evident that there was no law expressly forbidding the re-election of tribunes of the plebs. When Tiberius Gracchus raised the issue, his colleagues were in doubt, though the majority apparently held that his candidature was inadmissible (Appian, B.C. I, 14–15). Two years later Papirius Carbo proposed a bill ‘ut eundem tribunum plebi quotiens vellet creare liceret’, which was rejected by the plebs (Livy, Epit. LIX, Cic., de Amic. 95). This event would have confirmed the presumption against the reeligibility of tribunes, but of course made no change in the legal position. In fact Gaius Gracchus was re-elected in 123 (for 122) without any recorded protest.

The present text of Livy's Fourth Decade rests upon two main lines of tradition: first, the eleventh-century Bambergensis with fourteenth–fifteenth century recentiores and Gelenius' notes (1535) of the lost Spirensis; secondly, Carbachius' recording (1519) of the lost Moguntinus. This paper is concerned with the effect which more recent knowledge of the archetype of the first tradition may have upon emendation of the text. In the light of uncial fragments discovered at Bamberg in 1904 Traube showed that Bambergensis is a direct copy of the fifth-century MS. which they represent. At one step we are back in the world of late Roman scholarship, and one may correct Bambergensis in terms of the copying of continuous uncial script.

187 βαρεῖα δ᾿ ἀθυρόστομος codd. In the corresponding place of the strophe (176–7) we observe interlinear hiatus, ἀντέχει / ὦ: at this point of the antistrophe, therefore, a metrical period must be marked; there can be no run-over from βαρεῖ to -α δ᾿ ἀθυρόστομος. ἁ δ᾿ ἀθυρόστομος is absolutely required by the metre, and we are left with βαρεῖ- at the end of the preceding sentence. Taken as an adjective with λιμῷ, it is called ‘awkward and feeble’ by Jebb: harsher terms are appropriate, for we must emphatically deny that this adjective can be separated from its noun by the plump participial phrase ἀνήκεστα μεριμνήματ᾿ ἔχων.

On page 318 of F. M. Simpson's History of Architectural Development, vol. 1 (Longmans, 1956) I reprinted as fig. 107 the plan of Trajan's Forum from the earlier edition. I reprint it again here as Fig. 1. The plan is Lanciani's (Forma Urbis Romae, Milan, 1893, IV, 1). Compare R. Lanciani, Ruins and Excavations (London, 1897), fig. 119. This has drawn on me the strictures of scholars. Thus R. Martin writes (Revue des Études anciennes, p. 404, n. 1) that my book commits an ‘erreur dans le plan du forum de Trajan, qui ne rend pas la forme circulaire du côté méridional de la cour reconnu par G. Lugli’. By which he seems to mean that my plan makes the front wall of the court, to each side of the triumphal arch, straight and not segmental. A. von Gerkan, in Gymnasium, 1958, p. 545, remarks that in my book ‘gar zu oft hoffnungslos veraltetes Material vorgelegt wird. Das Trajansforum Abb. 107 ist ein groteskes Beispiel dafür’. Alas! following his usual custom, he gives no evidence for his statements, gladly though I should learn about these things.