History of religion, in its beginnings, had to struggle to emancipate itself from classical mythology as well as from theology and philosophy; when ritual was finally found to be the basic fact in religious tradition, the result was a divorce between classicists, treating mythology as a literary device, on the one hand, and specialists in festivals and rituals and their obscure affiliations and origins on the other.

It is proposed to reappraise the nature of Sappho's seizure (2 B = 2 D = 31 LP), to demonstrate that it constitutes proof positive of her lesbianism and to delimit, on the basis of psycho-physiological considerations, the sense any emendation of (v. 9) must have, if it is to match the clinical precision and to fit the rest of the seizure she describes.

The text of Parmenides 8. 4 is unusually corrupt. Most recent critics, however, agree that Plutarch's printed in the later editions of DielsKranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, should be excluded in favour of As G. E. L. Owen remarks (‘Eleatic Questions’, CQ [1960], 102), ‘[Plutarch's] is inappropriate since is to be proved from and not vice versa’.

In a previous article in this journal I proposed the hypothesis that the First Stele of the Hekatompedon inventories was originally opisthographic. Subsequently, when eleven fragments of this stele were placed in plaster in the Epigraphical Museum, it became possible to examine its reverse face thoroughly and to see clearly the architectural features of the stone.

Meritt, Wade-Gery, and McGregor have interpreted the rubric to signify that the Hellenotamiai transferred to the commissioners of the Propylaia any un-expended funds left from a grant of money authorized by the demos for a given military campaign. While this idea of surplus funds seems a perfectly possible explanation, I would suggest an alternative, that the Hellenotamiai transferred to the commissioners of the Propylaia an aparche of booty collected by an Athenian expeditionary force. Herodotus and Xenophon4 mention the dekate from the booty of several battles, and Thucydides speaks of the dedication of spoils as a customary procedure.

Publication by Eugene Vanderpool of the ostrakon with the name (Inv. No. P 27691) vindicates an inference made by Gustav Gilbert, Beiträge zur innern Geschichte Athens, 144 f. There he claimed that Nicostratus son of Dieitrephes (P.A. 11011) and Nicostratus (P.A. 11051), who is mentioned by Aristophanes, Wasps 81 f, were identical. Gilbert supposed that the qualities implied of Nicostratus in that passage were of the type to endear him to Nicias.

The whole of the Pylos campaign is intimately connected with the local topography. Pritchett has shown beyond reasonable doubt that the land in this area has sunk (rather than risen, as commentators have assumed) since classical times, and hence there is much about the campaign that needs re-examination. We confine ourselves here to a consideration of the Spartan plan to block the entrances, as given in Thucydides. Some points relevant to this turn on a more detailed examination of the site itself, which we were able to conduct in the summers of 1967 and 1968.

Aristophanes Frogs 1407–81 is a passage involving several problems of interpretation, the chief of which is, of course, the position and status of lines 1437–41 and 1451–3. In this brief note I shall confine myself to a consideration of the distribution of lines 1422–34 among the characters involved.

The tradition that Socrates had two wives at once, Xanthippe and Myrto, though an established one among ancient scholars, has met with blank incredulity in modern times. It impugns the character of Socrates, who has been established by Plato's martyrology as the unimpeachable patron saint of Western philosophy. And it appears to cast a slur on Greek marriage—not that the guiding lines of this somewhat ramshackle institution are perfectly known.

In his stimulating article on this topic Mr. Christopher Ehrhardt sought to show that there is no good reason to believe in any intervention by Philip of Macedon in Thessaly earlier than his campaign of 353. The second half of his paper is devoted to the date of Philip's capture of Pagasae, which Diodorus appears to put in the Athenian archon year 354/3 after the fall of Methone, a date adopted by most modern interpreters accepting the emendation for the unidentifiable in the text of Diodorus. Ehrhardt shows well the difficulties of believing in any capture of Pagasae, the port of Pherae, earlier than the capture of Pherae itself (in 352), and concludes that the emendation is to be rejected. In this I think he is right, and I am joining him in dating the capture of Pagasae in 352 after Pherae itself had fallen. The first half of his paper, however, rejecting all the evidence suggesting other interventions by Philip in Thessaly earlier than 353, is much harder to accept, for two reasons:

In Part I of his paper Cooper gives indisputable evidence regarding Plato's use of the man-made image as a step to the apprehension of a Form under discussion, whether that image be in fact a diagram or a model, or simply a verbal picture, such as his imaginative account of Justice within a community, which we find used to provide us with in Republic 443 c 4 ff. However, Cooper goes on to assure us that the divided-line figure offers us only three types of object: ‘We have three kinds of objects which differ from one another in clearness and esteem, firstly, the Forms, secondly, the objects of ordinary sense-perception, and thirdly, images, shadows and reflections.’ Now the admitted fact that, as he notes, Republic 10 (597 b 5-e 5) gives the same three orders of reality, does not entirely absolve Cooper from all the implications of Plato's decision to divide his line into four parts rather than three; for it is made quite clear in 509 b 6–10 that the Form of the Good, is the source of being as well as of knowledge, so the Line must also classify both.

Ever since the first edition of the De anima by Trendelenburg, modern scholars have been in trouble as to the exact interpretation of this phrase and especially of the expression Although the right one, as we think, was suggested a long time ago by Shorey, a restatement of it seems justified, because the later treatment of the problem in the edition of Sir David Ross has apparently established a different (and, as we believe, a wrong) communis opinio.

The first detailed examination of the whole passage was given by Bonitz, who saw no other possibility of making the text render the required sense than to alter This is indeed ‘a rather improbable corruption’. It is also clear that such an emendation of a reading defended by the consensus of all our manuscripts should only be accepted if there really is no other way out.

Aristotle's Poetics is a treatise notoriously difficult to understand, largely because of Aristotle's treatment of his theme, with its elliptical thought and loose terminology, but also because Aristotle's influence on subsequent drama and criticism makes it difficult to isolate the original thought from subsequent attempts at implementation or interpretation. However, as Aristotle devotes most of his treatise to tragedy—despite the wider subject he professes—and in discussing tragedy deals most extensively with plot, his views on the tragic plot should be reasonably clear. The passages cited have some importance for the understanding of his views.

Heracleides Ponticus, a pupil of the schools of Plato and Aristotle, who lived from about 390 to 310 B.C., shared the wide interests of many of his pre-Platonic predecessors. Diogenes Laertius gives a long list of his works, many of them now known only by their titles, which he divided into writings on ethics, physics, grammar, music, rhetoric, and history. Like most of his predecessors he gave some attention to the heavens and speculated about the nature of the moon (frg. 114a), comets (frg. 116), the infinity of the cosmos (frg. 112); he was best known in antiquity, in this field, for his suggestion that the phenomena could be saved if the heavens were at rest and the earth revolved about the central axis (frgs. 106, 108).2 One of two pieces of evidence for his involvement in anything more than this general, inexact speculation in the field of astronomy is contained in the commentary on Plato's Timaeus written in Latin by Chalcidius somewhere at the beginning of the fourth century A.D.; it is this passage which this paper will discuss.

K. J. Mckay includes Sappho i u in his interesting discussion (CQ. N.s. xvu [1967], 184–94) of doors that open spontaneously at the advent of a god. He glides without mention over the fact that workmen are ordered to do the opening (which detracts considerably from the element of spontaneity) and that the workmen's task—an extensive one, justifying a use of the plural —is not simply to open the door but to increase the whole structure's height (). Later in his essay (p. 91), while discussing Psalm 24, McKay remembers that the idea of gates opening upward is found in Oriental literature, not in Greek. It is odd that, three pages earlier, he forgot to apply this information to Sappho.

The latest volume of the Antinoopolis Papyri (iii [1967], no. 115) contains fragments of some 40 iambic lines in praise of a certain Archelas. The papyrus is dated by J. W. B. Barns, the editor of the piece, to the sixth century A.D., and the poem itself can be no older, since corrections and alterations show it to be an author's draft. According to Barns it is ‘an iambic encomium of a type not uncommon in late Greek occasional poetry from Egypt’ (p. 20). I would suggest rather that the surviving lines come in fact from an iambic preface to a hexameter encomium.

In the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries it was standard, if not universal, practice to preface a hexameter poem with an iambic prologue. Since details are not readily available, and are relevant to my argument, I tabulate them here. First the four examples that have come to us by manuscript tradition, as it happens the same manuscript (Palatinus 23), and all dating from the second half of the sixth century.

The present paper consists of emendations in the text of Maximus Tyrius. For convenience in citing the text I shall refer by page and line to Hobein's edition.

All the known codices of Maximus, as M. Mutschmann and F. Schulte have shown, most probably (many say certainly) derive from the Parisinus 1962 which belongs to the tenth or the eleventh century. In Hobein's edition and in the present paper the codex is indicated by the letter R.

The Thirteenth Epode is an intriguing poem. Like Carm. i. 7 it concludes dramatically with a highly condensed episode from epic tradition, in this case drawn from the early life of Achilles; but, unlike the Ode to Plancus, Epodes 13 does not reveal even the name of the addressee. And whether in spite of or because of this, the poem has been highly praised for its purely lyrical qualities. The now famous critique of E. Fraenkel, for example, represents the view of many: ‘A perfect poem,’ he calls it; ‘… its depth of feeling and beauty of expression and the harmonious blending of ideas of very different origin, make this ode superior to Odes 1. 7.’ The general approval of its poetic qualities might encourage a fresh attempt to discover any deeper significance it might have held for Horace's contemporaries.

The introductory ode of Horace's fourth book has been given comparatively little critical attention, although it might have been expected to arouse exceptional interest, being the first-fruits of the lyricist's autumnal harvest. The neglect is due partly to the poem's deceptive simplicity but much more to the unease which it arouses in Horace's admirers: Venus does not seem the most fitting deity for the poet laureate to invoke, and moreover this is not so much an invocation as an appeal to be left alone; the young man who is the subject of Horace's eulogy was hardly a person of much eminence at the time of writing, though he became prominent later and is now prosopographically well endowed; above all, there is the disturbing picture of the elderly poet testily acknowledging an amorous urge and surrendering his dignity in pederastic dreams.

Of the capital manuscripts R and V have nexantem, M and P nixantem. The good minuscules favour nexantem on the whole, though Paris lat. 7906 has nixantem. nexantem is found in the Latin grammarians (Keil ii. 469 and 538 (Priscian), v. 485 (Eutyches)), who quote the line because it contains this verb in its first conjugation form. Editors vary, and recently R. D. Williams, in his commentary on A. 5 (Oxford, 1960), has preferred nixantem. So it seems worth restating the case for nexantem, especially as its defenders have not used all the arguments open to them