The fact that the Odyssey and the Theogony share a number of verses in common seemed to most scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reason enough to assume that one work has influenced the other. Now that more is known about the techniques of oral poetry, which have clearly influenced the composition of both works, a greater caution is rightly shown in arguing for the priority of the one or the other on the basis of individual verses or phrases, since these may in fact be formulaic and thus common property which could have been used by any poet working in that tradition. In one case, however, Odyssey 8. 166–77 and Theogony 79–93, what is common is not a single verse but two and a half lines, so that the possibility of chance occurrence of the same formulas is virtually ruled out. Quite rightly therefore few critics have doubted that here either Homer has directly influenced Hesiod or vice versa. For this reason a good deal of the argumentation for the priority of the Odyssey or of the Theogony has concentrated on an examination of Od. 8. 166–77 and Th. 79–93. However, as is usual in such cases, most of the arguments which have been adduced in favour of the priority of the one or of the other are reversible because they are based on subjective grounds such as alleged incompetent adaptation of the earlier work, which is tacitly assumed to be superior. Since these arguments have recently been discussed in detail by Heinz Neitzel in a useful survey, it will not be necessary to review them here.

A problem in the text of Pindar, the interpretation of λαρ⋯ετον, O. 2. 87, seems to be vanishing, swept away by a remarkable consensus of recent criticism, a consensus the more remarkable in that it accepts a false solution to a genuine difficulty. This article has two purposes, the first and more important of which is to argue that the currently prevailing answer is manifestly wrong, the second to offer evidence in support of a different approach.

Simply read γαρυ⋯των, recent critics maintain, and all problems disappear. Since -ο- and -ω- were not yet distinguished in the orthography of Pindar's day, γαρυ⋯των is as correct as the unanimous γαρύɛτον of the MSS, testimonia, and scholia. By this simple change, the argument proceeds, the troublesome dual of the MSS is purged and with it the ‘historicist hare’, as one critic has recently called it, which less enlightened Pindarists chased for so long. If there is no dual, there is no need to speculate as to the identity of the ‘pair’ likened to κ⋯ρακɛς and contrasted with the ‘divine bird of Zeus’, the man who is wise φυᾷ. We need no longer suppose that the μαθ⋯ντɛς are Simonides and Bacchylides – the traditional answer – or any other specific rivals.

Unfortunately for this view, there is no evidence to justify taking γαρυ⋯των as a plural, which is of course precisely what critics have been doing. It is – if anything – a third dual imperative (an extremely rare form), and every bit as much a dual as the γαρύɛτον of the MSS.

Mr Stoneman is not alone in his ready dismissal of the ‘historicist hare’. Here is the view of Professor Lloyd-Jones: ‘… the lightest possible alteration converts the dual to a plural imperative, so that the number two vanishes’. A year before, Professor C. A. P. Ruck had chided the scholiasts for ‘reading out of Pindar's ΓΑΡΥΕΤΟΝ the dual…rather than the plural’. Bowra had declared that γαρυ⋯των ‘would be the plural of the imperative’. The belief is widespread and persistent; those who wish a full conspectus of earlier views on the matter may consult the massive compilation made by Dr J. van Leeuwen in 1964.

Not all critics and editors have endorsed the change from the traditional reading. While it has been in the successive Teubner editions since Schröder adopted it in 1900, neither Turyn nor Bowra accepted it. But among those who have argued for γαρυ⋯των, only one has expressed any doubt that it is a plural, and that one is Theodor Bergk, who first proposed it. Indeed Bergk expressed no doubt about its being a dual.

Commentators offer no satisfactory explanation of why Cleon's satellite Theorus should be sitting on the ground. Van Leeuwen suggests ‘ut infra in convivio’, which seems far-fetched and at best premature, for, though it might suit the character of Theorus as flatterer, that character is not revealed by Alcibiades' speech impediment till 45. It may be that there is nothing to explain, that Theorus is sitting on the ground because there is nowhere else to sit. But if an explanation is desired, what is wanted is something that fits the image of the crow. And if a scavenging bird positions itself on the ground in the vicinity of a monster holding a scale on which meat is being weighed out, its object is surely to pick up scraps that fall from the scale. Such behaviour symbolizes accurately enough the relationship posited between Cleon and Theorus the man – whereas a more ambitious and independent crow might try to snatch its food direct from the scale. (The antecedent of αὐτ⋯ς in 42 is probably ɸ⋯λλαιvα, not τρυτάνην, since ɸ⋯λλαινα is the subject of βούλεται in 41. But since the monster is holding the scale, Theorus, by positioning himself near the monster, is perforce well placed to seize anything that drops.)

In Euripides' Bacchae Dionysos visits Thebes in disguise to establish his mysteries there. And so, given normal Euripidean practice, it is almost certain that in the lost part of his final speech Dionysos actually prescribed the establishment of his mysteries in Thebes. In the same way the Homeric Hymn to Demeter tells how the goddess came in disguise to Eleusis and finally (vv. 476–82) established her mysteries there. After coming to Eleusis she performs certain actions in the house of king Celeus, for example the drinking of the κυκεών, which have long been recognized as corresponding to ritual undergone by the initiands in the Eleusinian mysteries. It is the main thesis of this paper that just as elements of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter seem to derive from a ἱερ⋯ς λ⋯γος of the Eleusinian mysteries, so certain elements of the Bacchae derive from a ἱερ⋯ς λ⋯γος of the mysteries of Dionysos, and that furthermore Euripides consciously alludes to the Dionysiac mysteries for a dramatic effect dependent on the religiosity of his audience, rather as Aeschylus alludes in the Oresteia, on the principle μαθο⋯σιν αὑδ⋯, to the mysteries of Eleusis.

This case will suffer from two drawbacks. Firstly there is the general scepticism about ritual patterns in drama arising as a reaction to the excesses of, for example, Murray and Cornford. This means that a far greater degree of probability seems to be required from suggestions of this kind than from the more traditional mode of speculation of, say, textual criticism. And secondly, it must be immediately and frankly admitted both that we do not know much about the mysteries of Dionysos and that most of what we do know is from the Hellenistic and Roman period. In the argument that follows recourse will sometimes be had to two assumptions. The first is to suppose a degree of continuity between the Dionysiac mysteries of the classical and later periods. This assumption is based firstly on the observable continuity of the mysteries: for example the antiquity of the Eleusinian ritual described by Plutarch, which will form an important part of my argument, is attested by Aristophanes and Plato. And it is based secondly on general considerations: conservatism is of the essence of those rituals in which a community such as a thiasos perpetuates itself by the transmission of a ritual treasured as originally taught by their god. The second assumption is to suppose, on the basis of numerous observable similarities, an essential similarity between the Dionysiac mysteries and the Eleusinian, about which we are well informed even for the classical period.

Editors of Lysistrate have regarded this passage as a kind of cursus honorum of a well-brought-up young Athenian lady: the chorine first served at the age of seven as a bearer of the sacred casket (arrephoros); then at the age of ten as miller of corn for Athena Archegetis (aletris); then followed service as a ‘bear’ (arktos) of Artemis at the Brauronia; finally, she returned to Athens as a basket-bearer (kanephoros), holding a string of figs, when a fair young girl. After this, presumably, she married.

There are several difficulties in this interpretation: notably, the intrusion into service apparently wholly devoted to Athena of a spell as one of Artemis' servants at Brauron; moreover, the evidence is that Artemis' ‘bears’ were pre-pubescent, not young girls on the verge of marriage, as the above interpretation seems to require them to be. Another weakness lies in the period of service as an arrephoros: this passage seems to be the only direct evidence that arrephoroi might be seven-year-old, rather than adolescent, girls.

A more extreme interpretation is that of A. Brelich, who regarded this passage as proof that there existed in fifth-century Athens a system of universal female initiation, based on four successive grades, arrephoria, aletria, arkteia and kanephoria. I do not propose to comment in detail upon Brelich's hypothesis, but critics of it might begin by questioning the age and number of the arrephoroi, and the function and location of the kanephoroi.

It seems to be widely agreed by modern scholars that when Solon created his four census-classes (τ⋯λη) in early sixth-century Athens (Plut. Sol. 18. 1–2) he gave to at least three of them – the ἱππεῖς, the ζευγῖται and the θ⋯τες – names which were in pre-existing use there. But what, if so, did the names signify, before being assigned their new, official, quantitative (and semantically colourless) Solonic sense? The archaic Athenian θ⋯τες were presumably recognizably akin to their Homeric and Hesiodic namesakes; and despite the etymological obscurity of the word in any event, in practical terms it will have denoted men who by all relevant social, economic or military tests scored a negligible rating. In the case of higher scorers, however, it becomes important for us to discover precisely which criteria are being applied, and so it is the ἱππεῖς and the ζευγῖται who have always posed the main interpretative puzzle. For the ζευγῖται Ehrenberg put it succinctly enough: ‘the zeugitai can be explained either as those who owned a pair of oxen under the yoke (zeugos) or those who are joined to their neighbours in the ranks of the phalanx’. Both these explanations – for convenience I shall (for the moment) call them the agricultural and the military – have indeed long had, and continue to have, their adherents. Most of the great nineteenth-century students of Staatsaltertümer took the agricultural line, usually without argument; and the standard lexica still do. In 1894, however, Conrad Cichorius made out a strong case for the military explanation, and he has had many followers, both witting and (I should guess) unwitting.

This paper is an attempt so to construe the arguments of the Hippias Minor as to remove the justification for regarding it as unworthy of Plato either because of its alleged fallaciousness and Sophistic mode of argument or because of its alleged immorality. It focuses, therefore, only on the arguments and their conclusions, steering clear of the dialogue's dramatic and literary aspects. Whereas I do not wish to deny the importance of these aspects to a proper understanding of the dialogue – on the contrary, in a dialogue so heavily laden with irony and caricature, these aspects are necessarily more significant than they are in other dialogues – I do think there is something to be gained from concentrating on the arguments themselves. Although there can be little doubt that Socrates is up to something in the Hippias Minor, the task of determining just what he is up to can only be simplified by clarifying the arguments first.

The Hippias Minor has traditionally been thought to contain two independent arguments, each having its own paradoxical conclusion. The first argument begins, it is said, when Hippias characterizes the two Homeric heroes Achilles and Odysseus as the true man (⋯ ⋯ληθ⋯ς) and the false man (⋯ ψευδ⋯ς) respectively. Through its discovery that both the false man and the true man have δύναμις, it results in the paradox that the false man and the true are identical. The second argument, on this view, leaves the subject of ⋯ ⋯ληθ⋯ς and ⋯ ψευδ⋯ς and compares instead all sorts of agents in intentional and unintentional action. Finding that the intentional agent is in every case better than the unintentional, the argument concludes that the intentional evil-doer is also better than the unintentional. Viewing the dialogue as thus containing two distinct topics treated in two self-sufficient arguments is perhaps not the best way to understand it.

My title is deliberately provocative, since I want to challenge both the chronology and the philosophical interpretation generally accepted for the dialogues called Socratic. I am not primarily interested in questions of chronology, or even in Plato's intellectual ‘development’. But the chronological issues are clear-cut, and it will be convenient to deal with them first. My aim in doing so will be to get at more interesting questions concerning philosophical content and literary design.

Interpreters should perhaps think more often about such questions as: Why did Plato write dialogues after all? Why does a little dialogue like the Laches have such a stellar cast, with so many major figures from Athenian history? Why does Plato re-create the schoolboy atmosphere of the Charmides and Lysis? Why does he compose such a large and vivid fencing-match between Socrates and the long-dead Protagoras, in a conversation supposed to have taken place before Plato himself was born? The view which I wish to challenge tends to assume that Plato's motivation in such dialogues was primarily historical: to preserve and defend the memory of Socrates by representing him as faithfully as possible. From this it would seem to follow that the philosophic content of these dialogues must be Socrates' own philosophy, which Plato has piously preserved somewhat in the way that Arrian has preserved the teachings of Epictetus. The counterpart assumption tends to be that when Plato ceases to write as an historian he writes like any other philosopher: using Socrates as a mouthpiece to express whatever philosophical doctrines Plato himself holds at the time of writing.

The use of dialogue in Xenophon's Hellenica is a phenomenon that needs explanation. Among previous historians, Herodotus had used it frequently but Thucydides hardly at all. In Xenophon's own time, Ctesias had used it but not the author of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia nor Ephorus to any great extent, as far as we can tell. Theopompus had plagiarized one of the Hellenica dialogues as well as adding others of his own. Generally, dialogue occurred less frequently in history writing than the set speech.

Yet there have been no serious studies of dialogue in the Hellenica, and where opinions are expressed they often vary. Sordi considered that the purpose of dialogue was decorative and agreed with the estimates of ancient critics about the liveliness of the conversations. Breitenbach also thought they had literary merit but suggested that their purpose was moral and didactic. Henry agreed that their purpose was didactic but thought them flat and lifeless and lacking in literary merit. Bruce thought their purpose was to illustrate personality.

These differences of opinion should be settled. Moreover, Sordi's view that the content, style and purpose of dialogue is quite different from that of the set speech, and that this reflects a difference of genre within the Hellenica, dialogue being typical of memoir and the set speech of ‘serious’ history, cannot go unchallenged. Herodotus used dialogue in what was clearly not memoir. Further, there has been no serious attempt to place dialogue in the Hellenica in the tradition of dialogue writing in history or to examine its relationship to dramatic dialogue or the philosophical dialogue. This needs to be attempted. Such are the aims of this paper.

The period after the repulse of Xerxes' invasion is one of the more obscure in Greek history, and this is particularly true of the eclipse of Themistokles and the history of the Peloponnese in the seventies and sixties. On the period of Themistokles' ostracism before the flight which led him to Persia Thucydides says only that he was ostracized and lived at Argos while also travelling to the rest of the Peloponnese. Other writers add a few details to Thucydides' account on other aspects of the ostracism, but tell us even less on the sojourn in Argos. Diodoros and Plutarch merely tell us that he lived there in exile while Nepos informs us that Themistokles' virtuous and dignified life in Argos aroused resentment.

Now Themistokles did not remain inactive in exile. The Spartans had some good reason to wish to remove him from Argos. The activities which aroused the Spartans' distrust are probably referred to by Thucydides' remark that Themistokles journeyed to the rest of the Peloponnese. It is usually concluded that Themistokles was involved in the creation of an anti-Spartan coalition and that a major part of this policy may have been the establishment of democratic governments in and the synoecism of the cities of Elis and Mantineia.

But we lack any clear evidence on Themistokles' actions in this period and the hypothesis rests principally on deductions from two brief passages. The first is from Herodotos and records that in 479 b.c. the Mantineian and Eleian contingents arrived too late to take part in the battle of Plataia and on their return both cities banished their commanders.

In his article ‘A Cavalry Unit in the Army of Antigonus Monophthalmus: Asthippoi’, N. G. L. Hammond argues that the reading of the manuscript R (Parisinus gr. 1665) at Diodorus 19. 29. 2 should be retained and that we should read ⋯π⋯ π⋯σι δ⋯ το⋯ς τε ⋯σθ⋯ππους ⋯νομαζομ⋯νους κα⋯ τοὺς ⋯κ τ⋯ν ἄνω κατοικο⋯ντων ⋯κτακοσιο⋯ς. The readings of F (Laurentianus 70, 12) and its copy X, ⋯νθ⋯ππους, and the commonly accepted conjecture of Wesseling ⋯μɸ⋯ππους (accepted by F. Bizière in her Budé edition of Diodorus 19), should both be abandoned. Hammond's arguments for retaining this reading are (i) that between the variant readings of R and F, R ‘is the more often correct’ (he here quotes Bizière); (ii) ⋯σθ⋯ππους, the reading of R, is preferable to F's ⋯νθ⋯ππους on the principle of ‘lectio difficilior’; (iii) the ‘difficulty’ of his lectio difficilior is made less by the arguments presented by A. B. Bosworth (CQ n.s. 23 (1973), 245 ff.), for the restoration at several places in the text of Arrian's Anabasis the word ⋯σθ⋯ταιροι, in place of the editorial emendation of πεζ⋯ταιροι. ‘For just as asthetairoi meant an élite group of Macedonian infantrymen,’ says Hammond, ‘so asthippoi should mean an élite group of Macedonian cavalrymen.’ He then proceeds to examine the passage and its context in an attempt to find confirmation of this proposition and comes to the conclusion that Diodorus' text says that there were 800 cavalrymen, broken into two groups, the asthippoi and ‘the men from the up-country settlers’; these, though having different names, had a close relationship to each other, as is shown by their being brigaded together (p. 129). Following his derivation of asthetairoi as meaning ‘townsmen-companions’, i.e. companions recruited from the towns of Upper Macedonia (i.e. ⋯στο⋯ ⋯ταῖροι), he argues that asthippoi were cavalry recruited (originally by Philip II) from the towns of Upper Macedonia (i.e. the cavalry equivalent of asthetairoi) and that τοὺς ⋯κ τ⋯ν ἄνω κατοικο⋯ντων means ‘the sons of settlers in up-country Macedonia’. These 800, says Hammond, were both among Antigonus' best troops and ‘were Macedonians from Europe’ (p. 134). We thus appear, on Hammond's interpretation, to have here a group of 800 Macedonian élite cavalrymen, all of whom were recruited in Upper Macedonia's townships, but of whom some were chosen to be the cavalry-equivalent of the élite ‘townsmen-companions’ by their title of ‘townsmen-cavalry’, whilst the others, similarly recruited – but perhaps of a younger generation? – had no particular distinguishing title beyond ‘sons of settlers in up-country Macedonia’.

Now, while it would be exciting to be able to add another one, possibly two Macedonian cavalry units to the Macedonian army of Philip, Alexander and the Successors, there are several aspects of Hammond's arguments that, it seems to me, are less than convincing. Thus, whilst it seems beyond reasonable doubt that ⋯σθ⋯ταιροι (or ⋯σθ⋯τεροι) should be retained in the text of Arrian, appearing, as it does, six times, this is not an argument that ⋯σθ⋯ππους should be read in Diodorus' text. Both it and F's reading of ⋯νθ⋯ππους are hapax legomena and it is possible that both readings are wrong. But even if we retain ⋯σθ⋯ππους as the correct reading, Hammond's explanation of its meaning is open to objection on several counts.

It is characteristic of A. to use words that occur only once in Homer, and such a word is ἄρρητος. In Od. 14. 466 it describes the remark that is better left unspoken, ὅ πέρ τ' ἄρρητον ἄμεινον. But it has the distinction of occurring once also in Hesiod, and this time it is used of men without fame, ῥητοί τ' ἄρρητοί τε Διòς μεγάλοιο ἕκατι (Op. 4). It is clearly this line in Hesiod's proem that A. is echoing in his own, and in the same kind of sense, though, as Martin points out, A. ‘renverse en quelque sorte une expression d'Hésiode’. In the Phaenomena it is Zeus who is always being celebrated by men.

The idiom with ⋯⋯ν and negative is used by Plato, Lg. 793 b, οὔτε νόμους δεῖ προσαγορεύειν αὐτ⋯ οὔτε ἄρρητα ⋯⋯ν, and it may have been a familiar expression. But here in A., with the emphatic οὐδέποτε, it does seem rather contrived, and this may account for the fanciful explanation in the scholia that Zeus here represents the air we use every time we speak. The phrasing is certainly designed to give the maximum emphasis to ἄρρητον, which comes in enjambement at the beginning of the second line and is then followed by a strong sense pause. It is tempting, therefore, to suggest that the poet is indulging in a kind of pun on the sound of his own name, which usually has a long α in its first syllable and sometines η in its second: e.g. Call. Epigr. 27. 4 Ἀρήτου σύντονος ⋯γρυπνίη, and Leonidas, A.P. 9. 25. 1 γράμμα τόδ' Ἀρήτοιο δαήμονος. Other Hellenistic poets have contrived puns on the derivation oftheir names: Philodemusin A.P. 5. 115, Meleager in A.P. 12. 165, and Crates in A.P. 11. 218. 4. Closer to A. is the story recorded in the ancient biographical tradition of Antigonus complimenting the poet with the pun εὐδοξóτερον ποιεῖς τòν Eὔδοξον.

As Fragment 46 of the first book of Sallust's Histories Maurenbrecher prints: Magnis operibus perfectis obsidium cepit per L. Catilinam legatum. This he takes in effect to mean that Lucretius Ofella after the completion of great siege works received reinforcements brought by L. Catiline legate of Sulla. The interpretation depends largely upon his contention that the phrase obsidium cepit is to be taken as equivalent to subsidium cepit, for which he claims the authority, ultimately, of Verrius Flaccus as represented by Festus p. 193M s.v. obsidium. Though opinions may occasionally have differed as to the precise event documented by the fragment, this central assumption seems to have gone unchallenged by historians. Yet it rests upon remarkably insecure foundations. The reading cepit has scant authority and the interpretation of obsidium as subsidium (= auxilium) none at all. It is in fact the result of misunderstanding the passage of Festus in which the text is embedded.

In Lindsay's edition (p. 210) the Festus entry which is here quoted in full runs as follows:

Obsidium tamquam praesidium, subsidium recte dicitur, cuius etiam auctor C. Laelius pro se apud populum (i.e. Orat. 9): ‘Ut in nobis terra marique simul obsidium facerent.’ Et Sallustius historiarum I (46): ‘Magnis operibus perfectis obsidium coepit per L. Catilinam legatum.’

Coepit is the reading of the manuscript F, which has been generally accepted, while cepit appears only in the Aldine edition where it may well be an emendation or even an error, there being no obvious independent source which might have provided it. For Maurenbrecher it was merely the ‘correction’ of Corte (1724) who produced the earliest roughly chronological arrangement of the fragments of Sallust's Histories.

The relevance of the 1st and 9th Vergilian Eclogues to land settlement in Italy after Philippi has been discussed by many scholars. Questions such as the identity of Tityrus, Menalcas, and the youthful deus of Eclogue 1, and the eventual fate of the paternal farm, are the very stuff of Vergilian scholarship. It is possible to add an archaeological and epigraphic commentary on these events which may perhaps provide a more balanced framework for the continuing literary investigation of the poems.

That Cremona was among the 18 prosperous cities selected before Philippi to be a reward for the time-served soldiery among the Triumviral legions is a clear and safe deduction from the Eclogues themselves. The decision to establish colonies was taken at Bononia in October 43, and colony commissioners were appointed at the same time (Dio 47. 14. 4). It is unlikely that they began work in earnest until the necessary victory had been won. These commissioners, sometimes and perhaps always with the title praefectus, acted as substitutes for the formal deductores, the Triumvirs themselves. The praefectus for Cremona is not directly attested.

From the poems themselves and the scholiasts it might be thought that the arrival of the veterans to take possession was sudden and unannounced, adding to the shock felt by the owners (Ecl. 9. 3–4; Serv. Proem.). In fact, the process of establishing a colony was carefully defined, and took considerable time. Firstly the commissioner, with a staff of surveyors and assistants, visited the town and set in motion the measurement of its territorium, the land on which the veterans would in due course be settled. Frequently the veterans expressed their dissatisfaction at the resulting time-lag (App. 3. 87; Plut. Ant. 73; App. 5. 13 ff.).

Among other things, R. O. A. M. Lyne's recent edition and commentary of the Ciris (Cambridge, 1978) has established the general method of composition followed by this pseudo-neoteric poet: he demonstrably lifted wholesale and applied to his own poem words, phrases, lines, and even entire sequences from the works of the neoterics and the poets of the following generation. Accordingly, one of the poem's chief attributes is that it serves as a means for recovering the general content, and at times the actual wording, of earlier, more important poetry. This paper offers some additional areas in the Ciris where such influence may exist. I confine myself to Cinna and Calvus, whose poetry may justly be considered the missing two-thirds of the neoteric movement.

The epistle to Florus (Ep. 2. 2) has usually been grouped with the epistle to Augustus and the Ars Poetica, partly because of its length, which sets it, like the other two, apart from the letters of the first book, and partly because of the common interest in literary theory which is manifested in all three. These poems have always been the subject of controversy; but 2. 2 has received less attention than the others, perhaps because the elegance and humour of the poem, which have been so often praised, have eclipsed the possibility that it may have something to say, especially about Horace himself, his personality and his changing allegiances to philosophy and poetry. The object of this paper is to offer a reading of 2. 2, not as a piece of autobiography, nor as a mosaic of conventional motifs, but as an examination by Horace of his own poetry and poetic aims, in which he is testing and criticizing his own achievement, and himself. In this he continues one of the most attractive and impressive practices of the earlier book of epistles.

Horace here abnegates his role as a lyric poet, and this is generally taken literally as placing the poem quite precisely between the completion of Epistles 1 and Horace's resumption of lyric writing in the Carmen Saeculare and Odes 4. But more important is the way in which Horace in Ep. 2. 2 itself expresses a judgement about his own poetic ambitions. The philosophic themes of the Epistles and the more frivolous lyric subjects (‘iocos, Venerem, convivia, ludum’, 2. 2. 56) which he presents as the essence of his Odes, are both aspects of Horace's poetry and personality; the question is whether one should be considered more valid than the other in the poet's own mature judgement, whether Horace should in fact have outgrown either or both kinds of poetry. In this poem, then, it is important not only that he renews the renunciation of poetry and the gay life which he made at Ep. 1. 1. 10–11, but also that this decision is to some extent forced on him, and reluctantly made (2. 2. 55–7).

Aetiological poetry tends to be mature poetry in both a literary and a political sense. Interest in antiquarian lore belongs in general to a poet's middle and later years when youthful and audacious quests for what is avant-garde and anti-establishment have yielded to conservatism and a desire to preserve the past. Propertius and Ovid both turned to aetiological poetry after a long apprenticeship in amatory ‘nugae’ which enabled them, like their predecessor, Callimachus, to embellish their work with a diversity of artistic devices founded on considerable poetic skill and literary experience. With this, a vital ploy to engage the sympathy of a sophisticated audience, went the poise and urbanity with which the aetiological poet found humour in the pose of earnest researcher, in the naivety of primitive cult and in clever literary adaptations. Moreover, dedication to a form of writing essentially nationalist and conservative encouraged a tone of patriotic pride and allusions, even compliments, to the ruling powers. In the light of such considerations we may examine Ovid's account of the ‘Ludi Megalenses’.

The ‘Megalensia’ furnished Ovid with a goddess who had enjoyed fame and even notoriety in the pages of Roman literature. In addition to showing a poetic and neoteric interest in the orgiastic elements of her cult and the alien music of her retinue Roman poetry could reflect too the awe and reverence inspired of old by the Great Mother and expressed in the Greek poets, whom Lucretius claimed as his sources in his powerfully beautiful excursus on Cybele worship. Again, Cybele's importance in Rome had been augmented by her Trojan origins, concerning which a canonical Augustan theology had been established by Vergil in the Aeneid.

At Pliny, Ep. 5. 18 we read that Macer, the recipient of that letter, has a villa which Pliny says must be lovely, because in qua [sc. villa] se composuerat homo felicior, antequam felicissimus fieret. The identity of this homo felicior is undoubtedly of some interest, but the latest commentary on Pliny's Letters (that of A. N. Sherwin-White) has nothing to say on the matter. However, B. Radice in her two translations of the Letters (Loeb and Penguin eds.) says that the person in question is Nerva, but adds as a second possibility ‘the dictator Sulla’. In this ambivalence she is at one with many of the older commentators on the Letters. Alone among the commentators examined by us, M. Gesner (following Cortius) elects to give preference to Sulla over Nerva. We believe Sulla is certainly the owner in question, but since the ambiguity persists in the scholarly tradition, a fresh look should be taken at the problem and the case against Nerva and for Sulla be put more fully than hitherto.

In using the phrase homo felicior, antequam felicissimus fieret without actually naming the person, it is clear that Pliny takes it for granted that the individual in question will be immediately recognizable to Macer, the recipient of the letter, by this description. It follows, therefore, that the phrase had become well established as a commonplace, inevitably and unambiguously linked to one person only. All of our evidence suggests that it cannot be applied to Nerva. First of all it is likely that such a phrase would need time to become accepted into the tradition so as to become readily identifiable, whereas Pliny was writing only a relatively short time after Nerva's reign.

Theodore Waitz, in the section of his introduction to Aristotle's Organon called De Codicibus graecis organi, prints a number of passages found in various manuscripts, which are not to be treated simply as scholia on Aristotle, but are still of some interest to the student of Aristotle's logic. In this paper I am concerned with three leaves, fos. 84–6, from Laurentianus 71, 32, a fourteenth-century manuscript containing paraphrases of several works, which Waitz uses for scholia on the Categories and the De Interpretatione. These leaves are in a different hand from the rest of the manuscript, and Waitz thinks they originated elsewhere. The heading is: Περ⋯ τ⋯ς το⋯ ποτ⋯ κɑτηγορ⋯ɑς, and the work falls into two parts, a discussion of Time, based on Physics 4, and an independent section in which the category of When, which Aristotle does little more than mention in a number of lists, is treated at length. In Waitz' text there are a number of references to scholia: these are in fact from Simplicius' Commentary on the Categories, and a comparison with these and still other passages of Simplicius not mentioned by Waitz suggests that the author of this work was Boethus of Sidon, the Peripatetic. I propose to examine it and argue that it is indeed by Boethus.

Boethus, known as ‘the Peripatetic’, to distinguish him from the Stoic philosopher of the same name, was head of the Peripatos in succession to Andronicus of Rhodes. There is some uncertainty about Andronicus' dates, but he lived some time in the middle of the first century b.c. and we may place Boethus somewhat later in the same century. Andronicus is well known as the editor, and in a sense the rediscoverer, of the esoteric works of Aristotle; it is less well known that he had an independent attitude to Aristotle and put forward what he presumably thought of as some improvements in doctrine. What concerns us here is his attempt to substitute the category of Time for that of When. In opposition to him Boethus may be seen as a conservative, coming to the defence of Aristotle against these innovations.

The problem of man's early existence and of the value of culture is discussed in one of the post-classical tragedies, and the answer given is definitely anti-primitivistic.

The longest and most remarkable of Moschion's fragments deals with man's development (fr. 6 N2/Sn., ap. Stob. 1. 8. 38) and runs to 33 well-constructed iambics containing throughout not a single resolved foot. It is uncertain whether Moschion belongs to the fourth or third century b.c. Nevertheless, his account is consistent with the conscious affirmations of progress which were widely attested in the fifth and fourth centuries b.c.