Professor Ogilvie, co-editor of Classical Quarterly since the summer of 1976, died suddenly at St Andrews on 7 November 1981. He was forty-nine. His untimely death is a grievous blow to his family, his colleagues at St Andrews, and an unusually wide circle of pupils past and present, friends from many walks of life, and classical scholars. At a remarkably young age Robert Ogilvie achieved distinction as a Latinist and Roman historian, a humane man of letters, a don, and a schoolmaster. He was a brilliant lecturer, an educationalist passionately convinced of the good in Greek and Roman life and literature. The demands which others made on him were heavy, and he demanded much of himself.

’Aυαγυώρισις γàρ διόλov, says Aristotle of the Odyssey,2 and throughout the poem's second half, with which we are here concerned, there is indeed a series of progressive recognitions as Odysseus reveals himself to Telemachos, Eurykleia, Eumaios, the suitors, Penelope and finally Laertes. So the importance of the opposite is not surprising; without concealment and deception there could be no eventual recognition. Concealment is of course necessary if Odysseus is to survive in the face of so many enemies, as Athena tells him (13. 307–10). But in addition, in any work of imaginative literature, so long as the reader or audience is aware of the truth, concealment and unperceived identity open the door to all sorts of half-truths and ironies – possibilities most obviously explored in tragedy and later comedy, but also made use of in the Odyssey. The irony which may be inherent in the arrival of the ‘nameless stranger’ has been most thoroughly explored by Fenik;3 here we examine a further implication.

Agamemnon returns victorious from Troy; the Argive Elders who form the chorus of the play greet and praise him. On a first reading the praise seems lukewarm, the passage as a whole rambling and uninteresting.1 Is the address unimportant because our eyes are intent upon Agamemnon and his retinue? If so, the tone of these anapaests would still be puzzling, in giving the king's arrival the effect of an anticlimax, particularly considering the duration and nature of the dramatic preparation for it.

All editors and translators that I know of render the first part of this passage along the lines of ‘They changed the usual meanings of words‘. Thus Weil and Romilly talk of ‘le sens usuel des mots’,1 Stahl of ‘usitatam vocabulorum significationem’,2 Bloomfield of ‘the accustomed acceptation of names’;3 the most popular modern English translation gives ‘words... had to change their usual meanings’,4 and the best-known modern commentary the phrase in my title – ‘the customary meanings of words were changed’.5 The passage is widely quoted, not only by ancient historians but also by sociologists and philosophers; and one suspects the excitement of this translation to be at least a part-cause of the passage's fame. Comparisons are made with modern propaganda, Orwell's 1984, and so on. But this translation must be wrong; unfortunately for generations of believers, though fortunately for the reputation of Thucydides, who would otherwise be saddled with a nonsensical piece of writing.

The purpose of this article is to explain what I believe to have been the nature of the relationship between Aristophanes and the producer of his earliest plays, Kallistratos. My view was indicated in my edition of Wasps (pp. 124, 263–4) without full explanation. It is much the same as the view taken by Rennie in his edition of Akharnians (pp. 11–21), but I think that it can be given more cogent support than Rennie gave it. Recently the whole matter has been discussed afresh by G. Mastromarco (QuadernidiStoria 10(1979), 153–96)andS. Halliwell (CQ n.s.30(1980),33–45).1 This has enabled me to make my article briefer; I need not repeat the full bibliographical references to other views which Mastromarco and Halliwell have given, and I can, for the most part, confine my comments to the points on which I disagree with them.2 Everyone accepts the statements of the Hellenistic scholars that the earliest plays of Aristophanes (Banqueters, Babylonians, Akharnians) were produced δι⋯Καννιστρ⋯του. Consideration of what this meant may begin from his own justification of the arrangement, given in the parabasis of Knights.

In this article, an introduction to a proposed more comprehensive treatment of the subject, I wish to discuss the contribution that the parabasis makes to the understanding and interpretation of Aristophanes’ comedies. The study of this part of the plays has in the past concentrated upon two main areas: firstly, its role in the development of comedy, including questions about its original position in the dramatic structure and its relationship to other elements such as the parodos and agon; and secondly, its role as the repository of Aristophanes’ personal views.1 I shall touch but incidentally on the first of these, though my argument will have some bearing on it; to the second I shall return at the end. My aim is to consider an aspect of the parabasis that has not so much been neglected as dismissed as non-existent: the relation between the contents of the parabasis and those of the rest of the play. It is generally agreed that the parabasis deals with matters that are irrelevant to the dramatic action, but I wish to argue that it has a significant role as the focus of the most important themes in the play: far from breaking up the unity of the play, the parabasis provides indications as to where that unity is to be found, besides giving hints about the meaning of the play and the nature of Aristophanic comedy generally.2

As an example of Aristophanic literary criticism the portrayal of Agathon in the prologue of the Thesmophoriazusae has been rather overshadowed by the poetry contest of the Frogs. This is largely because more can be said about parody when something substantial of the author parodied has survived.1 Before many of the specific difficulties of the Agathon scenes we have no alternative but to confess our ⋯πορ⋯α.On the other hand, we need not despair of understanding the general point of these scenes, and in this the most helpful method is that of identifying those Aristophanic techniques which shaped them. This method has already taken us a good way forward, so that there is no need now to argue for the structural integrity of these scenes2 or their thematic relevance to the play.3 Accordingly, in this paper I will discuss the portrayal of Agathon in relation to typical Aristophanic techniques. My main concern, however, will be with the significance of the different conceptions of literature raised in the course of the parody, Agathon being satirized in turn as an inspired poet, a craftsman poet and an effeminate poet. I hope to show that, for Aristophanes, Agathon's effeminacy is as much a reflection of his art as of his personality.

The ‘choriambic dimeter’, or ‘wilamowitzianus’, is favoured by Euripides. Aeschylus does not use this colon,1 while Sophocles, as explained below, restricts it to a few stanzas and occasional sequences. But Euripides has at least one ode composed of ‘chor dim’ standing κατà στίχoν with glyconic in all of his middle and later plays except Tro2 ‘Chor dim’ has a strong affinity with glyc. They not only mix within an ode but make strophic responsion with each other. P. Maas regards ‘chor dim’ as an anaclastic variant of glyc: and indeed some scholars give the name ‘glyc’ to the colon.4

Granted the acceptability of the argument in section B the only clear contradiction in the evidence about the union of Corinth and Argos is that between Xenophon and Diodorus. What I have said about the latter may seem arbitrary and wilful. But I suggest that it is no less arbitrary and wilful to regard Xenophon's account of the matter as utterly wrong or, worse still, almost utterly wrong but with tinges of truth, and that we are quite entitled to give Xenophon, not Diodorus, the benefit of the doubt. I should also have thought that, a priori, unification is quite as likely to have occurred against the background of the violent political disturbances of c. March 392 as against that of the destruction of the Spartan mora and Iphicrates' successes elsewhere in 390.33

Crime pays, says Polus at Gorgias 473. Socrates, on the other hand, maintains two propositions in the face of universal opinion:

Aristotle (Rhet. 3.9) distinguishes two types of style, the ‘periodic’ or ‘rounded’ (λ⋯ξιςκατεστραμμέη) and the ‘non-periodic’, ‘strung-on’ or ‘continuous’ (λέξιςε;ἰρομένη).* The latter is typical of prose in its young and unsophisticated state, and Aristotle is not much interested in it; his discussion of the periodic style is much longer, with subdivisions being introduced and numerous examples given. His basic definition of the period is not, however, clear, and the point has seen some controversy. There are two possibilities. (1) He defines the period ‘rhythmically’ (as I shall call it). The essential feature of the period is that its beginning and end are marked off by specific metrical rhythms (discussed in the preceding chapter, 3.8, where Aristotle recommends the paean).1 (2) He defines it ‘logically’. The period is a syntactic structure with an inner cohesion produced by the logical, pre-planned arrangement of its parts according to the requirements of the whole.2 The current consensus at least of written opinions is that Aristotle intended the first;3 I believe that the issue can be settled fairly decisively in favour of the second.

There is no general agreement among scholars that Aristotle had a unified concept of phantasia. That is evident from the most cursory glance through the literature. Freudenthal (p. 53) speaks of the contradictions into which Aristotle seems to fall in his remarks about phantasia, and explains the contradictions as due to the border position which phantasia occupies between Wahrnehmung and thinking. Ross, in Aristotle (ed. 5, London, 1949), p. 143, talks of passages on phantasia in De Anima 3. 3 which constitute ‘a reversal of his doctrine of sensation’ and perhaps do not ‘represent his deliberate view’. This is a serious state of affairs, since De Anima 3. 3 is Aristotle’s main discussion of phantasia. Of passages on phantasia, appearances and images in De Anima 3. 3, Hamlyn says: ‘There is clearly little consistency here’. Even Schofield, who is more optimistic about saving the unity of Aristotle’s concept than the last two scholars, grants that ‘some of the inconsistencies of Aristotle’s account seem more than merely apparent’.1 He thinks of Aristotle’s phantasia as a ‘loose-knit, family concept’ (op. cit., p. 106). My purpose here is to suggest that Aristotle is more consistent in his use of phantasia than his critics will allow him to be. The translation of the term as imagination frequently adds unnecessarily to the confusion, so I shall avoid it and use transliteration instead.

We have extremely strong reasons for supposing that the exposure of infants, very often resulting in death, was common in many different parts of the Roman Empire, and that it had considerable demographic, economic and psychological effects. The evidence for the first of these propositions has been reviewed or alluded to in several recent publications.1 However, a thorough new study, covering the whole of Greek and Roman antiquity, would be worth while. In the meantime Donald Engels has declared that in the Greek and Roman worlds the exposure of children was ‘of negligible importance’ (‘The problem of female infanticide in the Greco-Roman World’, CPh 75 (1980), 112–20).

A most pleasing recent advance in our knowledge of Callimachus’ fragmentary poems has been the recognition that an elegiac piece, part of which appeared as P. Oxy. vol. 1 no. 14, belongs to him and, one presumes, to the Aetia. Powell (Collectanea Alexandrina, p. 131) already thought of Callimachus as the author, others of Nicander (hence Gow-Scholfield doubtfully included the fragment in their edition, p. 220). Evidence that the author was of some standing is provided by the fact that a scholiast on Nicander, Theriaca 386 (P. Oxy. 2221 col. 11, 17–20) quoted line 4 of the fragment1 (though the additional letters at the start of the line have defied restoration and may be corrupt).2 Great progress came with the publication by M. Gronewald (ZPE 15 [1974], 105 ff.) of P. Mich. 4761, which preserves, almost though not quite perfectly, the beginning of lines 5–15 (underlined on the accompanying text), wherein P. Oxy.

Meleager, in assembling the poetic garland of his first epigram, picked palm-leaves to represent Aratus:

Our purpose is protreptic, to broach a subject neglected by researchers and consequently by commentators on Plautus and Terence.1 We mean the relation of rhythm and dramatic meaning in the ordinary stichic iambo-trochaic metres. It is of course a longstanding convention that a commentator writing in usum scholarum will include some account of the basic rules of scansion and prosody and a conspectus metrorum of sorts. Ambitious efforts may be made to analyse the polymetric songs in Plautus, if to label cola is analysis; but there are notorious difficulties in this, for the songs are astrophic and polymorphous, the colometry is uncertain, and it cannot be said that we fully understand the range or relationship of the elements out of which the songs are constructed, or that the rules of prosody in the cantica have been definitively established. Under the circumstances it is understandable that commentators refrain except in the most general terms from relating rhythm to dramatic context in the songs. But it is different with the iambo-trochaic metres. We are on firmer ground here, and there is more of it. Commentators will draw attention to aspects of the playwright's diction such as alliteration, assonance, triadic expression, hyperbaton, and so on, by which emphasis and dramatic ‘colouring’ may be indicated. But very little attention is given to the dramatic and tonal implications of the texture of the iambo-trochaic metres as used for whole scenes or in particular exchanges. This is a pity, because Plautus and the tragedians and even Terence can be shown to have exploited the latitude of realization allowed by ‘the rules’ to underpin the sense of a passage or an exchange.

It is often repeated that at the unsuccessful productions of Terence's Hecyra the audience left the theatre in order to see, on the first occasion, boxers and a tight-rope walker, on the second, a gladiatorial contest.1 The other view, that the spectators remained but demanded other entertainment, is to my mind clearly correct and deserves restatement since the mistaken one is so widespread.

In 56 L. Cornelius Balbus, a native of Gades, was charged with having usurped the Roman citizenship. Most scholars have held on the basis of Cicero’s speech in his defence that the charge was unjustified. This orthodoxy was challenged in 1966 by H. Braunert:1 in his view Balbus’ enfranchisement was illegal because the consent of Gades had not been obtained. More recently H. Galsterer has deduced from this premise the further conclusion that in the second century the Latin ius migrationis was restricted by a rule that no migrant could become a Roman citizen without the consent of the city of his origin. 2 It is my aim to rehabilitate the orthodox view and to show that there is no warrant for Galsterer’s thesis.

In CQ n.s. 30 (1980), 127 ff. Mr A. Hudson-Williams clearly and illuminatingly exposes the difficulties contained in these lines. It seems possible, however, to carry the analysis further; and in the following I offer, with Mr Hudson-Williams's findings as a starting-point, some suggestions towards a solution of the problems.