In the vast literature centering on the Itinerarium Egeriae (IE) there is a serious lacuna. No attempt has been made to analyse the circle of readers to whom this remarkable document was addressed and for whose sake Egeria recorded so faithfully every detail of her journey. Yet if a full understanding of the IE is to be achieved, some definition of the circle of Egeria and of its relations with the pilgrim is essential. In other words, who in the West at that point in the late fourth century, would have been so interested in Holy Land pilgrimage as to read attentively such a personal account as the IE? The following is a tentative essay to gauge the concerns, expectations and cultural background of Egeria's immediate circle of readers through her own emphasis on various aspects of her pilgrimage. In addition, the investigation will try to assess the place of pilgrimage in the life of western communities and the value of communications between the pilgrim on the road and the society back at home.

Among the artifacts produced by nineteenth-century Quellenforschung, few have exerted more influence or endured more censure than the lost Hellenistic epyllion which, as reconstructed by G. Knaack, told of the journey of Phaethon to the palace of the sun-god and his disastrous ride in the solar car. Relying chiefly upon the two versions of the story told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses (1.747–2.398) and Nonnus in the Dionysiaca (38.105–434), and applying techniques comparable to the stemmatic method of textual criticism, Knaack traced every shared feature of these two accounts to the inevitable lost Hellenistic ‘original’. Details from Lucian (Dial. Deor. 25) and Philostratus (Imag. 1.11), who were also presumed to have read this lost poem, helped to fill in the blanks. Knaack's thesis illustrates the extremes of which source criticism was capable at a time when it was naively assumed that Roman poets were capable of little more than literal translation of their Greek models. In the early part of this century, a reaction set in against Knaack's method, when it was alleged that there was no common source for the two poets and that Nonnus derived his account of Phaethon directly from his reading of Ovid. The case was first made by J. Braune, who examined four episodes common to both works – Phaethon, Cadmus, Actaeon, and Daphne – and argued that correspondences between the two are due to imitation of Ovid by Nonnus. Braune's arguments did not win complete acceptance; it is noteworthy that even his supporters were not entirely convinced by three of his four test passages, for which abundant evidence survives of sources earlier than Ovid.

In Eum. 1028–9 the Furies mark their transformation into Eumenides by donning red robes over their black costumes (Cho. 1049, Eum. 352, 370) in imitation of the robes worn in the Panathenaea by metics (Phot. s.v. σκάφας = Men. fr. 166 Koerte; cf. Eum. 1011). Greek epic was sensitive to the symbolic value of clothing and Aeschylus had experimented in the Persians with the greater scope that drama offered for clothing-symbolism. Scholars have detected a wealth of associations in the Furies' robing-scene: this culmination of the trilogy echoes the red carpet upon which Agamemnon walks to his death in the first play, which is actually referred to as ‘garments’ (εἵματα Ag. 921, 960, 963), and the net in which Agamemnon is caught (Ag. 1126, 1382, 1580, Cho. 1000, Eum. 635), which is brought on stage in the middle play (Cho. 973–1006). Another series of stage-actions of equal importance in preparing for the robing of the Furies has not been so well explained.

Anonymous, Vita Aeschyli 9 ( =TGF 3 T Al.30–32 Radt) preserves the following startling report concerning Aeschylus:

Some say that at the performance of the Eumenides, by bringing on the chorus one by one, as he did, he terrified the audience so that children swooned and fetuses were aborted.

C. Prien, Rh. Mus. 6(1848), 192f.: ‘…so habe ich vor Jahren schon vermuthet [but lot published, apparently] ὂρκιóν γ' αὶδουμένους mit Vergleichung der Stellen V. 650 = 680] ὂρκον αἴδεσθε und 680 [ = 710] αὶδουμένους τòν ὂρκον, ohne sie für evident usgeben zu wollen.’

ῶ φάτρασ θῄβησ ἔνοικοι, λεσσετ', οíδíπονσ ὄδε

ὄσ τά κλεíν' αíνíγματ' ἤδει και κράτιστοσ ἦν άνἠρ,

οὕ τíσ οὕ ζἠλῴ πολιτῶν ταῖσ τύχαισ ἐπἐβλεπεν,

εíσ ὄντ' ἑκεíνην τἠν τελενταíαν íσεíν

ἠμἐραν ἐπισκοποῦντα μνδἐν' ὄλβíζεη, πρíν άν

τἑρμα τού βíον περάσῃ μηδἑν ὰλγεινóν παθὡν.

The messenger who reports the miracles from the mountains in Euripides' Bacchae (677–774) concludes with an injunction to Pentheus that he accept this god into the city (769–74):

τóν δαíμον' ούν τóνδ' ἂστισ ἔστ', ῶ δἑσποτα,

δἐχον πóλει τἦδ'-ὰσ τὰ τ' άλλ' ἐστíν μὰγασ,

κάκεíνó φασιν αύτóν, ἑγὡ κλύω.

Students of the Orestes are fortunate to have two excellent commentaries at their disposal, by C. W. Willink (Oxford, 1986) and M. L. West (Warminster, 1987). Neither will help them to understand this line, which is ‘the only allusion to Ganymede's horsemanship’ (Willink ad loc), because ‘no story of riding by Ganymede is known’ (West ad loc). But we are repeatedly reminded that the scene with the Phrygian (1369ff.) has far fewer affinities with tragedy than with comedy, and εύριπιδαριστοφαíζεται Comedy provides the clue, specifically at Ar. Vesp. 50If. and Lys. 676ff. The reference is to the variety of equestrianism for which Ganymede is far from unknown (he was too young to have established an association with any other kind). For Innoavvr) here describes a σχῆμα ἐρωτικóν and the line means Ganymedes concubinus, Iovis supini inguini insidens et equitans, sc. inter causas fuit malorum propter Iunonis invidiam Troianis immissorum.

Of the four surviving fragments of Varius' De Morte1 perhaps the most widely discussed has been the first:

Vendidit hie Latium populis agrosque Quiritum

eripuit, fixit leges pretio atque refixit

This is imitated by Virgil, whose Sibyl says of a soul in Tartarus:

Vendidit hie auro patriam dominumque potentem

imposuit; fixit leges pretio atque refixit

Most commentators, quoting Cic. Phil. 12.5.12, connect both passages exclusively with Antony, and rightly point to Servius' words on v. 622, ‘possumus Antonium accipere’. What should be stressed, however, is that Servius also thinks the words ‘vendidit hie auro patriam’ have a general reference, but are at the same time designed to recall historical individuals, of whom he names two:

etiam haec licet generaliter dicantur, habent tamen specialitatem: nam Lasthenes Olynthum Philippo vendidit, Curio Caesari XXVII. S. Romam: de quo Lucanus <4.820> Gallorum captus spoliis et Caesaris auro.

caue, caue; namque in malos asperrimus

parata tollo cornua,

qualis Lycambae spretus infido gener

aut acer hostis Bupalo.

an, si quis atra dente me petiuerit,

inultus ut flebo puer?

Harrison observes that commentators translate ‘“inultus” not “unavenged” but “without taking revenge”, construing it with Horace as the subject of “flebo” and not with “puer”’, and he then asserts ‘This use of “inultus” is wholly unparalleled; the adjective is elsewhere always used passively of persons or objects unavenged and never in the active sense of “unavenging”’.

Here Horace's Catius lists restorative foods for drinkers. There seem to be two stages of drinking and two corresponding restoratives: the ‘marcens’ or drooping imbiber may be revived for more by prawns and snails, but not by lettuce, bad for the acidic and vinous stomach, while the man who is further gone needs ham and sausages or anything of that sort from the cook-shops. ‘Immorsus’ causes some difficulty here. It is usually taken with an understood ‘stomachus’ and translated ‘roused’ or ‘excited’ (with wine), but it is surely better to understand not ‘stomachus’ but ‘potor’, giving the elegant balance ‘marcentem…recreabis…potorem…[potor] flagitat immorsus refici’, with both verbs of restoration having the drinker for object. The sense usually given to ‘immorsus’ also seems doubtful: ‘immordeo’ is found only twice in classical Latin and only here in this metaphorical sense, and ‘mordeo’ in such contexts means not to rouse the stomach but to cause it to smart or sting, hardly the effect of wine – cf. Scribonius Largus 188 ‘[aconita] mordet autem stomachum et cor adficit’, Pliny, Nat. 27.133 ‘[radix] gustu acri mordet’.

This is the reading of Clausen's OCT, in which no variant for line 131 is recorded in the apparatus.

No doubt the hendiadys ‘scutica et metus…erilis’ is not impossible,2 but it seems to me not to be a well chosen expression. Since the scutica belongs to the master, one is tempted to construe erilis with both nouns, not just with metus. But then the adjective must function in two different ways: ‘scutica… erilis’ is possessive, ‘his master's strap’, but ‘metus…erilis’ is objective, ‘fear of his master’. And ‘metus…erilis’ in this passage receives no support from ‘erilis…metus’ at Plautus, Amphitruo 1069, which means ‘fear for my mistress’.

The answer to the basic question, quisquamne cantat?, given the rhetoric of the context (perhaps a professorial chestnut of Quintilian's: elements from 11.3.60 turn up at Pliny, Ep. 2.14.3), especially emotive in 57, should be that everyone cantat, but the form of the question seems to suggest, at first sight, the opposite.

Recently in this journal, R. Shaw-Smith suggested reading ‘citra Kal. Ian.’: ‘circa, implying that the consul died either before or after 1st January, will not do.’ Will the example of citra at Aug. 43.4, adduced by Shaw-Smith (and the OLD [s.v. ‘citra’ 3)] in support of the meaning ‘(shortly) before’?

Philostratus remarks on the terseness of the letters of Apollonius of Tyana (Vita Apoll. 7.35, cf. 4.27), and letter 61 is a good example of that stylistic feature. Addressed to a Lesbonax, it says: ᾽Agr;νἀχαπσις ó Σκὑθης ῆν σπφóς εí δὲ Σκὐθης, ὃτι καì ϳκὐθης (‘Anacharsis the Scythian was a sage.. And if he was a Scythian, then it was because he was a Scythian that he was a sage’). In my commentary to the letters, I observed that Apollonius is drawing here on the tradition of the Scythians as an idealized race, unspoiled by the cultivations of Greek city life, and is implicitly criticizing his contemporaries in the Greek world for not living up to the high ideals of Hellenism. I compared a critical remark in letter 34 that alludes to Euripides, Orestes 485: “ἐβαπβαπὡθ” οὐ “χπóνιος ὢν ἀφ’ ‘Ελλἁδι. More can now be said.

The extract from Paul's second book de adulteriis which is quoted at Digest 24.2.9 has been the source of much discussion about its implications for Roman divorce procedure. The text reads:

nullum divortium ratum est nisi septem civibus Romanis puberibus adhibitis praeter libertumeius qui divortium faciet. libertum accipiemus etiam eum, qui a patre avo proavo et ceteris susum versum manumissus sit.

’ɛχεδημία ἢ νῦν ’ακαδημία καλοɛμένη.

Latte's obelization is unnecessary. The form finds confirmation in a text from which I this one may itself derive, a fragment of Dicaearchus' βίος ϳελλάδος preserved by Plutarch:

ὁ δἑ Δικαίαχος ’ɛέμοε φησὸ καί ναράθοɛ σɛστρατεɛσάντων τίτε τίῖς τɛνδαρίδαις ἐξ ’ αρκαδίας, ἀφ’ οὖ μέν ’ɛχεδημίαν προσαγορεɛθῆναι τήν νἑν ’ακαδήμειαν, ἀφ’ οὐ δέ ναραθῶνα τὸν Δῆμομ, ἐπιδιδίντοντος ἐπιδιδίντὸν ἑκɛτσίως κατά τι λίγιον σφαγιον σφαγιάσασθαι πρὸ τῆς παατάξɛως.