‘My own father’, Achilles says to Priam in the last book of the Iliad, ‘was a rich man and a powerful one. He was king of the Myrmidons, and he had a divine wife. But even so the gods gave him evils too. He had no family, only one son, and that son a παναώριος one. I do not look after him in his old age, but am far away, sitting here in Troy, inflicting misery on you and your children.’

The problem I propose to discuss is the meaning of παναώριος. The word is unique to this passage, and the standard translation ‘of all-untimely fate’ or ‘doomed to die young’ is open to many objections. I shall argue that by describing himself as ‘untimely’ what Achilles means is that he is someone who is always doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, a misfit. It may seem a petty point, hardly worth the long argument that will be needed to establish it. But it has consequences for our judgement of the Iliad as a whole. If the one interpretation is correct, then Homer is content to repeat his effects without regard to the situation of his characters, which in any other author we would call careless writing. On the other interpretation he is capable of focusing down to quite detailed nuances. The question is not therefore one of lexicology alone but also of literary criticism.

The translation ‘all-untimely doomed’ has warrant from antiquity. Leaf quotes a scholium παντελ⋯ς ἄωρον ⋯ποθανούμενον, and the word ⋯ωρία is used by a scholiast at 1.505 to refer to the fate by which Achilles was to die early.

My purpose in this paper is to reassert the traditional view that Athenian women of the classical period regularly had an association with phratries (and incidentally to clarify the nature of that association). As part (though not an essential part) of my argument I adduce an overlooked piece of evidence, a much discussed passage from the Donatus commentary on Terence; for this I provide a new interpretation.

There is some evidence that Athenian women were introduced to their fathers phrateres at birth, or to their husbands' phrateres at marriage, or both. The speaker of Isaeus 3 repeatedly asserts (73, 75, 76, 79) that a certain Pyrrhus would have presented his daughter to his phrateres if she had been legitimate (which he denies). A scholium on Aristophanes, Acharnians 146 (= Suda s.v. Apatouria) may refer to such a practice. Euxitheus calls as witnesses of his mother's citizenship phrateres for whom his father celebrated the wedding feast, the gamelia, on her behalf (Dem. 57.43, 69, Isaeus 3.79); celebration of the gamelia is regarded as proof of the legitimacy of the speaker's mother at Isaeus 8.19. Neither Demosthenes nor Isaeus says that women were formally registered among the phrateres or even present at the feast; but notices in the lexicographers do connect the gamelia with registration among or introduction to the phrateres (Harpocration s.v. gamelia, Suda s.v. gamelia, Etym. Magn. 220.50 s.v. gamelia, Pollux 8.107, Anec. Bekk. 228.5, Schol. Dem. 57.43). Many scholars have accepted these passages as evidence for normal practice at Athens in the classical period.

ɸιλοκαλο⋯μέν τε γ⋯ρ μετ' εὐτελείας κα⋯ ɸιλοσοɸο⋯μεν ἄνευ μαλακίαας. πλούτῳ τε ἔργου μ⋯λλον καιῷ ἢ λόγου κόμπῳ χρώμεθα, κα⋯ τ⋯ πένεσθαι οὐχ ⋯μολοσεῖν τιν⋯ αἰσχρόν, ⋯λλ⋯ μ⋯ διαɸεύγειν ἔργῳ αἴσχιον ἔνι τε τοῖς αὐτοῖς οἰκείων ἄμα κα⋯ πολιτικ⋯ν ⋯πιμέλεια, κα⋯ ⋯τέροις πρ⋯ς ἔργα τετραμμένοις τ⋯ πολιτικ⋯ μ⋯ ⋯νδε⋯ς γν⋯ναι.

J. Kakridis has seen in this famous passage a reflection of the popular debate, conducted most memorably by Amphion and Zethus in Euripides' Antiope and Callicles and Socrates in Plato's Gorgias, over the respective merits of the vita activa and vita contemplativa. Normally the intellectual is faulted as lazy and helpless, the politician as an ignorant busybody; yet Pericles, according to Kakridis, claims that Athenians avoid these faults and combine the traits of both lives at their best.

This interpretation accords well with the idealism of the funeral oration, but it falters over what Pericles places between philosophy and politics, viz.πλο⋯τος. Kakridis must struggle to account for the transition directly from philosophy to wealth, on the assumption that πλούτῳ τε…χρώμεθα serves to amplify ἄνευ μαλακίας, while ἔνιτε…⋯πιμέλεια extends the description of the non-intellectual life from the private sphere of trade to the public one of politics (pp. 50–1).

The use of αὐτ⋯ το⋯το, ‘this very thing’, is perfectly familiar in classical Greek; but there is no general awareness, as witness the silence of the reference grammars and lexica, of the parallel usage of αὐτός juxtaposed with ⋯κεῖνος, which is in fact not infrequent in the classical period, and mentioned in Apollonius Dyscolus (Synt. 2. 88). The examination of this construction which follows is intended not only to add to our knowledge of Greek syntax, and thereby to defend some passages against erroneous emendations, but also to place in a wider context one of Plato's ways of referring to the Forms.

As far as I can establish, the only scholar who has ever paid much attention to αὐτ⋯ς ⋯κεῖνος is J. Vahlen in 1906, and that in an obscure place, to explain an obscure passage; moreover, he simply accumulated parallels from authors of the Imperial period, without discussing how the construction is employed. It will emerge that the usage is no less frequent earlier, when it is used in a greater variety of ways, especially by Plato.

The phrase ληκύθιον ⋯πώλεсεν, which Aeschylus in the contest of Aristophanes' Frogs mockingly introduces into six of the prologues of his rival Euripides (twice into one of them), has recently attracted a great deal of attention. With a couple of exceptions those scholars who have discussed it during the last fifteen years agree that it contains a sexual innuendo. Where they differ is on the exact nature of its meaning. What vase shape does ληκύθιον or λήκυθοс denote and hence what part of the male genitalia is envisaged? Or is it mistaken to press for anatomical detail? May not the phrase simply suggest ‘become detumescent’? These are the questions that have been posed regarding Ar. Ran. 1200–47. In what follows I shall try to show that the context, far from demanding that we give an underlying sexual meaning as well as its surface meaning to the phrase, could almost be said positively to exclude such a meaning. In an attempt to be as brief as possible I shall not deal with all of the suggestions made by the scholars mentioned in my second footnote and rarely indicate points of agreement, disagreement or indebtedness. When I confront the arguments of these scholars they are mostly those of two of the most recent contributors to the debate, Snell and Anderson.

At first sight there is some plausibility in the suggestion that lekythion might denote a penis or a pair of testicles or both things. Several vase shapes have a suggestive appearance. If the object denoted is actually the vase we are accustomed to call the aryballos, the reference would be to an object whose name possibly derived (in part) from a word which had a genital reference. It has also been suggested that this object was once manufactured from animals' testicles.

The little we know with certainty about Eupolis' Marikas can be summarised in a few lines. (1) The play was produced at the Lenaea of 421 b.c. (2) The demagogue Hyperbolus was satirised under the name of Marikas, and was represented as a man of little or no culture (Quint. 1.10.18 = Eup. fr. 193 K. Maricas, qui est Hyperbolus, nihil se ex musice scire nisi litteras confitetur). (3) Marikas/Hyperbolus was a slave. This has been denied in the past, but is now made clear by the commentary on the Marikas in P. Oxy. 2741 (no. 95, 145 f. Austin) πρ⋯ς[⋯ν] δεσπότην ⋯ Ὑπέρβολος. (4) Aristophanes complained in the Clouds we possess (i.e. in the revised edition of this play) that Eupolis had availed himself of the Knights for his Marikas (Nub. 553 ff.), and it is in fact possible that the idea of Marikas as a slave was borrowed from the Knights, because some of his traits seem to correspond to those of the Aristophanic Sausage-seller. (5) The play apparently had two semi-choruses, one of rich and one of poor people.

The point of the name Marikas has long been debated. Ancient sources are at least agreed that it is ‘barbarian’. Herodianus 1.50,12 Lentz does not go beyond stating that Marikas is an ⋯νομα βάρβαρον παρ⋯ τῷ κωμικῷ (he refers to Ar. Nub. 553). Hesych. μ 283 Latte has more to offer: Μαρικ⋯ν· κίναιδον. οἱ δ⋯ ὑποκόρισμα παιδίου ἄρρενος βαρβαρικόν (so Meineke for βαρβαρικα⋯, rightly).

Of all the leading personalities who left their imprint on the history of the Peloponnesian war Tissaphernes was to Thucydides the most enigmatic. Although judgements on the ability and character of individuals occur more frequently in the eighth book of the History than in other parts, Thucydides apparently did not feel himself to be in a position to include an explicit judgement on Tissaphernes. Nor does Tissaphernes, unlike many major and minor characters, receive even a brief descriptive introduction, though such introductions are also exceptionally plentiful in the eighth book. Thucydides has been successful in collecting an abundance of detailed information about the part played by Tissaphernes in the opening phase of the Ionian war and yet has failed to produce a satisfactory picture of him. In this paper attention will first be drawn to special problems arising in the case of Tissaphernes which do not arise in the presentation of other leading characters. My main purpose, however, is to attempt to establish that the account of him by Thucydides is basically inconsistent and that this inconsistency occurs because the material in the eighth book has not been fully integrated.

One source of difficulty for Thucydides in writing about Tissaphernes was that he seems to have had little opportunity to acquire knowledge of Persia and the Persians. There is no indication that he spent any part of his exile in or near Asia, and the notorious sparsity of his references to Greek relations with the Persians before the outbreak of the Ionian war suggests that his contacts with them were scanty. In this respect he was not exceptional. Before the end of the fifth century even the best educated Athenians seem to have possessed only a dim or distorted impression of Persia, as is illustrated in different ways by the Persae and the Acharnians.

There have been two recent attempts to disentangle the evidence for the procedures in fourth-century Athens for the enactment and revision of nomoi, by D. M. MacDowell and by M. H. Hansen. I have learned from both, but think that further progress can be made.

MacDowell distinguishes five separate measures:

(b) The Old Legislation Law, requiring action at a specified time, advance publicity for the new proposal, concurrent repeal of any existing law with which the new proposal conflicts, and a decision by nomothetae who are omomokotes, men who have sworn the dicastic oath <for the current year and are on the register of potential jurors>: this is described as a παλαι⋯ς νόμος, and as the law καθ' ὃν ἦσαν οἱ πρότεροι νομοθέαι.

(c) Replacing that c. 370, the New Legislation Law, no longer requiring action at a specified time, advance publicity, concurrent repeal, or that the nomothetae should be omomokotes: as a result of the change conflicting laws have been enacted, and for some time continuing to the mid 350s commissioners have had to be elected to sort out the conflicts.

(d) Still valid in the 350s, the Review Law, requiring an annual epicheirotonia of the laws in four subject divisions in the assembly on 11 Hecatombaeon (i), advance publicity for new proposals, and at the third assembly after 11 Hecatombaeon the appointment of nomothetae who are omomokotes to decide between the existing laws and the new proposals.

Since we cannot hope to witness a catasterism for ourselves, we are fortunate to have a detailed first-hand account of the inauguration of Coma Berenices, the last constellation to be added to the ancient list until the seventeenth century. However, the description of the critical stages in the process presents various difficulties resulting not so much from obfuscation on Callimachus' part (natural though this might be in an account of a miracle) as from the circumstances of the poem's transmission and the problems to be expected in interpreting occasional verses more than two millennia after the event to which they refer. In this note I shall attempt to clarify some of the obscurities surrounding the Lock's translation.

Few years pass without an attempt to interpret Theocritus, Idyll 7. The poem's narrative and descriptive skill, dramatic subtlety and felicity of language are mercifully more than adequate to survive these scholarly onslaughts, so I have less hesitation in offering my own interpretation.

The poem's chief problems seem to me to arise from uncertainty as to:

(a) Who is the narrator, and why are we kept waiting until line 21 before we are told that he is called Simichidas?

(b) Who, or what sort of man, is the goatherd Lycidas, whom he encounters on his way from town to the harvest festival?

Answers to these questions fundamentally affect our interpretation of their exchange of songs, which occupies almost half the idyll, and of Lycidas' gift of his stick to Simichidas; and these interpretations will go far towards interpreting the poem as a whole.

Rome and Carthage had established peaceful diplomatic relations before 300 b.c. — as early as the close of the sixth century according to Polybius, whose dating there no longer seems good cause to doubt. A second treaty was struck probably in 348. Both dealt essentially with traders' and travellers' obligations and entitlements, so any military or political terms sprang from that context. In both, the Carthaginians agreed to hand over any independent town they captured in Latium. In the first treaty they were not to establish a fort in Latium either; in the second, the Romans were not to found a city in Carthaginian Africa, Spain or Sardinia.

But independent military considerations are the stuff of a third treaty concluded during Rome's war with Pyrrhus. Rome and Carthage now pledged each other military aid in certain circumstances, as we shall see. And ‘geopolitical’ concerns of a very broad kind imbued a treaty which was reported by the third-century historian Philinus of Agrigentum. By this, he stated, ‘the Romans must keep out of the whole of Sicily, the Carthaginians out of Italy’ (ἔδει Ῥωμαίους μ⋯ν ⋯πέχεσθαι Σικελίας ⋯πάσης, Καρχηδονίους δ' Ἰταλίας). This is Polybius' citation of Philinus' allegation; Polybius himself then roundly rejects the very existence of such a pact and declares himself at a loss to understand how his predecessor could record it, but modern scholarship is no longer all that ready to accept his view. A strong majority of historians prefer to follow the Agrigentine, and many see 306 b.c. as the likely year for the agreement because Livy records a ‘renewal’ then of a foedus with Carthage (without giving details).

The aim of this paper is to discuss Terence's use of Greek loan-words and to examine their distribution by plays and by characters. How far are they used for stylistic effect and what relationship do they have to the themes of different plays? Is there any evidence for the concentration of these words, which often tend to be colloquial in tone, in the mouths of slaves and characters of low social status for the purposes of linguistic characterisation? Finally, does Terence's use of these words develop in the course of his short career? The usefuleness of a previous note on this subject by J. N. Hough is limited by the absence of any comprehensive list of occurrences, so that its objectivity is difficult to check. A more helpful discussion by P. Oksala gives a fuller list, but concentrates mainly on a comparison with Plautine usage in the type and frequency of these words and does not discuss their distribution within the Terentian corpus.

The question of characterisation by linguistic means, particularly in the field of New Comedy, has received considerable attention in recent years. The doctrine that a character's speech should be appropriate to his or her age, sex or social status, is well attested in the ancient world, with reference both to the theatre and to the law-courts. The ancient scholia on Aristophanes, as well as the fourth-century commentary on Terence that goes under the name of Donatus, contain comments on the appropriateness of particular words and phrases to particular character types. Leo, commenting long ago on the distribution of Greek words in Plautus, observed that they were used predominantly by slaves and characters of low social standing, a point made earlier by N. Tuchhaendler. More recently M. E. Gilleland has produced detailed statistical evidence for both Plautus and Terence which tends to back up these observations.

The ancient tradition is strong that the execution of M. Marius Gratidianus during the Sullan proscriptions was carried out by L. Sergius Catilina. The earliest evidence comes from several passages in Cicero's speech in toga candida, delivered just before the consular elections in 64 and designed to rake up as much prejudice as possible against his two main rival candidates, Catilina and C. Antonius (Hybrida). While in none of the passages does Cicero specifically mention the executioner or the victim, it is Asconius commenting on the passages (which are preserved for us as lemmata in his commentary on the speech) who reveals that Catilina was the executioner and Marius Gratidianus the victim. We do not have a great deal of the speech in toga candida left (and we are indebted to Asconius for what we do have of it); if we did have the whole speech, it is clear that we would have been given the name by Cicero himself.

The Ciceronian version (if that term may be used for convenience) is that the head of Gratidianus was cut off by Catilina, carried in his hands through the city from the Janiculum to the temple of Apollo, and delivered to Sulla still full of life and breath. This version is followed by Plutarch (Sull. 32.2). A variation can be found, as early as Sallust (and so for convenience it may be called the Sallustian version — not that the two versions are necessarily to be regarded as mutually exclusive). There is a fragment of the historiae which says that Gratidianus died after his arms and legs had been broken and his eyes gouged out, so that he expired as it were through each and every limb. There is nothing about his head being cut off and carried about, nor is there any mention of Catilina as the executioner. While the details of the torture and mutilation become progressively more gory, this version is followed by Livy (per. 88), Valerius Maximus (9.2.1), Lucan (2.173–93), and Florus (2.9.26 = 3.21.26).

Of the various contests held by Aeneas to mark the anniversary of his father's death the ship-race (Aen. 5. 116–286) is marked out by its length and initial position as especially important. However its precise significance is by no means obvious. That Virgil intends it to have some relevance to events of later Roman history seems fairly clear. First, we are told the names of the families descended from three of the four captains involved — Cluentii, Memmii and Sergii. It seems therefore that we should look to the activities of members of these families to discover Virgil's intention. Two families — Cluentii and Memmii — are a mystery, since none of their members plays an obviously prominent role in the events of Virgil's own time. However, Sergestus and the Sergii point unmistakably towards Catiline. Sergestus' rash folly, which is nearly the ruin of his men and his ship, exactly matches Catifine's own furor, which would have destroyed Rome. Even the name of his ship, Centaurus, reinforces the point.

In a characteristically provocative judgement Sir Ronald Syme has declared: ‘It is not easy to go against a document. Nevertheless, the worse posture is obduracy against the testimony of a precise and lucid writer’. The writer is Ovid, the document one employed by Frontinus, and the context, the death-date of Messalla Corvinus, a subject of scholarly dispute since Scaliger's day. Largely on the basis of two passages in Ovid (Trist. 4. 4. 25 ff.; Pont. 1. 7. 29 f.), Syme rejects the apparent testimony of Frontinus (Aq. 102) and Jerome (Chron. p. 170 H) that Messalla died in a.d. 12 or 13, in favour of a date in a.d. 8, before Ovid's departure for exile. Issues beyond the death-date of Messalla are involved. Thus Syme wishes, as a corollary, to ante-date the year of Livy's death by five years from a.d. 17 to a.d. 12.3 Further, Syme's characterization of Ovid as ‘a precise and lucid writer’ seems to have more general implications. His arguments merit close scrutiny.

When Mommsen saw foll. 28r line i–29r line 6 of cod. Paris, Bibl. Nat. lat. 7530, an eighth-century grammatical miscellany from Monte Cassino, he realised immediately the importance of their contents. He wrote to Bergk about his discovery on 2 November 1844 and Bergk published the material early the next year as being an epitome of a treatise on signs applied to literary texts by Probus and earlier Latin grammarians. There had long been known Diogenes Laertius' account of the χῖ and other signs placed in the margins of texts of Plato's dialogues, Hephaestion's account of the colometrical παράγραɸος, κορωνίς, διπλ⋯ and ⋯στερίσκος placed in texts of lyric and dramatic poetry, the chapter de notis sententiarum in Isidore's Origines, the names of various treatises περ⋯ σημείων mentioned in the Suda, the references to σημεῖα in Eustathius' commentary on Homer' and in the marginal scholia to Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes in Byzantine manuscripts, Cicero's allusions to the ⋯βελός and the διπλ⋯ scattered reports of the signs with which Origen equipped Greek versions of the Old Testament and Jerome's adaptation of Origen's system, and Cassiodorus' account of his own method of noting orthodox and heterodox opinions in ecclesiastical writings.

The institution of slavery has served to perform different functions in different societies. The distinction between ‘closed’ and ‘open’ slavery can be a useful one: in some societies slavery is a mechanism for the permanent exclusion of certain individuals from political and economic privileges, while in others it has served precisely to facilitate the integration of outsiders into the community. ‘The African slave, brought by a foray to the tribe, enjoys, from the beginning, the privileges and name of a child, and looks upon his master and mistress in every respect as his new parents… by care and diligence, he may soon become a master himself, and even more rich and powerful than he who led him captive.’ The model of an ‘open’ slavery implies that service as a slave is not a state to which a person is permanently, let alone ‘naturally’, assigned, but more akin to an age-grade. A parallel might be domestic or agricultural service as it was practised in much of Europe until this century — a period spent serving in another household after childhood and prior to marriage.

A Roman slave, on formal manumission, joined the community of citizens. To what extent ought we therefore to succumb to the temptation to see slavery at Rome — in contrast to the Greek world — in terms of the ideal type of a ‘process of integration’? In a noted article on ‘Die Freilassung von Sklaven und die Struktur der Sklaverei in der römischen Kaiserzeit’ (Rivista Storica dell' Antichitià 2 [1972], 97-129), G. Alföldi argued that in the Roman Empire slavery was an ‘Übergangszustand’ (p. 122), a transitional state which ultimately gave most slaves a recognised if not a fully equal place as members of the Roman citizen community.

When announcing the first instalment, the author made a firm declaration: ‘collegi non servato temporis ordine’. The note of elegant disdain suitably echoes a poet: ‘postmodo collectas, utcumque sine ordine iunctas’;. In fact, care for balance and variety predominates.

Nevertheless, when Pliny came to recount public transactions, he had to respect a ‘temporis ordo’, as many signs indicate. Mommsen in his classic study was able to work out the chronological framework, of the nine books, from 97 to 108 or 109. In general, his scheme stands the test — that is, apart from the notion of a rapid publication in separate books. Indeed, no argument avails to prove that the first instalment saw the light of day earlier than the end of the year 105.

Pliny was expert in finance and an alert contriver everywhere. Persons of that quality may succumb to inadvertence, although not very often. Licinius Nepos, praetor in 105, comes twice into action (4.29; 5.4), before his edict gets a mention (5.9). Again, in a letter the context of which points to 105, a consulship for Minicius Fundanus is divined ‘in proximum annum’ (4.15.5). Fundanus entered office in the early summer of 107. By contrast, Valerius Paulinus, consul suffect in the pair that followed that consulship, does not come up until 9.37. An extremely late point in the collection. It imposes a salutary warning when a number of letters in the final triad are put under scrutiny.

The exposition of Mommsen ran into criticism, sometimes hasty or even perverse. Moreover, various attempts were made to modify the dates of certain prosecutions in the Senate. The emergence of a consul on the Fasti Ostienses demolished an elaborate reconstruction that concerned two proconsuls of Bithynia. More accruing, a number of fairly close dates can now be established.

Ammianus Marcellinus, by common consent the last great historian of Rome, rounds off his obituary notice of the emperor Constantius II (d. 361) with the following observation:

The plain simplicity of Christianity he obscured by an old woman's superstition; by intricate investigation instead of seriously trying to reconcile, he stirred up very many disputes, and as these spread widely he nourished them with arguments about words; with the result that crowds of bishops rushed hither and thither by means of public mounts on their way to synods (as they call them), and while he tried to make all their worship conform to his own will, he cut the sinews of the public transport service.

This is a perceptive judgement of the ecclesiastical politics of the reign of Constantius, remarkable in a pagan writer, and of exceptional significance in that it lies outside those very ‘arguments about words’ which contaminate all the Christian assessments of this emperor. Although Ammianus is unsympathetic to Constantius, he manages succinctly to grasp the basic drift of imperial policy, inherited from Constantine himself, of trying to enforce the emperor's view of doctrinal and ecclesiastical unity by the summoning of repeated episcopal councils and browbeating the bishops into agreement — thus paying lip-service to the independence of the church's judgements. To the observant outsider, this process was notable above all for the burden it placed on the cursus publicus, as the bishops went about their business around the empire now provided with official evectiones; and Ammianus' comment finds confirmation in the letter issued by eastern bishops attending one of the many councils of Constantius' reign, that at Sardica in 343, who complained of the ‘attrition’ of the transport service caused by the imperial summons.

In two recent studies we have examined the prose rhythms in the clausulae of late imperial Latin authors. We found two clausular systems to be prevalent, the cursus and the cursus mixtus. The cursus involves the use of accentual rhythms and consists of three basic cadences: planus, tardus, and velox. The cursus mixtus has been defined by modern scholars as a type of prose rhythm in which the clausula is structured along both accentual and metrical lines, that is by the combination of one of the three forms of the cursus with one of the standard metrical forms derived from Cicero's system — cretic-spondee, dicretic, cretic-tribrach, or ditrochee.