They used to believe that mankind began in 4004 B.C. and the Greeks in 776. We now know that these last five thousand years during which man has left written record of himself are but a minute fraction of the time he has spent developing his culture. We now understand that the evolution of human society, its laws and customs, its economics, its religious practices, its games, its languages, is a very slow process, to be measured in millennia. In the case of Greek religious usage it is now appreciated that it has its roots not in Mycenaean but in Palaeolithic times. As for Greek poetry, comparative studies have shown that it goes back by a continuous tradition to Indo-European poetry.

In a brief article under the present title, Adam Parry raised a simple but profound question: were there certain things that the inherited vocabulary of oral poets did not allow them to sayF; The mere raising of this question, whatever his answer, is enough to make the article one of the more important contributions to Homeric studies in the last fifty years. As it happens, his answer was affirmative, and it has not been contested. Contested it will now be.

In C.Q,. xxii (1972), 199 Professor R. G. Austin has drawn attention to the short at the front, unusually long at the back. It must be related to that other heroic ‘long back and sides’, the Theseis, which is described by Plutarch (Thes. 5) who compares Homer's Abantes Il. 2. 542, and adds by way of explanation that the custom was not learnt from the Arabes, as some think, nor from the Mysians (which incidentally explains Hector), but because the Abantes liked close combat and short front hair denied their adversaries a hand hold. The same explanation probably serves the Hectorean hair style.

Dr. G. S. Kirk suggested (C.Q.xiii [1963], 51–2) that the last line here referred to ‘a fantastically ithyphallic bridegroom’. Professor Lloyd-Jones (C.Q,. xvii [1967], 168), while professing uncertainty as to the rightness of this suggestion, thought it ‘quite likely’, and adduced in support of it a story from Tzetzes on Lycophron 1378 (ed. Scheer, ii. 381 f.), a story told also, but in different words, in the Etymologicum Magnum s.v. (ed. Gaisford, 153, If.), and containing in this second version the words ‘used in just the sense which Dr. Kirk ascribed to it in Sappho’.

The twenty-seven fragments under this number ‘were assembled in the belief that they represented lyric verses in the Aeolic dialect and might contribute something to the text of Sappho or Alcaeus’ (Lobel). The only feature that is ‘unequivocally Aeolic’ is in fr. 2. 9 the letter following is, or possibly the division is not considered, no doubt rightly).

Is this indeed a text in the Aeolic dialect ? There is very little other indication: fr. 4. 3 in fr. 4. 5 would seem decisive if the reading were quite certain.

Apollo's oracle gives specific instructions concerning the treatment of the murderer of Laius. Oedipus issues an edict of excommunication and bindshimself under a curse. I wish to examine the relationship between these three pronouncements as they occur initially and as they are used throughout the play. The basis of what I have to say is tentative in that it consists in a particular interpretation of Oedipus' addres, 216 ff., and in the assumption that Sophocles employed a distinction between an edict, that is a secular command of the kingas governing authority, and a curse which, once pronounced, is felt to operate independently. However, both the interpretation and the assumption are farfrom arbitrary, and if they are acceptable the resulting analysis reveals whatmight be called Sophocles' creative use of past episodes. The terms of the oraclegive way to an edict of excommunication, and this in turn, becomes the contentof a curse which initially had a different content.

Thucydides describes Antipho (8. 68. 1) as ‘inferior to no one of his time in and more capable than any of initiating ideas and giving expression to them’. What does he mean here by? Does it refer to ability? or does it refer to courage and consistency of principle? and in either case how are we to relate this description of Antipho to Thucydides description of Nicias (7. 86. 5) as less worthy than any other Greek of the historian's day to meet with the misfortunes that he did?

The eschatological myth in the tenth book of the Laws (903 b–905 d) contains a paragraph which purports to explain why, in the next world, efficient treatmentof souls according to their deserts is ‘marvellously easy’

Ii is a well-known fact that the men of the Macedonian phalanx under Philip and Alexander were known collectively as or ‘foot companions’. Our first reference to the name comes from Demosthenes, who in his second Olynthiac tries unconvincingly to disparage the fighting qualities of Philip's mercenaries and Demosthenes adds no explanation, and it was left to commentators and lexicographers to unearth a relevant fragment from the Philippica of Anaximenes of Lampsacus

Many books have been written on Greek dance. The fault which bedevils a large number of them is that their authors have tried to recreate the movements of the dances from the artistic evidence without taking into account the conventions of Greek vase-painting and sculpture. Other books, and they are the most useful, set out the literary and the artistic evidence without attempting to reconstruct the dances. Rarely, however, are the wider implications considered, and it is these which I wish to discuss here. More analysis and discussion of the evidence for many of my statements is no doubt required, but the place for that is a book rather than an article which ranges over a comparatively large field.

What is the dry garment which Sceparnio offers to the sea-soaked Charmides? First of all, there is doubt about the spelling of the word. The Palatine tradition is tigillum, though T has tixillum; the Ambrosian palimpsest is provokingly defective at this point and Studemund was unable to determine whether the vowel is e or i. Since the beginning of the sixteenth century editors have chosen to print tegillum, being influenced by notes preserved in the collections of two grammarians—Nonius and Paulus. I quote these from Lindsay's Teubner editions.

The first large discoveries of Menander seem to have given courage to a school of critics who thought Terence a crude and bungling adapter; their attitude is typified by the learned article about him written for Pauly-Wissowaby Günther Jachmann. This exaggeration provoked a counter-exaggeration; a school arose which thought Terence a great original poet, treating his originals as Shakespeare did Plutarch; this was the view of Norwood in England, Croce and various followers in Italy, Erich Reitzenstein in Germany. Then truth began to emerge between the extremes, notably in the exact and intelligent study of Terence's individuality which Hans Haffter published in 1953; in 1968 Walter Ludwig modified the picture, claiming somewhat less

This inquiry starts from two passages in book 1 of Cicero's de Re Publica, both concerned with the failings of democracy as a political form. The first occurs in Scipio Aemilianus' opening criticism of the three unmixed constitutions. The weakness of democracy is that (1. 43)

cum omnia per populum geruntur quamvis iustum atque moderatum, tamen ipsa aequabilitas est iniqua, cum habet nullos gradus dignitatis:

In an article1 entitled Lucrèce et les éléphants, Professor Ernout has referred to recent archaeological evidence that in palaeolithic times the skeletons of mammoths were used in the construction of primitive habitations, and observes that the well-known lines of Lucretius. 532 ff. about India being so prolific inelephants that the whole land ‘milibus e multis vallo munitur eburno’ mayrefer not to anything legendary (as Bailey and others had supposed), nor to themilitary use of elephants in large numbers for frontier defence, but to a recognitionof the fact that even in later times ‘les Indiens avaient pu conserver leurmode de vie et utiliser avec ses défenses d'éléphant le système de protectioninvente par leurs ancêtres, ou simplement conserver ces gigantesques os demammouths’, etc.

His translation is, ‘obviously because the violence of the disease is dispersed throughout the body and as it forces out breath stirs up foam…’ The difficulty is that nowhere else does ‘distracta’ mean ‘dispersed’. Moreover, in vv. 501 and 507, in the same sequence of argument, the meaning is clearly ‘torn apart’, as usual. One way of meeting this difficulty is to read ‘anima’ in 493, as proposed by Tohte. However, this gives the barely defensible ‘anima spumas’ and is unsatisfactory in another respect. Lines 499–501, in which ‘ut docui’ must refer back to 492–3, imply that the ‘animus’ as well as the ‘anima’ was mentioned there and that the effect of epilepsy is to upset the relation between the two.

The reader of Catullus' fiftieth poem can hardly fail to be struck by the poet's use of erotic language to his friend Calvus. Sleeplessness and lack of appetiteare symptoms of love, and the threat of Nemesis is commonly used againsta haughty beloved; miserum (line 9), incensus (line 8), and indomitus furore (line 11) are words to describe a lover, and ocelle (line 19), as Kroll observes, is naturally addressed to a beloved. Even ut tecum loquerer simulque ut essem (line 13) suggests a lover's yearning, if we recall how Plato in erotic contexts stresses the desire to have company and conversation with the beloved (Symp. 211 d 6-8; Phdr. 255 b 2). It is strange then that Kroll should comment onpreces in line 18 that their content is not clear.

If Catullus' poems as we have them faithfully reproduce their order in the original roll or rolls, and if that order reflects a design of the poet's, then the last piece in our manuscripts naturally merits close attention. But even one who has vigorously upheld these hypotheses writes: ‘it is tempting to suppose that the poem is a spurious addition, attached after the publication of the collection; Catullus may indeed have written it, but not wanted to include so illepidus a piece of versification in his published works’ (Wiseman, Catullan Questions [Leicester, 1969], 27). Nor has the poem attracted much interest in its own right; it seems to be generally considered just another slice of biography, and as such hardly susceptible of a poetic meaning. The remarks which follow try to show that it has one, and perhaps also a significant position.

One of Sallust's main points in this preface is that individuals should strive to attain gloria (gloriam quaerere, 1. 3, etc.), i.e. should be spoken highly of by others. With this (the immediate context) in mind, the commentators seem agreed that silentio in the opening sentence must be taken in a passive sense: ‘silentio expresses not a state in which one says nothing, but a state in which nothing is said about one, i.e. “obscurity”’ (Neatby and Hayes; cf. E. W. Fabri [2nd edn., 1845], ‘so da sie sich nicht bemerkbar machen’; R. Jacobs— H. Wirz [1877], ‘die Menschen sollen von sich reden machen’; F. Antoine and R. Lallier [1888], ‘sans faire parler d'eux’; E. Malcovati [2nd edn., 1945], ‘senza far parlare di sè, quindi, con altra immagine, “nell'oscurita”’). The sequence of ideas in the first chapter makes this interpretation seem certain.

Many reasons have been put forward to explain why Aeneas and the Sibyl should depart through the gate of ivory, which lets out ‘false dreams’. The two views which have perhaps been found the least unsatisfactory are those of W. Everett and the one most recently championed by Brooks Otis.

Everett suggested that it was a common belief in antiquity that false dreams occur before midnight, and true dreams after midnight; he went on to suggest that Aeneas left Hades before midnight, when only the ivory gate would be open. That there was such a common belief has been disputed by, among others, H. R. Steiner.

Normally, if A knows B, B knows A, and ‘Lake Garda knows me’ is a poetic way of saying ‘I know Lake Garda’. The exchange of subject and object elevates diction and sentiment, but it can also help with the metre, especially where nouns such as gloria. and femina are concerned. Thus in 1.8. 46 the poet says ista meam norit gloria canitiem when in strict logic he should have said istam mea norit gloriam canities. Similarly here what he really wants to says is qua dum iter faciam feminam nullam norim. He must have been aware that the relationship is reciprocal, and something like oblitusque mearum, obliuiscendus et illis may well have been in his mind. But his main desire was to forget and not to know anything of women any more.