The appearance of two new editions of the Choephoroi in 1986 has prompted me to reexamine the theatrical logic of the recognition scene. Anthony Bowen's student edition (Bristol, 1986) offers a curious contrast. Bowen is alert to the music of the choruses, and describes them as ‘a feast in themselves’ (p. 43). He remarks with reference to the strophic verse that ‘it is surprising how well these works have come down to us’ (p. 41). When he discusses the staging, however, he no longer finds the text well preserved, and follows Fraenkel in disposing of the footprints. Three interpolations, a total of nine lines, have to be struck out (pp. 177–81). A. F. Garvie's scholarly edition (Oxford, 1986) broadly accepts the extant text, but does not – I wish to argue – yet grasp the theatrical logic of the writing.

The purpose of this paper is to inquire into the fate of Cleomenes' reforms after his defeat at Sellasia and to show that contrary to the prevailing opinion their main part was not abolished by the victors. It will be necessary to summarize briefly the reforms and to discuss their relation to the patrios politeia of Sparta before we examine their fate after Cleomenes' defeat.

I start at the end. Iolaus appeals to Demophon (229–31): ‘become their kinsman, friend, father, brother, master: all this is better than falling into the hands of the Argives.’ One should hope so. When Pearson comments ‘: i.e. submission to Demophon is better than subjection by the Argives. The remark is prompted by , the climax of the preceding appeal’, he is unconsciously repeating what had been said by Herwerden, R.Ph. N.S. xvii (1893), 236: ‘manifestum est ad solum referri posse, nam praegressa omnia sunt eiusmodi quae nemo non sibi exoptet.’ How they can even consider the possibility that may refer to one item only in a list of five I do not know.

The achievements of the textile industry in Roman Britain are often underestimated as a result of the meagreness of our available evidence. The Edict on maximum prices issued by Diocletian in A.D. 301 shows that British capes (byrri) commanded high prices on the markets of the Empire, and that in the late third century A.D. British rugs (tapetia) were the best in the world. In view of the competition from the traditional centres of rug manufacture in the East, this is an astonishing achievement.

A. F. Norman has recently suggested that a hitherto overlooked passage in Suidas is a fragment from the history of Eunapius of Sardis. He is clearly correct in referring the passage to an incident at the siege of Maiozamalcha during the Persian campaign of the emperor Julian, but I am not so sure that he is right in ascribing it to Eunapius, or in the conclusions he draws from this ascription. I give in parallel columns the accounts of Ammianus Marcellinus, Zosimus, and the passage from Suidas, together with a further version of the incident, unfortunately without names, from the pen of Libanius:

In the for 1952 (Athens, 1955), pp. 33 ff., Nikolaos M. Kontoleon published a most interesting inscription from the shrine of Archilochos on Paros. It was inscribed, as preserved, on two orthostats, which probably formed part of the structure of the hearth or bothros where offerings to the hero were made. There is much of interest to scholars in this new discovery, which is very fully and carefully interpreted by Kontoleon, and has been further discussed by Werner Peck (Philologus, xcix [1955], 4 ff.). In this article the present writer wishes to confine himself to some comments on the new evidence about responses of the Delphic oracle supplied by the inscription. This material is all found on the first of the two orthostats, and falls into two categories: responses connected with the setting up of the shrine, and responses connected with the life of Archilochus.

I. Eth. Nic. III. c. I, § 16.

In spite of what Bernays and others have done to clear up this chapter, many perplexities remain. To some of these I propose later to return, but here I confine myself to one. Among the possible circumstances of an act, ignorance of which is excusable and may excuse, is enumerated τò οὑ ἔνεκα. Nothing but desperation could have led the commentators to suggest that here τò οὑ ἔνεκα means the actual effect or result of the act (Stewart, Burnet). It may be sufficient to quote the notes ad loc. of these two scholars:

1. Stewart: ‘The oὑ ἔνεκα here is not, as usual, the intention of the doer, for he cannot be ignorant of what he intends to do; but the outcome or result of what he actually does, which is the opposite of the intention.’

In Book 6.88–94 of the Aeneid reference is made by the Cumaean Sibyl to the fact that there will be terrible wars on the Trojans' arrival at Lavinium. The details given by the Sibyl evoke the war at Troy; there will be a Simois, a Xanthus, and a Greek camp. Moreover, there will be another Achilles in Latium and the war will again be fought over a woman. Aeneas, when he hears this, has just arrived in Italy after the war at Troy and a gruelling seven-year journey. The prophecy is therefore the last thing that he wants to hear, but he responds very stoically and then proceeds to ask the Sibyl's permission to enter the Underworld (6.103ff.). Aeneas' filial pietas is therefore stressed by his determination to meet with his father's shade in the face of forthcoming adversity.

It is well known that mitto comes to mean ‘put’ in late Latin and that it shows reflexes with this sense in the Romance languages (e.g. It. mettere, Fr. mettre, Sp. meter). But the nature of this semantic change has not been fully explained, nor has the relationship of the word with other placing-terms in Latin. E. Löfstedt has stated simply that it ‘takes over the meaning ot ponere’.2 But as pono itself remains common in all types of Latin, the question arises whether the two words did really come into conflict. It is the purpose of the first two sections of this article to show that for a considerable period pono and mitto occupied complementary places in a lexical system. This system exhibits a definite structure which remains unaltered from early Latin to at least the sixth century A.D., though its component terms undergo some changes. In section I pono and the words which in earlier Latin performed the functions later assumed by mitto will be discussed. In section I I we shall move on to mitto itself. It will be necessary to consider the nature and motivation of the transition ‘throwput’ as it appears in Latin.

THE closing lines of Act I, Scene n of Terence's Eunuchus (189–206) pose certain difficulties; in particular it is far from clear when Phaedria and Parmeno leave the stage-if indeed they do so at all. Taking this small difficulty as a starting-point, I wish to examine the text of Eunuchus at this place in order to see what information can be gained about the structure of the play and about any alterations Terence may have made in adapting his Greek original. In this I shall mainly be confining myself to Terence's adaptation of Menander's Eunuchus at this one point, and shall not re-examine the welltrodden ground concerning the introduction of the parasite and the boastful Captain from Menander's Colax.

When Caesar sailed to Britain in 55 b.c. he was obliged to leave behind eighteen transports which had his cavalry on board and had been prevented by adverse winds from joining the rest of the fleet. These vessels, like those which carried the infantry, were of native Gallic build, and were doubtless sailed by Gallic seamen, who were familiar with the conditions of navigation in the Channel. On the fourth day after Caesar landed in Britain they set sail with a light breeze. All went well until they were approaching the British coast and were descried from the Roman camp when, as Caesar says,

‘such a violent storm suddenly arose that none of them could keep their course, but some were carried back to the point from which they had started, while the others were swept down in great peril to the lower and more westerly part of the island. They anchored notwithstanding, but as they were becoming waterlogged, were forced to stand out to sea in the face of night, and make for the continent.’

In C.Q. 42 (1992) 551–2 E. J. Kenney impugned the appropriateness of femina in 28 on the grounds that it sabotages the poet's disclaimer to be treating not of women generally, but only of women not ruled out of bounds by the stola and uittae. Hesitantly he proposed to read in its place non or nee proba. It should be borne in mind that when a word has intruded itself from a nearby line and expelled the authentic reading, the ductus litterarum is no guide to emendation. The door stands open to bold measures. I propose to read Thais. The name of the famous courtesan well serves as the type with which Ovid proposes to deal. But what advantage has she over, say, Lais or even Phryne, whose names would fit here as well as hers? The answer comes from Remedia Amoris 385–6 Thais in arte mea est: lasciuia libera nostra est; nil mihi cum uitta; Thais in arte mea est.

It is a brave scholar who ventures into the murky world of Late Antique medicine in search of information on earlier theories. Not only may the opinions of a Herophilus or a Galen be distorted by their distant interpreters, but frequently the texts themselves present serious challenges to understanding. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Latin versions made from Greek philosophical and medical commentaries, which interpose an additional linguistic barrier before one can make sense of sometimes complex arguments. Yet as R. J. Hankinson has shown in his recent note on John of Alexandria, there is much to be gained from these forbidding works. But while he has succeeded in elucidating much of the technical terminology and argument that lies behind one of these translations, his lack of familiarity with the textual basis of the relevant commentary has both led him into error and prevented him from resolving still more of its difficulties. His ignorance is easily pardonable, for, as will be shown, modern editors have unwittingly conspired to block the way to the truth, and the essential secondary literature has been published in journals and theses rarely accessible to the classicist.

THE first Epode provides no clear indication of date. We learn only that Maecenas is about to join Octavian on a dangerous expedition and has suggested that Horace should not accompany him, while Horace retorts that he will be unable to enjoy himself in the absence of his patron and would be ready to follow him to the ends of the earth, whatever the danger, in the hope of earning his gratitude.

The Epodes were published about 30 B.C. and, perhaps for that reason, the scholiast Pseudo-Acron confidently assigns the poem to the period immediately before the battle of Actium with the comment: ‘Maecenatem prosequitur euntem ad bellum navale cum Augusto adversum Antonium et Cleopatram.’ It is curious that in referring to the activities of Octavian in 31 the author uses the title Augustus, which was not conferred on him before 27,: but the substance of his comment accords with the known facts. In the spring of 31 Octavian asked all Romans of influence to meet him at Brundisium, thereby to demonstrate their willingness to take part in the war against Antony and Cleopatra, and more than seven hundred senators are known to have offered their services.

In one of his letters to Lucilius (Book 6,Ep.56), Seneca discusses the effects of noise and silence on study and contemplation.In the opening sections of the letter, he reveals that his current lodging is located above a bathhouse whence issue continually all sorts of irritating sounds. Seneca insists that such noises, despite their persistence, present no real distraction to one who possesses inner peace and a clear, untroubled mind (animum enim cogo sibi intentum esse nee avocari ad externa: omnia licet foris resonent, dum intus nihil tumultus sit,§5) and whose thoughts are ‘good, steadfast, and sure’ (nullus hominum aviumque concentus interrumpet cogitationes bonas solidasque iam et certas,§11).

Among the many textual difficulties that beset Ovid's Ibis are two passages that allude, in an oblique fashion typical of the whole poem, to the iambographer Hipponax:

(1) et quae Pytheides fecit de fratre Medusae,

eveniant capiti vota sinistra tuo,

(447–8 La Penna)

(2) utque parum stabili qui carmine laesit Athenin,

invisus pereas deficiente cibo.

(523–4 La Penna)

[Plutarch] records that Augustus passed a winter on the island of Aegina, rather than in Athens, as a sign of his wrath toward the Athenians. Paul Graindor assumed that the most likely time for Augustus to have been angry with the Athenians was immediately after Actium, and so he dated [Plutarch]'s anecdote to the winter of 31/30 (Athènes sous Auguste [Cairo, 1927], p. 17). This is impossible.