In chapters 30–1 of the de Stoicorum repugnantiis, Plutarch sets out to show that the Stoics involve themselves in self-contradiction if they claim that their philosophy allows them an intelligible notion of providence. In the first place, he says, this is so because the traditional boons which men expect to receive from the gods (health, wealth etc.) do not benefit them at all if they do not have wisdom. Indeed, the fool uses all things badly, so that to give him anything at all without giving him virtue should be positively harmful to him. Yet the gods never give virtue to anyone so, on this score, they benefit no one either.

Like most of the other poems contained in the Appendix Vergiliana, the Copa still arouses controversy with respect to authorship and date. While the tendency of contemporary criticism may fairly be summarized as favourable to acceptance of the tradition which ascribes this poem to Virgil, nevertheless there are not wanting respectable voices to declare the Copa a post-Virgilian imitation of the Eclogues; nor are the pro-Virgilians decided as to the period to which it should rightly be assigned.

Hosius and others have suspected v. 87 on the ground that it is omitted by most of the good MSS. But the omission, as Weber saw, is due to the similar endings of vv. 86–87 (cura-hora). It is difficult to see how a student of Lucan could convince himself that any other person is the author of v. 87, which not only improves the passage, but is wholly in keeping with the gloomy fatalism of Pompey as represented by Lucan in many other places. Francken's objection that the emphatic me should have a pronoun contrasted with it may be sufficiently answered by a reference to vv. 396–398 of the same book; many instances from other authors could be added.

The last epigrammatist named by Meleager as contributing to his Garland is Phanias, who, with Meleager's customary irrelevance, is said to be represented there by cornflowers . No inferences can be drawn from his place in the catalogue, which is neither chronological nor topographical in arrangement, and with one possible exception the epigrams give no hint of his home or date. In A.P. 6. 299.

P.Bon. 5 preserves the only known collection of ancient Latin model letters, accompanied by a Greek translation. This article argues that the Latin is the primary version and dates the composition to before the early third century. Comparisons with other model letter collections, principally ps.-Demetrius’ Epistolary Types and ps.-Libanius’ Epistolary Styles, locate the text within a wider literary genre. A new reconstructed text is provided in the Appendix at the end of this article.

This article presents texts recovered by post-processing of multispectral images from the fifth- or sixth-century underwriting of the palimpsest Codex Climaci Rescriptus. Texts identified include the Anonymous II Proemium to Aratus’ Phaenomena, parts of Eratosthenes’ Catasterisms, Aratus’ Phaenomena lines 71–4 and 282–99 and previously unknown text, including some of the earliest astronomical measurements to survive in any Greek manuscript. Codex Climaci Rescriptus also contains at least three astronomical drawings. These appear to form part of an illustrated manuscript, with considerable textual value not merely on the basis of its age but also of its readings. The manuscript undertexts show significant overlap with the Φ Edition, postulated as ancestor of the various Latin Aratea.

CATVLLVS LXVIII. 157 contains a crux in the last word which has continued to defy editors. In ending his long elegy to Manlius, Catullus showers his gratitude upon him and all who have served him in his first efforts to meet Lesbia:

Sitis felices et tu simul et tua uita

et domus, in qua nos lusimus, et domina

et qui principio nobis terram dedit aufert

a quo sunt primo omnia nata bona.

The two tractates forming the treatise of Plotinus, called rather misleadingly, to the modern mind, ‘On Providence’, have attracted attention mainly because of the remarkable stress laid in them on the doctrine of the Logos, which marks an interesting development of Plotinus' latest thought and brings the treatise into an apparently close relation to other systems with which the philosophy of Plotinus has little in common. I do not, however, in this article wish to discuss the Logos doctrine of these tractates, but rather to compare certain other aspects of the thought of the treatise with their probable sources in the work of earlier thinkers, and in particular to draw attention to a curious and unexpected parallelism of thought in one passage. I think that conclusions of some interest for the history of Greek thought in general can be drawn from such a comparison.

In his recent pamphlet on Herodotus the Historian, Friederich Focke has discussed the lion-portent which accompanied the birth of Pericles: έκ δἐ Ίππоκπἁτεоς Μεγακλἑνσ τε Ξλλоσ καὶ ᾈγαπίоτνς, ὶ;ϰλ· ίλπ ταὶ ᾽Αγαριστŋς ίхоυσα τò о;νоѵоνα. ῆ σооνικńσασί τε ξανθίππψ τῷ᾽ Απιφρоνоς καὶ ἔλκυоς éоûα είδε ὄψℓν ἐν τῷ ὕπνῳ. ἐδὁκεε δἐ λἑοντα τεκεῖṿ καὶ υετ᾽ ợλίγας ἡυἑρας τίκτει Пερικλἑα ξανθίππψ. As this is the only occasion on which Herodotus mentions Pericles by name, those critics who are concerned to show that Herodotus was ‘Pericles' man’ have made much of the passage, and have deduced therefrom that Herodotus here means to express all his pent-up admiration for Pericles, which otherwise the scope of his work did not give him an opportunity of displaying. This admiration is at least conveyed in cryptic form, and Focke, following up a hint of Nissen that Pericles is here called a lion ambiguously, combats the view that Herodotus is expressing great reverence for him; and after examining fifth-century parallels, comes to the conclusion that Herodotus was repeating (whether as a mere marvel or with some personal arrière pensée he cannot decide) a tradition that had been set afoot as a purposely ambiguous and derogatory reference to Pericles as a ‘tyrannical man of might.’ After an examination of Focke's evidence, however, I remain unconvinced. It seems possible to account for most of thes quotations which Focke makes by bringing them into line with the ordinary Greek use of leonine symbolism, which, as I shall try to show, was complimentary, not derogatory

Ritualistic formulae and acts pervade the political, legal, societal and religious life of the ancient world. In many instances there are striking similarities between the formulae of the Greco-Roman world and those of the Near East. Often illumination exists from one to the other. Here I wish to notice a few passages in Greek drama where I think such illumination is possible.

The following paper contains a few suggestions which have occurred to me from time to time. As it was written under appreciable difficulties—Want of access to a library being the chief—it is possible that at whiles I may have simply repeated the criticisms of others. In that case, I can only express my regret for the involuntary depredation.

The main source of Archytas, fr. 1 Diels-Kranz is Porphyr. in Ptol. harmon. p. 56,5–57,27 Düring; there is also an extensive quotation of its initial part in Nicomachus, Introd. Arithm. p. 6,16–7,5 Hoche. In recent years both the text and the interpretation of this fragment, whose authenticity was questioned by W. Burkert, have been re-examined, and a good deal of progress has been made especially by paying more attention to the nature of Nicomachus' quotation and its context.

DR. G. Zuntz's excellent paper on these verses in Proc. Brit. Acad. xlii (1956), 209–46, deserves all our thanks for the clarity and good sense of its exposition, and for clearing away much unnecessary comment that has been encumbering the fragment, especially Bignone's theory (Atene e Roma, i [1933], 30, and L'Aristotele perduto, i [1936], 94) that it derives its philosophy directly from Aristotle's Protreptikos, with Körte's supplement that (since all of it derives from this same source) it is indivisible—that there is no break at v. 7; see Körte's Menandri quae supersunt (1953), ii. 147–8. There is, however, I think, room for further comment on Zuntz's interpretation of the lines, and on his view that die fragment known as Papyrus Didotiana b (Körte, i. 145) may belong to the same play, Hypobolimaios.

Heracleides Ponticus, a pupil of the schools of Plato and Aristotle, who lived from about 390 to 310 B.C., shared the wide interests of many of his pre-Platonic predecessors. Diogenes Laertius gives a long list of his works, many of them now known only by their titles, which he divided into writings on ethics, physics, grammar, music, rhetoric, and history. Like most of his predecessors he gave some attention to the heavens and speculated about the nature of the moon (frg. 114a), comets (frg. 116), the infinity of the cosmos (frg. 112); he was best known in antiquity, in this field, for his suggestion that the phenomena could be saved if the heavens were at rest and the earth revolved about the central axis (frgs. 106, 108).2 One of two pieces of evidence for his involvement in anything more than this general, inexact speculation in the field of astronomy is contained in the commentary on Plato's Timaeus written in Latin by Chalcidius somewhere at the beginning of the fourth century A.D.; it is this passage which this paper will discuss.

The present paper consists of emendations in the text of Maximus Tyrius. For convenience in citing the text I shall refer by page and line to Hobein's edition.

All the known codices of Maximus, as M. Mutschmann and F. Schulte have shown, most probably (many say certainly) derive from the Parisinus 1962 which belongs to the tenth or the eleventh century. In Hobein's edition and in the present paper the codex is indicated by the letter R.

In the de Abstinentia book I chapters 7–12 Porphyry gives an account of the views of Hermarchus, the Epicurean, on abstinence from animal food. This account, which is presumably derived from Hermarchus' work on Empedocles, would seem to preserve his actual words, for in chapter 9 (p. 91, 22) the word γωγε is used where it must refer to Hermarchus. It would be exceedingly careless of Porphyry, if he were merely summarizing or paraphrasing, to leave this word as it stands. (On the view here maintained see the Additional Note at the end.)

One of the clearest phonological developments of the language of Attic inscriptions of the Hellenistic period down to the end of the second century B.C. is the change . I have studied this phenomenon with particular reference to the period 323–146 B.C., taking into account also the trends before 323 (i.e. between 403 and 323) and after 146 B.C. down to the end of the pre- Christian era. The object of this article is to draw attention to the fact that in only one instance, the relative pronoun, is there not a marked progressive increase in the frequency of at the expense of .

The verb λάω is attested in two passages of early epic poetry, (a) Homeric Hymn to Hermes 360, where the infant Hermes is hiding in a dark cave, and (b) τ 229 ff., of a hound seizing a fawn on the brooch of Odysseus. Of the several meanings suggested by the ancient lexicographers for λάω, seeing, gazing, or crying, screeching would suit (a). These senses recur in their explanations of (b), with gripping or devouring as additional possibilities. The most extensive modern treatment of λάω is by Leumann, who explains it as a present falsely formed from the perfect λ⋯ληkα (X 141, of a hawk), and originally intended to describe the cry of a bird of prey. The unfamiliarity of the form led to its being associated later on with the sharp-sightedness of such birds, as well as with the bark of a hound fastening on its quarry.