I shall argue the likelihood that Vergil took Aeacus’ speech as his model for Charon's, as part of Aeneas’ newly created journey through Vergil's expanded topography of Hades.

The four Greek verses just quoted, addressed by Aeacus to Heracles, and Heracles’ reply in twelve, were first published separately by Rabe, and then inserted by Page as verses 16–19 and 20–31 between surviving frs. 1 and 2 of P.Oxy. 2078, to be ascribed in all likelihood to the lost Pirithous of Euripides, rather than to the slightly later Critias.

This famous sentence, which opens the address of the Demiurge to the created gods, has puzzled commentators both ancient and modern. We must, I think, agree with Taylor and Cornford, who both discuss it at length, that no sense can be got out of θεọἰ θε⋯ν taken together, i.e. with a comma after θε⋯ν: I need notreproduce their arguments on this point. Accordingly they punctuate after θεọἰ. Taylor, however, thinks that even so the sentence cannot be translated, and accepts Badham's proposal to read ộδων in place of θε⋯ν ⋯ν. He then takes ộδων ἒπγων as an instance of ‘inverse relative attraction’ and translates ‘Ye gods, works whereof I am maker and father, seeing they were fashioned by my hands, are indissoluble without my consent’. Cornford objects to ộδων on the grounds that it creates an objectionable hiatus between the first two words (and it is true that the Timaeus is very sparing of hiatus), and also that it destroys what he finds to be the dominant rhythm of the whole speech, and particularly of this first sentence. That rhythm is Cretic: θεọἰ θε⋯ν ⋯ν ẻγὠ δημωνπγ⋯ς πατ⋯π ἒπγων: which he compares the famous opening of the De Corona τοῖς θεοῖς ε⋯χομα π⋯δ κα⋯ π⋯δς. I am, however, doubtful about the cogency of this argument from rhythm, as I have noticed a number of places in the dialogue where a similar rhythm occurs to all appearance naturally:

58 A κα⋯ ππ⋯ς αὐτὐν πεφνκνῖα βοὑλεδθα.

66 C ⋯δὺ κα⋯ ποδφλ⋯ς παντ⋯ π⋯ν.

70 A τ⋯ν τε δ⋯ καπδ⋯αν ⋯μμ⋯των.

77 A τ⋯ς γ⋯π ⋯νθπωπ⋯νης δνγγεν⋯

81 δ⋯γκλεν αὐτ⋯ν ππ⋯ς ἂλληλα κ⋯κτηα.

Herakleides, fr. 3I (Muller F.H.G. ii. p. 222, with his note):

ACP et margo p; om.reliqui.

Elymnion, according to Stephanos, was The name occurs in Aristophanes {Peace, 1126) in a context which points to the neighbourhood of Oreos. There is no evidence to connect it immediately with Chalkis. Mela (II. 2. 30) mentions an Echinia near Akanthos: ' inter Strymona et Athon Turris Calarnaea et portus Capru, urbs Acanthos et Echinia.' Confusion of A and X is easy. Thus, even if the first sentence has no ol, the passage gives no safe evidence that these settlers came to Kleonai from Chalkis, or from Euboea. Such a derivation would be hard to reconcile with Thucydides' account of the towns on Akte. If oί is right, cadit quaestio.

The evidence of ancient books points to the surprising conclusion that in texts of drama or prose dialogue changes of speaker were not usually marked by the name of the new speaker. Instead the ancient reader had a colon, sometimes combined with a paragraphus or stroke in the margin, to guide him. The inconvenience of this practice and the muddle it caused need no emphasis. The facts have been assembled for the text of Plato and Lucian by J. Andrieu (Le Dialogue antique, 288 ff.), and for Aristophanes by J. C. B. Lowe (Bull. Inst. Class. Stud, ix (1962), 27–42). As far as prose dialogues are concerned confirmation can be found in an unexpected source: the prologue to the dialogue Eranistes by the fifth-century church father Theodoret (Migne, Patrologia graeca, lxxxiii. 29 b).

Parisinus suppl. gr. 256 was written, to judge from the hand, not long after 1300. As far as the end of book VI the writer copied both text and scholia from a descendant of M. At that point another MS. came into his hands. This was no other than that ancestor of J which, as we saw on p. 87, had received valuable readings from the source ω. From this MS. the scribe now corrected what he had already written, copied the two remaining books, and added the two Lives before the text and the Epistula Dionysii ad Ammaeum after it. (That he went on to copy Demosthenes‘ Philippics and other works, and bound them up with the Thucydides, is not our concern.) From 1—for so, after Dain (see p. 86 n.), I shall style our MS.—was copied the MS. from which, after it had been perfunctorily corrected from another source, was copied X (p. 91).

The existence of Otto Weinreich's excellent Türöffnung im Wunder-, Prodigienund-und Zauberglauben der Antike, des Judentums und Christentums continues to make an apology necessary for any re-examination of texts in which doors are made, or encouraged, spontaneously to open, to admit a divinity or, occasionally, to speed his departure. But what little fresh sustenance remains to be sucked from some of these well-gnawed bones may now be usefully supplemented with comment on a number of more recently suggested examples.

A summary view of the main evidence at our disposal may be soon obtained. Three traditions appear at the outset. The first depends on a MS. once at Mainz, and now no longer extant, but of which part, at any rate, still existed in the sixteenth century; the second on an eleventh century MS. at Bamberg; and the third on a number of later MSS. in Rome, Florence, Paris, the British Museum, Oxford, Holkham, and other places. The fact that (at any rate for preliminary investigation) these three traditions must be regarded as separate may be seen first from the parts of the decade which they each omit.

Most of the above text is straightforward. Horace is explaining that wrath – the reader may think at this stage either of Horace's own wrath expressed in the scurrilous iambi mentioned in 2–3 or that of the woman he addresses – resembles various other things. Thus in 5a wrath's effect is compared to that of the Magna Mater on her priests, the Galli (they were driven so far from their senses that they castrated themselves), and in 5b–6 to that of Apollo on the Pythia (the god interfered with her personality so that she could utter his prophecies). In 7a Dionysus’ effect on his maenads provides the analogy (one thinks of Agave and her sisters, who dismembered Pentheus under the delusion that he was a lion). These are good comparisons to the ruinous effects of anger.

L has …, P … Paley wanted to delete Subsequent editors did not take up the suggestion. J. Diggle on the other hand has proposed that was originally a gloss on ‘It would be no cause for surprise that a scribe who had never seen the like of Homer's (Il. 4. 189) should fuse the two versions by distributing the two in what he thought a fair and impartial manner.’ Diggle arrives at The metre is tidied up, the corruption explained. But would be unique in Euripides. is the Euripidean Greek for ‘O dear one’. For ‘O dear Hector’ he writes (Tro. 673). If he did want to create here by repetition a sense of there is no reason why he should not have written what is in L; compare Tro. 1081 , Su. 278 and Andr. 530

The writer recently examined the two palimpsest folios of the manuscript Parisinus gr. 107B, otherwise known as the Codex Claromontanus, which contain most of the surviving passages of Euripides' Phaethon. Despite the damaging effects of the chemical reagents used in the nineteenth century the text is not wholly illegible and a collation was made where possible. A comparison of this with the standard texts published by Nauck, von Arnim, and Volmer revealed some puzzling discrepancies; it looks as if recent editors have not examined the manuscript, basing their work on their predecessors' false reports of the collation by Blass. Nauck writes (p. 599): ‘quoniam vero programmata academica in paucorum manus perveniunt, haud gravabor quae Blass legit hoc loco repetere’. von Arnim shows in his preface (p. 2) that he copied from Nauck, and Volmer says (p. 9): ‘J. de Arnim omnia tragoediae Euripideae fragmenta contulit in Supplemento Euripideo, quem librum prae aliis commentationibus in fabula restituenda adhibeo’. In future scholars who turn their attention to the Phaethon would do well to go back to the collation by Blass, but this too seemed faulty to me at certain points.

The romance of Leucippe and Clitophon had already been edited by I. and N. Bonnvitus (ed. prin. Heidelberg, 1601), Salmasius (1640), Boden (1776), and Mitscherlich (1792), but it was the work of Friedrich Jacobs, published in 1821, that provided the foundation for serious criticism of the text based on knowledge of a substantial number of representative manuscripts.

Histories of Roman literature state under Martial that his birthday was on ist March.1 Martial repeatedly says so himself. But these statements must now be questioned, since they harbour a peculiar difficulty, perhaps even a problem, whose solution is here attempted.

If in the various books of the Iliad and Odyssey the speeches or personated lines are separated from the rest, the metrical phenomena will, when tabulated, be found to show a perceptible divergence from those of the narrative verse. The differences are worth some notice. They throw into sharp relief the subtle rules that control the narrative type; and, what is more important, they do to some extent suggest the principle, of which these rules are the necessary outcome. There is also involved another point of considerable interest; for the contrast between narrative- and speech-verse exactly coincides, it must be remembered, with a very remarkable difference in the use of the augment; and the more this coincidence is considered, the less easy it will be found to dismiss it as accidental.

Mr. Harrison's critique of my article in JRS 63 (1973) is conducted with characteristic learning and subtlety. He has pointed out much that I ought to have observed. But I remain altogether unconvinced:

(i) Harrison objects to my preferring a close local sense for his (vii.206), hinc (vii.240), repetit (vii.241) and revehis (viii.37) because in comparison with the distance from Troy, even the 100-odd miles from Cortona to the scene of action—let alone the 50-odd miles from Tarquinii—count as ‘loca’

The ancient scholia and various modern editors interpret these lines as a description of the prodigies which followed the death of Caesar. It is bold to criticize a view so widely held, but its acceptance, to me, involves considerable difficulties. The first is the long interval between Caesar's death and the date of the Ode. About this date editors vary, but the general view is that it belongs either to the year 29 or 28 B.C.

A Cautious man, as I said at the outset, will not edit Lucilius; for it is an editor's business to pronounce an opinion on all the difficulties in his author, and when the author is in fragments the opinion will oftener be wrong than right. But a critic of Lucilius who is not also his editor, and can pick and choose among the pieces, is in a somewhat happier case; and I will now go on to attempt the correction or elucidation of certain passages where I seem to myself to have arrived at probable conclusions.