Stephen Tracy's neat demonstration that IG I3 35—authorizing the building of a temple and appointment of a priestess for Athena Nike—was cut by the man responsible for the Promachos accounts (IG I 435) at first seemed decisive for the traditional c. 448 B.C. against my radical down-dating. Ira Mark then argued that this decree provided for the naiskos and altar of his Stage III in the 440s: the marble temple belonged to Stage IV over twenty years later. Despite these two powerful interventions the matter is not closed. David Gill has, I fancy, convincingly refuted Mark on archaeological and architectural grounds. And there is still more to be said from the epigraphic angle.

IG I 36, cut on the back of the stele, looks like a delayed rider to 35. But just how delayed was it? It arranged for the regular payment of the priestess's salary by the kolakretai in office in the month Thargelion. On the traditional view the gap would be close to a quarter of a century, since 36 is firmly dated 424/3 B.C. This is quite extraordinary, though reasons have been found for it. More serious perhaps is some neglected epigraphic evidence. We have eighteen other examples in fifth-century Attic epigraphy where decrees are followed on the same stone by other texts; but virtually all the gaps are short, never more than a few years. The relevant texts are IG I 4, 11/12, 41, 42/43, 52 A–B, 59, 61, 66, 68, 71, 72, 73, 89, 93, 101, 127/II1, 156, 1454. It is true that 42/43 are dated c. 445–442 and c. 435–427 B.C. in IG I, but this is quite arbitrary.

Metaphysics Z.ll has in recent years received considerable attention, because of its importance for the exposition of Aristotle's psychology, which for some time now has been an immensely popular topic among Aristotelian scholars. Z.ll has proved contentious, however, especially over its statement of Aristotle's criticism of Socrates the Younger, who was wont to make a certain ‘comparison’ in the case of animals. Virtually nothing is known about this Socrates the Younger, nor is it known exactly what ‘comparison’ he made with animals. But, as most interpreters suppose from the context of Z. 11, his comparison certainly had much in common with that made by ‘some', who argue that natural objects, like man, are comparable to geometrical figures, like the circle, with respect to their relationship to their matter (1036b7–12). Just as the physical matter of circles, such as bronze, stone, and the like, are no part of the essence of the circle, so too the physical matter of man—flesh and bones—is no part of the essence of man. This comparison may hold true, even if, unlike circles, man is in fact found only in a single sort of matter, because the case of man may be like the counterfactual case in which all circles happen to be made of bronze. The bronze would still not belong to the essence of the circle; it would just be difficult psychologically to separate circularity from bronze (1036a31-b7).

Within Emile Littreés classification of Hippocratic works, class ten consists of three lost works, two of which appear to have been treatises on the treatment of serious wounds and on the extraction of arrows. The sources for their titles—Erotian, Galen, an eleventh-century Arabic MS and the twelfth-century MS Vat.graec.276–disagree on minor points, but it is clear that they are all referring to the same works.

As a contributory step toward a new edition of Du Cange's Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, planned by the International Association of Academies, the British Academy has undertaken to publish a critical edition of mediaeval glossaries. The most important of these glossaries, because it constitutes the parent-compilation from which subsequent compilers of glossaries drew their material, is that pair known as Abstrusa and Abolita, found combined in the Vatican MS. 3321, which is the oldest extant MS. of purely Latin glossaries. It is with the date and home of this MS. that the present note is concerned.

Cicero (Inu. 2, 166) defines gloria as frequens de aliquo fama cum laude, ‘much talk about a person to his praise.’ When the talk is by the person himself, the word takes the signification ‘boast’ (as early as Plaut. Mil. 22 gloriarum pleniorem).

In Part I of this article the major problems of the transmission of the Bacchae were considered, with a discussion of interpolated lines and lacunae, whether certain or merely postulated by previous editors. In the Introduction it was argued that P is a copy of a manuscript which was very like L (whether a copy or a twin hardly matters) before being supplemented with variant readings and with the whole of Tr. and Ba. 756 ff. from a lost source. The symbols λ and were used for P's exemplar and this remoter source respectively. The ancestry of in turn was traced back to Λ, the ancestor of L. This, if right, means that L and P (including the end of Ba.) both descend from a single uncial archetype, though with a fair chance that some true variants from a different tradition reached and λ. P, however, steadfastly preferred the original reading of λ (= L, in effect) whenever possible. When P differs from L, there are three possibilities: (a) that he is making a fresh error (misreading or carelessness—seldom, if ever, constructive); (b) that λ (before being supplemented) differed from L (probably only in ortkographica); (c) that λ (after contamination) included a variant which P preferred (significant variants are so rare that legibility is likely to have been P's main criterion).

Theocritus I. 49:

ἁ δ', ἐπὶ πήρᾳ

πάντα δόλον κεύθοισα, τὸ παιδίον οὐ πίν ἀνήσειν

φατὶ πρὶν ἠ ἀκράτιστὸν ἐπὶ ξηροȋσι καθίξῃ.

For a very long time I have held a view of this sentence which differs very greatly from any which I have seen advocated elsewhere. Mr. Campbell's discussion in the last number of C. Q. will render it possible to abbreviate my presentation of it. For many of Mr. Campbell's criticisms on page 99 are, I believe, sound, if occasionally overstated. Many will agree, with some hesitations, in his methods of disproving the rendering ‘set him breakfasting upon dry stuff’ on page 98. This has always seemed to me a bad rendering for quite other reasons. Unfortunately for my purpose, which is not to expose modern misrenderings, but to find out what ἀκράτωτὸν means, much is immaterial. Mr. Campbell's real objections to ἀκράτιστὸν seem to be confined:

(a) To an alleged ‘active’ sense.

(b) To an alleged equivalence with a ‘present’ participle.

(c) To a violation of a law which he attributes to Mehlhorn.

(d) ‘It is the only occurrence of ἀκρατίζομαι (with congeners) outside Comedy and Late Prose.’

It might seem quite commonplace to say that Aristotle identifies fire, air, water and earth as the στοιχεῖα, or ‘elements’ – or, to be more precise, as the elements of bodies that are subject to generation and corruption. Yet there is a tradition of interpretation, already evident in the work of the sixth-century commentator John Philoponus and widespread, indeed prevalent, today, according to which Aristotle does not really believe that fire, air, water and earth are truly elemental. The basic premise of this interpretation is that Aristotle takes fire, air, water and earth to be, in some sense, composite bodies and, as such, analysable into simpler constituents. But, of course, an element of bodies is defined by Aristotle himself as something into which bodies can be analysed, and which does not admit further analysis (Metaph. 5.3, 1014a26–1014b15; Cael. 3.3, 302a14–21). So if fire, air, water and earth can be analysed into simpler or more basic constituents, then it would seem to follow that the latter ought to be considered Aristotle's true elements. These are usually identified as the primary contraries hot and cold, dry and wet; many, perhaps most, commentators would insist also upon prime matter as the subject upon which these contraries act.

Euripides, Medea 11–13 (Diggle's Oxford text):

12 πολιτ⋯ν codd. et Σbv; πολίταις (Bgl) V3, sicut coni. Barnes 13 αὐτῷ Sakorrphos; αὐτή codd. et gE et Stob. 4.23.30

In his recent discussion of this passage (CQ 34 [1984], 50–1), Diggle has convincingly argued for πολίταις and αὐτῷ, the latter of which he places in his new Oxford text, but recognises that ɸυγῇ remains highly problematic (51): ‘The truth, I think, is still to seek’. It is to this last difficulty that I should like to suggest a solution.

The problems of ɸυγῇ are syntactical, as Diggle clearly demonstrates (51): ‘With which verb (⋯νδάνουσα or ⋯ɸίκετο) is ɸυγῇ to be constructed?’ Of these ⋯νδάνουσα is more likely for position, ⋯ɸίκετο for sense; but the former construction produces an obscurity, the latter an unacceptable hyperbaton. Another complicating element is the juxtaposition ɸυγῇ πολιτ⋯ν. it is clearly significant, and by its intervention appears to prevent taking ɸυγῇ as ⋯π⋯ κοινο⋯ with both verbs, the third possible construction.

As a solution I should like to revive a forgotten conjecture of Pierson's, made in his Verisimilia (1752). His ɸυγ⋯ς πολίταις appears both to solve all the syntactical problems and to give appropriate point to the juxtaposition of ‘exile’ and ‘citizen’. ɸυγάς would then go with ⋯νδάνουσα and bear a concessive sense: ‘pleasing, though an exile, the citizens to whose land she came’, a nuance found already in Wecklein's paraphrase of his text ɸυγῇ πολιτ⋯ν. ‘Sie gefällt denen, in deren Land sie gekommen ist, obwohl sie die Bürgerschaft als eine fremde, landesflüchtige Person gegenübersteht’. This contrast between citizen and exile and the necessity for the latter to please the former are naturally important themes in the dramatic situation of the Medea — cf. Medea's words at 222 χρ⋯ δ⋯ ξένον μ⋯ν κάρτα προσχωρεῖν πόλει, with Page's note.

The reader of Juvenal's fifth satire, making his way through the new Oxford text edited by W. V. Clausen, finds the sweep of the poet's indignant rhetoric interrupted by the obeli of 104. Reference to Clausen's paper which he quotes in support of his proposed reading glaucis sparsus (A.J.P. lxxvi [1955], 58–60) reveals that he proceeds from the assumption that the line is corrupt, and evidence that this is the case must be sought elsewhere.

Ovid in writing Amores 3.11.38–9 showed awareness of Metellus Macedonicus’ speech of 131, which proposed compulsory marriage in order to stimulate the birth rate and which was read to the senate and published at large by Augustus (Suet. Aug. 89.2). I wish to suggest that when he wrote Book 1 of the Metamorphoses Ovid was evoking another political debate in which Augustus was involved. Jupiter announces to the gods that in the end radical surgery is needed when the wickedness of mankind becomes incurable (Met. 1.187–91).