Philostratus remarks on the terseness of the letters of Apollonius of Tyana (Vita Apoll. 7.35, cf. 4.27), and letter 61 is a good example of that stylistic feature. Addressed to a Lesbonax, it says: ᾽Agr;νἀχαπσις ó Σκὑθης ῆν σπφóς εí δὲ Σκὐθης, ὃτι καì ϳκὐθης (‘Anacharsis the Scythian was a sage.. And if he was a Scythian, then it was because he was a Scythian that he was a sage’). In my commentary to the letters, I observed that Apollonius is drawing here on the tradition of the Scythians as an idealized race, unspoiled by the cultivations of Greek city life, and is implicitly criticizing his contemporaries in the Greek world for not living up to the high ideals of Hellenism. I compared a critical remark in letter 34 that alludes to Euripides, Orestes 485: “ἐβαπβαπὡθ” οὐ “χπóνιος ὢν ἀφ’ ‘Ελλἁδι. More can now be said.

Anonymous, Vita Aeschyli 9 ( =TGF 3 T Al.30–32 Radt) preserves the following startling report concerning Aeschylus:

Some say that at the performance of the Eumenides, by bringing on the chorus one by one, as he did, he terrified the audience so that children swooned and fetuses were aborted.

Horace's Asterie ode (3.7) has been somewhat neglected by critics. Fraenkel, uninterested in the erotic odes, fails to mention it, and others see it as merely counterbalancing the preceding six Roman Odes by its frivolity and light irony. However, it is one of Horace's most subtle and best-organized erotic odes, matching the more obvious conventions of Latin love-elegy with a romanticized Odyssey as an underlying framework.

To know the scale of an aulos it is necessary to have a complete instrument. None of the surviving auloi are complete. It is the purpose of this article to attempt to reconstruct the missing parts of several auloi and thus to determine their scales.

All musical sounds consist of regular vibrations. The interval between two notes may be expressed as the rate of vibration of the higher note divided by the rate of vibration of the lower note. This ratio is very roughly the same as the length of the air column for the lower note (i.e. the distance from the reed to the first open hole) divided by the length of the air column for the higher note. This gross over-simplification has been used for all calculations in this article. The width of the air column, the size of the holes, and the reed itself affect the pitch considerably. The player also has a large control over the precise note played. And so the notes obtained by the ancients might have been very different from the notes obtained by ignoring these factors; although the player's control over pitch might have been used to lessen the effects of the other factors.

AT the beginning of the third part of the Theaetetus (201d–2O2c), Socrates entertains an interesting theory of knowledge in the form of a ‘dream’. In Cornford's translation, it reads as follows:

I seem to have heard some people say that what might be called the first elements () of which we and all other things consist are such that no account () can be given of them. Each of them just by itself can only be named; we cannot attribute to it anything further or say that it exists or does not exist; for we should at once be attaching to it existence or nonexistence, whereas we ought to add nothing if we are to express just it alone. We ought not even to add ‘just’ or ‘it’ (‘that’) or ‘each’ or ‘alone’ or ‘this’, or any other of a host of such terms.

Since geography was one of the accepted branches of Ionian Ίστορíη, it is not surprising that geographical description and discussion should play so large a part in the work of Herodotus. Nor is it surprising that, since he covered so much ground, he should occasionally borrow information from his predecessors. Apart from particular passages where comparison with the fragments of Hecataeus shows that he borrowed from this author's Periegesis, there are numerous others which, although strictly relevant fragments are lacking, by their style and manner betray the influence of Hecataeus. The so-called ΛιβυκῸσ λΌγος for example, in Book IV is full of the conventional formulae familiar to anyone who has studied the fragments; consequently Jacoby is prepared to say that it provides even more valuable material for the method and style of Hecataeus than the treatment of Egypt in Book II, where more specific evidence of borrowing is available. There are countless other passages and isolated sentences where the style suggests, if not actual dependence on the text of Hecataeus, at least adherence to the Hecataean tradition of geographical description.

The whole of the Pylos campaign is intimately connected with the local topography. Pritchett has shown beyond reasonable doubt that the land in this area has sunk (rather than risen, as commentators have assumed) since classical times, and hence there is much about the campaign that needs re-examination. We confine ourselves here to a consideration of the Spartan plan to block the entrances, as given in Thucydides. Some points relevant to this turn on a more detailed examination of the site itself, which we were able to conduct in the summers of 1967 and 1968.

The uneasiness caused by deberent loqui is reflected in the variant readings and the emendations put forward. Is there in fact a personal subject? To understand iuvenes is possible but clumsy, but if the tragic poets themselves are intended, then these great writers are strangely selfish. Petronius surely is talking about the proper language for good oratory (cf. 2. 7), which depends on a healthy literary language in general. This rules outWilamowitz's too particular and Fuchs's uglier supplements: easier than deceret would be deberet, paralleled almost exactly in Petronius’ contemporary, Seneca (de Ira 3. 3. 1). Deberent and deberemus were doubtless due to a desire to provide a personal subject for the misunderstood impersonal verb.

After an opening of the elegiac epistle which recalls the Euripidean-Ennian Medea-prologue, Ovid's heroine thus states her purpose (Her. 12.23–4):

est aliqua ingrato meritum exprobrare voluptas;

hac fruar, haec de te gaudia sola feram.

Virgil's list of the qualities that are desirable in a brood cow corresponds closely to those in Varro's De re rustica and in the texts which, though later, can be plausibly taken as evidence of an existing tradition. Yet, there is one exception, and it is an exception to which the poet carefully draws attention. Varro's, Columella's and Palladius’ ideal cows all share with Virgil's and with each other hairy ears, very long dewlaps and tail, and other features. However, whereas they all have narrow hooves (ungulis breuibus, Palladius), moderate at most (ungulis modicis, Columella), and certainly not broad (pedibus non latis, Varro), Virgil's cow emphatically has big feet (Verg. G. 3.51–9):

optima toruae
forma bouis cui turpe caput, cui plurima ceruix,
et crurum tenus a mento palearia pendent;
tum longo nullus lateri modus: omnia magna,
pes etiam, et camuris hirtae sub cornibus aures. 55
nec mihi displiceat maculis insignis et albo,
aut iuga detrectans interdumque aspera cornu
et faciem tauro propior, quaeque ardua tota
et gradiens ima uerrit uestigia cauda.

The best shape
for a fierce cow is one which has an ugly head, which has a lot of neck
and whose dewlaps hang from her chin all the way down to her legs;
then let there be no limit to the length of her flank: let everything be big,
even the foot, and hairy ears under in-curving horns,
and I would approve of her being marked with white spots,
either refusing the yoke or sometimes fierce with her horn
and in appearance closer to a bull, and who is lofty in every respect
and when walking sweeps her tracks with the tip of her tail.

The editors allow me four corrections of Mr. Parry's remarks in C.Q. N.S. X (1960), 268–70. Mr. Parry observes (p. 268, n. 4): ‘Calder says that Jebb wanted to translate by him. That is not correct.’ But Mr. Parry has just said that exemplifies ‘the common “I know thee who thou art” construction’ and has endorsed the view of Brunck, ‘Est autem’ etc. Brunck is saying that is the proleptic subject of the verb which is he, sc. Oedipus, therefore does not mean her nor them but him whether or not the word ‘must be left out in translation’.

This paper is about several little-known Latin funerary formulae of some interest. It is also intended as an addition to the growing literature on what are now called in English ‘support verbs’, with special focus on facio.

Apropos congregatio Zetzel remarks ‘the metaphor is qualified by quasi…, as it more properly refers to animals rather than men’. It seems doubtful, however, that in general the -grego compounds were at this date felt as vividly metaphorical: segrego is used of human beings as early as Plautus and Terence (Mil. 1232; Heau. 386; other occurrences at OLD s.v., 1; Forcellini s.v., II); aggrego is commonly so used by Cicero (Zimmermann, TLL s.v., I). Moreover, our passage is the first attestation of congregatio. Cicero uses the word three times in De Finibus (2.109, 3.65, and 4.4), of which the latter two passages also refer to human beings but are without quasi. Hence the use of quasi in our passage is likely to be related above all to the newness of the term, albeit the etymology may be more strongly felt in a new coinage. Cf. TLL 4, 288.26ff.

Aulus Gellius records an epigram of the Roman consul Q. Lutatius Catulus (Noctes Atticae 19.9.14 = fr. 1 Blänsdorf/Courtney):

Aufugit mi animus; credo, ut solet, ad Theotimum
deuenit. sic est, perfugium illud habet.
quid si non interdixem, ne illunc fugitiuum
mitteret ad se intro, sed magis eiceret?
ibimu' quaesitum. uerum ne ipsi teneamur
formido. quid ago? da, Venu', consilium.

An inscription found in 1912 near Praeneste,1 and now easily accessible in the new edition of Vol. I. of the Corpus of Latin inscriptions (CIL. I. pars 2, fasc. 1, 1918, No. 2439), records a dedication in honour of Juno PALOS-CARIA(e) (dat. sg.), an epithet previously unknown, and not yet, I believe, satisfactorily explained. Rosenberg's attempted explanation (palus -i sens, obsc.—an extremely rare meaning, it should be observed—and stigare in the sense of ‘instigare,’ referring to Juno as the goddess of motherhood) will not secure many adherents, while that of Lommatzsch (CIL. l.c.), who would connect the word with palus -udis, and see an allusion to the ‘paludes Pomptinae,’ involves us in serious, though not insuperable, phonetic and morphological difficulties. If we were reduced to accepting the derivation from palus ‘marsh,’ I should prefer to see rather a reference to the festival of Juno on the Nonae Caprotinae (July 7), which took place near the Caprae (or Caprea) palus in the Campus Martius. There would then be at least a definite connexion of the goddess with the palus, whereas there is no such connexion, so far as I know, of Juno with the Pomptine Marshes.

The following texts and comments are a supplement to ‘Democritus on Politics and the Care of the Soul’, CQ 39 (1989), 307–31 (henceforth ‘Democritus on Politics’). The Democritean fragments there were quoted only in translation; detailed commentary on them would have taken up too much space and clogged the argument. They make their appearance here in the same order as they did there, preceded by a thumb-nail résumé of that argument and of their place in it. Text, spelling and numbering is that of the standard edition: H. Diels, W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin, 1951–2). Reference will also be made to collections by P. Natorp, Die Ethika des Demokritos (Marburg, 1893), S. Y. Luria, Democritea (Leningrad, 1970) and G. Ibscher, Demócrito y sus sentencias sobre ética y education (Lima, 1983–4), as well as to translations by V. E. Alfieri, Gli Atomisti (Bari, 1936), K. Freeman, Ancilla to the Presocratics (Oxford, 1948) and J. Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy (Harmondsworth, 1987).

Statius′ Silvae 5.4 is one of the best-known poems in the collection, although it is also one of the least representative. Its nineteen lines make it the shortest poem in the Silvae, and although there are other brief poems, such as those describing the parrot of Melior and the tame lion (Silvae 2.4 and 5), it is quite different from the many longer poems that deal with subjects and persons from contemporary society. Of course insomnia must always be a universal issue, but this is nevertheless a poem that does not draw the reader into the ‘ life and times’ of Statius as do the poems which precede and follow it, the laments for his father and for a child (Silvae 5.3 and 5.5).

AT the conclusion of his recently published paper on Corinna1 Professor Page leaves open the question whether the poetess was a contemporary of Pindar or of Moschus-whether she belongs to the middle of the fifth century or the end of the third. He gives excellent reasons for believing that these two dates exhaust the possibilities: they are far more probable than a date either outside or between them; but there seems to be no sure criterion by which we can decide between the two, and Professor Page has to end his researches with a suspension of judgement.

At Catullus 63.5, OGR read:

deuoluit iletas acuto sibi pondere silices. The gist of this (‘he rolled down from (?) himself flints with sharp mass’) is improbable, and in particular the form iletas is a non-existent word and two syllables too long for the metre.