Herodotus tells us that some Naxian oligarchic exiles approached Aristagoras who was then ruling Miletus as deputy for his father-in-law Histiaeus, and asked him to help them return to power. Aristagoras, who saw a possible advantage for himself in the request, was willing to oblige but, as the matter lay beyond his competence, he put the project before Artaphernes, who, he said, governed all the peoples of the sea-coast of Asia. Artaphernes, in turn, brought the plan to the attention of Darius, who gave his consent. An army and a fleet of two hundred ships was made ready and placed under the command of Megabates. After a feint in the direction of the Hellespont the fleet put in at Caucasa preparatory to swooping on Naxos. There, however, a quarrel broke out between Aristagoras and Megabates over a disciplinary matter and the Persian, in a fit of pique, sent a message to warn the Naxians. As a result they were ready for the siege which proved to be a miserable failure. Aristagoras feared he would pay dearly for this débâcle and when a message urging revolt arrived from Histiaeus, he immediately acted upon it.

Astronomy has been known to profit on occasion from the observations of amateurs; and so perhaps, in its less technical passages, could the Astronomica. I venture to dispute the emendations of Mr. Shackleton Bailey (hereinafter S.B.) in the first two items of his learned Maniliana (C.Q., N.S. vi. 81).

Reports of lunar and solar eclipses are of interest to students of both history and the history of science. Used with care, they can anchor significant historical events in time. Greek literature, like that of other civilizations, has its fair share of such reports. Often they motivate the actions of characters or expose aspects of belief. Sometimes they shed light on the assumptions of the writer. There are three places in the Histories of Herodotus where the author mentions darkenings of the sky (generally taken to be solar eclipses), which have narrative significance and which assist in dating the wars between the Lydians and the Medes (1.74) and between the Greeks and the Persians (7.37 and 9.10).

So Hall and Geldart's text and critical note. The latter needs a correction and an addition: R gives (so, too, ΣR, which has ; γ is found only in B and the Aldine edition, R and V omit it.

What is the object of Van Leeuwen says ‘mente suppl.xwhich seems to me inconsequent if not nonsensical. Starkie, printing a dash after the word, notes ‘as the sentence is interrupted by Philocleon, it is impossible to know what was meant to be the object of this verb’. This does not seem very satisfactory. Rogers apparently takes the verb as used absolutely and translates ‘you'll strike by and by’. Coulon, not unnaturally dissatisfied with these explanations, reads and translates ‘tu vas te faire lapider’, adding a note ‘on jetait des pierres aux fous; cf. Otseaux 524’. Starkie also mentions this possibility and attributes its origin to the scholiast—wrongly, for the gloss shows that the scholiast did not take as meaning ‘will be pelted as a madman’. In any case all this is very far-fetched. And there is a further point: the strange future active, is found elsewhere only at line 222 of this same play and nowhere else in Greek. It is therefore rash to postulate an entirely unparalleled middle form of this, and that, too, in a passive sense. Had he intended this meaning Aristophanes would surely have written.

It is no longer the fashion to imagine Herodotos a liar when he tells marvellous stories, for some of his most extraordinary statements have long since been shown to contain at least a substantial measure of truth. It is perhaps not sufficiently realized, however, that on occasion he misleads his readers and himself by too much critical unbelief in his materials and consequent application of the crude methods of mythological investigation then current. In other words, he often rationalizes in the only way then possible, superficially altering the story so as to rid himself of the incredible details, or at all events, as I think, attributing to the actors motives which a somewhat drily rational mind could understand and approve or condemn. It is of course well known that at least the former method was a commonplace of the sophists, whose influence on Herodotos is manifest and widespread; it has been said, indeed, that it is much older than they and characteristically Ionic. L. Radermacher finds traces of it in the Odyssey itself and adds that, although we can sometimes catch the rationalizer (or Fälscher, as he impolitely calls him) at work, we cannot be sure of always doing so and ‘müssen annehmen, dass der Glaube an die Geschichtlichkeit ihrer Sage manche griechischen Autoren früh verführt hat, sie geschichtlicher zu erzählen als eigentlich erlaubt war’. This is a true and useful statement. Modern criticism has long learned to set aside ancient allegorizations of myths, about which I need say nothing, for the subject has been repeatedly and well handled by my colleague, Dr. J. Tate; it has often, however, confused ancient interpretation of myth with ancient criticism of saga. Euhemerism indeed is usually recognized for what it is, although even this is not always so; but uixere inepti ante Euhemerum multi, and their efforts are by no means always distinguished either from allegorizing or from real sagas. For an example of the former confusion I may refer to Stallbaum's note on Plato, Phaedrus, 29 C-D, where the reader is referred to the account given by Lobeck of the rise and growth of allegorization. But Plato says nothing at all of allegories in this passage. He quotes, with ironical admiration of its ‘wisdom’, a version of the story of Boreas and Oreithyia according to which she. was knocked off the Areiopagos, or some other place, by a strong north wind, and so was killed and consequently said to have been carried away by Boreas. He adds that it would be a laborious and dismal business to go through all the tales of wonder in that way, rationalizing the Hippocentaurs, Gorgons, Chimaira, Pegasos, and the rest out of existence; a wise saying which was uttered in vain for Palaiphatos and his kind. However, most moderns know a myth from a saga and an allegory from a crude rationalization which accepts the story as true except for the incredibilities and is quite ready to believe, for instance, in Romulus if we will but postulate that he was not snatched up to heaven but murdered and his body hidden. There is a much more subtle snare, consisting of a story which, although rationalized, is well told, and Herodotos in this respect can be a notable offender, for he never tells a story ill.

How many kisses will be enough for Catullus? That is the question that opens Poem 7. The answer: as many as are the grains of sand in the Libyan desert, asmany as are the stars in the nightime sky. Yet in this poem sand and stars do notfunction simply as quantitative symbols. Each is in fact described in a mannerthat subtly alludes to the mouth – the organ from which Lesbia's kisses couldcome.

I refer to the editions of the third book of Columella by S. Hedberg (Uppsala, 1968) and J. C. Dumont (Paris, 1993).

… nullus tamen uel iniquissimus locus non maiorem quaestum reddet quam acceperit inpensam: siquidem, ut cultoris neglegentia sex milia seminum intereant, reliqua tamen decem milia tribus milibus nummorum libenter et cum lucro redemptorum erunt… 3.3.12–13

In my previous article I argued that certain of the later MSS. of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, and especially those which I call Class I., are to a large extent descended from a lost copy of F, made before the rent was torn in Book VIII., and therefore before the writing of ϕ; and I inferred that it was likely that the evidence of these MSS. would prove a valuable addition to that of ϕ in places where F is now illegible. In the following pages I shall prove that this hope has been fulfilled.

In his choice of quotations concerning fate and the good ordering of events Stobaeus (Eel. 5. 10–12) gives in succession three passages which the manuscripts ascribe to the Peleus of Euripides and the Phaedra of Sophocles, but as Wilamowitz and Nauck saw, all three form a single piece, and the ascriptions to Euripides and Sophocles do not concern them. The text so recovered may be presented as follows

Cicero's discussion of wit in the de oratore includes an entertaining story about Ennius and a certain Nasica (whom it is almost certainly wasted energy to attempt to identify) (2.275–6): ‘Valde haec ridentur et hercule omnia quae a prudentibus per simulationem subabsurde salseque dicuntur. Ex quo genere est etiam non videri intellegere quod intellegas… ut illud Nasicae, qui cum ad poetam Ennium venisset eique ab ostio quaerenti Ennium ancilla dixisset domi non esse, Nasica sensit illam domini iussu dixisse et ilium intus esse; paucis post diebus cum ad Nasicam venisset Ennius et eum ad ianuam quaereret, exclamat Nasica domi non esse, turn Ennius “quid? ego non cognosco vocem” inquit “tuam?” Hic Nasica “homo es impudens:ego cum te quaererem ancillae tuae credidi te domi non esse, tu mihi non credis ipsi?”’ This anecdote, devitalized by its divorce from a well–known name, finds a place in the Philogelos, a compendium of jokes compiled in late antiquity and ascribed to the otherwise unidentifiable Hierocles and Philagrius, (193): Δύσκολόν τις ζἠτει. δ πεκρίνατο∼ Ούκ εἰμì ὧδε. τοû δ γελσαντος καì εἰπόντος∼ Ψεύδῃ∼ τς γρ φωνς σου κούω – εἶπεν∼ ῏Ω κθαπμα, εἰ μέν δολός μου εἶπχες ἂν αὐτῷ πιστεσαι∼ γὼ δ σοι οὐ φαίνομαι ξιοπιστότερος κείνου εἶναι

Cicero's Cato, in a passage nicely illustrating that enthusiasm for Greek literature which is said to have come upon him in old age, offers some valuable observations about manure (Sen. 54): ‘quid de utilitate loquar stercorandi? dixi in eo libro quern de rebus rusticis scripsi; de qua doctus Hesiodus ne verbum quidem fecit, cum de cultura agri scriberet; at Homerus, qui multis ut mihi videtur ante saeclis fuit, Laertam lenientem desiderium quod capiebat e filio, colentem agrum et eum stercorantem facit.’

Since Teuffel's Römische Literatur (at least the edition of 1910) mentions s.v. Varius (६ 223, 2) the famous entry in the Monte Cassino MS. (Paris Bibl. Nat. Lat. 7530) incipit thvestes varii, but ignores its occurrence in a Benevento MS. (Rome, Casanat. 1086 or A III. 11), it may be well to give some account of the latter codex. For I read with amusement a recent article in this journal in which the writer severely censured Mr. Garrod's ignorance of the entry in Paris 7530, but revealed his own ignorance by assuming that it was the scribe of the Paris MS. who had the lost tragedy of Varius before him.

Discussing different types of metaphor, Isidore of Seville quotes an anonymous fragment that uses agricultural vocabulary to describe the sailing of a ship in order to illustrate metaphorae ab inanimali ad inanimale ‘metaphors taken from inanimate objects and applied to inanimate objects’ (Etym. 1.37.3 = inc. fr. 63 Blänsdorf):1

Aeschylus' constant metrical practice shows that either Ag. 404/5 in the strophe, or 421/2 , correspondingly in the antistrophe, is corrupt in the manuscript tradition..

In the course of a wider study of stylistic development in Cicero's speeches1 an examination was conducted into the clausal and phrasal structure of a chronological cross-section of the speeches. The examination revealed some clearly distinguishable developments in the orator's maturing style.

This paper is restricted to an examination of one aspect of his stylistic development, namely his use of abundantia of phrases. The term abundantia has a long history, but in Cicero's rhetorical treatises it is almost synonymous with amplitudo and copia.