Roman magistri and grammatici taught their students a wide range of subjects, primarily through the medium of Latin and Greek literary texts. A well-educated Roman in the Imperial era was expected to have a good knowledge of the literary language of Cicero and Virgil, as well as a competent command of Greek. By the late fourth and early fifth centuries, this knowledge had to be taught actively, as everyday Latin usage had changed during the intervening four centuries. After the reign of Theodosius the division between the Eastern and the Western Empires meant that knowledge of Greek was no longer as common as it had once been in the West. At the same time, by Late Antiquity, migration increased and foreigners as well as provincials moved within the empire, for example, in search of military promotion. There is evidence that recruitment to official or public careers was based less on birth than on education. These ambitious newcomers sent their children to Roman schools, which would facilitate their access to public office. Receipt of this education provided a means by which men from less privileged backgrounds could achieve promotion to such office and become prominent and influential individuals. At the same time a late Roman education also produced a high level of cultural homogeneity among those who had experienced it. So what might we learn about how language was taught—and what kinds of language were valued—in a late-antique Roman school? How might this contribute to our understanding of late-antique Roman elite society?

In late c.e. 467 Sidonius Apollinaris journeyed from Lyon to Rome. An account of his journey appears in Epist. 1.5. Sidonius made his way to the city by boat and imperial post horses, arriving during the nuptial celebrations of the Emperor Anthemius’ daughter Alypia and the barbarian potentate Ricimer. The wedding linked Ricimer, who had held significant political power in the interregnum after the death of Libius Severus (461–465), to the new emperor in the West, Anthemius, whom the eastern Roman emperor, Leo I, had just appointed.

Kenneth Dover proposes an explanation of this joke in which the gist is to be understood in terms of ‘homosexual rape as an expression of dominance’, so that Dicaeopolis is offering himself up for use as a pathic by Lamachus. Dover believes that the joke becomes ‘intelligible if the assumption is that the erastēs handles the penis of the erōmenos during anal copulation’. Others have seen a circumcision joke here. Alan Sommerstein explains how the joke would work either of these ways.

Goffredo Coppola, the Italian editor of this papyrus, supposed that τὸν ὄρχιν (the testicle) = τοὺς ὄρχεις; but he was puzzled when no likely erotic word seemed available to finish the line. He suggested φαλ[ῆς, from φαλός = λευκός (‘white’) to be followed by some metaphorical word for penis such as κέρκου. Romagnoli noted that it made no sense to have the testicle(s) dependent on the penis, and argued that Hipponax here intended ὄρχις to refer metaphorically to the glans penis; therefore, he emended to καί μοι τὸν ὄρχιν τῆς φαλ[ῆς ἐκλέψασα (= peeling back the penis’ foreskin); but his feminine form τῆς φαλ[ῆς is unlikely given the masculine form τοῦ φάλεω in Hipponax fr. 21 W. Medeiros suggested ὄρχις, sing. = ὄσχη ‘scrotum’; West actually exalted the role of the testicle by emending to τῆς φαλ[άκρης ἕλκουσα ‘pulling my testicle by the bald spot’; but it is not obvious why hitting the testicles merits such attention in a narrative fixed on the failure to attain an erection.

Plato's Hippias Major has usually been taken to be a comic dialogue, and rightly so. Its main theme is the καλόν, but what is primarily targeted and harshly mocked throughout the dialogue is Hippias’ pretence of having σοφία, which should allow him to define what the καλόν consists in. Yet, καλόν is an ambiguous term since, besides its aesthetic meaning, it also usually means the ‘morally right’. Not being able to define what καλόν is therefore also amounts to being unable to define what the right is. And indeed, the genuine σοφία, as Plato will tell us explicitly, is the σοφία that helps people, especially the youth, to become morally better (see especially 283c4, where Socrates has Hippias wholeheartedly admitting that his σοφία is supposed to aim at εἰς ἀρετὴν βελτίους ποιεῖν). Thus, the serious conclusion Plato wants his reader to draw is, first, that the well-known sophist Hippias (and perhaps all the sophists, more generally) have no real σοφία despite their very name, and second, and most importantly, that they cannot help anyone become virtuous, and that therefore their claim of educating people in moral goodness proves to be specious.

In a recent paper, M. Finkelberg has endorsed part of M.L. West's emendation of the fifth strophe of the second stasimon in Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes (= Sept.). In her opinion, accepting West's emendation also allows adopting earlier emendations proposed by Schütz and Prien, leading to a better understanding of the passage. It is recalled that this is where the chorus relates the disasters that ensued from Oedipus’ discovery of the truth about his marriage. In the following short discussion, I intend to revisit and defend once again the reading, according to which the two acts mentioned in connection with Oedipus’ discovery are gouging out his eyes and casting a curse on his sons, and not murdering his father and bedding his mother.

In carm. 55, Catullus supposes his friend Camerius may be caught in erotic adventure:

num te lacteolae tenent puellae?
si linguam clauso tenes in ore,
fructus proicies amoris omnes:
uerbosa gaudet Venus loquella.    20
uel, si uis, licet obseres palatum,
dum nostri sis particeps amoris.

Two excerpts from Xenophon, in which he states that Socrates avidly practised religious ceremonies promoted by Athens, are subject to two different interpretations by modern historians. For some, they are the proof that the Athenian city was only concerned with the rituals of its fellow citizens, and in no way with their beliefs. In contrast with this view, Hendrick Versnel feels that, by writing that Socrates performed ceremonies, Xenophon thinks that he proves that his master really did believe in the gods. Both of these interpretations are incorrect, as a careful new consideration of these passages can demonstrate.

At Carm. (Odes) 4.2.17–20 Horace's catalogue of Pindar's poetry reaches his victory odes:

siue quos Elea domum reducit
palma caelestis pugilemue equumue
dicit et centum potiore signis
munere donat;                                            20

Odysseus has just entered the acting area following the choral song, during which he witnessed the Cyclops butchering, cooking and then eating two of his companions. In these lines Odysseus seemingly presents himself as being at a loss for words (τί λέξω), and claims that what he witnessed inside the cave is not to be believed (οὐ πιστά). These are, of course, nothing more than rhetorical ploys, with frequent parallels in Euripides and elsewhere. When Odysseus says οὐ πιστά he means not that what he is about to recount lacks credibility—he does, after all, expect the satyrs (and the audience) to accept his account as reliable—but that it surpasses the bounds of ordinary human experience. And the account that follows belies his apparent profession of being at a loss for words, since he is about to deliver what is in effect a messenger-speech of over fifty lines (382–436). Expressions of aphasia are common in Euripides, sometimes accompanied, as here, by lengthy exposition. Characters use such expressions to indicate that the circumstances in which they find themselves are beyond the power of language to convey. There is, therefore, something discordant in Odysseus immediately following his expression of aphasia by saying that what he has witnessed is ‘like stories’, especially when he is about to tell the story of the circumstances in which he finds himself. It is the purpose of this note to suggest that the words μύθοις εἰκότ’ have been universally misunderstood, and that Odysseus is here saying something quite other than that the events in the cave have a greater resemblance to stories than to reality.

According to the manuscripts of On the Crown (18.260), Demosthenes mockingly claims that, as the youthful Aeschines led processions in his mother's mystery-cult celebrations, he was hailed by various old women as ἔξαρχος καὶ προηγεμὼν καὶ κιττοφόρος καὶ λικνοφόρος καὶ τοιαῦθ’ (‘leader and guide and ivy-bearer and bearer-of-the-winnowing-fan and the like’). Τhese are clearly special titles—Aeschines is not just one celebrant among many but a leading figure in the train of worshippers—and recent editors accordingly note that κιττοφόρος seems weak and follow Albert Rubens (‘Rubenius’) in printing instead κιστοφόρος (‘basket-bearer’), which Harpocration reports was read by some authorities here. κιστοφόρος appears to be supported by ΣF2 18.260 (296 Dilts) ὁ φέρων τὰς κίστας (‘the man who carries the baskets’), which is easily taken to confirm that Demosthenes meant that Aeschines stood out in the crowd of celebrants inter alia because he carried containers within which must have been sacred implements of some sort.

In a recent article, I discussed vocative uses of οὗτος in the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, showing that there are two types of vocatives: ‘calls’, which are utterance-initial and directed at one whose attention is turned elsewhere, and ‘addresses’, which are non-initial, employed by a speaker who is already conversing with a hearer, and typically indicate a speaker's annoyance at the hearer. Menander uses οὗτος as a vocative in the same ways as the other dramatic poets, but there is one instance in Dyscolus that has been routinely misconstrued and merits clarification.

Aratus’ Phaenomena calls upon its reader to scrutinize the letters of the text as carefully as the stars and constellations that form its subject matter. The poem abounds with clever letter-play and wordplay, and its reception too is characterized by verbal cleverness, as later authors vie with Aratus and one another to create ingenious textual effects. Among the best-known examples is the word ἄρρητον (‘unspoken’) at Phaen. 2, a witty hidden sphragis for Aratus, who nowhere in his work directly names himself. Later poets picked up on this pun: Callimachus speaks of the λεπταὶ ῥήσιες Ἀρήτου (Anth. Pal. 9.507.3-4 = 27 Pf.), repeating the verbal root of ἄρρητον in ῥήσιες and its sound in Ἀρήτου. Leonidas of Tarentum meanwhile rates Aratus ‘second after Zeus’ (Διὸς … δεύτερος, Anth. Pal. 9.25.5-6), acknowledging the hidden sphragis, which follows directly after the invocation of Zeus in line 1 of the Phaenomena.

Modern editors of Catullus all agree on the text of line 53. The manuscripts also agree on the line, the only difference being R transmitting mutantibus, while O and G transmit nutantibus. Nevertheless, a few scholars have in the past questioned the reading of nutantibus. As the lines quoted above illustrate, Catullus generally translates Callimachus’ poem closely. But neither of the words suggested in the manuscripts seems wholly to describe the rapid and vigorous movement of Callimachus’ κυκλώσας βαλιὰ πτερά, ‘having whirled its swift wings’. The reading of nutantibus is somewhat supported by Apuleius’ pinnarum nutantium (Met. 6.15.5). But there too the nodding, swaying and wavering sense of nutare does not seem to illustrate the hurried and rapid action of Jupiter's eagle. Additionally, the wording of the passage is sufficiently disputed to make it possible that nutantium is not the correct reading.

The sentence that comprises 5.31.5 in Caesar's Bellum Gallicum has long been felt to be problematic. It was deleted entirely by H. Meusel. A. Klotz posited a lacuna after quare. Others sought smaller adjustments. Yet, the defence of the text as transmitted also drew advocates (T. Rice Holmes, A. Ernout, O. Seel) and the debate quietened. The current Teubner edition, by W. Hering in 1987, prints the transmitted text and does not acknowledge the debate in the apparatus criticus. I propose a new solution, one that reinterprets the sentence in context and requires a small textual change from et to nec. I will first set the context and identify problems with the conventional understanding of 5.31.5.