These texts, the property of the Egypt Exploration Society, were purchased, together with other literary and documentary material, from a Greek lady at Medînet-el-Faiyûm by Dr. J. de M. Johnson in 1914. I am grateful to the Secretary of the Society for permission to publish them.

Parisinus 1672 (E in Wyttenbach and all subsequent editions), executed at the instigation of Maximus Planudes, is the only manuscript which contains all seventy-eight extant moralia of Plutarch. It may be dated soon after 1302, the year in which Planudes appended to his manuscript of the Greek Anthology (Marc. 481) a πίναξ Πλουτρχου containing the titles of the first sixty-nine of the seventy-eight treatises and concluding with the words τατα πντα εὑρθη. The addition of nine further treatises to the Corpus was made possible by the discovery of two further sources, one containing Nos. 70–7 and the other No. 78. The tradition of No. 78 is established beyond doubt: we are concerned here only with the remaining eight, Nos. 70–7.

The celebration of the revived Olympic games in London in the summer of 1948 gave to ‘records’ an unusually prominent place in men's thoughts and in their speech and writing, and we instinctively turn back to the ancient Greek world, which witnessed the foundation of the Olympic festival and its long history of wellnigh twelve centuries, to seek traces of any similar phenomenon.

Before daybreak on 23 November 57 B.C., about 11 weeks after his return from exile, Cicero wrote to Atticus and recorded for him, in diary form, events at Rome between 3 November and the date of writing. Clodius and his gangs were still causing trouble on the streets, interfering with the rebuilding of Cicero's house on the Palatine (§ 2), and even molesting Cicero himself (§ 3). Clodius was a candidate for the curule aedileship; if he were elected, he would succeed in evading the accusation for vis which had been brought against him by Milo; he therefore made full use of his gangs to intimidate Rome and thus accelerate the elections. He was supported in this manœuvre by the consul Q. Caecilius Metellus Nepos, who planned to hold the comitia (for the election of curule aediles) by surprise; this plan, however, was being thwarted by the tribune Milo, who was ready to use his power of obnuntiatio (backed by a sufficient display of force) to prevent the elections being held.

Housman put the case against fallacia with characteristic trenchancy in an early paper (Journ. Phil, xvi, p. 25). ‘I conceive’, he wrote, ‘that so far as Latinity is concerned the words deductae fallacia lunae may bear any one of three meanings. First they may mean “false pretence of bringing down the moon”: a sense peremptorily forbidden by the context. Mr. Lucian Mueller points out that Propertius cannot look for help to those whom he holds and asserts to be impostors, and that argument is clinched by the tune ego crediderim of 23: Propertius now doubts whether the power of magic be real or no, but turn Cynthia's heart and he will believe. Secondly deductae fallacia lunae may legitimately mean “deceiving men by bringing down the moon” on the analogy of Ov. Met. 13. 164deceperat omnes, in quibus Aiacem, sumptae fallacia uestis. But plainly this sense is no better than nonsense: if magicians bring down the moon as men believe them to do, then men are not deceived. Equally absurd is the third possible sense of the words, deceiving the moon and bringing her down. I know that Pan deus Arcadiae captain te, Luna, fefellitin nemora alta means, but in what sense do magicians faltere lunam? What conceivable deceit do they employ? Manufacture a cerea effigies of Endymion I suppose and lay it on the mountain tops.’

The article by Professor Webster on ‘South Italian Vases and Attic Drama' in C.Q. xlii, pp. 15–27, raises problems for the reader of Roman comedy. Professor Webster takes the view that the Latin plays are good evidence for the costumes worn on the Greek stage; he even says (p. 20) that ‘the Greek original of Sceparnio in the Rudens (429) certainly wore the phallus’, thus reviving a suggestion of Skutsch which Marx (Rudens, ad loc.) thought sehr k's argument that ancient works of art, in particular Italian vases and terra-cottas, afford faithful representations of the costumes worn on the Attic stage. ‘It is certain’ (p. 26) ‘that the actors in Eubulus’ Auge looked like the figures on the vase' (in Leontini).

The amount of criticism heaped upon persuadent (13) has obscured consideration of the meaning of picta; for it is this word which carries the weight of the line. Tracing the sequence of thought in the passage will show where the emphasis lies. There is throughout a comparison, either expressed (melius 10, formosius 11, dulcius 14), or implied (9 and 12), between the artless manifestations of nature and their cultivated, trained, or man-made counterparts; ‘wild flowers are more beautiful to behold than cultivated ones; similarly ivy and arbutus which grow as they will are more attractive than those in gardens; natural rills more charming than artificial fountains, … birds which sing from the heart delight us more than those which have been taught.’

The application of λἠκɛθος ànd its derivatives and the Latin terms ampullae and ampullari to the turgid or elevated style of poetry or oratory has provoked such a variety of explanations amongst modern and ancient commentators that it would be a tedious business to examine them all in detail. The ancient commentators on Horace, Ars Poetica, 11. 93–7

interdum tamen et vocem comoedia tollit,

iratusque Chremes tumido delitigat ore;

et tragicus plerumque dolet sermone pedestri

Telephus et Peleus, cum pauper et exsul uterque

proicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba…

were not even in agreement on the question of the precise correspondence of the two words, for while Porphyrion said that proicit ampullas was imitated directly from the ληκθειος Mοcomflex;σα of Callimachus, Pseudacron's note makes no reference to ληκɛθζειν at all, but merely connects the metaphor with the inflated appearance of the Roman ampulla. And though modern scholars do not question the fact that the two words do correspond in some degree, there has been a wide divergence of opinion on the derivation and meaning of the metaphor. Ritter and Wilkins, for example, held that the meaning ‘paint-pots’ was indicated by the conjunction of ληκθοɛς with pingere in one of Cicero's letters to Atticus, and that in Horace, Epistles 1. 3. 12–14

Burent's and Robin's collations of W (cod. Vindob. 54 Suppl. Gr. 7) differ for the text of the Phaedo in about 130 readings of a more than orthographical interest.✝ A new inspection of the manuscript has shown that Robin very often corrected Burnet, but added some twenty mistakes. The actual readings of W and of its second handW2 are given in the following list; each of them is followed, after a colon, by Burnet's (b) and Robin's (r) misreadings. The Stephanus numeration refers to Burnet's edition.

Orientius, Bishop of Auch (Augusta Ausciorum) in the early fifth century, possessed a talent for elegiac verse of no despicable order, and this he exercised in a didactic poem of 518 distichs, (known without indeed any good authority) as the Commonitorium. This poem, consisting of two books, describes and exhorts the reader to follow the Christian mode of life, and is characterized by its unassuming simplicity, some effective description, a number of well-turned lines (one of which has attained a modest renown, viz. 2. 184 ‘uno fumauit Gallia tota rogo’), and a sincere belief in the truths he was preaching. The language is in general clear and direct, though tinged here and there with turns of a decidedly late flavour.

The most reliable manuscript of Statius' Achilleid is the Puteaneus (P), and its authority, against the group QKC, is frequently upheld only by the Codex Etonensis (E). The readings of this manuscript (Eton College library), which contains, apart from the Achilleid, Maximian, Ovid's Remedium Atnoris and other poems, were collated by C. Schenkl, Wiener Studien, iv (1882), 96 ff., and were used by H. W. Garrod for the O.C.T. of Statius: Klotz in the Teubner 2nd edition merely notes the readings of Schenkl and of the Oxford text. Unfortunately these are neither complete nor always accurate; and the latter should be corrected as follows:

1. In three passages the Oxford text differs from the reading of PEKQ without noting the fact: Ach. i. 145 Non superant is not, as implied, the MS. reading, but Havet's conjecture: PEKQ have nam superant. 306 PEKQ have impulsam (inpulsam), not impulsum. 680 PEKQ ibi, not ubi.

In his discussion of the tragic act in Poet. 14. 1453b15 ff. Aristotle separates the pity which we feel at mere suffering (πάθος) from pity roused by the way in which this suffering is or will be brought about. The revenge of an enemy is not in itself pitiable. We pity, if victim and agent are closely related to one another as members of the same family, but only if the action is of a certain kind. Four possible ways of presenting the tragic act are therefore distinguished: (1) attempted but not performed, with knowledge of the relevant facts (as by Haemon in the Antigone); (2) performed with knowledge (as by Euripides' Medea); (3) performed but in ignorance, recognition following later (Sophocles' Oedipus, Astydamas' Alcmeon, etc.); (4) attempted in ignorance but not performed, since recognition occurs in time to prevent it. Of these four variations (listed in order of demerit) the first is censured on the ground that it is morally shocking without being tragic, since it lacks πάθος. The second is mentioned in b27 as the favourite of the older poets, but is here passed over without comment. The third is explicitly approved on the ground that it avoids moral shock and has the emotional ἒκπληξις of the recognition. But for some reason which he does not state, Aristotle prefers the last, where recognition is in time to prevent the tragic suffering from actually taking place.

Professor Webster's attempt (C.Q. xlii, pp. 15 ff.) to prove that south Italian vases of the middle of the fourth century can be used as evidence of Athenian theatrical arrangements of half or three-quarters of a century earlier leaves me unconvinced. It, is true that, as he says, ‘the plays’ which the vases illustrate ‘come from Athens'— at least, most of them probably did: but (1) a number of scenes on the vases are not scenes presented in the plays at all, but are scenes suggested to the painter by descriptions in messengers’ speeches, or, quite possibly, by the story dramatized in the plays, but not by the Athenian poet's particular treatment of the story; (2) the plays —and the stories made popular by them—had been the common property of the Greek world for more than half a century, and there is no reason why Italian producers should have gone back to the original production in Athens, still less why Italian painters should have done so, even if they knew what the original production was like. (It is clear that Italian theatres of the fourth century were in various ways not like the fifth-century Athenian buildings.)

In C.Q. xliii (1949), p. 39, Mr. J. H. Quincey quotes the opening lines of Catalepton 5 as,

Ite hinc,-inanes, ite, rhetorum ampullae,

inflata rhoso* non Achaico verba,

and adds, ‘the second line is corrupt and no satisfactory emendation has been proposed’.

The MS. readings are: rhorso B, roso Mu, om. in lacuna Ar. In face of these voces nihili many have fallen back on the rore of the Aldine edition of 1517. But this does not really help, for one does not inflate with dew: orators are not dew-bags, but wind-bags. It occurred to me some years ago that what is needed is some word meaning breath or wind to go with inflata, and that in view of the rh in rhorso it was probably a Greek word which a scribe had failed to recognize. I conjectured ῥοζῳ, and found subsequently that this had been proposed by K. Münscher in Hermes, xlvii (1912), pp. 153–4. ῥοȋζος used of any rushing sound, is applied to speech by Philostratus (V. Soph. 2. 15, p. 98, Kayser), and by Pollux (6. 148). It is easy to see how rhoezo could degenerate into rhoeso-rhoso-roso.

Plato pays little attention to the third class in his ideal city, regarding them as raw material on which the Guardians exercise their art. But modern criticism is interested in them, for upon their treatment and opportunities our judgement of Plato's city partly depends. They are the great mass of the people, and centuries of Christian equalitarianism have made us regard their welfare as an important criterion of the city's value.

The Twofold Exhalation. Aristotle explains in Book I of the Meteorologica (341b6 ff.) that the heat of the sun causes the earth to give off an exhalation (ναθνμασις), which is of two kinds. One kind, derived from the moisture within the earth and on its surface, is a moist vapour (cf. De Sensu 443a26–7), ‘potentially like water’ (340b28–9); the other, which comes from the earth itself, is hot, dry, and smoky, highly combustible ‘like a fuel’ (οἷον ὑπκκανμα 341b18–19), ‘the most inflammable of substances’ (341b16–17), ‘potentially like fire’ (340b29), and compounded of Air and Earth (De Sensu 443a21–2, 27–8).

Chapter 47 contains a sentence which has been the subject of a good deal of controversy and is manifestly corrupt. In the codex it reads as follows: κα τοᾁτων πνω μαϰιμᾃτατον ἒθνος Bακτριανν ὑπ βασιλα οὖσαν ἴδιον τπον κα 'Aλξανδρος ρμηθες π τν μερν τοᾁτων ἂϰρι τοȗ Γγγον διλθε κτλ.

Attempts have been made to connect this sentence with the rulers of the Kushan dynasty. It has even been suggested that οὖσαν represents Kονσαν (Kennedy, J.R.A.S. 1913, p. 127): the suggestion naturally won no acceptance, but one may point out that in any case it failed to attack the real difficulty, which lies in the words (or word) ἴδιον τπον On that essential point, the views of recent editors have both varied and combined.