It is often thought that Plato sets himself an important task in the Sophist – that of disentangling different uses, or senses, of the verb einai. Plato is thought to have confused different senses or uses of the verb in his philosophical youth; here he is supposed to correct his mistake, and to mark out a danger area for his successors.1 Plato is also often supposed, by commentators, to have set himself the task of disentangling a second confusion – a confusion between the mē on (what is not) and the mēdamōs on (what is in no way): on this view, the mē on is revealed as the negation of the on, whereas the mēdamōs on is the opposite of the on.

Scholarly opinion about Ptolemy Soter's history of Alexander has been far from unanimous. Not long ago Ptolemy was held to stand in the first rank of ancient historians. His history was described as brilliant, rational, straightforward, and exhaustive, while he himself was proclaimed a ‘second Thucydides’. In recent years, however, Ptolemy's reputation has seriously declined. His shortcomings, acknowledged also by his admirers, have been stressed and extensively analysed. Fritz Schachermeyr clearly reflected current opinion when he equated a ‘version from the Hauptquartier's circles’ with a lie, a fraud, and an intentional omission. The purpose of this paper is to examine the recent reassessment of the nature and the aims of Ptolemy's work.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the validity of some methods currently being used to interpret the demographic evidence from the ancient world. For example, it has been claimed that during the Hellenistic and Roman eras, birth rates were 40/1,000/year, death rates 36/1,000/year, and that 10% of healthy infants were killed, raising the death rate to 40/1,000/year; the claims rest on comparative material and anecdotes from literary sources. This paper will question (I) the use of comparative material from modern primitive societies as ‘evidence’ for Greece and Rome, and (II) the value of anecdotes for elucidating ancient demographic structure and population policies.

In the year of Eubulus' archonship at Athens (345/4), Timoleon the Corinthian, who had been chosen by his fellow citizens to command at Syracuse, prepared for his expedition to Sicily. He hired seven hundred mercenaries and having put his soldiers aboard four triremes and three fast sailing ships departed from Corinth. Following the coastal route he picked up three further ships from the Leucadians and Corcyreans and then with ten ships in all crossed the Ionian gulf to Italy. Thus far Diodorus Siculus 16. 66. 1–2. In the course of the crossing, Diodorus continues (66. 3), a peculiar and miraculous event befell Timoleon, with the supernatural order coming to the support of his enterprise and foreshadowing his eventual fame and the glory of his achievements. I now quote Diodorus' own words: δι' ὂλης γρ τς νυκτς προηγεῖτο λαμπάς καιομένη κατ τν οὐρανόν μέχρι οὖ συνέβη τν στόλον εἰς τν Ἰταλίαν καταπλεσαι In translation: ‘throughout the whole night he was preceded by a torch that blazed in the sky until the flotilla reached land in Italy’. No more than a single night would, of course, have been required in order to accomplish the crossing of the gulf, with Timoleon presumably heading from Corcyra for the Iapygian promontory as was normal procedure in such transits. Diodorus goes on (66. 4–5) to recount that Timoleon, who had been informed in Corinth that Demeter and Persephone would accompany him on his voyage, recognized the actual assistance of the two goddesses, dedicated his best ship to them and named it Sacred vessel of Demeter and Kore. After diplomatic activity at Metapontum and Rhegium Timoleon proceeded from Italy to Sicily, where he landed at Tauromenium (66. 5–68. 7) still in the year of Eubulus.

When characterizing ta pathē in the Eudemian Ethics Aristotle claims that they are usually accompanied by perceptual pleasure or pain. He says:

λέγω δ πάθη μν τ τοιατα, θυμν ϕόβον αἰδ πιθυμίαν, ὂλως οἶς ἒπεται ώς π τ πολὺ αἰσθητικ ήδον ἢ λύπη καθ' αὑτά.

By affections I mean such things as anger, fear, shame, desire – in general anything which, as such, gives rise usually to perceptual pleasure and pain. (translation by Woods)

I offer some notes on the text of Propertius. In the apparatus to individual passages Ω is employed to indicate the archetype, i.e. the consensus of N and A. Only two quires of A are extant, and after 2. 1. 63 its place is taken by descendants: F, L (2. 21. 3 ff.) and P. These derive more immediately from a manuscript of Petrarch (here called Π), copied from A in the Sorbonne in 1333, and now lost. The delta mss. (DVVo.) I discard; they are too interpolated and contaminated to aid in the reconstruction of Π. They may contain some elements of truth independent of N and A/Π, but J. L. P. Butrica has shown that another group of mss. headed by Vat. Lat. 3273 has a stronger claim to be cited in the apparatus for these readings, as it antedates Δ. However, as the matter is controversial and not of vital importance for my discussions, the group is here ignored. In the absence of a satisfactory arrangement of the humanistic conjectures into groups akin to those introduced by Mynors in his Catullus, I use the age-old catch-all ς for unauthoritative readings found in fifteenth-century mss.

In his discussion of Virgilian imitations of Lucretian phraseology Cyril Bailey examines the phenomenon of what he terms the ‘doublet’, that is, the procedure whereby Virgil imitates separate elements of a Lucretian phrase at different points in his own work. Take, for example, De Rerum Natura 1. 210–12:

esse videlicet in terris primordia rerum,

quae nos fecundas vertentes vomere glebas

terraique solum subigentes cimus ad ortus.

Recent work on Callimachus has tended to concentrate on the technicalities of his poetry. Commentaries on the Hymns have dealt exhaustively with vocabulary, metrics, Homeric allusion, historical background. What remains to be done is to use these detailed pieces of work in readings of the individual poems, showing how the commentator's minutiae can be assimilated into an overall view of each hymn. In Hellenistische Dichtung Wilamowitz attempted such an appreciation; but since his time literary approaches have changed considerably. With the thorough commentary of G. R. McLennan as foundation, it may be worth while to make a re-assessment of the Hymn to Zeus in less technical terms. In the reading which I offer here I hope to escape the tyranny of the individual word; but I hope, too, that what I have to say will not appear too loosely founded on the text.

In April 1741 there appeared a slim volume entitled An Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews by a certain Mr Conny Keyber, whose name is generally supposed to conceal that of the novelist Henry Fielding. Shamela, to give the book its more familiar title, was a parody of Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Pamela: or Virtue Rewarded, which had been published to great acclaim the previous year. In a series of letters purportedly sent to each other by the main characters, the story unfolds of the honest servant-girl Pamela, her efforts to avoid seduction by her master Mr B., and her eventual marriage to him. Fielding's chief target was the morality of the book (Pamela's virtue contains a disturbingly large element of self-interest), but in passing he drew cruel attention to some of the pitfalls of the epistolary form as a vehicle for narrative. One passage in particular deserves quotation, from Letter VI, which Shamela writes to her mother at (so we are duly informed at the top of the letter) twelve o'clock on Thursday night:

Mrs Jervis and I are just in Bed, and the Door unlocked; if my Master should come – Odsbods! I hear him just coming in at the Door. You see I write in the present Tense, as Parson Williams says. Well, he is in Bed between us, we both shamming a Sleep, he steals his Hand into my Bosom, which I, as if in my Sleep, press close to me with mine….

Jasper Griffin, in his recent book on Homer, has suggested that modern critics would do well to pay more attention to the localized insights and the general critical framework of the ancient Greek commentators. In a previous article, ‘Homeric Pathos and Objectivity’, he claimed to show, by careful study of those passages in which the scholiasts found ἒλεος, οἷκτος or πάθος, that ‘the ancient scholars were right to regard pathos as one of the most important elements in the Iliad’. also think this is a potentially fruitful and underdeveloped approach to the criticism of Homer and other ancient authors; and that the term pathos, together with ēthos, with which it is often coupled or contrasted, is one of the most suggestive, though also confusing, of ancient critical terms. I want to begin the story further back in time than the scholia, in the treatises on rhetoric and poetics from which the scholiasts’ critical vocabulary was largely derived. I propose to survey the use of ēthos and pathos as contrasted terms in these treatises from Aristotle to Longinus, in the hope that such a survey will not only clarify the various meanings and associations attached to these terms but will also throw a more general light on ancient critical presuppositions. Both Aristotle and Longinus used the ethos/pathos distinction to contrast the Odyssey and theIliad; and a clearer understanding of the significance they gave to these words may help us to appraise the critical usefulness of their comments.

The elegiac lines in PQasrlbrim inv. 78–3–11/1 (L/2), first edited and ascribed to Gallusby R. D. Anderson, P. J. Parsons and R. G. M. Nisbetin 1979, raise a number of major problems of interpretation yet to be resolved. As is now well known, the papyrus fragment contains nine fairly well-preserved lines: first a pentameter, followed by two quatrains each composed of two elegiac couplets; the two quatrains are carefully marked off from each other and from the lines which preceded and followed them by a pair of signs which have defied interpretation; another such sign can be seen to have marked a similar separation between groups of lines in the next column of the papyrus. One might think that the sets of lines thus marked off were quite separate epigrams, or perhaps excerpts from longer poems, for they are concerned with separate, indeed discrepant, topics – the naughtiness of Lycoris, the morale-boosting effects of Caesar's forthcoming successes, the love-poet's fearless stance before his critics – and they do not seem prima facie to follow logically after one another. However, various unmistakable verbal and thematic connections between them have rightly been pointed out by Nisbet. So what is this sequence of related verses and why is it set out in this way?

Discussions of the constitution of the Principate are usually focused on the powers of the emperor, and relatively little attention is given to the role of the senate; by exception much has been written on its jurisdiction, with which I shall not be concerned. Despite his theory of a dyarchy of emperor and senate, which I do not wish to revive, Mommsen, partly because he devoted separate volumes to each, did I not exhibit the extent to which Augustus and Tiberius at least worked through the senate, and on occasions attributed to them legal powers to act by their own authority, when in reality (as I shall argue) they caused the senate to take action as the only proper means of effecting their wishes. More recently, F. de Martino in his admirable account of the Principate dedicates only one out of twenty-seven chapters to the composition, functions and procedure of the senate. For Syme it was simply an ‘organ that advertised or confirmed the decisions of the government’. This description does not bring out the truth that it was performing a role essential to Augustus' design. For though in effect he founded a monarchy, he commonly thought it expedient on necessary obtain for his measures senatorial approval. That this was the practice of Tiberius in his early years is clearly attested, and some suppose that he behaved in an entirely different manner from Augustus. This view seems to be mistaken, and the mistake is of some consequence.

Velleius text rests on a single manuscript, found at Murbach in 1515, which long ago disappeared. We know of it from three reports: (a) the editio princeps (P) by its discoverer Rhenanus, published in 1520, apparently from an inaccurate copy taken by an anonymous friend;1 (b) notes on the manuscript taken by Rhenanus' secretary Burer (B), who compared it with proofs of the edition; and (c) a copy (A), probably from the same source as P, taken in 1516 by B. Amerbach and discovered by Orelli in 1834. Of this text one editor has written: 'While modern scholarship has made progress in solving its enigmas, the text of Velleius, unless some long-hidden manuscript shall unexpectedly come to light, will always continue to be one of the most corrupt among the surviving texts of classical authors.

Who is the author of this poem and what is its historical context?

Gow and Page are convinced that the author is Crinagoras. Manuscript authority, in the person of the so-called ‘corrector’, supports the attribution. Yet, at first sight at least, the attribution of this poem to Crinagoras raises something of a problem. It does so because the poem evidently relates to what seems to be a contemporary marriage linking the royal families of Egypt and Libya respectively: if the author is indeed Crinagoras, what marriage can this be? Only one such marriage is available: as Gow and Page accurately observe, ‘It is generally agreed that this epigram refers to the marriage of Cleopatra Selene and Juba II’.

The reconciliation between Juno and Jupiter at the end of the Aeneid (12. 791–842) forms the cap to the divine action of the poem. The scene is conventionally regarded as the resolution of the heavenly discord that has prevailed since the first book; in particular, it is normal to see here a definitive transformation of Juno, as she abandons, her enmity once and for all, committing herself wholeheartedly to the Roman cause. So G. Lieberg, for example: ‘I due emisferi di Giove e di Giunone alia fine del poema si ricongiungono nella totalita del mondo divino, garante del glorioso futuro di Roma’ or W. Kiihn: ‘In einem strahlenden, vollen Schlussakkord endet das Gottergesprach.’

The text of each passage commented on is that of Housman except where otherwise stated. The following editions of Lucan or other works concerned with him are indicated by the scholar's name only: (i) Text: A. E. Housman (Oxford, 1926). (ii) Text with commentary: F. Oudendorp (Leiden, 1728); P. Burman (Leiden, 1740); C. H. Weise (Quedlinburg and Leipzig, 1835); C. E. Haskins (London, 1887); R. J. Getty, Book 1 (Cambridge, 1940).

The rapid turnover of senatorial families during the Principate is a well-known phenomenon, but one which awaits satisfactory explanation. Comparative evidence shows the rate of turnover to have been unusually high. For example, the old aristocratic families of early modern Europe gave way to new at a much slower rate. Patterns of Roman property-holding and of the transmission of wealth from one generation to the next must have been closely associated with this rapid turnover. When an aristocratic family produced no offspring who reached adulthood, the normal pattern of passing the bulk of the estate from one generation to the next within the family was interrupted. On the other hand, if a family produced many children, it might well become impoverished in the process of providing for all of them. Consequently, to perpetuate the family line with its status intact required careful financial and family planning. It was necessary to use or to take into account the various laws and customs regarding the family, including those regulating division of the estate among heirs, adoption, dowry and so on.

In the period between Constantine's reunification of the Empire in 324 and the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 M. Valerius Probus enjoyed a large reputation as master of all areas of the ars grammatica. The commentary on Terence attributed to Donatus and the commentary of Servius on Virgil cite him more often than they do any other ancient authority. His fame persisted through the Dark Ages. Eugenius of Toledo set him with Varius and Tucca against Aristarchus, the greatest of the Alexandrian students of Homer. Modern writers on the history of Roman scholarship have estimated in widely different ways his quality as a textual critic, the level of his reputation during the century after his death and the influence which his activities had on the transmission of the Latin classics. That he ‘annotated’ at least some of these in the manner of an Aristarchus is not in dispute, but everything about the nature of his ‘annotation’ is. This paper will treat afresh a famous statement about Probus in Suetonius' De grammaticis (24. 3), two lists of notae associated with Probus’ name in a late eighth-century manuscript from Monte Cassino, cod. Paris, Bibl. Nat. lat. 7530 (CLA v 569), two references to such notae which have been detected in Virgilian scholia (Serv. Aen. 10. 444 and Serv. Dan. Aen. 1. 21) and a number of statements in these scholia which appear to give Probus’ reasons for affixing notae. The results of my study are largely negative but may help to control general discussion of the history of a number of Latin texts.

The task of making a new Teubner edition of the Anacreontea has led me to realize how much still remains to be done for the text of these once celebrated but no w little-read poems, for which we depend on the same tenth-century manuscript as for the Palatine Anthology. In what follows I attempt to justify the new emendations adopted in the edition, and one or two old ones which have generally been dismissed

Chapter 57 of the Periplus Marts Erythraei is our sole source for a nugget of vital information: how westerners learned to sail over the open sea to India. Unfortunately, emendations distort the Greek in all editions1 and misconceptions the rendering in all translations.