The statement that masks were not introduced on the Roman stage until after the time of Terence is still repeated by editors (e.g. Menaechmi, Thoresby Jones, 1918, p. 19; Menaechmi, Moseley aria Hammond, 1933, p. 19) and has the support of Pauly Wissowa (Bieber, s.v. ‘Maske’, 1930) as well as Daremberg and Saglio (Navarre, s.v. histrio); it may, in fact, be regarded as generally accepted. Yet so long ago as 1912 A. S. F. Gow (J.R.S. ii. 65–77) put forward strong arguments on the opposite side; his article, though mentioned with respect in Bursian (1936, pp. 51 ff.) and referred to by Schanz-Hosius (i. 149), has not yet been satisfactorily answered, so far as I am aware. Gow did not claim that a final solution of this problem could be attained on our present evidence, but he did show that the orthodox position is open to attack. I hope to prove that the arguments in favour of the early use of masks are even stronger than he claimed.

The following lines (15 sqq.) are a famous crux:

τὸ μὲν ὅτι βασιλεὺς

ἐσσὶ μεγαλᾶν πολίων

ἔϰει συγγενὴς

ὀφθαλμὸς αἰδοιότατον γέρας

τεᾷ τοῦτο μειγνύμενον φρενί.

The reading is that of all MSS., save for the necessary correction αἰδοιότατον for αἰδοιέςτατον, which will not scan. I have purposely left it without punctuation. The core of the difficulty of course is the word ὀφθαλμός Farnell, it seems to me, has made it abundantly clear that this cannot be literal, for, apart from the oddity of the epithet συγγενὴς in such a context, to take it as meaning the actual physical eye of Arkesilas (or anyone else) involves giving ἔϰει the impossible meaning ‘sees’. But the metaphorical meaning is not much easier. A person or group of persons can be the ‘eye’, that is to say the most precious part, of something, as the Emmenidai were the ‘eye of Sicily’, Ol. ii, 10, Amphiaraos the ‘eye’ of Adrastos' army, Ol. vi, 16, the eldest or only son, or even the presence of the master, the ‘eye’ of the house (Aesch., Choeph., 934, Pers., 168–9), a child the ‘eye’—we should perhaps say ‘light’—of his mother's life, Eurip. Andr., 406, and perhaps, for the interpretation is not too certain, a chosen band of Athenians the ‘eye’ of Theseus' land, Aesch., Eumen., 1025. In these instances we may I think acquiesce in Groeneboom's remark on Pers., loc. cit., that ‘eye’ is used to signify the most precious or noble part of something, its glory (dat iets het kostelijkste, het edelste, de glorie van dit of dat is).

No ancient has told us in any surviving writing when Iambulos lived. Lucian says no more than that he composed a work obviously fabulous but quite amusing; Diodoros of Sicily, the only other author to mention him at all, earns our gratitude by excerpting his romance, apparently under the impression that it was sober fact. Moderns are accordingly vague in dating him. It is obvious that he must be earlier than or contemporary with Diodoros, whose historical work mentions no date later than 54 B.C, but his allusions to events of his own life indicate that he was old enough to take an intelligent interest in the world as early as about 60 B.C, and still alive as late as (perhaps) 21 B.C. Kroll contents himself with indicating that Iambulos is later than Megasthenes, which gives us a range of close on 250 years. I think, however, that we may reduce this very considerably and place Iambulos, if not in any definite year, at least within a period of less than a century.

In a recent paper (C.Q. XXXII pp. 65–74) I attempted to show that Plutarch founded his Timoleon upon a Hellenistic biography and made direct use of Timaeus only for the major episodes, where the material contained in this biography was insufficient. The Pelopidas is similar in colouring to the Timoleon, both belonging to what might be described as the ‘chivalrous hero’ class of Plutarch's Lives. Yet this similarity does not originate from the use of similar authorities; for in writing the Pelopidas he was compelled by the nature of the sources available to him to adopt an entirely different process of composition. The bulk of the Life is, as I hope to show, directly derived from the work of a fourth-century historian, and a considerable amount of supplementary material is added from miscellaneous sources.

So much has been written on this vexed issue, that one hesitates to reopen it. Yet one has no other choice when one finds scholars accepting as generally agreed a view which rests on altogether insufficient evidence. I propose, therefore, to examine the main grounds on which recent authorities interpret the disorderly motion of Tm 30a, 52d–53b, and 69b as a mythical symbol. They are four:

I. That the Timaios is a myth;

II. The testimony of the Academy;

III. That motion could not antecede the creation of time;

IV. That motion could not antecede the creation of soul.

As Headlam remarked more than thirty years ago, ‘It is a strange fact that the order of words in a Greek sentence has never been clearly appreciated.’ The emphatic word is placed at the beginning of the sentence, or as near it as the structure of the language permits. That is the general law, which I have discussed at length in my edition of the Oresteia. My object in this article is to make an exhaustive study of its operation in a limited field.

17A. οἱ δ νν τν νθρώπων σοφο ἓν μν, ὅπως ἂν τχωσι, κα πολλ θττον κα βραδὐτερον ποιοσι το δοντος, μετ δ τ ἓν ἄπειρα εὐθς τ δ μσα ατος κφεὺγειοἷς διακεχώρισται τ τε διαλεκτικς πλιν κα τ ριστικς μς ποιεῖσθαι πρς λλλους τος λγους.

Neglect of the ‘codices deteriores’ has caused the ascription of a considerable number of readings in Cic. De Diuin. to the conjectures of scholars of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and later centuries, though manuscript evidence, in some cases of a much earlier date, is to be found. Even if the presence of such readings in the manuscripts is due to conjecture and to no other cause, credit for priority should be given to the manuscripts. The following notes are restricted to the evidence of the London MSS.

When Pythodorus in 411 B.C. moved in the Athenian Assembly his decree that Commissioners should be elected to draft measures for the security of the State, Cleitophon added a rider instructing the Commissioners προσαναξητῆσαι καὶ τοὺς πατρίονς νόμονς οὓς κλειδθένης ἓθηκεν ὃτε καθίδτη τὴν δημοκρατίαν, ὄπως ἅν ἀκούσαντες καὶ τούτων βολεύσωντααι τὸ ἂριστον. The instruction appears to have struck Aristotle as paradoxical and inept, for he has appended an explanation of Cleitophon's reasons which is also a criticism: ὡς οὐ δημοτικὴν ἁλλὰ παραπλησίαν οὖσαν τὴν Kλεισθένους πολιτείαν τῇ Σόλωνος. Indeed one would never imagine that the constitution of Cleisthenes as described by Aristotle (21) could have been seriously suggested as a model or a repertory of precedents for legislators intent, like Cleitophon's friends, on restoring the πάτριος πολιτεία, which it obviously disestablished; and the conjunction of τοĐς πατρίουσ with ὃτε καθίστη τὴν δημοκρατἰαν might seem to make the proposal a challenge or a mockery. Aristotle had already (22. 1, cf. 41. 2) given his opinion that by Cleisthenes' innovations δημοτικωτέρα πολĐ τῆς Σόλωνος ἐγένετο ὴ πολιτεἰα He recognized democratic features in Solon's laws, but they lay in the redress of social wrongs or in the method of administering justice rather than in the organization of the government; he regarded Solon's political changes, not as the establishment of democracy proper, but as a reform, conservative rather than revolutionary, of existent institutions. His comment on the rider implies that he would not have corrected Cleitophon if he had referred the Commissioners to Solon's ancestral laws, but to refer them to Cleisthenes' must, he thought, be ignorance, irony, or idiosyncrasy.

The publication of Dr. Warren E. Blake's edition of the romance of Chariton has at last made it possible to know what the tradition of the text amounts to and form some opinion of its principal weaknesses. That these include lacunae will be obvious to anyone who even glances through his apparatus criticus; I think there are at least three which neither he nor any of the former editors has noted. The supplements I propose are of course mere examples of how they might be filled; their existence seems pretty certain, but no more than the general sense of what is missing is likely to be got unless some new papyrus or other unexpected find puts us in possession of more evidence.

The vast majority of the extant mss of Euripides consists of ‘Byzantine’ mss of the ‘school triad’, Hec, Or., Phoen. The value of this mass of material for textual criticism is problematical: it has been declared to be nil by numerous modern scholars, and this is no doubt a natural reaction against the excessive importance attached to certain of the ‘Byzantine’ mss by the scholars of the earlier part of last century, men like Porson and Dindorf, who, however, did not collate their mss with a view to such things as Leitfekler. In fact, until our knowledge of this class of mss is far more thorough than it is at present, it would be premature to pass judgement on it as a whole.

In a recent note (Rev. de Phil. 1936, 208) Mr. T. B. Allen had corrected a reading of J. B. Cramer (Anecdota Oxoniensia II 56) βρβειος οὐρ to προβτειος., but in a footnote he adds ‘When I made this correction I was not aware of the word πρβειος. Liddell and Scott and Sophocles share my ignorance. I found it in the Anecdota of Boissonade III 408: κ δ τν κρεν ρνιθας σθειν κα πρβεια κα περιστερς sim. 410, 412, 419. Boissonade quotes the word from a similar treatise by Hierophilus, and the 1851 edition of Stephanus reproduces his note.’ This trisyllabic word πρβειος is obviously a ‘Reimbildung’ to ἄρνειος, μσχειος, ταρειος etc., and its occurrence clears up a papyrus reading which has long puzzled me. In P. Lond. 113, 10, 13 [VII] we read πρωβαων δερμτων, which Preisigke lists as ‘πρβαιος=προβτειος’ Until reading Allen's note I had supposed that the loss of the syllable -ατ- in προβτ-ειος, was a haplography induced by the following δερμ-τ-ων but there are now grounds for regarding the formation as genuine. Only the variation of the adjectival suffix -ειος × -αιος presents a difficulty. In clearing this up we shall be able to lay a number of ghost-words which have spooked in the second edition of Mayser's Grammatik der ptolemäischen Papyri.

Herodotus tells us in book vii, ch. 220, that the Pythian priestess gave the Spartans a warning couched in hexameters, of which the second line begins ἢ μ⋯γα ἄστυ ⋯ρικυδ⋯ς. To this text the admirable commentary of How and Wells takes exception in the following note: ‘The synizesis ἄστυ ⋯ρικυδ⋯ς is intolerable. Read δ⋯μ' ⋯ρικυδ⋯ς, ἄστυ being a gloss, H. Richards, Cl. Rev. xix. 345.’ Doubtless this union of vowels is harder than that of υω in Ἐριν⋯ων (Eur. Iph. Taur. 1456) or in γεν⋯ων and δυωδεκ⋯μηνον, accepted by Christ in his edition of Pindar (Pyth. iv. 225; [Nem.] xi. 10). Let us grant that from the point of view of elegance it is even intolerable; the question still remains, should the line be altered?

Greek art and literature follow parallel courses through the long period from Homer to Euripides. Homer and Euripides, Dipylon vases and the latest white lekythoi are as far apart from each other as it is possible for works in the same medium to be. The distance can only be explained by a similar change in the views of artists, writers, and their public.

Aristotle is asking why the heaven revolves in one direction rather than the other. His answer is based on his earlier proof that the Universe has a top and a bottom, a right and a left. The upper region, as the place of divinity, is prior or superior to the lower; so upward motion is prior to downward motion. Right is similarly prior and superior to left. The present problem can be solved by supposing that the world has also a front and a back, and hence a forward motion, which will be prior and superior to backward motion. Since Nature always follows the best course, the reason for the direction of the heaven's revolution will be that that direction is forward and therefore better.