‘E veramente quella sentenzia di Cornelio Tacito è aurea, che dice: che gli uomini hanno ad onorare le cose passate e ad ubbidire alle presenti, e debbono desiderare i buoni principi, e communque ei si sieno fatti, tolleragli’ – so Niccolò Machiavelli in 1531. Some four hundred years later a young Oxford scholar remarked: ‘that bad man, Eprius Marcellus, could have turned out a fine speech on the necessity for monarchy and tolerance, if we believe Tacitus – “ulteriora mirari, praesentia sequi; bonos imperatores voto expetere, qualescumque tolerare” (Hist. 4.8.2)’. It may be asked, however, to what extent the opinions of Eprius Marcellus (‘that bad man’) can be regarded as those of Tacitus himself; this is, beyond doubt, a part of a major question, i.e. to what extent the utterances of historical personalities can be seen as a means of conveying Tacitus' own judgements. It is not my intention here to deal with this large problem; rather, I think it useful to look more closely at the Tacitean passage as a whole: not only the speech of Marcellus but also that of Helvidius (to which it is a response) as well as the historical context of the affair. It is to be hoped that such examination will render the quest for the historian's own opinions a little less difficult.

At Aristotle's Rhetorica III 9.2 (1409a), in a discussion of λ⋯ξις εἰρομ⋯νη and κατεστραμμ⋯νη, occurs the following misquotation of Herodotus' proem

In the penultimate scene of the Ecclesiazusae, the young man who has come to see his lover is accosted in succession by three old women, each insisting that the new legal code requires him to sleep with her first. In lines 999–1000, the first of these old women, faced with his refusal to cooperate sexually, swears by Aphrodite

The lack of a separate commentary on the fourth book of Statius' Thebaid has meant that many significant details in this description of Capaneus in the catalogue of the Seven have gone unremarked. This article aims to fill the deficiency, pointing out the rich literary allusions, artful symbolism and the careful use of language in this well written passage.

There are a number of fragments attributed to Theophrastus, as well as titles in Diogenes Laertius' catalogue of his writings (5.42ff.), of which it is uncertain whether they should be placed among his logical or rhetorical works. In this note I want to give my reasons for excluding one of them from my forthcoming edition of his logical fragments. It is not my intention here to discuss all the questions it raises; I hope to come back to them in a later volume of my commentary.

Martial's epigrams on the dead slave-child Erotion, especially the first (5.34) and third (10.61), have generally given rise to sentimental comments about the poet's love for young children or the humane concern which he displays for his slaves. Scholars show less unanimity in their interpretation of the second piece (5.37), where the poet's laudatio of his lost puella is made the occasion of a joke against Paetus, who has managed to survive the loss of his noble and wealthy wife. The poem in question runs as follows

In his exemplary edition of the papyrus fragments of Callimachus' Victoria Berenices, P. J. Parsons briefly considered the spelling of the name of Hercules' host, who played such a major role in Callimachus' αἴτιον on the founding of the Nemean games. At B iii 2 the papyrus has M⋯[λ]ορκοϲ. On this Professor Parsons noted ‘elsewhere M⋯λορχοϲ: the unusual spelling, which no doubt comes from the text, reappears in Apollodorus, Bibl. 2.5.1 (Mολ⋯ρκῳ, but later M⋯λορχοϲ), Nonnus, Dion. 17.52 and Stephanus of Byzantium s.v. Mολορκ⋯α (above p. 2f)’.

In a short speech in Book 24 of the Iliad (194–9), Priam tells Hecuba of his intention to visit the camp of the Achaians in order to attempt to ransom the body of Hector. Hecuba responds with predictable consternation to this dangerous proposition (203–5)

It is gratifying to see the authenticity of Od. 10.475–9 defended anew by the late, Professor Alfred Heubeck; in 1974 I put forward a rather similar defence of the lines myself. However, Heubeck's correct conclusion – that the passage is genuine – stands in startling contrast to some gross exaggerations, in both the Italian and the English versions of his work, about the extent of the manuscript evidence against the passage.

These important lines have not yet received an adequate discussion. Aphrodite has been told that her beloved Adonis is dying on the mountainside; she rushes to him in grief, letting down her hair and calling for him.

Students of the play have not appreciated the merits of W. Dindorf's proposal to delete lines 895–7: his conjecture is not reported by most editors; when reported it is not accepted; and it has been taken seriously perhaps only in an iobiter dictum of Wecklein. Nevertheless, the arguments in its favour are even more powerful than Dindorf realised

Our information on Horace's friend Aristius Fuscus, whom he addresses in Odes 1.22 and Epistles 1.10, is neatly summed up by Nisbet and Hubbard: ‘he was a close friend of Horace's (serm. 1.9.61 ‘mihi cams’, epist. 1.10.3 ‘paene gemelli’). He wrote comedies (Porph. on epist. 1.10) and seems to have had a sense of humour: it was he who refused to rescue Horace from the ‘importunate man’ in the Sacra Via (serm. 1.9.60ff.). Horace says elsewhere that he was a town-lover, who disliked the countryside (epist. 1.10); here he amuses him with an account of the perils of his Sabine estate. Fuscus was a schoolmaster by profession (Porph. on serm. 1.9.60 ‘praestantissimus grammaticus illo tempore’); in epist. 1.10.45 Horace teases him for his stern discipline (‘nee me dimittes incastigatum…’: cf. CQ 9 [1959], 74f.). Fuscus is mentioned with Asinius Pollio and others as a critic who approved of Horace's poetry (serm. 1.10.83ff.). He may also have written on grammar; cf. gramm. 7.35.2 ‘Abnesti Fusti (Aristi Fusci Haupt, Aufusti Usener) grammatici liber est ad Asinium Pollionem’. The purpose of this note is to add a further piece to this picture, consonant with Fuscus' grammatical interests, namely to argue that Fuscus was also a Stoic, and that his philosophical loyalties are played on in the two poems addressed to him by Horace.

In 204 B.c. Pleminius, after perpetrating appalling atrocities at Locri, was sent back to Rome, and his fate is described at Livy 29.22.7–10

The lack of stage directions in surviving Greek comedy which might give a clue to comic ‘business’ not clearly signalled or confirmed in the text is a considerable disadvantage to us, not least in some of the opening tableaux of Aristophanes. One thinks of restless father and snoring son in bed at the opening of Clouds, the jokes involving the incongruous entry of master, slave, donkey and baggage in Frogs, the preparations for launching the dung-beetle into space in Peace – all scenes which demand visual as well as verbal effects in order to engage immediate attention and get the audience into a lively humour for what is to come. In the opening scene of Wasps between the slaves engaged in their nocturnal vigil over Philocleon, there are a number of points implied by the verbal references which seem to me to depend for clarification on their actions, and perhaps also the stage properties involved.

Femina in line 28 has nagged me subconsciously for years. I have now belatedly realized that it sabotages the poet's prudent disclaimer: it is not women in general who are in question, but only those not ruled out of bounds by stola and uittae. The repetition of the word in the following verse, where it means, as the opposition to uiri indicates, ‘the female sex’, only serves to underline its inappropriateness here. Cristante's defence of the anaphora, that it ‘ribadisce la necessità dell'insegnamento, introducendone la giustificazione’ (Ovidio, L'arte di amare, ed. E. Pianezzola [1991], p. 352), sets up an unwanted connection: lines 25–8 are strictly parenthetic to the main argument, as indeed is signalled by the truly functional anaphora of femina in line 29, whose effect is blurred in the text as transmitted. The form of the couplet, typical of Ovid, dictates that what is wanted is a variation on nil nisi lasciui, e.g. nec or, better, non proba. The source of the intrusive femina is not far to seek, though how precisely it ousted the original reading I do not pretend to guess.

Professor Vlastos argues that Socratic irony was responsible for a momentous change in the way in which irony was understood in ancient times. Before Socrates, he argues, irony is connected with lying and deceit, but after Socrates it is associated with wit and urbanity. Vlastos claims that Socratic irony is distinctive and complex. According to Vlastos, Socratic irony involves no hint of deception; it consists simply in saying something which when understood in one way is false, but when understood in another way is true.

In 4.621–6, Ovid describes Perseus' flight over the known world

In his prefatory epistle dedicating his Naturalis Historia to Vespasian, the elder Pliny takes great pains to plead that his magnum opus (which at praef. 1 he compares with Catullus' nugae!) is unworthy of the emperor: ‘maiorem te sciebam, quam ut descensurum hue putarem’ (praef. 6). Continuing in this vein, Pliny goes on to say ‘praeterea est quaedam publica etiam eruditorum reiectio’, and appeals for support to the great Cicero: ‘utitur ilia et M. Tullius extra omnem ingenii aleam positus, et, quod miremur, per aduocatum defenditur’ (praef. 7). Cicero's aduocatus is the satirist Lucilius, from whom a mangled fragment in trochaic septenarii is then quoted: ‘nec doctissimis. Manium Persium haec legere nolo, Iunium Congum uolo.’ The sense of this fragment, which Pliny very probably quoted from the now-lost beginning of Cicero's preface to his De Re Publica, can be restored from Cicero, De Oratore 2.25: ‘nam ut C. Lucilius…dicere solebat ea quae scriberet neque ab indoctissimis se neque a doctissimis legi uelle, quod alteri nihil intelligerent, alteri plus fortasse quam ipse; quo etiam scripsit “Persium non curo legere” (hie enim fuit, ut noramus, omnium fere nostrorum hominum doctissimus), “Laelium Decimum uolo” (quem cognouimus uirum bonum et non illiteratum, sed nihil ad Persium): sic ego…’. This latter passage has allowed the former to be restored, to some extent exempli gratia, to the following form in Warmington's and Krenkel's editions of Lucilius

In this poem, ascribed to Automedon, Nicetes' way of orating is compared first to a light breeze that strikes upon the rigging of a sailing vessel and then, when the breeze has increased to a wind, to the vessel itself as it runs over open water under full sail.

Some time ago I noted that the generally accepted emendations a! fuge (1.9.30), and a! ducere (1.11.5) are suspect (CPh 75 (1980), 71–2). In his recent Loeb edition (Cambridge, Mass. 1990), Goold in the latter passage restores the MSS. reading adducere; in the former, quisquis es assiduas aufuge blanditias, he prints Tappe's tu fuge for MSS. aufuge. The best solution, it seems to me, is one which the modern editions, Propertiana included, are of a mind to ignore: Markland's heu fuge.