It is appropriate that this speech should be full of quotations from Roman drama. These offered the jurymen some compensation for their enforced absence from the theatrical performances of the Ludi Megalenses; on the very day (4 April 56 b.c.) when Cicero demolished Clodia's reputation in court, her brother Clodius, as curule aedile, was nearby presiding at the opening of the Ludi. Brother and sister both had a strong interest in the stage; in Pro Sestio 116 Clodius is described as ‘ipse ille maxime ludius, non solum spectator sed actor et acroama, qui omnia sororis embolia novit’. In Pro Caelio 18 Cicero takes up Crassus' quotation of Ennius' Medea, ‘utinam ne in nemore Pelio …’ ends by calling Clodia ‘the Medea of the Palatine’. Clodius is made to address his sister in a trochaic septenarius, ‘quid clamorem exorsa verbis parvam rem magnam facis?’. A harsh parent is represented by a quotation from Caecilius, a gentle one by Micio from Terence's Adelphoe. Clodia herself is called (64) ‘veteris et plurimarum fabularum poetriae’—this phrase should not be taken to mean that she had actually written plays—and in 65 the whole affair at the baths is likened to a mime with no satisfactory conclusion (‘mimi … exitus in quo clausula non invenitur’).

A. E. Housman has written that the context of Juvenal 5.140 is ‘the most obscure in Juvenal’ (p. xxxii). I am primarily concerned with the following five lines, but the entire passage (132–145), and its position in the poem, must also be examined.

Pauly's Real-Encyclopädie knows of two women named after the attractive looking,but allegedly unappetising fish, c⋯λπη. The first is mentioned several times in theelder Pliny, who on one occasion refers to her as an obstetrix, while the second features in the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus as a writer of πα⋯γνια. In a recent issue of this journal J. N. Davidson has made the suggestion that they were one and the same person. Salpe's πα⋯γνια, Davidson argues, would not have consisted of light or frivolous verse, but of a compilation of prose recipes of a kind that is to be found in a section of a London magical papyrus which is headed πα⋯γνια Δημοκρ⋯του. Such recipes might well have cohabited with the kind of practicalmedical advice reportedly given by the Salpe referred to in Pliny. His case is superficially attractive since, as will be seen, such a collocation of practical help and frivolity is easy to parallel in magical and other subliterary texts. It needs to be scrutinized, however, in the light of a fuller presentation and consideration of the evidence than is to be found in his note. First, it is worth describing at greater length the phenomena in question, which are much more common than one would gather from a reading of Davidson and which are, I suspect, not as yet as familiar to the scholarly world as they should be.

Apropos congregatio Zetzel remarks ‘the metaphor is qualified by quasi…, as it more properly refers to animals rather than men’. It seems doubtful, however, that in general the -grego compounds were at this date felt as vividly metaphorical: segrego is used of human beings as early as Plautus and Terence (Mil. 1232; Heau. 386; other occurrences at OLD s.v., 1; Forcellini s.v., II); aggrego is commonly so used by Cicero (Zimmermann, TLL s.v., I). Moreover, our passage is the first attestation of congregatio. Cicero uses the word three times in De Finibus (2.109, 3.65, and 4.4), of which the latter two passages also refer to human beings but are without quasi. Hence the use of quasi in our passage is likely to be related above all to the newness of the term, albeit the etymology may be more strongly felt in a new coinage. Cf. TLL 4, 288.26ff.

The ancient law school about which we have the most information was at Beirut. Editors of legal papyri have occasionally speculated about possible connections between particular ancient texts and the activities of professors of law in that city, but no one has examined the evidence in a body. It is likely, I think, that legal papyri reflect the state of contemporary legal education at Beirut, and that they preserve, moreover, primary evidence for the history of scholarship in general. With so broad a topic, it would be useful first to consider what we know about legal instruction in antiquity, particularly at Beirut, then to review the relevant papyrological evidence, and finally to draw the two subjects together by considering the possible relation between the marginal commentaries of legal papyri and the extensive scholia which fill the broad margins of many medieval manuscripts.

Towards the start of the elegy which prefaces his third book, Propertius rejects lengthy, martial epic in favour of slender poetry (3.1.7–8): it is on account of the latter that fame (fama) elevates him above the earth, his Muse triumphant (9–10); accompanying him in the triumphal chariot are his Amores (11), and following the wheels is a crowd of writers (12 ‘scriptorumque meas turba secuta rotas’). The latter, in the race for glory, rival the poet to no purpose (13–14). Many writers will praise Rome (15 ‘multi, Roma, tuas laudes annalibus addent’) and sing of future conquests (16), but Propertius’ pages, a special delivery from the Muses' mount, are the perfect peace-time reading (17–18).

The fragment is preserved in two sources, Clement of Alexandria's Miscellanies, Strom. 5.14.112 (ii.402 Stählin), which gives the order of words printed above, and Eusebius' Praep. Evang. 13.680c, in which the second line is given as . The latter reading was preferred by Bergk, but there seems at first little reason to prefer one order over the other. I shall return to this issue shortly.

The meaning of the expression simul ultima signant in Virgil's description of the foot race in the memorial funeral games for Anchises has been controversial since ancient times. The interpretation implied by R. A. B. Mynors's Oxford text printed above is that the word simul in line 317 is a conjunction and that the expression refers to the final section of the race. The sense presumably is: ‘As soon as they trod the last stretch’ Nisus came out in front, whereas previously the runners had all been in a bunch, pouring forth like a storm cloud from the start. This interpretation, which requires a full stop in the middle of line 317, was proposed by F. H. Sandbach in response to problems generally acknowledged in the line as traditionally punctuated, that is, with a lighter pause after similes and a full stop at the end of the line—as, for example, in F. A. Hirzel's Oxford text: effusi nimbo similes: simul ultima signant. With this punctuation the last three words of the line have been taken to mean either that the runners fix their eyes on the finish, which gives a meaning to the verb which is difficult in the absence of any reference to the eyes, or that other people apart from the runners mark out the finishing line, which gives unexceptional sense to the verb but an implausible timing to the operation: it is odd indeed to leave the marking of the finish until after the race has started. These and other suggestions are discussed by Sandbach and R. D. Williams, who believe that they are untenable.

Punning on names was common in Old Comedy. Aristophanes punned on the name of Lamachus, who died at Syracuse (μαχ⋯ν / κα⋯ Λαμ⋯χων, Acharnians 269–70; cf. 1071). In the same play he made the famous joke, ‘some went to Kamarina, others to Gela, and some to Katagela’—‘an invention of the poet's from the fact that the men's officers laughed at them’ (schol. Ar. Ach. 606).

In this well-known passage of his Antiquitates Romanae, Dionysius of Halicarnassus describes how Romulus and his companions seized and married the Sabine virgins. Romulus justifies his actions by stating that this method of acquiring wives was a Greek custom:

Dionysius' report of a Greek tradition adopted by Romulus is rather enigmatic. It has previously been noted that this passage bears similarity to passages of Plutarch and in particular his description of the Spartan marriage ceremony. This Spartan marriage ceremony does bear some relation to the situation being described by Dionysius in that the women are captured before being married, but other elements of the ceremony—the bride having her hair cut off and being taken in a darkened room—are quite out of place here and would appear to be a peculiarly Spartan tradition. As Plutarch was writing some time after Dionysius, it is not possible for Dionysius to be making a parallel with the ceremony as decribed by Plutarch, but he may have had access to a common source about that ceremony, now lost. However, I would like to suggest that there is another well-known source which may have been the source of the Greek tradition referred to in Dionysius 2.30 that is connected to neither Plutarch nor marriage.

The appearance of Nan Dunbar's important commentary on Birds is to be welcomed. Inevitably, however, such a volume requires addenda et corrigenda; and already the author must be collecting material for a second edition. Here is some pabulum. On the passage cited, Dunbar comments, ‘The difficulties of this sentence stem from uncertainty over (a) the form and sense of the main verb … and (b) the point of χαραδρι⋯ν μιμο⋯μενος and its connection with what precedes …’

The main outline of the events and chronology of the Claudian invasion of Britain are familiar enough, despite the loss of Tacitus' Annals for the period in question. A Roman force of four legions was assembled, along with auxiliaries, at Boulogne and crossed the channel under the command of Aulus Plautius. Dio states unambiguously that this occurred in A.D. 43. He provides no explicit information on the month, but certain assumptions can safely be made. It is inconceivable that the Romans would have attempted a crossing of a dangerous stretch of sea like the English Channel before the sailing season technically opened, on 10 March, and it is almost inconceivable that they would have ventured to transport a large army over that passage before the seas were considered safe, on 27 May. Moreover, the expeditionary force was delayed by two unforeseen factors. Suetonius tells us that the expeditionis Britannicae dies was postponed because of the illness of Galba. Also, the troops initially refused to embark from Gaul, and if Dio's account is correct, this led to a delay while Narcissus was summoned from Rome to the Gallic coast. How long these two factors might have held back the invasion cannot be known. Even after the successful landings the Claudian forces faced another hold–up. The Britons refused to engage the Romans, hoping to wear the invaders out, and Plautius had great difficulty tracking his enemy down.

Hippolytus' declamation on the progress of human depravity brings him from the invention of weapons to the climactic horror of stepmothers (553–8), after which he turns to the vices of women in general and Medea in particular (559–64):

The Oxford text of this passage reads as follows:

This gives the received text and punctuation. No generally agreed meaning has been found in the opening sentence as it thus stands; nor have any of the numerous alternative versions which have been proposed gained widespread support. In this paper I suggest that good sense can, after all, be made of this passage in its received form.

The scholiast is clearly busy glossing a rare word. Here, as elsewhere in the scholia, Homer is cited for just that purpose. There is also an effective tendency to build judgements on a writer's style around the label ‘Oμηρικ⋯ς. Curiously, in our case the scholiast seems to have hit upon the right reading of the passage. The detail about decaying timbers in the context of Nicias' letter could not help striking educated Greek readers, who, like Thucydides himself, had Homer at their fingertips, as an echo of Agamemnon's words in Il. 2.135.1 argue that Thucydides intends the reminiscence to be perceived, and moreover, uses it to trigger off our understanding that the figure of Nicias should be read against that of the Homeric Agamemnon.

The information transmitted on the numeration of the books of Petronius' Satyrica is notoriously contradictory. Parts of the extant fragmentary text are variously assigned to Books 14–16: the testimonia are clearly set out in Muller's recent fourth edition (whose numeration I use here), and briefly discussed by Sullivan: of Müller's testimonia, no. 10 places Sat. 89.1 in Book 15, no. 13 puts Sat. 20.5 in Book 14, no. 21 identifies the Cena Trimalchionis (Sat. 26.7–78.8) as Book 15, and no. 22 suggests that excerpts from Sat. 6–141 and the complete Cena all come from Books 15 and 16. My main purpose here, however, is not to reopen the general question of the numeration or the overall number of the books of the Satyrica.

Chapter 68 begins the account of the last year covered by Tacitus in Annals 4: A.D. 28, when Junius Silanus and Silius Nerva were consules ordinarii. The new year, Tacitus informs us, was marked by a disgraceful event, the arrest (postponed since A.D. 24, cf. 19.1) of Titius Sabinus, loyal friend to Germanicus and his family. After the naming of the consuls at 68.1 and the brief preliminary account of Sabinus' arrest, 68.2–69.3 revert to the period before the beginning of a. d. 28 and describe Sabinus– entrapment by a group of ambitious praetors wishing to gratify Sejanus and so secure the consulship, an office ad quern non nisi per Seianum aditus, ‘to which the only access was through Sejanus’ (68.2).

Catullus' cunning dinner invitation to Fabullus continues to generate a rich variety of interpretations of its memorable central image, the promised gift of a certain unguentum Veneris (13.12). Three Latomus articles, by Littman, Hallett, and Case, have explored possible origins of and uses for that mysterious substance, suggesting, for example, that it might even contain female secretions with powerful aphrodisiac properties, or some other unmentionable sexual lubricant.

Varro's Hebdomades vel de imaginibus contained 700 pictures of illustres accompanied by short descriptions in verse and prose, all arranged by the number seven: Gellius provides a detailed excerpt from the first book on the significance of this number. Speculation on the arrangement and content of the fifteen books abounds. On the other hand explicit attestation of personages included in Varro's list is relatively scarce: the discussions in the passage of Gellius on the ages of Homer and Hesiod, and of the former's birthplace in the epigram attached to his portrait certify the rather obvious choice of the two oldest Greek poets, presumably part of a canon of seven.

Continuing previous studies of medieval and modern false quotations from Gellius,1 I present two more misascriptions, one by an early modern editor, the other by a medieval author.