The Augustan constitution—if we may use this word, for which there is no ancient equivalent—is as important a subject as the large number of modern writings devoted to it would suggest, and to judge by their contradictory character, it is a difficult one. Anyone who attempts, as I am attempting to-day, yet another general statement, and that within the compass of a single paper, must hedge himself around with protestations and admissions of what he is going to leave out. I must also at once forestall the criticism, frequently launched at students of this subject, that I am the dupe of ancient propaganda, inscriptions including the Res Gestae, and the coins. I fully appreciate that their insinuating suggestions are constantly misleading; and yet they, as the principal contemporary sources, are what I chiefly propose to quote to you to-day. I must also concede that these sources show a meticulous correctness of terminology, concerning matters such as the legal nuances distinguishing various powers, which must have been lost on considerable sections of the general Roman public. But these sections of the public should not be the concern of a student of the Augustan constitution. His concern is rather with the governing class, the fabricators of this insidious publicity. They, at least, were very far from averse to constitutional niceties; and incidentally, against those who stress the ignorance of the public, these hard-headed men would never have taken so much trouble if nobody was going to be impressed by it.

But I am not plunging into the full intricacy of their efforts to-day; for the compass of one paper requires simplification, and one way in which I shall simplify is by ignoring the many nuances between different categories of power, and considering them as subdivided into two main categories only—on the one side that sort of power which was part of the legal and formal machinery of the State, a potestas, including some powers carrying imperium and some lacking it, and on the other side all those media of authority which were not based on any potestas.

FOR some time past Ovid has been a neglected poet. The opinion has grown up that he is remarkable for two things only: an amazing command of the technique of versification, and a pleasant facility in the art of story-telling. It is useless, so we gather, to look in his works for any genuine feeling, for poetry that springs from the heart; his merits, such as they are, appear only on the surface, rhetorical virtues with nothing substantial beneath them. However, there are encouraging signs that Ovid may return to favour. There appeared, for instance, in 1934 an excellent article by T. F. Higham entitled ‘Ovid: Some Aspects of his Character and Aims’, in which the author attacked the prevalent view because it simply does not make sense of Ovid as a man. Recently, too, H. Frankel published a sympathetic book on the poet which should go far to interest the general public in his work. In a review of this book L. P. Wilkinson wrote of the need for ‘a demonstration with abundant quotation in Latin of what it is that can make Ovid at his best enjoyable reading for us’. The present article is, in a small way, an attempt to provide such a demonstration. It is too much, of course, to hope for a demonstration in the logical sense, for conclusive proof; but what one can attempt is to demonstrate in the first meaning of the word, to point to features that seem to be significant, in the hope that others may'be induced to read with awakened interest.

During the recent German occupation of Greece the occupying authority published a number of brochures in which it was argued that the modern Greeks have nothing whatever in common with the ancient Greeks. These brochures were circulated among German troops with the object of stifling any sympathy or admiration which the ordinary soldier might feel for the present-day Greeks as descendants of the ancient Athenians and Spartans. (It is pleasant to record that that object was not always achieved.)

In part, this propaganda was a revival of Fallmerayer's theory that the Greeks, as a race, vanished in the Middle Ages, their blood being at first diluted and then swamped by that of Slav invaders. It was also in the line of Nazi party doctrine, since Rosenberg in Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts contended that the modern Greek was merely a feeble Levantine who had, in common with the ancient Greeks, only the name of Hellene.

Now, although it has been resoundingly refuted, and not least by the Slavs themselves, one can treat Fallmerayer's denial of the continuity of the Greek race with at least a modicum of respect since it was based on arguable premisses. But it is impossible that anyone with reasonable experience of Greece and Greeks could have any patience with Rosenberg's nonsense, which questions even the continuity of the Greek way of life, that continuity which is usually the first striking impression formed by the classically trained visitor to Greece.

A clear and vigorous refutation of Rosenberg will be found in Professor St. Kyriakides' monograph, Γλσσα καì Λαïκòς Πoλıτıσμòς τν N∊ωτέρων Eλλἡων(Athens, 1946).

From the several references to the crews of ships in the Iliad and the Odyssey it can be seen that the complement of oarsmen is usually twenty. I assume that Homer is describing the Heroic ships, the ships of the Achaeans, and not necessarily the ships of the time in which he lived. However, naval specialists from the west of Greece, like the Phaeacians, were able to build larger ships; for they sent Odysseus home to Ithaca in a ship with a crew of fifty-two. The ship, too, in which Odysseus left Troy must have been about this size; by the time it had reached Circe's island its complement had been reduced to forty-six, including Odysseus and Eurylochus, but then there had been casualties. Each of the ships which originally left Troy with Odysseus had lost six men during the attack of the Cicones; had it not been for this loss, then, the crew would have been fifty-two. It is true that Odysseus' particular ship had lost six men to Cyclops as well; but it is likely that Odysseus' ship would have been made up to strength from the other ships after the incident. It is at any rate clear that Odysseus' ship had a crew of about fifty, and that the pentekontor, although Homer does not use the actual word π∊ντηκóντoρoς, was in use at the time of the Trojan War.

This deduction is supported by a Mycenaean vase decorated with a ship, found during the excavation of the Tragana Tholos Tomb at Pylos (Koryphasion) and dated by Furumark to 1230–1100.

In my Latin Subjunctive (p. 142) I stated that no one could produce any examples of the imperfect subjunctive used in primary sequence indirect questions of the type ‘It is not known who was reigning in that country at the time when the Romans invaded it’—with the exception of a few passages in which a preceding clause containing an imperfect or pluperfect prepares the way for the imperfect subjunctive (e.g. Cic. Amic. 2 ‘meministi … profecto, … cum is … capitali odio a Q. Pompeio … dissideret, quocum coniunctissime … uixerat, quanta esset … admiratio’).

In an article in Greece & Rome (vol. xvii, pp. 128–9) Mr. Eric Laughton claims to have found a clear example of the imperfect subjunctive so used without any historic subordinate clause to prepare the way for it. His instance is Cic. Att. 3. 20. 1 ‘tibi uenire in mentem certo scio quae uita esset nostra, quae suauitas, quae dignitas. ad quae reciperanda … incumbe, ut facis’. Laughton takes this to mean ‘I feel sure you recollect what a life mine was’; he is supported by Tyrrell and Purser (vol. i, p. 399), and in view of the following words (ad quae reciperanda) this interpretation seems to be the natural one at first sight. But I cannot help feeling that, if Cicero had meant this, he would have written quae uita fuerit. To my mind, this is not a case in which the sense specially calls for an imperfect. Indeed, in Cicero's mood of despondency, it would actually be more natural for him to say ‘what a life mine once was’—the perfect tense implying that that life is gone for ever. I therefore think it much more likely that quae uita esset means ‘what a life mine would be’.