When the Virgil Society did me the very high honour of asking me to lecture to-day, there was little doubt in my mind as to what my subject should be. For Mr. Jackson Knight had been constantly spurring me to develop three ideas which he saw in embryo in my notes to The Singing Farmer—the sources of Virgil's agricultural lore, how he used them, and points in Roman farming which might be of scientific interest to-day. To deal adequately with these subjects would require a volume of imposing proportions: all that can be done in the short space of an hour is to state, and attempt to solve, a few of the problems, and thereby to indicate lines on which further profitable research may proceed. A good deal of accurate research work on Virgil's botany, animal husbandry, and natural history has already been done by the late John Sargeaunt and by Canon Royds; and Professor T. J. Haarhoff has done much to demonstrate the modernity of our poet in his searching study, Vergil in the Experience of South Africa, and will, I understand, be doing still more in a forthcoming volume, to be entitled Vergil the Universal. I can only pray, therefore, that my exiguous mouse, born to-day after mountains of labour, will not abstract anything from your grain-heaps of knowledge but add to them; for it is in this hope that I have tried to be, during the two and a half years since my release from captivity, a picker-up, not merely of learning's crumbs, but of unconsidered trifles.

‘Here the prince held a review in the park and took a muster of our countrymen and they amounted all told to 11,000 heavy-armed and about 2,000 light-armed infantry. Thence he marched to—, a populous town, where he halted five days. More than three months’ pay was now owing to the troops and they came often to his gates and demanded it. He talked hopefully and tried to put them off, but was obviously worried. For it was not like him to withhold money when he had it. At this place the wife of a neighbouring king came to the prince and, it was said, gave him a large sum of money. At any rate he gave the troops four months' pay. This queen had a body-guard of her own men, but according to camp gossip the prince knew how to pass the sentries. Thence he proceeded another two marches further inland to another large town. There he halted three days and there, it was said, the queen asked him to show her his army. This was in accord with his own wishes. So he held a review of our countrymen and of his own troops. He ordered our men to draw up in their accustomed order of battle, each general in command of his own contingent. So they formed up four deep. The prince inspected his own forces first and they marched past, the horse by squadrons and the foot by companies.Then he inspected our men, driving up and down the lines in a chariot, and the queen following in an armoured wagon.

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.

At the beginning of the fifth book of his Saturnalia Macrobius makes his characters all agree that Virgil is to be considered an orator no less than a poet; such is his mastery of eloquence and his careful observance of the rules of rhetoric. Are we to dismiss this as an example of a type of criticism now fortunately outmoded, or is there something in it? Was Virgil to any important extent influenced by rhetorical precept, and, if so, how did this influence work? These are the questions which I propose to discuss in this paper.

Let us begin with a comparison. Let us first imagine ourselves sitting in a village schoolroom eighty years or so ago. The occasion is a ‘penny reading’, and the rector has chosen for this evening's reading the poet laureate's recently published Enoch Arden. The tale draws to its close, and we reach the last three lines:

So past the strong heroic soul away.

And when they buried him the little port

Had seldom seen a costlier funeral.

Now we transfer ourselves to the year 23 B.C. and the palace of Augustus. Virgil himself is reciting, and the company includes Augustus and Octavia. The poet is reciting from his yet unfinished Aeneid, and he comes to the passage in the sixth book where Anchises shows Aeneas the young Marcellus among the souls yet to be born.

quantos ille virum magnam Mavortis ad urbem

campus aget gemitus! vel quae, Tiberine, videbis

funera, cum tumulum praeterlabere recentem.

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.

A Striking development in recent years has been the rapidly increasing popularity of extempore addresses and discussions of various kinds. Although by no means confined to broadcasting, these are particularly prominent in the programmes of the B.B.C. Well-known men and women deliver impromptu speeches or improvise answers to questions on various points of political, ethical, social, literary, or scientific interest. Their audiences are generally large and appreciative, far larger than those commanded by the lecturer who has carefully prepared beforehand the substance and style of his address.

This cult of the impromptu speech has a close parallel in Greece of the sophistic era. A prominent member of the ‘Brains Trust’ in ancient Greece, had one existed, would undoubtedly have been Hippias of Elis. Aided by his vast knowledge, covering, it would seem, every branch of human activity, he used to appear before large audiences, such as the great Panhellenic Festival at Olympia, claiming to answer any question his hearers might put to him. He apparently fulfilled his promise, for he told Socrates that no one had yet got the better of him. However, his system of improvising answers broke down when confronted by Socrates’ inexorable cross-questioning on the nature of Beauty, and he had to ask Socrates for a few moments’ grace in order to think the question over quietly by himself.

A close rival of Hippias for ‘Brains Trust’ honours would have been Gorgias of Leontini. He, also, used to appear before large audiences professing his readiness to answer any questions, and once told Socrates it was many years since anyone had asked him anything new.

In explaining to Memmius his purpose in writing De Rerum Natura Lucretius wrote:

nec me animi fallit Graiorum obscura reperta

difficile inlustrare Latinis vxsersibus esse

multa novis verbis praesertim cum sit agendum

propter egestatem linguae et rerum novitatem.

He thus showed that he realized the difficulty of his task in making the Latin tongue express what it had never expressed before. But in spite of the poverty of Latin and the apparently unpoetic nature of his subject, he has proclaimed his philosophy in language that shows him a poet. For the ancient word ‘poet’ has truth in its root (πoıητής); a poet is a maker who, by using words in new ways, makes a new world; he is also, as the Romans knew, a seer, not one who foretells the future, but one who tells forth truths that lie hidden behind appearances.

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).

There is a similarity in the critical treatment that has been accorded to the Antigone and to Measure for Measure. The parallelisms help to illustrate the way in which errors of emphasis in one direction lead to compensatory distortions in another; and the plays themselves, widely though they differ in many ways, cast some light the one on the other.

Both plays have a heroine more obviously than they have a hero. Antigone gives Sophocles' play its name, and Shakespeare's is commonly; thought of as primarily the story of Isabella, though the title lays stress on the abstract theme rather than on any of the characters, and though we may if we choose remember that the source-play was called Promos and Cassandra (i.e. Angelo and Isabella). Both heroines, moreover, more clearly ‘stand for’ specific moral values than is usual in drama— which, as R. W. Chambers has pointed out for Isabella, is not to say; that they are allegorical. The difficulty comes when we ask how far each play is the story of the heroine, and both have been adversely criticized because of unguarded answers to this question. It was perhaps easier with Measure for Measure. It was a ‘problem play’, and Shakespeare could not be expected to write a well-constructed comedy while he was ‘in the depths’ and ought to have realized that he was in his Tragic Period. In dealing with, but it has been thought that he took an unconscionably long time to learn that a play should be one and not two, and that the Ajax and the Antigone (and probably the Trachiniae) are specimens of what he did before he learnt it.

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.

‘IS that the villa up there?’ said Makarion, ‘like a star on top of the A cliff fronting the sunset?’

‘Yes,’ I replied, getting a grip of the reins, ‘and we take a sharp right turn directly. … Now. Hold tight to the bar.’

I whistled to Phloxy and pulled hard over. The car whirled round the corner crab-wise and then straightened up well to take the hill.

‘Holy Castor!’ screamed Makarion (nervous fellows, these Greeks) —‘Have a heart, Lucius. You'll have the wheel off. Why the speed?’

‘I told you this car could take anything and I want to prove it. Besides, we are behind time. Watch these two breast the hill.’

As we rose above the sea Makarion forgot his nerves and became absorbed in the view. I tapped the axle-gauge: it was pretty hot and the horses began to labour, so I eased them down to a walk.

‘What a view!’ he said suddenly. ‘Certainly Italy has something that Greece lacks. This long stretch of coastline, curving like a scimitar, the edge tempered silver with the surf. And all these splendid villas, pro-claiming wealth and comfort. Poor little Greece!’

‘The home of lost causes, perhaps,’ I replied; ‘still, it's very useful for education. The governor's got sense. I bless him for sending me to Athens. And I bless him no less for his choice of villas. It's good to be home.’

We now approached the level towards the drive, so I whipped up to a smart pace again and we were soon bowling for the gates and made for the house.

One is pleasantly surprised and at the same time a little bit envious to find the Greek and Latin languages playing the important part they do in the Dutch educational system. For whereas, I suppose, in this country we can no longer boast a single school where every pupil learns Latin and Greek, every town in Holland has at least one gymnasium, as such schools are called. In the country as a whole there are 53 of them, containing 9,370 pupils, both girls and boys. Their prestige is high, and they pride themselves on being the repository of classical culture in the modern age. In a country where there are no class distinctions in education they number among their pupils the most intelligent children of all classes.

These pupils come to them at the age of twelve, having been selected by methods similar to those now generally used in this country, and all of them, girls as well as boys, start Latin in their first year and Greek in their second, not to mention three modern languages, English, French, and German. It is a formidable assignment, of which only the most intelligent pupils are capable, but there are plenty of these in Holland. The course lasts for six years. There is no specialization, and only during the last two years is a slight bias introduced in the direction of either Arts or Science: the Alphas, as they are called, drop physics and chemistry and do a little extra classics, while the Betas retain those subjects and do rather less classics.

It is well known that the Greek accent from about the Christian era gradually changed from pitch to stress, and that by about the fourth century stress had become so powerful that, if necessary, quantity was overridden—as in Modern Greek: e.g. νθρωπος came to be pronounced ánthrǒpus, and Xenophon's εЗωνοι are now éfzǒni.

This fact has had some interesting consequences. The influence of Greek was not confined to the Byzantine Empire; even in the West the majority of slaves and freedmen would be Greek-speaking: St. Paul writes to the Christians at Rome in Greek: the Epistle of Clement in the next generation is in Greek, and all the men's names in Petronius are Greek (or Oriental). Vulgar Latin became infiltrated with Greek words, which sometimes assumed characteristic Vulgar Latin forms: e.g. μθοσ > muttus > mot; χωλόπος (stressed on the second syllable) > cloppus > clocker, clopin—forms only explicable by assuming a strong stress accent.1

As popular influence became ever more overwhelming, we find that even those who must have known better scanned Greek words as they pronounced them: e.g. Ausonius trigǒnus, tetragǒnus, Prudentius Asclepiādem. Sidonius Apollinaris has been much ridiculed for assumed ignorance in scanning Euripīdis: it was not ignorance (we know, for instance, that he read Menander with his son), but the actual pronunciation of his day, both Latin and Greek.

Christians normally scanned abssus, erěmus, idǒlum: even in the time of Plautus we regularly find Phílppus (the coin). Similarly būtrum (βούτρον) > Fr. beurre: Eng. butter seems to have come straight from Vulgar Latin (via Vulgate ?).

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’.