bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Idler's Paradise in Attic Comedy
Authors: Baldry H. C.
Published: July 2013

This article is chiefly concerned with a well-known passage of that extraordinary miscellany, the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus, in which the author follows his usual habit of illustrating a thesis by quoting from comedy. In the pages considered here (vi. 267e–270a) he draws his examples from a series of plays now lost—the Plutuses of Cratinus, the Beasts of Crates, the Amphictyons of Telecleides, the Miners and Persians attributed to Pherecrates, the Sirens of Nicophon, and the Thurio-Persians of Metagenes. This string of quotations, full of cookery-book vocabulary, constitutes our main evidence about the comic poets' treatment of the theme of the land of Cockaigne, Schlaraffenland, the idler's or glutton's paradise. On the basis of this evidence many sweeping generalizations on this subject have been made, some of them so wide of the mark that it may perhaps be worth while to attempt one more review of a passage already often discussed, in the hope of arriving at a fresh assessment of its true significance.

Discussion of such a passage usually involves study of the extracts cited, and leads on to the hazardous business of trying to form some conception of the plays from which they are drawn. But before one follows this well-trodden path there is a more general question to be considered, the answer to which may give some guidance on the way. What is it that Athenaeus' quotations illustrate? The speaker in this part of the symposium, the philosopher Democritus of Nicomedia, has been discoursing about servants, and has already cited the Savages of Pherecrates to show that there was a time when people had no slaves, but did all their own work (263 b).
Doctor and Patient in Classical Greece
Authors: Phillips E. D.
Published: July 2013

The medical literature of the Greeks from the classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods is very full and of inexhaustible interest for the history of science, but its public, even among scholars, is small, particularly in Great Britain. On the theoretical and technical side independent study is likely to remain the preoccupation of a few, but on the practical and human side there is abundant material of historical and social interest that deserves to be more widely known. Among that material the present article is concerned only with the evidence from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., the first age of scientific medicine among the Greeks. Some is to be found in commonly read authors, such as Plato, but for fuller details the only contemporary source of much value is the Corpus Hippocraticum, the mixed collection of medical writings from these centuries which has reached us under the name of Hippocrates, but in fact contains treatises, essays, pamphlets, and notes by the most various authors, as their styles and contents show.

For English readers by far the most useful edition of any large part of the Corpus is the four volumes of the Loeb Hippocrates—i, ii, and iv by Dr. W. H. S. Jones, and iii by Dr. E. T. Withington, containing the surgical books. But this is not exhaustive; for the complete Corpus the most recent edition is still the ten volumes of Émile Littré, Œuvres complètes d'Hippocrate (Paris, 1839–61). This, like the Loeb, has translations opposite the text, introductions, and a few illustrations; it is now a rare book and still valuable in spite of its age.
The Conquistadores and the Classics
Authors: Armstrong A. Macc.
Published: July 2013

The men of the Renaissance looked to classical antiquity for models not only of literary elegance but also of conduct to imitate and outrival. Even Hernán Cortés and his companions were heartened in their struggles by the examples of the classical world, as is clear from the account of one of them, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who was not a literary man and wrote his True History of the Events of the Conquest of New Spain in protest against the conventional distortions of the professional historians.

When Cortés proposed to his followers the burning of their boats, which would prevent anyone from slinking back to Cuba and secure the additional strength of the sailors but at the same time meant throwing off the authority of the Governor of Cuba, he first emphasized that his company must look for aid to God alone and then ‘drew many comparisons with the heroic deeds of the Romans’. They replied in the words of Julius Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon,1 that the die was cast (ch. 59). The comparison with antiquity was later used against Cortés by seven fainthearts who complained that not even the Romans or Alexander of Macedon or any other famous captains whom the world had known had ventured to advance with so small an army against such vast populations. Cortés admitted this, but retorted that with God's help the history books would say far more about them than about their predecessors (ch. 69). His fondness for comparisons with the Romans was parodied when he overcame the forces of Narvaéez sent after him by the Governor, for a negro jester cried out that the Romans had never done such a feat (ch. 122).
Classical Association Jubilee
Authors: Webster T. B. L.
Published: July 2013

The Classical Association was founded in December 1903 in the Botany Lecture Theatre of University College, London. University College has invited the Association to celebrate its Jubilee there from 7 to 10 April 1954. Invitations have been received from the University, King's College, and Westminster School to hold part of the functions in their buildings and a special exhibition of new books is being arranged by the University Library. In connexion with the Jubilee an appeal is being issued to members with the object of raising a small working capital to avoid the necessity of increasing the subscription, which in spite of growing membership no longer produces enough to cover the increased cost of printing and provides no margin for extra activities.

It is hoped that the Hon. Secretary, Professor L. J. D. Richardson, will give the opening lecture on the history of the Association. Headings will clearly be: the foundation of local branches in this country and of parallel associations in the Commonwealth, the establishment of the Association's three journals, the institution of school reading competitions, and the excellent work done by the Education Sub-Committee. During its fifty years of life the Association has endeavoured to fulfil the objects laid down in the rules. Two recent activities are designed particularly ‘to encourage investigation and call attention to new discoveries’ and ‘to create opportunities for friendly intercourse’, viz. participation in the Joint Committee of Greek and Roman Societies, which runs the successful triennial meetings at Oxford and Cambridge, and membership of the International Federation of Classical Studies, whose next conference will be in Copenhagen in August 1954.
The Ancient Mine-Workings of Laureion
Authors: MacDonald C.
Published: July 2013

The ancient mine-workings of southern Attica, although less photogenic than the Parthenon and other better-known buildings of antiquity, provide some of the most fascinating remains of Classical Greece. Their density upon the ground and state of preservation, except where they are being obliterated by modern mining or quarrying operations, are outstanding, and even a brief visit made without specialist knowledge cannot but send one away with a desire to know more about them.
Muses on Pindos
Authors: Brown A. D. Fitton
Published: July 2013

Pindos, the mountain range between Thessaly and Epeiros, is not without renown. It appears first in Pindar (Pythian ix. 15), where in its ‘storied dells’ Kreousa gave birth to Hypseus by the love of the river-god Peneios. It, or more likely the town of the same name in Doris, was known to Pindar (Pythian i. 66) as the home of the Dorians, and it appears in Aeschylus and Sophokles—in the former (Supp. 257) as the north-western boundary of Pelasgos' realm, in the latter (Fr. 249) as the source of the Acheloos. Kallimachos, Theokritos, and Orpheus refer to it, and in Latin it is at least as old as Virgil. We find it in Horace, Propertius, Ovid, Lucan, Silius, and Valerius Flaccus,3 and in the course of antiquity it acquired a reputation as a lofty, wooded mountain which persists in Claudian and through the Dark Ages. Once more it is the setting for an amour of Apollo; Paion's mother, Liagore, receives leech-craft as the price of her favours (Faerie Queene, iii. 4. 41); and the same Spenser praised the whiteness of its snow (Prothalamian, 40). Wordsworth, as he wondered at the torrent at the Devil's Bridge, asked:

‘Hath not Pindus fed thee, where the band Of Patriots scoop their freedom out, with hand Desperate as thine?’

and it was about the Pindos range that, in 1940, another band of patriots repelled the Italian invasion of their country and won the first Allied victory of World War II.
An Enigmatic Koph
Authors: Carrington A. G.
Published: July 2013

Paton remarks that the meaning of the riddle is obscure. May not the answer be the word κσρη, whose first meaning is ‘maiden’, but whose other meanings are also hinted at in this enigma? The successive phrases may then be explained as follows.
Johan Nicolai Madvig
Authors: Jensen Povl Johs
Published: July 2013

This Danish scholar is known to the British public not only through his works but also through an essay by Henry Nettleship and the mention made of him in the well-known book on the history of classical scholarship by J. E. Sandys. At the 150th anniversary of his birth Greece and Rome has found it proper to publish an article on Madvig from a Danish source, and in any case it does seem only right to stop and consider for a moment his work from a modern standpoint.
Hail and Farewell
Authors: Hooker G. T. W.
Published: July 2013

We publish in this number a paper by the late Professor William Beare, which was received shortly before his death last summer. Readers who had the good fortune to know him will surely feel that this paper captures something of the style and spirit of the man: a modest, sober, humane, and forthright scholar, ποθεινὸς τοῖς φίλοις.
Numa and the Pythagoreans: A Curious Incident
Authors: Prowse K. R.
Published: July 2013

Perhaps no Roman, except Julius Caesar, attracted the interest of ancient writers who specialized in religious affairs as much as Numa. His reign was considered to have been a period of unbroken peace, when the civilizing influences of religious laws tempered the savagery of the Romulean era. The Romans ascribed to Numa the organization of much of their state ritual, although they did admit that some of it was derived from the Etruscans and the Greeks. Numa's successor, Tullus Hostilius, failed to observe his instructions relating to the worship of Jupiter Elicius, a god usually associated by the ancients with lightning, to whom Numa had dedicated an altar on the Aventine. The result was that Tullus met his death when a thunderbolt struck his house. In contrast, Ancus Marcius, traditionally Numa's grandson, regarded Numa as his model and caused the instructions for state ritual contained in Numa's Commentarii to be transcribed on to tablets and displayed in the Forum. This king had a successful reign. Such is the spirit of those whose accounts of the Roman kings are still extant, all writers who lived during the late Republic and early Empire. It is clear from the way in which they make Numa the author of complete institutions which could not have received their final form until later times, that every change and every new practice in religious performance needed at least to conform in appearance to the doctrines of Numa. Fondness for apposite etymology led some to associate his very name with the Greek νόμος, a law.
The Attis of Catullus
Authors: Dale F. R.
Published: July 2013

I Am offering to readers a version of the Attis, which I read at the Leeds meeting of the Classical Association in 1962. It is composed in the same metre as the Latin, according to the rules (and practice) of quantity in English. The metre is galliambic; the line consists of four ionic metra, the last syncopated or catalectic. The ionic metron, as two shorts and two longs, is familiar in Horace's Neobule

miserarum est neque amori dare ludum neque dulci—

but the first and the last syllables of the metron may be either long or short; this admits the anacreontic dimeter, a favourite variant in Greek lyrics—

super alta / uectus Attis …

Catullus' galliambic consists of two such anacreontics—

itaque ut domum Cybelles // tetigeṙe lassulae [pause]. (35.)
Prehistoric Crete: A Warning
Authors: Chadwick John
Published: July 2013

The trouble with epigraphy is that it does not admit of tidy classification. The linguist seizes upon inscriptions as samples of language; the historian, when the linguist has interpreted them, as factual evidence. But their discovery is due to the archaeologist; and in a prehistoric period, where the historian has no loctis stanai, the archaeologist is liable to claim epigraphy as part of his province. This is what seems to have happened in the case of a recent book, Prehistoric Crete, which contains in Chapter 3 a long account of the Minoan scripts and the controversy which surrounded the decipherment of Linear B. It is regrettable that Mr. Hutchinson's expert knowledge of Minoan archaeology is not matched by a similar grasp of Minoan and Mycenaean epigraphy, and I feel driven to write a criticism of this chapter, in the hope that it will be thoroughly revised and brought up to date in a second edition.
A Heresy-Hunt Continued
Authors: Poynton J. B.
Published: July 2013

Mr. Macdonald's attack on the -orum -arum heresy is welcome. But statistics seldom carry much weight; the best way of convincing schoolmasters (and, perhaps, certificate examiners) that the Romans had not the slightest objection to the gerundive with repeated -orum or -arum is to confront them with plenty of examples. I hope the following will be of help to Mr. Macdonald in a crusade which deserves all success.
The Market of Athens Topography and Monuments
Authors: Wycherley R. E.
Published: July 2013

Athenaeus (xiv. 640 b–c) quotes from the Olbia of Euboulos, the Middle Comedy poet, some lines which begin ⋯ν τῷ γ⋯ρ αὐτῷ πάνθ' ⋯μο⋯—a phrase reminiscent of Anaxagoras for ancient hearers and for modern readers—and which continue, παρ⋯ προσδοκίαν, as follows: ‘“Everything together in the same place” will be for sale at Athens, figs, summoners, bunches of grapes, turnips, pears, apples, witnesses, roses, medlars, haggis, honey-combs, chick-peas, lawsuits, beestings, beestings-pudding, myrtle-berries, allotment-machines, irises, lambs, water-clocks, laws, indictments.’
Heresies IX: ‘Scriberis Vario’
Authors: Witton W. F.
Published: July 2013

Generations of English editors, brought up to a rigid observance of the rules in the Public School Latin Grammar, have boggled at Horace's disregard of convention. It seemed indecent for the ablative of the agent to appear without its chaperon, the preposition ab. Some years ago a writer in the Classical Review faced the whole question afresh. He condemned Horace for omitting the preposition, though at the same time asserting that he could not have used it, because it was his rule never to represent the agent by ab with the ablative in lyric verse.
The Roman Achievement
Authors: Beare William
Published: July 2013

It was in Istanbul, shortly after the anti-Greek riots of 1955, that some of us, who had met there to attend the Congress of Byzantine Studies, or some other conference, fell to talking about Rome, the Roman record, the Roman civilization. There, among the melon-carts and the Cadillacs, we thought of the darker side of Roman rule—the lack of intellectual curiosity, the indifference to technological advance, the blight of rhetoric, the cruelty, the vulgarity, and everything summed up by Haverfield as ‘the heavy inevitable atmosphere of the Roman material civilization’. And, having said all that, we began to reflect that this was perhaps a partial and an unworthy view of a people who, to mention nothing else, had preserved for our world the Greek heritage. There we were in Istanbul, Constantinople, the New Rome created by the Old Rome to be a world capital, the city which had preserved its Graeco-Roman traditions through the thousand years that separate antiquity from the modern world, and at the last had handed them back to the West and so made possible the new birth of art and science and literature.
The Gods of Homer
Authors: Earp F. R.
Published: July 2013

There is a question relating to the gods of Homer which is obvious enough, when one thinks of it, and yet has never, so far as I know, been clearly answered, or even envisaged. Professor Nilsson, for instance, in his works on Homer and on Mycenaean and Minoan religion, has nothing definite to say about it. The question I mean is this: where did Homer get his gods? Or it would be better to say, where did he get his pantheon? The question I have in mind is not the origin of the individual gods. That has been discussed repeatedly. Nor is it the origin of the Olympian monarchy, for that, it is generally agreed, is modelled on the monarchies of early Greece. It is rather how all those deities came to be present in Olympos, or at least how Homer and his audience knew that they were there.
The Comic Odysseus
Authors: Phillips E. D.
Published: July 2013

Odysseus, with Herakles, was a favourite character in that mythological type of comedy which we know only in titles and fragments, though it was well liked in antiquity. The purpose of this article is to collect these stray pieces, to present Odysseus as he appears in this tradition, and to suggest reasons for his popularity on the comic stage.
A Visit to Virgil's Country
Authors: Gossage A. J.
Published: July 2013

There are two regions of Italy which might properly be called ‘Virgil's Country’. One is Mantua and its neighbourhood, where the poet spent his early days on his father's farm and witnessed the turmoils and miseries of the civil wars that ensued on the death of Julius Caesar; the other is the Naples area, where, after settling early in the thirties B.c. on an estate at Pausilypon, Virgil spent most of the rest of his life in comparative freedom from anxiety. The Eclogues describe the experiences of his younger days and his emotional and spiritual reactions to the great upheavals of the late forties B.c., while the Georgics were completed in ‘ignoble ease’ on the cliffs overlooking the Bay of Naples from the north. It was here, too, that the Aeneid was composed. The poet carried with him from the district of his birth vivid impressions which contributed much to his peculiar artistic outlook and which remained indelibly with him to the end of his life; but it was at Pausilypon that his art and thought reached the peak of maturity.
Aesthetic Values in the Elementary Latin Class
Authors: Henry Bessie
Published: July 2013

Latin begins, as we all know, with roses for sailors and Principal Parts; necessary items, not readily associated with τὸ καλόν. It is true that when people give us the reasons why the classics should still be studied in schools one always finds the argument that the varied richness of Greek Literature, and the few but incomparable masterpieces in Latin, should be made accessible to the educated European. The child should be given the key to this treasure-house, which he may turn if he chooses after a glimpse of the treasure within. If one points out that the key offered to the young treasure-seeker (who by that time has usually seen plenty of more alluring treasure elsewhere) appears rather rusty and unhandy, the answer is given—not unsympathetically—that no genuine treasure is to be won without an effort. This axiom is so manifestly true that it silences protest.
A Playwright Relaxed or Overworked?
Authors: Sri Pathmanathan R.
Published: July 2013

Having been associated with a recent production of Euripides' Cyclops in the original Greek at Ibadan, I feel prompted to reply to Peter Arnott's charges against Euripides' adaptation of the well-known episode in Homer's Odyssey, ix. We know very little about the origin and nature of satyric drama, and it seems unfair to discuss the structure of the Cyclops on a priori grounds or to compare it with the form of Greek tragedy. We do not subject Old Comedy to this kind of treatment because we are aware in this case of the dissimilar elements which came together to produce the disjointed articulation that Old Comedy displays. It may well be that ‘the pattern of decline’ in the composition of the choruses and episodes noted by Arnott is not the result of hasty composition and overwork but is merely indicative of a looser structure allowed by the conventions of the satyr play. On the other hand, the intervention of the chorus in the Cyclops is always eminently dramatic— not too long-drawn-out or too brief—and gives a life and impetus to the play which modern audiences, unfamiliar with the choral tradition of Greek tragedy, miss in more regularly constructed plays. The ‘miserable couplet’ which serves as exodos is not unparalleled even in tragedy, although the iambics in place of the more usual anapaests are certainly unexpected. In general, the choral odes are admirably suited to the grotesque personalities of the satyrs; they include two haunting lyrics, lines 495–502 and 511–18 (unfortunately somewhat mutilated) which rank in rhythm and imagery with some of the best of Euripides, and at the moment of greatest tension, in the third and fourth stasima, are commendably brief and onomatopoeic.
The Fall of the Roman Empire in the West: A Case of Suicide or Force Majeure?
Authors: Hands A. R.
Published: July 2013

Today, so we are told, there are two main views, held in Moscow and Peking, concerning the way in which the West will ultimately meet its fate; the one view that Western society can and should be overthrown by military force, the other that because of its own internal contradictions and weaknesses Western society will destroy itself without needing to be subjected, at any rate in any large degree, to external force—it will inevitably give way to the superior organization of society as revealed by the gospel of Karl Marx. This difference of opinion illustrates once again the topical relevance of the problem of the decline of the Roman Empire which has been well emphasized by F. W. Walbank, for it is paralleled by contrasting explanations of the fate which overtook the Roman world. Naturally the orthodox Marxist has not failed to emphasize the internal causes of the decline of Rome, thus providing himself, deliberately or otherwise, with an admirable historical basis for his belief as to the eventual outcome of contemporary events. But it is by no means, of course, only historians of Marxist outlook who have placed the emphasis on internal rather than external factors. Even Edward Gibbon, whose view, summed up in the famous words ‘I have described the triumph of Barbarism and Religion’, is regarded by Toynbee as a classic exposition of the view that civilizations lose their lives as the result of successful assaults upon them by external powers, recognized what might more properly be regarded as internal causes; as when he speaks of the decline of Rome as ‘the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness’ or in his approval of the judgement that Septimius Severus was ‘the principal author of the decline of the Roman Empire’.
The Evolution of the Basilisk
Authors: Alexander R. McN.
Published: July 2013

Thebasilisk, or cockatrice, is no longer a familiar animal. It was, however, well known in the Middle Ages from St. Isidore's alarming account, which was very widely quoted in the bestiaries:

basiliscus graece, latine interpretatur regulus, eo quod rex serpentium sit, adeo ut eum videntes fugiant, quia olfactu suo eos necat; nam et hominem vel si aspiciat interimit. siquidem et eius aspectu nulla avis volans inlaesa transit, sed quam procul sit, eius ore conbusta devoratur. a mustelis tamen vincitur, quas illic homines inferunt cavernis in quibus delitescit; itaque eo visu fugit, quem ilia persequitur et occidit. nihil enim parens ille rerum sine remedio constituit. est autem longitudine semipedalis; albis maculis lineatus. reguli autem, sicut scorpiones, arentia quaeque sectantur, et postquam ad aquas venerint,δροφ⋯ βους et lymphaticos faciunt. sibilus idem est qui et regulus. sibilo enim occidit, antequam mordeat vel exurat.
The Wound of Glaukos
Authors: Williams E. Watson
Published: July 2013

The standard rendering of the prayer of Glaukos is: ‘For I have this grievous wound and my arm on this side and on that is shot through with sharp pangs.…’

In 1. 510 Χείρ is always correctly translated: ‘With his hand [Χειρὶ] he held his arm [βραΧίονχ]’ where he had been wounded, a little below the shoulder (xii. 389). Homer knew a lot about the results of arrow and other wounds. His translators do not. Failing to understand how a wound in the arm can cause pain in the hand, they have attempted to ‘correct’ what was written, and in so doing have destroyed the sense, the explanation why an apparently simple flesh wound was so crippling. This is an excellent description of injury to the median nerve in the (upper) arm, causing (1) sharp pain felt in the area—palm, thumb, and fingers—supplied by that nerve, (2) aching ‘referred’ to the region just below the shoulder supplied by the circumflex nerve (arising from the same spinal segments, cervical 5 and 6), and (3) paralysis of the flexor (‘grasping’) muscles of the wrist and hand. We should therefore translate: ‘For I have this grievous wound and my hand is pierced through with sharp pangs … and my shoulder is made heavy thereby, nor have I power to grasp my spear firmly.’
Thucydides and History Today
Authors: Winter Phyllis E.
Published: July 2013

Many brilliant assumptions made for the first time by the Greeks have been for centuries part of European thought, and it requires a great deal of historical imagination to realize that much of what we tend to think obvious or inevitable has happened because of the Greeks and not by nature. So with the concept of ‘History’. The word conjures up certain thoughts and feelings which, I suggest, owe their origin to Thucydides when at the end of the fifth century B.c. he evolved a new literary form, a mixture of art and science.
Crito or Kriton? a Plea for Greek
Authors: Gomme A. W.
Published: July 2013

The advantage of our traditional method of spelling Greek names and titles as though they were Latin and pronouncing them as though they were English (often with a fine disregard of quantity, Crito, Meno, though we scorn such as confuse the penultimate vowel in Man-tinea and Tegea), is just that it is traditional: we are used to it, especially with our eyes, and the visual appearance of a word is important. But we may lose too much by clinging to tradition; no one, I think, wants to revert to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva for Greek gods, nor even to Ulysses for the Greek hero; and in the process of changing to the Greek names we have created two anomalies, Asclepius and Heracles, which are neither Latin nor Greek, nor traditional English.
The Oracle of Dodona: A Postscript
Authors: Williams E. Watson
Published: July 2013

‘Messages were divined by soaking oak leaves in the holy spring. Oak leaves have veins rich in tannins, and I find that by soaking such leaves in dilute iron sulphate solutions hieroglyphics are produced on the dry leaves which could easily pass for distorted Greek characters. On one occasion I succeeded in obtaining characters that perhaps could have been read καιχ ρομε; and it is interesting to note that Gallaeus records a message reading καὶ ‘Ρώμη ῥύμη.’
The Centre for the Promotion of Ciceronian Studies
Authors: Dorey T. A.
Published: July 2013

The Centro di Studi Ciceroniani was founded at Rome in January 1956 by the late Professor Gino Funaioli. It works in close cooperation with the Istituto di Studi Romani and shares the same buildings at No. 2 Piazza Cavalieri di Malta. Under its Statutes the Centre is to consist of not more than forty Ordinary Members, an unlimited number of Honorary Members, to be chosen from those who have distinguished themselves in the field of classical studies, and an unlimited number of benemeriti Members, chosen from those who have made some noteworthy contribution towards the promotion of the work of the Centre. The President of the Centre is Doctor Giulio Andreotti, Minister of Defence in the Italian Government, and the General Secretary is Professor Guerino Pacitti, President of the Licei Classici Statali.
Agricola and Domitian
Authors: Dorey T. A.
Published: July 2013

It is now generally acknowledged that in the concluding chapters of the Agricola Tacitus is on several occasions guilty of distortion of the truth. The story told in 40. 2, for example, of the secret mission of one of Domitian's confidential freedmen with an offer of the governorship of Syria as a bribe to Agricola in case he should appear reluctant to obey the orders for his recall is obviously sheer fabrication, designed solely to intensify the picture of suspicion and distrust on the part of the Emperor that Tacitus is endeavouring to create. Again, though in 43. 2 Tacitus records the rumour that Agricola had been poisoned by Domitian (the rumour is repeated by Dio Cassius, lxvi. 20, as sober truth), he does so in such a way as to indicate that he himself did not believe this charge, though he hoped his readers would. There are, however, three points that have never been satisfactorily explained: the relations between Agricola and Domitian between A.d. 85 and 93, Agricola's refusal of the proconsulship of Asia, and the reason for his non-employment in the Danubian wars.
The Guilt of Oedipus
Authors: Vellacott P. H.
Published: July 2013

In this paper I propose to deal with some difficulties in Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus, of which some have been noticed before, others I think have not. I am going to propose an unorthodox explanation, not through any love of unorthodoxy, but in the spirit of Oedipus himself, who when faced with a puzzle could not resist following a fact to its logical conclusion. The Sphinx's riddle was not, after all, a very hard one; and Oedipus doubtless grew tired of being praised for ingenuity. My thesis too disclaims that dubious quality. Ingenuity is what many of us have been using all our lives to explain difficulties in this play which may after all be insoluble.
Their Finest Hour
Authors: Hooker G. T. W.
Published: July 2013

For months alarming reports had been coming in, telling of the gathering cloud in the east. Now the spring had come, the Athos canal was finally cut, and the Hellespont bridged. As though in fulfilment of some riddling oracle, Xerxes marched his army over the water and sailed his fleet through dry land. The Persian steamroller began to move westwards, and the petty states of Greece faced it in a precarious alliance.
The Falls of Troy in Greek Tradition
Authors: Andrews P. B. S.
Published: July 2013

Althoughmost authorities now agree in identifying Priam's Troy with level VIIa at Hissarlik, arguments are still advanced from time to time for reverting to the earlier identification with VI [h?]. Since it is accepted that VI was destroyed by an earthquake and not (or not primarily) by armed force, this means proposing theories to account for the discrepancy with Greek tradition. Either the Greeks never took Troy at all, and simply invented the legend that they did—in which case there seems little point in trying to identify Priam's Troy; or else the earthquake is symbolized by the Wooden Horse, under cover of which the Greeks finally entered Troy.
The Archytas Ode
Authors: Patricius
Published: July 2013

It used to be supposed that the Ode (Horace i. 28) was a dialogue between Archytas and a sailor, the nauta of verse 23, but considerable difficulties arise in assigning the various verses to the two speakers. It is therefore now the generally accepted view that the Ode is a dramatic monologue by the ghost of a drowned man whose corpse lies unburied on the Marine shore near the grave of Archytas.
Multas Per Gentes
Authors: Robinson C. E.
Published: July 2013

The punctuation of a classical text cannot by the nature of things be sacrosanct. There has been opportunity enough for errors; and it is the purpose of this brief note to suggest with great temerity that one such may have found its way into Catullus' poem of farewell to his dead brother (Catullus ci.).
Diffugere Nives: Horace and the Augustan Spring
Authors: Dyer Robert R.
Published: July 2013

Diffugere Nives is not a political poem, and the echoes which link it to the mythology of the Augustan Age are to our ears imperceptible. Yet they do not deserve to be ignored, for in the intellectual climate of the time, used to the images of spring and rebirth for the Augustan restoration and the praise of pietas and the old Roman virtues, this poem must have sounded with a peculiar note of disillusion and regret rather different from the mood modern editors attribute to it. For it is Horace's last statement about the ideals of a new order, for which, despite occasional Epicurean fits of indifference, he had devoted most of his literary effort.
Bimillennial Reflections on Ovid
Authors: Maguinness W. S.
Published: July 2013

Ina book that is commonly presented to boys and girls in recognition of their progress in classical languages and literature, the studious recipient will read of Ovid that ‘he may fairly be called the wickedest writer on the world's bookshelves’. This was in 1912. The opinion of a critic who was at little pains to read the authors (Plautus, for example) whom he was so ready to dismiss with cursory jibes is not in itself worthy of citation. Allowing, however, for gross exaggeration, we can no doubt regard his judgement as consistent with the prevailing opinion of that time. We know too much about ‘wicked writers’ now to give Ovid the prize for wickedness, or even, what he might have aspired to, a very high mark for ‘naughtiness’. Such knowledge was not, indeed, outside the reach of Stobart's contemporaries, but the classical scholars of those days seem to have confined their improper reading to the classics and to have reacted, publicly at least, with expressions of shocked disapproval. The combined romanticism and puritanism of the nineteenth century in England were disastrous to what remained of the popularity that Ovid had enjoyed from Chaucer onwards, and, as usually happens, moral censure was reinforced by aesthetic depreciation. The worthy Sellar did not live long enough to put together the chapter on Ovid in hisRoman Poets of the Augustan Age. The chapter we have, concocted from his posthumous notes by W. P. Ker, makes rather depressing reading. We are reminded that Ovid is, in his love poetry, ‘the poet of pleasure and intrigue’, Tibullus and Propertius poets ‘of serious sentiment or passion’.
A Layman's Delight in the Odyssey
Authors: Howell Evelyn
Published: July 2013

This paper is a warmed-up dish, crambe repetita, but devoid, I trust, of lethal after-effects. I had hoped to serve it up without much re-cooking. Vain hope—for in the interval since its first appearance Denys Page, Regius Professor of Greek in this University, has delivered a course of lectures on the Odyssey, and subsequently polished them up into book form. The book came out only last year; and after I had read it and then reverted to my own paper, I felt rather like a man peering about with a candle after switching off the electric light. At first I thought it my duty to attempt some analysis of Professor Page's book, or at least of its conclusions, but after some struggles I abandoned the idea. For, after all, Professor Page's line of approach does not cross mine. He is a scholar of a high order, full of theories about how, when, and where the Odyssey was composed, and in search of evidence to support his theories he puts the poem under a microscope and is constrained to devote much of his attention to its defects, to the holes in its fabric, so to speak, and the patches, rather than to its merits. So it comes as something of a surprise when, at the end of his book, he ranks the Odyssey as K 2 among the peaks of literature, second only to Everest in the form of Shakespeare.
The Methods of the Greek Physiognomists
Authors: Armstrong A. MacC.
Published: July 2013

Physiognomy (φυσιογνωμονία), the systematic diagnosis of a man's character from his bodily features, originated as a branch of Greek medicine. True, it had antecedents in Babylonia, but the Babylonian science was more concerned with the prediction of the vicissitudes of a man's life than with deciphering his mental and moral qualities, and even deliverances dealing with such qualities were couched in the omen form. Prophetic physiognomists or metoposcopi held their ground throughout classical antiquity, but it was recognized that there were two classes of physiognomist, the seers and the physicians. The medical science of physiognomy was an attempt to extend the idea of treating a man's visible conditions as signs or symptoms of his invisible state, and to produce a list of signs such that the mind's construction could be inferred when it was not transparent. According to Galen this science was invented by Hippocrates himself, which is likely enough, for physiognomical observations occur in probably authentic Hippo-cratic treatises, and there seem to be none in earlier Greek authors. It was introduced into Athens about the time of Socrates, for the philosopher Antisthenes devoted a treatise to it, and there was a story of a visiting expert's diagnosing Socrates as stupid and fond of women.
Roman Cognomina
Authors: Douglas A. E.
Published: July 2013

The question of cognomina tends to be over-simplified in the elementary textbooks, where one meets such statements as: ‘Most Romans had three names … of which the third defines the familia within the gens.’ Such brevity is doubtless pedagogically convenient, but it has its dangers, particularly in respect of one of the most important periods in Roman history and literature, the late Republican; for there exceptions to this rule are so numerous and important as to make it almost meaningless. To demand greater accuracy in this matter is not mere pedantry; already a tradition is being established powerful enough to influence those whose business it is to know better, even leading, as I shall show later, to the misinterpretation of texts.
The Negligent Historian: ‘Howlers’ in Livy
Authors: Walsh P. G.
Published: July 2013

TheAb Vrbe Condita of Livy has been on many counts justly criticized as defective. The inaccuracy of his battle accounts, the vagueness of his geography, the occasional confusion caused by his failure to reconcile divergent accounts in his sources, the distortion of history through the excessive partiality shown to one or other of his ‘heroes’, and in general the highly rhetorical nature not only of his speeches but also of his dramatic narrations, which inevitably causes distortion—all these are formidable and justifiable criticisms. Some of these faults are, of course, attributable to the conventions of rhetorical history initiated by Isocrates, which dominated Roman historiography. Others have their cause in the fact that Livy was a book-scholar pure and simple; he seems not to have understood fully the tactics employed on the battlefield or the manifold devices used in sieges, nor to have visited many of the sites he describes. Now it is essential to expose these limitations, but in a sense it is unfair to condemn Livy for them, since they arise from human defects which would have required a heroic determination to repair.
Aristophanes and Cleon
Authors: Dorey T. A.
Published: July 2013

The purpose of this article is to examine the belief that Cleon, the fifth-century Athenian demagogue, was not only violent and relentless but also venal and dishonest, and made money out of politics by taking bribes and misappropriating public funds. This view of his character had by the second-century a.d. become almost a commonplace of literature. To give only two examples, Aelian mentions the story (citing Critias as his authority) that Cleon was in debt when he entered politics but died worth 50 to 100 talents, and the scholiast on Lucian described Cleon as being ‘venal to excess’. The interesting point about this second comment, however, is its inappropriateness to the context, which calls for a reference to Cleon's rapacity rather than to his venality; this indicates to what an extent Cleon's reputation for bribe-taking had come to predominate over all his other qualities.
The Generalship of Alexander
Authors: Burn A. R.
Published: July 2013

Napoleon said that in war ‘the moral is to the physical as three to one’. Alexander would have agreed. He was not only a great strategist and tactician; he was a personal leader of heroic mould, heading every major assault, probably more often wounded than any other man in his army. First up the ladder when the troops hung back at the city of the Malloi in India, leader of the last five in the search for water, when his desert column nearly foundered in Gedrosia, pouring out for a libation, David-like, the water brought to him in a helmet, earlier in that same march, he kept the love of his soldiers even through times of exasperation. Thus, from the very first, he built up in his army a tremendous feeling of moral superiority, a certainty that under his leadership no one could stand against them and no obstacle was impossible, in the strength of which his thirty to forty thousand marched from the Dardanelles to the Nile, the Oxus, and the Indus, with never a check, save at Tyre for a time, when he was present. Any special defiance, or any reputedly impossible problem, he took as a personal challenge, and fell upon it with especial ardour. The Gordian Knot yielded when he slid the yoke sideways out of it—and revealed many rope-ends, not only two. The defenders of the ferocious defile of the Cilician Gates fled at the mere terror of his approach; no doubt he would have scaled the Taurus to outflank them, but they could have gained time. Of Gaza on its high tell he said ‘the more “impossible” it is, the more it must be taken’, because of the moral effect: ‘for the achievement would amaze and dismay the enemy, and failure would be a disgrace when told to the Greeks and to Darius’. It was at Gaza that he is said to have disgraced himself by the atrocious killing of the captured Batis (Berve, ii. 104 f., no. 209—an atrocity unmentioned by Arrian, and disbelieved by Tarn—but Tarn had convinced himself that Alexander was a saint). More often, anyone who gave Alexander a stern fight gained his respect. Porus the Indian was among those who survived to enjoy it. Batis, a eunuch, perhaps aroused Alexander's disgust.
The Administration of the Empire
Authors: Badian E.
Published: July 2013

When Alexander invaded Asia, he almost certainly had no idea V V how far he would go or what the end would be. For the moment, Antipater was left in complete charge of Macedon and (with ill-defined powers) of the ‘free’ Greek allies and other European dependants; it was only towards the end of his life that the King began to worry about the excessive power that Antipater had fashioned for himself; and by then, as it turned out, it was too late to deal with him and Alexander died without doing so. As far as Asia was concerned, there were no blueprints on how to organize it. This is not mere conjecture, but can be proved. One point of policy was inherited from Philip and inescapable: the ‘Hellenic crusade’, to liberate the Greeks of Asia and to punish the barbarian for the events of 480. It might be thought that on this point Alexander had little freedom of action. Yet it is precisely here that we see him proceeding—within the elastic framework of ‘liberation’—slowly and pragmatically. Bypassing Greek cities that he knew were unfriendly, he did not take one (Zelea) until after the battle of the Granicus: the Zeleans were ‘forgiven’ for having helped the enemy under compulsion, but got no special concessions (A. i. 12. 6; 17. 2). After his stay at Sardis—which will occupy us soon—he entered Ephesus. This city had been occupied by Parmenio in his invasion of Asia before Philip's death. He had established democracy (since the Persians had ruled through a narrow oligarchy), and the grateful citizens had set up Philip's statue in the great temple of Artemis (‘Diana of the Ephesians’). But a counter-revolution had brought the city under Persian control and undone Parmenio's work. Alexander could do no less than restore the democracy that welcomed the son of Philip. As for the tribute paid to Persia (and presumably, for a time, to Philip), he ordered it to be paid henceforth to Artemis (A. i. 17. 9 ff.)—a gesture befitting both his religious feeling and his love of display. He offered to do more: to finish the restoration of the temple (which had been burnt down the night he was born) and dedicate it in his name, and he was prepared to pay for this honour; but the Ephesians politely declined (Strabo xiv. i. 22).
Cretan Hieroglyphs: New Light on the Trojans
Authors: Davis S.
Published: July 2013

The occurrence of Greek and Trojan names on the Linear B tablets at Knossos and Pylos raised a problem. Professor T. B. L. Webster, writing in 1955, a few years after the decipherment of Linear B, stated: ‘For the moment it may be safest to assume that Mycenaean poetry already possessed these names but that poetry was continually remodelled to tell of recent events, so that if the sack of Troy VIIa found its way into poetry, its defenders, as well as its attackers, would be given for the most part, as Nilsson long ago suggested, existing Mycenaean names.’ Four years later Professor D. L. Page deepened the issue when he stated: ‘An apparently Greek name on the Trojan side may be merely an adaptation, the assimilation of a foreign name to a Greek form. Let the name ofAlexandrasbe a warning to us: he looks Greek enough, but we know that he is merely a foreigner in a Greek dress.
The Study of Classical Civilization Without Classical Languages?
Authors: Christie J. T.
Published: July 2013

I Know that it is a commonplace to begin with apologies, but the Head Master of Eton did so last night, and hence let me say that you are doomed to disappointment this morning if, at the end of your splendid and varied programme, you are expecting a sonorous peroration on ‘The Spirit of Antiquity’ or ‘The Greeks and what they mean to us’. You know the kind of thing I mean: ‘Greek simplicity recalls to us the central interests of the human heart. Greek truthfulness is a challenge to see the world as it is and to shun the falsities of rhetoric or sentiment. Greek beauty is a memorial of an aspect of the Universe to which ages of thought are often blind.’ Noble words, and as you hear them, some of you are no doubt murmuring ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume’, and like Stanley you would be right. Originally I was billed to talk about Verse Composition but this was changed to something about the Greek Anthology, and finally I find myself responsible for the concluding lecture. I fear it will be for me not to heighten the tone but to lower it. I have myself attended conferences of this kind and drawn much profit from them.
Miser Catulle: A Postscript
Authors: Moritz L. A.
Published: July 2013

In his perceptive discussion of Catullus' eighth poem (Greece & Rome xiii, no. i [1966], 15–21) R. L. Rowland several times speaks of the ‘two halves’ of the poem, the second of which he takes to start with uale, puella, iam Catullus obdurat. These ‘two halves’, however, are very unequal in length, occupying eleven and eight lines respectively; and Catullus has made it hard for the reader to fail to notice this, for there are few Latin poems in which the structural parts are more clearly, or as clearly, marked. It may be legitimate to discern a poetic intention behind these ‘signposts’, and, if so, an analysis of them may perhaps supplement Mr. Rowland's observations and itself contribute something to our critical appreciation of the poem.