bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Nature Note: Dolphin-Riders: Ancient Stories Vindicated
Authors: Higham T. F.
Published: July 2013

In the Classical Review of March 1957 a request was made that some New Zealand scholar would confirm and amplify for future editors of Pliny, H.N. ix. 24 ff., and Pliny, Ep. ix. 33, a brief report printed in The Times of 10 March 1956 about a dolphin ‘which allowed children at the Opononi beach to ride on its back … frolicked among the bathers in the shallow water and balanced balls on its nose’. I record most gratefully the substance of two replies to this request, one from Mr. L. G. Pocock, formerly (1928–55) Professor of Classics in Canterbury University College; and the other from Professor H. A. Murray, M.A., F.R.N.S., N.Z., of the Victoria University of Wellington. I am further indebted to Mr. Pocock for obtaining the photographs reproduced in this number of Greece & Rome (Plate V). They were taken by Mr. Eric Lee-Johnson, (Box 5, Waimamaku, Hokianga, N.Z.), who has most generously waived reproduction fees, on condition that none of the prints is handed on for reproduction elsewhere.
Variations on a Military Theme in Ovid'sAmores
Authors: Thomas Elizabeth
Published: July 2013

‘Warwith its strenuous exertions is the direct opposite of love with its languid sentimentality: nevertheless, that truism challenged ingenuity to invent reasons why they should not rather be considered as similar.’ This statement may serve as a basis for a survey of the use of the military metaphor in love poetry, in particular in Ovid'sAmores, which illustrate the image in its most highly developed and perfected form.
The Flight and Exile of Marius
Authors: Carney T. F.
Published: July 2013

Itmust occur to anyone who reads Plutarch's account of Marius' flight and exile to wonder how much of this thrilling and romantic tale is historically true. There is indeed much to cause disquietude. Historiography of Plutarch's day had no distinct genre for the romantic novel, as Perrin so well points out, and consequently included much that history proper would exclude. Incidents in the flight and exile have in fact been described as ‘fairy-tale-like’ and ‘out.of the Arabian nights’. The debating points of the schools of rhetoric have had their influence too, involving Marius in several dilemmas which seem to have been invented forsuasoriae(e.g. Marius and the slave-herdsmen, 36. 3; and the shipowners, 37. 2; and the old fisherman, 37.4; and Sextilius' envoy, 40. 3–4; the deliberations before the grove of Marica, 39. 4, are another example).
The Origins of Greek Drama
Authors: Miller N. P.
Published: July 2013

Various difficulties beset the scholar investigating the origins of Greek drama. The ancient evidence is fragmentary, sometimes unreliable, and often difficult to interpret; Greek drama is the original drama, and from those to whom dramatic representation is a commonplace a real effort of imagination is required in dealing with its possible origins and early history; and scholars of a previous age, writing under the influence of early anthropological studies and their generation's innate notion of progress as ordered and inevitable, have sometimes bedevilled the whole investigation. Not all of these difficulties can be removed, nor are they without their compensating advantages. Anthropology can provide very interesting and suggestive parallels, and can help us to see significance where we might otherwise have missed it; and ritual no doubt has much to do with the beginnings of drama. But in attempting to explain the existence of the great drama of fifth-century Greece, we should do well to view with suspicion any theory which traces a direct and merely thickening line from primitive ritual to Aeschylus or Aristophanes, and regards the plays not as dramas but as interesting sources of evidence for primitive ‘survivals’. The more new facts about the origins (the plural is used with intent) of drama become known, the more complex these origins appear; and however much an artist is influenced (as he must be) by the conventions and inheritance of his own age, we should remember that that inheritance will include conscious intelligence and individual genius, as well as primitive ritual and superstition.
The Mines and Miners of Ancient Athens
Authors: Hopper R. J.
Published: July 2013

A Traveller from Athens who takes the inland route to Cape Sounion will pass from the plain of Athens, between Hymettos and Pentelikon, to enter the pleasant and fertile region of the Mesogia. Through the vineyards and olive groves, and through the attractive and populous villages of Paiania, Koropi, Markopoulo, and Keratea, the road bears on south-eastwards to encounter and cross a hill barrier close to the eastern coast of Attica. Descending by this road as it winds through the Plaka Pass to Thorikos and the sea the traveller is struck by the changing aspect of the country. Already in the Plaka Pass there is a hint of an abandoned industrial area such as is encountered in Derbyshire. The impression produced by these first indications of industry is strengthened after the descent to the level of the sea-coast. The charm of Attica's shore, so apparent elsewhere, is here destroyed by an ugly village with great dark mounds like those of a Yorkshire colliery or Scottish shale mine. There are also industrial buildings, for the most part derelict, looking not unlike enlarged Nonconformist chapels in the nineteenth-century tradition. Up the hill-side stretches a curious brick tunnel, with smoke stacks at intervals, intended to remove the noisome vapours generated in the processes here carried out. This is the village of Lavrion. Its other modern name of Ergasteri underlines its character. It is a profoundly depressing place, and one passes through it with relief to regain the road to Sounion.
‘Heresies I’ Again
Authors: Macdonald C.
Published: July 2013

This salutary series got off to a flying start with W. F. Witton's article upon a subject in bad need of treatment—the gerund and gerundive. Textbooks and grammars, when discussing the use of ‘gerundive attraction’, waver, through many shades of loosely expressed opinion, from a prudent silence to a complete prohibition of the use of this construction when it involves a genitive plural with nouns of the first and second (or sometimes all) declensions. The basis of this prohibition is the allegedly ugly sound of -arum -arum and -orum -orum. In connexion with this construction Witton not only perpetuated a heresy but confirmed it in clear and forthright language. He concludes his discussion with this statement: ‘Thus we arrive at the rule that in normal Latin the gerund does not govern an accusative unless for the purpose of retaining the distinctive neuter termination, as in aliquid agendo, or to avoid a sequence of genitive plurals: consiliorum tuorum cognoscendorum causa was too much of a mouthful even for Cicero.’ Let us now see what is Cicero's practice in reality.
Epochs of Greek History: A Lecture
Authors: Ehrenberg Victor
Published: July 2013

In choosing a subject which—to me at least—sounds at the same time simple and vague, I feel I have to start with a few explanations. It goes without saying that by Greek history I mean only ancient Greek history. But what are epochs? To distinguish various periods in history is an ordinary, though recently disputed, thing to do. They may be artificial, but they seem necessary to enable us to find a way within the limitless spread of our historical material. Epochs are periods too, but they may be not quite the same. We naturally look first at the original Greek words. 'Εпοχή, deriving from ἐпέχειν, indicates, according to Liddell and Scott, a check, a cessation, a stoppage. In terms of time, and that is to say, of history, it may mean a fixed or turning point. Still, that meaning only appears as late as the astronomer Ptolemaios, i.e. the second century A.d. The other word, пερίοδος, means a cycle within space or time. Pindar speaks of the seasons as ἐτέων пερίοδοι, as the recurring sections of the years; hence it is also used simply as an extent of time. It could be said (and has been said) that the two concepts together, the epochs forming the transitions between every two periods, mark a definite rhythm, a sort of short-long, short-long metre, of the course of history. That may be so; but the Greeks were never aware of it. Modern use, anyway, is different: epoch and period seem to be more or less interchangeable. This occurs, for instance, in Ranke's famous book Über die Epochen der neueren Geschichte. He was chiefly concerned with discussing the possibility of human progress. In his view it consisted in the fact that in each historical period a certain movement of the human mind is displayed, stressing now one and then another tendency. No generation is superior to the preceding one in every respect, each epoch has its own immediate bond with God (‘jede Epoche ist unmittelbar zu Gott’), or to put it more profanely: each epoch or period has its own character, its own achievements, its own faults, its own significance. In Mr. Eliot's words: ‘History is a pattern of timeless moments.’
The Strategy of the Second Punic War
Authors: Salmon E. T.
Published: July 2013

The strategy of the Carthaginians, in the writer's opinion, must be regarded as an aggressive one that had been devised long before the outbreak of the war in 218 B.c. The view that their operations in Spain did not have an attack on Italy as their ultimate object is naïve. The truth is that they went to Spain after their defeat in the First Punic War precisely in order to build up a base. They hoped to make it the point d'appui for their planned war of revenge against Rome: the Iberian peninsula was to be for them a springboard for attack.
Changing Fashions in Ancient Drama–II
Authors: Hooker Edna M.
Published: July 2013

This, then, was the state of the theatre when the Romans first came into direct contact with the Greeks in the middle of the third century: revivals of fifth-century melodramas and romantic tragedies, especially those of Euripides, and revivals of the New Comedy of the late fourth and early third centuries, especially the plays of Menander, held the stage. The Romans themselves had nothing quite like this in their own popular entertainment. They had stage-shows of a sort, of course. Their own native form of entertainment was the satura, which seems to have been some sort of variety show; and they had imported Etruscan ludi, consisting mainly of music and dancing, and the Campanian Atellane farce, which was something rather similar to a harlequinade. The Greek theatre, which at this period was outwardly more splendid than ever before, was to the Romans an impressive and fascinating novelty; and, when Livius Andronicus in 240 B.c. translated a Greek tragedy and a Greek comedy for the Roman stage, he achieved an immediate success and started a vogue for drama in the Greek style at Rome which ousted the old satura from the stage. It is sometimes regarded as a reflection on Roman taste that the Roman theatre in the third and second centuries B.c. should have concentrated on Euripidean melodrama and Menandrean New Comedy to the exclusion of the greater works of the fifth-century Greek dramatists. But this is an unjustified conclusion. The choice of models represents not the taste of the Romans—for in fact Greek-style drama failed to achieve lasting popularity at Rome—but that of the contemporary Greek theatre, which was the only guide that the Romans had at that date. At this period Rome imitated the literature which was currently fashionable in the Greek world. It was not until the time of Catullus and the ‘learned’ poets that the Romans, following the lead of the Alexandrine scholars, made a systematic study of Greek literature. It was only then that the Romans made the acquaintance of those works which had become the province of the scholar, and so were able to draw upon the whole range of Greek literature for their models. The inspiration derived from studying Greek poetry of the finest periods was to lead to great developments in lyric and elegy and in pastoral and didactic poetry, but it came too late for drama, which was by that time fast disappearing from the Roman theatre.
The Fourth Book of the Aeneid: A Critical Description
Authors: Quinn Kenneth
Published: July 2013

Book iv is Virgil's masterpiece. It can stand comparison with the other great books in the qualities where they excel. It has the narrative power of Book ii, the imaginative power of vi, the tragic intensity and truth of the finest scenes in x and xii. But it overshadows these by its perfectly contrived synthesis of tragedy and epic. The book is the shortest of the twelve and the most dramatic in form: a tripartite structure is more clearly marked than in the other books and for once seems consciously present in the poet's mind, for each of the three sections has its own clearly marked internal unity and each begins with the entry of the queen and the same key phrase at regina: lines 1–295, the beginning of the affair; lines 296–503, the alienation; lines 504–705, the end of the affair—Aeneas' departure and Dido's suicide. But Virgil's narrative technique also reaches in this book its highest level of perfection and variety—the passage 74–89, for example, in which a close-packed succession of images suggests the compulsive, irresistible impetus of Dido's wild infatuation; or the serene, colourful, carefully organized narrative of the hunting episode (129–72), with its happy, relaxed realism and the terrifying, penetrating, ironic symbolism with which that episode concludes; or the awful simplicity and sublimity of the death scene (630–92).
Ennius the Mystic—II
Authors: Newman J. K.
Published: July 2013

Ennius was brought to Rome in the first place by Cato. How soon he came under the influence of Scipio we do not know, but it is clear that to a poet acquainted with Greek thought the austerely Italian doctrines of his first patron cannot have had much appeal. The partiality which he displays for Euripides, that most sophisticated and troubled of poets, does not harmonize well with the utilitarian views which find their place in the De Agricultura and elsewhere in Cato. (It is interesting to compare the spirit of μὴ ῴην μετ' ἀμουσίας from the well-known chorus of the Hercules Furens with that of ‘poeticae artis honos non erat…’.) Eventually Ennius was to eulogize Scipio in a separate volume of that name, and to shock the Censor with his gourmet's handbook, the Hedyphagetica. But the work with which he most commended himself to fame was of course the Annales, for which he introduced the hexameter.
Ovid and Modern Times
Authors: Hicham T. F.
Published: July 2013

No author is more helpful than Ovid to anyone whose task it is to express modern ideas in Latin or to sum up in a brief and memorable way the achievements of distinguished men and women. Here I have gratefully brought together some examples of the help he has given me during the last twelve years in presentations for honorary degrees at Oxford. My hope is that this form of bimillenary tribute will not seem out of place in Greece & Rome. The Editors will know that the revival of spoken Latin is much in the air at the moment—there was a conference on the subject at Avignon in 1956—and they themselves not long ago invited suggestions for a Latin rendering of ‘television’. Ovid's own prophetic shot at this word is listed among the other examples of his foresight given below. All my borrowings from him have been actually used in public orations; but I have not thought it necessary to name the honorands concerned, nor have I sometimes scrupled to adapt to present purposes the Latin used to introduce the borrowed quotation.
Progress Report—I: Roman Britain: The Trend of Recent Ideas
Authors: Webster Graham
Published: July 2013

Oneof the difficulties facing the teacher of Classics is that of trying to keep abreast of the growing spate of new information. The same problem exists for teachers of other subjects, but in scientific fields it is possible, though arduous, to keep in touch through the several excellent periodicals likeDiscovery.For the classical scholar there are few such aids apart from the yearly summary inThe Journal of Roman Studies, and one can easily refuse to acknowledge any advance at all and rely on texts and commentaries absorbed in one's own school and undergraduate days.
The Structure of Plato's Crito
Authors: Gomme A. W.
Published: July 2013

There are features in both the logical and the dramatic structure of the Crito the interest of which has not, I think, been sufficiently appreciated. They are worth discussion; and this will lead further to a consideration of the dialogue as μίμησις in the sense in which Aristotle uses the word in the Poetics.
Virgil's Garden of Flowers and his Philosophy of Nature
Authors: Haarhoff T. J.
Published: July 2013

In his charming essay on ‘Jardins d'Humanité’ Pierre Grimal says that gardens are inseparable from the humanism of Europe; ‘the groves were God's first temples’, wrote the poet Bryant; and there is abundant testimony to these statements in classical antiquity. Sir Archibald Geikie, who, like Sir D'Arcy Thompson, belonged to those grand old Scottish scientists who added to their science a deep humanism, Geikie from whose books I learned geology forty years ago, wrote:

From the infancy of mankind, trees have been regarded with mingled feelings of admiration and awe. The combined majesty and grace wherewith they tower above the soil that supports them; their infinite variety of individual forms and colours, whether carrying their foliage all the year or at one season clothing themselves with tender leaf and blossom, at another flaming in the varied glories of autumn, and, thereafter, bare and leafless, stretching their giant arms and delicate branches to all the winds of heaven; their immemorial age; their calm endurance and seeming defiance of the vicissitudes of time, in pathetic contrast to the short and troubled span of human life; their varied music under the changeful moods of the weather, from the faint whisper awakened by the gentlest breath of summer to the loud roar or moaning wail aroused by the fury of a wintry tempest; the grateful shelter which under their canopy of leafy boughs they provide for man and beast; the endless services which they render to man's daily life in their yield of timber or leaves or fruit—these features give to trees a high place among the charms and bounties wherewith Nature teems.
Virgil and the Bees
Authors: Whitfield B. G.
Published: July 2013

This article may be open to the charge of deviating unashamedly from its main subject, but any research into the sources of the fourth Georgic, or into Virgil's practical knowledge of apiculture—and it should be stated at once that there is no sure answer to the inquest— must eventually range over the whole of classical bee-literature. And it was curiosity over the sources of this Georgic which led me some years ago to set out on what proved to be a lengthy and meandering tour— starting with a short and disappointing excursion into Varro, and proceeding thence on a long road with numerous by-lanes until finally the course had been covered from Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Aelian, through Pliny and Columella, to the end of the journey in Palladius and the Geoponica.
Venus and Lucretius
Authors: Vertue H. St. H.
Published: July 2013

Nearly ten years have gone by since Dr. Cyril Bailey gave to lovers of Lucretius his edition of the poet in three volumes, winning for himself a crown, insignem cum laude coronam, after a lifelong quest and bestowing upon us an enlarged understanding of that wonderful work of antiquity, the De Rerum Natura, which holds in its ‘massive and magnificent whole’ many a valuable message for the modern world, could it but read them. At the outset of his commentary Dr. Bailey draws attention to a discrepancy that has often been discussed, namely that which lies between the literary masterpiece with which the poem opens, the invocation to Venus, and the Epicurean belief entertained by the poet that the gods neither govern the forces of Nature nor interfere in the affairs of men. On the one hand, Venus is addressed as a creative power with prayers for inspiration and assistance and for peace; on the other hand, we are told that the nature of the gods needs nothing of us, is untouched by anger, and is unmoved by merit; and if the reading of the manuscripts be retained, the second set of lines immediately succeeds and contradicts the first.
Alexander's Early Life
Authors: Hamilton J. R.
Published: July 2013

Alexander's parents were both striking personalities. Olympias, a native of Epirus, whose family traced their ancestry back to Achilles, was jealous and possessive—and terribly passionate. Her emotions found an outlet in the wild orgiastic rites of Dionysus, and at Alexander's accession and again after his death her desire for vengeance erupted in acts of unbridled savagery. This streak of cruelty reappears in Alexander, especially when in his later years he was under increasing strain. Philip, too, was capable of great passion although he nearly always managed to control himself. It is scarcely surprising therefore that their son should occasionally be subject to volcanic outbursts. To call him, as Mithridates VI of Pontus has been called, a ‘barbarian varnished’ would be absurd; it is scarcely less so to expect from him the conduct of a Greek gentleman or the product of one of our public schools. He also reproduced some of Philip's most notable qualities. We see in him the same reckless, even foolhardy, bravery, the same dogged persistence, the same open-handed generosity. From his father he inherited too his capacity for managing men and affairs.
Alexander's Historical Achievement
Authors: Welles C. Bradford
Published: July 2013

Whethermen make history or history makes men is an old problem, and one of which the ancients were fully conscious. In Book XV, for example, Polybius describes an extraordinary, certainly fictional interview between Hannibal and Scipio. Here were the two ablest commanders of the day, and on the morrow the issue was to be settled between them on the field of Zama. Polybius knew that this was a contest of generals, and that the better would win. But in the discussion, there is reference only to Fortune and the gods. Of the latter, one knew that they gave or withheld success for good and know-able, if not always obvious, reasons. The former, however, was quite unpredictable, the cause of events which could neither be explained nor anticipated. She was the personification of What Happened, τὸ τυχόν; that is to say, in modern terms, of History.
Phantasmagoria and Idyll: An Element of Seneca's Phaedra
Authors: Henry Denis , Walker B.
Published: July 2013

If the Phaedra is Seneca's best-known play, it has suffered more than any other from inadequate or misdirected critical attention. Most accounts have been preoccupied with its similarity or dissimilarity to the Hippolytus of Euripides, or else with its rhetorical luxuriance. The first group has spoken of it as a not very meritorious rewrite of Euripides' play (Version I, II, or mixed). Méridier, for example, in his Hippolyte d'Euripide devotes a chapter to the Phaedra, giving a résumé of the plot, listing parallels and discrepancies with the Hippolytus, and providing by way of conclusion an ‘étude littéraire’. In this he treats the play as mere adaptation, remarking ‘on voit ce que l'œuvre de Sénèque a perdu au changement’. Where Seneca has introduced originalities, ‘ces scenes nouvelles ne témoignent pas toujours … d'un art très heureux’.
Caesar and the Monarchy
Authors: Carson R. A. G.
Published: July 2013

The victories of Pharsalus, Thapsus, and Munda had left Caesar in a position of undisputed authority and, as the year 44 opened, the question in Roman minds must have been how Caesar intended to consolidate and perpetuate his position. His assassination on the Ides of March left his contemporaries with little indication of what political solution Caesar had devised, and left to subsequent historians of the period the intriguing problem of deducing from such evidence as the last few months of Caesar's life provide what his political intentions had been. The initial difficulty of this problem is to free one's mind from the simplifications and, indeed, distortions with which subsequent political thought has reported the critical events of Caesar's last months; for in most of western civilization, particularly the English-speaking portion, the popular impression of Caesar as a tyrant and the conspirators as democrats is almost ineradicable, thanks to the dramatic story of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
The Literary Output of the Roman Emperors
Authors: Dilke O. A. W.
Published: July 2013

Tacitus, in a famous passage of the Annals,2 comments: ‘Older men who had leisure to compare the present with the past noted that Nero was the first of our rulers who had need of borrowed eloquence. The dictator Caesar could hold his own with orators of the first rank; and Augustus had a ready and fluent mode of speaking which well befitted his imperial position. Tiberius had a rare skill in weighing out his words; he could express his meaning forcibly or conceal it as he chose. Even with Gaius, the disorders of his mind never interfered with his powers of speech; and when Claudius delivered a prepared discourse, his style left nothing to be desired.’
The Sickness at Athens
Authors: Williams E. Watson
Published: July 2013

Thucydides wrote his history after his return from exile in 404 b.c. (i. 22). It is not easy therefore to be sure to what extent his account of the great Sickness depends on notes made at the time, some twenty-five years before, and how much on memory—especially of his personal sufferings, from which it seems he recovered without any of the ‘signs’ which he implies ‘marked’ all survivors. He tells us that he has described only the general features of the Sickness (ii. 51), since the symptoms varied much from case to case; perhaps he realized how difficult it is for anyone, even an experienced physician, who has suffered from some severe and unusual illness (ii. 50) not to consider his own symptoms characteristic.
The Death of Seianus: An Essay in Filling a Lacuna in Tacitus
Authors: Vannan Anne M. I.
Published: July 2013

Vniversa iam plebs vias implebat dissono clamore poscens Seiani caedem velut si in circo aut theatre ludicrum postularent. quem orto die ad curiam acclamationibus et studio inani secuti1, nunc pari laetitia in carcerem tractum spectavere. agebatur hue illuc Seianus vario turbae fluctuantis impulsu; derisus, contumeliae omnium subiectus, vidit suas statuas afflictas calcatasque a vulgo effrenato, mox talia passurus ipse. eodem die patres convenerunt et, popularis assensus haud inscii et quod aberant Praetoriani, nullis indicibus, nullo teste damnatum morti Seianum tradiderunt. apud senatum omnes gaudere, multi ex animo, qui conscii fuissent tanto effusius laetitiam significavere quanto indicium conspirationis timuerunt. credo et providentioribus curam subisse rei publicae quae, non omnino a Sciano eversa, rursus tradrebatur irae imperatoris nunc inveteratae.
The Myth of Ariadne from Homer to Catullus
Authors: Webster T. B. L.
Published: July 2013

Greek myths are so vivid that we think of the figures in them as real people and argue about their characters and what made them do what they did. We forget not only that the people never existed (or if some of them did, they were certainly very different from the refined and sophisticated representations of them about which we argue), but also that what we have is a number of often incompatible versions in literature and art dating over a period of a thousand years or more, whereas what we argue about is either a single late version or a very late amalgam of a number of versions made in a handbook of mythology.
Communes in Some Latin Poets
Authors: Pye D. W.
Published: July 2013

Bycommunis is meant a syllable, not the last syllable of a word nor a prepositional prefix, which may in one context be short, in another long, because it contains a short vowel, this vowel being followed by a mute (which may be represented by more than one character) followed by a liquid. The first two syllables of quadruplicis are communes. In Cicero, Arati Phaenomena 334, this word is scanned with the first syllable long and the second short, and we may say that it contains a long communis followed by a short communis; but in another context the first syllable of this word might be short and the second long, or both might be long. For brevity we may use CR (CCR) to mean long communis (-es) in the rise of a foot (arsis, strong position), CF (CCF) to mean long communis (-es) in the fall of a foot (thesis, weak position).
Bruegel and the First Georgic
Authors: Morford Mark P. O.
Published: July 2013

Peter Bruegel's The Fall of Icarus—his only painting with a mythological subject—has long been seen as an allegory: Charles de Tolnay has shown how Bruegel took the details which he found in Ovid and used them, contrary to the accepted tradition of his time, to contrast the futility of Icarus' venture with the solid worth of the peasant labourer's life. Ovid, like Bruegel's contemporaries (for the most part), emphasized the wonder and novelty of the flight: the people in his landscape stopped in the middle of their tasks to wonder at the god-like beings who flew so effortlessly above them:

hos aliquis tremula dum captat harundine pisces aut pastor baculo stivave innixus arator vidit et obstipuit, quique aethera carpere possent credidit esse deos.
Practical Criticism: A Reading of Propertius i. 21 and Catullus 17
Authors: Quinn Kenneth
Published: July 2013

InDidaskalos 1968 I have argued that the chief task of the commentator on a short poem (an ode of Horace, an elegy of Propertius, or a poem of Catullus) is to reconstruct the hypothesis upon which the poem rests by piecing together the data actually provided by the text, or deducible from the text as a plausible, necessary deduction; to these data, I argued, one need only add what the poet feels he can rely on any reader to know, though two thousand years later it may of course require some research to recover what was common knowledge at the time. I cited Catullus 17 as a case in point—a poem where reconstruction of the hypothesis depended on things outside the text, things which, though part of the cultural background of the poet's contemporaries, were hardly part of ours, yet within our grasp if we cast around a little.
Aristotle Leaves the Academy
Authors: Chroust Anton-Hermann
Published: July 2013

It is commonly held that Plato died in 348/7 b.c. during the archonship of Theophilus or in the first year of the 108th Olympiad. According to a widespread and almost universally accepted tradition, which has found a place in our current books on ‘The History of Greek Philosophy’, Aristotle departed from Athens soon after Plato's death, repairing to Atarneus (or Assos) in Asia Minor, where he stayed with Hermias. Thus, it would appear that the death of Plato was the prime if not sole reason for Aristotle's journey in 348/7 b.c. It has been conjectured, however, that Plato actually died in the spring of 347 b.c., probably in May. Though this is by no means certain, it properly requestions the causality of the Stagirite's flight.
The Women on the Acropolis: A Note on the Structure of the Lysistrata
Authors: Hulton A. O.
Published: July 2013

Aristophanes' Lysistrata opens with Lysistrata herself waiting in front of the entrance to the Acropolis for the women whom she has summoned. Calonice arrives from the city, and later others from Anagyrus (Attica), Sparta, Boeotia, and Corinth. Lysistrata expounds to them her plan: wives are to refuse intercourse with their husbands until peace is made. She has also, she says, arranged for the Acropolis to be attacked. Later again, after the women have been won over and sworn an oath of loyalty, a noise is heard (240): it is the Acropolis being captured. This forms the climax, so to speak, of the Prologue. Lampito, the Spartan, returns home, and from now on it is the Acropolis that constitutes the place of interest in the play and the women's occupation of it the central theme. But what is the relation of this plan (Plan B) to the other (Plan A)? And what does Plan B really involve? These questions are never satisfactorily resolved.
From Aristophanes to Menander
Authors: Arnott W. Geoffrey
Published: July 2013

At the beginning of 405 b.c., fourteen or fifteen months before the final catastrophe overtook Athens in the Peloponnesian War, Aristophanes produced the Frogs. It is the last extant play of Old Comedy proper. Its plot is at times discursive, its subject-matter is passionately tied to the city in which the play was conceived, and its structure is largely controlled by such traditional and formal Old Comedy elements as the agon and parabasis. The Frogs won first prize. In 316 b.c., just eighty-nine years later, if we accept a plausible emendation in the Bodmer papyrus, Menander in his turn won the first prize at the same festival with his Dyskolos. The Dyskolos is the first extant play of the New Comedy to which we can give a firm date. Its plot is tightly knit, its subject-matter is universal, and its structure is largely governed by a new set of formal elements. Aristophanes' Frogs had a chorus of initiates, who charmed the audience by their nostalgic evocation of the old annual procession to Eleusis, suspended at the time because of the Spartan occupation of Decelea. This chorus of initiates sang and danced between the dialogue scenes a series of specially composed, memorable lyrics which were relevant to the plot, to the city, and to the period; they and their leader also delivered the parabasis. This vivid, lively, functional chorus is replaced in Menander by only a dim shadow: a κ⋯μος of tipsy young men who have no function whatever in the plot, who serve merely to entertain the audience in the intervals between the five acts with a song-and-dance routine whose words are not preserved and possibly were not even specially composed for the play by its author.
The Olympian Faith
Authors: Sale William
Published: July 2013

The Olympian faith was the religion of the poetry of Hesiod and J. Homer, including the Homeric Hymns, and upon this poetry the thought of all Greeks in the archaic and early classical ages was founded: ‘All men begin their learning with Homer,’ says Xenophanes. Herodotus makes it clear that any Greek of his own day considered Homer and Hesiod canonical:

Whence each of the gods arose, whether all always were, what their individual forms are, the Greeks did not know until the day before yesterday, so to speak. For I think that Homer and Hesiod were four hundred years older than me and no more. And they are the ones who constructed divine genealogies for the Greeks, gave the gods their epithets, determined their spheres and functions, and indicated their forms (ii. 53).
Difficile Est Longvm Svbito Deponere Amorem
Authors: Moritz L. A.
Published: July 2013

Two articles on Catullus' eighth poem in recent issues of this journal (Greece & Rome, xiii [1966], 15–21, 155–7) appeared under the title Miser Catulle; and indeed the poem itself might aptly have its first line—Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire—as its heading. But this apparently is not how the Romans themselves would have headed it. If Ovid three times uses the phrase perfer et obdura (Am. iii. 11. 7; A.A. ii. 178; Tr. v. 11. 7; cf. Fordyce, ad Cat. 8. 11) he is clearly recalling what to him seemed to be the ‘message’ of Catullus' poem, conveniently transferring it from scazon to hexameter (or pentameter) by the simple addition of et. The word obdura, first introduced (with perfer) at the end of the central ‘stanza’ and repeated at the end of the following line and again at the very end of the second ‘half’, is surely the theme word of the whole poem. It is the positive self-admonition, after all the negative self-advice of the first part, beginning with desinas ineptire and culminating in nec miser uiue (10): it is the only thing that is left to the lover when all is over between him and his love.
Invasion in the Aeneid
Authors: Nethercut William R.
Published: July 2013

Through the ages it has been the tendency of critics to dwell upon Virgil's praise of Augustus and to emphasize the poet's role as a propagandist for the new regime. In his first encounter with the Aeneid, the student learns to consider this work, as well as the author's treatment of its central figure, a ‘glorification’ of the Princeps.
The Freedmen of Cicero
Authors: Treggiari Susan
Published: July 2013

The private life of one of the great figures of history, indeed, as a discerning judge has recently put it, ‘perhaps the most civilized man who ever lived, attracts and deserves attention. A considerable, though subordinate, part in the life of a Roman of the upper classes was played by his servants, who ministered to his comfort, supported his dignitas, and were essential agents in his political work. In the case of Cicero these servants are known to us from his letters, while the staffs of other republican magistrates are much less completely revealed. An investigation of his more trusted and important servants, that is his freedmen, should cast light both on Cicero's private character and on the extent to which he relied, in his political and private life, on his subordinates.
Low-Level Metric
Authors: Haworth C. M.
Published: July 2013

Classical Association branches hold yearly Latin reading competitions: J.A.C.T. sponsors records of eminent scholars reading Latin in the way that their learning and sensibility direct them. They recognize that, with the knowledge of Latin speech rhythm for ever lost, they run the risk of disturbing Virgil's ashes and rousing unseemly laughter in Hades' realm; but, ungrateful to the late Professor Beare for his agnostic warning, they read up accurately and hope for the best.
Epicurus: Some Problems in Physics and Perception
Authors: Harry Brigid
Published: July 2013

The philosophy of Epicurus is one which was designed for living in a world where truth is attainable through, and only through, the right use of the senses, which are a reliable source of information in that they faithfully relay to the mind all impressions which reach them: all perception is true, but if the impression reaches the sense organ ‘damaged’, or an incorrect interpretation is put on it by the mind, error can occur. Such false conclusions as to the nature of an object of perception, when the information being received about it is inadequate or in some way distorted, can be avoided by ‘filing’ the received impression, for confirmation or contradiction, without coming to a decision on it until conditions are more favourable.
Tsunamisin Greek Literature
Authors: Smid T. C.
Published: July 2013

Thedescription of a seismic sea-wave has a long history, but the understanding of it a short one. Although the ancient Greeks did not have a name for it, until recently the moderns used a misnomer: tidal wave. Now that the phenomenon is correctly understood it has acquired a Japanese name:tsunami(soo-NAH-me), but misnomers often persist even among those who know better.
The Classical Latin Quotations in the Letters of St. Ambrose
Authors: Charles Sister
Published: July 2013

Saint Ambrose (c.A.d. 339–97), bishop of Milan, was one of the outstanding figures of the fourth century both from a political and from an ecclesiastical point of view.
The Birthplaces of Latin Writers
Authors: Watts W. J.
Published: July 2013

In his introduction to the Loeb translation of Suetonius, J. C. Rolfe suggests that Suetonius' unknown birthplace may be Rome, adding: ‘There is no prominent writer of whom this [being born in Rome] can be asserted positively; it seems probable in the case of Caesar and Lucretius.’ One wonders, then, just where the writers in the Latin language were born, and what effect, if any, this had on the literature, especially that now extant. I have investigated the birthplaces of the major authors up to a.d. 200, and propose here to summarize my results and offer a few comments.
Lucretius V. 1442
Authors: Smith Martin F.
Published: July 2013

InG & R xvii (1970), 197–8, H. G. Lord discusses the textual problem in Lucretius v. 1442 and proposes

tum mare velivolis florebat propter ad oras

navibu', non ausi tum in altum vertere proras.

Since the crux is one of those desperate ones of which it is almost true to say ‘quot editores tot sententiae, suos quoique mos’, and I have already published my own emendation, I will not attempt a refutation of a proposal which I myself find unconvincing. However, there are some inaccuracies in Lord's article upon which comment must be made. He states: ‘The only suggestions which attempt to deal with the reading of the manuscripts are that of Clodachzh (“in search of spices”, which in addition to its improbability uses propter in a causal, and not in a local sense; the latter alone appears to be the Lucretian usage) and that of Ellis.’
Sybaris—Legend and Reality
Authors: Rutter N. K.
Published: July 2013

On 14 December 1968 the following report from New York appeared on the front page of the Guardian: ‘An American-Italian team of archaeologists has found the long-lost site of Sybaris, known throughout the ancient world for its wealth and the luxurious life of its citizens. The discovery of the city was announced last night at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. F. G. Rainey, director of the University's museum, and Professor Giuseppe Foti, superintendent of antiquities at Calabria, said that the city, which disappeared around 510 B.c. after a civil war, had been found “beyond reasonable doubt”…’ When the excavation of Sybaris starts in earnest, it is expected to produce material of the first importance for the study of Greek colonial history in the archaic period. In view of the general interest that the excavation will arouse, it is worth summarizing what is known about Sybaris, to explain both the considerable efforts that have been made to find the site of the city, and the potential importance of its discovery.
A Lost Line of Lucretius?
Authors: Lord H. G.
Published: July 2013

The only suggestions which attempt to deal with the reading of the manuscripts are that of Clodachzh (‘in search of spices’, which in addition to its improbability uses propter in a causal, and not in a local sense; the latter alone appears to be the Lucretian usage) and that of Ellis, ‘which does preserve most of the letters but shuffles them up in an impossible manner’ (Bailey) and for this reason has not found acceptance. Common ground for emendation is the need to provide a substantive with the meaning ‘ships’ for velivolis. It follows that if this is to be done, and if at the same time anything resembling the manuscripts' propter odores is to be retained, then a lacuna containing navibus must be presumed. (There is no help to be obtained from ii. 417, which does no more than record the existence of propter odores, words which there fit the context.)
Justinian and the Historian Procopius
Authors: Evans J. A. S.
Published: July 2013

The Emperor Justinian, who succeeded his uncle Justin to the throne of Byzantium in A.d. 527, probably never intended to mark an epoch. Not, at least, the epoch which the modern historian must assign him. For his reign is in a sense a watershed; he was the last Roman emperor and the first Byzantine one. The reality of a Roman Empire embracing the whole Mediterranean had suffered a little before Justinian owing to circumstances. Among the Franks in Gaul and the Visigoths in Spain, it was more fiction than fact, but it was a fiction which was still cherished, and not merely in Constantinople. After Justinian, the concept was not dead; but it was clearly losing force.
A Letter from Augustus to Tiberius
Authors: Shaw-Smith R.
Published: July 2013

Suetonius quotes some attractive specimens of Augustus' domestic correspondence. They include several sentences from letters to Tiberius by which Suetonius seeks to show that Augustus had a high regard for his adopted son as a military man and valued campaigner. One quotation (Suet. Tib. 21) is as follows:

Vale, iucundissime Tiberi, et feliciter rem gere, ⋯μο⋯ κα⋯ ταῖς †μουισασαιστ στρατηγ⋯ν. Iucundissime et ita sim felix, vir fortissimo et dux νομιμώτατε, vale.
Seneca's Hercules Oetaeus: A Stoic Interpretation of the Greek Myth
Authors: King Christine M.
Published: July 2013

Seneca's shortcomings as a tragedian are a commonplace of literary criticism. On the one hand, the style of Seneca's plays is condemned for being excessively rhetorical; long, undramatic speeches, full of mythological references, alternate with bombastic utterances; or, as J. W. Duff states, comparing Seneca with his Greek predecessors: ‘in the Latin plays one has entered a new world where genius has been replaced by cleverness, and an eminently classic directness of expression by rhetoric.’ On the other hand, Seneca's detractors claim that extravagance of style is matched by a propensity for gory detail, such as the notorious piecing together of Hippolytus at the end of Phaedra. Thus, according to F. L. Lucas:

if only to make up for the unreality of his ultra-academic drama [Seneca] tries to be vivid by being lurid, to stimulate the jaded imagination of his public by screaming atrocity. Seneca does indeed recall the man in Plato who had a morbid desire to view the corpses in the city ditch; long ashamed to yield to such an impulse, at last he ran to the edge and uncovered his eyes with the cry, ‘There, you wretches, take your fill’.
Thucydides for the Amateur
Authors: Millar C. M. H.
Published: July 2013

Thucydides is, naturally enough, almost always considered purely and simply as a historian. Scholars deal with such problems as textual readings, the composition of the History, topography, land and sea forces, and the authenticity of the speeches. Yet treated just as a work of literature, as a book to take down off the shelves and read in an easy chair (though not, like Macaulay's;s scholar, with feet on the fender), the History can exercise an ever-increasing fascination. I do not suppose Thucydides has very many compulsive readers, but over one of them at any rate he has cast his spell, and as an amateur in every sense I should like to attempt to explain why.
The Computer and its Role in Classical Research
Authors: Ireland Stanley
Published: July 2013

Classics and the Computer: one might well be forgiven for dismissing such a phrase as today's equivalent of the ‘oil and vinegar’ of antiquity, those two substances whose refusal to mix was then proverbial. On the level of pure aesthetic appreciation indeed we have to admit that there is little that any statistical study or procedure can contribute. The majesty of Homer or Vergil, the intensity of Greek tragedy, the passion of Sappho, the grandeur of Cicero all make their appeal as much to the heart as they do to the head. Yet for a number of years now the languages of Greece and Rome, like those of more modern times, have been the subject of a growing interest among scholars who have sought to gain, through the application of the computer, both a wider and a deeper understanding of ancient literature and its structure. Classicists indeed have often been in the very forefront of computer application to literature. This is not to say, however, that the computer has in any way diminished the need for the more traditional forms of classical research; the ever growing stream of books and articles of this type should be sufficient answer to any such suggestion.