bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Date of Composition of Suetonius' Caesares
Authors: Townend Gavin
Published: February 2009

The only external evidence we have of the date of publication of Suetonius' Caesares is the statement of Iohannes Lydus that it contained a dedication to Septicius Clarus as praetorian prefect—a statement, incidentally, which is related to the correct nomenclature of the office, and not in any way to the persons concerned. This dedication, lost along with the opening chapters of Iulius, must accordingly have been made some time during the years 119–22, before Septicius and Suetonius were dismissed from their respective posts, apparently for lack of respect to the empress. What is by no means certain is that the dedicatory epistle was attached originally to the whole series of Lives; nor that all the Lives were completed, far less published, while Suetonius was still employed as ab epistulis to Hadrian.
Some Passages of the Agamemnon
Authors: Broadhead H. D.
Published: February 2009

In this article I deal with difficulties, textual and exegetical, in ten passages of the Agamemnon. In some passages there is wide agreement on the sense required, but not on the remedies proposed for a corrupt reading: here I venture to put forward fresh proposals that seem to possess a reasonable1 degree of palaeo-graphical probability (1347, 1659). In another passage I argue for a new interpretation with its appropriate emendation (1339). In some cases where the sense is hardly in doubt and the text not certainly corrupt, I propose what seems on linguistic or other grounds a preferable reading (496,966,1409,1630), or I argue in favour of some other scholar's proposal (319). Finally, where there can be little, if any, likelihood of successful restoration, I offer a tentative suggestion which may give at least an approximation to the original text (1657).
Horace's Epistle to Torquatus (Ep. 1.5)
Authors: Eidinow J. S. C.
Published: February 2009

Horace addresses Torquatus again in Carm. 4.7. There the poet distinguishes three cardinal qualities: Torquatus's genus, his facundia, and hispietas. Since Horace distinguishes them they were no doubt qualities on which Torquatus prided himself, but they are, in any case, the key by which Torquatus slips into Horace's lyric. I suggest that we can use the same key to open up the Epistle, and that by taking up these qualities we have ready access to the wit of the poem, carefully predicated upon its addressee.
Pour encourager les autres: Athens and Egesta encore
Authors: Henry Alan
Published: February 2009

A propos of his earlier attempt to demonstrate, by means of measurements, computer-enhanced images and laser technology, that the archon of IG i311 was Antiphon (418/17), not Habron (458/7), Mortimer Chambers now quotes with approval the favourable verdict of J. Tréheux: ‘la mésure des intervalles entre les lettres, la superposition des photographies multiples et, surtout, le bombardement du marbre par un rayon laser ont prouvé (les photographies en couleur A et B ne permettent pas d'en douter)
Aristophanes, Lysistrata 231
Authors: Forrest W. G.
Published: February 2009

In his admirable commentary, Jeffrey Henderson notes the significance of posture and of physical setting. He does not remark that the statue of Leaina near to which Lysistrata and Kalonike are standing on the Akropolis was intimately tied to the obscure story of the later years in the Athenian tyranny. With minor variations of detail or colour the story was that Leaina, a hetaira beloved of Harmodios or Aristogeiton, had been tortured by Hippias after the murder of Hipparchos but, brave girl, had preferred to die than say yes, or indeed say anything. She bit out her tongue. The Athenians set up a bronze lioness, the work of Amphikrates, to commemorate her martyrdom.
A sign of a new speaker in Plautus and Terence?
Authors: Kershaw Allan
Published: February 2009

The phrase ei mihi is used fifteen times by Plautus. On all but one occasion these words introduce a new speaker. The single ‘exception’ is, I suggest, rather an error of transmission. I quote the line in context, Bac. 1171–4

NIC. Ni abeas, quamquam tu bella es,

malum tibi magnum dabo iam. BACCH. Patiar,

non metuo, ne quid mihi doleat

quod ferias. NIC. Ut blandiloquast!

ei mihi, metuo. SOR. Hie magis tranquillust.

1173 non – blandiloquast uno versu B 1174 SOROR B: B D
A punning reminiscence of Vergil, Ecl. 10.75–7 in Horace, Epist. 1.5.28–9
Authors: Langslow D. R.
Published: February 2009

The fifth poem in Horace's first book of Epistles takes the form of an invitation to Torquatus to attend a dinner which the poet is preparing for that evening, the eveof the Emperor's birthday (line 9 eras nato Caesare). The fare will be simple but Horace will see to it that the furnishings, napkins, vessels and plates will be clean and bright and that the company and the seating-plan will be to Torquatus’ taste (21–6). Horace will get Butra and Septicius to be there, and Sabinus, too, as long as he is not kept away by a prior dinner engagement or by a girl he'd rather spend the evening with. With Torquatus and Horace, that makes four or five diners, so that there is room for others before the triclinium is full, although there shouldn't be too many; or, as Horace puts it (28–9):

locus est et pluribus umbris;

sed nimis arta premunt olidae conuiuia caprae.
Tycho Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff on the Dramatic technique of Sophocles
Authors: Lloyd-Jones Hugh
Published: February 2009

No project lay nearer to the heart of Eduard Fraenkel during his last years than that of promoting a reprint of the famous book Die dramatische Technik des Sophokles, by Tycho von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, which was first published as volume xxii of Philologische Untersuchungen in 1917. Tycho Wilamowitz, the son of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and the grandson of Theodor Mommsen, was killed fighting against the Russians near Ivangorod on the night of 14/15 October 1914. After his death the manuscript was prepared for publication by his friend Ernst Kapp, who has explained in the foreword of the book the nature of his services.
Euripides Heracles 581
Authors: Bremer J. M.
Published: February 2009

This passage is interpreted by all commentators and translators as follows: ‘Or how shall we call it glorious that I went out to fight the hydra and the lion at the command of Eurystheus—and shall I not labour to shield off death from my own children ?’ The purpose of my note1 is to suggest (i) that we have here a very remarkable use of the verb , and (2) that Euripides used it here with a precise and subtle intention
The Defeat of L. Metellus Denter at Arretium
Authors: Gwyn Morgan M.
Published: February 2009

The consuls of 284, according to the Fasti Capitolini, were L. Caecilius Metellus Denter and C. Servilius Tucca. Of Tucca we know nothing else at all, and if the literary sources also tell us that Metellus Denter was defeated and killed by Gauls at Arretium, the date of this setback and Metellus' status at the time have long been matter for dispute. The surviving accounts of Rome's campaigns against the Gauls in this period fall into three categories. First, there is Polybius, who apparently sets Metellus' death in 284 and terms him , prima facie consul. Then there are the sources which seem clearly to derive from a later, annalistic tradition; they describe Metellus as praetor and place his death in 283. And finally there is Appian, whose account represents an attempt to conflate these views and consequently falls between two stools; in his account Metellus is not even mentioned.
Habeo and Aveo: The Romance Future
Authors: Gratwick A. S.
Published: February 2009

‘The sudden emergence of all the post-classical functions of habeo+Infinitive in Tertullian is very remarkable’, as Mr. Coleman has said in his important paper (p. 226) on the origin and development of this structure, so prominent in the formation of the Future and Conditional paradigms of the main Romance languages. The functions which he has in mind are all Prospective: he distinguishes meanings tangential, as he puts it, to Possibility, Obligation/Necessity, Futurity, and, for the past tenses of habeo, Futurity-in-the-Past and Conditioned Unreality (p. 217). In this he essentially follows received opinion, though there have been those who would also distinguish a meaning tangential to Volition. Mr. Coleman gives these short shrift (p. 217 n. 3, p. 219 n. 2). Whether rightly, the reader may judge from what follows.
Literary Criticism in the Exegetical Scholia to theIliad: A Sketch
Authors: Richardson N. J.
Published: February 2009

The Homeric Scholia are not the most obvious source for literary criticism in the modern sense. And yet if one takes the trouble to read through them one will find many valuable observations about poetic technique and poetic qualities. Nowadays we tend to emphasize different aspects from those which preoccupied ancient critics, but that may be a good reason for looking again at what they have to say.
Aeschylusü Oresteia And Archilochus
Authors: Janko R.
Published: February 2009

In a recent article in this journal M. L. West made the plausible suggestion that some features of the parodos of Aeschylusü Agamemnon, including the famous simile of the vultures deprived of their young, display the influence of Archilochusü celebrated epode in which Lycambes was admonished with the tale of the fox and the eagle. I think a passage in the Choephoroe confirms his view.

One of the Oresteiaüs most characteristic traits is the manner in which themes and images recur during the trilogy. The simile of the vultures at Ag. 48 ff. and the omen of the eagle and the hare at 112 ff. are conspicuously placed and vividly drawn, and we are not surprised to find a resumption of this imagery in the Choephoroe, when the eagleüs nestlings, Electra and Orestes, are reunited and plan their revenge (Cho. 246–51, 255–9). Here we find the image reversed: the young have lost their parents, not the parent-birds their young as at Ag.
Alexander's Intelligence System
Authors: Engels Donald
Published: February 2009

It has frequently been recognized that the collection and use of accurate military intelligence was of fundamental importance for the success of Alexander's campaigns. No intelligent strategic or tactical decision can be made by any commander without advance knowledge of an enemy's location, strength, his capabilities and weaknesses, and the geography of the projected campaign. However, an analysis of the procedures Alexander used to obtain and evaluate intelligence has never been undertaken. This neglect is probably the result of the scattered and unsatisfactory nature of the references to Alexander's intelligence procedures in our ancient sources.
Lucretius de Rerum Natura 5.849–854
Authors: Chilton C. W.
Published: February 2009

For we see that many happenings must be united for things, that they may be able to beget and propagate their races; first that they may have food, and then a way whereby birth-giving seeds may pass through their frames, and issue from their slackened limbs; and that woman may be joined with man, they must needs each have means whereby they can interchange mutual joys.
Notes on Ovid's Tristia, Books I–II
Authors: Diggle James
Published: February 2009

When I refer to ‘modern editors’ I mean the following: (i) S. G. Owen, who edited the Tristia thrice (Tristium libri v, Oxford, 1889; in Postgate's Corpus poetarum Latinorum, 1894; Oxford Classical Text, 1915) and produced a small commentary on the first book (Oxford, 1885) and a large one on the second (Oxford, 1924); (ii) C. Landi (Corpus Paravianum, 1917); (iii) R. Ehwald-Fr. W. Levy (Teubner, 1922); (iv) A. L. Wheeler (Loeb edn., 1924); (v) J. André (Budé edn., 1968); (vi) Georg Luck (Heidelberg, 1967 (text and translation), 1968–72 (commentary on Books 1–2), 1977 (commentary on 3–5)).
Some Passages in Arrian Concerning Alexander
Authors: Hammond N. G. L.
Published: February 2009

‘Alexander, it is said, starting from Amphipolis and keeping on his left the city Philippi and the mountain Orbelus, invaded Thrace, that part occupied by the so-called self-governing Thracians. He crossed the river Nestus, and in ten days, they say, he reached the mountain Haemus.’
Periplus Maris Erythraei: Three Notes on The Text
Authors: Casson Lionel
Published: February 2009

IPer.4: As the text stands now, we read that Adulis, the principal port of the Axumite Kingdom, is on a deep bay that extends due south, in front of which is an island called Oreiue, situated about 200 stades from the innermost [sc. part of the] bay towards the open seaand with both its shores paralle to the mainland, where arriving vessels now moor…Formerly they used to moor at this innermost [part of the] bay at what is called Didorus Island right by this [part of the]
Towards a Resolution of the Problem of τά ένί διαστηματι γ ραφόμενα In Pappus' Collection Book VIII
Authors: Jackson D. E. P.
Published: February 2009

The phrase τά ένί διαστηματι γ ραφόμενα occurs in that part of Pappus' Collection Book VIII which deals with instrumental solutions to problems more practical than purely geometrical. In the preceding section an instrumental solution for the problem of doubling the cube has been propounded, which is dependent on the use of a ruler passing through a point about which it is turned in the generation of the locus of points known as the cissoid, and in the subsequent section a solution is propounded for the problem of finding the diameter of a cylinder of which only an incomplete portion of the side remains, leaving neither base intact.
Alcaeus Fr. Ni Helen (Lobel-Page), 15 F.
Authors: Gillies Charles E.
Published: February 2009

‘And many chariots were smashed to pieces in the dust…’ My conjecture seems far more vibrant and vivid than Edgar Lobel's suggestion Adopting my supplement the Greek will mean that the chariots are not only broken but actually smashed to pieces. This Epic form fits well into a poem that already has so much Epic usage.
The New Gallus, 8–9
Authors: Hollis A. S.
Published: February 2009

As far as I am aware, it has generally been taken for granted that ‘Kato’ in the pentameter must be vocative. The double vocative ‘Visce’—‘Kato’ does not seem objectionable if ‘non’ were repeated as first word of the pentameter (e.g., as Professor Nisbet suggests, ‘non ego, Visce, / non quadrupla, Kato, …). None the less this is unexpected, and it seems at least worth considering the possibility that 'Kato’ might be nominative. The most plausible (if not the only) way of accounting for a nominative would be as subject of a relative clause. Further consequences would follow almost inevitably: the word-ending doubtfully read
How the Moon might throw some of her Light upon the Two Ways of Parmenides
Authors: Popper K. R.
Published: February 2009

I first met Parmenides – together with Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and the other great Presocratics – in a German translation by Wilhelm Nestle, famous as the editor of the later editions of Zeller's magnum opus. I was 15 or 16 years old, and I was overwhelmed by the meeting. The verses that I liked best were Parmenides' story of Selene's love for radiant Helios (DKB 14–15). But I did not like it that the translation made the moon male and the sun female (these being their genders in German), and it occurred to me to give the couplet in German a title like ‘Moongoddess and Sungod’, or perhaps ‘Selene and Helios’, in order to rectify the genders. So I began fiddling about with the translations. The volume, which I still possess, shows many traces of this.
Euripides, Supplices 42–70
Authors: Willink C. W.
Published: February 2009

In a previous article I discussed some textual and metrical issues in the lyric-iambic stanzas Supplices 71–8/79–86, and the problematic persona and constitution of the Chorus. The preceding maternal ἱκεсα in four ionic stanzas presents fewer textual problems; but here too there is a challenging crux, at 45(–6) in the first strophe; and there is more to be said about the ode's metrical structure. I begin with a metrical reappraisal, which will prove to have a bearing on the textual problem. Unless otherwise stated, the text given is identical with those of both Diggle and Collard, except in lineation.
Aristotle and Democracy
Authors: Lintott Andrew
Published: February 2009

There are two main types of question which arise from Aristotle's treatment of democracy, as from all other major topics which we find in that part of the Politics which is related to empirical data about political behaviour (Books 2–6 in O.C.T.). One type is primarily philosophical: ‘Is Aristotle's analysis logically coherent, is it consistent with his data, is it convincing?’ The other is more historical, though it has philosophical importance too: ‘From where does he derive his data, from where his views (or prejudices)? Has he done justice to the historical events that he adduces and to the opinions of men that he cites as evidence for political and ethical norms?’ Although in this paper I have a special interest in questions of the second type regarding the nature of the data, they cannot be tackled satisfactorily without considering the nature and validity of the analysis of democracy.
Aenesidemus and the Academy
Authors: Caizzi Fernanda Decleva
Published: February 2009

In cod. 212 of hisBibliotheca, Photius provides some information of great importance for our scanty knowledge of Pyrrhonian scepticism between Timon and Sextus
‘Pompeius Macer’ and Ovid
Authors: White Peter
Published: February 2009

The Pompeius Macer whom prosopographers have discerned among the friends of Ovid boasts connections as stellar as anyone in Ovid's ambit. His induction into the Roman establishment was preceded by the achievements of his father (or possibly grandfather) Theophanes of Mytilene, who for two decades had been one of Pompey's closest confidants. Macer himself served Augustus first as equestrian procurator of Asia and then as director of state libraries in Rome, and when the phil-Hellene Tiberius replaced Augustus, his position at court grew firmer still. He lived to see his son gain a seat in the Roman senate, to become the first known senator of Greek origin. And while tending to his political career, he made a name for himself in Roman literary circles and maintained a long-lasting friendship with Ovid.
The Complexity of Socratic Irony: A Note on Professor Vlastos' Account
Authors: Gottlieb Paula
Published: February 2009

Professor Vlastos argues that Socratic irony was responsible for a momentous change in the way in which irony was understood in ancient times. Before Socrates, he argues, irony is connected with lying and deceit, but after Socrates it is associated with wit and urbanity. Vlastos claims that Socratic irony is distinctive and complex. According to Vlastos, Socratic irony involves no hint of deception; it consists simply in saying something which when understood in one way is false, but when understood in another way is true.
Kai For Et
Authors: Holford-Strevens Leofranc
Published: February 2009

The late Sir Roger Mynors, in a letter to Sebastiano Timpanaro quoted in the latter's Contributi difilologia e di storia della lingua latina (Rome, 1978), p. 543 n. 15, states that he had wondered ‘whether it might be a habit of Latin writers, when they were putting only one or two “parolette” between two pieces of Greek’, to use Greek rather than Latin: he invents as an example ‘ἦθος κα πθος where logic demanded ἦθος et πθος’. The answer is that they sometimes did: the present paper will concentrate on the type instantiated by his imaginary example, the use of κα for et. I do not claim to have recorded every case, but those I have observed are the following.
Patterns of Name Diffusion Within the Greek World and Beyond
Authors: Herman Gabriel
Published: February 2009

Thucydides the Historian identifies himself as the son of a certain Oloros (4.104.4) and, since Thucydides was by birth an Athenian (1.1.1), and Oloros is a Thracian name, the question arises how he acquired this Thracian patronymic. According to the view which has gained almost general acceptance, Thucydides of the deme Halimous in Attica owed his Thracian patronymic to a connexion by marriage. The hypothetical reconstruction of the family tree is that Thucydides' Athenian grandfather had married a daughter of Miltiades the Athenian and Hegesipyle, daughter of the Thracian ruler Oloros, and a son of this marriage was called Oloros after his maternal great-grandfather. This Athenian Oloros became, as shown in Figure, the father of Thucydides the historian – an Athenian with a Thracian patronymic.
Love and the Individual in Plato's Phaedrus
Authors: White F. C.
Published: February 2009

There are two basic objections to Plato's account of love in the Phaedrus, both raised by Gregory Vlastos, both metaphysically important in their own right, and both still unanswered. The first is that the Phaedrus sees men as mere images of another world, making it folly or even idolatry to treat them as worthy of love for their own sakes. The other is that it considers the love that we bear for our fellow men to be the result of human, temporal deficiency. If only we could be free of this deficiency, the objection runs, we would have no reason to love anything or anyone except the Forms: seen face to face, these by themselves would absorb all our love.
History in [Demosthenes] 59
Authors: Trevett Jeremy
Published: February 2009

It is well known that Athenian orators, when they made reference to the historical past, usually eschewed prolonged narrative in favour of brief allusions to familiar episodes from Athenian history. Perhaps the most striking exception to this custom is the long and detailed account of fifth-century Plataean history in the pseudo-Demosthenic speech Against Neaera (Dem. 59.94–103). The main interest of this passage, however, lies not in its divergence from contemporary rhetorical practice, but in its clear reliance on Thucydides for its account of the siege of Plataea during the Peloponnesian War. Indeed, it is unique in Attic oratory in the extent of its reliance on an identifiable historical work. Yet, considering its significance, this passage has received very little scholarly attention, and merits a closer reexamination.
The Text of Lucretius 2.1174
Authors: Possanza Mark
Published: February 2009

The phraseire ad scopulumhas long been the victim of a conspiracy of silence. Thecaput coniurationis, one might say, is an editorial prejudice against the transmitted text born of a rather misguided enthusiasm for Vossius' conjecturecapulum. That conjecture has been a reliable fixture in the modern Lucretian vulgate since Havercamp first printed it in his text of thede rerum natura(Leiden, 1725). Before the publication of Havercamp's edition, however, scholars had not baulked at the transmitted text, rightly glossing it as a nautical metaphor for ‘ruin, destruction’: in the words of Lambinus (Paris, 1565), ‘ad interitum: translatum a navi, quae infligitur scopulo’. But after the appearance of Havercamp's edition editors and commentators strangely refused to give due consideration to the reading of the manuscripts, ignoring it for no better reason than a presumption of error. I propose, therefore, in the following discussion to expose the fallacious reasoning that undergirds such a presumption and to vindicateire ad scopulum.
The Death of Priam: Allegory and History in the Aeneid
Authors: Bowie A. M.
Published: February 2009

The true relation between these scenes and historic fact is more mysterious and less simple. The metamorphosis takes place on a higher plane. Historic events and the poet's inner experience are stripped of everything accidental and actual. They are removed from time and transported into the large and distant land of Myth. There, on a higher plane of life, they are developed in symbolic and poetic shapes having a right to an existence of their own. The fact, therefore, that the subjection of the storm is described in a simile for a moment highlighting a very important sphere of the poem (namely that of the historical world) is more decisive than a possible allusion to the younger Cato.
What Are the Topnoi in Philebus 51C?
Authors: Compton Todd
Published: February 2009

In an interesting passage in the Philebus (51c, cf. 56b–c, an enlarged and slightly modified list), Plato associates pure beauty with geometrical forms created by certain measuring tools used both by mathematicians and carpenters. The ‘beauty of figures’ is analysed as' something straight [εὐθ⋯ τι]… and round [περιφερ⋯ς] and the two- and three-dimensional figures (sc. σχ⋯7mu;ατα) generated from these by [τ⋯ρνοι] and ruler [καν⋯σ7iota;] and set-squares [γων⋯αι]' He continues: ‘For I maintain that these things are not beautiful in relation to something, as other things are, but they are always beautiful by nature, by themselves…’
Wordsworth on Virgil, Georgics 4.228–30
Authors: Wu Duncan
Published: February 2009

When Wordsworth was eighteen he embarked on a series of translations from Virgil's Georgics. All that survives of them today is a series of rough drafts and jottings, among which is a short note in which he attempts to resolve the well-known crux at 4.228–30

Suppose we read it thus – ‘prius haustu parcus aquarum / Ora fove, etc.’ – and construe it thus:

First sparingly steep the mouth (‘ora’) of the hive in water (‘haustu … aquarum’).
Cornelia and Dido (Lucan 9.174–9)
Authors: Kubiak David P.
Published: February 2009

Pompey has been treacherously killed, his body decapitated and thrown into the surf. The faithful Cornelia cannot give her husband a proper funeral, but must be content to place on the pyre all that is left of his greatness. Commentators are not of much help in this place, most caught up in tralatician glossing and hence content to echo the scholiastic reference to Pompey's three triumphs. Thomas Farnaby thought of the funeral of Misenus in Aeneid 6; but one looks in vain to Grotius (1639), Oudendorp (1728), Burman (1740), Bentley (1760), Weber (1828–9), Francken (1896–7), Heitland-Haskins (1889), Housman (1926), Bourgery-Ponchont (1947), and Luck (1985) for the most important parallel, which is to Dido in Aeneid. I adduce the passages Heinze well described as examples of ‘das Idealbild eines heroischen Weibes’:

tu secreta pyram tecto interiore sub auras

erige, et arma uiri thalamo quae fixa reliquit

impius exuuiasque omnis lectumque iugalem,

quo perii, super imponas:

494–7) super exuuias ensemque relictum

effigiemque toro locat haud ignata futuri.

(507–8)hie, postquam Iliacas uestis notumque cubile

conspexit, paulum lacrimis et mente morata

incubuitque toro dixitque nouissima uerba:

‘dulces exuuiae…’
Augustus and the Muses (Suetonius, Tiberius 21.4)
Authors: Powell J. G. F.
Published: February 2009

Suetonius quotes a number of extracts from Augustus' letters, with the intention of showing that Augustus did not dislike Tiberius as much as some had held, and that he had a high opinion of Tiberius' military qualities. The first of these contains a somewhat vexed textual problem. It reads as follows (in Ihm's Teubner edition):

Vale, iucundissime Tiberi, et feliciter rem gere, ⋯μο⋯ κα⋯ ταῖς †μουιcαcαιcτ στρατηγ⋯ν. iucundissime et ita sim felix, vir fortissime et dux νομιμώτατε, vale.
The interrogation of Meletus: Apology 24c4–28al
Authors: Smith Lynette Reid
Published: February 2009

The interrogation of Meletus in the Apology at 24c4–28al is not infrequently seen as a typical case of all that is intellectually and artistically dissatisfying in Plato's practice of the genre of philosophical dialogue: not only are we presented with a philosopher who makes some claim to being committed to setting a particularly stringent standard for honesty in argumentation making sophistical arguments, but we are presented also with a cardboard interlocutor who is forced by the hand of Plato to acquiesce to those arguments in a fashion that is completely dissatisfying to the reader. The best anyone seems to do to save Plato from these charges of artistic incompetence and intellectual dishonesty is to appeal to such a level of historical accuracy for the text that the stupidity of Meletus' responses can be attributed to the stupidity of Meletus himself, or to point out features of the political and legal situation that might prevent Meletus from answering the questions by drawing on his true motivation—which is presumably more coherent. Taylor says of this passage:

The humour of the situation is that the prosecutor cannot venture to say what he means by either of his charges without betraying the fact that, owing to the ‘amnesty’, the matters complained of are outside of the competency of the court… Hence, when Meletus is pressed to explain what he means, he has to take refuge in puerile nonsense.
Notes on Ovid's Tristia
Authors: Ritchie A. L.
Published: February 2009

The text is taken from Georg Luck's edition (Heidelberg, 1967). I have also consulted P. Burman (Amsterdam, 1727), S. G. Owen's editio maior (Oxford, 1889), A. L. Wheeler's Loeb edition (London and New York, 1924) in the 2nd edition revised by G. P. Goold (London and Cambridge, MA., 1988), and Georg Luck's commentary (Heidelberg, 1977). I have also had a preview of J. B. Hall's forthcoming Teubner edition and I have used his apparatus, in which the traditional sigla for the principal manuscripts are retained.
Sharing out land: two passages in the Corpus agrimensorum romanorum
Authors: Campbell J. B.
Published: February 2009

Virgil, in his description of the establishment of a new city by Aeneas for those Trojans who wished to remain in Sicily, is thinking of the Roman practice of colonial foundation: ‘Meanwhile Aeneas marked out the city with the plough and allocated the houses (by lot)’. We may note the personal role of the founder, the ploughing of the ritual first furrow, the organized grants to the settlers and the equality of treatment implied in the use of lot (sortiri). Virgil was writing at the end of the first century B.C. at a time of great activity in land distribution, but the Romans had been founding colonies from the mid fourth century. Each colony involved the creation of an urban area and the settlement of people on the surrounding agricultural land, and so perpetuated the city state, which was central to ancient life and culture. Indeed a colony was a smaller image of Rome itself. In the early Republic, colonies, either of Latins or of Roman citizens, were established on the periphery of Roman territory, largely for military and strategic reasons. Between 200 and 173 B.C. more than 40,000 may have received plots of land, amounting to about 1,000 square miles of territory. Later, the motives for colonial foundations became more complex, being closely connected with increasing economic and political problems. There can have been few more important aspects in the development of colonies than the need to find land for discharged troops. These in the main were rank and file soldiers who would expect equal shares in land allocations.
Don't try this at home: Pliny's Salpe, Salpe's Paignia and magic
Authors: Davidson James N.
Published: February 2009

There are two women called Salpe who are said to have written books in antiquity: one is described by Athenaeus (7.322a) as the name or pseudonym of a writer of ‘Paignia’ the other is cited by Pliny the Elder who calls her at one point Salpe obstetrix. Salpe is a rare name in antiquity—I know of no other examples—and few ancient books were ascribed to women. That two of these rare female writers should be called by the same name is something of a coincidence. That the name they shared was the very rare Salpe is a priori distinctly unlikely. It is much more plausible that they were one and the same.
Socrates and Gorgias at Delphi and Olympia:Phaedrus235d6–236b4
Authors: Morgan Kathryn A.
Published: February 2009

It is a commonplace of modern criticism that every text is to be located within a complex network of cultural practices and material. Students of the ancient world may sometimes feel at a disadvantage; we simply do not have as much information as we would like in order to contextualize thoroughly. This has been especially true in the study of Platonic dialogues. The meagre remains of the writings of the sophists against whom Plato measured himself and of the art to which he refers (to mention only two areas) entail that analysis of Plato is often confined to the structure of his philosophy. Of course, the requirements of Plato's arguments must always be assigned primary importance; the relative lack of information about Plato's cultural context has not prevented detailed exposition of his method and achievements. Occasionally, however, a kindly fate allows us to set a dialogue, or part of it, in its appropriate material and ideological context and to create an interface between literary, philosophical, and archaeological evidence. Such evidence may not alter our evaluation of Plato's arguments on the analytic level, but it can enrich our appreciation of his literary artistry and recapture for us some of the resonance that his work would have had for a contemporary audience.
The death of Chiron: Ovid, Fasti 5.379–414
Authors: Brookes Ian
Published: February 2009

The story of the death and catasterism of Chiron is one of the most charming and skilfully-presented episodes in the Fasti. Ovid relates how Hercules, in the course of his twelve labours, came to Mount Pelion, and was hospitably received by the centaur Chiron and his pupil, the young Achilles. While admiring Hercules' splendid arms, Chiron drops one of the hero's poisoned arrows onto his foot. Despite desperate attempts to find a remedy, he fails to recover, but is transformed into the constellation of Centaurus.
A sacred ceremony in honour of the buttocks: Petronius, Satyrica 140.1–11
Authors: Panayotakis Costas
Published: February 2009

The episode at Croton is the last series of events we possess from the surviving Satyrica, though not necessarily the last part of the novel in its original form. The action takes place in a town which no longer existed at the suggested time of the novel's composition. The plot is focused, mainly, on two themes: legacy-hunting and Encolpius' impotence. His unsuccessful relationship with the nymphomaniac Circe (126.1–130.8) and his painful experience with the witch-like priestesses Proselenos and Oenothea (131.1–139.5) are manifestations of the latter theme. Philomela's prostitution of her children (140.1–11) is a brief example of the former theme and shows the kind of gifts the Crotonians offered Eumolpus in order to win his favour and a share in his vast legacy (124.4). The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the anecdote of the matron Philomela was composed by Petronius as a narrative equivalent of a theatrical farce. The paper is divided in two parts. The first aims to establish the theatrical (mimic) backcloth of the story, in front of which the ensuing action is going to take place. The second shows the theatrical nature of the anecdote itself, i.e. the structure, the characters, the staging, the language and the multiple levels of its description that demonstrate its theatricality.
Don't take it literally: Themistocles and the case of the inedible victuals
Authors: Marr J. L.
Published: February 2009

There is a standard tradition in the ancient sources, which makes its first appearance at Thucydides 1.138.5, that, when Themistocles had fled into exile and been given the equivalent of political asylum by the Persian King Artaxerxes, he was ‘given’ the three Asiatic Greek cities of Magnesia, Myus and Lampsacus. There has been a fair amount of scholarly controversy over how the King could ‘give’ Themistocles Lampsacus, a city of great strategic importance on the Hellespont, which, by the mid-460s, was almost certainly within the ambit of the Delian League, i.e. no longer his to give. My concern in this paper is not with that political problem, but rather with a different, though related, issue – whether valid conclusions can be drawn from the Thucydides passage and the subsequent tradition for the social and economic history of these three cities in the classical period. I suggest that they cannot.
Senate intervenants in 50 b.c.
Authors: Ryan F. X.
Published: February 2009

M. Bonnefond-Coudry has performed a great service by compiling a list of senators who are known to have spoken in the senate (‘intervenants’) in the first century b.c. Yet her list for the year 50 invites a thoroughgoing revision. Beside the rubric ‘supplicatio à Cicéron’ she gives the following list: Cato, Hirrus, Balbus, Lentulus (Spinther?), Domitius (Ahenobarbus or Calvinus), Scipio, Favonius. She also notes that Pompey spoke at a session late in the year (App. b.c. 2.28–9, instead of her reference, 2.29–30), and maintains that Scipio spoke on 1 December (Plut. Caes. 30.4–6).
Religion and Politics in Aeschylus'Orestela
Authors: Bowie A. M.
Published: February 2009

In the light of the remarkable changes of political colour which Aeschylus has undergone in the hands of scholars, there is a certain amusing irony about the fact that the satyr-play which followed theOresteiawas theProteus. Sadly, we know too little of theProteusto say whether it would have resolved this debate about theOresteid'spolitical stance, though one may have one's doubts.
‘A Cock for Asclepius’
Authors: Most Glenn W.
Published: February 2009

In any list of famous last words, Socrates' are likely to figure near the top. Details of the final moments of celebrities tend anyway to exert a peculiar fascination upon the rest of us: life's very contingency provokes a need to see lives nevertheless as meaningful organic wholes, defined as such precisely by their final closure; so that even the most trivial aspects of their ending can come to seem bearers of profound significance, soliciting moral reflections apparently not less urgent for their being quite unwarranted. From earliest times, this fascination with last moments has come to be concentrated in particular upon last words: situated at that most mysterious of borders, between life and death, they seem to look backwards and forwards at once, judging the speaker's own past life from the vantage-point of a future realm he is about to attain and hinting at the nature of what awaits us all from the perspective of that past life he still – however tenuously – shares with us. A moment earlier, and there is no reason to privilege any one discourse of the speaker's above another; a moment later, and his lips are sealed for ever. Only in that final moment can he seem to pass an unappealable judgement on himself, to combine in a single body two incompatible subjectivities, the one suffering and extremely mortal, the other dispassionate and transcendent. If he is a thinker or a man of action, this is his last chance to summarize a lifetime's meditation or experience in a pithy, memorable aphorism.If he is a celebrated poet, he can be imagined to have composed his own epitaph; if he is a Hellenistic poet, he may even in fact have done so.
Xenocrates' Daemons and the Irrational Soul
Authors: Schibli Hermann S.
Published: February 2009

In the second century of our era the Athenian Platonist, Atticus, claimed that it was clear not only to philosophers but perhaps even to ordinary people that the heritage left by Plato was the immortality of the soul. Plato had expounded the doctrine in various and manifold ways (ποικίλως καì παντοίως) and this was about (σχεδόν) the only thing holding together the Platonic school. Atticus is but one witness to the prominence accorded the soul in discussions and debates among later Platonists. But while questions concerning the origin, constitution, and destiny of the human soul are relatively well attested for Middle Platonism, not to mention Neoplatonism, we know much less about these topics among Plato's immediate successors in the Academy, Speusippus of Athens (c. 408–339) and Xenocrates of Chalcedon (396–314). Both wrote treatises on the soul (περì ψυχ⋯ς), but these have been lost along with their other, numerous writings. Because the least that can be said is that Speusippus and Xenocrates upheld the immortality of the soul (as would be expected), any snippet of information that might tell us more deserves close consideration.
Aristotle on the Analogy Between Action and Nature
Authors: Granger Herbert
Published: February 2009

In Physics 2.8 Aristotle argues for his natural teleology by arguing for the goal-directed character of nature (or biology). The argument that he develops with the most care is directed against those natural philosophers, like Empedocles, who maintain that the results of natural processes which benefit organisms, such as teeth, come to be through chance (198b16–199a8). Aristotle counters by arguing that because the beneficial results of natural processes occur regularly, ‘always or for the most part’, they cannot be the outcome of chance, which would yield beneficial results only irregularly. Thus such results must come to be only for the sake of some end. This argument against chance has received the most attention from scholars, but Physics 2.8 contains another argument for the goal-directed character of nature, which has received relatively little attention because it does not seem to offer much argument for natural teleology. The argument depends upon an analogy between action and nature, and it simply maintains that since human action (of which art is an example) and nature are analogous, and since action is goal-directed, so too is nature. The argument is of interest, despite its neglect, because it seems to prove nothing to us and yet Aristotle puts it forward confidently as advancing his view about the goal-directed character of nature. The argument from analogy should claim our attention because it provides important evidence for the basic spring behind Aristotle's natural teleology. The fact that Aristotle takes for granted the strength of the analogy with human action in his argument for the goal-directedness of nature suggests that he holds human-like goal-directedness to be a condition of intelligibility that must be met by any intelligible process of coming to be, whether human or natural.
Analecta Gelliana
Authors: Holford-strevens Leofranc
Published: February 2009

Not only was Gellius' preface received in the fifteenth century at the end of his work instead of the beginning, but it arrived almost or wholly without the Greek, which had to be patched up by guesswork; between siluarum and quidam early editors read ‘ille κηρ⋯ον, alius κ⋯ρας ⋯μαλӨε⋯ας’, the first two names in the similar passage, Plin. N.H. pr. 24. Salmasius, in the preface to his Plinianae exercitationes, printed a text ‘ex vestigiis antiquae scripturae optimi exemplaris [sc. MS P = Paris, BN lat. 5765] partim etiam coniecturis nostris correctiorem’; following κ⋯ρας he gave, in the right place but with the wrong accent, ‘alius Κ⋯ρια’. But when eleven years later he came to annotate Simplicius' commentary on Epictetus' Ἐγχειρ⋯διον, alerted by Simplicius' statement (taken from Arrian's own epistle dedicatory) συν⋯ταξεν ⋯ Ἀρριαν⋯ς, τ⋯ καιριὼτατα κα⋯ ⋯ναγκαι⋯τατα ⋯ν øιλοσοø⋯ᾳ κα⋯ κινητικώτατα τ⋯ν ψυχ⋯ν ⋯πιλεξ⋯μενος ⋯κ τ⋯ν Ἐπικτ⋯του λ⋯γων, he remarked: ‘Quidam et inscripsere libros suos olim τ⋯ κα⋯ρια, quod maxime ad rem quam tractabant pertinentia eo opere persequebantur’, citing Gellius with ‘alius κα⋯ρια and commenting ‘Ita enim ex veteri codice ibi scribendum est, non ut vulgo editur, κ⋯ριον [sic]'. Nevertheless, editors preferred his first thoughts to his second; Hertz, in his separate edition of Gellius' preface (Progr. Breslau, summer 1877) and in his editio maior (Berlin, 1883–5), gives three parallels:

Plin. N.H. pr. 24, ‘Κηρ⋯ον inscripsere quod uolebant intellegi fauom’, where the Latin translation guarantees the reading;

Clem. Alex. 6.1.2.1 (pp. 422–3 Stählin-Früchtel-Treu) ⋯ν μ⋯ν οὖν τῷ λειμ⋯νι τ⋯ ἄνӨη ποικ⋯λως ⋯νӨοȗντα κ⋯ν τ⋯ παραδε⋯σ⋯ [‘orchard’] ⋯ τ⋯ν ⋯κροδρ⋯ων øυτε⋯α οὐ κατ⋯ εἶδος ἕκαστον κεχώρισται τ⋯ν ⋯λλογεν⋯ν (ᾗ κα⋯ Λειμ⋯ν⋯ς τινες κα⋯ Ἑλικ⋯νας κα⋯ Κηρ⋯α κα⋯ Π⋯πλους συναγωγ⋯ς øιλομαӨεȋς ποικ⋯λως ⋯ξανӨισ⋯μενοι συνεγρ⋯ψαντο), where again the sense requires the honeycomb;

Philost. VS 565 ⋯πιστολα⋯ δ⋯ πλεȋσται Ἡρώδου κα⋯ διαλ⋯ξει κα⋯ ⋯øημερ⋯δες ⋯γχειρ⋯δι⋯ τε κα⋯ καίρια τ⋯ν ⋯ρχα⋯αν πολυμ⋯Өειαν ⋯ν βραχεȋ ⋯πηνӨισμ⋯να, where hertz emends κα⋯ρια to κηρ⋯α.
Why Attic Nights? Or What's in a Name?
Authors: Vardi Amiel D.
Published: February 2009

In the preface to his Nodes Atticae, Gellius explains his choice of title:

quoniam longinquis per hiemem noctibus in agro, sicuti dixi, terrae Atticae commentationes hasce ludere ac facere exorsi sumus, idcirco eas inscripsimus Noctium esse Atticarum (praef. 4)

He then proceeds to enumerate other titles used for miscellaneous works similar to his own, both Greek and Latin, which, he claims, are far more refined and witty than his title (§§4–9). Attractive as Gellius' explanation may be, it raises some serious difficulties2 and should not be taken at face value, especially since it seems to establish a novel type of relation between title and work. None of the titles in Gellius' list seems to have been based on the circumstances of the inception of the work, nor indeed does any other extant title prior to the publication of the Nodes Atticae. There is no reason to deny Gellius the credit for inventing a novel principle of titling, yet titles based on the circumstances of composition rather than on the content of the work fail to perform a primary function of titles, namely an initial direction of the expectations of prospective readers.
Ctesias' Parrot
Authors: Bigwood J. M.
Published: February 2009

Tall tales abound in Ctesias'Indica, as scholars have not hesitated to emphasize, heaping ridicule on the author's enthusiasm for the fantastic and on his apparent lack of regard for the truth. However, by no means everything in the work is absurd or wrong, and marvels too are no surprise. After all, as a resident of the Persian court for a number of years at the end of the fifth century B.C., Ctesias had seen items from India which would have been truly remarkable to Greeks of his time. He had seen, for example, elephants, which few Greeks before Alexander's Asian campaigns had done, and, it should be added, much of what he says about these animals is quite correct. The following pages discuss what he relates of the bird which he calls the β⋯ττακκος, the parrot, or rather what Photius in a not entirely problem-free section of his summary of the work preserves of the original description. As with Ctesias' account of the elephant, this is the first Greek description, so far as we know.
A Notes onAeneid8.514–517
Authors: Papanghelis Theodore D.
Published: February 2009

Evander promises Aeneas two hundred of his Arcadians for the war against the Italians, with as many cavalry under Pallas into the bargain; and puts his son under the Trojan leader's command:

hunc tibi praeterea, spes et solacia nostri,

Pallanta adiungam; sub te tolerare magistro

militiam et graue Martis opus, tua cernere facta

adsuescat, primis et te miretur ab annis.
The Nature of Sappho's Seizure in FR. 31 LP as Evidence of her Inversion
Authors: Devereux George
Published: February 2009

It is proposed to reappraise the nature of Sappho's seizure (2 B = 2 D = 31 LP), to demonstrate that it constitutes proof positive of her lesbianism and to delimit, on the basis of psycho-physiological considerations, the sense any emendation of(v. 9) must have, if it is to match the clinical precision and to fit the rest of the seizure she describes.
The First Stele of the Hekatompedon Inventories
Authors: Thompson Wesley E.
Published: February 2009

In a previous article in this journal I proposed the hypothesis that the First Stele of the Hekatompedon inventories was originally opisthographic. Subsequently, when eleven fragments of this stele were placed in plaster in the Epigraphical Museum, it became possible to examine its reverse face thoroughly and to see clearly the architectural features of the stone.
Who Said What About Alcibiades? Frogs 1422–34
Authors: Marr J. L.
Published: February 2009

Aristophanes Frogs 1407–81 is a passage involving several problems of interpretation, the chief of which is, of course, the position and status of lines 1437–41 and 1451–3. In this brief note I shall confine myself to a consideration of the distribution of lines 1422–34 among the characters involved.