bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Greek Dance
Authors: Fitton J. W.
Published: February 2009

Many books have been written on Greek dance. The fault which bedevils a large number of them is that their authors have tried to recreate the movements of the dances from the artistic evidence without taking into account the conventions of Greek vase-painting and sculpture. Other books, and they are the most useful, set out the literary and the artistic evidence without attempting to reconstruct the dances. Rarely, however, are the wider implications considered, and it is these which I wish to discuss here. More analysis and discussion of the evidence for many of my statements is no doubt required, but the place for that is a book rather than an article which ranges over a comparatively large field.
Lucretius 3. 492–3
Authors: Gilbert G. D.
Published: February 2009

His translation is, ‘obviously because the violence of the disease is dispersed throughout the body and as it forces out breath stirs up foam…’ The difficulty is that nowhere else does ‘distracta’ mean ‘dispersed’. Moreover, in vv. 501 and 507, in the same sequence of argument, the meaning is clearly ‘torn apart’, as usual. One way of meeting this difficulty is to read ‘anima’ in 493, as proposed by Tohte. However, this gives the barely defensible ‘anima spumas’ and is unsatisfactory in another respect. Lines 499–501, in which ‘ut docui’ must refer back to 492–3, imply that the ‘animus’ as well as the ‘anima’ was mentioned there and that the effect of epilepsy is to upset the relation between the two.
Catullus 116
Authors: Macleod C. W.
Published: February 2009

If Catullus' poems as we have them faithfully reproduce their order in the original roll or rolls, and if that order reflects a design of the poet's, then the last piece in our manuscripts naturally merits close attention. But even one who has vigorously upheld these hypotheses writes: ‘it is tempting to suppose that the poem is a spurious addition, attached after the publication of the collection; Catullus may indeed have written it, but not wanted to include so illepidus a piece of versification in his published works’ (Wiseman, Catullan Questions [Leicester, 1969], 27). Nor has the poem attracted much interest in its own right; it seems to be generally considered just another slice of biography, and as such hardly susceptible of a poetic meaning. The remarks which follow try to show that it has one, and perhaps also a significant position.
Further Observations on the Dating of Enmann's Kaisergeschichte
Authors: Bird H. W.
Published: February 2009

The significance of the dating of Enmann's Kaisergeschichte in the controversy which has long surrounded the Historia Augusta is common knowledge to all scholars who have more than a nodding acquaintance with the period. Enmann himself concluded that the KG ended with or shortly after Diocletian's accession. This was a necessary hypothesis for Enmann in 1884 because the H.A. had clearly used the KG and the self-proclaimed authorship and dating of the former were generally accepted. None the less in Enmann's opinion the resemblances between Victor and Eutropius continued into the sole reign of Constantius II down to the Battle of Strasbourg in 357 and Enmann was compelled to ascribe this to a ‘continuation’ of the KG.
Symmetry in the Empedoclean Cycle
Authors: Graham Daniel W.
Published: February 2009

According to the traditional view of Empedocles' cosmic cycle, there are two creations of plants and animals, one under the dominion of increasing Strife and one under the dominion of increasing Love. At the point at which Strife holds complete sway the four elements are completely separated and all life is destroyed; at the point at which Love is completely dominant there is also a destruction of the biological world, this time because the elements are blended into a perfectly homogeneous mixture. This interpretation of the cosmic cycle, which has prevailed almost since it was developed by Friedrich Panzerbieter (1844) and seconded by authority of Eduard Zeller (1856) was challenged by Paul Tannery (1887) and then by H. von Arnim (1902). Long after these essentially programmatic critiques, three independent studies published in 1965 by Jean Bollack, Uvo Hölscher and Friedrich Solmsen mounted a vigorous challenge to the received view. However, in a detailed monograph devoted to Empedocles' cosmic cycle, Denis O'Brien (1969) brought to bear an impressive array of scholarly evidence and critical acumen in support of the traditional view (or rather a modified version of it). Several challenges to the traditional view have appeared since O'Brien's book, of which the most significant is that of A. A. Long, who, while criticizing attempts of some opponents of the traditional view, produced some novel and interesting arguments against it. Although the traditional view continues to enjoy the support of authorities such as Jonathan Barnes and M. R. Wright, there is a decided shift in favour of revisionary views. Nevertheless recent advocates of a revisionary interpretation do not provide detailed refutations of the traditional view; Long's arguments remain the strongest objections to the traditional view, and they have never been refuted. Will they stand up to scrutiny?
Euripides, Medea 1–45, 371–85
Authors: Willink C. W.
Published: February 2009

Much has been written about the problematic passage towards the end of the Medea prologue-speech, in which the Nurse expresses fear concerning the intention(s) of her mistress; problematic both in itself, especially as to the interpretation of lines 40–2, and in relation to lines 379–80, which are almost the same as 40–1; a most suspicious circumstance.
When is a Sale Not a Sale? The Riddle of Athenian Terminology for Real Security Revisited
Authors: Harris Edward M.
Published: February 2009

In Athens during the late Classical and Hellenistic periods, it was customary for a man who was borrowing a large sum of money to pledge some property as security for the repayment of his loan. To show that this property was legally encumbered, a flat slab of stone, called ahoros, was set up, and an inscription, indicating the nature of the lien on the property, was inscribed on thehoros. Thesehoroiserved to warn third parties that the man who pledged the property as security was not free to sell it or otherwise alienate it until the loan was repaid. The terminology which is used on thesehoroito indicate that the property has been pledged as security varies. On a relatively small number ofhoroi, only seven, the property is described as ‘lying under (an obligation)’ (ὑποκειμένου, -ης, -ων) for a debt, the amount of which may or may not be specified. The texts found on a far greater number ofhoroi, some 128 in all, use a different type of expression. On thesehoroi, the property is said to have been ‘sold on condition of release’ (πεπραμένου, -ης, -ων, ἐπὶ λύσει). The terminology used on thehoroito describe this kind of lien presents a striking contrast with that employed by the Attic orators: in their speeches we find the verbs ὑποκεῖσθαι and ὑποτιθέναι when it is a question of pledging security for a loan, but never πέπρασθαι with the addition of the prepositional phrase ἐπὶ λύσει.
Hand Over Fist: The Failure of Stoic Rhetoric
Authors: Atherton Catherine
Published: February 2009

Students of Stoic philosophy, especially of Stoic ethics, have a lot to swallow. Virtues and emotions are bodies; virtue is the only good, and constitutes happiness, while vice is the only evil; emotions are judgements (in Chrysippus' Stoa); all sins are equal; and everyone bar the sage is mad, bad and dangerous to know. Non-Stoics in antiquity seem for the most part to find these doctrines as bizarre as we do. Their own philosophical or ideological perspectives, and the criticisms of the Stoa to which these gave rise, are no less open to criticism than are the paradoxes and puzzles under attack – but they may be, often are, better documented, less provocatively attention-begging, or simply more familiar. Even disputes within the Stoa can be obscured or distorted by modern prejudices. Posidonius rejected Chrysippus' theory of a unitary soul, one rational through and through, on the grounds that such a theory could not satisfactorily account for the genesis of bad – excessive and irrational – emotions, the πάθη (Galen,PHP2.246.36ff., 314. 15ff. De Lacy). Posidonius' own Platonising, tripartite soul feels more familiar to us because theRepublictends to be a set text rather more often than do the fragments of Chrysippus'de anima; and the balance in Plato's favour is unlikely to change. When Posidonius wrote, on the other hand, the Chrysippean soul was school orthodoxy, and Platonism the latest thing in radical chic.
Hermarchus,Against Empedocles
Authors: Obbink Dirk
Published: February 2009

The standard histories give notice of a polemical treatise entitledLetters on Empedocles, 'Eπιστολικὰ. περὶ 'Eμπεδοκλέους (Diog. Laer.Vitae10.25) in twenty two books by Hermarchus, Epicurus' favourite pupil and successor. The work survives in some twenty fragments of more than probable ascription. The most important of these is an extensive extract preserved by Porphyry atDe Abstinentia1.7–12 on the origin in human history of justice, homicide law, and expiatory purifications, which has been the subject of much discussion. Porphyry himself never names the title of Hermarchus' treatise, though he makes it clear that it was in the form of a polemical attack on the views of Empedocles. A recent papyrus find gives the title not asLetters on Empedocles, but as φρὸς 'Eμπεδοκλέα (Against Empedocles). In what follows it will be convenient to show that this is no mere variant but in fact the original and correct form of the title, and to determine what can be known with certainty as a result about the make-up of the work.
Deflating the Odes: Horace, Epistles 1.20
Authors: Harrison S. J.
Published: February 2009

Epistles 1.20, the last poem of its book, begins with an elaborate joke on the entry of Horace's book of epistles into the world and ends with a well-known σϕραγίς describing the poet himself. It will be argued here that this final poem recalls and subverts the pretensions of two earlier final poems in Horace's own Odes, and that its good-humoured depreciation of Horace himself is matched by a similar attitude towards his previous grand poetic claims as a lyric vates.
Horace, Satires 2.4.61
Authors: Harrison S. J.
Published: February 2009

Here Horace's Catius lists restorative foods for drinkers. There seem to be two stages of drinking and two corresponding restoratives: the ‘marcens’ or drooping imbiber may be revived for more by prawns and snails, but not by lettuce, bad for the acidic and vinous stomach, while the man who is further gone needs ham and sausages or anything of that sort from the cook-shops. ‘Immorsus’ causes some difficulty here. It is usually taken with an understood ‘stomachus’ and translated ‘roused’ or ‘excited’ (with wine), but it is surely better to understand not ‘stomachus’ but ‘potor’, giving the elegant balance ‘marcentem…recreabis…potorem…[potor] flagitat immorsus refici’, with both verbs of restoration having the drinker for object. The sense usually given to ‘immorsus’ also seems doubtful: ‘immordeo’ is found only twice in classical Latin and only here in this metaphorical sense, and ‘mordeo’ in such contexts means not to rouse the stomach but to cause it to smart or sting, hardly the effect of wine – cf. Scribonius Largus 188 ‘[aconita] mordet autem stomachum et cor adficit’, Pliny, Nat. 27.133 ‘[radix] gustu acri mordet’.
Persius 5.129–31
Authors: Morgan J. D.
Published: February 2009

This is the reading of Clausen's OCT, in which no variant for line 131 is recorded in the apparatus.

No doubt the hendiadys ‘scutica et metus…erilis’ is not impossible,2 but it seems to me not to be a well chosen expression. Since the scutica belongs to the master, one is tempted to construe erilis with both nouns, not just with metus. But then the adjective must function in two different ways: ‘scutica… erilis’ is possessive, ‘his master's strap’, but ‘metus…erilis’ is objective, ‘fear of his master’. And ‘metus…erilis’ in this passage receives no support from ‘erilis…metus’ at Plautus, Amphitruo 1069, which means ‘fear for my mistress’.
Lawgivers and Tyrants (Solon, Frr. 9–11 West)
Authors: Rihll T. E.
Published: February 2009

Solon's fragments 9–11 (West) are preserved in three late authors: frr. 9 and 11 by Diodoros Sikelos (fl. 60–30 B.C.), 9.20.2, Plutarch (fl. A.D. 46–127), Solon 3.6 and 30.3 respectively, and Diogenes Laertios (fl. early third century A.D.), 1.50 and 1.51 respectively; and fr. 10 by Diogenes Laertios alone, 1.49. They are all quoted in the context of Solon's reaction to Peisistratos. Stories on this theme were circulating by the time of the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (AP), and Rhodes' scepticism about them is well founded. Its author did not garnish (Rhodes' very apt term) his version of events with these poems, nor indeed with any Solonian utterance, and he explicitly states that myth-making on this subject had already resulted in two stories about Solon and Peisistratos which were chronologically impossible (17.2).
Democritus on Politics and the Care of the Soul
Authors: Procopé J. F.
Published: February 2009

A number of Democritean fragments may loosely be called ‘political’, concerned as they are with questions to do with the π⋯λις – with government, with the duties and dangers of public office, with justice, law and order. The majority of them (B 248–66) have been preserved in chapters of Stobaeus’ anthology entitled ‘On the State’ (iv 1), ‘On Laws and Customs’ (iv 2), ‘On Government’ (iv 5).
Orthodoxy and Hopiltes
Authors: Cawkwel G.L.
Published: February 2009

In Philip of Macedon (1978) (pp. 150f.), as part of a general survey of the development of the art of war in Classical Greece, I briefly adumbrated a view of the nature of hoplite fighting. It was not the conventional one, of which the following statement of Adcock in The Greek and Macedonian Art of War (1957) p. 4 is fairly representative:

The effectiveness of the phalanx depends in part on skill in fighting by those in the front rank, and in part on thephysical and moral support of the lines behind them. The two opposing phalanxes meet each otherwith clash of shield on shield and blow of spear against spear. Their momentum is increased by the impetus of the charge that precedes their meeting. If the first clash is not decisive by the superior weight and thrust of the one phalanx over the other, the fighting goes on. The laterranks supply fighters as those before them fall. At last one side gains the upper hand. Then the other phalanx breaks and takes to flight and the battle is won and lost.
Quintilian'sDe Causis Corruptae Eloquentiaeand Tacitus'Dialogus De Oratoribus
Authors: Brink C. O.
Published: February 2009

Certain proximities between two distinguished but very dissimilar contemporaries, Quintilian and Tacitus, may be stated. Contemporary they were, though the former, born probably a little before A.D. 40, was older by about twenty years. Both were from outside Rome, Quintilian certainly of provincial, Spanish, origin, Tacitus very probably from one of theGalliae, yet both exemplars ofRomanitas.
A Note on Lucretius 4.1046
Authors: Schiesaro Alessandro
Published: February 2009

One of the most surprising features of the final part of the fourth book of the De rerum natura is the peculiar way Lucretius introduces the topic he intends to examine at length. We approach the extensive treatment of love from merely physiological phenomena. The terms libido and amor are mentioned for the first time at 1045 and 1046 respectively; I would like to focus on the interpretation of those lines and on the meaning of the clausula dira libido in the context of the final section of Book Four. Lucretius is talking of semen:

quod simul atque suis eiectum sedibus exit,

per membra atque artus decedit corpore toto,

in loca conveniens nervorum certa cietque

continuo partis genitalis corporis ipsas.

irritata tument loca semine fitque voluntas 1045

eicere id quo se contendit dira libido,

idque petit corpus mens unde est saucia amore.
Bulls and Boxers in Apollonius and Vergil
Authors: Hunter Richard
Published: February 2009

In a famous passage of the third book of the Georgics (3.209–41) Vergil describes two bulls fighting over a formosa iuuenca; the bull which is at first beaten goes off to recover and prepare, returning to attack again its arrogant opponent. The description of the bull's training blends the toughness of early man, the playfulness of a young animal, the suffering of the exclusus amator and the preparations of a human athlete:

ergo omni cura uiris exercet et inter

dura iacet pernox instrato saxa cubili

frondibus hirsutis et carice pastus acuta, 230

et temptat sese atque irasci in cornua discit

arboris obnixus trunco, uentosque lacessit

ictibus, et sparsa ad pugnam proludit harena.

(Georg. 3.229–34)
Seneca, Troades 1109–10
Authors: Coulson Frank T.
Published: February 2009

The English critic Bentley first proposed emending the transmitted text of Troades 1109 from teget, the reading of all manuscripts, to leget. Bentley's suggestion subsequently gained wide acceptance and was printed in many later editions of the tragedies, including those of Leo (1878–9), Richter (1902), and Moricca (1917–23). More recent critics have favoured retention of the manuscript reading. Carlsson, for example, underlines the distinctive alliterative quality which the reading teget imparts to the line; and the latest commentator on the Troades has produced a spirited defence of the transmitted text:

Andromache has not yet realized the condition of the corpse, and is thinking, not of gathering up fragmented limbs, but merely of the formal requirements of burial. What Carlsson (I p. 50) defends on grounds of alliteration should be retained on grounds of sense: teget tumuloque tradet is a doublet of which the second part makes clear the religious meaning of the first, more general, word.
The Divine Audience and the Religion of theIliad
Authors: Griffin Jasper
Published: February 2009

One of the most striking features of theIliadis that the gods are constantly present as an audience. Not only are they shown intervening and responding to human action, but repeatedly they are explicitly said to be watching. It will here be argued that this is much more than a ‘divine apparatus’, that it stands in a peculiar and identifiable relation to real religion, and that it is of the greatest importance both for theIliadand for later Greek poetry.
The Reason for the Danaids' Flight
Authors: MacKinnon J. K.
Published: February 2009

The central question of Aeschylus' Supplices has usually been taken to be the reason for the flight of the Danaids. The most exhaustive guide to the many theories, of varying plausibility, which have been developed to account for this flight is provided by A. F. Garvie's book on the Supplices. For present purposes, therefore, it is unnecessary to examine any but the two most acceptable theories in detail. Nevertheless, a brief summary, prior to this examination, of two other, initially attractive, views might be helpful to students of this problem, the first simply because it is so attractive to so many eminent scholars, the second because, while it fails to provide an acceptable solution, it suggests a useful approach to the problem.
Bastards as Athenian Citizens
Authors: Rhodes P. J.
Published: February 2009

A. R. W. Harrison in The Law of Athens, i (O.U.P., 1968), 63–5, argued that the exclusion of bastards from the phratries and the severe restriction of their right of inheritance does not entail their exclusion from Athenian citizenship; and that the form of Pericles' citizenship law, not stating that were to be , and Solon's law restricting the inheritance rights of , both point to the conclusion that bastards were not ipso facto debarred from citizenship. D. M. MacDowell in CQ N.S. 26 (1976), 88–91, rightly finds Harrison's positive arguments inconclusive, but suggests that three texts provide more definite support for this conclusion.
A Cavalry Unit in the Army of Antigonus Monophthalmus: Asthippoi
Authors: Hammond N. G. L.
Published: February 2009

As the editor of the new Budé edition of Diodorus Siculus 19 has said, R is ‘the more often correct’ of the two main manuscripts and the other, F, has a number of acceptable variants; and she reckons the division between R and F to have been ‘fairly ancient’. All other manuscripts are merely copies, more or less faithful, of R and F. For the passage which I wish to consider I quote the text as given in R:
Saving the Appearances
Authors: Lloyd G. E. R.
Published: February 2009

‘Saving the appearances’,, is a slogan that, in its time, stood or was made to stand for many different methodological positions in many different branches of ancient natural science. It is not my aim, in this paper, to attempt to tackle the subject as a whole. I shall concentrate on just one inquiry, astronomy. Nor, with astronomy, can I do justice to all the complexities of what was certainly one of the central methodological issues, if not the central issue, in the history of ancient theoretical astronomy. I have a quite limited aim, to examine the foundations, and test the applicability, of a widespread and influential line of interpretation of ancient Greek astronomy according to which it was essentially, or at least predominantly, what we may call ‘instrumentalist’ in character—that is, broadly speaking, that Greek astronomical theories were devices or fictions put forward purely for the sake of calculations with no claims to correspond with physical reality.
Cleisthenes of Sicyon, ΛευτḢρ
Authors: Ogden Daniel
Published: February 2009

It is the purpose of this paper to argue for a new interpretation of the Delphic response to Cleisthenes of Sicyon at Herodotus 5.67: the oracle's reference is topharmakeia, the Greek ‘scapegoat’ ritual.
Two Notes on Greek Suicide
Authors: Whitehead David
Published: February 2009

Near the end of the fifth book of Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle has a brief discussion (1138a6–14) of suicide, to illustrate the question of whether one can wrong one's self. Suicide, he declares, is not enjoined by law, and what law does not enjoin, it forbids. Thus the suicide does do wrong – but to whom or what? Surely the polis, not himself (for his suffering is voluntary, and no one wrongs himself voluntarily). δι κα πλις ζημιοῖ, κα ις τιμα πρσεστι τῷ αυτν διαφθεραντι ὡς π πλιν δικοντι.
Io! In Ovid
Authors: Kershaw Allan
Published: February 2009

The scribes of the Latin poets were not, as a rule, in the habit of interpolating exclamatory particles; on the contrary, their tendency was to trivialise. The particle io has MSS authority in two passages in Ovid where distinguished critics reject it.

Kenney in the Oxford Text of Ars Amatoria 3.742 prints.

labor, io: cara lumina conde manu.
Hesiod's Didactic Poetry
Authors: Heath Malcolm
Published: February 2009

In this paper I shall approach Hesiod's poetry from two, rather different, directions; consequently, the paper itself falls into two parts, the argument and conclusions of which are largely independent. In (I) I offer some observations on the vexed question of the organisation of Works and Days; that is, my concern is with the coherence of the poem's form and content. In (II) my attention shifts to the function of this poem and of its companion, Theogony; given the form and content of these two poems, what can we plausibly conjecture about the end or ends to which they were composed? In particular, I shall consider whether, and in what sense, these poems may be regarded as didactic in intent. Much of what I have to say in (I) I say with a measure of confidence; in (II), by contrast, my primary aim is to undermine unwarranted confidence — although I do, even here, reach some positive conclusions.
The Authenticity of Archytas fr. 1
Authors: Huffman Carl A.
Published: February 2009

In a long note in his epoch-making book on ancient Pythagoreanism Walter Burkert raised some grave doubts about the authenticity of Archytas Fr. 1 which have recently been challenged in an article by A. C. Bowen. In this paper I have two goals. First, I will evaluate Burkert's doubts and the success of some of Bowen's arguments against them. Second, I will present a further consideration that both clarifies the text of the fragment and also removes the most serious problem raised by Burkert. The upshot of both these points is to increase the likelihood that the fragment is authentic.

I reproduce the text of just the first part of the fragment as given in DK followed by the text as it appears in the two primary sources, Nicomachus and Porphyry.
Livy 40.51.9 and the Centuriate Assembly
Authors: Grieve Lucy
Published: February 2009

In 179 b.c. the censors M. Aemilius Lepidus and M. Fulvius Nobilior brought about a reform in the voting. The only evidence for this is a single sentence in Livy (40.51.9):

mutarunt suffragia regionatimque generibus hominum causisque et quaestibus tribus discripserunt

The meaning of these words has often been discussed but never in a fully systematic manner. Further, the attempts to discover their meaning have always been made in an effort to throw light upon some other problem. They are thus transported into the historical context in question, such as the vicissitudes of the freedman vote or the reforms of the comitia centuriata. Yet the formulaic nature of the sentence and its virtual independence from its immediate context make it essential to examine it in its own right in order objectively to establish its meaning. Only then should the question of historical context be considered. The purpose here is to provide a systematic analysis of each element in this sentence. If the results of this are accepted it will become apparent that Livy 40.51.9 relates to central questions concerning the census and the centuriate assembly.

As it stands the sentence is entirely divorced from what precedes and follows it, with the exception of the subject, the censors. Not only is there nothing in the surrounding context to explain it; there is nothing remotely comparable anywhere else in Livy. This, together with the precision of the language, the institutional content, and the formal and formulaic sound of the whole, suggests that Livy has either lifted the sentence out of an official document or is using the terminology characteristic of such documents.
Axelson Revisited: the Selection of Vocabulary in Latin Poetry
Authors: Watson Patricia
Published: February 2009

Although it is now fifteen years since G. Williams' thorough-going criticism of B. Axelson'sUnpoetische Wörter, his discussion has failed to elicit the adverse response which might have been expected in view of the widespread influence exerted by the earlier work.

The reason for this may be that Axelson's theory is so widely accepted that any refutation thereof may be disregarded. Yet surely Williams was right to point to the dangers of total reliance on statistics and to the necessity of considering the contexts in which words occur in Latin poetry. In this respect, he was not so much rejecting Axelson's work as pointing to its inadequacies: whereas Axelson would be content to label a word that occurs only rarely in poetry as ‘unpoetisch’, it is necessary, as Williams demonstrates, to take the further step of determining the effect that such a word has in a given context. This approach will be particularly helpful, for example, in the case ofparvulusat Virg.Aen.4.328, where the heightened pathos achieved by Virgil's use of a diminutive is better appreciated by the reader who is aware of the scarcity of diminutive adjectives in poetry and in epic above all. To recogniseparvulusas an ‘unpoetic word’, with Axelson, is the essential first step, but we should proceed a stage further to inquire what effect was intended by the employment of a form not normally found in elevated poetry.

Of greater importance is Williams' rejection of the ‘hierarchy of genres’ theory, taken for granted by Axelson, that is, that Latin poetry may be divided into a number of higher- or lower-ranking genres and that the more elevated a genre the less unpoetic vocabulary it is liable to employ.
Technical Chronology and Astrological History in Varro, Censorinus and Others
Authors: Grafton A. T. , Swerdlow N. M.
Published: February 2009

Technical chronology establishes the structure of calendars and the dates of events; it is, as it were, the foundation of history, particularly ancient history. The chronologer must know enough philology to interpret texts and enough astronomy to compute the dates of celestial phenomena, above all eclipses, which alone provide absolute dates. Joseph Scaliger, so we are told, was the first to master and apply this range of technical skills:

Of the mathematical principles on which the calculation of periods rests, the philologians understood nothing. The astronomers, on their side, had not yet undertaken to apply their data to the records of ancient times. Scaliger was the first of the philologians who made use of the improved astronomy of the sixteenth century to get a scientific basis for historical chronology.

So Mark Pattison.

This verdict can be challenged on a number of grounds. The one relevant at present is simple: Scaliger himself claimed far less. He certainly said that technical chronology had been untouched in modern times — not an entirely fair judgement — but in antiquity it had been practised in exactly the manner he considered proper, or so he believed. In particular he singles out Censorinus, whose De die natali drew extensively on Varro's lost Antiquitates rerum humanarum, books 14–19, for information on chronology.

Students of Varro have long appreciated the importance of Censorinus. His dry and compact treatise offers Varronian views on etymology, the human life-span, and the course of history itself, all couched in language so jejune as to suggest that he added little or nothing to what he read.
Paul the Silentiary and Claudian
Authors: Whitby Mary
Published: February 2009

The extent to which Latin was familiar to the inhabitants of late sixth- and early seventh-century Constantinople is a topic of current discussion and interest. While there is little evidence to suggest a significant knowledge of Latin even among the educated in the seventh century, it is clear that in the late sixth century the language was still familiar to a section of the upper classes. Among native easterners, the degree of this familiarity would certainly have varied considerably, from those who could recognise a few words of Latin, through the lawyers, administrators and military men who had a specialised, professional knowledge, to the small proportion who could detect the Virgilian echoes in Corippus' panegyric of Justin II.

Whether Paul the Silentiary, epigrammatist and panegyrist of the Emperor Justinian's church of S. Sophia, should be included in the small category who were acquainted with Latin literature is indeed a more far-reaching issue than that of the survival of Latin in the eastern capital, since it is an element in the larger problem of the extent to which late Greek poets knew and imitated the work of their Latin predecessors. The broad generalisations of the past no longer satisfy modern scholarship, which rightly demands rigorous scrutiny of the evidence for each individual author.
Cecropids in Eubulus (fr. 10) and Satyrus (A.P. 10.6)
Authors: Egan Rory B.
Published: February 2009

Cecropids, grammatically masculine in one case and feminine in the other, occur in each of these pieces of poetry. I believe that the second passage can shed some light on the meaning of the term as it is used in the fragment from the Antiope of Eubulus. The question of the significance of the Cecropids in Eubulus has previously been discussed by E. K. Borthwick. A. B. Cook, noting the similarity of κερκώπη (a term designating a type of cicada) to the name of Cecrops and seeing their associations with dew as a link between the insects and the names (Herse, Pandrosus) of Cecrops' daughters, had posited a connection between the autochthonous Athenian family of Cecrops and the earth-born cicadas, those symbols of Athenian autochthony. Borthwick applied Cook's theory to the passage from Eubulus and concluded that when the poet mentions the Cecropids that feed on the breezes he is alluding to the musical cicadas, who were believed to subsist on dew and/or air. It was this latter feature of their diet, Borthwick proposed, that inspired the last line of the fragment.
Household, Gender and Property in Classical Athens
Authors: Foxhall Lin
Published: February 2009

The idea that the household was the fundamental building block of ancient Greek society, explicit in the ancient sources, has now become widely accepted. It is no exaggeration to say that ancient Athenians would have found it almost inconceivable that individuals of any status existed who did not belong tosomehousehold; and the few who were in this position were almost certainly regarded as anomalous. In ancient Athens, as elsewhere, households ‘are a primary arena for the expression of age and sex roles, kinship, socialization and economic cooperation’. It has been suggested for modern Greece that our own cultural biases, along with the Greek ideology of male dominance, have led to the assumption that the foundations of power in Greek society lie solely in the public sphere, and that domestic power is ‘less important’. In a less simple reality the preeminent role of the household cannot be underestimated. Here I hope to question similar assumptions about ancient Greece, focusing in particular on the relationships that existed between Athenian households and the property of the individuals, particularly women, within these households.
Nikias, Epimenides and the Question of Omissions in Thucydides
Authors: Herman Gabriel
Published: February 2009

Our starting point is a somewhat obscure incident which has lately attracted some attention. The year is 429 B.C., and the place is Athens in the third year of the Peloponnesian war. The plague, which had broken out only a year before, was still claiming its victims. Yet military operations were in full swing, and the general Phormio operating in the Corinthian gulf against a Peloponnesian fleet was able to score an impressive victory. The Lacedaemonians were deeply dissatisfied. This was the first sea-fight they had been engaged in, and they found it hard to believe that their fleet was so much inferior to that of the Athenians. They dispatched three advisers to Knemos, the admiral in charge, instructing them to make better preparations for another sea-fight. Additional ships were solicited from the allies, and those already at hand were prepared for battle. It is at this point that the incident in question occurred. Not to prejudge the issue, I quote the text in full leaving the controversial phrases untranslated:

4. And Phormio on his part sent messengers to Athens to give information of the enemy's preparations and to tell about the battle which they had won, urging them also to send to him speedily (δι⋯ τ⋯χους) as many ships as possible, since there was always a prospect that a battle might be fought any day.

5. So they sent him twenty ships, but gave τῷ δ⋯ κυμ⋯ξοντι special orders to sail first to Crete. Nικ⋯ας γ⋯ρ Kρ⋯ς Γορτ⋯νιος πρ⋯ξενος ⋯ν persuaded them (αὺτο⋯ς) to sail against Cydonia, a hostile town, promising to bring it over to the Athenians; but he was really asking them to intervene to gratify the people of Polichne, who are neighbours of the Cydonians.

6. So ⋯ μ⋯ν λαβὼν τ⋯ς να⋯ς. went to Crete, and helped the Polichnitans to ravage the lands of the Cydonians, and by reason of winds and stress of weather wasted not a little time.
Aidōs in Plotinus: Enneads II.9.10
Authors: Edwards M. J.
Published: February 2009

At one point in his treatise against the ‘Gnostics’ Plotinus treats his adversaries as men of flesh and blood, not merely as proponents of false books and false beliefs:

For I feel a certain shame (aidōs tis echei) with regard to some of my friends (philoi), who, having chanced upon this doctrine before the beginning of our friendship, have continued to adhere to it for reasons that I cannot understand. Not that they themselves show any compunction in saying what they say: they may believe what they say to be true (alethe), but perhaps they rather wish others to be persuaded of the truth of their own opinions. (Enneads II.9.10.3ff.)
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 72–5
Authors: Gannon J. F.
Published: February 2009

In the first of his three magisterial articles on the Agamemnon H. L. Ahrens showed that all the evidence then available best fitted the conclusion that ⋯τ⋯ται derived from τ⋯νω and not from τ⋯ω. Subsequently Ed. Fraenkel in his own note on the word reviewed and supplemented the evidence gathered by Ahrens, and expressed the view that Ahrens' ‘discussion, details apart, is final’; and there seems to be widespread agreement that on the linguistic side at least Ahrens' argument cannot be refuted. If this means anything, it means that the sense of the word cannot be ‘unhonoured’ or ‘dishonoured’. Yet Denniston–Page in their commentary say that ‘”unhonoured” seems the only possible sense here’, and R. Fagles' recent translation, which generally rests on sound scholarship as well as poetic gifts, has ‘dishonored’. The principal reason for this persistent disagreement seems to be that the sense proposed by Ahrens for ⋯τ⋯ται has been thought to have rather less plausibility than the linguistic considerations that appear to lead to it.
A Career in the Navy (Arist. Knights 541–4)
Authors: Gilula Dwora
Published: February 2009

Aristophanes' description of the stages of promotion in the Athenian navy recently received renewed attention, when Mastromarco and Halliwell enlisted it in their battle against the traditional opinion that Aristophanes' early career fell into two stages, a secret one of writing plays but not producing them, and a public one in which he undertook both activities. Mastromarco argues for a tripartite career, and Halliwell, who is against a too strict correlation, for a gradual development, a sort of a complex apprenticeship, which eventually he divides also into three stages similar to those discerned by Mastromarco. In summing up their position, MacDowell paraphrases the above passage according to its prevalent interpretation: ‘The nautical metaphor (541–4), with its progression from oarsman to prow-officer to helmsman, indicates that Aristophanes did not take over his task all at once, but by stages. But what were the stages?’
Plautus, Pseudolus 189: Grain-Mountains and Cattle-Fodder
Authors: Eden P. T.
Published: February 2009

In the most recent edition of this play (Bristol Classical Press, 1987) M. M. Willcock places an obelus before montes with the comment ‘monies and acerui get in each other's way’. But in view of its metaphorical use elsewhere in Plautus (e.g. Aul. 701, Mil. 1065, Mos. 352), prima facie suspicion does not fall on montes.
Ruit Oceano Nox
Authors: Knox Peter E.
Published: February 2009

Night falls on war-weary Troy after a day of celebration, setting the stage for the final agony of the city:

uertitur interea caelum et ruit Oceano nox

inuoluens umbra magna terramque polumque

Myrmidonumque dolos

(Virg.Aen. 2.250–2)
Virgil and Marcellus' Education
Authors: Horsfall Nicholas
Published: February 2009

On Virgil's lines excudent alii…(Aen. 6.847–53) there have been two recent studies, 1 and further items of bibliography from the last five years or so may be added. Nevertheless, there remains a good deal of uncertainty, even controversy, over Virgil's choice of Greek and Roman cultural achievements and over the literary antecedents of that choice.
Two Notes on Horace, Epodes (10, 16)
Authors: Harrison S. J.
Published: February 2009

Epode 10: the Mystery of Mevius' Crime

Horace's tenth Epode, an inverse propempticon, calls down dire curses on the head of a man named Mevius as he leaves on a sea-voyage.1 Scholars have naturally been interested in what Mevius had done to merit such treatment, but answers have been difficult to find, for nothing explicit is said on this topic in the poem; as Leo noted, ‘[Horatius] ne verbo quidem tarn gravis odii causam indicat’. This is in direct contrast with the Strasbourg epode usually attributed to Hipponax (fr. 115 West), which served as Horace's model in this poem; there it is clear that the similar curses on a departing sailor are caused by his breaking of oaths to the poet and betrayal of their previous friendship (15–16 ⋯ς μ' ἢδίκησε, λ⋯ξ δ' ⋯π' ⋯ρκίοις ἔβη, τò πρίν ⋯ταῖρος ⋯ώμ ). One might expect Horace to give some kind of indirect suggestion of the nature of Mevius’ offence, but even this is despaired of by Fraenkel: ‘There is no hint at the sort of crime which Mevius is said to have committed, nor is anything said about the man himself; he remains an entirely shadowy figure’. The best that scholars have been able to do is to follow the ancient commentary of Porphyrio in suggesting that Horace's Mevius is to be identified with the poetaster attacked by Vergil in Ecl. 3.90 ‘qui Bavium non odit, amet tua carmina, Mevi’. Though it is pleasant to think of Vergil and Horace, perhaps by now friends in the circle of Maecenas, ganging up on a luckless hack, there is, as Fraenkel points out, no mention in the tenth Epode that Mevius is a poet, and his literary incompetence, assuming he is Vergil's poet, does not seem to underlie or indeed warrant the bitter imprecations of the poem: Catullus might wish a dire fate on the works of a bad poet (e.g. Volusius – 36.18–20, 95.7–8), but to long for their author's shipwreck and consumption by gulls might indeed seem excessive.
Rhetorical Balance in Aristotle's Definition of the Tragic Agent: Poetics 13
Authors: Armstrong David , Peterson Charles W.
Published: February 2009

The most recent attempt to explain Aristotle's use of in Poetics 13 is that of T. C. W. Stinton (CQ N.S. 25 (1975), 221–54). Stinton insists that must not be restricted to any one definition, but should be understood to include a ‘range of applications’ embracing both moral error and ‘ignorance of fact’ (p. 221).
An argument in Metaphysics Z 13
Authors: Heinaman Robert
Published: February 2009

In Metaphysics Z 13 Aristotle argues that no universal can be substance. Prima facie, this appears to rule out the possibility that any universal can be substance, species as well as genera. Nevertheless, many commentators have denied that this chapter intends to rule out the possibility that any universal can be substantial. Aristotle, it is thought, cannot wish to deny that any universal can be substance because he believes that some universals are substances, viz. species.
Tranquility Without a Stop: Timon, Frag. 68
Authors: Burnyeat M. F.
Published: February 2009

Translation at this stage would be premature, but three variants in line 3 deserve notice, (a) Bury (iii.394) writes(b) Natorp (p. 292), followed by Brochard (p. 62 n. 4), suggested(which would yield a meiouric line), (c) Wachsmuth (p. 22) prints a colon instead of a comma after

It is not surprising that line 3 has attracted emendation. As it stands, it lacks a verb andhas to modify an understood existential
Paulus Silentiarius, Ovid, and Propertius
Authors: Yardley J. C.
Published: February 2009

In the late nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth thematic resemblances to the Roman elegists in Paulus Silentiarius (and other late epigrammatists) were explained as the result of the poets' reliance on a common Hellenistic source – usually this was identified as the so-called ‘subjective Alexandrian love elegy’ – and this represented a departure from the views of earlier scholars such as Hertzberg and Postgate, who had maintained that Paulus knew and imitated the elegists. In recent years the pendulum has swung back (partly, perhaps, because the whole notion of a ‘subjective Alexandrian love elegy’ has been abandoned), and the prevailing opinion seems to be that the Roman elegists were known to Paulus. This is the view of, for instance, Giovanni Viansino in his edition of Paulus, of Elmar Schulz-Vanheyden in his important work on Propertius' relationship to Greek epigram, and of Hermann Beckby in his edition of the Greek Anthology. Recently, too, Gordon Williams has put forward a very strong case for earlier epigrammatists like Antipater and Crinagoras imitating the Augustan poets.
A Note on Some Unusual Greek Words for Eyes
Authors: Borthwick E. K.
Published: February 2009

In Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society N.S. 14 (1968), 68, D. C. C. Young drew attention to a curious variant in the text of Longus 2.2.1, where, in a description of how, at the vintage, women ‘eyed’ Daphnis, A has concluding that ‘brothers’ must be a colloquial expression for ‘eyes’, he was however unable to cite any other example of this usage, but compared ‘picked men’, in Paulus Silentiarius (A.P. 5. 270), a locution found in a small range of other authors (Sophron, Callimachus, and Nicander, and in a number of lexicographers), as well as ‘comrades on the flank, bystanders’ ‘twins’ = testicles, and French jumelles - binoculars.
Some Uses of Gratus and Gratia in Plautus: Evidence for Indo-European?
Authors: Williams Gordon
Published: February 2009

The form of this paper, which has more than one purpose, needs a word of explanation and perhaps of excuse. I had had it in mind to bring together and discuss a number of passages of Plautus in which gratus or gratia occurred. Then I came across an interesting paper by Professor L. R. Palmer in Hommages à Max Miedermann (Collection Latomus vol. xxiii), Bruxelles, 1956, pp. 258–69, entitled ‘The Concept of Social Obligation in Indo-European: A Study in Structural Semantics’. There Palmer dealt, among other things, with gratus and related words; he seemed to me, however, to treat the Latin evidence, the greater part of it from Plautus, in a way which I felt to be mistaken. In addition it seemed that a preconceived theory, derived from a special interpretation of the Mycenean tablets, was being read into Roman thought and institutions against the evidence. I have therefore taken the opportunity to discuss the passages of Plautus in which I was first interested within a general examination of Palmer's treatment of the Latin evidence for his theory.
A Cyprian Contract concerning the Use of Land
Authors: Beattie A. J.
Published: February 2009

Mr.Mitford has kindly provided me with a photograph and impression of a Cyprian text of uncertain provenance, which he assigns to the fifth or fourth century B.C. An account of the text has been published by Mr. Mitford in Minos, VI. i (1958), 37–47. I print below my interpretation, which differs in some respects from his.

The characters on the stone are for the most part clearly legible, and even where there is damage to the surface of the stone restoration is practically certain.
The Language of Virgil and Horace
Authors: Wilkinson L. P.
Published: February 2009

As in literature poetry precedes prose, so in poetry a special and ‘heightened’ diction seems to precede everyday language. Mr.T.S.Eliot has put it thus: ‘Every revolution in poetry is apt to be, and sometimes to announce itself as, a return to common speech.’ How does this apply to Greek and Latin ? There are objections to considering words in isolation from this point of view, since neutral ones are apt to go now grey, now purple, according to their company; but if we do not do so, we deny ourselves the only considerable method of investigation (unsatisfactory though it is) that is still open to us. Again, we must recognize that most poems are composed largely of ordinary words, though these are often used in a way that is not ordinary.
Additional Notes on Claudian
Authors: Hudson-Williams A.
Published: February 2009

Mr. Alan Ker in C.Q., N.S. vii (1957), 151–8, proposes to alter the text of Claudian in numerous places where the tradition appears to me to be blameless, in some cases substituting for readings which seem characteristic and admirable others which seem less so. Claudian is an elegant poet, whose mastery of language many regard as comparable with that of the Silver Age poets, and Mr. Ker's dismissal of him (p. 154) as ‘a simple writer, with a small and unambitious vocabulary’ does less than justice to his powers. I would suggest, in particular, the following points for consideration.