In JRS (1968), Shelagh Jameson discussed the relative chronology of the campaigns of Aelius Gallus and C. Petronius: her discussion has rightly met with broad acceptance. She argued that Petronius began his first Ethiopian campaign in or by autumn 25 B.c., while Gallus began his Arabian campaign in or by August 26 B.C. and ended it in October or November 25 B.c.

‘The Greeks have two treaties with the King: the one which our city made, which all praise; and later the Lacedaemonians made the one which all condemn,’ says Demosthenes (15. 29) c. 350. Isocrates, however, did not always run with the pack, for a few years earlier he urged the Athenians to make peace on the basis of the treaty ‘with the King and the Lacedaemonians [which] commands the Greeks to be autonomous, the garrisons to depart from the cities of others, and each people to have its own territory’ (On the Peace 8. 16)

Five epigrams in the Greek Anthology are ascribed to Sophronius, sophist, poet, theologian and finally patriarch of Jerusalem when it fell to the Arabs in 638. Sophronius' other extant poems are all in the anacreontic metre, which he wrote with a certain fluency but (judged by classical standards) without perfect mastery. It is in principle quite possible that he also composed in so traditional a genre as the classicizing epigram, but (as we shall see) there are in fact considerable doubts about four of the five in question.

Pease ad loc.: ‘Roman writers often use axis… in a figurative sense… for the caelum as a whole, and in our passage, while the force is applied by Atlas to the axis of the sphere, yet the whole sphere is apparently in mind, as the phrase stellis ardentibus aptum indicates.’ It is lexicographical commonplace that axis is used, especially in the poets, as a synonym for the sky, yet the oddity of the synecdoche by which a scientific, or pseudoscientific, term for the axis of the universe is transferred to mean the heavens in general has been little commented on; unanalytic recognition of the semantic fact is the norm (e.g. ‘aus einem bestimmten mathematischen Begriffe eine… allgemeine, unbestimmte Vorstellung’). I believe that a more precise account of this transference can be given, and in particular I will argue that Virgilian usage in the Aeneid is central to the history of this process.

It has been acknowledged ever since H. T. Becker's dissertation on Aeschylus in Greek comedy that Aristophanes' plays can provide us with a terminus ante quern for the composition of the Prometheus Bound. The evidence is clearly presented by Becker and shows that there are a large number of echoes, particularly in the Knights and later in the Birds. Of these latter the most interesting occurs at Birds 1547, a line spoken by Prometheus himself, μισ⋯ δ' ἅπατντας τω⋯ θεōὺ ὡς ōἶσθα ςὺ which is certainly meant to parody PV 975, ⋯πλΏ λ⋯γῳ τō⋯ς π⋯ντας ⋯χθα⋯ ρω θεōὺς a line also spoken by Prometheus. It makes explicit what is surely implicit in all Aristophanic imitation, that what we have here is not just a play but a particular context that is so well known that the reference is meant to be picked up not just by the fictional ‘you’ to whom it is addressed but by the audience, too; in short we may infer that the line of the Prometheus Bound was already a classic quotation.

Scholarly interest in epiteichismos has, for various reasons, been centred almost exclusively upon the Athenian occupation of Pylos and the Spartan occupation of Decelea. In occupying Pylos the Athenians were adopting epiteichismos for the first time, as were the Spartans in occupying Decelea. Both enterprises were on a considerable scale and deeply influenced the course of the Peloponnesian war, though neither so decisively as had initially seemed likely. Another source of interest in them is their link with the perennial problem of speeches in Thucydides. The Thucydidean versions of speeches delivered shortly before the outbreak of the Archidamian war include references to the possibility that epiteichismos might be attempted by both sides (1. 122. 1; 142. 3–4), although in fact Athens did not do so until 425, and then partly by accident, and Sparta not until much later. These puzzling references have been thought by some scholars to be anachronistic, while others have disputed this inference, maintaining that even before the war military leaders had in mind the possibility of epiteichismos. A similar if less vexed problem arises from the fact that the occupation of Decelea, vigorously recommended by Alcibiades in the Thucydidean version of his speech at Sparta at the end of 415 and apparently accepted with enthusiasm (6. 93. 1–2), was not implemented until the spring of 413.

Plato's Symposium consists of six speeches on Eros with the addition of Alcibiades' praise of Socrates. Of these speeches Socrates' speech is philosophically most important. It is true that the speech is given as a report of Diotima's view on Eros, but ‘she is a double of the Platonic Socrates’, and we take her view as the theory of Socrates in this dialogue

Barrett has given a brief account of the affiliations of Hn with the manuscripts which he has collated. He derives his information about the readings of Hn from the reports of nineteenth-century editors, and he does not report this manuscript in his apparatus criticus. He concludes that ‘In three instances (72, 641, 817) Haun. has the truth, or an approximation to it, where the rest of our tradition is at fault (though in two of them there are traces of the same reading in O) … in each case the reading can be accounted for as a lucky accident, and so I judge it in fact to be.’ Of the other four manuscripts, which editors have not collated, he gives no account. ‘From a number of readings cited by Turyn it appears that they are all more or less closely related to Haun.’ K. Matthiessen has voiced a mild regret that Barrett did not settle the question by collation. I have collated these five manuscripts from photographs or microfilms.

The story of Atlantis, inspiration (on a recent estimate) of more than 20,000 books, rests entirely on an elaborate Platonic myth (Timaeus 20d–26e, continued in Critias 108d–121c), allegedly based on a private, oral tradition deriving from Solon. Solon himself is supposed to have heard the story in Egypt; a priest obligingly translated it for him from hieroglyphic inscriptions in a temple in Sais. It might be added that (unlike his modern readers) Plato is less concerned with Atlantis than with her rival and conqueror, the Athens of that antediluvian age 9600 B.C. That Plato himself made the whole story up (fashionable recent theories about Thera notwithstanding) is indeed virtually demonstrable. This is not the place for such a demonstration (not that any amount of proof could destroy the faith of the true believer), but it is at any rate possible to eliminate completely one of the crucial props on which belief has always leaned.

R. Renehan's ingenious solutions to the problems of Symphosius 42. 1 and Anth. Lat. 207 in this journal (n.s. 31 (1981), 471 f.) are much to be welcomed. On the other hand, I do not think that his defence of the manuscript reading in Anth. Lat. 24. 3 marcent post rorem violae, rosa perdit odorem holds water. Taking rorem as = rorem marinum he explains that ‘the poet is not presenting us with a piece of botanical information about the relative seasons of the violet and rosemary; he means rather that all flowers wither and fade’. Actually, however, the poet on this showing does present information; and whether the information is botanically correct or not (I am not enough of a botanist to know), that is an odd way to make his point. Stranger still is his choice of rosemary out of all the fading flowers of field and garden. It was bound to be I misunderstood. As Renehan indicates, ros = ros marinus is supported only by Virg. Georg. 2. 212–13, where the identity has been doubted, and Plin. HN 24. 100, where ex rore supra dicto refers back to ros marinum in 99. Renehan may well be the first reader not to take rorem as dew. And an evergeen shrub (see Shorter Oxford English Dictionary) makes a singularly unfortunate illustration of floral decay, even though the shrub does produce a flower. Pliny classes it with herbs (19. 187; cf. 24. 99 ros marinum dictum est. duo genera eius: alterum sterile, alterum cui et caulis et semen rosinaceum, quod cachrys vocatur).

The Romans had various ways of justifying their imperial aims and methods, some high-minded, some less so. We find in particular that they could give honourable and satisfying explanations of their aims and methods in war. Here for example is Cicero:

quare suscipienda quidem bella sunt ob earn causam, ut sine iniuria in pace uiuatur; parta autem uictoria conseruandi ii, qui non crudeles in bello, non immanes fuerunt, ut maiores nostri Tusculanos, Aequos…in ciuitatem etiam acceperunt, at Carthaginem…funditus sustulerunt…mea quidem sententia paci, quae nihil habitura sit insidiarum, semper est consulendum. et cum iis, quos ui deuiceris, consulendum est, tum ii qui armis positis and imperatorum fidem confugient, quamuis murum aries percusserit, recipiendi (Off. 1. 35).

In the first argumentative section of Book 1, Lucretius establishes the existence of matter and void (146–482), and in the second identifies matter as the atoms and defines their properties (483–634). In the third section, following Epicurean tradition, he attempts to refute a representative selection of Presocratic philosophers – Heraclitus (635–704), Empedocles (705–829) and Anaxagoras (830–920) – whose explanations of basic matter are potential rivals to the atomist theory which he has just outlined. The climax to this section is reached in Lucretius' triumphant personal claim to be an original poet and health-bringing purveyor of truth (921–50). His foregoing criticism (and praise) of the Presocratics as writers and thinkers is deeply coloured by the values he openly professes here. The introductory passages to each philosopher, in particular, are highly revealing of Lucretius' personal inclinations as a poet and exhibit a virtuoso command of several styles and techniques.

In any competition for monuments of wasted labour the collection of accidental acrostics in Latin poets published by I. Hilberg would stand a good chance of a prize. But amongst his examples of ‘neckische Spiele des Zufalls’ (269) is one I am gullible enough to believe may be more significant. In Aeneid 7. 601–15 Vergil describes the custom of opening the gates of war in a long anacoluthic sentence, the first four lines of which run:

Mos erat Hesperio in Latio, quern protinus urbes

Albanae coluere sacrum, nunc maxima rerum

Roma colit, cum prima movent in proelia Mortem,

Sive Getis inferre manu lacrimabile bellum…

Aeneas' speech of defence before Dido (A. 4. 333–61) is the longest and most controversial he delivers. Although by no means typical, it can open up some revealing perspectives over the rest of the poem.

The exchange between the two, having as its kernel a dispute over obligations and responsibilities, requires some words of context. The early part of the book describes the establishment of a liaison between the refugee leaders, while revealing amongst the poem's characters a wide discrepancy of opinion over the nature of that liaison. Juno announces that she will arrange the marriage of the couple (125–7); after the ensuing marriage-parody of the cave-scene (165–8), Dido also calls what now exists a ‘marriage’: coniugium uocat, hocpraetexit nomine culpam (172). Fama too, moving around Libya, speaks as if Dido has taken Aeneas for husband (192). But the local King Iarbas regards Aeneas as a pirate who has carried off a successful job of plunder (217), while Jupiter looks down from heaven and sees ‘lovers’, amantis (221). Mercury is able to address Aeneas as uxorius (266).

Plato's fondness for words compounded with παν- (nearly all adjectives and adverbs) is obvious at the most cursory reading of his works; this characteristic of his style becomes even more striking when his use of these words is compared with their frequency in earlier authors. An investigation of Platonic usage in this respect, relatively easy since the publication of Leonard Brandwood's Word Index to Plato (Leeds, 1976), yields interesting results. Whether the effect of the παν-prefix is intensive or determinative (see below, §I), Plato has a tendency to associate these words with some sort of disapproval; this disapproval is sometimes explicit enough and can sometimes be inferred from the use of the word, or of a word related to it, in other contexts. The words may be used ironically, as π⋯γκαλος often is and π⋯σσοϕος always. Another sort of disapproval springs from what may be called Plato's general dislike of (promiscuous plurality, excess and variety; for a philosopher who believes in single, unchanging Forms there is something intrinsically objectionable in such words as π⋯μπολυς and παντοδαπ⋯ς. It also transpires that Plato may have coined a number, of these words and that he was probably the first prose writer to import others from poetry; in the face of the fragmentary nature of surviving Greek literature it would be unwise to be more dogmatic. The following, somewhat dry, survey will, it is hoped, throw some light on the usage of these interesting words

Mommsen, writing in 1866,1 dated the marriage of Tiberius Gracchus and Cornelia to 165/4 on the basis of this passage, understanding it to mean that their twelve children came in an alternating series of boys and girls. Tiberius, with his father's praenomen, would then be either the first or second child of the marriage, and as he was born in 163/2, Mommsen concluded that the marriage must have taken place not much more than two years before that date.

Three famous sophists are referred to together in the Apology of Sokrates as still practising their enviably lucrative itinerant profession in 399 b.c. (not, by implication, I in Athens): Gorgias of Leontinoi, Prodikos of Keos and Hippias of Elis. The last of these was the least well known to the Athenian demos, having practised mainly in I Dorian cities. There is no extant reference to him in Old Comedy, but we can assume that he was sufficiently famous – especially for his fees (possibly the highest charged by any sophist) – to justify his inclusion as the third of this ‘triad’; cf. the triad Protagoras – Hippias – Prodikos in the Protagoras, considered further below. Gorgias was by now a grand old man of about ninety (with more than a decade of active life still ahead of him), the last survivor of the first generation of fee-taking educators, associated first and foremost in the popular mind with the suspect arts of political and forensic persuasion. Prodikos and Hippias were probably in their sixties.