Granted the acceptability of the argument in section B the only clear contradiction in the evidence about the union of Corinth and Argos is that between Xenophon and Diodorus. What I have said about the latter may seem arbitrary and wilful. But I suggest that it is no less arbitrary and wilful to regard Xenophon's account of the matter as utterly wrong or, worse still, almost utterly wrong but with tinges of truth, and that we are quite entitled to give Xenophon, not Diodorus, the benefit of the doubt. I should also have thought that, a priori, unification is quite as likely to have occurred against the background of the violent political disturbances of c. March 392 as against that of the destruction of the Spartan mora and Iphicrates' successes elsewhere in 390.33

The editors of the new fragment of Gallus draw attention to line 6, ‘fecerunt carmina Musae’. They say ‘“fecerunt” is unusual in such a context, and to a Roman reader would inevitably suggest (not used of poets in early Greek); the Muses of Gallus provided craftsmanship as well as inspiration’. It is possible to be more precise: cf. Euphorion fr. 118 Powell

Michael Winterbottom (CR n.s. 26 (1976), 39) criticizes Costa's edition of Seneca's Medea for failing to annotate sic fugere soleo (1022). ‘Did Medea’, he asks, ‘habitually escape by chariot - or is this a coy allusion to Seneca's predecessors?’ Of course it is neither; sic fugere soleo means Medea was accustomed to flee by leaving dead bodies behind to encumber her enemies (her children's in this instance, Absyrtus' and Pelias' on previous ones). According to. Seneca's usage, and that of Silver Latin rhetoric in general, once would be enough to establish such a ‘habit’, for in that fairy-world wonders and horrors become, as Atreus (Thyestes 273 f.) says petulantly, immane…sed occupatum on repetition. At Troades 249 and 360 soleo is used of the virgin-sacrificing ‘habit’ of the Achaeans, i.e. the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, which makes the sacrifice of Polyxena seem a good idea.

After consulting the commentaries and the fine remarks of ‘Longinus’ (23. 3) on this passage, a reader may still reasonably feel dissatisfied. Lines 1405–7 are normally taken to mean ‘you have shown fathers, brothers, sons and brides, wives, mothers to be kindred blood’; for the position of Schneidewin-Nauck compare Od. 4.229–30

Professor Ogilvie, co-editor of Classical Quarterly since the summer of 1976, died suddenly at St Andrews on 7 November 1981. He was forty-nine. His untimely death is a grievous blow to his family, his colleagues at St Andrews, and an unusually wide circle of pupils past and present, friends from many walks of life, and classical scholars. At a remarkably young age Robert Ogilvie achieved distinction as a Latinist and Roman historian, a humane man of letters, a don, and a schoolmaster. He was a brilliant lecturer, an educationalist passionately convinced of the good in Greek and Roman life and literature. The demands which others made on him were heavy, and he demanded much of himself.

Meleager, in assembling the poetic garland of his first epigram, picked palm-leaves to represent Aratus:

All editors and translators that I know of render the first part of this passage along the lines of ‘They changed the usual meanings of words‘. Thus Weil and Romilly talk of ‘le sens usuel des mots’,1 Stahl of ‘usitatam vocabulorum significationem’,2 Bloomfield of ‘the accustomed acceptation of names’;3 the most popular modern English translation gives ‘words... had to change their usual meanings’,4 and the best-known modern commentary the phrase in my title – ‘the customary meanings of words were changed’.5 The passage is widely quoted, not only by ancient historians but also by sociologists and philosophers; and one suspects the excitement of this translation to be at least a part-cause of the passage's fame. Comparisons are made with modern propaganda, Orwell's 1984, and so on. But this translation must be wrong; unfortunately for generations of believers, though fortunately for the reputation of Thucydides, who would otherwise be saddled with a nonsensical piece of writing.

Since the publication of our article on Thucydides and the Plague of Athens, Dr Heinrich von Staden of Yale University has kindly drawn our attention to a paper by Eby and Evjen suggesting that the Plague was glanders. We do not think that this diagnosis can possibly be correct, though there are undoubtedly some points in its favour. The authors have argued their case as persuasively as possible, and the proposal has sufficient merit to deserve a serious reply.

Agamemnon returns victorious from Troy; the Argive Elders who form the chorus of the play greet and praise him. On a first reading the praise seems lukewarm, the passage as a whole rambling and uninteresting.1 Is the address unimportant because our eyes are intent upon Agamemnon and his retinue? If so, the tone of these anapaests would still be puzzling, in giving the king's arrival the effect of an anticlimax, particularly considering the duration and nature of the dramatic preparation for it.

Bailey posed the problem succinctly and clearly: ‘Though you can be said to “fashion a dream for yourself”, it is not easy to see how you can do it for someone else.’ He agrees with Giussani: somnia = ineptae fabulae, which is unexceptionable. But in fact Bailey's objection to the ‘literal’ meaning of the text is baseless. Dream control was indeed practised in antiquity.

A glance at Enk's commentary will show how much dispute there has been about the poem's coherence. In the past several scholars have proposed transpositions, but no scheme has won acceptance, and no modern expert advocates that procedure.1 Another way of understanding the poem's design might be through its modes of expression-exclamation, narrative, threat, etc.2 But this also proves unsatisfactory; for although a number of clear divisions can be made, the sections are too short and fragmented to be regarded as structural units. (We will find, however, that at three important points a change in the mode of expression accompanies and reinforces the divisions suggested by a different method of analysis.) A third approach might be made by following the direction of the poet's address-now to himself, now to Cynthia, now to the reader. But it is not always clear where the divisions come, and even when we agree on an approximation (i.e. ‘somewhere between line x and line y’), the break rarely coincides with a break in thought.3 So it is worth trying instead the approach indicated by the title. In doing so we shall note half a dozen cases where the method supports one textual reading against alternatives proposed.

In the literature on Rome's trade with the Far East, it is confidently stated that sandalwood and teak figured among the imports from India. The evidence offered is a passage from Per. 36. As it happens, the words in the passage taken to refer to sandalwood actually refer to teak, and those taken to refer to teak have nothing to do with it.

The purpose of this article is to explain what I believe to have been the nature of the relationship between Aristophanes and the producer of his earliest plays, Kallistratos. My view was indicated in my edition of Wasps (pp. 124, 263–4) without full explanation. It is much the same as the view taken by Rennie in his edition of Akharnians (pp. 11–21), but I think that it can be given more cogent support than Rennie gave it. Recently the whole matter has been discussed afresh by G. Mastromarco (QuadernidiStoria 10(1979), 153–96)andS. Halliwell (CQ n.s.30(1980),33–45).1 This has enabled me to make my article briefer; I need not repeat the full bibliographical references to other views which Mastromarco and Halliwell have given, and I can, for the most part, confine my comments to the points on which I disagree with them.2 Everyone accepts the statements of the Hellenistic scholars that the earliest plays of Aristophanes (Banqueters, Babylonians, Akharnians) were produced δι⋯Καννιστρ⋯του. Consideration of what this meant may begin from his own justification of the arrangement, given in the parabasis of Knights.

Among the many codices carried by Cassiodorus when he returned to Italy from Constantinople in the early 550s was a copy of the chronicle of Marcellinus, an Illyrian who had lived for many years in Constantinople before writing his chronicle in A.D. 518/519. The chronicle covered events from 379 to the death of Anastasius (518) and was later continued by Marcellinus to 534.1 That the chronicle is preserved at all is due partly to the fact that Cassiodorus recommended it in his reading guide for monks, the Institutiones (c. 555), where it is included under the heading ‘Christian Historians’ (Inst. 1. 17). If you want to know which chroniclers to read, says Cassiodorus, then begin with Jerome's translation of Eusebius and his own continuation of Eusebius to 378. Of all the continuators of Jerome Cassiodorus recommends Marcellinus and Prosper, but in mentioning Marcellinus he digresses slightly to include some valuable and unique information which he had picked up while in Constantinople on Marcellinus' public career.

The position on the question of divine providence of the Aristotelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c. A.D. 200) is of particular interest. It marks an attempt to find a via media between the Epicurean denial of any divine concern for the world, on the one hand, and the Stoic view that divine providence governs it in every detail, on the other.2 As an expression of such a middle course it finds a place in later classifications of views concerning providence.3 It is also of topical interest: Alexander's fullest discussion, in his treatise De providentia (On Providence) (surviving only in two Arabic versions), has only recently been edited and translated,4 although some aspects of his position had long been known from other texts preserved in Greek.5

(1) Agr. 6. 4. The MSS give idem praeturae certior et silentium. Usually this corrupt passage is restored according to the conjecture of Rhenanus as idem praeturae term et silentium,1 because certior et does not make sense, although it has been pointed out several times that even this, the best of various suggestions as to how to solve the problem, is basically not satisfactory.2

Crime pays, says Polus at Gorgias 473. Socrates, on the other hand, maintains two propositions in the face of universal opinion: