The ‘choriambic dimeter’, or ‘wilamowitzianus’, is favoured by Euripides. Aeschylus does not use this colon,1 while Sophocles, as explained below, restricts it to a few stanzas and occasional sequences. But Euripides has at least one ode composed of ‘chor dim’ standing κατà στίχoν with glyconic in all of his middle and later plays except Tro2 ‘Chor dim’ has a strong affinity with glyc. They not only mix within an ode but make strophic responsion with each other. P. Maas regards ‘chor dim’ as an anaclastic variant of glyc: and indeed some scholars give the name ‘glyc’ to the colon.4

In CQ n.s. 30 (1980), 127 ff. Mr A. Hudson-Williams clearly and illuminatingly exposes the difficulties contained in these lines. It seems possible, however, to carry the analysis further; and in the following I offer, with Mr Hudson-Williams's findings as a starting-point, some suggestions towards a solution of the problems.

As an example of Aristophanic literary criticism the portrayal of Agathon in the prologue of the Thesmophoriazusae has been rather overshadowed by the poetry contest of the Frogs. This is largely because more can be said about parody when something substantial of the author parodied has survived.1 Before many of the specific difficulties of the Agathon scenes we have no alternative but to confess our ⋯πορ⋯α.On the other hand, we need not despair of understanding the general point of these scenes, and in this the most helpful method is that of identifying those Aristophanic techniques which shaped them. This method has already taken us a good way forward, so that there is no need now to argue for the structural integrity of these scenes2 or their thematic relevance to the play.3 Accordingly, in this paper I will discuss the portrayal of Agathon in relation to typical Aristophanic techniques. My main concern, however, will be with the significance of the different conceptions of literature raised in the course of the parody, Agathon being satirized in turn as an inspired poet, a craftsman poet and an effeminate poet. I hope to show that, for Aristophanes, Agathon's effeminacy is as much a reflection of his art as of his personality.

In 56 L. Cornelius Balbus, a native of Gades, was charged with having usurped the Roman citizenship. Most scholars have held on the basis of Cicero’s speech in his defence that the charge was unjustified. This orthodoxy was challenged in 1966 by H. Braunert:1 in his view Balbus’ enfranchisement was illegal because the consent of Gades had not been obtained. More recently H. Galsterer has deduced from this premise the further conclusion that in the second century the Latin ius migrationis was restricted by a rule that no migrant could become a Roman citizen without the consent of the city of his origin. 2 It is my aim to rehabilitate the orthodox view and to show that there is no warrant for Galsterer’s thesis.

‘It is not deceptae tabellae which reveal your conduct to me nor secretly given presents which incriminate you.’ So does Ovid, according to the vast majority of our MSS, complain of the openness of his mistress's infidelity (the point of this couplet does not emerge fully until line 13, ipse miser uidi…). Tabellae causes no difficulty - wax tablets traditionally carried elegiac love-letters1 - but deceptae, which obviously cannot bear its most usual meaning here, has often been declared corrupt. Burman favoured the variant decepto given by the ‘Sarravianus’ of Heinsius;2 it certainly qualifies mihi aptly enough but leaves tabellae without a much-needed epithet.3 Other editors have resorted to conjectures of widely varying distinction,4 of which easily the most seductive is Heinsius’ male deletae for mihi deceptae. It was prompted by the mihi deletae which appears in one fifteenth-century MS5 and would seem to derive considerable support from Ars Am. 3. 495–6 nec nisi deletis tutum rescribere ceris, | ne teneat geminas una tabella manus (cf. also Ars Am. 2. 395–6 et, quotiens scribes, lotas prius ipse tabellas | inspice: plus multae, quam sibi missa, Legunt).

After these words begins Cassandra's long, halting movement into the house and towards her death.

The Roman Senate in 144 B.C. instructed the urban praetor, Q. Marcius Rex, to repair the conduits of Rome's two existing aqueducts, the Appia and the Anio (later called the Anio Vetus), and to put an end to illegal use of their water by private citizens. Urban growth now demanded a more copious water supply, and so the Senate further I instructed Marcius to secure additional water for the city. Money was appropriated for this work, and Marcius' praetorship was prorogued for 143. At this point the decemviri objected to a plan for bringing water to the Capitol. The issue was debated in the Senate in 143, and again in 140; but on both occasions Marcius' gratia prevailed, and water reached the Capitol in a new aqueduct which Marcius himself had built. A statue of Marcius was erected in later times on the Capitol, behind the temple of Jupiter, to commemorate this grand achievement.1 An everlasting glory was in fact to be his in the name of the aqueduct whose waters earned poets' praises.

There is no general agreement among scholars that Aristotle had a unified concept of phantasia. That is evident from the most cursory glance through the literature. Freudenthal (p. 53) speaks of the contradictions into which Aristotle seems to fall in his remarks about phantasia, and explains the contradictions as due to the border position which phantasia occupies between Wahrnehmung and thinking. Ross, in Aristotle (ed. 5, London, 1949), p. 143, talks of passages on phantasia in De Anima 3. 3 which constitute ‘a reversal of his doctrine of sensation’ and perhaps do not ‘represent his deliberate view’. This is a serious state of affairs, since De Anima 3. 3 is Aristotle’s main discussion of phantasia. Of passages on phantasia, appearances and images in De Anima 3. 3, Hamlyn says: ‘There is clearly little consistency here’. Even Schofield, who is more optimistic about saving the unity of Aristotle’s concept than the last two scholars, grants that ‘some of the inconsistencies of Aristotle’s account seem more than merely apparent’.1 He thinks of Aristotle’s phantasia as a ‘loose-knit, family concept’ (op. cit., p. 106). My purpose here is to suggest that Aristotle is more consistent in his use of phantasia than his critics will allow him to be. The translation of the term as imagination frequently adds unnecessarily to the confusion, so I shall avoid it and use transliteration instead.

Aristotle (Rhet. 3.9) distinguishes two types of style, the ‘periodic’ or ‘rounded’ (λ⋯ξιςκατεστραμμέη) and the ‘non-periodic’, ‘strung-on’ or ‘continuous’ (λέξιςε;ἰρομένη).* The latter is typical of prose in its young and unsophisticated state, and Aristotle is not much interested in it; his discussion of the periodic style is much longer, with subdivisions being introduced and numerous examples given. His basic definition of the period is not, however, clear, and the point has seen some controversy. There are two possibilities. (1) He defines the period ‘rhythmically’ (as I shall call it). The essential feature of the period is that its beginning and end are marked off by specific metrical rhythms (discussed in the preceding chapter, 3.8, where Aristotle recommends the paean).1 (2) He defines it ‘logically’. The period is a syntactic structure with an inner cohesion produced by the logical, pre-planned arrangement of its parts according to the requirements of the whole.2 The current consensus at least of written opinions is that Aristotle intended the first;3 I believe that the issue can be settled fairly decisively in favour of the second.

In Metamorphoses 1. 461–8 Ovid lists islands visited by Minos and brought into his realm during his journey from Crete to Aigina on the way to avenge the death of Androgeos in Attica.

There are certain ‘facts’ which every schoolboy knows. Every schoolboy knows, for instance, that at the Battle of Hastings King Harold was killed by a shot in his eye from an arrow; and Sir Frank Stenton's demonstration that he pretty certainly wasn't has done little to shake this conviction.1 Not every schoolboy, perhaps, but every undergraduate who studies the history of ancient Athens knows that Ephialtes was murdered. After all, that is what the books tell him. Thus in Meiggs/Bury we read that ‘Cimon's chief antagonist Ephialtes was murdered’; this is echoed by Forrest and Davies, to name just two authors of recent standard works. Hignett even knew the weapon the murderer used: ‘the dagger of the assassin removed him in the hour of his triumph’

We have extremely strong reasons for supposing that the exposure of infants, very often resulting in death, was common in many different parts of the Roman Empire, and that it had considerable demographic, economic and psychological effects. The evidence for the first of these propositions has been reviewed or alluded to in several recent publications.1 However, a thorough new study, covering the whole of Greek and Roman antiquity, would be worth while. In the meantime Donald Engels has declared that in the Greek and Roman worlds the exposure of children was ‘of negligible importance’ (‘The problem of female infanticide in the Greco-Roman World’, CPh 75 (1980), 112–20).

In the past most scholars held that at Odes 1.16. 5–21 Horace is making excuses for his own anger. More recently, however, Commager (The Odes of Horace: A Critical Study, p. 138) and Nisbet and Hubbard (A Commentary on Horace: Odes I, pp. 202–3) maintained that in this passage the poet is referring to the addressee's ira and trying to dissuade her from being angry with him. In my opinion both interpretations contain part of the truth, but both fail to grasp the essential point that the passage is in fact yet another instance of an Horatian tease.

A most pleasing recent advance in our knowledge of Callimachus’ fragmentary poems has been the recognition that an elegiac piece, part of which appeared as P. Oxy. vol. 1 no. 14, belongs to him and, one presumes, to the Aetia. Powell (Collectanea Alexandrina, p. 131) already thought of Callimachus as the author, others of Nicander (hence Gow-Scholfield doubtfully included the fragment in their edition, p. 220). Evidence that the author was of some standing is provided by the fact that a scholiast on Nicander, Theriaca 386 (P. Oxy. 2221 col. 11, 17–20) quoted line 4 of the fragment1 (though the additional letters at the start of the line have defied restoration and may be corrupt).2 Great progress came with the publication by M. Gronewald (ZPE 15 [1974], 105 ff.) of P. Mich. 4761, which preserves, almost though not quite perfectly, the beginning of lines 5–15 (underlined on the accompanying text), wherein P. Oxy.

The last book we shall have from the hand of Denys Page is an edition of that ‘talented but inscrutable writer’ the epigrammatist Rufinus.1 It is a model of its kind, distinguished by all the virtues we have come to associate with Page's work - erudition, intelligence and judgement. But on the long-debated question of Rufinus’ date he may be as much as three centuries out.

Ritualistic formulae and acts pervade the political, legal, societal and religious life of the ancient world. In many instances there are striking similarities between the formulae of the Greco-Roman world and those of the Near East. Often illumination exists from one to the other. Here I wish to notice a few passages in Greek drama where I think such illumination is possible.

Theurgy, the religious magic practised by the later Neoplatonists, has been commonly regarded as the point at which Neoplatonism degenerates into magic, superstition and irrationalism.1 A superficial glance at the ancient lives of the Neoplatonists, and in particular at Eunapius’ Lives of the Sophists, reveals a group of people interested in animating statues, favoured with visions of gods and demons, and skilled in rain-making. But when we look more closely at the works of the Neoplatonists themselves, rather than the stories biographers tell about them, we find a considerable diversity of attitudes towards theurgy and a number of attempts to fit theurgy into their philosophical system.

Aristides Quintilianus' dates are not known, but he can hardly be earlier than the first century A.D. or later than the third. Several passages in the early pages of his de Musica1 purport to record facts about the practice of much older theorists, in contexts which make it clear that his references are to the period before Aristoxenus. Since our knowledge of music theory in that period is extremely sketchy, it is obviously worth trying to assess the reliability of Aristides' information. Two of his references have often been recognized as being of special interest, and there is a third, to which, I shall argue, the other two are intimately related. The first (12. 12 to the end of the diagram on 13) records two systems of notation, alleged by Aristides to have been used by oί ⋯ρχαîoι. The second (18. 5 to the end of the diagram on 20) is the famous, or notorious, account of certain ‘divisions of the tetrachord’ which were employed by oί π⋯νυαλαιότατoι πρ⋯ς ⋯ρμoνίας. It is these, Aristides tells us, which are mentioned by Plato in the Republic.2 The remaining passage (15. 8–20) is superficially rather less exciting: it records the names and initial notes of the ⋯ρμoνίαι, or forms of octave scale, said to have been distinguished by oί παλαιoί, and says something about a method by which the πoιότης of each can be made clear. The information given here about the nature of the ⋯ρμoνίαι is familiar: it is to be found, for example, in Cleonides Eisagoge 19. 4 ff., where rather more detail is given, and where the names of the ⋯ρμoνίαι are again ascribed to oί ⋯ρχαîoι (19. 7: cf. also ‘Bellerman's Anonymous’ 62). I shall suggest, however, that Aristides' version has independent interest. What he tells us in the first two passages is found nowhere else.

Our purpose is protreptic, to broach a subject neglected by researchers and consequently by commentators on Plautus and Terence.1 We mean the relation of rhythm and dramatic meaning in the ordinary stichic iambo-trochaic metres. It is of course a longstanding convention that a commentator writing in usum scholarum will include some account of the basic rules of scansion and prosody and a conspectus metrorum of sorts. Ambitious efforts may be made to analyse the polymetric songs in Plautus, if to label cola is analysis; but there are notorious difficulties in this, for the songs are astrophic and polymorphous, the colometry is uncertain, and it cannot be said that we fully understand the range or relationship of the elements out of which the songs are constructed, or that the rules of prosody in the cantica have been definitively established. Under the circumstances it is understandable that commentators refrain except in the most general terms from relating rhythm to dramatic context in the songs. But it is different with the iambo-trochaic metres. We are on firmer ground here, and there is more of it. Commentators will draw attention to aspects of the playwright's diction such as alliteration, assonance, triadic expression, hyperbaton, and so on, by which emphasis and dramatic ‘colouring’ may be indicated. But very little attention is given to the dramatic and tonal implications of the texture of the iambo-trochaic metres as used for whole scenes or in particular exchanges. This is a pity, because Plautus and the tragedians and even Terence can be shown to have exploited the latitude of realization allowed by ‘the rules’ to underpin the sense of a passage or an exchange.