The manuscript B of Aulus Gellius, containing N.A. 9-12 and 13.5, and now split at potuit/admonendi 12.10.3 between Cod. Bern. 404 and Cod. Lugd.- Bat. B. P. L. 1925, is dated by Hosius (Teubner edn., I.xii) and Marshall (O.C.T. I.xvii) to 1173 on the strength of the subscript to an astronomical work immediately preceding Gellius in Cod. Bern. 404. This work is the ‘Liber Atphargan'i [sic] in scientia astrorum et radicibus motuum caelestium’’ translated by Johannes Hispalensis; the subscriptio, quoted in full by Hertz (.ed. max., Il.lxi), indicates the date as follows (I expand contractions): Expletus est die uicesimo quarto. V. mensis lunaris anni Arabum quingentesimi. XXVIIII. existente,. . die mensis Martii era. M.C.LXXIII.

The predominance of the rhetorical spirit in fourth-century tragedy has often been remarked: Aristotle himself explicitly attests the rhetorical character of contemporary dramatic compositions when he says (Poet. 6, 1450b4–8) that the older poets used to present the dramatis personae speaking like statesmen

The Phaselis decree (IG I. 16+ = Meiggs—Lewis, No. 31 = IG I. 10) is our chief piece of evidence for the manner in which the Athenians regulated civil-suits arising between themselves and the allies in the mid-fifth century. It reads as follows:

Augustan poets refer curiously often to the possible composition of a Gigantomachy, as in Prop. 2.1 and 3.9, Ov. Am. 2.1.11 ff., Trist. 2.61 ff. and 331 ff., and the future study of natural philosophy, as in Verg. Georg. 2.475 ff. and Prop. 3.5.25 ff. These ambitions are rejected, abandoned, or firmly set in the future. I suggest that the function of both is closely similar since they provide traditionally sublime themes to contrast the poet's present ‘humbler’’ task.

Mr. Reed has performed a distinct service by reminding us (CQ 26 (1976),309 ff.) of the odd statement by Guglielmo da Pastrengo that Tacitus was once the director of Titus' private library: if authentic, the information is too precious to be neglected. We cannot deny that Guglielmo may have had ancient sources now lost. When we know that a short epic, probably by Rabirius, one of the most admired poets of the Augustan age, disappeared after 1466, although it was protected by a false ascription to Virgil, it would be foolhardy to claim that any loss after 1350 was impossible. On the other hand, we all know that instant erudition was a speciality of many Medieval sciolists whom admirers of the Middle Ages now call ‘Humanists’’ and ‘scholars’’, e.g. Arnulf of Orleans, whose recondite learning enabled him to inform us that Lucan was called Annaeus because bees settled on the infant's lips, and that he was brought to Rome as a captive after Nero stormed Cordova.

With these words the ‘first slave’’ of the Knights (usually identified as Demosthenes), encourages the Sausage-seller to take up the cudgels against the Paphlagonian, confident that the actor playing this role will not be masked. The exception proves the rule and it is generally concluded from these lines that portrait masks were customary in Aristophanic comedy.

In her Greek and Roman Sundials (New Haven and London, 1976), Sharon Gibbs discusses (pp.105–17) with success the identification of the archaeological finds of ancient sundials with the description of the types given briefly by Vitruvius (De Arcbitectura, IX.8.1). There is, however, an important piece of evidence from another ancient literary source which, though it does not alter her conclusions, ought to be added and clarified.

‘Tiberium Neronem et Claudium Drusum priuignos imperatoriis nominibus auxit [sc. Augustus]’’, i.e. honoured them with salutations as ‘imperatores’’. So I took it in my commentary (Cambridge, 1972), supposing argument needless. I must now defend my view against R. Syme, Historia antiqua, Commentationes Louanienses in honorem W. Peremans (Louvain, 1977), p.239. Syme asserts ‘Avoiding a technical term, he [Tacitus] describes the stepsons of the Princeps as invested with imperatoriis nominibus (3.1). That is, a grant of imperium proconsular (after the campaigns of 11 B.C.).’’ He adds in a footnote ‘As emerges clearly from Dio 54.33.5 (Drusus), cf. 34.4 (Tiberius). The matter must be stated firmly, since both Koestermann and Goodyear are totally inadequate.’’ Let me make amends.

The Ionian war was more complex than any previous war in which Greeks had fought one another. Various factors contributed to its complexity. One of them was the uneasy partnership between Peloponnesians and Persians, which seldom functioned to the complete satisfaction of the former and was at times almost in abeyance. Other factors were the oligarchical revolution at Athens, which nearly plunged the Athenians into civil war, and the chameleon-like behaviour of Alcibiades, who within a brief period lent his services first to Sparta, then to Persia, and finally to Athens, though at all times serving primarily his own interests. Yet another factor was the multiplicity of Greek states directly or indirectly involved in the war. In addition to those of the Greek homeland and of Italy and Sicily which supplied contingents to the Peloponnesian expeditionary forces in Asia, all the members of the Delian Confederacy included at any time in the Ionian, Hellespontine, and Carian districts, numbering more than 150, must have been affected to some extent by the war, though only a fraction of them played an active part in it. The aim of this paper is to consider the attitude of Asiatic Greek cities towards the war and the extent of their involvement in it.

In the long section of anapaests with which they make their entry, the old men of Argos methodically deliver three essential messages to the audience:

40–71. It is the tenth year of the Trojan War.

72–82. We are men who were too old to go and fight in it.

83–103. Some new situation seems to be indicated by the fact that Clytemnestra is organizing sacrifices throughout the town.

In an earlier study I argued that the appearance of the name of Memmius in the first, second, and fifth books alone of Lucretius de Rerum Natura is only the most striking indication of a fundamental change in the poet's attitude towards his reader which is already well established quite a short way through book 5, and which makes it almost incontestable that Lucretius wrote books 3, 4, and 6 after he had lost all hope of converting Memmius to Epicureanism.

A. A. Barrett's recent addition of a raeda to Juvenal 1.155 is a novel and ingenious contribution to the ago-old debate over the text and meaning of the passage in question. His proposal is, however, vulnerable to the following objections.

First, it is worth emphasizing that there is no manuscript variant for the traditional reading taeda. In a passage so fraught with problems and textual discrepancies, this is probably suggestive.

Sed quid ego Graecorum: nescio quo modo me magis nostra delectant. Omnes hoc historici, Fabii Gellii sed proxume Coelius: cum bello Latino ludi votivi maxumi primum fierent, civitas ad arma repente est excitata …

Quintus goes on to tell the story of the countryman's dream, with its divine warning about the ominous praesul, which is also related by Livy, Dionysius, Valerius Maximus, and Macrobius.

It is a view commonly held by Tibullus' commentators and critics that the poet's art consists essentially in the more or less skilful weaving together of disparate themes into a single elegy. Leo, for example, talks of Tibullus' imagination which ‘ihn selbst und somit den Hörer gleichsam unwillkürlich von Bild zu Bilde reisst’’;

Q. Veranius, the governor of Britain who died in office, assured Nero in his will that he would have subjugated Britain ‘si biennio proximo vixisset’’. Proximo is suspect; if he had lived two years longer they were bound to be the next two. Read si biennio provixisset. For the verb provivere, to live longer, see Ann. 6.25; for the confusion of proximo and pro, see Capelli, p.299; and cf. Iul. Cap., M. Aur. 27 ‘si anno uno superfuisset, provincias ex his fecisset’’.

In this paper I shall be examining the nature and provenance of what many people state or imply to be a traditional, conventional, even trite figure of speech: the Augustan Elegists' figure of the ‘seruitium amoris’’. It is indeed a very frequent image (so to call it for the moment) in the Elegists. As. F. O. Copley says: ‘Of all the figures used by the Roman elegists, probably none is quite so familiar as that of the lover as slave.’’ But frequency does not equal triteness nor traditionality.

In Thucydides' account of Melesander's expedition with six ships to Caria and Lycia (2.69.1) there appears to me to be a difficulty which is universally ignored by commentators and fudged by translators. Thucydides describes the purpose of the expedition

The purpose of this note is to defend the following reading, offered by a minority of manuscripts, at Sat. 6.6.

Even if the evidence of the manuscripts showed merely that egregius… senes was an eleventh-century conjecture which gained a very moderate degree of acceptance, the reading would still have much to commend it.

Haec quae est a nobis prolata laudatio obsignata erat creta ilia Asiatica quae fere est omnibus nota nobis, qua utuntur omnes non modo in publicis sed etiam in privatis litteris quas cotidie videmus mitti a publicanis, saepe uni cuique nostrum.

Professor M. L. West has challenged the accepted reading (Reiske) and proposed (Philologus 117 (1973), 145). This makes for a disappointing antithesis, and Paley seems to have been right in pointing out that would be surprising as an object to tragic diction, at least, seems to use only pronouns, adjectives, or nouns which stand as internal accusatives etc.; fr. adesp.