One of the most striking features of the Iliad is 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 the Iliad and for later Greek poetry.

The degrees of formality into which speech can be graded are in no sphere more obvious than in expressions of address and third-person reference. Methods of naming vary according to many factors: the formality of the circumstances in which naming takes place, the nature of the subject under discussion, and the ages, sex, and relative status of the speaker and addressee. Conventions of naming sometimes reflect the rigidity or otherwise of social divisions. In some societies or circles address between superior and subordinate is non-reciprocal: the speaker with the greater prestige will adopt one form of address, the subordinate another. In other societies when unequals address each other both may use the same formal method of address: the difference of prestige is not explicitly acknowledged.

The purpose of this article is to examine a neglected formulaic element in Homer, which we may call the doublet, and to establish its nature and function by comparison with—mainly—Irish narrative literature. By doublet is meant a combination of two terms which are to all intents synonymous. Without attempting to give a new definition of formula it may be useful to say that both the doublet and the noun-epithet formula—and perhaps only these two—are formulae of the style of heroic narrative.

The problems connected with the Cornificii of the late Republic are various, and all concerned with identification. I have no major discoveries to present, but various minor rectifications and suggestions to make, which should give the younger Q. Cornificius at least more substance. Where he is concerned, one basic identification has been, rightly, generally accepted: that made by Jerome between the poet of the name and the Cornificius who fell in Africa in the wars of the Triumvirate, abandoned by the soldiers whom he had castigated as ‘hares in helmets’. I do not wish to discuss here in any detail the military career of Cornificius; son of the man, like him Quintus, who stood in vain for the consulship of 63, he fought with success for Caesar as quaestor pro praetore in Illyricum in 48; he was rewarded, probably in 47 when Caesar doled out many priesthoods, with the augurate, and went out to govern Cilicia, only to find himself called on to help in suppressing Caecilius Bassus' revolt in Syria.

Of all the explanations of this line the most sensible seems to be that first proposed by Beroaldus: ‘Conqueritur Cynthia sibi defunctae tegulam fractam mutilatamque sub capite fuisse suppositam, quum debuerit amator puluinos molles delicatosque subiicere.’ That Cynthia is talking about the performance of funeral rites is confirmed by Shackleton Bailey's discussion of 1.25 (CQ 63 (1949), 28 f.). In default of ancient parallels, I offer a modern one. In the last wishes of the Princess Teresa Uzeda in the novel I viceré by Federico De Roberto, first published in 1894, is included the provision:

We know of the Atinian plebiscite only from a tantalizing reference of Gellius, apparently citing Ateius Capito: ‘nam et tribunis, inquit plebis senatus habendi ius erat, quamquam senatores non essent ante Atinium plebiscitum.’ Willems was able to note two interpretations, one of which held that the plebiscite required that all tribunes be senators already, the other that it allowed tribunes the enjoyment of senatorial rights. The first was rightly rejected; since all we know disallows the notion that an aedileship would precede the tribunate, senatorial status could only come after the quaestorship and while there were only eight or less quaestors, clearly ten tribunes could hardly all be ex-quaestors. Consequently Willems adopted the second alternative: acquisition of the tribunate entailed the ius sententiae dicendae in the senate.

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: