Excavations at Sparta early in this century seemed at the time to have provided a fairly clear-cut and decisive answer to questions about the character of Spartan life in the archaic and classical periods. In the seventh century B.C. and the beginning of the sixth century, it was thought, life was comfortable and even luxurious but thereafter comforts and luxuries disappeared from among the offerings at the temple of Artemis Orthia and so, it was held, from Spartan life.

The Argive herald is dissuading the king from championing the cause of his petitioners. ‘It is either because they have detected some stupidity that they have come here to you, or because, being in a hopeless position, they are just chancing their arm to see whether or not . For I doubt if they expect that, in your right senses, you would, etc’ For the alleged impersonal use of (‘employed in a sense similar to that of our colloquial to come off, Pearson) editors can quote only two passages of Aeschylus, which I transcribe from Page's text: Su. 527–8 , Ch. 378–9 (‘non intellegunturjmutilum esse iudico inclusis scholiorum fragmentis’, Page).

I have not seen the papyrus, but if β and μ are correctly reported, and if the space between would admit three letters, I tentatively suggest . sed haec quidem (sunt) uituperatio.

The old Analytical view that the union between the Journey of Telemachus and the rest of the Odyssey is post-Homeric, superficial, and incompetently effected is nowadays widely rejected, and rightly so. However, although many defences cumulatively, I believe, successful–of the content of the second divine assembly have been put forward in recent years, no adequate answer has yet been given to the objections raised against the allegedly anomalous language of Athene's speech of 5.7–20:

The last line should, I believe, be printed as a question. Strepsides is seated on the sacred and a wreath is put on his head, which makes him feel like a sacrificial victim. In 261 he is told to hold still, and we gather from that at this point he is being sprinkled with some dry substance. If we put the full stop at the end, he is saying, ‘I can see you won't disappoint me: being sprinkled like this will make me into flour all right’. If we make it a question, it is ‘No fear, you won't trick me: you mean being sprinkled is the way to turn into flour?’ This seems more in keeping with his apprehension in 257, and it allows what is perhaps a more natural sense to

Statius' Silvae owe their preservation to a copy made in Switzerland for Poggio in 1417 by a local scribe. This copy, brought to light by G. Loewe in 1879, was recognized for what it was by A.C. Clark and A. Klotz twenty years later, and since then its descendants have had at best historical interest. To extract much of that from them an editor must endeavour to survey all the extant material, and A. Marastoni in the recent Teubner edition (1961, 1970) claims to have done just that: ‘omnes manuscriptos libros veteresque editiones iterum contuli’ he says at the opening of his preface, and the reviewers echo his words.

CO. Brink's discussion of these lines takes five pages in the body of his commentary, and is continued in an appendix of nine pages at the end. But the passage has for so long caused such sore vexation that his treatment of it seems actually compendious rather than long, and deserves our gratitude. With the main part of his solution, which is to understand communia as ‘generalities to which individual features must be given’ (p. 196), I fully agree.