Attenderes Physicis; quaereres, utrumne ignis esset initium rerum, an vero. minutis editus et mirabilibus ementis perpetuus hie mundus, an mortalis esset.

Theseus, on entering, immediately demands of the Chorus an explanation of the in the house and of the lack of proper welcome for the returning master. His first thought (794) is that something may have happened to the aged Pittheus. No, say the Chorus, the (that which has happened) has nothing to do with the old: it is the young whose death causes pain (798). Naturally, Theseus now leaps to the conclusion that it is his children whose ‘life is pillaged’ (799): no, he is told, it is his wife.

One of the most striking differences between ancient and modern writings on Homer is the prominence in the former, and the rarity in the latter, of discussions of pathos. The word barely appears in the most characteristic books of our time on the subject. Thus the inquirer will find in Wace and Stubbings's Companion to Homer (1962) an index hospitable enough to include ‘Babylonian cuneiform’, and ‘Kum-Tepe, neolithic-site at’, and ‘Pig-keeping, in Homer’; but for ‘pathos’ he will look in vain.

(a) The Regress: Knowledge, we like to suppose, is essentially a rational thing: if I claim to know something, I must be prepared to back up my claim by statingmy reasons for making it;and if my claim is to be upheld, my reasons must begood reasons. Now suppose I know that Q; and let my reasons be conjunctively contained in the proposition that R. Clearly, I must believe that R (for R cannot give my reasons unless it has my assent);equally clearly, I must know that R (for mere opinion is not nutritious enough to sustain the demanding body of knowledge). Thus if I know that Q, I know that R. But if I know that R, then I must have my reasons, R' for holding R; and, by the same argument, I mustknow that R'. And if R', then R”; and so on, ad infinitum

Odysseus describes Polyphemus preparing his meal. One expects an indication of the terrifying size of the (cf. 385, 388, 390 f.); and so , lonely though it is in L, should not be abandoned: compare Ar. Pax.73 . must mean bowls for blood. But the blood of the Greeks flows into the cauldron (see below). It seems probable therefore that is a (probably corrupt) comic periphrasis for the cauldron. Hermann read 395 after 399 as .

In pages 101–3 of his article Pope lists the numbers of occurrences of interrogative and enclitic in Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and mentions occurrences in other authors. He shows that, although there is a dead heat between the numbers of instances of the two words in Aeschylus, nevertheless enclitic is very rarely indeed, and perhaps never, found in sentences which do not have a main verb (or, failing that, at least subject and predicate). There are, however, occurrences of interrogative in sentences which lack a main verb and have no predicate either. It must surely be rare to find statement sentences which do not contain at least subject and predicate at the best of times, let alone when happens to occur in the sentence. There are strong reasons, then, for rejecting the version of F and Triclinius, quite apart from the occurrence of in the sentence. One can defend by saying that either is understood from the preceding sentence, or else is vaguely understood: The favour of the gods comes to men (comes about) perforce.’ But it is not very plausible. I am inclined to agree with Pope on this point, if not for quite the same reason.

The essential purpose of the present article (which is quarried from my Cambridge doctoral dissertation, ‘A Study of the Seven against Thebes of Aeschylus’, 1975) is to put forward a new theory concerning the last scene of the Septem, 1005–78. The problem of the play's ending as a whole has been very thoroughly discussed by P. Nicolaus, Die Frage nach der Echtheit der Schlussszene von Aischylos' Sieben gegen Theben (Tübingen, 1967); since I have no wish to duplicate Nicolaus's work I shall deal only very briefly with those aspects of the problem on which I find myself in agreement with him and with other scholars.

… super scorpionem + pisciculum marinum +, super sagittarium oclopetam, super capricornum locustam marinam, super aquarium anserem, super pisces duos mullos.

The unsoundness of the area following scorpionem is brought out by its extreme vagueness (Heinsius) coupled with the stylistically inelegant repetition of marinum/ -am, - objectionable in Petronius. I should like to submit what I believe to be a plausible way of restoring the text.