The following notes on the In Pisonem are largely based on the commentary of R. G. M. Nisbet (Oxford, 1961) (‘N’). The references to the speech are by section and line of his text, and where my note is based on one of his I add a reference to the page of his commentary.

1. 20 (p. 58) voltus …, qui sermo quidam tacitus mentis est: ‘thoughts are usually revealed by the face.’ Add to Otto's, Seyffert-Muller's, and N.'s examples: Curtius 8. 6. 22 ‘voltus haud sane securi animi index’, Juv. 9. 18 ff.

T. D. Barnes has recently impugned the authenticity of these verses and calls for a defence of their genuineness. Although I agree with Fergus Millar that ‘the problem of the Historia Augusta is one into which sane men refrain from entering’,2 yet I think we can at least counter Barnes's objections.

Barnes musters four arguments which he naturally calls ‘quite conclusive’. He first points out that the verses are omitted in the epitome of Dio by Xiphilinus, who is our sole source for Dio here, and claims that it is unlikely that Xiphilinus could have omitted such a ‘striking poem’. This is putting an extraordinarily high value on Xiphilinus, who is quite capable of omitting things of greater moment than five Latin verses which he would presumably have had to translate into Greek; as an epitomator of Dio, he is inferior to Zonaras, and his account of Hadrian's reign is particularly poor.

In the controversy over the date of Corinna, the following points may be taken as agreed:

1. An edition was made in Boeotia about the end of the third or beginning of the second century B.C.

2. The texts of Corinna current in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods were all descended from that Boeotian edition.

3. Before its dissemination, Corinna was unknown in Greece at large. If she wrote at an earlier period, she must have been remembered only locally.

The difference between Boeotian spelling of the fifth century and that of the fourth is very great: but the difference in this respect between the mid-fourth century and the late third or early second is comparatively slight. It is therefore tenable that whereas there would be a good reason for the re-spelling of fifth-century Boeotian into the later convention of any period, there would be no obvious or adequate reason for re-spelling Boeotian of the fourth century into the orthography of the third, or that of the third into that of the second. Even those features of fourth-century spelling which have ceased to preponderate are by no means unknown or even uncommon at the end of the third century.

The context shows that the intention of the lines was to bring out the surpassing beauty of a certain girl and its value to the chorus as a whole. When the Pleiades rise up the sky, they are followed by a star that far outshines them all: Sirius. In Alcman's image, then, the Pleiades should correspond to the chorus and Sirius to the girl. The point of opdpiaiis that the comparison is not chosen at random, but suggested by something to be seen during the current ceremonies: the Pleiades rise up the sky before dawn when we carry the plough, with Sirius down below them, and they seem like a rival group.

There is no reference to Ortheia, and no rival chorus. We may translate: ‘For the Pleiades range themselves against us, before dawn, as we bear the plough through the ambrosial night, bringing Sirius up with them as they do.’

The verb λάω is attested in two passages of early epic poetry, (a) Homeric Hymn to Hermes 360, where the infant Hermes is hiding in a dark cave, and (b) τ 229 ff., of a hound seizing a fawn on the brooch of Odysseus. Of the several meanings suggested by the ancient lexicographers for λάω, seeing, gazing, or crying, screeching would suit (a). These senses recur in their explanations of (b), with gripping or devouring as additional possibilities. The most extensive modern treatment of λάω is by Leumann, who explains it as a present falsely formed from the perfect λ⋯ληkα (X 141, of a hawk), and originally intended to describe the cry of a bird of prey. The unfamiliarity of the form led to its being associated later on with the sharp-sightedness of such birds, as well as with the bark of a hound fastening on its quarry.