It has frequently been remarked by critics of Petronius (though usually merely in passing) that the entry of the monumental mason, Habinnas, in the Cena Trimalchionis is modelled on that of Alcibiades in Plato's Symposium. Yet surprisingly enough the parallel has not found its way into the commentaries, nor has it ever been analysed in detail. In fact it can stand as an interesting illustration of the use of literary allusion in the Satyricon.

To know the scale of an aulos it is necessary to have a complete instrument. None of the surviving auloi are complete. It is the purpose of this article to attempt to reconstruct the missing parts of several auloi and thus to determine their scales.

All musical sounds consist of regular vibrations. The interval between two notes may be expressed as the rate of vibration of the higher note divided by the rate of vibration of the lower note. This ratio is very roughly the same as the length of the air column for the lower note (i.e. the distance from the reed to the first open hole) divided by the length of the air column for the higher note. This gross over-simplification has been used for all calculations in this article. The width of the air column, the size of the holes, and the reed itself affect the pitch considerably. The player also has a large control over the precise note played. And so the notes obtained by the ancients might have been very different from the notes obtained by ignoring these factors; although the player's control over pitch might have been used to lessen the effects of the other factors.

In Ox. Pap. xxxii (1967) i ff., no. 2617, Mr. Lobel published fragments which he shows reason to believe are from Stesichorus’ Geryoneis. Further work has been done on them by Professor D. L. Page and Mr. W. S. Barrett, and the more substantial fragments are included in an Appendix to Page's Lyrica Graeca Selecta (Oxford, 1968). Fr. 4, the most considerable piece, describes how, in Lobel's words: ‘a person, who I do not think there is much room to doubt is Heracles, delivers a secret attack on somebody which consists in shooting him through the head. Though only one “forehead”, one “crown”, and one “neck” are mentioned and the Geryones of Stesichorus had six hands and six feet (Page, MG fr. 186; Stesichorus, fr. 9; LGS fr. 56) and therefore presumably three heads, as elsewhere (e.g. Hes. Theog. 287), the possibility that Geryones is here in question does not seem to be ruled out.’

In a recent article Mr. D. A. West investigated the meaning of haurire, haustus, showing how the primary sense ‘to take by scooping, to draw’ is present in a number of passages which have been incorrectly interpreted in the light of extensions made only later of this usage. He noted in passing that ‘this sense may well survive in , the cognate of haurire’. In this article I hope to show that the recognition of this as the basic sense of and its cognates and compounds helps to clear away a number of errors arising from the misunderstanding of the fact that the action of scooping, or drawing, is at the root of Gk. , as of Lat. haurire.