In this scene Oedipus receives the delegation of suppliants who have come, under the leadership of the priest of Zeus, to entreat Oedipus to deliver them from the blight and the plague. The issue with which I propose to deal concerns the composition of this delegation.

This couplet has escaped critical attention, even though it contains two anomalies. First the combination ut iam has lost its normal meaning ‘even granted that’ (e.g. Ars 1. 346 ut iam fallaris tuta repulsa tua est) and must be split into its two elements and iam translated as though it were tandem. Second, the reflexive adjective is used in a dependent clause to refer to the subject of the main-clause verb: though there is no reason why Ovid should not have used this licence for metrical convenience.

In a note on Aesch. Ag. 1243 f. in C.R. lxxv (1961) 187-8, I had occasion to cite a number of examples of adverbial transference. Whether they were or were not (cf. C.R. lxxvii [1963], 127) adequate to establish the point I was seeking to make I leave to the judgement of others, but the idiom possesses interest of its own, and it seems worth while to quote some further instances of it that I have noted since my article appeared. I will divide them according as they occur with verbs of hearing or with other verbs.

There can, I think, be little dispute that the most exciting plays about Philoctetes are those which have been described by Bowra, Kitto, and now B. M. W. Knox. It is a matter for regret that we must choose between them, or even reject all of them, since only one play is in question, the Philoctetes of Sophocles. My purpose, however, is not to compare the merits of these rivals, but something more restricted and rather duller. I shall make use of them in reexamining the difficulties raised by Sophocles' handling of the prophecy of Helenus, for it is to these that they largely owe their origin.

Since the appearance in 1952 of Alexander Turyn's Studies in the Manuscript Tradition of the Tragedies of Sophocles it has been quite clear that editors must abandon the traditional stemma and with it much of their traditional thinking about the text. One of Turyn's most important contributions to Sophoclean studies has been his treatment of what he calls the vetustiores.

Sisenna Historiarum lib. iii: Lucium Memmium, socerum Gai Scriboni, tribunum plebis, quern Marci Livi consiliarium fuisse callebant et tune Gurionis oratorem … (Nonius 393L, s.v. ‘callet’).

Erat Hortensius in bello primo anno miles, altero tribunus militum, Sulpicius legatus; aberat etiam M. Antonius; exercebatur una lege iudicium Varia, ceteris propter bellum intermissis; cui frequens aderam, quamquam pro se ipsi dicebant oratores non illi quidem principes, L. Memmius et Q. Pompeius, sed oratores tamen, teste diserto utique [Jahn: MSS. uterque] Philippo, cuius in testimonio contentio et vim accusatoris habebat et copiam. Reliqui qui turn principes numerabantur in magistratibus erant cotidieque fere a nobis in contionibus audiebantur … (Cicero, Brutus 304–5).

Dr. G. S. Kirk has suggested (C.Q. N.S. xiii [1963], 51–52) that the last line of this fragment represents the bridegroom as being ‘fantastically ithyphallic’. This seems quite likely; but it would be more so if a parallel for the unusual use of the expression ‘a great man’ that it involves could be adduced.

The notes that follow are concerned with certain mineralogical problems which could not be discussed at length in my edition of the De Lapidibus (Oxford, 1965). For the most part, only the bare conclusions are stated there.

In handling these problems I owe much to the discussions that I had during his lifetime with Dr. Stanley Smith, and to those that I have had more recently with Professor F. Coles Phillips and Mr. Robert H. S. Robertson.

By the colours and decoration of a vase fragment one determines the period and style to which the original belonged; while its physical contours show from what part of the original it comes. The material may be insufficient for a reconstruction of the whole design. But it is often legitimate to go beyond what is actually contained in the preserved pieces.

Yet an interval of upwards of a year, apparently, separates the two occasions; already by 4. 193–4 t n e winter is well advanced; at 5. 46 Aeneas tells his men that exactly a year has elapsed since Anchises' death—the last event (3. 714: hie labor extremus) narrated in Book 3. Dido's words, therefore, and those of the false Beroe are commonly held to be irreconcilable.

The achievements of the textile industry in Roman Britain are often underestimated as a result of the meagreness of our available evidence. The Edict on maximum prices issued by Diocletian in A.D. 301 shows that British capes (byrri) commanded high prices on the markets of the Empire, and that in the late third century A.D. British rugs (tapetia) were the best in the world. In view of the competition from the traditional centres of rug manufacture in the East, this is an astonishing achievement.

In addition to the technical writers on music, a number of ancient authors, notably Plutarch and Athenaeus, have recorded several musical terms, either by way of illustrative material—Plutarch is particularly given to musical similes and metaphors—or in the course of anecdotes about music and musicians. As musical terminology in different ages contains words or phrases not only of general acceptance and familiarity, but other more ephemeral expressions which belong to the jargon of a narrower circle of executants and critics, it is possible that the musical significance of such words, when used in an apparently non-musical context, has escaped notice.

Both the meaning of and the identity of the are in some doubt here. Gow's view that ‘Lacon thinks of labourers and cicadas vying with one another in the heat’ and that means ‘provoke to further exertions, put him on his mettle’ agrees in general with the scholiast

One would expect venditabat to imply that the rustic is attempting to sell the tunic in a fairly aggressive manner: he is not merely ‘offering it for sale’ (Loeb trans.), but ‘crying it up’. Yet he is doing so fastidiose and tamquam mendici spolium. These two latter notions do not cohere at all well with the former; and in any case, we are not particularly concerned with the vehemence of the rustic's salesmanship, but rather with how much he has manhandled the tunic. I therefore propose to read ventilabat for venditabat: ‘was waving it about’, an expression which gives an intelligible picture of the scene. The corruption, which is easy enough in itself, may have received an additional stimulus from vendentis two lines below.

In Classical Quarterly N.S. ix (1959), 80 ff. Professor Hugh Lloyd-Jones published an article on the closing scenes of Seven Against Thebes. In it he directed an assault on the orthodox belief that these scenes are, in whole or in part, not authentic. The movement in favour of authenticity seemed all the stronger when independently, and in the same year, Walter Potscher put forward arguments in Eranos in defence of some parts of the disputed passages.