Professor G. E. L. OWEN has demonstrated (C.Q. N.S. X [1960], 84 ff.) that Parmenides' Way of Truth is to be taken as a self-contained logical argument. The basis for this argument is a proof that whatever we may choose to think about The first stage of this proof is contained in B 2.

According to Owen's reconstruction of the argument, Parmenides' method is to take the three possible answers to the question (i.e. an unqualified yes; an unqualified no; and a noncommittal answer that some- times we must say yes, sometimes no) and rule out two of them. This view involves giving equal status to each of the two wrong answers; but Parmenides appears not to do this. At the start of B 2 he undertakes to tell us

In the sixth mime of Herodas is described a visit by a woman called Metro to her friend Coritto. After an introduction ( I-I 7) largely taken up with abuse of Coritto's slave, Metro comes to the point: she asks, (18–19). Coritto is furious that knowledge of this precious possession has spread so far, and without answering the question asks where Coritto saw it: the reply is, (20–21). Coritto laments the faithlessness of those she thought her friends, but is consoled by Metro, who repeats her question. Coritto now reveals that the craftsman was Cerdon, and describes him and his works: and she was prevented from this last only by the presence of a neighbour's slave. Metro now asks how Coritto got to know Cerdon, and on hearing that it was through Artemeis, she declares her intention of going to see her, to learn more of Cerdon, and departs (95–98). The poem ends with Coritto giving orders for the door to be closed and the hens counted.

Chapters 3 and 4 of Book 80 of Dio Cassius, dealing with the founding of the new Sassanid dynasty in Persia, have to be reconstructed from Xiphilinus on the one hand and the Excerpta Valesiana on the other. Zonaras 12. 15 in turn excerpts Xiphilinus; but Zonaras 12. 15, p. 572. 7–10 B. is not to be found in either of the excerptors of Dio. The words are as follows:

The causes and the outbreak of the Corinthian war, as well as the events immediately preceding it, have often been discussed by modern historians. Since the Corinthian war is the first attempt at achieving a new settlement in Greece after the Peloponnesian war and since it brought about new political alliances and the revival of old imperial rivalries, it is not only an episode in the continual warfare among the Greek states, but may also be regarded as a key to the understanding of a part, at least, of the pattern of Greek history in the fourth century B.C.

The argument as far as 205 is simply and clearly laid out by Munro, but later editors have rejected his explanation, and proposed more involved analyses. The first purpose of this paper is to support the simple interpretation and refute later complications.

The only serious difficulty lies in the mention of plants in line 189. Without this line the argument would run as follows. ‘Nothing can move upwards of its own accord’ (184–6). ‘Don&t be misled by the atoms of flames, for they spring into being and take their increase in an upward direction, although all weights, left to themselves, move downwards’ (187–90). ‘Nor must we believe that when fire leaps up to the roofs of houses …, it does so of its own accord’ (191–3). Now the two analogicalarguments: ‘For blood spurts up into the air and timbers leap out of the water, yet everybody agrees that their weights left to themselves move downwards’ (194–202). Now the conclusion repeating the original proposition: ‘This is how it must be that flames too rise, forced out upwards through the air although their weights, left to themselves, move downwards’ (203–5).

I Have argued elsewhere, and still believe, that the Phaedo was written before Plato's first journey to Italy, when the strong Pythagorean influences displayed in that dialogue were reaching him through the Pythagorean centres on the Greek mainland, in particular Phleius and Thebes; and that in the Republic and Phaedrus it is possible to trace equally strong Pythagorean influence but different in detail, because Plato had now come into contact with the Pythagoreans who still remained in Italy, particularly Archytas. The most remarkable of these influences from whatever source was the doctrine of the immortality and transmigration of the soul, which we know to have been held by the earliest Pythagorean society, and the account of the soul's experience in the world below.

The traditional interpretation of line 149 understands in praecipiti as a metaphor expressing the height that vice has reached in Juvenal's day. Vice is now ‘at its zenith’ (Mayor), ‘at its highest point’ (Hardy), ‘auf demGipfel’ (Friedlaender, Knoche), ‘at its acme’ (Ramsay), ‘a son comble’ (Labriolle and Villeneuve), ‘at a climax’ (Sedgwick), ‘at a dizzy height’ (Highet). Lewis and Short have a special sub-heading, II. B. 3. b. (β), for this example of praeceps (together with Pliny's accedere adpraeceps in Epp. 9. 26. 2) and translate ‘at its point of culmination’.