Few authors, I should suppose, get less expert treatment in this lexicon than Cicero, so far at least as his letters are concerned. That is largely because the editors chose to trust Tyrrell and Purser, to whom Cicero's Greek was no less full of pitfalls than his Latin. The following notes may be of help in the preparation of a tenth edition.

Demosthenes prophesied1 that, unless Athens stopped Philip in the north, she would have to deal with him in Greece itself, and the events of 346 proved him right. Right in this much, he has been presumed right in general, and the policies of those he opposed have received only scant consideration before being dismissed as the selfish pursuit of peace by the rich, who were so blinded by their material interests that they could not see the real issues involved. It is the purpose of this article to question, from a purely military standpoint, the soundness of Demosthenes' policy.

J. Kaerst, following a suggestion made by Ranke, conjectured that Diodorus' source for Alexander, whom he identified with Clitarchus, derived information from the mercenaries who served Darius. This conjecture has been developed into an elaborate theory by Sir William Tarn, a theory that has found some favour. He holds that the ‘mercenaries' source’, which I shall henceforth call M, was Diodorus' ‘principal guide [my italics] down to Issus’, and also ‘largely used’ by Curtius (p. 71); from certain texts in Curtius Tarn infers (pp. 105–6) that M went down to Darius' death, and he thinks that till that point both Diodorus and Curtius continued to draw upon him, as well as upon other authorities.

It is generally held that Plutarch's authority in his Vita Agidis was Phylarchos and that, consequently, our knowledge of Agis' programme derives solely from the Phylarchean, pro-Spartan, and generally unreliable tradition. There is little doubt that Plutarch's biography of Agis is based on Phylarchos. However, our knowledge of the programme of Agis does not depend solely on the Phylarchean tradition.

Among the Greek manuscripts in the Earl of Leicester's library at Holkham, which were recently acquired by the Bodleian Library throuth the generosity of the Dulverton Trust, is a volume containing eight of Aristophanes' plays. This manuscript (no. 88, formerly no. 269) is not included in the list of Aristophanes' manuscripts compilied by J. W. White, and it seems that no editor has ever consulted it. The object of this paper is to describe the manuscript, which will be called L, to prove that it is an almost complete copy of the Triclinian edition of Aristophanes,

I take this opportunity of correcting a particularly reprehensible error of my own on p. 140 of my edition of these poems. At A.A. 1. 730 read ‘…hoc multri †non ualuisse† putant’; and at 11. 3-4 of the critical apparatus read ‘equidem multi <s> utique’ eqs. In other words, the manuscripts are unanimous in offering multi. I hope that Dr. Lenz will be glad to have this evidence of our common humanity (Maia xiii [1961], 131).

This article does not set out to cast doubts on the established textual basis of the bulk of Quintilian's Institutio, or on the history of the work's fortunes in the Middle Ages. What I say about these things will be unoriginal and, I hope, uncontroversial. My object, however, is to show that what is true of the bulk is not true of 10. 1. 46–131; and to fill in some details in the history of the tradition.

To the editor of a classical text manuscripts are useful as they can be induced to yield the truth. The purpose of this article is purely practical: to discuss in moderate compass, though in greater detail than an O.G.T. preface seems to demand, how the manuscripts of these poems can be used to find out what Ovid wrote. His text has been transmitted to us in circumstances which defy the rigid application of this or that ‘method’ of recension; and his editors will sometimes be wise to recognize the limitations of the evidence and to cultivate a robust indifference to unnecessary detail.

In a recent paper Mr. Balsdon has condemned the ‘political barrenness of Cicero's thought and the thought of his political friends’. The speech pro Sestio, we are told, with its stress on otium, implies ‘an acceptance of the existing political and social conditions, of what Cicero describes as otiosae dignitatis … fundamenta (98), which the principes must protect and defend’. Defence of these was ‘a placid acceptance of the existing régime’ and the appeal for otium ‘the retort of Maître Pangloss that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds’.