The Medicean Scholiast on 168 paraphrases The Scholiast has apparently misunderstood the image, since it does not seem to be a question of the ‘poor enjoying the pleasure [or the power] of light’. Broadhead’s explanation of 166-7 seems plausible: ‘wealth, deprived of men, will not win respect, and … ἀναρχία may follow the news of a great disaster’ (The Persae of Aeschylus [Cambridge, 1960], p. 74). But how can this be got out of the Greek? R. D. Dawe’s Repertory of Conjectures on Aeschylus (Leiden, 1965) lists numerous attempts to emend 166, but the real trouble seems to lie in 167. After discussing various interpretations of 167 as it stands, Broadhead expresses some doubts (‘if the text is sound’). He notes Lawson’s suggestion of φωσίν ὅ for φς ὅσον. Dawe records Blaydes’ ὅσοις. Broadhead also reports a suggested transposition of 166 and 167 (A. ‘Ludwig and others’), which does not really affect the issue of how 167 is to be interpreted. Πάρα at the end of 167 = πάρεστι according to LSJ, of which I fail to make any acceptable sense; Broadhead gives the words the only meaning they will bear: ‘For those lacking in wealth what strength they possess does not shine as a light’ (p. 74 n. 1), but his paraphrase, ‘does not bring salvation, or success’, is hardly justified by the Greek.

It is not certain that the ten annotated plays of Euripides came to be grouped by a process of selection based on some definite critical principle. In any case, it is something of a paradox that the Andromache, which has a long history of negative criticism, finds itself alongside plays, the reception of which has been much more favourable. The remark found in the second, probably Aristophanean, hypothesis: τό δέ δρμα τν δευτέρων has met with the agreement of several scholars who have found the play unsatisfactory. Verrall believed that on a straightforward reading the drama was worthless and unintelligible; Wilamowitz came to the conclusion that the play is ‘euripideisch in Gutem und Bösem und verdient die Zensur τν δευτέρων, die Aufnahme in eine Auswahl schwerlich’. According to Schmid-Stählin Euripides himself was not unaware of the drama’s shortcomings, for, as can be deduced from the scholium on 1. 445, he was too ashamed to produce it in Athens, and he did not, it seems, produce it in his own name.

This study examines in detail the handling of an ancient story by three poets of widely differing dates and also considers what is known of lost versions from the surviving prose summaries. It does not speculate on origins or seek to reconstruct the historical connexions between lost and surviving versions, since neither activity can lead to certain results. Origins in religious cult were very much the concern of O. Crusius in an article entitled ‘Der homerische Dionysoshymnus und die Legende von der Verwandlung der Tyrsener’ (Philologus 48 [1889], 193-228), and this should be used as a warning example. His main purpose, however, was to establish the antiquity of the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus and in this he amply succeeded. Although it is impossible to date the hymn within a century or two, no one is likely to dispute that it is the oldest extant version of the story, and no more than that is assumed in this study. In the last part of his article (pp. 218-28) Crusius briefly examines the prose summaries and later poetic versions of the story, and here he makes a number of valuable observations, which I shall acknowledge or dispute wherever relevant. The justification for the present study is that it takes the examination of the material very much further and offers some original interpretations. Care will be taken throughout to be fully intelligible without obliging the reader to turn to the relevant texts, although it will be an advantage to have the texts of the Homeric hymn, Ovid and Nonnus at hand. References to Crusius’ article are made by means of his name and the page-number. The only other unusual abbreviation is ‘A.H.S.’ for the edition of the Homeric hymns edited by T. W. Allen, W. R. Halliday and E. E. Sikes (Oxford, 1936).

Aristotle said that the association between male and female was the most natural form of association and he treated it as the first of the elementary units of society. Like many of Aristotle’s confident assertions this one looks unimportant, though true; but it deserves some attention. The association between male and female might seem to have a timeless reference. We might think that we know exactly what we mean by the words, and that Aristotle could have thought no differently. In fact there are many possible relationships between males and females and the ancient world was well aware of it.

Editors and critics of Catullus, both recent and not so recent, seem content with viewing lines 384-408 of Catullus’ sixty-fourth poem as a ‘moralizing epilogue’ which contrasts the poet’s own time with that of the Age of Heroes as represented by Peleus and Thetis, Ariadne and Theseus. For example, E. T. Merrill in his venerable school edition of Catullus comments succinctly: ‘Epilogue, commenting upon the withdrawal of divine presence from the ceremonies of men after the heroic age, on account of the impiety of the race’.

The fortuitous survival of ILS 212 provides an important control against the historical technique of Tacitus. But elucidation of the Emperor’s speech to the Senate in the light of external epigraphic evidence has tended to overshadow the normal internal correspondences of Tacitean narrative. Significantly, only a few pages prior to the memorable event of 48, we find in the German digression of 47 superficial and deep reflections by the historian on the admission of the Gauls to the Senate, and on the Princeps responsible for that step.

The late B. E. Perry’s work on the stories of Aristomenes and Thelyphron in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses is a classic of its kind. Originally a by-product of his doctoral dissertation on Lucius of Patrae, it has stood the test of time as a critical analysis of Apuleius’s narrative style; Perry himself repeated his analysis with only minor changes of emphasis forty odd years later in The Ancient Romances, having energetically repelled a few attacks early in its career, and it holds the field still. His study on the two stories observes an effect which all readers sense in the text, perhaps without being aware of it as a distinct phenomenon, and traces this effect to certain causes which lie under the surface of the text. As he said: ‘I am trying to explain for myself and others the secret of that exceedingly strange and romantic effect which certain of (Apuleius’s) stories produce.’ He goes on to remark: ‘Only a part of this effect is produced by the subject matter as such’; that which is peculiar to Apuleius, ‘the unique element … which contributes most of a reader’s sense of mystification, even when he is not aware of it, is the absence of a natural and normally logical sequence of events …’

The sixth-century bishop Jordanes was actually in the process of writing, in Constantinople, his de summa temporum vel origine actibusque gentis Romanorum (Romana, after Mommsen) when he was exhorted by his friend Castalius to undertake a summary of Cassiodorus’ Gothic history, de origine actibusque Getarum (Getica, after Mommsen). When he had completed the Getica Jordanes turned his attention once again to the Romana and soon finished it off, publishing it after the Getica in A.D. 551.