In determining the time of Archilochos it is useless to begin with the eclipse—an event which strongly appeals to the modern mind, as it seems open to exact astronomical and mathematical computation. Even granted from the first and as a matter of course that Archilochos saw the eclipse and that it was total or nearly total in the place where he saw it, there are two objections: (1) the astronomical data for the two eclipses of 711 B.C. and 648 (or 647) B.C. are as yet insufficient even for Paros and Thasos; (2) we do not know for certain where the eclipse poem was written: probably it was in Paros, as the speaker is Lykambes, but it may be Thasos, not to mention Euboia, Crete, or Sicily. The whole thing is elusive, and Alan Blakeway, when he stated the case for 711—perhaps ‘too emphatically’, as he concedes—is quite clear in this respect. The most he affirms is that ‘there is nothing to choose between the two eclipses astronomically’; and what he asks for is a new examination of ‘the literary evidence without that unconscious bias in favour of the 648 B.C. eclipse which so far has influenced it’. That is quite a reasonable demand, and it is only with Blakeway's re-examination of the literary evidence that I find fault.

So run two lines on the title-page of Marcianus 250 (X: xi+xiv cent.). Whether the Moralia still benefit the character or no, they may still serve to sharpen the wits; for in spite of the work of Meziriac, Reiske, and Wyttenbach, Madvig, Bernardakis, and Wilamowitz, to mention only some of those who have brought learning and sagacity to the task of emendation, there are still hundreds of passages which cry halt to the reader and challenge him to divine what Plutarch wrote.

Athenaeus, xii. 526 a, quotes three elegiac couplets of Xenophanes on the luxurious ways which the men of Colophon learned from the Lydians. Since the lines lack theological or metaphysical interest, they have not received so much attention as other fragments of Xenophanes, and few attempts have been made to unravel their exact meaning. But it is rash to hurry over anything written by Xenophanes, and these lines are in their way as interesting as anything else that he wrote. For they show what he, a penetrating and serious critic, thought about one aspect of the impact of East on West, of barbarian on Greek, and they contain his only known judgement on historical events. On examination they raise more questions than are usually found in them. They may be quoted as Diels printed them:

⋯βρоσ⋯νας δ⋯ μαθ⋯ντες ⋯νωφελ⋯ας παρ⋯ Λνδ⋯ν,

⋯φρα τνρανν⋯ης ἦσαν ἄνεν στνγερ⋯ς,

ἤϊσαν εἰς ⋯γоρ⋯ν παναλоνργ⋯α φ⋯ρε' ἔχоντες,

оὐ με⋯оνς ὥσπερ χ⋯λιоι εἰς ⋯π⋯παν,

αὐχαλ⋯оι, χα⋯τῃσιν ⋯γαλλ⋯μεν' εὐπρεπ⋯εσσιν,

⋯σκητоῖσ' ⋯δμ⋯ν χρ⋯μασι δεν⋯μενоι.

Following the example of the late Professor R. S. Conway, who in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philological Society, vol. v, part i (1899), discussed ‘The Use of the Singular Nos in Cicero's Letters’, I examined Catullus’ employment of the idiom in an article published in Mnemosyne, series iii, vol. vii, fasc. 2 (1938), pp. 148–56. While the usage of Catullus exemplified various of Conway's indisputable types of the singular nos, such as the Plural of Authorship and the Plural of Proprietorship, my observations did not confirm his main thesis of a ‘projective’ use, which L. C. Purser reviewing his rnonograph called ‘a Pluralis Dignitatis or Fiduciae, not to say Adrogantiae’, in direct contrast to the orthodox pluralis modestiae. I found that, where the use of nos related to a state of mind of the writer or speaker, not merely to circumstances of his environment, the usage in Catullus was either a pluralis modestiae or one of several derivative types. My examination of Virgil seems wholly to confirm the conclusions reached concerning Catullus, whose types of singular nos I classified as follows: (a) the Plural of Proprietorship (see Conway, op. cit., pp. 15 and 33 ff.); (b) the Traveller's Plural (see Conway, ibid., pp. 10 and 70); (c) the Local Plural (see Conway, ibid., pp. 10, 69, and 70); (d) the Plural of Authorship (see Conway, ibid., pp. 12, 18, 33); (e) the Social and Domestic Plural (see Conway, ibid., pp. 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 18, 40 ff.); (/) the pluralis modestiae (see Kϋhner-Stegmann, Ausfiihrliche Lateinische Grammatik, vol. ii, part i (1912), pp. 87–9); (g) the Plural of Pleading or Requesting; (h) the Plural of Pathos or Self-pity. Of these (a), (b), (c), and (e) are a product of circumstances of environment and relate to a group of which the speaker or writer is a member; (d), (/), (g), and (h) express an attitude or state of mind. Virgil's examples of the usage fall into six of these categories, (b) and (c) being absent. For the purposes of the present study I shall, in order to indicate more clearly the connexion between (a) and (e), and the subjective character of (d), number the six Virgilian categories as follows: (i) the Plural of Proprietorship; (ii) the Social and Domestic Plural; (iii) the Plural of Authorship; (iv) the pluralis modestiae; (v) the Plural of Pleading or Requesting; (vi) the Plural of Pathos, Self-pity, or Complaint.

For the senseless inira some manuscripts have inire or in arva, and the latter stands in the text of Baehrens (Poetae Latini Minores, v, 1883, p. 67). The attempts at emendation may be divided into two groups, those altering only inira and those tampering with ibat as well. I pass over the latter group, as Robinson Ellis, in his commentary, p. 125, has defended ibat sufficiently by reference to the frequent ñει in Babrius, Avianus’ model. The former group is represented by Withof (ibat honore) and Robinson Ellis himself (ibat in ora); and the editors of the Loeb text of the Minor Latin Poets, in 1934, had the verse printed with this in ora. Nobody seems to have seen that the verse-maker had to express the idea of the panther's pride. Therefore I propose ibat in (astra, a metaphorical phrase for the animal's conceit. For this metaphor cf. Horace's famous feriam sidera, for ibat Virg. Aen. 9. 641 sic itur ad astra, for in astra at the same place of the pentameter after a verb of motion Prop. 3. 18, 34 cessit in astra; Ov. Fast. 2. 478 and 3. 186 venit in astra. Avianus himself has this in astra before the last word of the pentameter in two more passages, 15. 8,19. 6.

The distribution of the parts among the actors in the O.C. is a problem that has long defied solution. In all the other extant plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides the dramatis personae can without difficulty be divided between three actors: but the construction of the O.C. is so complex that it does not admit any such simple allocation. When the part of Oedipus (1–1555) has been assigned to the first actor, and that of Antigone (1–847, 1099–555, 1670–end) to the second, the roles of the Stranger (36–80), Ismene (324–509, 1099–555 mute, 1670–end), Creon (728–1043), and Polyneices (1254–446) must clearly belong to the third: who, then, is to play Theseus (551–667, 887–1043, 1099–210, 1500–55, 1751–end)? It seems impossible to allot the part complete to any one of the three actors. Faced by this crux, all those who have dealt with the subject have chosen one or the other of two clear-cut alternatives, either the assumption of a fourth regular actor, or else the splitting-up of the single part of Theseus between two or three actors. These two alternatives, both of which are far from satisfactory—the former infringing the three-actor rule, the latter offending against scenic probability and realism—are fully examined below; at the end of the paper a new part-distribution is suggested, which, it is hoped, avoids both these faults.

Professor H. J. Rose's article in C.Q. xxxiii. 69 f. has advanced the study of this perplexing passage in two important respects. He has observed that, in order to determine the ‘eye’ as metaphorical, ỏΦθαλμός requires a dependent genitive, and he has therefore restored μεϒαλ⋯ν πολ⋯ων to this relation by punctuating as above instead of after πολίων And he is surely equally right in maintaining that this plural genitive must have a plural reference; it must mean ‘of great cities’ and not ‘of Cyrene’. For although there is a figure called pluralis maiestatis, such obscurity in the use of it seems too affected, such ambiguity too perverse; a poem honouring the prince of Cyrene will refer to this famous city in unmistakable terms.

Eur. Hel. 1032 ff. Ελ. Μενέλαε, πρ⋯ς μ⋯ν παρθένου σεσῴσμεθα.

τοὐνθένδε δ⋯ σ⋯ τοÙς λ⋯υς ϕέροντα ϰρ⋯

κοιν⋯ν ζυν⋯πτειν μηϰαν⋯ν ωτηρίας.

If the text as given above is sound (and it may possibly be so), then Helen effaces herself from the discussion which is to follow: σ⋯ is stressed, τοὺς λ⋯ους is roughly equivalent to ‘all that is to be said’, and the simple øέροντα does duty for a compound like εἰσø⋯ροντα. There is evidently a tinge of artificiality about this interpretation, and, if the unbroken usage of the tragedians counts, then τοὺς λ⋯ους ø⋯ρειν should mean ‘to bring the message“, and no more: cf. e.g. Ion 1110 τιε προθυμία | ποδ⋯ν ἔϰει σε, κα⋯ λ⋯ους τίνας ϕ⋯ρεις; El 228 ἤκω ø⋯ρων σοι σο⋯ κασιγν⋯του λ⋯γους, Or. 853 λ⋯γους | ᾃκουσνν, οὓς σοι δυστυϰε῕ς ἣκω ø⋯ρων, Soph. Track. 493 ώς λ⋯γων τ’ ⋯πιολ⋯ς ø⋯ρῃς, and so with ø⋯μας or ø⋯μην Eur. Hel. 1282, ø⋯τιν Soph. O.R. 86, Aesch. Ag. 9, Soph. At. 826, μ⋯θον O.C. 357, and with various periphrases. For other senses a compound is called in (e.g. ἰσø⋯ρειν Bacch. 650, Andr. 757, Ion 1340; προσø⋯ρειν I.A. 97, Ion 1002), or a prepositional phrase is appended (e.g. εἰς ὦτα Soph. Ai. 149, or—what one expects here—εἰς μ⋯σον Eur. Tro. 54). Hence, in this passage, the credibility of the tradition is not exactly enhanced by the fact that the difference between ΔHCε and ΔΗС—or, for that matter, ΔεΙʗ—is, to all intents and purposes, negligible.