Because of an incomplete description of its contents, it has escaped notice that the fifteenth-century vellum MS Parisinus graecus 2833 contains Orphic Hymns 76 and 77 on folio 91 verso. The Hymns are copied, without indication of title or authorship, after Musaeus' Hero and Leander (lines 1–245), and before the collected (Proclan and other) Prolegomena to Hesiod A a, b, c, BEF a, b Pertusi, which are followed by Hesiod's Works and Days, Shield and Theogony. These are all in the same hand.

To ensnare the sophist of the Sophist in a definition disclosing him as a purveyor of images and falsehoods Plato must block the sophistical defence that image and falsehood are self-contradictory in concept, for they both embody the proposition proscribed by Parmenides — ‘What is not, is’. It has been assumed that Plato regards this defence as depending on a reading of ‘what is not’ (to mē on) in its very strongest sense, where it is equivalent to ‘what is not in any way’ (to mēdamōs on) or ‘nothing’. Likewise, the initial paradoxes of not-being (237b–239c) are seen as requiring that to mē on be understood in this way, that later designated by Plato (257b, 258e–259a) as the opposite of to on or ‘being’. On this interpretation, Plato's counter-strategy is to recognise a use of to mē on which is not opposed in this strict sense to being, but is indeed a part of it and is ‘being other than’.

In a stimulating article, R. W. Jordan challenges this account. I shall briefly attempt to show that his objections are not decisive and that his own interpretation is open to question.

Jordan makes the interesting suggestion (p. 120) that a distinction between two senses of not-being, where one is equivalent to nothing and one is not, dates from the middle dialogues — particularly from Republic V, where objects of agnoia are mēdamē onta and objects of doxa are both onta and mē onta. He concludes (p. 121), ‘Malcolm's view, then, seems to amount to this: that Plato is now extending the moral he draws about objects of belief (i.e. particulars) in the Republic to cover forms. Forms too now are seen to be both being and notbeing.’

Cecropids, grammatically masculine in one case and feminine in the other, occur in each of these pieces of poetry. I believe that the second passage can shed some light on the meaning of the term as it is used in the fragment from the Antiope of Eubulus. The question of the significance of the Cecropids in Eubulus has previously been discussed by E. K. Borthwick. A. B. Cook, noting the similarity of κερκώπη (a term designating a type of cicada) to the name of Cecrops and seeing their associations with dew as a link between the insects and the names (Herse, Pandrosus) of Cecrops' daughters, had posited a connection between the autochthonous Athenian family of Cecrops and the earth-born cicadas, those symbols of Athenian autochthony. Borthwick applied Cook's theory to the passage from Eubulus and concluded that when the poet mentions the Cecropids that feed on the breezes he is alluding to the musical cicadas, who were believed to subsist on dew and/or air. It was this latter feature of their diet, Borthwick proposed, that inspired the last line of the fragment.

The time-limits imposed by the κλεψύδρα on speakers in Athenian trials have been much discussed, but a valuable distillation of the ancient evidence and modern interpretations of it has recently been made by P. J. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (1981), pp. 719–28. He prudently states his own conclusions in a cautious manner, but I find them convincing. One khous of water took 3 minutes to run out; this is indicated by the length of time taken by the κλεψύδρα found in the Agora (first published by S. Young, Hesp. 8 [1939], 274–84), which holds 2 khoes and takes 6 minutes, and it is also consistent with the evidence of Aiskhines about the διαμεμετρημένη ⋯μέρα. In a ‘measured-through day’, used only for public cases, the total amount of time allowed for the speeches in a trial was 11 amphoreis (Ais. 2.126), equivalent to 132 khoes, taking 396 minutes; one third of this time was allocated to the prosecution, one third to the defence, and one third to the speeches on the assessment of the penalty (Ais. 3.197). Time taken for other proceedings, including the allocation of jurors to courts, voting, and payment of jurors at the end of the day (this last is not mentioned by Rhodes, but it was surely completed well before dusk, because the jurors had time to go shopping afterwards; cf. Ar. Wasps 303–11, 788–9), was additional.

In his Index Bioneus, containing all instances in which Bion of Borysthenes is mentioned or quoted in ancient literature, O. Hense also included a reference to Philodemus, Rhetorica 2.55 Sudhaus, where τ⋯ν Βορυσθενίτην is mentioned, but gave no further treatment of this item. In my edition of the testimonies to and fragments of Bion I did not include this passage, not because the name Bion does not occur, but because I did not think that it really was a reference to Bion. As M. Gigante and G. Indelli have objected to this procedure and seem to be convinced that the passage really is a definite reference to Bion of Borysthenes, I think it deserves a somewhat closer interpretation. I start by giving the crucial text:

Τ[ί] γ⋯ρ μ⋯λλον αἰσχρ⋯ν

ἧν] σιωπ⋯ν, Ἱσοκράτην

δ' ⋯⋯ν λέγειν ἢ κατ⋯ πό-

λιν ζ[⋯ν], Μάνην δ⋯ [σ]κα-

π[αν]εύειν ⋯⋯ν, κ[⋯ν τ]⋯ι

γ⋯]ι διατρ[ί]βειν, ⋯π[ικ]υ-

μα]τί[ζ]εσθαι δ⋯ τ⋯ν [φο]ίνι-

κα κ]α⋯ τ⋯ν Βορυσθε[νείτη]ν,

κα⋯ ⋯σɸ]α[λέστ]ατα [μ]⋯ν ὅ[λον

τ⋯ν βίον] ἰδιω[τεύειν,

Θεμι]στο[κ]λέα δ[⋯ οτ]ρα-

τεύειν] ⋯⋯ν.

In this part of his Rhetorica Philodemus attacks the philosophical schools which pursue the study of rhetoric, and especially Aristotle. Philodemus takes as his starting point a well known parody of a line from Euripides, Philoctetes (fr. 796 Nauck), by which Aristotle is said to have justified his teaching of rhetoric: αἰσχρ⋯ν σιωπ⋯ν, Ἱσοκράτην δ' ⋯⋯ν λέγειν which was quoted already in Rhetorica 2.50 Sudhaus. Philodemus here sets out to prove that the attitude of Aristotle is wrong by ridiculing his view that it is shameful to abstain from a certain activity and leave it to someone else.

So E. J. Kenney in the OCT Appendix Vergiliana (1966). The same scholar has now given us his secundae curae in The Ploughman's Lunch. Moretum. A Poem Ascribed to Virgil (Bristol Classical Press, 1984), which was on its way in luminis oras when the sibling edition of A. Perutelli, [P. Vergili Maronis] Moretum (Pisa, 1983), saw the light of day.

Only three words of line 15 are above any kind of suspicion: et reserat…ostia…, ‘and he unbars the door’ (ostia poetic pl.), some door, that is, which he, Simulus, prouidus heros (line 59), must open to reach a pile of grain not left exposed outside his cottage, but stored somewhere.

clauis (v.l. claui) is semantically unobjectionable in close association with reserat: cf. Petronius 94.7f. Eumolpus…limen egressus adduxit repente ostium cellae…exemitque raptim clauem…reseratis foribus intrat Eumolpus. But here it strangely overemphasises the internal security of the cottage, whose only other occupant was the slave-woman Scybale, and she, unlike the usual run of pilfering servants (see Nisbet-Hubbard on Horace, C. 2.14.26), was its unica custos (line 31). More important, claui(s) usurps the place which sense and style alike require for the substantive qualified by the participle clausae. (F. Leo, ALL 10 (1898), 438, suggested that it was a substantive. It is indeed easy, as Perutelli observes, to encounter in medieval Latin the noun clausa > Old French close > English closet, parallel to clausu > French clos.