1. IN the C.Q.xxxiv (1940), pp. 118 ff., I wrote on ‘Some Uses of the Imperfect in Greek’ (hereafter quoted as ‘Uses’). It occurred tome to check the suggestions there made by examining all the instances in one author. I had no hesitation in choosing Herodotus, who of all authors, except perhaps Homer, presents the most baffling diversity of types (I quote by chapter and the lines of Stein's annotated edition). For purposes of comparison I also read Thucydides and Xenophon's Anabasis 1–4. It would appear that Thucydides retains something of Herodotus' freedom, Xenophon comparatively little.

ALL Roman historical writers use a naval terminology based on military parlance. Ships on the move in line ahead (or astern) are an agmen navium, positions in the line are ordines (like ranks in a marching column), ships in a single file are said to move tenui agmine—in two columns are said to be birds in ordine navibus. In one passage the three posts in the column are described as prima navis, media classis, extremum agmen. To bring up the rear is agmen cogere.

‘VERANIUS’ is an uncommon gentilicium, with brief and transient notice in Loman annals. The earliest Veranius on record is the friend of Catullus. iccording to Catullus (28; 47), he was abroad on the staff of a governor while, or just after, the poet was with Memmius (pr. 58) in Bithynia. The governor was Piso, clearly L. Piso (cos. 58), proconsul of Macedonia till the summer of 55. Veranius, it emerges elsewhere (9. 5 ff.; 12. 14 ff.), had also been in Hispania Citerior, accompanied here too by his inseparable Fabullus. Veranius may, or ray not, have been an author, identical with the Veranius who wrote on religious antiquities—who again might be the Veranius Flaccus whom Caesar Augusstus derided for his affected and archaic style.

hoc est, Capitolium’. This sentence comes in a passage based on a portion of the Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth (3. 10 ad init.), but is not itself to be found in Geoffrey. Since Luard was unable to find the words attributed to him ‘in Lucan’, he concluded that the chronicler who was responsible for their inclusion (he calls him the ‘compiler’) had made a mistake. He offers no suggestions about the origins of the quotation. In a posthumous work of G. Gundermann's edited by G. Goetz, Trogtis und Gellius bei Radulfus de Diceto, we find the quotation described as ‘einen angeblichen Lucanvers'. W. Morel learned of its existence from this reference and printed it as fr. 12 of Lucan:

This passage seems to have escaped identification so far. This is somewhat surprising, since it clearly refers to an incident at the sack of Maiozamalcha during Julian's Persian campaign which has been much discussed by editors ind critics of Ammianus and Zosimus. The reason may well be that in some ilder editions of Suidas (e.g. Küster) the name appears as.

The text of lines 39–40 is open to three main objections: stimulantem pectu Achilli cannot be construed in its context; to refer tuas to Persen would involvi difficult, though not unexampled, change of person; and thirdly, and most serious, it is scarcely possible to believe that Cornelia could appeal to a king of Macedon to testify to the soundness of her morals.

The use of with the future indicative (and the corresponding participle and infinitive) is admittedly rare in post-Homeric Greek. In the passages concerned many deny the usage completely and either omit the particle or resort to emendation, or dismiss the construction as a mere ana-colouthon. In an instructive article in the Classical Quarterly, xl (1946), Moorhouse argues in favour of retaining many of the readings, and it is only his interpretation that is in question here. His main thesis is that in Homeric Greek, where the usage is common enough, κ∈ or with the future means either ‘in that case’ (where a condition is stated or implied) or ‘probably’ (where there is no such condition). The latter usage, however, he regards as sometimes assuming a tone of dogmatic certainty (‘ironical meiosis’), and this ‘emphatic future’ came to be the regular and literal meaning of the later idiom, without any irony being involved.

All past interpretations of this passage involve an obscure train of thought. There appear to be two ideas running right through; light-twilight-night, and quick-slow-(never?). But how are we to combine these ideas so as to make sense of them ?

Most, if not all, past commentators have agreed in taking to mean ‘punishes’’ and most interpretations conform to one or other of the following patterns:

The purpose of this article is to set down the results of a careful examination of certain readings contained in Books 21–25 of the Codex Agennensis of Livy (Mus. Brit. Harl. 2493), to consider the significance of these readings in the textual tradition of Livy 21–25, and to discuss briefly a point raised by Professor G. Billanovich in his recent article on the Agennensis.

‘Prince, lovelier than the flashing star’, says the Poet Laureate to his Emperor; ‘Leda would rather have produced thee than Castor, Thetis than Achilles; Delos prefers thee to Apollo, Lydia to Bacchus.’ Then follows a passage describing the effect on nature of the Emperor's going out to hunt: ‘the beasts will gladly fall to your spear, the lion will be proud to die at your sacred hand. Venus scorns Adonis returned to life, Diana Hippolytus’.

There can be no doubt of the primacy of Andronicus in Roman literature, but there is an interesting and unorthodox ancient tradition concerning his date. Modern scholars incline to place Andronicus' birth about 285 B.C. and to postulate either that he came to Rome as a slave from Tarentum in 272 B.C., or that the story of his captivity is a fiction. His first play was produced in 240 B.C.

The initial paradox is simple: The ideal state, as Plato describes it, is composed of un-ideal individuals. Both the warrior class and the masses are deprived of reason and must be governed by the philosopher-king. How can one legitimately call a community perfect when so many of its members are imperfect ? My point here is logical; the word ‘ideal’ is used in a self-inconsistent manner.

In his recently published Propertiana, Mr. D. R. Shackleton Bailey has given what I believe to be the correct interpretation of the first two lines. He maintains that sacra has no direct connexion with poetry, that it may be virtually synonymous with Manes or possibly signify the rites paid to the dead, or that it can be taken in the sense of their physical relics, the ashes in the urn. He reminds us that nemus is more than a ‘poetic grove’; it must be a ‘consecrated grove’.

The letters are constant in the tradition of 1. 19 and must be taken as genuine. It follows that we have to do either with ‘lead’ or with one of its compounds. At any rate nobody has found another word of like appearance that will fit the context.

Since the first publication of P. Oxy. xxi.

Professor Webster has replied briefly to my article on this subject, and has dealt elsewhere with the works of art. One point I will gladly concede. In referring (p. 69) the phlyakes-vases to ‘the fourth or third century’ I was quoting Pickard-Cambridge's words in Dithyramb, etc. (1927), p. 267. But in Dramatic Festivals (pub. 1953), Pickard-Cambridge, perhaps influenced by Trendall, speaks of the fourth century only.

In answer to Professor Beare's note, which he has generously shown me, I would make the following points: (1) I think it unlikely that Middle Comedy was more obscene than Old Comedy, and the Attic vases go back to about 420 B.C. (see my Greek Theatre Production, pp. 56 f., particularly 66, and Wiener Studien, lxix (1956), 110 f.).

Astronomy has been known to profit on occasion from the observations of amateurs; and so perhaps, in its less technical passages, could the Astronomica. I venture to dispute the emendations of Mr. Shackleton Bailey (hereinafter S.B.) in the first two items of his learned Maniliana (C.Q., N.S. vi. 81).

The aim of this paper is the discussion, and in some cases also, it is hoped, the clarification, of several passages in the fragments of the comic poet Alexis, where either the traditional text has been attacked because there occurred in it an allegedly objectionable split anapaest, or alternatively an excellent emendation has been rejected because laws framed by modern scholars have wrongly been applied to the passage being emended.

At Book 15, chapter 76, Diodorus Siculus says that during the Attic year 366/5, at the same time as the Thebans won possession of the Attic border district of Oropus, the King of Persia sent ambassadors and persuaded the Greeks to put an end to their wars and to conclude Common Peace )); this peace, he adds, was more than five years after the battle of Leuctra.

One of the ways in which a poet may show his quality is by discrimination and originality in his choice of adjectives. Poetry likes to adorn the bare noun; a noun such as ‘the sky’ calls out for an attribute. But in practice the poet has to take care to avoid the cliche. He can seldom write ‘the blue sky’; even ‘the azure sky’ has become trite. He has to search for the epithet which will be both apt and original.