Galen in a celebrated passage remarks that there were three ‘choirs’,in early Greek medicine: the choirs of Cos, of Cnidus, and of Sicily. The word is vague and suggestive, and we do well to keep it so. If we look in the Hippocratic Corpus for schools of medical theory, with distinct sets of doctrine marked off clearly from the doctrines of rival schools, we shall be lucky indeed if we can find them, and, having found them, succeed in convincing others of their existence. But we shall find, now and again, an individual voice proclaiming itself from among its impersonal surroundings with clarity and vigour: some treatises in the collection have their author's personality stamped on them as distinctly as on a work of art.

As a student at Cambridge forty years ago I received a good training in the language and literature of classical Greece, and had the good fortune to study paleography under the late E. H. Minns. For all this I am deeply grateful. But I had no training in Byzantine Greek. It was only later, and more or less by accident, that I discovered Byzantine and Modern Greek. It is not my intention to discuss the wider aspects of this question now, but to appeal, on the basis of some passages in the Oresteia, for a new approach to textual criticism, or rather for the renewal of an old approach.

The use of on which much ink has been spilt.

Alkman's Partheneion contains so many obscure details that even the elucidation of a single point seems worth while. It is proposed to show that the Kolaxaian horse, (59), hitherto identified as the typical Skythian horse,1 is an altogether different breed, specifically associated with Skythian royalty.

Context. The Partheneion mentions four breeds: The winged dream horse, the Enetic courser, and, together, the Ibenian and Kolaxaian (49, 51, 59). Not one of these breeds has, as yet, been definitely identified. All of them are, however, exotic breeds, and this regardless of whether the Enetic is a Venetic or a Paphlagonian steed, the Ibenian a horse of Keltic or of Ionian origin, and the Kolaxaian a Skythian steppe pony or some other Skythian breed. Other exotic elements are Lydian coifs and the Xanthos river (67–68, 100).

Nikostratos son of Dieitrephes is stated by Thucydides to have been a general in a number of years during the first half of the Peloponnesian War, ranging from 427 (Th. 3. 75) to his death in 418 (Th. 5. 74. 3). Nikostratos, a Skambonides by deme, is mentioned in Aristophanes as a member of the audience at the performance of the Wasps in 422 (Ar. Wasps 81).

The recurrence of horse-imagery in Alcman's Partheneion (47 ff., 50, 58-59, 92) suggested to Bowra that the chorus may have been the guild of priestesses called Leucippides, who seem from a mysterious gloss in Hesychius to have been known as It is true that the comparison of girls with fillies is common enough in Greek, but the appearance of Helen as of girls like at Ar. Lys. 1308–15 seems, as Bowra says, ‘to hide a ritual use of ’. The existence of this guild of priestesses appears to be established from Paus. 3. 16. 1 and 3. 13. 7. In the latter passage they join with the in offering sacrifice to Dionysus and the unnamed hero who first guided him to Sparta, but it seems reasonable to assume that their principal concern was with the cult of the goddesses Phoebe and Hilaeira, the daughters of Leucippus, from whom, as Pausanias explicitly says (3. 13. 7), they took their name.

‘Alcman lived sometime in the seventh century.’

‘At some period in the seventh century Sparta was occupied with the Second Messenian War, but we do not know its date or whether Alcman lived before or during or after it.’

Between these two utterances, part of a papyrus commentary on Alcman was published,3 from which it appeared that the poet mentioned names known to us from the Spartan king-lists. It might have been expected that this discovery would lead to a more precise dating for Alcman. Some people think, that in fact it does, and I am one of them.

These two texts come from a store of papyrus fragments which are at present being examined and worked over at Oxford. They are the property of the Egypt Exploration Society and will be republished in vol. xxxi of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri as Nos. 2544 and 2534; permission for their separate publication here has been granted by the Society in view of the relevance of the former of them to the article by Mr. W. S. Barrett which appears on pp. 58–71 below. We are much indebted to Mr. Barrett and Professor Hugh Lloyd-Jones for many valuable suggestions and criticisms. The nature of both texts was recognized by R. A. Coles, of Magdalen College, Oxford, one of the collaborators in this article.

We now know that the epitomes prefixed to the plays of Euripides in the medieval manuscripts were written not for this purpose but as part of a complete collection of Euripidean epitomes, arranged alphabetically by initial,and intended presumably to make the subject-matter of the plays available to persons unable or unwilling to read the plays themselves. The first direct proof of the existence of this collection came with the publication in 1933 of a fragment containing Rhesos, Rhadamanthys, Skyrioi (Gallavotti, Riv. Fil. lxi [1933], 177 fif.; now P.S.I. 1286); we now have parts of it in three other papyri as well (P. Mil. Vogl. 44, with Hippolytos; P. Oxy. 2455, with over twenty plays, including Medea, Orestes, Troades, Phoinissai; P. Oxy. 2457, with Alkestis and Aiolos), and may reasonably suppose that P. Oxy. 420 (Elektra; published in 1903) is also from the same work.

I print the text as given in Pearson. I agree with Jebb and Sheppard that the strophe is sound, and therefore I would retain at 866–7. The problem now lies with the antistrophe, where with the manuscript reading at 877 we lack either or-to give proper responsion with 867.

The manuscript text can be vindicated if we detect that simplest of scribal errors, haplography. Thus for 876–7 I would read

I. We know fairly well how the City Dionysia at Athens was celebrated in classical times. But although the numerous dramatic festivals of the Hellenistic period were in many respects modelled on the Athenian Dionysia, it is not clear how the performances at these festivals were organized. The difficulty arises from the fact that apart from a few great centres which may have had their own theatre production, playwrights, actors, etc., the majority of cities depended on the travelling of Dionysos’.1 It seems that the of Dionysiac artists were formed early in the third century. Three major Dionysiac associations—the Athenian, the Isthmian and Nemean, and the Ionian and Hellespontian—operated in Greece, Asia Minor, and the islands in Hellenistic times. The question is how these associations functioned. Were they theatrical companies as well as professional guilds? Did they undertake the organization of musical and dramatic performances at various festivals? Was there a division of territories between the and were certain festivals dominated by certain guilds?

IN the fourth book of Stobaeus’ Anthologium, in a section entitled, ‘The Virtue of Having Children’,

(Anth. Pal. 10.92)

So the Palatinus, our only source for this poem. No satisfactory explanation of has ever been propounded, and the words are surely corrupt. By deftly changing two letters and replacing by Jacobs restored a sense of sorts:

THE book which Eudoxus of Cnidos was stated by some to have translated from the Egyptian is entitled in the manuscripts of Diog. Laert. 8. 89, a reading which R. D. Hicks retains in his Loeb edition (vol. ii, 1925, revised ed. 1931, repr. 1950, p. 402). It was retained also in the edition of C. Gabr. Cobet (Paris, 1878) and in the Tauchnitz edition (Leipzig, 1895); so also H. S. Long in O.C.T. (1964). Egyptian religion was richly theriolatrous. But does it proffer a suggestion of ‘Dialogues of Dogs’ ?

The contrary belief is suggested by the proposal of various emendations.

The work with which I am concerned is not the one that appears under the name of Tryphon in Rhetores Graeci, viii. 726–60 Walz, iii. 191–206 Spengel, but the one that appears under the name of Gregory of Corinth, viii. 761–78 W. and iii. 215–26 Sp. What I now offer amounts to a makeshift edition. I call it makeshift, because I have not sought out and assessed all existing manuscripts of the work, or versed myself in Greek grammatical writing to the extent that a serious editor would have to do; I offer it because, whatever its deficiencies, it represents a more complete and a recensionally better founded text than those of the three existing editions, the most recent of which is now 109 years old.

In the doxographical tradition the concept of a ‘crystalline’ outer-heaven is ascribed to two Presocratic thinkers. Aëtius tells us that Anaximenes held that the stars were fastened like nails in the ‘crystalline’: (2. 14–3 DK. 13 A14) and, again, that Empedocles believed that the fixed stars were attached to the ‘crystalline’, while the planets were unattached: (2. 13. II DK 31 A54.) The ascription of this concept to both these Presocratic philosophers is decidedly odd; for, whereas, in the case of Empedocles’ thought, fire acts as a solidifying agent, Anaximenes, on the other hand, connected solidity with cold and rarity with heat and in his cosmology the heavenly bodies are created by the rarefaction into fire of vapour from the earth. For this reason the concept of a solid outer-heaven is quite incompatible with the little else that is known of his cosmogony and cosmology.

IN C.Q. N.S. xiii (1963), 1578ff., M. L. West discusses various non-Greek traditions which throw light on the interpretation of Pherecydes. Of course problems remain, but one of these the comparative material may yet solve. Is West correct in suggesting (p. 157) that we emend the Suda entry on Pherecydesand so reduce the seven recesses to five ? A convincing analogy can help us here. G. S. Kirk has already compared the seven gates which Ishtar has to penetrate when she descends into the underworld. Despite all his reluctance to admit oriental influence on Pherecydes, he sees this as a possible source.

Scholars have known for some time that Plotinus' treatment of memory forms an important part of his philosophy; and while there are various points of view from which his doctrine can be approached, one seems singularly important. His analysis of memory boldly contrasts conscious and unconscious behaviour in human beings and so materially advances our knowledge of his concept of conscious experience.

Opinion has long been divided as to the exact interpretation of the phrase de tenero ungui, the Latin version of a Greek proverbial expression The competing explanations are:

A. ‘from the depth of her being’, penitus.

B. ‘from her earliest childhood’, ab infantia; that is, presumably, from the time when the nails were still soft like those of a very young baby (though cf. E. W. Fay, A.J.Ph. xxix [1908], 205).