The physical shape of Attica has not altered appreciably since ancient times; Attica is far too well founded for that in the remote geological structure of the Aegean. But Attica is a promontory, an akté, plunged in the sea at the far end of the main watershed of peninsular Greece; and filled also with abrupt and lofty mountains, which prevent it from being ‘easy to oversee’ (eusynoptos) in the sense prescribed by Aristotle for his ideal city-state. Consequently the ground-plan, the ‘shape’ of Attica on a map of Greece, has been differently interpreted by different observers.

On the modern map, based on ‘trigonometrical’ measurement of angles subtended by bases of exactly measured length, Attica appears as a wedge-shaped promontory, one side of which lies between Piraeus and C. Sunium, the other between Sunium and the bend of the coast south of Rhamnus. The angle between these two coasts is about 45 °, or half of a right angle. West of Piraeus, the island of Salamis, seen from the sea, not only looks like part of Attica, but conceals the great ingression of the Saronic Gulf into the Bay of Eleusis. And north of Rhamnus, even on the modern map, few people realize that the coast runs much more nearly west than north—bearing about 300° from Rhamnus to the Euripus Strait; so completely does Euboea insist on its immemorial connexion with Attica, and disguise the fact that from Parnassus east-ward into Attica the Greek mainland is an isthmus, lying nearly east and west, and only about 24 miles broad between the bays of Livadostro (anc. Creüsa) on the Corinthian Gulf, and Skroponeri on the Euboean channel, on the border between Boeotia and Locris.

The fragments of ancient historians are regarded by many people as a storehouse of unrelated scraps of historical evidence. It is natural that a modern student of history should take this attitude, since he welcomes any new piece of evidence offered to him and is likely to be more interested in the information itself than in the source from which it comes. Indeed, it may happen that an isolated fragment quoted from an obscure lost historian has an almost absolute value for him. For example, according to the account in Plutarch, Diyllus, ‘by no means an insignificant historian’, recorded that the Athenians, on the motion of a certain Anytus, voted a gift of ten talents to Herodotus, presumably as a reward for giving readings from his history. We know next to nothing about Diyllus, except that he wrote twenty-six books dealing with the last quarter of the fourth century b.c., and this isolated remark of his, preserved by Plutarch, tells us little more. But a fragment of this kind has considerable interest for the historian; its value is like the value of an inscription which records the proposal and passing of a law. At the same time, since a single instance does not justify a general conclusion, it does not give enough information on which to base any conclusive opinion about the rewards given to literary men in Periclean Athens. No more does a single inscription make it possible to pass judgement on the legislative activities of any particular period. The historian must collect and compare a number of such inscriptions before he is entitled to form an opinion.

Three years of war have clarified a good many issues. One of the luxuries that soon had to go was the academic and scholastic privilege of sitting on the fence in the interests of ‘intellectual honesty’. The war has forced us to take sides. There are values to which to-day—in different degrees of understanding and sincerity—we all necessarily subscribe. We believe in the virtue of free thought and discussion, in coming to conclusions on the basis of objective evidence, in deciding our courses of action through the operation of an informed democracy: we are against the autocratic rule of a group or an individual, we reject dogmas (such as racial teaching) based on emotion, a priori assertions that must not be tested, ‘inspired’ truth as the controller of scientific investigation. If anyone doubts that we have made up our minds about these values, let him consider the fact that 99–99 per cent, of the people of this country are ready to fight on in an increasingly conscious struggle against the Fascist enemy who denies them all.

Now for the past few years it has been my privilege to mark ancient history answers of candidates for Higher Certificates from some of the leading schools in the country. And as the issues to which I have just referred have grown clearer, I have become progressively more uneasy. The question which has gradually, framed itself in my mind is this: Are we teachers of Roman history in fact engaged in an unconscious trahison des clercs? Are we in danger of becoming an intellectual ‘fifth column’? In short, are we presenting Roman history in such a way as to bring those rightly accepted democratic values into contempt? (I say ‘Roman history’ designedly: for the dangers I have in mind do not arise to the same extent in relation to Greek history.)

The belief in a golden age is not confined to any one age or civilization. In every civilized community there tends to grow up a nostalgia for the simpler life of bygone days; and other races besides the Greeks (particularly the Chinese) have shown the same desire to exalt their origins and ancestry; But there are peculiar factors which for the Greeks make this belief more real. Their civilization was, they believed, a new one without a forerunner; immediately previous to it lay the period of barbarity in which the idealized naturalism of the age of Cronos was supposed to have flourished. At the same time the subconscious memory of the glories of the Aegean civilization and, perhaps, of the peaceful civilizations such as that of the Indus valley, furnished material to embellish the legend of the Golden Age.

The scope of this article is somewhat diffuse, and a brief mention of the points which are discussed in it will help to make the oudine more clear. First I shall recapitulate the main characteristics of the Golden Age as it is portrayed in classical literature; next I shall discuss the significant fact that it is only used by some writers, while others adhere to the competing theory of ascendant evolution. Then I shall attempt to settle the position, first of the writings of Lucretius, secondly of the Prometheus legend with reference to these competing theories of degeneracy and evolution. Finally, after a brief outline of the causes which lead to a belief in a cyclical theory, a comparison will be made between the views of Hesiod (in Works and Days, 109 ff.) and Plato (Politicus, 269 ff.).

When I was looking through some old books and papers recently, before committing them to the salvage dump, my attention was caught by two Italian books which, with several other volumes, had been salvaged from my house which had been blasted in one of the Mersey-side raids.

Glancing quickly through them I discovered in one of the volumes a source of interest and a certain amount of inspiration, as a result of which I pass on a few suggestions.

The book was the second volume of La Letteratura Latino by Professors Bassi and Cabrini, and published by the once well-known house of G. B. Paravia and Co. of Milan.

I make no attempt to pass judgement on the scholarship of these learned Italians; but the passages of wide range and high quality chosen to illustrate the prose and verse literature of the Silver and Post-classical periods not only serve their purpose admirably, but appear to me to afford a tolerably good anthology of Late Latin.

In Fifth and Sixth Forms the first consideration in the Classics course is no doubt success in public examinations, and any reading which the pupils may indulge in apart from the set books ought, I suppose, to be limited to the principal authors of the classical period. Yet I wonder if it would not be possible in the work of the Sixth, at all events in the year succeeding the School Certificate Examination, to vary the stereo-typed programme by introducing a little discursive reading, even if it be no more ambitious than the reading of selections.

Dear Caecilius,

Here is an account of Plautus' latest play, which will, I hope, give you some entertainment, and relieve the boredom which you must feel after six months spent in the wilds of Sardinia.

The play is called The Rope, and is said to be an adaptation of Diphilus' Wallet. I inquired among my friends for a copy of the Greek original, but was unable to find one; I must therefore judge the Latin without reference to its merits as a translation. It is full of wit, of course —all Plautus' work is—but I am afraid that some of the Latinized Greek jokes were above the heads of the audience. You should have heard them groan when the slave likened a storm to the ‘Alcmene of Euripides’! The very name of a Periclean author is enough to make them angry.

The plot is not very original—the usual recognition story, you know, which was so popular in New Comedy. An old Athenian, Daemones, is living in retirement on the coast near Cyrene. His long-lost daughter Palaestra has become the property of a bawd Labrax, who is carrying her away aboard ship from Cyrene to Sicily. The ship, however, is wrecked within sight of Daemones' house, and the eventual wayvwpuns is carried out by means of certain tokens belonging to Palaestra. These are discovered in a basket which Daemones' slave, Gripus, salvages from the sea. I need hardly say, my dear Caecilius, that there is a great deal of by-play of one kind and another. There is a particularly funny scene in which Gripus quarrels with the bawd's slave, Trachalio, for the possession of the basket.

The Classical Association held its annual general meeting in Cambridge on Tuesday, 13 April 1943, and the two following days: that is a statement of Fact. But, as we were reminded one morning, Facts and Truth are not synonymous; and at any rate to those who were present at this particular meeting there was a significance about the time and place alone which would have been enough to make it memorable.

One member, at least, having booked his railway ticket underneath the question ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ (ΓNΩΘI ΣEAYTON must sometimes have produced similar reactions), returned to London with something of a feeling of having dreamed it all, but of conscience not a tremor. Could a Cambridge translated into the poet's Arcady, where the warm sunshine of June shone from a cloudless sky upon faery woodlands carpeted with all the flowers of springtime blossoming at once, and which was inhabited, it seemed, almost entirely by American soldiers, indeed be real ? One could sit out in the moonlight among the narcissus thinking of garlands for Heliodora's brow; but to the accompaniment of what sounded like several million heavy bombers. Surely in this place, as nowhere else, To-day stood confronted by Eternity; and that was just what we had come here to witness.

One has often on previous occasions had an uncomfortable impression that meetings of the Classical Association (and no doubt, of other similar bodies) would be the healthier for a Devil's Advocate. They are apt to be a paradise with a notice to the effect that serpents will be prosecuted.