Historians, we are told on all sides, have signally failed to clarify the terms ‘empire’ and ‘imperialism’, though they employ them all the time. The man in the street, curiously enough, sees no great problem, and I shall argue that he is right. Much of the trouble in the professional literature stems from a elementary confusion between a definition and a typology. It would not be a useful definition of empire, for example, that excluded either the Athenian or the Persian empire because Athens was a democratic city-state or Persia an autocratic monarchy; whereas that distinction might be important in both a typology and an analysis.

The source of the tears mentioned in the much quoted final line (449) has been the subject of diverse views. That the shedder of the tears is not specifically designated has been felt to create an ambiguity, and critics have been tempted to conjecture his or her identity according to their personal whims or prejudices. The point is of more than passing interest and is of relevance in the assessment of Aeneas' character and the understanding of Book 4. The tears have been variously assigned: to Aeneas (so Servius, Augustine, C.D. 9.4 fin., and a number of modern critics); to Dido and Anna (Heyne-Wagner, Conington-Nettleship), or Dido (Sidgwick, Page); to Aeneas, Dido, and Anna (R. Lesueur, L'Énéide de V. (Toulouse, 1975), p. 404). R. G. Austin (ed. Aen. IV, Oxford, 1955, p. 135) thinks it wrong to probe: ‘Virgil is purposely ambiguous, and why may he not remain so? The line is ruined by a chill analysis … These tears could not be denied to Aeneas: but … few could withhold them for ever from Dido.’ The position is summed up in Servius auctus: ‘quidam … lacrimas inanes uel Aeneae uel Didonis uel Annae uel omnium accipiunt’, to which we may add ‘〈uel totius generis humani〉’: cf. ‘Virgil has not said whose tears; by not specifying he widens the area of sorrow, generalises this particular conflict into the universal conflict of pity with duty’ (R. D. Williams (ed.), Aen. I–VI (London, 1972), p. 373; cf. too W. F. Jackson Knight, Roman Vergil (London, 1944), p. 205). That Virgil should in truth have intended such puzzling obscurity seems hard to credit. It is being assumed that in a detail of his narrative which closely concerns the leading characters and which cannot but excite the reader's interest this master artist is guilty of a vagueness for which another writer would be censured as negligent, if not inept. It appears to me that the evidence presented by the poet himself is nowadays commonly ignored, and, outmoded as the process may seem, a reasoned consideration of the actual Latin text may not be out of place.

At the end of the first episodion of Sophocles' play, Ajax, having affirmed the immutability of his ἦθος, which leaves him no choice but to live nobly or to die nobly, retires into his tent to end his life. Overwhelmed by shame from his attempt to kill the Greek leaders, which resulted instead in his deluded slaying of sheep and cattle, he sees death as the only way to reassert his heroic stature and to prove to his noble father, Telamon, that his son is not ἄσπλαγχνος (472). Many critics have agreed that at this point the audience and Chorus consider him as good as dead and that consequently his reappearance in line 646 comes as a dramatic surprise. What has proved a source of continuing controversy, however, is the explanation for this reappearance, and thus the question inevitably suggests itself: why, indeed, is Ajax still alive when he emerges from his tent in line 646? This question provides the central focus for this paper, which seeks to provide an explanation based upon an analysis of interrelated patterns of imagery within the play, particularly those involving Ajax's sword.

There has been a revolution in Pindaric studies in the last twenty years; hardly an issue of a classical periodical now appears without a new treatment of one of the forty-five epinician odes, the author putting into practice the genre-centred approach which began (more or less) with W. Schadewaldt's Der Aufbau des pindarischen Epinikion (Halle) in 1928, and had its greatest forward impulse from E. L. Bundy's Studia Pindarica (Berkeley and Los Angeles) in 1962.

The relation of poet to patron is one which we today find rather difficult to understand. In our present society the theory, and to a considerable degree the practice, is that everyone has an equal opportunity and owes his position to his merits. It was not always so. The old way of doing things was by influence and interest and patronage. It was thought only right to do the best for your relations and friends and those who had done you some service, and those without wealth and power could only get on with the help of the wealthy and powerful. And as talent does not always go with wealth and power, men of talent such as writers often found themselves in a position of dependence. The invention of printing, the spread of literacy, and the establishment of a system of copyright, have now made it possible for a writer to be independent—dependent, that is, on the general public instead of on individuals. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no one would have had any difficulty in understanding Virgil's and Horace's relation to Maecenas.

The celebrated trick with the arrow and the axes, described in the twenty-first book of the Odyssey, has been extensively discussed; but there is little agreement on how, if at all, it was performed. We report here an attempt at a practical reconstruction.

Our first need is to define closely the sort of people for whom we intend the translation. Then we must be clear as to what we aim to achieve with them and it. Our audience, presumably, consists of young people many of whom have a primary allegiance to some other Arts discipline, chiefly English, Modern Languages, or History. Almost all will have some experience of studying literature in their own tongue, some will be familiar at first hand with foreign literatures, few will have more than a nodding acquaintance with Latin. By and large they will be used to taking a text and pressing it so as to establish a close understanding of it. Unhappily, if they attempt that with any translation known to me disaster will inevitably ensue. At this point, many readers will no doubt feel that all their doubts about the wisdom of attempting to teach Virgil through translation are being vindicated, while, in my experience, those who wish to defend the practice will tend to do so by granting the proposition that much will inevitably be lost in translation, conceding that students must learn not to press translations, and then making a number of ill-defined generalizations on what can be achieved. What I wish to argue is that none of the popular Virgilian translations was composed with our needs in mind, all make certain assumptions which were possibly quite proper for their audiences but which render their work unsuitable for ours. I shall argue further that we are far too lenient in the demands we make of our translators.

The following is the third of a series which began in G & R 20 (1973), 38 ff. and 155 ff. and was continued in G & R 21 (1974), 165 ff.

38. Nota per eos dies Iunii Blaesi mors et famosa fuit, de qua sic accepimus. gravi corporis morbo aeger Vitellius Servilianis hortis turrim vicino sitam conlucere per noctem crebris luminibus animadvertit. sciscitani causam apud Caecinam Tuscum epulari multos, praecipuum honore Iunium Blaesum nuntiatur; cetera in maius, de apparatu et solutis in lasciviam animis. nee defuere qui ipsum Tuscum et alios, sed criminosius Blaesum incusarent, quod aegro principe laetos dies ageret. ubi asperatum Vitellium et posse Blaesum perverti satis patuit iis qui principum offensas acriter speculantur, datae L. Vitellio delationis partes. ille infensus Blaeso aemulatione prava, quod eum omni dedecore maculosum egregia fama anteibat, cubiculum imperatoris reserat, filium eius sinu complexus et genibus accidens. causam confusionis quaerenti, non se proprio metu nee sui anxium, sed pro fratre, pro liberis fratris preces lacrimasque attulisse. frustra Vespasianum timeri, quem tot Germanicae legiones, tot provinciae virtute ac fide, tantum denique terrarum ac maris immensis spatiis arceat: in urbe ac sinu cavendum hostem, Iunios Antoniosque avos iactantem, qui se stirpe imperatoria comem ac magnificum militibus ostentet. versas illuc omnium mentis, dum Vitellius amicorum inimicorumque neglegens fovet aemulum principis labores e convivio prospectantem. reddendam pro intempestiva laetitia maestam et funebrem noctem, qua sciat et sentiat vivere Vitellium et imperare et, si quid fato accidat, filium habere.