Here you have the whole of Odyssey 6, partly in Greek and partly in translation. Make sure you read the excellent Introduction, RGT pp. 243–244, and notice GE p. 362, #337 on some vital features of Homeric dialect and syntax, and GE pp. 362–364, #338–339 on Homeric hexameters and Greek metre. There is also the Reference Grammar pp. 378–382, #349–352 ‘Homeric dialect’ – the main features’.

Remember that this is poetry in the oral tradition. Oral poets did not commit a poem to memory verbatim, but they had in their minds a huge collection of formulaic phrases which fitted neatly into a hexameter line and they could use these to tell the story. Do you remember the rhapsode in Section 1H, with the ‘winedark sea’ (ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον) and the ‘black, hollow or swift ship’? These were ‘formulas’. You will quickly come to recognise such phrases, and it is interesting to consider how Homer uses them.

20A

Page 246

1 ὥς with an accent = οὔτως ‘so’, ‘thus’.

ἔνθα Odysseus is sleeping under an olive bush, having covered himself with leaves.

καθεῦδε = καθηῦδε. The absence of the augment is very common in Homer.

See GE p. 362, #337(a).

πολύτλας δῖος 'Οδυσσεύς A formulaic phrase; Odysseus is often referred to by this description, and it is entirely apt. πολύτλας: πολύ = ‘much’, -τλας is from τλάω ‘I endure’, thus ‘much-enduring’.

14A

Page 176

1 ἐάσετε Future of ἐάω.

2 ἣν This is accusative s. fem. of the relative pronoun: ‘she whom …’

3 ἣ What is this?

4 ἣ This has a smooth breathing, so it cannot be a relative pronoun. Try ‘or’.

5 ἐλήλνθεν What tense? What verb? Learn it!

6 ψηφιεῖσθεν This comes from ψηφίζομαι, whose future is ψηφιοῦμαι. Cf. νομίζω νομιέω.

8–9 πρίν is followed by two accusative and infinitive clauses ‘before she did x and y, and before you did z’. Do not translate πρότερον, which prepares for πρίν.

10 ἐπειδὴ δὲ πέπνσθε καὶ ἴστε … Notice the present force of the perfect ‘since you have found out and you all know (now, at this moment)’.

Translation for 14A

Gentlemen of the jury, will you then allow this Neaira to insult the city so disgracefully and so contemptuously, [this woman] who was neither left a citizen by her parents nor was she made a citizen by the people? Will you allow her to act irreverently towards the gods with impunity, she who has openly prostituted herself throughout the whole of Greece? For where has she not worked with her body? Or where has she not gone for her day-to-day earnings? Now that Neaira is clearly known by all as the kind of woman she is, will you vote that she is a citizen? And if you vote in this way, what fine thing will you say that you have accomplished to those who ask you?

Rem publicam, Quirites, uitamque omnium uestrum, bona, fortunas, coniuges liberosque uestros atque hoc domicilium clarissimi imperi, fortunatissimam pulcherrimamque urbem, hodierno die deorum immortalium summo erga uos amore, laboribus, consiliis, periculis meis e flamma atque ferro ac paene ex faucibus fati ereptam et uobis conseruatam ac restitutam uidetis. et si non minus nobis iucundi atque illustres sunt ii dies quibus conseruamur quam illi quibus nascimur, quod salutis certa laetitia est, nascendi incerta condicio et quod sine sensu nascimur, cum uoluptate seruamur, profecto quoniam illum qui hanc urbem condidit ad deos immortales beneuolentia famaque sustulimus, esse apud uos posterosque uestros in honore debebit is qui eandem hanc urbem conditam amplificatamque seruauit. nam toti urbi, templis, delubris, tectis ac moenibus subiectos prope iam ignes circumdatosque restinximus, idemque gladios in rem publicam destrictos rettudimus mucronesque eorum a iugulis uestris deiecimus. quae quoniam in senatu illustrata, patefacta, comperta sunt per me, uobis iam exponam breuiter, Quirites, ut et quanta et quam manifesta et qua ratione inuestigata et comprehensa sint uos qui et ignoratis et exspectatis scire possitis.

Principio ut Catilina paucis ante diebus erupit ex urbe, cum sceleris sui socios, huiusce nefarii belli acerrimos duces, Romae reliquisset, semper uigilaui et prouidi, Quirites, quem ad modum in tantis et tam absconditis insidiis salui esse possemus. nam tum cum ex urbe Catilinam eiciebam (non enim iam uereor huius uerbi inuidiam, cum illa magis sit timenda, quod uiuus exierit), sed tum cum illum exterminari uolebam, aut reliquam coniuratorum manum simul exituram aut eos qui restitis-sent infirmos sine illo ac debiles fore putabam.

In this section you are introduced to the verse of Greek Tragedy in a touching scene from Euripides' Alkestis (produced in 438 BC). Consult GE p. 310, #286 for a list of tragic usages. Note (e) here contains the warning: ‘Word order in verse can be far more flexible than in prose; again, utterances can be far more oblique and tightly packed with meaning.’ While it is probably true that you will find an increase of difficulty in this section, the Greek should prove manageable. We have tried to keep the translation as literal as possible throughout.

15A

Page 184

1 ἴστω The third person singular imperative of οἶδα (GE #207). οἶδα is followed by a participle (‘know that …’, see GE #247). The vocabulary tells you that κατθανουμένη is the future participle of καταθθνῄσκω.

εὐκλεές = ‘a glorious [woman]’. It is easiest to translate it as an adverb, ‘gloriously’.

3 πῶς δ' οὐκ …; πῶς γὰρ οὔ (literally ‘for how not?’ = ‘of course’) has appeared from Section 1 onwards.

4–5 Difficult. Consult the translation.

11 ἐκ … ἑλοῦσα This splitting of a verb from its prepositional prefix is called ‘tmesis’ (‘cutting’). It is quite common in verse authors, but it is not always easy to recognise whether the preposition is there in its own right or if it is a case of ‘tmesis’.

13 ‘Εστία Hestia is the goddess of the hearth, crucial for the continued existence of the home.

To produce a new commented edition of Cicero's Catilinarians may seem like a woefully unoriginal, if not altogether superfluous undertaking. There are, of course, various commentaries, mostly of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century vintage, intended to introduce this corpus to school children. But in the latter half of the twentieth century interest in producing such works tapered off as the traditional classical curriculum came under fire and lists of set books were altered in the hope of reinvigorating the subject. In addition, the palpable decline of oratory in the political life of the Western democracies made C.'s products seem less relevant to contemporary concerns. Last, but not least, the negative assessment of C. by W. Drumann and T. Mommsen has often colored the judgment of subsequent historians of antiquity and thus fed a neglect of, if not outright hostility to, C. and his work.

The fact that his place in the curriculum can no longer be taken for granted may prompt some salutary reflection on C. and his educational uses. Blind hero-worship is clearly inappropriate, as Petrarch already realized upon discovery of C.'s letters. But the fact that C., too, was human makes him more, not less interesting. His creation of a distinctive and powerful prose style exploiting to the full the resources and registers of the Latin of his day commands, or should command, admiration in an age when language and style tend to be handled carelessly.

CATILINE'S CAREER DOWN TO 63

For most of his life, Lucius Sergius Catilina, or Catiline, as he has come to be known in English, looked like anything but a revolutionary. He was the scion of an old patrician family, the gens Sergia, which gave its name to one of the Roman tribes; and Virgil glorified, if he did not invent altogether, an eponymous ancestor, Sergestus, as one of the Trojan heroes who migrated to Italy with Aeneas (Aen. 5.121). Even his adversary C. was able, in the very different context of a lawcourt speech, to express a certain appreciation for the attractive features of Catiline's many-faceted personality (Cael. 12–14).

Catiline's great-grandfather, M. Sergius Silus, had distinguished himself in the Hannibalic War (without, however, rising above praetorian rank). As praetor of the year 68, Catiline must have been born by 108 (or 106 on the assumption that patricians had the option of presenting themselves two years early). He substituted an individual cognomen for the inherited Silus but followed the family tradition of military service. The beginnings of his military career are lost unless he is to be identified with the L. Sergius L.f. attested as a member of the consilium of the consul Cn. Pompeius Strabo in 89 during the Social War.

Hypothesis . The dramatic hypotheses (‘prefaces’ or ‘plot summaries’) which are preserved in the surviving medieval manuscripts and ancient papyri fall into three general categories (Zuntz (1955a) 129–52; cf. also van Rossum-Steenbeek (1998) 1–39; for the papyri, see Haslam (1975) 150–6, Diggle (2005)).

The first and most valuable are those derived from the Alexandrian edition of Aristophanes of Byzantium (cf. Pfeiffer (1968) 192–6, Mastronarde (1994) 168 n. 2). Although only fragments of these survive (occasionally combined with the two other types of hypothesis), we have enough material to be able to piece together the scope and typical features of Aristophanes’ introductory notes (for Eur., cf. Alc., Med., Hipp., Andr., Hec., Phoen., Or., Bacch., Rhes.). They combine basic points of scenography (e.g. where the play is set, the identity of the chorus and prologue speaker) with more scholarly information regarding such topics as the treatment of the myth by the other two tragedians, the date of the play, the titles of companion plays, and the results of the contest (Alc. second prize, Med. third prize, Hipp. first prize, Phoen. second prize).

The second type of hypothesis is uniquely Euripidean, stemming from a collection of Euripidean plot summaries, arranged alphabetically by the first letter of the title, which was composed in the first or second century ad To gain scholarly respectability, the collection was ascribed to Aristotle's fourth-century bc pupil Dicaearchus of Messene. These Tales from Euripides (as Zuntz (1982) 358 called them) were, however, written for a popular audience, and their narratives were intended to be simple summaries of the plot.

Helen has often been misunderstood and undervalued because of its apparent refusal to follow the ‘rules’ of its genre, yet in fact it embodies the variety and dynamism of fifth-century Athenian tragedy perhaps more than any other surviving play. The story of an exemplary wife (not an adulteress) who went to Egypt (not to Troy), Euripides' ‘new Helen’ skilfully transforms and supplants earlier currents of literature and myth. Nevertheless, Euripides uses his unorthodox heroine and her phantom double to explore many of the central issues connected to her more traditional self: the role of the gods in human suffering, the limits of mortal knowledge, the importance of reputation, the consequences of overwhelming beauty and desire, among others. By turns playful and serious, Helen is an extraordinarily exuberant and inventive drama that deserves to be read (and performed) more widely. To that end, this edition of the play aims to discuss a broad spectrum of issues (intellectual context, stagecraft, language, style, reception, etc.) in an easily accessible manner. Like many other tragedies, Helen has suffered from being interpreted anachronistically: as a tragicomedy, for example, or as an indictment of war; the Introduction therefore seeks to reconstruct the original audience's core values and expectations as a more accurate guide to understanding the play. As a result, the Introduction is comparatively long for this series, but the many preconceptions about Helen (and Euripidean tragedy more generally) therein addressed are of such pervasive and continuing influence as to merit detailed analysis.