At some point before the late fifth century a.d. an unidentified writer compiled and affixed to each book of Dio's Roman History an index, most notably comprising a table of contents and an excerpt of the consular fasti. Of dubious provenance these paratexts have played a peripheral role in the editorial history of the work. Bekker and Dindorf, with somewhat puritanical zeal, removed them from the main text of their editions of the Roman History in the belief that they were not by Dio's hand. Conversely, the stereotyped edition of Dio's history produced under the auspices of Karl Tauchnitz at Leipzig in 1818 provided Latin translations of the indices, but omitted the Greek. Dio's more recent editors have restored them to their editions of the Roman History, despite questions over their origins.

In his paper ‘The wrong text of Euclid: on Heiberg's text and its alternatives', published in 1996, W.R. Knorr resuscitated the debate which had taken place in the 1880s between the orientalist M. Klamroth and the editor of Euclid's Elements, J.L. Heiberg. In nuce the debate concerned the fundamental question of which manuscript tradition of the Elements should be assigned textual anteriority: the Greek tradition or the Arabic tradition. Whereas Klamroth argued for the latter position, Heiberg, whose view became the prevailing one, endorsed the anteriority of the Greek tradition.

The following textual and interpretative notes were informed by the preparation of the first volume of the revised Greek Anthology for the Loeb Classical Library.

Anth. Pal. 1.20 (Claudian)

ἀρτιφανές, πολιοῦχε, παλαιγενές, υἱὲ νεογνέ,
αἰὲν ἐὼν προεών τε, ὑπέρτατε, ὕστατε, Χριστέ,
ἀθανάτοιο πατρός τε ὁμόχρονε, πάμπαν ὁμοῖε …
2 ἐὼν ex αἰὼν P

In 2007 I published the first part of some manuscript notes on the text of Menander Rhetor, which I attributed to F. Jacobs (1764–1847). I now present the second part of these notes, alongside a global assessment of all the coniectanea and corrections by F. Jacobs on the text of this rhetor.

Thucydides, Diodorus and Plutarch describe the outbreak of war between Miletus and Samos in 441/440 b.c.e., ostensibly over possession of their smaller neighbour Priene, in similar ways (Thuc. 1.115-17; Diod. Sic. 12.27-8; Plut. Per. 25-8). What began as a local conflict over land escalated when Miletus appealed to Athens as hegemon of the Delian League. The Athenians ordered arbitration to resolve the conflict, but the Samians, probably concerned that the Athenians would side with the Milesians (Diod. Sic. 12.27.1), refused, which in turn led to war between Samos and Athens. Eight months later a coup at Samos started another war. When the Samians finally surrendered, the Athenians forced them to repay the cost of the siege (IG I2.293; Thuc. 1.117.3) and collected hostages (Thuc. 1.117.3).

ἔγωγε νὴ τοὺς κονδύλους, οὓς πολλὰ δὴ ᾽πὶ πολλοῖς
ἠνεσχόμην ἐκ παιδίου, μαχαιρίδων τε πληγάς

Here's a fine argument for you!

1. 1) Anyone who plans to prescribe medicines will need to be a skilled doctor;

2. 2) These people plan to prescribe medicines;

3. 3) Therefore, these people will need to be skilled rulers.

If you expected the last word of the conclusion to be ‘doctors’ instead of ‘rulers’, then you will find the rest of this note plain sailing.

Hermes, rising for action, is twice (Il. 24.340-1 and Od. 5.44-5) described as follows: αὐτίκ’ ἔπειθ’ ὑπὸ ποσσὶν ἐδήσατο καλὰ πέδιλα, | ἀμβρόσια χρύσεια (‘then, at once he bound beneath his feet beautiful sandals, ambrosial and golden’). In both cases, the verses that follow imply that the sandals enable Hermes to travel over land and sea, as fast as the wind. Athena is described in the same way at Od. 1.96-7: ὣς εἰποῦσ’ ὑπὸ ποσσὶν ἐδήσατο καλὰ πέδιλα, | ἀμβρόσια χρύσεια. And a line including ἐδήσατο καλὰ πέδιλα and preceded by ὑπὸ ποσσὶν or ποσσὶ … ὑπό, but without reference to any divine powers, appears four times in the Iliad, describing the actions of Agamemnon (2.44, 10.22), Nestor (10.132) and Hera (14.186), and five times in the Odyssey, describing the actions of Odysseus (2.4), Menelaus (4.309) and Telemachus (15.550, 17.2, 20.126).

Recently in the pages of The Classical Quarterly Mathias Hanses convincingly demonstrated the existence of a fourth occurrence of the programmatic adjective λεπτός in Aratus, Phaen. 783–7. This new example occurs in the form of a diagonal acrostic alongside the known ‘gamma-acrostic’ (formed by the λεπτή that is the first word of the passage and the vertical acrostic λεπτή made up of the first letters of each line) and the occurrence of the same form of the adjective in line 784. Jerzy Danielewicz has now proposed yet a fifth instance of λεπτή in the form of an acronym spread over two lines and meant to be read anticlockwise.

Peneus comes to the wedding celebration of Peleus and Thetis (64.288–91) –

non uacuus: namque ille tulit radicitus altas
fagos ac recto proceras stipite laurus,
non sine nutanti platano lentaque sorore
flammati Phaethontis et aeria cupressu.

The first eclogue opens with an exposition, put in the mouth of Meliboeus (1.1–5):

Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi
siluestrem tenui Musam meditaris auena;
nos patriae finis et dulcia linquimus arua.
nos patriam fugimus; tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra
formosam resonare doces Amaryllida siluas.

A distinctive feature of Aeneid 8 is the constant interplay and fluctuation of registers, with high epic and the genus grande alternating with the lighter strains or learned allusions associated with the genus tenue. As one commentator has remarked, ‘Man darf das Buch allein schon wegen seines Reichtums an Aitien als das ‘kallimacheischste’ der Aeneis bezeichnen.’ Beyond the emphasis on aetiology—the Cacus myth in particular is presented as aition for the consecration of the Ara Maxima—the Callimachean complexion comes out also in several smaller not-so-serious or learned touches, typically at unlikely moments to infuse an element of humour in an otherwise intensely dramatic narrative. The Hercules–Cacus episode conflates high drama and low comedy as the cattle rustler's slightly ridiculous stratagem becomes a gigantic clash resonating with the primal gigantomachy. Among the rudimentary weapons of mass destruction unleashed by Hercules upon Cacus (omniaque arma | aduocat et ramis uastisque molaribus instat, 8.249-50), the hapax molaris (massive boulder, lit. millstone) echoes its Homeric equivalent μύλαξ (Il. 12.161), itself a hapax, with the recherché term then reappearing (again as hapax) at Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.59: missiles and diction are equally outlandish. When Hercules in a reprise of the celebrated Empedoclean leap plunges per ignem in pursuit of Cacus (8.256-8), an (incongruous) evocation of the Sicilian philosopher's fiery exit adds a touch of comedy at the heated moment. And from this inferno Virgil moves to Olympus, lowering the tone but raising the temperature as Venus in a domestic comedy seduces the uxorious Vulcan into preparing new armour for Aeneas: now she kindles flames of a different sort in the fire-god (8.388-92, 8.404-6) in a scene marked by witty double entendre that provides a playful contrast with the unfolding drama at Pallanteum. At moments like these, a lighter strain is audible through the epic thunder, Vergilius ludens is hard at work (or play).

Virtually all the major scholarly reference works, as well as many more popular sources, provide two alternative versions of the ancestry of Amphictyon, the mythical founder of the Delphic-Pylaic amphictyony, as either the son or the grandson of Deucalion, that is, by implication, either the brother or the son of Hellen. Yet, a review of all relevant sources shows that they unanimously and exclusively refer to Amphictyon as the son of Deucalion.

Scholarship on Grattius’ Cynegetica, a minor Augustan didactic poem on hunting, has done a laudable job of finding allusions in the text or other ancient passages that elaborate the sometimes-obscure information that Grattius provides. Such scholarship has not led to a floruit for Grattian research, although the June 2015 conference ‘Grattius in context(s): Hunting an Augustan Poet’ indicates that there is more to the poem than meets the eye, for those who are willing to spend time with the text. One area particularly open to research is the influence of Greek authors, a subject not addressed even in the aforementioned conference. To demonstrate what work can be done, as well as to speculate on the underlying themes of Grattius’ Cynegetica, I wish to discuss one unnoticed allusion to the Greek epinician poet Pindar. These two authors are not often or obviously read in conjunction to one another, but there are moments of contact: a recognized reference occurs at Grat. 527, cantatus Graiis Acragas. One unrecognized moment of contact is when Grattius quotes Olympian 1.13 when discussing dog-breeding (Grat. 198). The allusion highlights that there is still literary work to be done on the Cynegetica to appreciate fully Grattius’ poetic agenda and how he establishes his authority—not to mention the idea that Grattius has an agenda at all. To discuss this reference, I will first focus on the technical aspects of the translation before discussing interpretations of the line and the allusion.

In an article published in this journal in 1996, I surveyed number stylization in monetary amounts recorded in Roman-era literature up to the Severan period. I argued that certain leading digits such as 1, 3 and 4 were heavily over-represented in the evidence. For the limited samples I used at the time these findings are not in need of revision. However, as I show here, a more inclusive approach to the material produces a substantially different picture. The most significant shortcoming of my study was my failure to take account of the probable distribution of leading digits in a random sample, which may serve as a benchmark for assessing the nature and extent of number preference. While I noted that lower leading digits were inherently more likely to occur than higher ones, I schematically related observed frequencies to an even distribution of leading digits (in which each of them is expected to make up one-ninth of the total). This benchmarking strategy is invalidated by a widely observed phenomenon known as Benford's Law, according to which leading digits frequently conform to a predictable pattern that greatly favours lower over higher numbers. This is true in particular if observations are spread across several orders of magnitude. Ancient monetary valuations satisfy this condition since recorded amounts range from single digits to hundreds of millions. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, Benford's Law has never been applied to the study of these data.

In his panegyric of Avitus, his father-in-law, the poet Sidonius gives a vivid and often detailed picture of the career of the future emperor from his boyhood until he gained the supreme power in the West in the year 455, which he owed to his ability and accomplishments in warfare, diplomacy and administration. He also enjoyed strong support from both Goths and Gauls, and his repeated success in managing the volatility and the aspirations of the Goths is a major theme. This short note seeks to contribute to the understanding of his emergence as Augustus by proposing a new interpretation of a pivotal passage (lines 519–24), quoted below. The context can be briefly given. Sidonius has painted a graphic picture of the reaction among the Goths to the news of the Vandal capture of Rome in the year 455 (lines 441–57). In the ensuing assembly of Gothic elders Avitus (who happens to be with them at Toulouse at this moment) gives a speech that vigorously praises peace (lines 458–86), and this is favourably received. There follows a speech from the Gothic king, Theoderic II, in which he puts his own strong case for an agreement between Goths and Gauls, and seeks to persuade Avitus to fill the vacuum in Rome and Italy caused by the recent death of the emperor Petronius Maximus and take the name of Augustus (lines 489–518).