Astronomy has been known to profit on occasion from the observations of amateurs; and so perhaps, in its less technical passages, could the Astronomica. I venture to dispute the emendations of Mr. Shackleton Bailey (hereinafter S.B.) in the first two items of his learned Maniliana (C.Q., N.S. vi. 81).

Augustus opens the Res Gestae with his age: ‘nineteen years old’ (annos undeviginti natus). This places the reader firmly in the autumn of 44, rather than the aftermath of Caesar's assassination on the Ides when Octavian had been eighteen, presumably because the credibility of Octavian's claim to have liberated the res publica rested on his military intervention against Antony and the senate's commendation of it. Velleius Paterculus' summation (which echoes Augustus' formulation in the RG) is clear enough: although the domination of Antony was universally resented, no one was willing to take action against him ‘until Gaius Caesar, shortly after his nineteenth birthday, with marvellous daring and supreme success, on his private initiative (privatum consilium) showed a courage on behalf of the res publica which exceeded that of the senate. He summoned his father's veterans first from Calatia then from Casilinum; other veterans followed their example, and in a short time they united to form a regular army’. By raising an army, Octavian made himself politically relevant, but his move was strikingly illegal in two respects: he was too young (the entrance of politicians into public life had been subject to regulation since the formalization of the cursus honorum in 180 b.c.; Octavian, entering public life at the age of nineteen, was too young to have set foot on the lowest rung of the ladder, the quaestorship, for which the minimum age was thirty) and he was a private citizen with no authorization whatsoever to do anything of the sort. None the less, he advertises both aspects in the opening sentence: why?

All our ancient sources agree on the basic sequence of events after the battle of Pydna on 22 June 168: the consul L. Aemilius Paullus advanced to take possession of the whole of Macedonia and finally managed to capture Perseus, the defeated king, who had taken refuge on Samothrace. Once in complete control of the situation he sent his troops into winter quarters and himself set off on a trip that was to take him round the most famous sights of Greece. Only when he heard of the arrival of the customary senatorial commission did he return to Macedon, settle its affairs, hold magnificent games, and finally return to Italy. Thus far there is little cause for concern, but what most of these events lack is a properly established date. Livy, our only ancient source venturing to date them, places everything up to sending the troops into winter quarters (45.8.8–9) in the same consular year as Pydna and assigns the remaining events to autumn and winter 167 (45.27ff). He thereby creates an awkward gap of somewhat more than a year between the battle of Pydna and the subsequent actions of Aemilius Paullus. A majority of scholars either seem to have ignored this point altogether or silently corrected Livy's chronology by simply shifting the events in question back to 168/ (Julian calendar). Others, ranging from Miiller and Weissenborn to Hammond and Walbank in their magisterial History of Macedonia, have kept Livy's date,4 while only one scholar has actually attempted to argue for a correction of Livy.

This paper investigates Philomela's metamorphosis into a swallow as inferred from Sophocles’ fragmentary Tereus. The first part focusses on the association between the swallow and barbaric language, casting new light on Philomela's characterization in the play. The second investigates the shuttle, the weaving tool which prompts the recognition of Philomela, arguing that the mention of its ‘voice’ in fr. 595 Radt refers not only to the tapestry which it created, but also to the actual sound of the shuttle, which ancient Greeks associated with the swallow, and thus anticipates Philomela's metamorphosis. The representation of Philomela as a speech-impeded and yet vocal character supports the Dionysiac background of the act of vengeance which she and her sister commit.

In my previous article I argued that certain of the later MSS. of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, and especially those which I call Class I., are to a large extent descended from a lost copy of F, made before the rent was torn in Book VIII., and therefore before the writing of ϕ; and I inferred that it was likely that the evidence of these MSS. would prove a valuable addition to that of ϕ in places where F is now illegible. In the following pages I shall prove that this hope has been fulfilled.

The beginning of the second entry of Apollonius Sophista's Lexicon Homericum reads as follows in the codex Coislinianus gr. 345, the only direct witness to this section (1, 14–15 Bekker):

A Distinction of four species of tragedy and epic poetry is laid down, though not explained at length, in two passages of the Poetics (18, I455b32–56a3 and 24, I459b7–16), and, as I hope to show, mentioned in another (12, ). At the end of the treatise, Aristotle positively says that he has given an explanation of both the species and the component parts of tragedy and epic poetry (l462bl6–l8 ).

In the Snell-Maehler edition of Bacchylides there is a very comprehensive bibliography, listing almost 300 items concerned with Bacchylides poems. It is significant that 80 per cent of these were written in the first twenty years following Kenyon's publication of the Bacchylides papyri in 1897. Of the articles which have appeared since the First World War, many are concerned with more recent papyrus discoveries and a few are stylistic discussions. For most of the poems dealt with in the pioneering days of Bacchylidean scholarship certain readings of the text and interpretations of it have become canonical. This article aims to show in just one poem, XVII, a few instances in which the accepted interpretations should be re-examined. In some cases new interpretations are offered, but in others older views have been resurrected and bolstered by further argument.

On the analogy of the colloquial register in some modern languages, where narrative and argument may be punctuated by oaths and exclamations (sometimes obscene or blasphemous) in order to maintain a high affective level and compel the hearer's attention, it is reasonable to postulate that Attic conversation also was punctuated by oaths, that this ingredient in comic language was drawn from life, and that the comparative frequency of ║ (|) M M (M) Δ in comedy is sufficiently explained thereby. There are obvious affinities between some passages of comedy, relaxed conversation in Plato and Xenophon, and the forceful, man-to-man tone which Demosthenes sometimes adopts to such good effect (e.g. xxi 209). Compare, for instance, Ar. V. 133 f. ἔστιν δ' ⋯νομα ⋮ τῷ μ⋯ν γέροντι ⋮ Φιλοκλέων / να⋯ μ⋯ Δία, τῷ δ' υἱεῖ κτλ., where the oath is a response to imagined incredulity, and X. Smp. 4.27 αὐτ⋯ν δ⋯ σέ, ἔɸη, ⋯γὼ εἶδον να⋯ μ⋯ τ⋯ν Ἀπόλλω, ὅτε κτλ. (‘Oh, yes, I did!’).

It is also important that the commonest oaths fit, in most of their forms, the end of an iambic trimeter: (να⋯) μ⋯ τ⋯ν Δία, ν⋯ (τ⋯ν) Δία,ν⋯ τούς θεούς, μ⋯ τοὺς θεούς. Add that in Aristophanic dialogue (by contrast with Menander) over half the iambic trimeters end with major pause, and half the remainder with minor pause, and we can see why Δ / established itself early as a distinctive comic pattern. Out of 105 examples of M M (M) Δ cited from comedy in Section II above, 59 have the oath at verse-end.

In the case of πάνυ, which was almost exclusively Attic and — to judge from its great rarity in tragedy — felt by Athenian poets to be prosaic, we lack evidence on its functions in the colloquial register; it may or may not have served as affective punctuation. In prose, we have to reckon with the fact that π Mπ and Mπ π constituted a genuine stylistic choice (cf. n. 32) as far back as the evidence will take us, since the two earliest instances in prose are [X.] Ath. 2.3 πάνυ δι⋯ χρείαν and ibid. 3.5 πολλ⋯ ἔτι πάνυ. The oath, as treated by the comic poets on the basis of colloquial usage, is bound to have served as a model for πάνυ, exerting an influence which pulled πάνυ to the end of the verse, but there was also a powerful metrical constraint. As a dibrach ending in a vowel which could not be elided or enter into crasis, πάνυ was especially appropriate for verse-end. That in itself was enough both to establish Mπ π as the dominant pattern in comedy and to promote Mπ … π. Out of the total of 104 examples of Mπ (…) π in comedy, 93 have πάνυ at verse-end, which makes Mπ (…) π / one of the hallmarks of comic style. Mπ … π does not occur in prose in association with any other feature identified as colloquial, but it should be noted that Aiskhines and Demosthenes are much fonder of Mπ π than other prose authors. In some cases one can see that the order Mπ π avoids a succession of short syllables (e.g. D. xviii 130, liv 1) or hiatus (e.g. D. xxx 36) or both (e.g. D. xliii 10), but there are other cases in which it has the opposite effect (e.g. D. xxiv 140, xliii 53). The possibility of comic influence on oratorical language cannot be dismissed out of hand. It is also possible that someone will find positive determinants which will explain all the cases of Mπ π in prose.

σɸόδρα, which, like πάνυ, is peculiarly Attic, is metrically more tractable than πάνυ, since it can be elided; even so, out of the 80 comic examples of Mσ (…) σ no less than 58 have σɸόδρα at verse-end, and of those 58 there are 22 at major pause, 8 at presumed major pause and 9 at minor pause. The comic treatment of σɸόδρα is thus comparable with the treatment of πάνυ, and Timokles (CGFP) 222(b).4 τηρεῖν…σɸόδρα is in fact the closest analogy we have to Ar. Pl. 234 f. ἄχθομαι…πάνυ.

δέ and γάρ are a different matter, and in some significant respects different from each other. Postponement of δέ is especially prominent in Aeschylus (45 examples, including a few in which the text is suspect) and then abundant in fourth-century comedy. It is much less common in Euripides (18 examples), rare in Sophocles (6) and Aristophanes (6), and virtually limited in prose to the categories which I labelled (l)–(3). There is as yet no evidence to associate postponement of δέ with colloquial language; on the contrary, it seems to have begun as a feature of poetic language and to have been taken up and exploited by fourth-century comedy. If, in addition to being Aeschylean, it was colloquial in the fourth century, what happened to it afterwards? Except for such an isolated and inexplicable case as Diod. xx85.1 (v.l.!) — in a military narrative — it is not a feature of the Koine at literary, documentary or subliterate level.

Postponement of γάρ was no doubt encouraged by postponement of δέ, but it is not itself notably poetic (20 examples in tragedy, of which only three come in my class (5)). One can see how it could possibly have developed in the spoken language of the fourth century, extending the function of γάρ as an explanatory particle (rather on the lines of γε) in a way which makes it comparable with the English ‘you see’ in (e.g.) ‘He didn't dare pick it up. He hurt his back last year, you see’. For an extension of this kind we may compare the current extension of the English genitive affix in (I heard both examples a year or two ago) ‘Then the girl whose place she was taking's mother turned up’ and ‘The man that Christopher liked's Introduction is much better’. Moreover, postponed γάρ appears in a segment of conversation constructed in indirect speech by Theophrastus in Char. 8.9 τ⋯ πρ⋯γμα βο⋯σθαι γάρ (p C N γάρ). Again we must ask: what happened to it afterwards? A couple of cases in Theophrastus' botanical works (CP iii 11.3 and HP iv 6.1) could be a reflex of the influence of comedy on literary language at Athens. The influence was plainly short-lived, since it did not affect the Koine.

It is not hard to see why serious poetry in the fifth century and earlier should have experimented occasionally with the postponement of δέ and γάρ: treatment of M M q as a valid alternative to M q M is metrically very convenient. No poet, however, could afford to use common words in a bizarre, un-Greek way merely to save himself time and trouble in constructing a verse. Linguistic innovation is normally analogical, proceeding by extension from a starting-point already there, and the most obvious starting-point for postponement of δέ and γάρ is constituted by my class (3). This consideration provides comic postponement with a pedigree, but does not deny it individuality. The remarkable scale and frequency with which comedy exploited a phenomenon which tragedy used with restraint and prose hardly at all gives comic postponement the right to be regarded as a quite distinctive artificial feature of comedy.

The rare Latin word draucus is known almost exclusively from Martial. Older dictionaries and handbooks used to gloss the word as ‘sodomite’, until Housman showed that draucus is in fact ‘as innocent a word as comoedus, and simply means one who performs feats of strength in public’. Thus, Mart. 7.67.5–6 concerns weightlifting: gravesque draucis | halteras facili rotat lacerto (‘and with effortless arm she rotates weights that would tax a draucus’), while 14.48 describes drauci playing hand-ball (harpastum): Haec rapit Antaei velox in pulvere draucus | grandia qui vano colla labore facit (‘These the swift draucus, who makes his neck big by futile toil, snatches in Antaeus’ dust').

Cicero's Cato, in a passage nicely illustrating that enthusiasm for Greek literature which is said to have come upon him in old age, offers some valuable observations about manure (Sen. 54): ‘quid de utilitate loquar stercorandi? dixi in eo libro quern de rebus rusticis scripsi; de qua doctus Hesiodus ne verbum quidem fecit, cum de cultura agri scriberet; at Homerus, qui multis ut mihi videtur ante saeclis fuit, Laertam lenientem desiderium quod capiebat e filio, colentem agrum et eum stercorantem facit.’

Plutarch's Moralia mentions that Theophrastus twice delivered his native city from tyrants (1097B, 1126F), a detail that has been difficult to make coherent with our existing understanding of Theophrastus’ life. Theophrastus seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time for this to have been possible, or to have been too undemocratic and scholastic a philosopher to have wanted to participate in these struggles in the first place. By more closely examining the nature of Plutarch's comment and the evidence for Theophrastus’ political orientation and character, this article argues that there are, however, grounds on which to take Plutarch's report seriously. It presents a case for Theophrastus’ participation in two liberation struggles in 334 and 332, without complicating the trajectory of his accompanying Aristotle to both Macedonia and Athens during this period.

There is a suspicion in the minds of a number of Virgil's modern commentators that Corydon, the lover-shepherd of the second Eclogue, is himself a slave, and that the dominus of his beloved Alexis (who may be the Iollas of line 57) is his master too.1 It is the purpose of this note to show that the suspicion is baseless.

None of the ancient commentators appears to know of such an interpretation. This should be significant in that they probably shared the poet's assumptions about literary decorum. We can gather how Virgil viewed the function of slaves in poetry of an exalted genre by looking at the Aeneid and the Georgics. The essential considerations were set out by W. E. Heitland in Agricola (1921), pp. 218-41. Virgil was less ready to introduce slaves into his epic than Homer had been. More startling is the complete silence of the poet in the Georgics on the use of slave labour in contemporary farming. Literary decorum induces this reticence; slaves are too mean to have a voice or place in epos. How do matters stand with pastoral?

Meleager, in assembling the poetic garland of his first epigram, picked palm-leaves to represent Aratus:

Lvcilivs 11191 (Ma.) is preserved for us in Isid. Etym. XIX, iv, 10, where, amongst the articles of a ship's equipment, the plummet (catapirates, the ) of Herodotus is mentioned, with this illustration (I give the reading of the Archetype) from Lucilius:

Hunc (hanc ?) catapiratem puer eodem deforet unctum,

plumbi paucillum rudus linique mataxam.

The longest extant fragment of the Arimaspea consists of six lines quoted by ‘Longinus’ in On the Sublime 10. 4. He does not mention its author by name but contents himself with a guarded reference to 6 , as if he himself had doubts about the authenticity of its ascription to Aristeas of Proconnesus.

29–33. Phaedra's ἒρως must at first (at Athens) have been without betraying symptoms, by contrast with the change at Trozen to symptoms of νόσος (still unexplained) as described in 34–40. We need to be told that explicitly, in preparation (μέν) for 34ff. (ἐπєὶδὲ…) and in conjunction with the potentially revealing foundation of a temple to Aphrodite. We therefore need not only Jortin's ὀνομάσουσιν for ὠνόμαζєν in 33, but also my ἂδηλον for ἒκδηλον (v.l. ἒκδηλον) in 32. The nearby ἒκδηλον in 37 will have played a part in the corruption.

Hiller vonGaertringen says of this inscription: ‘Lapis in obscuro loco collocatus est. In ectypis nihil fere dispeximus … Lectio e Koehlero et Velseno componenda est.’ I did not find the stone till my last morning in Athens: it is E.M. 6600; it is extremely illegible, and I had not time to move it to a really good light. But there are a few things to add, and the length of line can, I believe, be determined.