Until the fifth century B.C. all Greek poets made their poems for hearing not for seeing, for the ear and not for the eye. Poetry was social rather than private being usually sung, recited, or performed at religious ceremonies, festivals, feasts, or entertainments. Even when the Greeks began to read poetry privately for themselves – Euripides is the first known possessor of a private library – they read it aloud, not silently as we generally do. Silent reading of literature – as distinct from business documents – is not clearly attested until the fourth century A.D.

Since the Second World War we have been subjected to a flood of memoirs and counter-memoirs by generals, admirals, air marshals, and politicians. One of the direct results of this is that our vocabulary has been increased—if not enriched—by a military jargon. Most of the latter's terms have in fact very specialized meanings, and if they are used out of their proper context they can present a highly coloured view of a rather simple situation. Can these terms be applied with validity to historical situations of antiquity ? At first sight there is an attraction in theirvery modernity, for they seem to give a freshness of approach; but Professor Salmon's use of them in his recent article, ‘The Strategy of the Second Punic War’, has made the dangers of their use manifestly clear. By his use of these anachronisms—for that is surely what they are—Professor Salmon has given nothing new in the way of interpretation, but merely provided confirmation of Oman's dictum ‘Historians may have the most divergent views according to their predispositions’, and has exaggerated the capabilities of both sides beyond belief.

Metapoetics—the name given by Aristotle's editors to his works on Publishing (either because they came after, or because they went beyond, and transcended, his Poetics)—deals with literary activity not qua itself but qua its product (ἔργον), the Book (ὥσπερ γὰρ τῆς οἰκοδομικῆς τέχνης ἐστὶν ἔργον ὁ οἶκος, ὁμοίως τῆς ποιητικῆς τὸ βιβλίον), and considers how this product is brought to the notice of the reader–or, rather, readers (μία γὰρ χελιδὼν ἔαρ οὐ ποιεῖ).

What is the cure for unrequited love? According to the Hellenistic poet Theocritus the cure is song. To illustrate this thesis Theocritus wrote two poems about the lovesick cyclops Polyphemus. Alexandrian poets were very interested in the subject of love, especially when it went wrong, and they were also keen to show off their literary knowledge and skills by borrowing and adapting ideas from their predecessors. The lovesick cyclops of Idylls 6 and 11 combined both concerns. Theocritus was able to demonstrate his literary debt to Homer by borrowing many grotesque details from the cyclops in Homer's Odyssey. He was also able to devote the bulk of his poems to making his point that the only successful cure for lovesickness is to be found in poetry and singing.

You would do well to make a special thing of Homer. Read it in large lumps and get up Monro's ‘Homeric Grammar’ afterwards. I have been reading the Odyssey at the rate of four books a day since I came here. It is the only secret. It is so much easier to pick up the theories of modern scholars, so far as they are worth picking up, when you have a large first-hand acquaintance with the actual literature. That is the primary fact we have to deal with, and all the rest is ‘trimmings’. I never knew what scholarship meant till one lucky summer when I was inspired to read Plato from cover to cover.

Field events are notoriously the Cinderellas of the athletic world, and this was as true in antiquity as in our own day. The Greeks practised three, long jump, discus, and javelin, and in their festivals did not accord them the status of separate events but grouped them, together with a foot race and wrestling, which were also solo events in their own right, in the pentathlon. This was first included in the Olympic programme in 708 b.c.; other festivals imitated Olympia, and, with the astonishing conservatism of the Greek athletic world, the pentathlon remained unchanged until the disappearance of the festivals a thousand years later.

For the Greeks, athletics occupied the place in life which in the modern world is taken by football and cricket. Ball games were not unknown to the Greeks, as two famous reliefs in Athens show, but literature is silent about them, while it abounds in allusions and metaphors drawn from athletics—running, jumping, boxing, wrestling, and throwing the javelin and discus. Their popularity continued for many centuries: we read of them in Homer; even the unathletic St. Paul cannot avoid frequent metaphors drawn from the games; and the great athletic festivals were discontinued only when, in the fourth century a.d., the Christian Roman emperors put an end to them as pagan rites.

Nearly ten years have gone by since Dr. Cyril Bailey gave to lovers of Lucretius his edition of the poet in three volumes, winning for himself a crown, insignem cum laude coronam, after a lifelong quest and bestowing upon us an enlarged understanding of that wonderful work of antiquity, the De Rerum Natura, which holds in its ‘massive and magnificent whole’ many a valuable message for the modern world, could it but read them. At the outset of his commentary Dr. Bailey draws attention to a discrepancy that has often been discussed, namely that which lies between the literary masterpiece with which the poem opens, the invocation to Venus, and the Epicurean belief entertained by the poet that the gods neither govern the forces of Nature nor interfere in the affairs of men. On the one hand, Venus is addressed as a creative power with prayers for inspiration and assistance and for peace; on the other hand, we are told that the nature of the gods needs nothing of us, is untouched by anger, and is unmoved by merit; and if the reading of the manuscripts be retained, the second set of lines immediately succeeds and contradicts the first.

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.