It has been easy to take the apparently detached viewpoint of the two early Greek epics as actually objective, a window on a ‘Heroic Age’, on a ‘Homeric society’ and its values. We used to ask whether ‘Homeric society’ belongs to the poets' own time or to some earlier one. We still ask how to characterize and explain the ways in which the ‘Homeric world’ differs from any world that we can accept as having existed: we answer with phrases such as ‘poetic exaggeration’ and ‘epic distance’. We have constructed ‘Homeric society’, but it remains an isolate. It can tell us nothing in return of the poets' intentions, or of the society of their time, unless we have a working hypothesis as to the place in that society that was held by the poets and their audiences.

The omen of the door and the eagle at Iliad 24.314–21 appears to have sparked scant scholarly interest, but deserves careful attention. The omen itself forms part of an analogy, for the eagle is likened in the size of its wingspan to a large, barred door. This simile might seem unremarkable, merely a convenient means of depicting great size, a casual juxtaposition of two ordinary nouns. The omen, on the whole, might be dismissed as nothing more than a conventional expression of divine favor. But closer scrutiny will reveal that there is, in fact, nothing arbitrary or haphazard in the selection of the terms of the analogy. Appreciation of the elegance and subtlety of the simile in turn reveals the full import of the omen.

Those who write about early Greek literature often assume that each item in the ancient vocabulary answers to a single concept in the world-view of its users. It seems reasonable to hope that the body of ideas represented by a particular Greek word will frame one's discussion better than any question that could be asked in English: so that a cautious scholar might prefer to discuss the phenomenon called αἰδώς, for example, than to plunge into a study of Greek ideas of ‘honour and shame' irrespective of whether those anthropologists’ labels mark off a single body of ancient ideas. But the question is not merely one of common sense: in recent years, for example, a strategy of extrapolating deep ideas from single words has been deliberately developed by such scholars as Gregory Nagy, who constantly moves back and forth between the semantic patterns of individual words and corresponding thematic patterns found in myths. Here is a recent example from his analysis of Pindar's conception of the unity between athletic victory and mythical heroism:

In Pindaric usage ἂεθλος applies equally to the contests of athletes and to the life-and-death ordeals of heroes. We have already seen from the myth of the chariot race of Pelops that the ordeals of heroes on the level of myth correspond aetiologically to the contests of athletes on the level of ritual, in that the myths can motivate the rituals. Now we see that a word like ἂεθλος can collapse the very distinction between the myth and the ritual.

Just about every odd year in the early fifth century B.C. has been proposed as the date of the Nemean victory of Pytheas from Aegina, celebrated in Pindar's Fifth Nemean and Bacchylides' thirteenth ode. Scholars have attempted to date both odes with the help of Isthmian 6 and 5, which celebrate victories of a member of the same family and the latter of which at 48ff. refers to Salamis as a recent event. Various interpretations of the victory catalogues in I. 6 and 5 have led to various dates for N. 5 and B. 13. The fullest analysis of the material is that by Severyns, who argues that N. 5 and B. 13 must be at least seven years earlier than I. 5. In his conclusion (pp. 50–51), however, he still suggests three possible dates for N. 5 and B. 13: 487, 489, and 485 B.C., in what he considers to be the order of likelihood.

Protagoras believes that all beliefs are true. Since Protagoras' belief that all beliefs are true is itself a belief, it follows (somewhat trivially, perhaps?) from Protagoras' belief that all beliefs are true that Protagoras' belief is true. But what about the belief that Protagoras' belief is false? Doesn't it follow, by parallel reasoning and not at all trivially, that if all beliefs are true and there is a belief that Protagoras' belief is false, then Protagoras' belief is false?

Although there is a long tradition, going back at least to the tenth century, that would see Aristophanes' Birds (performed in the spring of 414 B.C.) as somehow related to the exile in Lacedaemon of Alcibiades, and to the fortification of the Attic township of Decelea by his Spartan hosts (Arg. Av. 1 Coulon), current scholarship surrounding Birds is firmly in the hands of those who are antipathetic to seeing the creation of Cloudcuckooland in terms of a political allegory. ‘The majority of scholars today…flatly reject a political reading’; Birds has ‘no strong and obvious connection with a topical question of public interest’; ‘attempts to find in Birds any extensive allegorical comment…are unconvincing’. Not only is it widely believed that ‘Birds… is strangely free of political concerns’. but also that ‘the theme of the Birds is absurdity itself…it is about meaninglessness’ (ibid. 179). This is a tradition that descends from A. W. von Schlegel, for whom Birds was ‘merely a “Lustspiel”, full of imagination and the marvellous, with amusing touches at everything, but with no particular object’. This approach was reinforced by the fact that by the second half of the nineteenth century, the allegorists had apparently spun out of control. By 1879, there were no fewer than 79 accounts of the Tendenz of the Birds —some political, some ‘escapist fantasy’–on offer. The most influential allegorical interpretation of Birds was J. W. Suvern's study of 1826, but which is now generally dismissed, and only mentioned to be held up as a warning to those who might be tempted to take the allegorical route. This paper takes a different point of departure, namely Pierre Brumoy's Le thétre des grecs (Paris, 1730), an allegorical treatment that is full of good sense, and which was too hastily dismissed by Suvern, and ignored by others.

Critical discussion of Andromache has almost invariably focused on the question of unity. As everyone who has ever read a critical account of the play knows, the action falls into three parts: the plot against Andromache by Hermione and her father, foiled by Peleus; Hermione's subsequent panicky flight with Orestes; and Neoptolemos' murder at Orestes' instigation. The play appears not to possess ‘unity of action’ in the strict Aristotelian sense: there is, for instance, no tight causal connection between the plot against Andromache and Orestes' plot against Neoptolemos. Troubled by this, critics have made a variety of attempts to find unity of another sort: unity of ‘theme’. Each has asked, ‘What is Andromache about?’, taking the question in an absolute sense; and has assumed that one must search for a single answer.

The interrogation of Meletus in the Apology at 24c4–28al is not infrequently seen as a typical case of all that is intellectually and artistically dissatisfying in Plato's practice of the genre of philosophical dialogue: not only are we presented with a philosopher who makes some claim to being committed to setting a particularly stringent standard for honesty in argumentation making sophistical arguments, but we are presented also with a cardboard interlocutor who is forced by the hand of Plato to acquiesce to those arguments in a fashion that is completely dissatisfying to the reader. The best anyone seems to do to save Plato from these charges of artistic incompetence and intellectual dishonesty is to appeal to such a level of historical accuracy for the text that the stupidity of Meletus' responses can be attributed to the stupidity of Meletus himself, or to point out features of the political and legal situation that might prevent Meletus from answering the questions by drawing on his true motivation—which is presumably more coherent. Taylor says of this passage:

The humour of the situation is that the prosecutor cannot venture to say what he means by either of his charges without betraying the fact that, owing to the ‘amnesty’, the matters complained of are outside of the competency of the court… Hence, when Meletus is pressed to explain what he means, he has to take refuge in puerile nonsense.

Robert Wardy's recent The Chain of Change (Cambridge, 1990) has again brought to the fore the question of the role of Physics VII in the development of Aristotle's conception of motion. Wardy reads VII in conjunction with VIII, and argues that the former is the precursor of the latter in the development of the conception of a cosmic unmoved mover. He also claims that this account is the only one that can save us from a version of self-motion made unacceptable by Aristotle's hylomorphic account developed elsewhere. This is what Wardy thinks enables him to infer that the account of motion in Physics VII leads directly into the argument about unmoved movers in Physics VIII. I want first to show why I think that Wardy's thesis about the conceptual links between VII and VIII need not hold. This disconnection of VII from its current context, taken together with the thesis of W. D. Ross and others that VII was originally a separate work, and that of the two competing versions of VII, the α-version is the preferred text, opens the way to very different philosophical conclusions from the ones that Wardy offers.

It is a truism of modern discussions of Athenian law and oratory that the Athenians regarded adultery as a more heinous offence than rape. This consensus has been challenged in a valuable paper by E. M. Harris. But although Harris has successfully (at least in my view) placed in question a number of assumptions about this area of Athenian law and ethics, I wish to argue that the traditional position is in its broad outlines correct. In this as in so many aspects of Athenian law it is difficult to make firm statements. Firstly, for the Athenian system as a whole we lack evidence for many issues of legal prescription and procedure for the period before the restoration of the democracy, and our evidence is frequently lacunose even for the period after the restoration. As a result we are presented with a ‘snapshot’ of the Athenian system at a particular stage in its development and are rarely able to trace chronological developments in detail and frequently unable to trace them in broad outline. A further result of this ‘snapshot’ effect is a false impression of coherence. Legislative measures belonging to different periods are likely to present themselves as the result of an integrated design rather than the product of accretion. Finally, and most importantly, our sources distort. Occasionally they provide information on the laws and on legal procedure in passing, in order to contextualize an argument or narrative; but in general they are presenting us with information in an attempt to persuade.

Chapters 114 and 115 of Diodorus Siculus Book 17 give rise to impressive difficulties, considering their relative brevity. At the beginning of Chapter 113 Diodorus has announced the opening of the year 324/3 (Athenian archon, Roman consuls, 114th Olympic Games)—the last year of Alexander the Great's life. Alexander by then has already, at the end of the previous year (112.5), taken the fateful step of entering Babylon: wounded in his soul by Chaldaean prophecy, Diodorus says, but healed by Anaxarchus and the philosophical corps of the Macedonian army. The new year, 324/3, begins with Alexander dealing with diplomatic missions from three continents; and then, at the beginning of Chapter 114, Diodorus brings in the funeral of Hephaestion.

The incursions of Ptolemy Soter into Coelê-Syria and Phoenicia after the death of Perdiccas have received scant attention from scholars in recent years, and the little they have received has failed to draw some vital conclusions. The sources are compressed, but unanimous, that very soon after the settlement of Triparadeisus, Ptolemy subverted and overran the region, fortified and garrisoned the cities, and returned to Egypt. He seems to have held this satrapy until it became a major arena in the third Diadoch war, c. 315–311 B.C.

Apollonius Dyscolus’ use of ambiguity in grammatical problem-solving has in recent years had the benefit of two scholarly studies. David Blank, in the course of his analysis of the Syntax as a whole (1982), has described the broad functions which Apollonius assigns to ambiguity. Jean Lallot's 1988 paper, ‘Apollonius Dyscole et l'ambigüité linguistique: problemes et solutions’, is devoted exclusively to the treatment of linguistic ambiguity in Apollonius’ work. Yet it is to be feared that the flood of light thrown by these scholars on what had been an unregarded corner of ancient grammar has shown up rather more than Apollonius would have cared to admit, both about the nature, and about the prospects for success, of the enterprise on which he was engaged. At the same time, certain structural features of ancient grammar, at least of the ancient grammar which Apollonius himself constructed, have come into sharper focus: features clear enough with the benefit of hindsight, but glimpsed, it appears, all too dimly by Apollonius himslf. It is now worryingly clear not only that ambiguity was ambiguous for Apollonius, but also that the ambiguity of ambiguity represented a genuine threat to the coherence and value of his work. In this paper I set out to justify both these claims.

Callimachus, ep. 1 Pfeiffer (= LIV Gow-Page = AP 7.89) relates an anecdote about Pittacus: when consulted by a stranger from Atarneus who was wondering whether to marry a woman of his own social class or one of a higher status, he suggests the question is answered by the cries of the children playing with tops, τν κατ ｃαντν ἔλα. The chequered history of the transmission and interpretation of the poem is beset by a number of unfavourable or patronizing judgements which, I hope to show, have their origin in a series of misunderstandings. The poem seems to lack the sharp point characteristic of epigrams, and indeed Gow-Page go so far as to pronounce that it ‘has no claim to be called an epigram at all’. We now have a number of valuable parallels for the unusual length of the piece, but grave doubts continue to be expressed about the Callimachean authorship of the poem. While Diogenes Laertius (henceforth referred to as ‘D.L.’), who quotes the poem in his life of Pittacus (1.79ff.), explicitly attributes it to καλλμαχοఁ ν τοῖఁ ’Epsilon;πιγρμμαఁιν, in P and PI there is no ascription at all: there our epigram has been mistakenly consigned to the ’ɛπιτμβια simply because AP 7.81 (= Antipater XXXIV Gow-Page), on the Seven Sages, is followed by some fifty epigrams on them and other philosophers, all (save three) derived from D.L. In the Palatine ms. there survive traces of the questions raised by this poem, though—surprisingly—both Pfeiffer and Gow-Page fail to report them.

One of the great mysteries of the history of southern Italy, if studied from a purely literary point of view, is the ethnic composition of the Greek cities in the era of the Oscan and Roman conquests. Ancient authors paint a most gloomy picture of those cities which were conquered by the Oscan peoples at the end of the 5th century B.C. or later, saying in some cases that the entire Greek population was slaughtered (Cumae, 421 B.C.), in others that the entire elite was slaughtered (as happened during the capture of Rhegium by Campanian mercenaries in 275 B.C.), and in yet others that the remainder of the Greek population was kept in a state of dire subjection (Paestum, 410 B.C.). While not wishing to minimize the horrors of war, these lurid tales must be an over-simplification of the actual situation. It is not readily plausible that entire Greek populations disappeared so abruptly.

This article has a double purpose: to argue for some specific points on Cicero's rhythm, and to show how the significance of rhythm for literary understanding is larger than has perhaps been perceived. The piece is based on a reading of the whole of Cicero; but it will make only occasional reference to the letters. The question of rhythm in the letters is particularly involved, and it will be best handled elsewhere.

In an earlier article in Classical Quarterly, S. J. Harrison explored the varying frequency of hexameter-endings of the type discordia taetra, where a noun that ends in short a is followed by its epithet with the same termination. It appears from this that while most pre-Augustan poets allow a fairly high frequency of such verse-endings (e.g. Lucretius 1:130, Catullus 1:204), some Augustan poets and their imitators show a distinct tendency to avoid them (e.g. Vergil, Georgics 1:547), while some almost exclude them altogether (e.g. Ovid, Metamorphoses 1:4999, Statius, Thebaid 1:1948). The hexameters of elegiac poetry might be subject to the same restriction; the following are figures for elegy from Catullus to Martial.

What follows is a list of corrections to my ‘Discordia taetra: the history of a hexameter-ending’, CQ 41 (1991), 138–49. Most of these are owed to the researches of Dr Nigel Holmes, author of the preceding article, and I am most grateful to him for his material, and to the editors of CQ for giving me this opportunity for correction; my humble apologies for human error in my pre-CD-ROM era. I am glad to say that none of the article's conclusions are substantially modified by these corrections.

A dominant theme in the ninth of the Heroides, Deianira's letter to Hercules, is Deianira's indignation that Hercules has been defeated by a woman: first by Iole (especially in the first part of the letter: for example, lines 2, 5f., 1 If., 25f.); then by Omphale (especially in the section 103–18). The theme is exploited so insistently that Vessey, who regards the epistle as spurious, sees in this insistence a sign of the forger's clumsiness. consider the exploitation of the motive of‘victor victus’ in Heroides 9, on the contrary, as a strong sign of Ovidian authorship. From the very beginning of the letter, the reader is reminded that if a woman, Iole, has metaphorically destroyed Hercules, another woman is on the point of destroying Hercules in a much more real and literal way, and this woman is none other than Deianira herself. When Deianira writes the letter, she has just sent to Hercules the garment soaked in Nessus' poison that will provoke Hercules' horrible death (see 143–68): thus Deianira, rather than Iole or Omphale, is the woman who vanquishes the unvanquished hero. But this is not only a matter of dramatic irony based on the general lines of the story. Heroides 9 is an elegiac rewriting of Sophocles' Trachiniae (it is no coincidence that the letter opens with an allusion to Propertius 3.11), and at the same time is inserted in the time and the ‘body’ of the tragedy. Ironic prefiguration in Heroides is normally realized through intertextual anticipation: thefuture events that are prefigured are present in the texts of the model epic or tragedy. Deianira blames Hercules for bis defeat:

quern numquam Iuno seriesque immensa laborum

fregerit, huic Iolen imposuisse iugum (Her. 9.5f.)

quem non mille ferae, quern non Stheneleius hostis,

non potuit Iuno vincere, vincit amor. (Her. 9.25f.)

The text is taken from Georg Luck's edition (Heidelberg, 1967). I have also consulted P. Burman (Amsterdam, 1727), S. G. Owen's editio maior (Oxford, 1889), A. L. Wheeler's Loeb edition (London and New York, 1924) in the 2nd edition revised by G. P. Goold (London and Cambridge, MA., 1988), and Georg Luck's commentary (Heidelberg, 1977). I have also had a preview of J. B. Hall's forthcoming Teubner edition and I have used his apparatus, in which the traditional sigla for the principal manuscripts are retained.