In the long section of anapaests with which they make their entry, the old men of Argos methodically deliver three essential messages to the audience:

40–71. It is the tenth year of the Trojan War.

72–82. We are men who were too old to go and fight in it.

83–103. Some new situation seems to be indicated by the fact that Clytemnestra is organizing sacrifices throughout the town.

Professor Martin West's paper, titled ‘The Parodos of the Agamemnon’’, argues with characteristic learning and insight that Archilochus’’ fable of the fox and the eagle (frs. 174-81 West) was a major source for Aeschylus’’ description of the portent of the eagles and the pregnant hare in the parodos of the Agamemnon (108 ff.). The portent is vividly described by the chorus: two eagles, one black and one white behind feed upon a pregnant hare. Poetry is not real life, and Aeschylus’’ picture is not a naturalist's field-report. At the same time, an image's power increases in proportion to its precision, and I have no doubt that at some stage behind Aeschylus’’ description there was a personal sighting of a parallel incident by Aeschylus himself perhaps, or by Archilochus, or by an unknown figure who passed on his report. Fraenkel's commentary (p.69) avers that ‘precise zoological identification of the species of eagle named by Aeschylus must not be attempted.’’ This is a fair warning, but not for the reason advanced by Fraenkel here: the plumage variation among different birds of the same species, which makes the identification of large raptors in the wilds of Greece today a problem for even the most expert ornithologists. There are two better reasons. One will emerge in the course of this note. The other is that no ancient writer using the Greek language came at all near to the modern classification of eagle species native to Greece.

The Ionian war was more complex than any previous war in which Greeks had fought one another. Various factors contributed to its complexity. One of them was the uneasy partnership between Peloponnesians and Persians, which seldom functioned to the complete satisfaction of the former and was at times almost in abeyance. Other factors were the oligarchical revolution at Athens, which nearly plunged the Athenians into civil war, and the chameleon-like behaviour of Alcibiades, who within a brief period lent his services first to Sparta, then to Persia, and finally to Athens, though at all times serving primarily his own interests. Yet another factor was the multiplicity of Greek states directly or indirectly involved in the war. In addition to those of the Greek homeland and of Italy and Sicily which supplied contingents to the Peloponnesian expeditionary forces in Asia, all the members of the Delian Confederacy included at any time in the Ionian, Hellespontine, and Carian districts, numbering more than 150, must have been affected to some extent by the war, though only a fraction of them played an active part in it. The aim of this paper is to consider the attitude of Asiatic Greek cities towards the war and the extent of their involvement in it.

This passage from the most important of all our textual sources on Ancient-Egyptian shipbuilding has been discussed by me in my newly published Commentary. There I followed the traditional view whereby is translated as ‘thwarts’’, is taken to describe thwarts passing from one gunwale to the other in such a way that each end was placed ‘on top of the gunwale, and the sentence is understood to refer to caulking with papyrus. J. S. Morrison has in recent years on several occasions offered a radically different translation under the influence of the Fourth-Dynasty boats interred beside the Great Pyramid of Gîza (c. 2600 B.C.). His criticism of the old rendering seizes upon three points:

The Phaselis decree (IG I. 16+ = Meiggs—Lewis, No. 31 = IG I. 10) is our chief piece of evidence for the manner in which the Athenians regulated civil-suits arising between themselves and the allies in the mid-fifth century. It reads as follows:

Aristophanes, Lysistrate 256–65 ∼ 271–80 runs as follows. I print the muchdiscussed and frequently emended2 lines 260–65 ∼ 275–80 as they appear in the manuscripts (the strophe survives only in R) and testimonia, and shall argue that they are sound with the exception of 264, for which I suggest an emendation.

Professor M. L. West has challenged the accepted reading (Reiske) and proposed (Philologus 117 (1973), 145). This makes for a disappointing antithesis, and Paley seems to have been right in pointing out that would be surprising as an object to tragic diction, at least, seems to use only pronouns, adjectives, or nouns which stand as internal accusatives etc.; fr. adesp.

Professor Stevens's fine edition of Andromache, which treats all kinds of problems–linguistic, textual, metrical, theatrical, and interpretative–with great authority in a well-balanced commentary, and in a short introduction deals succinctly with the main ‘background’’ questions, must have prompted many to look anew at the play; so prompted, I here offer some supplementary points, mostly of interpretation.

The predominance of the rhetorical spirit in fourth-century tragedy has often been remarked: Aristotle himself explicitly attests the rhetorical character of contemporary dramatic compositions when he says (Poet. 6, 1450b4–8) that the older poets used to present the dramatis personae speaking like statesmen

In an important recent article T. C. W. Stinton reaffirmed the case that in Aristotle's Poetics, ch. 13, has a wide range of application. I do not wish to dispute the general conclusion of what seems to me a masterly analysis of the question but simply to discuss two areas where Stinton's argument may be thought defective–the interpretation of the examples given by Aristotle in Poetics 13, 5 3all and 53a2O–1 and the problem of the contradiction between 13, 53a13–15 and 14, 54a4–9.

One of the most widely accepted emendations in Lucretius has been the change by Lambinus in 2.289 of the manuscript reading res to mens. For instance, of the major editors since Lachmann only Bockemüller, Merrill in his 1917 edition, and Martin in his Teubner editions have printed res. Also, few emendations in Lucretius are of equal significance for Epicurean doctrine because, as will be shown, some conclusions of important recent scholarship depend on the acceptance of the reading mens.

In an earlier study I argued that the appearance of the name of Memmius in the first, second, and fifth books alone of Lucretius de Rerum Natura is only the most striking indication of a fundamental change in the poet's attitude towards his reader which is already well established quite a short way through book 5, and which makes it almost incontestable that Lucretius wrote books 3, 4, and 6 after he had lost all hope of converting Memmius to Epicureanism.

Most editors and commentators have acquiesced without enthusiasm in the reading in Creta religasset at 174, though Mynors in his Oxford text (1958) reverted to what had been the old vulgate in Cretam religasset (e.g. in Silvius' Delphin edition (Paris, 1685); Vulpius' (Padua 1737). If we read in Cretam, the sense must be ‘(Would that Theseus) had not untied his rope

In this paper I shall be examining the nature and provenance of what many people state or imply to be a traditional, conventional, even trite figure of speech: the Augustan Elegists' figure of the ‘seruitium amoris’’. It is indeed a very frequent image (so to call it for the moment) in the Elegists. As. F. O. Copley says: ‘Of all the figures used by the Roman elegists, probably none is quite so familiar as that of the lover as slave.’’ But frequency does not equal triteness nor traditionality.

It is a view commonly held by Tibullus' commentators and critics that the poet's art consists essentially in the more or less skilful weaving together of disparate themes into a single elegy. Leo, for example, talks of Tibullus' imagination which ‘ihn selbst und somit den Hörer gleichsam unwillkürlich von Bild zu Bilde reisst’’;

Sed quid ego Graecorum: nescio quo modo me magis nostra delectant. Omnes hoc historici, Fabii Gellii sed proxume Coelius: cum bello Latino ludi votivi maxumi primum fierent, civitas ad arma repente est excitata …

Quintus goes on to tell the story of the countryman's dream, with its divine warning about the ominous praesul, which is also related by Livy, Dionysius, Valerius Maximus, and Macrobius.

The purpose of this note is to defend the following reading, offered by a minority of manuscripts, at Sat. 6.6.

Even if the evidence of the manuscripts showed merely that egregius… senes was an eleventh-century conjecture which gained a very moderate degree of acceptance, the reading would still have much to commend it.

Manuscripts are listed in alphabetical order of library designation, and then, where necessary, in order of catalogue number. The date refers strictly to the cited folia or pages of the manuscript. Defective manuscripts are marked with an asterisk.

A. A. Barrett's recent addition of a raeda to Juvenal 1.155 is a novel and ingenious contribution to the ago-old debate over the text and meaning of the passage in question. His proposal is, however, vulnerable to the following objections.

First, it is worth emphasizing that there is no manuscript variant for the traditional reading taeda. In a passage so fraught with problems and textual discrepancies, this is probably suggestive.

Augustan poets refer curiously often to the possible composition of a Gigantomachy, as in Prop. 2.1 and 3.9, Ov. Am. 2.1.11 ff., Trist. 2.61 ff. and 331 ff., and the future study of natural philosophy, as in Verg. Georg. 2.475 ff. and Prop. 3.5.25 ff. These ambitions are rejected, abandoned, or firmly set in the future. I suggest that the function of both is closely similar since they provide traditionally sublime themes to contrast the poet's present ‘humbler’’ task.