All students of the classical languages are aware that, in referring to intervals of time, the Greeks and Romans often employed a method of reckoning which was inclusive and consequently different from our own. The Greeks, for example, refer to the period between two celebrations of the Olympic games (e.g. 776–772 B.C.) as a though we should call it a four-year interval. One instance of this kind of usage in Latin is the stereotyped formula employed in expressing a date: ante diem quintum Id. Mai. is 11 May, though we should say that there was an interval of four days only between 11 and 15 May. Another instance is the use of tertiana and quartana as applied to fevers which recur on alternate days and on every third day respectively. The ramifications of this mode of expression are extensive, but I am only concerned here with one, namely the use of quisque with ordinals.

In a paper where we tried to show in how many different meanings the term is chiefly used in the philosophy of Aristotle, we discussed the relation between and , but neglected the relation between and , which seems to be yet more important. The neglect, however, was purposeful; for to answer the question what the latter relation is requires a special research. This we are now going to carry out.

Odysseus' man, disguised as the captain of a merchant ship, is explaining to Neoptolemus how he chanced unexpectedly to meet Neoptolemus' sailors. Jebb's note, ‘the same land (Lemnos); not, strictly, the same “spot” ’, and his rendering, ‘off the same coast’, somewhat contradict one another.

That after that is just too ghastly. Jebb's citations are no parallels; the difference is that (‘as to which things’—J.) and (‘that prospect’—J.) have both precisely the same reference. Read ‘which reflections … time-honoured as they are’. In this well-known construction a term (often substantive, sometimes adjective) which logically belongs to the antecedent is deferred and inserted in the relative clause—‘for emphasis’ (M. Tierney, rightly, on E. Hec. 771).

The pseudo-Ciceronian Epistula ad Octavianum enjoys the unmerited distinction of being preserved not only in most of the manuscripts which contain the AdAtticum letters but also in some of those which contain the second half of the Ad Familiares letters; the former tradition is usually designated Ω, the latter I shall designate X. It was on the Ω tradition that the earliest printed texts were based. In the sixteenth century Cratander (1528) and Turnebus (1565) introduced a number of readings from the X tradition; some of these were incorporated in the vulgate, but the printed editions from that of Lambinus (1565) to that of Purser (1902) still continued to be based mainly on Ω. In 1913, in an article in Eranos, xiii. 136–46, Sjögren set himself to prove that the value of Ω had been overrated in the establishment of the text, and that greater importance should be attached to X than to Ω; and in accordance with this view, in his 1914 Teubner text, Sjögren follows X, as against Ω, about twice as often3 as Purser does. This view of Sjögren's, I believe, will not stand examination, and to disprove it is the purpose of the present article.

It is not my purpose to discuss the authorship of this work; I shall only say that I do not believe it was written by Quintus Cicero. The question of authorship cannot be brought into a discussion of the problems raised by the text, because, even if it were the product of Quintus' pen, it would obviously be unjustified to apply to Quintus the same canons of Latinity as can be applied to his brother.

In writing the following notes on some passages in Aeschylus' Persae I have consulted mainly the editions of Schiitz, Blomfield, Hermann, Paley, Vitelli–Wecklein, Sidgwick, Prickard, Wilamowitz, Mazon, and Italie (but not that of Groeneboom, which has been inaccessible), and the Index of Italie. The text quoted is that of Murray (ed. alt. 1955).

In these notes I propose to discuss only those passages where I can offer either a new solution or new arguments in favour of a neglected one. Where I am wrong I hope to be told so before my proposals are enshrined in my text.

Cornford's interpretation of Anaxagoras' theory of matter (C.Q. xxiv [1930] 14 ff. and 83 ff.) was an attempt to solve the apparent contradiction between the Principle of Homoeomereity, as he calls it, and that which asserts that ‘there is a portion of everything in everything’; and also, perhaps, to assign a more definite place in the system to the qualitative ‘Opposites’ which Tannery and Burnet had asserted, in rather vague terms, to be Anaxagoras' elements. In effect he solves the problem by applying the former principle to the phenomenal world and to the Seeds which are the elements for Anaxagoras, and confining the latter, the principle of Universal Mixture as we may call it, to the Opposites, which are the substantial but inseparable constituents of the Seeds. By this tidy and ingenious solution he avoids not only the above-mentioned contradiction but also what he calls the grotesque and gratuitous absurdity of holding that a Seed of gold contains mostly gold, but also flesh and all other natural substances, in order to explain the possibility of various changes, the great majority of which never occur anyhow (gold, for instance, does not turn into flesh).

It is generally stated that diaeresis after the first metron, obligatory in recitative dimeters, is not the rule in catalectic dimeters, or paroemiacs. An examination of the material, however, yields the following results. The paroemiacs of Tyrtaeus' consistendy observe metron-diaeresis. Out of a total of 348 recitative paroemiacs in the Attic dramatists, only 34 disregard metron-diaeresis altogether. A further 75 overlap metron-diaeresis by one short syllable (the licence of which the dramatists sometimes avail themselves in full dimeters). Apparently, the practice with regard to metron-diaeresis is fundamentally the same in paroemiacs as in full dimeters, only the licences are a little more frequent. The poets occasionally take advantage of the interruption in the movement produced by the catalectic colon in order to break away still farther from regular anapaestic rhythm. Aristophanes, in particular, rather likes to round off an anapaestic period with a rattling, and often abusive, polysyllable: Vesp. 326:

In the for 1952 (Athens, 1955), pp. 33 ff., Nikolaos M. Kontoleon published a most interesting inscription from the shrine of Archilochos on Paros. It was inscribed, as preserved, on two orthostats, which probably formed part of the structure of the hearth or bothros where offerings to the hero were made. There is much of interest to scholars in this new discovery, which is very fully and carefully interpreted by Kontoleon, and has been further discussed by Werner Peck (Philologus, xcix [1955], 4 ff.). In this article the present writer wishes to confine himself to some comments on the new evidence about responses of the Delphic oracle supplied by the inscription. This material is all found on the first of the two orthostats, and falls into two categories: responses connected with the setting up of the shrine, and responses connected with the life of Archilochus.

At the end of the dialogue Theages, after a general review of the prophetic power given by Socrates quotes the words of Aristides to himself—130 d—e:

The extravagant claim here made for the influence of Socrates as conveyed through physical proximity and contact is one of the chief reasons for regarding the dialogue as spurious, giving as it does a later and a distorted development from suggestions made by Plato and Xenophon themselves.

Cynthia's apparition is upbraiding Propertius ior having forgotten her so soon. In spite of their former love, he had not been present at her death, and, because of his neglect, her funeral had been a mean affair, lacking not merely any signs of affection, but any semblance of ordinary decent feeling. In a succession of couplets tracing the regular stages of a Roman funeral from the deathbed to the final rites of the cremation, this lack of respect and affection is particularized: no loving voice had been heard in her dying moments (23–24); her body had been laid out to await the funeral with little thought for what was seemly at such a time (25-26); on the day of the funeral Propertius had not put on mourning or shown signs of grief (27–28); the funeral procession had moved with indecorous haste to the city gate (29–30); Propertius had not been present at the cremation, and no perfumes had been poured on the flames (31–32); no customary final offerings had been made to the ashes (33–34).

Herodotus has told us some queer tales but it is always unsafe to discredit them merely because they seem strange to us. Who would have thought that his story of the bald-headed Argippaioi who sat under trees judging the Scythians was literally true until the recent discovery in Russia of a felt wall hanging providing a contemporary illustration of these queer tribunals ?

In this celebrated sentence Thucydides gives his opinion more specifically than anywhere in the narrative of Books 6 and 7 on the reasons for the failure of the Sicilian expedition. Unfortunately, however, he expresses his views with some lack of clarity, and this has led to disagreement among modern scholars who have sought to determine precisely what he means. It is also unfortunate that he does not state the evidence upon which he bases his conclusion that the expedition failed because of struggles for political leadership at Athens. The main purpose of this paper is to consider the meaning and implications of this sentence, which can, I believe, be clarified by reference to other passages in which Thucydides uses when debating the causes of past actions. A closely allied problem, that of the relationship between this sentence and the narrative of Books 6 and 7, will also be discussed. A. W. Gomme has maintained that this relationship throws some light upon the date of composition of Books 6 and 7. There is no doubt whatever that the sentence was written at or after the end of the Peloponnesian war (ibid. 12), and if there are differences of outlook, even inconsistencies, between it and the narrative which show that Thucydides cannot have written, or at any rate conceived, both at the same time, he almost certainly wrote the narrative before the end of the war.2 In my opinion there is inconsistency on one point only, but here the inconsistency is sufficiently marked to suggest not only that Books 6 and 7 were written considerably earlier than 2. 65. 11, but that they were written within the next few years after the conclusion of the Sicilian campaign.

In a recent issue of this journal (C.Q., N.S. vii [1957], 47–52) Professor P. Thielscher criticizes my hypothesis concerning the manuscript tradition of the Silvae of Statius (see C.Q., N.S. iii [1953], 69–78). He censures me for what he calls my ‘errors’ and ‘mistakes’. Here are my answers.