The Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus is a major source of our knowledge of the late Roman army. However, although himself a former army officer, it was not the intention of Ammianus to explain the institutions and organization of the late Roman army to his readers. We learn about these only from the incidental pieces of information which are scattered throughout his text. It was not his intention either to present us with the regimental histories of any individual units, yet repeated references to the more prominent and prestigious units were inevitable in a history such as his. This was particularly true in the case of the scholae palatinae because of their role as the bodyguard units of the emperors. It is my intention here to draw together such information as Ammianus provides about the scholae in order to demonstrate how, in a number of cases in particular, it is possible to reconstruct an almost complete list of their commanders for the period c. 353–364

Wordplay involving names is routine in Homer. Less common, but not rare, is wordplay that does not have anything to do with names. Thus, at Iliad 1.290f. there is a play on ; at 24.611 an implicit play on (people)/ (stone); at Odyssey 12.45–46 a possible play on .

The commentators have noticed the central role that wordplay performs in this epigram. Heraclitus the Magnesian is indeed a magnet, but it is the heart of the poet rather than iron that he attracts. As Gow-Page remark, does double duty. But that is only part of the story, for there lurks here yet a second play on words that reinforces the first.

In Aristotle′s Nicomachean Ethics (E.N.), at 1149b15–16, there is a quotation: Aristotle does not tell us who wrote these words, and we now find the quotation as lyric fr. adesp. 949.2

In the course of studying ancient Greek diplomatic relations I have come to think that one item of evidence deserves a little more said about it than it has, up to now, received. Tod 11.154, entitled Athens aids Eretria: 357–6 B.C.', is a document whose significance in Greek diplomatic history has not, I suggest, been fully appreciated. It is a unique epigraphic record of a genre of diplomatic instrument that was available to states which wished to emphasize their non-belligerence. R. Bauslaugh has recently gathered the literary evidence for the use by neutral states of this type of instrument, prohibiting a state's citizens from serving as mercenaries for a foreign power, but he did not consider this decree, in which a state uses the same instrument to demonstrate its goodwill towards its allies.

Having withered you while you live I will lead you down so that you may give recompense for the miseries of your slaughtered mother. And if anyone else of mortals has done wrong, committing impiety against god or any stranger or his own parents, you will see him getting his just deserts. For Hades is a great euthunos of mortals below the ground, he oversees all things with his tablet-writing mind.

The familiar crux in line 139, as obelized by Dawe, disappears in the new Oxford Text, whose editors accept the Triclinian reading . Their short critical note touches only on the metrical issue, citing discussions by Stinton and Diggle, in both of which acceptance of here is cautiously linked with recognition of the same responsion at Philoctetes 209/218 and Euripides, Medea 159/183. The note concludes with a reference (credited to Miss Parker) to p. 75 of an article by K. Itsumi.

If you would reflect that the part of the soul that in the former case, in our own misfortunes, was forcibly restrained, and that has hungered for tears and a good cry and satisfaction, because it is its nature to desire these things, is the element in us that the poets satisfy and delight, and that the best element in our nature, since it has never been properly educated by reason or even by habit, then relaxes its guard over the plaintive part, inasmuch as this is contemplating the woes of others and it is no shame to it to praise and pity another who, claiming to be a good man, abandons himself to excess in his grief; but [he] thinks this vicarious pleasure is so much clear gain, and would not consent to forfeit it by disdaining the poem altogether.

When Lysidamus arrives on stage in Plautus′ Casina, he delightedly announces that he is in love with the slave girl Casina. He is returning, he says, from an expedition to buy perfume which he hopes has made him appealing to his beloved. Casina′s name is derived from the fragrant spice casia. Cassia and the related spice cinnamon originate in the Far East and were imported to Rome through Arabia or Africa.Like other ancient spices, cassia was used as perfume, condiment, and in medicinal and religious contexts.

Around 16 August of 45 B.C. Cicero wrote a brief letter to Atticus (Alt. 13.39) in which he reminds Atticus to send the books of the Epicurean scholarch Phaedrus that he had requested. The Greek words in the text of his request have been corrupted through the centuries

In the poem which sets the seal on his three books of odes, Horace declares that his monument to himself will be more durable than bronze and higher than the pyramids. As T. E. Page noted in his commentary, aere can suggest not only bronze tablets, but also commemorative statuary, although tablets seems more to the fore here, given the reference to monumentum As for the pyramids, they are a fine example of grandiloquent architecture, but of a kind which is nevertheless subject to the destructive natural forces from which Horace exempts his own commemoration.

On his way to convey Jupiter's rebuke to Aeneas, Mercury passes by his maternal grandfather Atlas, a mountain vividly personified as an old man with snowy beard/frozen rivers running down his chin (4.249–51). Here he pauses, then flings himself into the waves (4.253–4):

In his influential work Unpoetische Wörter, B. Axelson mentions sane as one of the words used freely in prose but generally avoided in verse.1 He briefly discusses its occurrences in poetry. A closer look at these occurrences offers some insight into the manner in which Roman poets employed words usually associated with prose writing or everyday speech, while raising some interesting questions about the accepted text of a passage in the Aeneid and the style of Ovid's Heroides 16–21.

In telling the story of Tereus, Procne, and Philomela (Met. 6.401–674), Ovid transformed tragedy—the Tereus of Sophocles1—into epic. The result was a narrative that followed the tragic plot but with a very different presentation. For example, Ovid incorporated into his episode events from the play's prologue, such as the marriage of Procne and Tereus (426ff.), the birth of Itys (433ff), and the voyage of Tereus to Athens (444ff.). In addition, he brought offstage action into the limelight, including the violation of Philomela (549ff.), the slaughter of Itys (636ff.), and the metamorphoses of Tereus and the sisters (667ff). Finally, he explicated innermost thoughts, like the lust of Tereus (455ff.) and the rage of Procne (581ff.)— emotions whose external manifestations would have been clear in performance, but whose effects the reader perceives from the inside out. So sequential and immediate a treatment owes much to the shift from one genre to the other.

The wine referred to in the second line of the epigram was produced near Verona, at the foot of the Rhaetian Alps. It was well regarded by most and was a favourite of the Emperor Augustus: for references see Mynors at Verg. G. 2.96 and my note at Mart. 14.100.2. It appears, however, to have undue prominence in this poem, supposedly about the earthenware drinking vessels which, presumably, were manufactured in the same area.

There is also the question of why Martial refers to Verona in such a circumlocutory way. Is he merely following a well established elegiac/epigrammatic convention in associating Verona with Catullus (cf. e.g. Ovid, Am. 3.15.7 and Mart. 1.7.2), or does his circumlocution here have any particular point?

R. J. Tarrant has remarked that ‘Latin poets from Ovid onward...felt an almost irresistible urge to mention the Isthmus of Corinth wherever possible’,2 and A. E. Housman admitted to a similar, though less urgent, inclination to introduce the city of Corinth into the passage quoted: ‘inter 295 et 296 excidisse uidetur uersus cuius clausula fuerit Corinthus’. Corinth would, of course, be very much at home in this list of depraved and wealthy (or formerly wealthy) Greek cities, and would suitably head the list.

Ann. 11.11: nam is quoque (Domitian) edidit ludos saecularis iisque intentius adfui sacerdotio quindecimvirali praeditus ac tune praetor; quod non iactantia refero sed quia collegio quindecimvirum antiquitus ea cura et magistratus potissimum exequebantur officia caerimoniarum.

In CQ 45 (1995), 547–50, S. J. Harrison and M. Winterbottom (hereafter H-W) propose a series of emendations to the text of the recently discovered passage of Donatus which contains his commentary on Aen. 6.1–157. I offer some further emendations (bold figures refer to lines of Virgil).