In the course of its 53 Stephanus pages Plato's Protagoras uses the verb διαλέγεσθαι 32 times: a frequency considerably greater than that of any other dialogue. The next largest total is 21 occurrences in the Theaetetus (68 Stephanus pages). In the vast bulk of the Republic διαλέγεσθαι occurs just 20 times over 294 Stephanus pages. The ratios are striking. In the Protagoras the verb turns up on average once every 1.65 Stephanus pages; in the Theaetetus once every 3.25 pages; in the Republic only once every 14.7. The statistics reflect a fact evident to any reader of the Protagoras and Theaetetus, that the first of these dialogues is Plato's most sustained treatment of the comparative merits of the many different forms of διαλέγεσθαι, the second his most ambitious exhibition of the type of dialectic (as he has taught us to call it) with which Socrates there wins his contest against Protagoras. It is the former dialogue that interests me here.

Mr. P. H. Ling's suggestion that the famous line ϕθε⋯ρουσιν ἤθη χρ⋯σθ' ⋯μιλ⋯αι κακα⋯ stood at the beginning of a play of Euripides seems to me to lack anything like cogent proof. A gnomic verse of this sort—to take the characteristics of the line in the order given by Mr. Ling—may indeed begin a play, as in the fragment of the Stheneboia (Nauck, 661) which he quotes; but it may also begin a speech, as Hec. 864; or come early in a speech, cf. Heracl. 2; or alone in stichomythia, as Alc. 540; or late in a speech, as Med. 561; or at the end of one, as Supp. 510. In other words, there is no position which it may not have. As to its lack of ‘any particle or conjunction to connect it with what preceded or followed,’ how does Mr. Ling prove that it was not preceded by γιγνώσκων ὅτι, cf. Med. 560; or that the previous line did not end in γάρ, like Hec. 551, Supp. 361; or that this line is not the end of a longer sentence, like Alc.

Mr. Richards is justified in saying that is here indefensible, but he does not much mend matters by reading . Iocasta may have been a paragon of all the virtues, but what has that to do with it? No, the real correction is . ‘ To whom should I tell even greater things than this rather than to thee ?’

IX. 6. 12. (The young nobles of Capua describe the bearing of the Romans released from the Caudine Forks after having passed under the yoke.)

iacere indolem illam Romanam ablatosque cum armis animos; non reddere salutem, non salutantibus dare responsum, non hiscere quemquam prae metu potuisse.

In Part I of this article the major problems of the transmission of the Bacchae were considered, with a discussion of interpolated lines and lacunae, whether certain or merely postulated by previous editors. In the Introduction it was argued that P is a copy of a manuscript which was very like L (whether a copy or a twin hardly matters) before being supplemented with variant readings and with the whole of Tr. and Ba. 756 ff. from a lost source. The symbols λ and were used for P's exemplar and this remoter source respectively. The ancestry of in turn was traced back to Λ, the ancestor of L. This, if right, means that L and P (including the end of Ba.) both descend from a single uncial archetype, though with a fair chance that some true variants from a different tradition reached and λ. P, however, steadfastly preferred the original reading of λ (= L, in effect) whenever possible. When P differs from L, there are three possibilities: (a) that he is making a fresh error (misreading or carelessness—seldom, if ever, constructive); (b) that λ (before being supplemented) differed from L (probably only in ortkographica); (c) that λ (after contamination) included a variant which P preferred (significant variants are so rare that legibility is likely to have been P's main criterion).

Femina in line 28 has nagged me subconsciously for years. I have now belatedly realized that it sabotages the poet's prudent disclaimer: it is not women in general who are in question, but only those not ruled out of bounds by stola and uittae. The repetition of the word in the following verse, where it means, as the opposition to uiri indicates, ‘the female sex’, only serves to underline its inappropriateness here. Cristante's defence of the anaphora, that it ‘ribadisce la necessità dell'insegnamento, introducendone la giustificazione’ (Ovidio, L'arte di amare, ed. E. Pianezzola [1991], p. 352), sets up an unwanted connection: lines 25–8 are strictly parenthetic to the main argument, as indeed is signalled by the truly functional anaphora of femina in line 29, whose effect is blurred in the text as transmitted. The form of the couplet, typical of Ovid, dictates that what is wanted is a variation on nil nisi lasciui, e.g. nec or, better, non proba. The source of the intrusive femina is not far to seek, though how precisely it ousted the original reading I do not pretend to guess.

In her recent discussion of ILLRP 311 Kirsteen Moir draws attention to the discrepancy between the epitaph's apparent claim that young Publius had before him a brilliant career, had he but survived, and the description which Cicero provides of Africanus' son, Publius, who is usually identified, with varying degrees of conviction, as the subject of this inscription. As Moir points out, the son of Africanus, though remarkably erudite, was incapacitated by poor health from achieving the military and political distinction predicted by the necrology. Within the actual text of this inscription, one might add, there is another discrepancy: the Publius here commemorated was flamen Dialis, and the taboos which restricted the daily life of the priest of Jupiter effectively barred him, regardless of his powers or inclination, from fulfilling the promise voiced by his memorial. Moir proposes a solution which will solve both problems. She suggests that the gloria to which Publius could look forward was literary celebrity. The son of Africanus, after all, composed works known and read by Cicero a century later, works which documented his literary capabilities. Such attainment was well within the grasp of the flamen Dialis. And this interpretation of the inscription, if correct, would solve both discrepancies.

Most of the above text is straightforward. Horace is explaining that wrath – the reader may think at this stage either of Horace's own wrath expressed in the scurrilous iambi mentioned in 2–3 or that of the woman he addresses – resembles various other things. Thus in 5a wrath's effect is compared to that of the Magna Mater on her priests, the Galli (they were driven so far from their senses that they castrated themselves), and in 5b–6 to that of Apollo on the Pythia (the god interfered with her personality so that she could utter his prophecies). In 7a Dionysus’ effect on his maenads provides the analogy (one thinks of Agave and her sisters, who dismembered Pentheus under the delusion that he was a lion). These are good comparisons to the ruinous effects of anger.

Herakleides, fr. 3I (Muller F.H.G. ii. p. 222, with his note):

ACP et margo p; om.reliqui.

Elymnion, according to Stephanos, was The name occurs in Aristophanes {Peace, 1126) in a context which points to the neighbourhood of Oreos. There is no evidence to connect it immediately with Chalkis. Mela (II. 2. 30) mentions an Echinia near Akanthos: ' inter Strymona et Athon Turris Calarnaea et portus Capru, urbs Acanthos et Echinia.' Confusion of A and X is easy. Thus, even if the first sentence has no ol, the passage gives no safe evidence that these settlers came to Kleonai from Chalkis, or from Euboea. Such a derivation would be hard to reconcile with Thucydides' account of the towns on Akte. If oί is right, cadit quaestio.

Aristotle begins his criticism of the communism of property in Plato's Republic1 with the following (which I have divied into two sections for convenient reference):

(i) τπων μν οὖν ὂντων τν νεωπγοὑντων ἂλλς ἂν εἴη ςπóπος καì πᾀων, αὐτν δ’ αὑτοις διαπονοὑνων τ πεπì τς κτσεις πλεíονς ἃν παπχοι δνσκολíας. (ii) καì γπ ν ταις πολαεςι ν τοις ἒπγοις μἠ γινομνων ἴςων λλ’ νíσων ναγκααιον γκλματα γíνεσθαι ππòς πολαὑσντας μν ἢ λαμβνοντας πολλ, òλíγα δ πονσντας ταῖς λττω μν λαμβνσι, πλεíω δ πονοσιν.

Shortly after his accidental transformation into an ass, Lucius attempts to return to his human form by grabbing some roses decorating a statue of the patron goddess of the quadrupeds, Epona. But his servulus feels outraged at the sacrilegious act. Jumping to his feet in a temper and acting as a faithful defender of the sacred place, he addresses his former human owner as a new ‘Catiline’ (Apul. Met. 3.27):

In discussing the origin and history of Orphism, it is usual to treat it rather as a system of belief than as a ritual. The former aspect of it probably was more salient in later times, yet it is certain that the Orphic movement began rather as a ritual with strong emphasis on purification and a rule of life. Its theological and traditional aspect developed only gradually, and the greatest characteristic of this development was always its readiness to incorporate elements possibly alien to the original Dionysos mystery, till it finally takes all Greek religious tradition within its scope. It was early influenced by Eleusinian ideas, and exerted a mutual influence on the cults and myths of the Kabeiroi and those of Sabazios. Whether its own ritual was affected by these latter to the same degree as its mythology we cannot say with certainty, but it may at any rate be affirmed that Orphism was an eclectic type of religion from the beginning. This was indeed only natural to such a system which depended for its teaching on wandering priests, and may never have possessed any kind of temple. It may also be safely said that neither the rite nor the central beliefs of Orphism were nearly as much affected by these borrowings as its mythology. It took over the names and some of the legends of strange deities and grafted them on to its own system. The ritual may have remained in all essentials the same, as did the eschatology.

This article takes as its starting point the frequency with which Ovid refers to his earlier works in his Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. Alongside his treatment of the Metamorphoses in the exile poetry, it is suggested that Ovid refers, on a number of occasions, to his Fasti and the progress he is making on it. He does so by using the incipit of his calendar poem, Tempora; this term is sometimes combined with signa (‘stars’), which are also mentioned in the opening couplet of the Fasti. It is proposed that Ovid's attitude toward his Fasti changes over the course of his exile, during which time he is, at various junctures, editing his calendar, and that some of these changes are discernible in the exile poetry; they result in part from his entertaining the possibility of using his Fasti as leverage in securing a mitigation of his punishment. Poems discussed in detail are Tristia 1.1, 1.7, 2.547–52, 5.3; Epistulae ex Ponto 2.1, 4.8.

Social dialect, which can be defined negatively as dialect associated with variables other than geographic region, was hardly recognized as a linguistic category until the twentieth century. Although it has been recognized since antiquity that groups at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder speak differently from the elite, non-elite idioms did not merit serious investigation since they were regarded merely as corrupt or decadent approximations to the prestige variety. There is evidence that the Greeks also recognized gender as a variable in linguistic production. Age occasionally figures in discourse about language, but the association is vaguer since it was tangled up with the idea that earlier generations spoke a better or more authentic form of Greek.

This article argues that the word ψυχαγωγία and its cognates which are found in the writings of Philodemus retain a semantic connection to the domain of magic and are best translated in terms of ‘enchantment’ rather than the more generic sense of ‘entertainment’.

The so-called Latin Iliad, the main source for the knowledge of the Greek epic poem in the Latin West during the Middle Ages, is a hexametric poetic summary (epitome) of Homer's Iliad likely dating from the Age of Nero, which reduces the 15,693 lines of the original to a mere 1,070 lines (6.8%).

Roman elegy is well known for its reversal of traditional Roman gender roles: women are presented in positions of power, chiefly but not exclusively erotic, that bear little or no relation to women's lived experience in the first century b.c.e. Yet the way elegy presents the beloved in a position of power over her lover, as Sharon James has observed, ‘retains standard Roman social and power structures, thus suggesting an inescapable inequity even within a private love affair: rather than sharing goals and desires, lover and beloved are placed in a gendered opposition … Hence resistant reading by the domina is an anticipated and integral part of the genre’. James's remark is indeed correct for each of the instances in which the domina, or female beloved, speaks directly. When she does so, as James also shows, she speaks at cross-purposes with her lover, following a script that is designed ‘to destabilize him’ in an attempt to keep his interest. Yet what has not been noticed is that when the beloved is instead male, the situation is quite different. Tibullus' Marathus in poem 1.8, our sole example of a male elegiac beloved-turned-speaker, is the exception that proves the fundamental rule of gender inequity. Marathus, that is, when given the opportunity to speak, does in fact share the aims of a male lover, albeit in pursuit of his own puella. When the gendered opposition so integral to elegy is erased, the beloved no longer protests against the strictures of the genre; when both are male, lover and beloved alike are entitled to speak as elegiac lovers.