In the Iliad the Achaean ships play a prominent role in the narrative; they are foregrounded as Achilles sits by his vessels in anger and threatens to sail home; as the Trojans come close to burning them; and as Hector's body lies by Achilles’ ships until ransomed. Where not in the foreground, the ships remain a consistent background; without them the Achaeans would not have reached Troy; they are an essential component of the Greek encampment; and are the unrealized potential vehicle of the Achaean homecoming.

Ecclesiazusae, the first surviving work of Aristophanes from the fourth century b.c.e., has often been dismissed as an example of Aristophanes’ declining powers and categorized as being less directly rooted in politics than its fifth-century predecessors owing to the after-effects of Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian War. Arguing against this perception, which was largely based on the absence of ad hominem attacks characterizing Aristophanes’ earlier works, this paper explores how Ecclesiazusae engages with contemporary post-war Athenian politics in a manner which, while different to his earlier comedies, remained closely rooted in the political and cultural concerns of the 390s. By examining the figure of Praxagora, I will first consider recent suggestions that Ecclesiazusae hints at the possibility of an anti-democratic coup. I will then examine how contemporary discussions of constitutional and legal reforms (including the invocation of ‘founding fathers’ such as Solon and Lycurgus) are incorporated into both Praxagora's language and the scenes featuring the Selfish Man and Hags that follow the establishment of Praxagora's regime. Examining these final scenes, I conclude that Ecclesiasuzae does not suggest that the idea of democratic equality itself is fundamentally flawed, but instead argues that Athens needs a suitable leader, well suited to the rough and tumble of assembly rhetoric, in order to successfully function. In the world of Ecclesiazusae, the men of Athens have failed too often to inspire any hope, putting their own interest above the state, and the new leader must be someone different. Thus Aristophanes sets up Praxagora as a female Solon to remake the state and lead the democracy. The second half of the play demonstrates this need for a strong leader, as problems arise both from the quarter of critical bystanders (the Selfish Man and Epigenes, the Young Man in the ‘hag scene’) and from over-zealous enforcers (the Old Women).

There is a certain conventional interpretation of Aristotle's argument, in Metaphysics Λ.7, for the identification of the first unmoved mover as God, according to which that argument has the following outline

Without doubt, veni vidi vici is one of the most famous quotations from Antiquity. It is well known that it was Julius Caesar who coined the renowned expression. Less frequently discussed is the fact that ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’ was announced as written text. According to Suetonius, Caesar paraded a placard displaying the words veni vidi vici in his triumph held over Pontus in 46 b.c. (Suet. Iul. 37.2):

Among the accusations Procopius brings against Justinian in the Secret History is the following:

The matter of the kataskopoi is as follows. From ancient times many men were maintained at public expense. They would enter enemy territory and gain access to the palace of the Persians, either under the guise of trading or by some other ploy. After investigating everything thoroughly, they would return to Roman territory and be able to report all the secrets of the enemy to the government officials. Forewarned, they were on their guard and nothing unforeseen would take them by surprise.

Most of the traditions about Stesichorus place him in Italy and Sicily. He was said to have been born at Mataurus and to have lived and died at Himera. Only two small and disputed pieces of evidence connect him with the Peloponnese. Suidas s.v. Στη⋯χορος says that he went to Catana when banished from Pallantium in Arcadia, and the Marmor Parium records that in the archonship of Philocrates (485 B.C.) the poet Stesichorus came to Greece. Both testimonies are embarrassing and both have been subjected to sceptical criticism. Stesichorus' connection with Pallantium has been reduced to a misunderstanding of his mention of it in his Γηρυον⋯σ (Paus. VIII 3, 2), and the entry in the Marmor Parium is so flatly in contradiction of the other evidence for his date that it has with some justice been regarded as a mere blunder. And yet it is possible that behind these two disputed testimonies there lies a genuine tradition based on the actual sojourn of Stesichorus in the Peloponnese. Some evidence for this may be found in what we know of his Ἑλ⋯νη and Ὀρεστεἰα.

Both patently incorrect readings and long-established emendations have a habit of retaining their places in texts of ancient authors with few or no questions asked. This paper considers two examples of this phenomenon (one of each type) in Book 15 of Diodorus' Bibliotheke.

The vast majority of the extant mss of Euripides consists of ‘Byzantine’ mss of the ‘school triad’, Hec, Or., Phoen. The value of this mass of material for textual criticism is problematical: it has been declared to be nil by numerous modern scholars, and this is no doubt a natural reaction against the excessive importance attached to certain of the ‘Byzantine’ mss by the scholars of the earlier part of last century, men like Porson and Dindorf, who, however, did not collate their mss with a view to such things as Leitfekler. In fact, until our knowledge of this class of mss is far more thorough than it is at present, it would be premature to pass judgement on it as a whole.

Since the poem of Sappho, which was first published as No. 7 of the Oxyrhynchus series, has been the object of a good deal of attention and ingenuity (some of it frivolous), it is perhaps not too early to publish a number of new readings, the result of repeated examinations of the papyrus (now P. 739 in the British Museum), that may provide a surer foundation for future attempts at reconstruction. I have submitted my suggestions to Professor Hunt, who does not reject them (though in fairness it must be added that he has not re-examined the original), and I have to thank him and Mr. H. I. Bell, of the Department of MSS., for the readiness of their help whenever and under whatever form I made appeal to it. But, of course, neither of them is in any way committed to any of my readings or deductions.

As Fragment 46 of the first book of Sallust's Histories Maurenbrecher prints: Magnis operibus perfectis obsidium cepit per L. Catilinam legatum. This he takes in effect to mean that Lucretius Ofella after the completion of great siege works received reinforcements brought by L. Catiline legate of Sulla. The interpretation depends largely upon his contention that the phrase obsidium cepit is to be taken as equivalent to subsidium cepit, for which he claims the authority, ultimately, of Verrius Flaccus as represented by Festus p. 193M s.v. obsidium. Though opinions may occasionally have differed as to the precise event documented by the fragment, this central assumption seems to have gone unchallenged by historians. Yet it rests upon remarkably insecure foundations. The reading cepit has scant authority and the interpretation of obsidium as subsidium (= auxilium) none at all. It is in fact the result of misunderstanding the passage of Festus in which the text is embedded.

In Lindsay's edition (p. 210) the Festus entry which is here quoted in full runs as follows:

Obsidium tamquam praesidium, subsidium recte dicitur, cuius etiam auctor C. Laelius pro se apud populum (i.e. Orat. 9): ‘Ut in nobis terra marique simul obsidium facerent.’ Et Sallustius historiarum I (46): ‘Magnis operibus perfectis obsidium coepit per L. Catilinam legatum.’

Coepit is the reading of the manuscript F, which has been generally accepted, while cepit appears only in the Aldine edition where it may well be an emendation or even an error, there being no obvious independent source which might have provided it. For Maurenbrecher it was merely the ‘correction’ of Corte (1724) who produced the earliest roughly chronological arrangement of the fragments of Sallust's Histories.