This is one of the identities offered by Ovid for the goddess Anna Perenna, whose festival falls on the Ides of March. Ovid's lines give us the following information about this version of Anna: she was a poor but industrious old woman living in the suburbs of Rome, her benevolent baking and distribution of cakes provided much-needed sustenance for the plebs during their secessio on the Mons Sacer, and the plebs repaid this service when peace was restored by dedicating a cult-statue to her, so founding the cult of Anna Perenna. This Anna is thus a minor character, otherwise unknown, associated with a cult of obscure origin and with a major historical event, the first secessio plebis to the Mons Sacer usually dated to 494 B.C. This alone would make it likely that Ovid is inventing her here as circumstantial detail. When we consider that wo are told that she lived at Bovillae, some twelve miles south-east of Rome (orta… Bovillis surely indicates residence as well as place of birth), and that the Mons Sacer was located three miles north-east of the city, any probability of Ovid's story being a fully historical report vanishes; Anna of Bovillae was simply in the wrong place to purvey cakes to the plebs on this occasion, unless she ran a modern-style delivery service over a thirty-mile circuit. The possibility remains that there was an otherwise unknown cult of Anna Perenna at Bovillae to which Ovid refers, since the association of Anna with Bovillae must have come from somewhere, especially as it here seems to introduce an unwanted inconsistency.

In the second century of our era the Athenian Platonist, Atticus, claimed that it was clear not only to philosophers but perhaps even to ordinary people that the heritage left by Plato was the immortality of the soul. Plato had expounded the doctrine in various and manifold ways (ποικίλως καì παντοίως) and this was about (σχεδόν) the only thing holding together the Platonic school. Atticus is but one witness to the prominence accorded the soul in discussions and debates among later Platonists. But while questions concerning the origin, constitution, and destiny of the human soul are relatively well attested for Middle Platonism, not to mention Neoplatonism, we know much less about these topics among Plato's immediate successors in the Academy, Speusippus of Athens (c. 408–339) and Xenocrates of Chalcedon (396–314). Both wrote treatises on the soul (περì ψυχ⋯ς), but these have been lost along with their other, numerous writings. Because the least that can be said is that Speusippus and Xenocrates upheld the immortality of the soul (as would be expected), any snippet of information that might tell us more deserves close consideration.

Investigations apropos of the passage in Ovid to which we shall ultimately come have revealed that one kind of Latin genitive at least is still far from satisfactorily charted by authorities more eminent even than M'Turk. This is the genitive of material. More often than not grammarians and commentators do not distinguish this usage from the genitive of definition. So for instance at Ovid, Met. 3. 315 the phrase lactis alimenta is identified by Bomer ad loc. and by H. J. Roby (A grammar of the Latin language from Plautus to Suetonius (1896), ii. § 1302) as genitive of definition. This is correct as far as it goes, in the sense that lactis defines the alimenta; but the definition is what they were made of, their material. So again at Met. I. III flumina iam lactis, iam ftumina nectaris ibant (on which Bömer does not comment) the rivers consisted of milk and nectar. This passage, however, was classified by J. N. Madvig (A Latin grammar for the use of schools, trans. R. Woods, 4th ed. (Oxford, 1859), p. 249) under expressions involving number, measure or quantity. This is not unreasonable, but Madvig's examples illustrate the need for care in drawing the line. They include, for instance, aceruus frumenti (the genitive with aceruus is of course common) and uini tres amphorae. Now a heap may be thought of as containing its constituents, but it also consists o/them, which is not true of a vessel and its contents. Thus, though there is some semantic justification for including both these expressions, as Madvig did, under the ‘measure or quantity’ rubric, they are nevertheless grammatically distinct. The fluidity (!) of the borderlines in this area is evident also in flumina lactis, an undeniable genitive of material which is, however, clearly analogous to a not uncommon class of expressions such as riuus/fons aquae, lapidum imber, uolumina fumi, campus harenae, silicum uenae, ὔδατος ῥος, κρνη ὔδατος, ργρου πηγ, etc., in which the notion of quantity as well as composition is present.

In Physics 2.8 Aristotle argues for his natural teleology by arguing for the goal-directed character of nature (or biology). The argument that he develops with the most care is directed against those natural philosophers, like Empedocles, who maintain that the results of natural processes which benefit organisms, such as teeth, come to be through chance (198b16–199a8). Aristotle counters by arguing that because the beneficial results of natural processes occur regularly, ‘always or for the most part’, they cannot be the outcome of chance, which would yield beneficial results only irregularly. Thus such results must come to be only for the sake of some end. This argument against chance has received the most attention from scholars, but Physics 2.8 contains another argument for the goal-directed character of nature, which has received relatively little attention because it does not seem to offer much argument for natural teleology. The argument depends upon an analogy between action and nature, and it simply maintains that since human action (of which art is an example) and nature are analogous, and since action is goal-directed, so too is nature. The argument is of interest, despite its neglect, because it seems to prove nothing to us and yet Aristotle puts it forward confidently as advancing his view about the goal-directed character of nature. The argument from analogy should claim our attention because it provides important evidence for the basic spring behind Aristotle's natural teleology. The fact that Aristotle takes for granted the strength of the analogy with human action in his argument for the goal-directedness of nature suggests that he holds human-like goal-directedness to be a condition of intelligibility that must be met by any intelligible process of coming to be, whether human or natural.

In this paper I will reconsider the doxographical text about Aristotle in Clement of Alexandria's Protrepticus 5.66.4:

οὐδ⋯ν δ⋯ οἶμαι χαλεπ⋯ν ⋯ντα⋯θα γεν⋯μενος κα⋯ τ⋯ν ⋯κ το⋯ Περιπ⋯του μνησθ⋯ναι· κα⋯ ⋯ γε τ⋯ς αἱρ⋯σεως πατ⋯ρ, τ⋯ν ὅλων οὐ νο⋯σας τ⋯ν πατ⋯ρα, τ⋯ν καλο⋯μενον ‘ὕπατον’ ψυχ⋯ν εἶναι το⋯ π⋯ντος οἴεται· τουτ⋯στι το⋯ κ⋯σμου τ⋯ν ψυχ⋯ν θε⋯ν ὑπολαμβ⋯νων αὐτ⋯ς αὑτῷ περιπε⋯ρεται. ⋯ γ⋯ρ τοι μ⋯χρι τ⋯ς σελ⋯νης αὐτ⋯ς διορ⋯ζων τ⋯ν πρ⋯νοιαν, ἔπειτα τ⋯ν κ⋯σμον θε⋯ν ⋯γο⋯μενος περιτρ⋯πεται, τ⋯ν ἄμοιρον θεο⋯ θε⋯ν δογματ⋯ζων.

It has recently and rightly been observed that Plutarch is exceptional as a prose author in the finesse with which he employs tragedy in his Lives. And, one might add, in the extent to which he does so. His dislike for the sensationalism of ‘tragic history’ was no obstacle to his use of ‘the sustained tragic patterning and imagery which is a perfectly respectable feature of both biography and history’. The primary purpose of the present discussion is to draw attention to the profound importance of tragedy, particularly of Euripides' Bacchae, to the Carrhae narrative in Plutarch's Crassus. It is argued that details in Crassus'; version of Carrhae recall the tragedy of Pentheus and, in so doing, substantially advance the portrayal of Crassus' character.

Gell. NA 3.10.13 citing Varro's Hebdomades uel de imaginibus, reports:

Venas etiam in hominibus, uel potius arterias, medicos musicos dicere ait numero moueri septenario, quod ipsi appellant τν δι τεσσρων συμφωναν, quae fit in collatione quaternarii 〈et ternarii〉 numeri.

He also states that doctors who make use of music theory declare that the veins, or rather arteries, in human beings move in accordance with the number seven; they call this motion ‘the consonance of the fourth’, which is produced by the proportional relation of the numbers four and three.

Writing of Terence's Andria (‘The Girl from Andros’) in 1952, Duckworth said: ‘In the Andria the second love affair is unusual; Charinus’ love for a respectable girl whose virtue is still intact has been considered an anticipation of a more modern attitude towards love and sex. More frequently in Plautus and Terence the heroine, if of respectable parentage, has been violated before the opening of the drama (Aulularia, Adelphoe), or she is a foreigner, a courtesan, or a slave girl' (Duckworth (1952), p. 158). Perhaps in 1993 it does not seem quite so ‘modern’ that Charinus is not only in love with a respectable virgin but wishes to marry her.

Callimachus' Victoria Berenices has received a good deal of scholarly attention since its first publication in 1976, both from textual critics, attempting to clarify uncertain readings, and from specialists in Latin poetry, eager to trace allusions to Callimachus in Vergil, Statius, or Ovid. While the search for Callimachean influence on the later texts has proved quite fruitful, it opens up the possibility of reading certain issues inappropriately backwards into the Hellenistic material. The discovery of (limited) parallels may lead to an assumption of complete agreement that misrepresents the earlier, more fragmentary text. I would like to consider one particular incident in the Victoria Berenices that has fallen prey to this fate, namely the reception of Heracles by the farmer Molorcus

Porphyry's Life of Plotinus is the earliest extant memoir of a philosopher by his pupil. Historians of philosophy have embraced it as a key to the intellectual development of Plotinus, while historians of the third century have found it an invaluable supplement to the fragmentary records of this era. Yet few have cared to read it as an original work of literature, or even as the mature work of a scholar and philosopher who for centuries eclipsed his master in influence, if not in reputation. In consequence, attention has not been paid to certain striking peculiarities in Porphyry's selection and arrangement of materials, which, if studied, will shed light on the form and purpose of the whole biography. This article is devoted to a strange chapter which, as in any ancient writing, we should expect to be the most instructive because it is the first.

The Kaisergeschichte (KG) was a set of short imperial biographies extending from Augustus to the death of Constantine, probably written between 337 and c. 340. It no longer exists but its existence can be deduced from other surviving works. Amongst the histories of the fourth century – Aurelius Victor, Eutropius, Festus, Jerome's Chronici canones, the Historia Augusta, the Epitome de Caesaribus, and, in places, even Ammianus Marcellinus and perhaps the Origo Constantini imperatoris (Anonymi Valesiani pars prior) – there is a common selection of facts and errors, and common wording and phrasing in their narratives between Augustus and the death of Constantine, especially in their accounts of the third century. A natural assumption is that later historians copied earlier ones, yet later historians include information not contained in earlier ones, and historians who could not have known each other's work share similarities. For example, it looks as though Aurelius Victor was copying Eutropius, yet Victor wrote before Eutropius, and Eutropius contains information not in Victor and does not reproduce Victor's peculiar style or personal biases, things which he could hardly have avoided. Therefore Eutropius cannot be copying Victor. Since neither could have copied the other, there must therefore have been a common source. In his Chronici canones Jerome appears at first to be simply copying Eutropius. Yet when he deviates from Eutropius, his deviations usually mirror other histories, such as Suetonius, Victor, Festus, even the Epitome and the Historia Augusta, two works that had not even been written when Jerome compiled his chronicle and that did not use, and would never have used, the Christian chronicle as a source. Jerome was hurriedly dictating to his secretary, he had no time to peruse four or five works at a time for his brief notices. There must have been a single source that contained both the Eutropian material and the deviations common to Jerome and the other works. That source was the KG. It is the purpose of this paper to add to the above list of authors who relied upon the KG two other writers whose work can be shown to have derived, either at first hand or later, from the KG: Polemius Silvius and Ausonius.

By the time his Teubner De Officiis had reached its fourth edition, C. Atzert was running out of hope. So great was the number of the still-accumulating manuscripts ‘ut paene desperaverim in seligendis et ordinandis eis’. In fact, there were hundreds more of which he knew nothing. My own list approaches seven hundred in all, and there will be others lurking still. The present paper aims to impose some order on this vast army.2 It sketches in new detail the interrelationships of the old witnesses to the ξ tradition, and the transition to a twelfth-century Vulgate (Ψ); it throws light on the early story of the ξ family; and it makes a start on the task of showing how the f stream, from the twelfth century onwards, fitfully mingled with the Vulgate (for the stemma, see Fig. 1). It could never have been written without the help of Marina Luttrell and of countless friends and colleagues who provided information about manuscripts I could not see for myself

Near the end of the fifth book of Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle has a brief discussion (1138a6–14) of suicide, to illustrate the question of whether one can wrong one's self. Suicide, he declares, is not enjoined by law, and what law does not enjoin, it forbids. Thus the suicide does do wrong – but to whom or what? Surely the polis, not himself (for his suffering is voluntary, and no one wrongs himself voluntarily). δι κα πλις ζημιοῖ, κα ις τιμα πρσεστι τῷ αυτν διαφθεραντι ὡς π πλιν δικοντι.

The paragraph in the first book of the Georgics, running from lines 118 to 159, which describes the loss of the golden age and man's subsequent history, has been very diversely interpreted. But one sentence, at 145f., has been especially controversial:

labor omnia vicit

improbus et duns urgens in rebus egestas.

The scribes of the Latin poets were not, as a rule, in the habit of interpolating exclamatory particles; on the contrary, their tendency was to trivialise. The particle io has MSS authority in two passages in Ovid where distinguished critics reject it.

Kenney in the Oxford Text of Ars Amatoria 3.742 prints.

labor, io: cara lumina conde manu.

This note brings to light some instances of Vergilian borrowings from Lucretius and Catullus in the composition of the Dido episode. The way in which Vergil adapts these sources and combines them in the depiction of tormented love is discussed and it is suggested that a consequence of this is to invest the image of love eating Dido internally with a significance beyond that of an erotic topos.

Early in Aeneid 3 Aeneas visits Delos and approaches the temple of Apollo with a request for advice on the destination for which the refugees should head. There is an immediate response to his questions (Verg. Aen. 3.90–2):

uix ea fatus eram: tremere omnia uisa repente,

liminaque laurusque dei, totusque moueri

mons circum et mugire adytis cortina reclusis.

In C.Q. 42 (1992) 551–2 E. J. Kenney impugned the appropriateness of femina in 28 on the grounds that it sabotages the poet's disclaimer to be treating not of women generally, but only of women not ruled out of bounds by the stola and uittae. Hesitantly he proposed to read in its place non or nee proba. It should be borne in mind that when a word has intruded itself from a nearby line and expelled the authentic reading, the ductus litterarum is no guide to emendation. The door stands open to bold measures. I propose to read Thais. The name of the famous courtesan well serves as the type with which Ovid proposes to deal. But what advantage has she over, say, Lais or even Phryne, whose names would fit here as well as hers? The answer comes from Remedia Amoris 385–6 Thais in arte mea est: lasciuia libera nostra est; nil mihi cum uitta; Thais in arte mea est.

So far as I can tell from the editions of Friedländer, Gilbert, Izaac, and Shackleton Bailey, no one has questioned or defended the pointless repetition of cenam in 15. It is, however, to the credit of the Loeb translator, Walter C. A. Ker, that he could not bring himself to render the word twice and in 15 he translates with ‘table’. Mensam would in fact not be a bad conjecture, especially since it has a number of letters in common with the jarring cenam, and might in fairness be attributed to Ker. Nevertheless, I propose lectum instead. It seems to me superior in that the table might have had up to seven more guests around it. But if the pest pursues Martial to the same couch and reclines beside him, there is truly no relief except escape (whether Martial describes himself as edentem or sedentem makes no difference). At any rate, editors who print cenam a second time ought to say how it pulls its weight.

Acontius argues that there was nothing wrong with the trick he played on Cydippe – the end justifies the means.

Heinsius and Dilthey doubted the authenticity of this couplet, whilst Bornecque bracketed line 26 alone. Line 25, however, contains a familiar elegiac theme, and line 26, with one small emendation, is rhetorically sharp.

All the MSS have uni in line 25, but many editors have found this unsatisfactory, preferring to read unum and punctuating the line in various ways: Burman prints ‘iungerer? unum’, Showerman, Goold and Palmer ‘iungerer, unum?’ Of these, the latter is the more attractive (Acontius wants one thing and one thing only – union with Cydippe; he is not interested in trying to cheat her financially, which is what fraus would most immediately suggest), ‘iungerer uni’, however, is perfectly good, and should be retained: uni means not ‘you alone (as opposed to several girls)’, but ‘you alone (as opposed to any other girl)’, cf. OLD s.v. unus 8 ‘one in particular, one above all others’. Acontius is paying Cydippe a compliment – she is the only girl for him, and nobody else will do. This is a common theme in Latin love elegy, cf. Prop. 2.7.19, [Tib.] 3.19.3–6, Ovid, Ars Am. 1.42: ‘elige cui dicas “tu mihi sola places”’.