All wars have causes; some have pretexts. When Polybios (6. 6. 1–7. 3) distinguishes between the cause, the pretext, and the beginning of war, his language sounds curiously modern. When he summarizes the causes of the Second Punic War the modern reader is not so satisfied. The war was due, in his opinion, to the indignation of Hamilcar Barca, who had to accept peace when he could have continued fighting in Sicily; to the anger of the Carthaginians, when they were forced to surrender Sardinia; and to the good fortune which attended their armies in Spain. A more recent account differs from Polybios not only on matters of detail. ‘It is true that it was Hannibal's attack on Saguntum, undertaken in full knowledge of the almost inevitable consequences, that precipitated the war, but the historian must decide that, so far as attack and defence have a meaning in the clash between states, the balance of aggression must incline against Rome.’

1. IN the C.Q.xxxiv (1940), pp. 118 ff., I wrote on ‘Some Uses of the Imperfect in Greek’ (hereafter quoted as ‘Uses’). It occurred tome to check the suggestions there made by examining all the instances in one author. I had no hesitation in choosing Herodotus, who of all authors, except perhaps Homer, presents the most baffling diversity of types (I quote by chapter and the lines of Stein's annotated edition). For purposes of comparison I also read Thucydides and Xenophon's Anabasis 1–4. It would appear that Thucydides retains something of Herodotus' freedom, Xenophon comparatively little.

Jebb renders the last clause as follows: ‘The warrior of the white shield, who came from Argos in his panoply, hath been stirred by thee to headlong flight, in swifter career.’ ‘In swifter career’ is a discreet rendering of ., Jebb says, ‘does not mean (1) “in flight swifter than their former approach“ nor (2) “the reins are shaken ever faster on the horses' necks”.’ ‘The Argives’, he writes, ‘began their retreat in the darkness (cf. 16): when the sun rises, the flashing steel of their bridles shows them in headlong flight’. Cf. P. Mazon, R.E.G. xxv (1951), 13. This view is shared by all modern scholars, except that Dain and Mazon put commas after and translate accordingly; which I do not think is an improvement.

ALL Roman historical writers use a naval terminology based on military parlance. Ships on the move in line ahead (or astern) are an agmen navium, positions in the line are ordines (like ranks in a marching column), ships in a single file are said to move tenui agmine—in two columns are said to be birds in ordine navibus. In one passage the three posts in the column are described as prima navis, media classis, extremum agmen. To bring up the rear is agmen cogere.

‘VERANIUS’ is an uncommon gentilicium, with brief and transient notice in Loman annals. The earliest Veranius on record is the friend of Catullus. iccording to Catullus (28; 47), he was abroad on the staff of a governor while, or just after, the poet was with Memmius (pr. 58) in Bithynia. The governor was Piso, clearly L. Piso (cos. 58), proconsul of Macedonia till the summer of 55. Veranius, it emerges elsewhere (9. 5 ff.; 12. 14 ff.), had also been in Hispania Citerior, accompanied here too by his inseparable Fabullus. Veranius may, or ray not, have been an author, identical with the Veranius who wrote on religious antiquities—who again might be the Veranius Flaccus whom Caesar Augusstus derided for his affected and archaic style.

A Principle of fundamental importance, if it is valid, for the interpretation of the Pentekontaetia is laid down by the authors of A. T.L. iii in its most rigorous terms: it is that Thucydides has set events ‘in proper order … without any deviation whatever’. The conclusion appears to the present writer to be founded ultimately on a false assumption about Thucydides' purpose in these chapters (89-118. 2), namely that he set out to write an outline history of the period of fifty years to which he refers in 118.2 and, in effect, in 97. An examination of these passages reveals that it is not the outline of a period as a period that is offered, but rather the account of a particular theme or process falling within the period: his purpose in presenting the theme there defined is to be seen from the setting of the excursus as a unit in Bk. I rather than from the statement in 97.2: the due significance of this last, and of the demarcation of a period in 118. 2, is to be seen only in this wider context.

It has long been known that two medieval scholiasts, one of them called John of Sicily, the other anonymous, commenting on a passage of Hermogenes' , ascribe what looks like a passage of the de Sublimitate to ‘Longinus’. On the assumption, however, that the ‘Longinus’ referred to must be Cassius Longinus, the third-century rhetorician, scholars have tended to minimize the vweight of the evidence and attempted to explain it away. For it is now established that the de Sublimitate must date from the first century A.D. Yet, apart from the identity of ‘Longinus’, the evidence of the scholiasts looks clear and specific.

hoc est, Capitolium’. This sentence comes in a passage based on a portion of the Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth (3. 10 ad init.), but is not itself to be found in Geoffrey. Since Luard was unable to find the words attributed to him ‘in Lucan’, he concluded that the chronicler who was responsible for their inclusion (he calls him the ‘compiler’) had made a mistake. He offers no suggestions about the origins of the quotation. In a posthumous work of G. Gundermann's edited by G. Goetz, Trogtis und Gellius bei Radulfus de Diceto, we find the quotation described as ‘einen angeblichen Lucanvers'. W. Morel learned of its existence from this reference and printed it as fr. 12 of Lucan:

This passage seems to have escaped identification so far. This is somewhat surprising, since it clearly refers to an incident at the sack of Maiozamalcha during Julian's Persian campaign which has been much discussed by editors ind critics of Ammianus and Zosimus. The reason may well be that in some ilder editions of Suidas (e.g. Küster) the name appears as.

The article of Dr. Wasserstein, ‘The Manuscript-tradition of Statius'; Siluae’, C.Q. N.s. iii (1953), 69–78, causes me to revert once again to the question I treated twice in Philologus Ixvi (1907), 85–134; lxxxii (1927), 167–180. In the first place I must refer to a frequent slip of the pen which occurs, for example, in the 414 verses of the Culex thrice, viz.:

The text of lines 39–40 is open to three main objections: stimulantem pectu Achilli cannot be construed in its context; to refer tuas to Persen would involvi difficult, though not unexampled, change of person; and thirdly, and most serious, it is scarcely possible to believe that Cornelia could appeal to a king of Macedon to testify to the soundness of her morals.

MR. MARTIN seems to have misread my table. He professes to summarize its last two rows, but he has got the last but one all wrong, and the last he omits altogether. My last row but one signifies: In the matter of a following disyllabic thesis Phaedria, Pamphilĕ, and Parmenō behave exactly alike: no argument here either for or against Phaedriā. The last row speaks plainly: If Phaedria were a cretic, we should expect to find it used as a cretic at least six times. Mr. Martin had found it so used once, and I noted that this one example was in fact an ablative–a strange coincidence. But this was not, as Mr. Martin says, the only ‘error’ of which I ‘convicted’ him. I also, and primarily, pointed out that what he called ‘the significant thing’, viz. that the scansion Phaedriâ was never inevitable, held no significance whatever, since all dactylic words were in the same case.

The use of with the future indicative (and the corresponding participle and infinitive) is admittedly rare in post-Homeric Greek. In the passages concerned many deny the usage completely and either omit the particle or resort to emendation, or dismiss the construction as a mere ana-colouthon. In an instructive article in the Classical Quarterly, xl (1946), Moorhouse argues in favour of retaining many of the readings, and it is only his interpretation that is in question here. His main thesis is that in Homeric Greek, where the usage is common enough, κ∈ or with the future means either ‘in that case’ (where a condition is stated or implied) or ‘probably’ (where there is no such condition). The latter usage, however, he regards as sometimes assuming a tone of dogmatic certainty (‘ironical meiosis’), and this ‘emphatic future’ came to be the regular and literal meaning of the later idiom, without any irony being involved.

The complete, or almost complete, absence from the Theaetetus of any unequivocal reference to Platonic Forms is a problem, the solution of which appeared to many scholars to have been found and convincingly presented in the late Professor Gornford's book Plato's Theory of Knowledge, published in 1935. Put briefly, his contention was that the main purpose of the dialogue is to show that no acceptable definition of knowledge can be reached if the Forms are left out of account, that there are a number of passages in which any reader of the middle dialogues would see that they were deliberately being left out of account, and one or two, namely in the famous digression on the philosophic life, and in the discussion of ‘common terms’ , where they are actually brought in, though not indeed under the name of

All past interpretations of this passage involve an obscure train of thought. There appear to be two ideas running right through; light-twilight-night, and quick-slow-(never?). But how are we to combine these ideas so as to make sense of them ?

Most, if not all, past commentators have agreed in taking to mean ‘punishes’’ and most interpretations conform to one or other of the following patterns:

The purpose of this article is to set down the results of a careful examination of certain readings contained in Books 21–25 of the Codex Agennensis of Livy (Mus. Brit. Harl. 2493), to consider the significance of these readings in the textual tradition of Livy 21–25, and to discuss briefly a point raised by Professor G. Billanovich in his recent article on the Agennensis.

Little progress has been made in classifying the manuscript tradition of Livy's First Decade since Frigell published his Livianorum Librorum Primae Decadis Emendandae Ratio (1875). This laid the foundations of a serious analysis of the manuscripts, but was hampered by the fact that full evidence was not available at that date. The deficiency was made good by the Oxford editors, who, however, failed to make use of their evidence to explore in detail the inter relation of the manuscripts. Walters indeed disclaims its importance (C.Q. ii [1908], p. 213): ‘Further in stemmata-making I decline to go, for “stemmata quid faciunt?” except much stereotyped mischief.’

The Lex Plotia Agraria is known to us only by name through a single reference in one of Cicero's letters, from which we can extract nothing more than a terminus ante quern and a very general notion of its probable scope. Gabba in a short article, after reviewing the different hypotheses about this law, decided in favour of a suggestion put forward originally by Zumpt, that it belongs probably to the year 70/69 B.C.; and identifying it with a law referred to in a passage of Dio, he argued that the law was passed on behalf of Pompey's and Metellus Pius' veterans of the Spanish war. Following a suggestion of Niccolini he identified Plotius with the Plotius, tribune 70/69 B.C., who was responsible for the Lex Plotia de reditu Lepidanorum, and the date of his tribunate he put in 70 B.C. With Gabba's reasoning and general conclusions the present writer is in agreement, namely, that the law belongs to 70/69 B.C., and aimed at providing land for the veterans of Pompey and Metellus; the object of this note is to draw attention to a piece of evidence which has hitherto been strangely neglected, and to draw some possible inferences about the scope and fate of the law.

‘Prince, lovelier than the flashing star’, says the Poet Laureate to his Emperor; ‘Leda would rather have produced thee than Castor, Thetis than Achilles; Delos prefers thee to Apollo, Lydia to Bacchus.’ Then follows a passage describing the effect on nature of the Emperor's going out to hunt: ‘the beasts will gladly fall to your spear, the lion will be proud to die at your sacred hand. Venus scorns Adonis returned to life, Diana Hippolytus’.