Modern research has done much to elucidate the question what the reforms of Kleisthenes in fact achieved, and the work continues, but that does not settle the question what he was trying to achieve. Herodotos gives him a political motive in outline, that he brought the people over to his side because he had been defeated in a struggle for power against Isagoras (5.66.2); and in resuming this proposition after a digression he describes the Athenian people as (5.69.2). But he gives us no clear insight into the nature or mechanism of the struggle with Isagoras, and in particular he does not say that the latter's election to the archonship in 508 constituted his victory, though the dating of the reform to the archonship of Isagoras ('A.21.1) makes that highly probable; nor does he explain in what sense or by whom the Athenian people had been ‘previously excluded’.

The old Analytical view that the union between the Journey of Telemachus and the rest of the Odyssey is post-Homeric, superficial, and incompetently effected is nowadays widely rejected, and rightly so. However, although many defences cumulatively, I believe, successful–of the content of the second divine assembly have been put forward in recent years, no adequate answer has yet been given to the objections raised against the allegedly anomalous language of Athene's speech of 5.7–20:

Anyone who seeks to add to the already vast pile of literature dealing with the I.A. must needs feel apologetic, especially if he is conscious that little of what he will say is new. Nevertheless this seems to be one of those occasions when it is necessary to restate old arguments. Recent contributors to the debate about the problems of the opening of the play either fail to realize what the problems are or else attempt to explain away valid criticisms of the text with arguments that are methodologically suspect and parallels which will not hold water.

In the Snell-Maehler edition of Bacchylides there is a very comprehensive bibliography, listing almost 300 items concerned with Bacchylides poems. It is significant that 80 per cent of these were written in the first twenty years following Kenyon's publication of the Bacchylides papyri in 1897. Of the articles which have appeared since the First World War, many are concerned with more recent papyrus discoveries and a few are stylistic discussions. For most of the poems dealt with in the pioneering days of Bacchylidean scholarship certain readings of the text and interpretations of it have become canonical. This article aims to show in just one poem, XVII, a few instances in which the accepted interpretations should be re-examined. In some cases new interpretations are offered, but in others older views have been resurrected and bolstered by further argument.

descent represents a progression in this relationship whereby the Chorus, in finally abandoning their chariot and agreeing to approach Prometheus and listen to him, jeopardize their detachment from him and his fate, offer tentative support, and give him scope to develop his storytelling abilities and apply his persuasive powers. Although this progression does not represent an unequivocal commitment to Prometheus–for the Chorus fluctuate throughout the play between sympathy and reproach for him–it is none the less a crucial step as signalled by the intensity of Prometheus' insistence that they descend and hear his story through to the end.

It has long been accepted as a principle by editors and writers on Greek metre that brevis in longo and hiatus in tragic lyrics often coincide with some kind of sense-pause. The object of this inquiry is (i) to determine the incidence of pause in such places, and show that it is significantly high; (ii) to show that there is a comparable incidence in the corresponding places in strophic systems; (iii) to show that period-ends determined by criteria other than brevis and hiatus are attended by similar conditions. It might seem that if all this were true it would have been recognized long ago, particularly as the connection between sense and metrical structure, and symmetry of sense in strophe and antistrophe, has often been pointed out.

In CQ 55 (1941), 22–5, E. Harrison noticed that hiatus between verses in the trimeters of dialogue was much less frequent in tragedy when the sense ran on from one verse to the next, than when there was a pause in sense at verse-end. He observed (i) that Aeschylus' Prometheus differed from the other plays of Aeschylus in this respect, the proportion of run-over hiatus to end-stopped hiatus being much higher, and more like that of comedy; (ii) that Sophocles had remarkably few verses with run-over hiatus in the Trachiniae (8) and Antigone (12), much less than Aeschylus in proportion to the number of non-stop trimeters in the play, though Oedipus Tyrannus had much the largest number in Sophocles (48), and no continuous chronological development was discernible; (iii) that in Euripides there was a general progression from relative strictness to relative freedom in the run-over hiatus allowed, though individual plays did not conform closely to this pattern; (iv) that in general comedy was freer than tragedy.

An ambiguity in this passage apperas to have gone unnoticed. The ambiguity in line 27 ( ═ ‘arms’ or ‘genitals’) is well known; and when Xanthias at once continues ‘But you tell me about yours’, many a listener might well not immediately realize that the noun to be supplied was from 25 rather than from 27, and might therefore momentarily suppose that Xanthias was saying ‘Tell me about your penis’; a supposition that would be temporarily confirmed when Sosias replied ‘It's a big one’. The reaction of such a listener would be the same as that of Kalonike at Lys. 23. She has been told (14) that the women have been summoned to deliberate . Now she asks and on receiving the answer at once jumps to the conclusion that Lysistrata is using in its phallic sense and asks .

The Birds of Aristophanes is unique among his extant plays in that it employs a chorus in which each member has an individual identity, that is, in which each chorus-member represents a different kind of bird. The consequent variety of costume must have been a great visual embellishment to the play, and one is led to wonder how commonly the device employed in Birds featured in Old Comedy in general. Two parallels are frequently cited in the choruses of Eupolis' and Ameipsias' , both of which will be considered below, but, although those plays do indeed provide our best evidence outside Birds, I wish to argue here that we may reasonably suspect that some other old comedies known to us had choruses of the type in question, which I designate ‘individualized’ or ‘multiform’ choruses.

The last line should, I believe, be printed as a question. Strepsides is seated on the sacred and a wreath is put on his head, which makes him feel like a sacrificial victim. In 261 he is told to hold still, and we gather from that at this point he is being sprinkled with some dry substance. If we put the full stop at the end, he is saying, ‘I can see you won't disappoint me: being sprinkled like this will make me into flour all right’. If we make it a question, it is ‘No fear, you won't trick me: you mean being sprinkled is the way to turn into flour?’ This seems more in keeping with his apprehension in 257, and it allows what is perhaps a more natural sense to

It is characteristic of Aristophanes that, in the fifth-century debate on the conflicting moral claims of and he tended to adopt a conservative stance, and in general to support the claims of Most of his plots concern an imbalance.in cosmic order (usually at first perceptible to the hero alone), and the hero's (Ach. 128) which is undertaken to correct it. Often the cosmic imbalance is caused by the pre-eminence of those who place their own above (whether they are generals, politicians, sophists, or tragedians), and the hero's self-imposed task is to reverse this state of affairs.

The action of Euripides' Ion takes place in front of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. The chorus, maidservants of Kreusa who have come with her from Athens, enters at 184, admiring the temple and commenting on a series of mythological scenes which they see represented before them: (i) Herakles slaying the Hydra with the help of Iolaos (190–9); (ii) Bellerophon mounted on Pegasos slaying Chimaira (200–4); (iii) a Gigantomachial (205–18) which includes the figures of Athena brandishing her Gorgon shield against Enkelados (209–11), Zeus laying Mimas low with a thunderbolt (212–15), and Bakchos slaying another Giant with his thyrsos (216–18). The chorus's description recalls the temple of Apollo which stood in Delphi in Euripides' day.

The Messenger is relating how Menelaus and Helen escape from Egypt in a royal Egyptian ship, under pretext that they are going to carry out a ritual ‘sea burial’ of the supposedly drowned Menelaus. Helen's husband, whose identity was as yet unknown to the Egyptian crew, induced them to let his own shipwrecked crew (as though Greek strangers wishing to participate in honour to the deceased) come on board, and as the bull intended for sacrifice resisted being embarked he here cries to his men to manhandle it—in fact to carry it—on board.

In the early years of the fifth century, the Greek cities of Asia Minor attempted to free themselves from Persian rule. Our primary evidence for the unsuccessful ‘Ionian Revolt’ is literary, a patchwork from the narrative of Herodotus iv–vi.

The main events of the Revolt need not be doubted: the Ionian cities were ruled by Greek puppet tyrants until the outbreak of the rebellion (Hdt. 4.136–7); Aristagoras was the early leader of the movement which began after the failure of the Persian-Milesian expedition against Naxos (5.30–5); Athens, petitioned by Aristagoras, and Eretria supplied limited support for-the Revolt (5.38; 55; 65; 97; 99);

In an earlier article I sought to analyse the metaphor of withdrawal in the last argument of Plato's Phaedo for the immortality of the soul.1 The key to the metaphor lies, I believe, in recognizing the paradox that in terms of Plato's metaphor something stays as it is, for example continues to be fire and to be hot, or to be cold and to be snow, by running away. Plato's argument is that fire will either ‘run away’, i.e. it will escape the onslaught of cold, and so continue to be fire, or else it will perish. For in terms of Plato's metaphor if something which is characterized essentially by one of a pair of opposites, in the way that soul is, were to ‘stay behind’ then it would have to ‘accept’ the opposite of the form by which it is characterized, and that it cannot do. Fire cannot be cold. Snow cannot be hot. The soul cannot be dead.

Of the ten ships of the barbarians three the reef that is between Sciathus and Magnesia and is called the Ant. When the barbarians had brought to the reef and set up there a pillar of stone, they themselves set out from Therma, as the way ahead had now been made clear for them, and sailed on with all their ships, having let eleven days pass since the king's departure from Therma. The reef, which was right in their course, had been pointed out to them by Pammon, a Scyrian.

None or at most one of the emendations here proposed has any philosophical significance. They are niggling corrections that spring merely froman impertinent curiosity about what Plato actually wrote.

The excursus of Thucydides on the last years of Pausanias and Themistocles (1.128–38) is remarkable for its simple, rapid-flowing style, its storytelling tone, its wealth of personal ancedote, its marked deviation from his normally strict criteria of relevance. These characteristics, which give the excursus a Herodotean flavour, have often been noted by modern scholars, but until recently acceptance of its general credibility has been widespread, and indeed, with one important exception, which seems to have created very little impression almost unchallenged.

In Cornford's opinion, the theory of Forms as put forward in theParmenides is identical with the theory as stated in the Pbaedo—both of them expressing thethat concrete things are the bearers, simultaneously, of contrary characters. Christopher Kirwan has recently denied this identity, in a paper which, if hisis accepted, will upset many traditions and greatly alter our understandingLthe middle dialogues.

Excavations at Sparta early in this century seemed at the time to have provided a fairly clear-cut and decisive answer to questions about the character of Spartan life in the archaic and classical periods. In the seventh century B.C. and the beginning of the sixth century, it was thought, life was comfortable and even luxurious but thereafter comforts and luxuries disappeared from among the offerings at the temple of Artemis Orthia and so, it was held, from Spartan life.