The verb βυσσο-δομεύω (Sc. 30 = Hes. Frg. 195.37 M.–W.), separated by Glenn Most in his translation as ‘planning in the depth’, appears to be composed of a noun βυσσός (‘depth’) and a verbal root *δέμ- (‘[to] construct’), thus literally meaning ‘(to) build in the deep’. There is no instance in our extant texts where this compound verb is employed literally in reference to an act of construction, and to the best of our knowledge it is exclusively used metaphorically in early epic diction to describe a mental process (see also Hom. Od. 4.676; 8.273; 9.316; 17.66, 465, 491; 20.184).

In the early fourth century bc, a slave of possibly Phoenician origin, called Pasion, was owned by the Athenian bankers Antisthenes and Archestratos (Dem. 36.43). During the course of his slavery, Pasion quickly rose to become the trusted manager of his owners' money-changing and banking firm in Piraeus. After having been manumitted (Dem. 36.48), he took over the running of this bank (Isocr. 17, passim), became a very successful banker, and established a shield factory. His businesses prospered to the extent that by the time of his death in 370/369 he had assembled a fortune estimated at around 70 talents. With this money, Pasion made a number of generous benefactions to the Athenians, as a reward for which the Athenians passed a decree in his favour granting him a gold crown and the right of citizenship to him and his descendants ([Dem.] 59.2). As soon as he received his grant of citizenship, Pasion started to make use of his citizen rights and invested in real property. Although he was probably never actively involved in politics, he is known to have been a close friend of several members of the political elite, such as Agyrrhius of Collyte (Isocr. 17.31) and Callistratus of Aphnida (Dem. 49.47). Moreover, he had dealings with important public figures, such as Timotheus, son of Conon (Dem. 49, passim).

The Μελιταῖον κυνίδιον, as the very word κυνίδιον or its Latin equivalent, catulus, suggests, was a little lap-dog. It was so small that Aristotle compares it with an ἴκτις or marten and Aelian with the Indian Phattage. People commonly called it νανούδιον—a little dwarf. It was a well-proportioned, flat, long-haired dog with a bushy tail and a sharp nose of the type of the Spitz or Pomerian. We are also informed that it barked in a squeaky voice.

In the eighth and ninth books of the Republic Plato describes the four inferior or corrupt types of government – timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny – and the four related types of human personality – the timocratic, oligarchic, democratic, and tyrannical man (544dff.). Closest to the ideal, and first therefore in sequence of decline, is the timocratic state, the term timocracy being employed not in the Aristotelian sense of a polity demanding a property qualification of its ruling class but with ‘the peculiar meaning of government by the principle of honour (τιμ). The timocratic state, it is claimed (545cff.), develops when its members no longer live in harmony but come into conflict as the guardians join brides and bridegrooms ‘inopportunely’ (παρ καιρν, 546d), so that their offspring are neither well-born nor blessed by fortune. The result is a form of government which retains some of the features of its good predecessor, anticipates some of the features of its worse successor, and also boasts some features unique to itself, such as a preference for the ‘spirited’, men better suited for war than for peace. Above all else such a state will be distinguished by a cultivation of competition and a passion for honour: διαϕανστατον δ’ ναὐστν τι μνον… ϕιλονκαι κα ϕιλοτμαι (548c).

In the Agricola … Tacitus amalgamates biography and historical monograph. But the success of the combination is questionable. He gives roughly two thirds of the work to Agricola's governorship of Britain, and treats the climax of Agricola's campaigns at length, providing direct speeches for the two leaders, almost as if he were experimenting with full-scale history. Such extensive development of a part, albeit an important part, unbalances the whole. Again, most of what he tells us about Agricola's personality is conventional and unrevealing.… Some contend that Tacitus exaggerated Agricola's achievements and wilfully misconstrued his relations with Domitian. We cannot be sure, but certainly many matters in the Agricola are unclear or, like the insinuation of poisoning against Domitian, ill substantiated. There is, however, a case for the defence. Tacitus probably found little else worth relating about Agricola except the governorship, and hence made the most of it. In thus concentrating on military and administrative achievements, he followed a hallowed Republican tradition.… A Roman aristocrat should possess and display virtus, above all in warfare: to this pattern Agricola conformed. Thus one old-fashioned attitude underlies a work somewhat novel in conception.

Cadiz's main claim to fame in antiquity was its situation at thes end of the known world and its temple to Hercules which was visited by many famous personalities of antiquity; however, perhaps surprisingly, given Seneca and Pliny's insistence on the sobriety of the Spanish character, Cadiz had another well known attraction, its dancing girls, leading to Martial dubbing the town ‘Laughing Cadiz’, ‘Iocosae Gades’.

The Roman empress Eusebia, wife of the Christian emperor Constantius II (A.D. 337–361), owes what fame she enjoys amongst historians to her role in the life of Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor (361–363); in the years 354–355 the empress emerged as the saviour and advocate of her (still in the closet) pagan in-law. However in this article I wish to focus exclusively on the treatment of the empress Eusebia in the history of Ammianus Marcellinus, the great historian of Late Antiquity and himself a devotee of Julian. This treatment merits attention not just for the undoubtedly interesting fact that Eusebia is one of the few female characters to surface in the history, but also because in the history the empress is cast in seemingly different personae. She is the kind and beautiful empress, akin to the image Julian himself created of her in his Speech of Thanks to Eusebia, written in commemoration of his salvation at her hands; but she is also a devious player, as we find too in Zosimus' treatment of the empress, though in Ammianus her deviousness is malevolent. It is this contradictory characterization aspect of the treatment that I wish to explore here. For whilst general attempts have been made to reconcile these images in the context of political history, the repercussions for our understanding of Ammianus have been little explored. How can the historian let these contrasting images co-exist? Has he merely assembled his history clumsily, or is there a more rewarding explanation for the impression of the empress's split personality?

The trial (undoubtedly for maiestas) of Marcus Primus, former proconsul of Macedonia, is described only by Cassius Dio—and his account is unsatisfactory in more than one respect. According to Dio, Primus was accused of making war upon the Odrysae, a friendly Thracian tribe, during his governorship. His defence was that he had acted at the behest of Augustus, though sometimes he named Marcellus. When Augustus of his own accord came into court and, asked by the presiding praetor whether he had given the order, denied it, Primus' advocate Licinius Murena demanded what he was doing there and asked who had summoned him. Augustus' brief reply—‘the interest of the state’—won him the approval of people of good sense; but a considerable number of jurymen voted for Primus' acquittal all the same, and the trial was followed by the conspiracy of Fannius Caepio, in which Murena was alleged to be implicated.

Looking back, as we do, from the films and television of the twentieth century, we are inclined to think of Greek theatregoers as very serious-minded people, who suffered hard stone seats for days on end to watch a succession of tragedies, each with a solid intellectual content, performed against an austere stage setting by actors who could achieve only a distant approach to realism. We are constantly reminded of the very severe treatment meted out to Euripides for his experimental innovations. He tried out the use of blasphemous expressions—the equivalent, in his dramatic setting, of the four-letter words in modern ‘realistic’ drama: but Hippolytus' cry, ⋯ γλ⋯σσ' ⋯μώμοχ', ⋯ δ⋯ φρ⋯ν ⋯νώμοτος, was parodied mercilessly by the comic poets for years afterwards. Another of his ‘gimmicks’ was the tragic hero in rags, a device which anticipates in some respects the recent trend of ‘kitchensink drama’.

The death of T. S. Eliot removed from the world of English letters a staunch and resolute advocate of the Greek tradition in our modern literature. The precise interaction between this tradition in which the poet believed so firmly and his own five verse dramas therefore deserves some consideration.

It was not until the time of Aristotle and his pupil Theophrastus that the Greeks took the initiative in studying botany from a scientific point of view, but naturally earlier Greek writers were interested in varying degrees and for various reasons in the plants which they saw around them, and therefore mention them in their works.

The present is the third of a series of articles, the first two of which have appeared in the Classical Review, ‘Trees and Plants in Homer’ (C.R., vol. 1, July 1936, pp. 97 ff.) and ‘Trees and Plants in Herodotus’ (ib., vol. lvi, July 1942, pp. 57 ff.). The present article deals with the references to trees and plants in the thirty-five extant plays and fragments of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. It is proposed first to tabulate the references to trees, shrubs, and plants in these authors and indicate the contexts in which they occur, and then to try to draw some conclusions as to the interest which these writers display in plant life and the attitude which they adopt towards it. Forty-three botanical names occur in the plays of the three dramatists, whereas in Homer there are fifty and in Herodotus fifty-seven. It will be clear, I think, that the dramatists took much less interest in plant-life than either Homer or Herodotus.

To take trees and shrubs first, the oak, ρῠς (Quercus robor)—a word which, like the Sanskrit root dru, was originally a general term for ‘tree’ or ‘wood’, and hence is used for the ‘king of trees’—occurs frequently in the Greek tragedians, especially in Euripides.

The sixth book is the focal point of the Aeneid; it completes and concludes what has gone before, and it provides a new impetus for the second half of the poem. It is not an isolated piece of theology; it has its work to do within the design of the poem. It is of vital importance in the development of the main themes of the Aeneid, and it is on three of these that I want to concentrate as we accompany Aeneas on his journey from the cave at Avernus to the Gates of Ivory. We shall be concerned firstly with how a memorable picture—or perhaps two memorable pictures—of the world after death is built up from the rich and tangled heritage of poetry, folk-lore, philosophy, and religion. In the words of T. R. Glover—to whose warm and sensitive appreciation of the poet Virgilian studies are deeply indebted—‘we find here as elsewhere that Virgil tries to sum up all that is of value in the traditions, the philosophies, and the fancies of the past’. It is in the later part of Book vi that Virgil comes nearest to a solution of the problem of human suffering with which the whole poem is so preoccupied, as he gropes towards a conception of the life after death in which sin is purified away and virtue rewarded. Secondly, the golden hopes for the future of Rome and the Roman world are in this book expressed with a patriotic pride more complete than anywhere else; the vision of the temporal destiny of the world follows upon the vision of the spiritual after-life. Thirdly, and this is the aspect which I shall stress most because it is not generally stressed enough, this book (like the rest of the Aeneid) is above all about Aeneas himself, his character and resolution, his experiences, past, present, and future. We must always remember that the aim of the book is not primarily philosophical or theological—and in this it differs from the myths of Plato to which it owes so much; the aim is to present a poetic vision which has special reference to Aeneas and Rome within the design and framework of the total epic poem.

Boni and improbi are political words. Political words change their meanings—as we all very well know today—but they also have histories, which suggest basic, fundamental value-judgements, and whose use reveals as much about the user as about the object to which he refers.

We come now to the signs of fair weather; and the first five lines are important:

nec minus ex imbri soles et aperta serena prospicere et certis poteris cognoscere signis. nam neque tum stellis acies obtunsa videtur, nec fratris radiis obnoxia surgere luna, tenuia nec lanae per caelum vellera ferri.

By definite signs no less will you be able To forecast sunny, clear, and rainless days After the rain, or know it has set fair. Then seen, the stars' keen brilliance is not dulled; Rises no sunlit moon; no woolly cloudlets Flock over heav'n.

Characters, though not under that title, began like many other things with Homer. A δειλός is typified in Iliad xiii and the Catalogue of Ships has brief descriptions of the leaders of the various contingents. Ajax the Lesser, for example, ὀλίγος μὲν ἔην, λινοθώρηξ,/ ἐγχείῃ δ' ἐκέκαστο Пανέλληναςκαὶ'Αχαιούς. Or Nireus, ‘the best-looking man that went to Troy, excepting the blameless Achilles’: ἀλλ' ἀλαпαδνὸς ἔην, пαῦρος δέ οἱ εἳпετο λαός. Best known, and in contrast to Nireus the handsome, is Homer's portrayal of Thersites (αἴσχιστος δὲ ἀνὴρ ὑпό λιον ἦλθε) with full supporting details of his figure. The physical oddities of Pittakos the sage were emphasized in verses by Alkaios: Herodotos, through Otanes the Persian in Book iii, depicted the nature of a tyrant. This recalls ὁ τυραννικός of Plato Republic iv. 573 c as well as his political descriptions of men and constitutions in Book viii.7 Aristotle also pictured tyrants (Politics 1313b): as well as (for ethics) a χαῦνος, (for rhetoric) a young man and an old, and the germ of the later portrait Character is seen in Thucydides already (Themistocles, i. 138. 3). But the truest pre-Theophrastan Character is that of Philokleon in the Wasps—the lover of the courts, φιληλιαστής.

The true site of the oracle of Dodona was discovered only in comparatively recent years. Christopher Wordsworth was the first to identify it, and the Greek archaeologist Carapanos the first to explore it. It lies to the south-west of Ioannina, at a spot most easily accessible from the coast of Thesprotiaby way of the valley of the Thyamis (Fig. 1). It is reached today by a branch road some ten miles to the south of loannina. The long, narrow valley in which it stands is completely dominated on its western side, and for much of the day overshadowed, by the almost precipitous mountain Tomaros (Olitzika), which rises to a height of 6,500 feet. This mountain bears a chain of craggy peaks, and its flank is scarred with gorges and torrents, fed by the snow which lasts some four months of the year on the upper slopes. The climate of the district is severe and well substantiates Homer's description of Δωδώνη δυσχωί-μερος. The valley is remarkable for its violent thunderstorms, which bring torrential rain to fill the mountain cataracts in the summer, and its soil is thus unusually swampy. The foothills of Tomaros are covered with pine trees, while in the plain below a few rather ragged oaks are still to be seen. The rivers of the district are the Acheron and the Kokytos, both associated with the underworld; and not far away is the Acheloos which makes its way down into Akarnania. (See Pl. VI.)

One of the less expected treatises included in Plutarch's Moralia consists of the nine books of ‘Table-talk’ or topics suitable for discussion by the participants at the strictly male and private drinking party or symposium (612Cff.) But even when the association of symposium and the erotic is acknowledged or we note the interest of ancient philosophers in the general area of eugenics (e.g., Arist. Pol. 1334b29 ff. and Plutarch on the Spartan marriage, Lye. 15.3–9) or we identify the type of prejudice which later led Christians to believe that a child conceived on a Sunday will be a leper or epileptic, the sixth question analysed in Book 3, ‘the right time to make love’ (653Bff), is perhaps considerably more surprising. The conclusion eventually reached, however, will occasion no alarm: the right time for men and women to sleep together would appear to be at night when it is dark (cf. 654D–E) – after all, we are busy and preoccupied throughout the day and are not animals like the cock eager for sex first thing in the morning. But in the evening we are relaxed and at our ease, and so the time is right provided, of course, we have neither eaten nor drunk to excess. This is hardly a conclusion, however, to be warmly welcomed by the sexually liberated for whom intercourse is there to be enjoyed wherever, and at whatever time of night or day, excitement mounts. But when it comes to sex, Plutarch is no revolutionary keen to experiment.

There is some ancient evidence, and much more modern conjecture, about the existence of Medizers in Athens during the period 508–480 B.c. The present article attempts to take further the clarification of the term Medism which was begun by A. W. Gomme, and to suggest that there has been too uncritical an acceptance of the label in many, if not most, of the cases to which it has been applied.

People wonder at this stone [the magnet]. Indeed it often makes a chain of rings hanging from itself. For you can sometimes see five or more rings hanging down one after another swaying in light breezes, when each hangs down from another, clinging underneath it, and each feels from the other the force and attraction of the stone; so much does its force penetrate and have its effect. … It also happens sometimes that the nature of iron withdraws from this stone, and will flee it and follow it in turn. I have even seen iron rings leap up, and at the same time iron filings seethe in bronze bowls when a magnet has been put underneath, so eager to escape the stone is iron seen to be.