Oinoanda's chief claim to fame in Classical studies is philosophical, rather than architectural; it is the home of that Diogenes who had the name of a Cynic but Epicurean convictions, which he inscribed, ironically enough, on the walls of a stoa. In fact it was the repeated visits of M. F. Smith in connection with this great philosphical inscription that led to the British Institute of Ankara's survey project at Oinoanda under the direction of A. S. Hall. I am most grateful to Mr Hall for inviting me to participate in the survey and study of some of the city's buildings in 1975, 1977 and 1981, and for his support of my work on the site. We are all indebted to the Directorate of Antiquities at Ankara for permission to work at Oinoanda, and to a succession of most helpful simply representatives for their co-operation.

Most of the city's buildings have simply collapsed where they stood and been left undisturbed since the city's a bandonment, so that it is possible to study their fallen upper parts in some detail; but is should be remembered that the terms of our survey permit do not allow any excavation, and since the lowest part of almost all remain hidden, many question of plan and date remain invitably unanswered.

Perhaps no other poem of the Amores so consciously bears the marks of literary indebtedness as does Amores 2.11. The poem is modelled on Propertius 1.8. The opening echoes the opening of Catullus 64 and of Euripides' Medea (and Ennius' translation) and possibly the Argonautica of Varro of Atax. The ending echoes the ending of Tibullus 1.3. The essential facts may be found in the commentaries of P. Brandt (1911), F. Munari(ed. 5, 1970), and F. Bertini (1983). For recent discussion of the poem see L. P. Wilkinson, Ovid recalled (1955) 21–3, K. Quinn, Latin explorations (1963) 266–73, W. Görler, Hermes 93 (1965) 338–47, W. Kühn in Forschungen zur römischen Literatur (Festschrift Karl Büchner, ed. W. Wimmel, 1970) 151–7, B. E. Stirrup, Eranos 74 (1976) 32–52, M. Labate, SCO 27 (1977) 327–33, K. Morgan, Ovid's art of imitation: Propertius in the Amores (1977) 75–7.

Plato and Aristotle give different answers to the question ‘What are the substances (ousiai)?’. One way Aristotle defends his answer is by arguing that his candidate substances – particulars such as Socrates or Callias – better satisfy the criteria for substance than do Plato's candidates – eternal, unchanging, nonsensible universals called ‘Forms’. This defense goes along with another. For Aristotle disagrees with Plato, not only about the candidates, but also about the criteria, for substance: one reason Plato fastens on to the wrong candidates is that he focuses on some of the wrong criteria.

Aristotle mounts his defense in different ways in the Categories and Metaphysics. In both works he defends the priority of particulars. In the Cat., however, their nature is left unanalysed; and their priority is defended largely by appeal to unPlatonic criteria. In the Met., by contrast, Aristotle analyzes particulars into compound, form, and matter. Socrates, for example, may be viewed as a compound of his form (his soul) and his matter (his body); or he may be viewed as his form or soul. Further, Aristotle now invokes additional, Platonic criteria for substance; and this leads him to argue that it is Socrates as form that counts as primary substance; the primary substances are individual forms.

The narrative of the Culex has scarcely begun, with a herdsman leading his goats out to pasture (42–57), when it is interrupted by a lengthy formal digression in praise of the blessings of a herdsman's life (58–97). An initial exclamation at the herdsman's felicity is followed by a complex negative enumeration of the appurtenances of wealth which are no part of his simple rural life (58ff.):

o bona pastoris (si quis non pauperis usum
mente prius docta fastidiat et probet illis
somnia luxuriae spretis) incognita curis 60
quae lacerant avidas inimico pectore mentes.
si non Assyrio fuerint bis lota colore
Attalicis opibus data vellera, si nitor auri
sub laqueare domus animum non angit avarum
picturaeque decus, lapidum nee fulgor in ulla 65
cognitus utilitate manet, hec pocula gratum
Alconis referent Boethique toreuma, nee Indi
conchea baca maris pretio est, at pectore puro
saepe super tenero prosternit gramine corpus…

The following observations are offered on some of the passages dealt with by Professor Shackleton Bailey in PCPS 28 (1982) 90–100.

When Alexander was civilising Asia, Homer was commonly read, and the children of the Persians, of the Susianians and of the Gedrosians learned to chant the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides. And although Socrates, when tried on a charge of introducing foreign deities, lost his cause to the informers who infested Athens, yet through Alexander Bactria and the Caucasus learned to revere the gods of the Greeks. Plato wrote a work on the one ideal constitution, but because of its forbidding character he could not persuade anyone to adopt it; but Alexander established more than seventy cities among savage tribes and sowed all Asia with Grecian magistracies, and thus overcame its uncivilised and brutish manner of living.

These familiar words of Plutarch (Mor. 328 D-E, Loeb) begin to seem not quite as foolish as they did, in the light of modern discoveries in Ai Khanum and Kandahar. They may thus serve to raise some larger questions. Firstly, it is curious how Plutarch concentrates on remote central Asian areas which were no longer Hellenised in any obvious sense in his own day. Secondly he emphasises, as we would expect, the creation of new cities with Greek constitutions. Here we might well turn to a neglected passage of his older contemporary, Josephus, concluding his account of the tower of Babel (Ant. 1. 121).

At the end of Juvenal's Ninth Satire the pathetic debased Naevolus describes what he hopes for in order to live as a ‘pauper’ (147).

viginti milia faenus
pignoribus positis, argenti vascula puri,
sed quae Fabricius censor notet, et duo fortes
de grege Moesorum, qui me cervice locata
securum iubeant clamoso insistere circo;
sit mihi praeterea curvus caelator, et alter
qui multas facies pingit cito. (140–46)

The first item on the list, viginti milia faenus pignoribus positis, has been understood by commentators to mean 20,000 sesterces in annual interest and has been connected with Martial, Epigram 3.10 in discussions of the significance of the capital sum implied. I wish to argue that there is no warrant for understanding faenus as annual interest and to suggest on various grounds that in this context it is more likely to mean capital out in interest-bearing loans.

The following editions are referred to: Freinsheim (1639); C. T. Zumpt (1849); Hedicke (1867, 1908); Stangl (1902); Menge-Fried (1911); Rolfe (Loeb edition, 1946); Bardon(Budé edition, 1947-48); K. Müller(text) and H. Schönfeld (German translation) (1954).

Caedicus Alcathoum obtruncat, Sacrator Hydaspen (Aen. 10.747)

A fine line, with resonant names! It occurs at the beginning of a general list of killings, what in Homeric studies is called an androktasia, one of the few such found in the Aeneid. Perhaps the resonance of the names suggests to us that these are real people; but who are they? The answer is that we have not the faintest idea. Indeed, we are probably uncertain which side each of them is on, Trojan or Latin.

Virgilian battle scenes may properly be compared with those of Homer. In the Iliad, the descriptions are extraordinarily precise; and it is wholly possible, if one is interested, to understand exactly what is being described by the poet. There are certain conventions, which were without doubt fully understood by Homer's audience. Any lack of understanding on our part is not Homer's fault. The conventions, and implications of what happens in the battle scenes, are most clearly set out in the work of Dr Franz Albracht, Kampf und Kampfschilderung bei Homer (1886 and 1895). It is abundantly clear that Virgil not only knew Homer from beginning to end, and used his own personal technique of ‘creative imitation’ in putting together the Aeneid with one eye on Homer, both in the large scale and in detail, but that he also knew the Alexandrian commentaries on Homer. The former of these facts has recently been demonstrated at great length, but still not exhaustively, by G. N. Knauer in Die Aeneis und Homer (1964); the latter in a more selective way by R. R. Schlunk in The Homeric Scholia and the Aeneid (1974). There can thus be little doubt that in deciding how to present the fighting scenes in the ‘Iliadic Aeneid’, as Brooks Otis calls it – the necessary second half of the epic, which engages in the maius opus of establishing Aeneas and his people in Italy – Virgil would pay very close attention to the action of the Iliad.

This poem is Catullus' reply to a letter from a friend called (probably) Manlius and it consists of three separate paragraphs: introduction (1–14), response (15–36), conclusion (37–40).

This first paragraph itself consists of two parts: Catullus' recapitulation of the points made in Manlius' original letter (1–10), and an indication of what his response to that letter will be (11–14). From 1–2 it emerges that Manlius has experienced a crisis, and from 3–4 that he described himself in metaphorical terms as a shipwrecked person needing to be rescued by Catullus. From 5–8 we learn what Manlius' crisis was: he has lost his girlfriend and cannot sleep (5–6), and he derives no pleasure from the poetry of old writers (7–8). From line 10 we discover that Manlius has asked Catullus for munera et Musarum … et Veneris. What are these gifts? Some scholars have assumed that line 10 is an example of hendiadys and that only one gift has been requested, viz. erotic poetry; but it is clear from the word utriusque in 39 that two separate items have been requested, in which case the munera Musarum and munera Veneris must be two separate things. This is, after all, exactly what we should expect in the light of 5–8, where Manlius is represented as having made two separate complaints (neque … Venus … nec … Musae – 10 et Musarum … et Veneris).

This study has a limited aim. It is to expand as fully as possible one aspect of Eclogue 1. The aspect concerned covers Virgil's description of the nature of his pastoral poetry, its inspiration both by poetic predecessors and a living dedicatee, and the claims which he makes implicitly for his own poetic achievement in the volume to which this poem serves as introduction. Some of the points which I make have been picked up by others, but not, in my opinion, welded into a coherent reading of this entire aspect of the poem. I shall attempt to show that we have here a carefully composed preface to the book of Eclogues; that it establishes a programme of specifically Roman pastoral, derived from Theocritus, but with important critical allegiance to Callimachus; that this is achieved by placing at the centre of the poem a symbolic encounter of the poet with his ‘divine’ source of inspiration firmly in the tradition of Hesiod, Callimachus and many other poets (and prophets); that such a reading of the poem begets new and alternative interpretations of individual passages which help to confirm its validity; and that it is further confirmed by subsequent passages in Virgil himself and in other writers. In so doing I shall touch hardly or not at all upon the historical, political, social and legal questions which the poem raises and which have always been in the forefront of discussion of it. This is not because I consider them irrelevant to the overall interpretation of the poem. They are, in fact, crucial. I have, however, little that is new to say on these matters and to have pursued them would have deflected me from my task of trying to set the work firmly within its literary tradition and to expound its central literary content.