The Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius deals with a band of heroes one generation before the great warriors at Troy, and the narrative does not really concern itself directly with the later generation. Some of the familiar heroes of Homer may never seem very far from Apollonius' narrative, but they tend not to appear in the poem themselves. One who does is Achilles, twice in fact: once in the first book and once in the last. Both of these passages deal with his early life: the first when he is in the care of Chiron and his wife (1.553ff.), the second when he is in the family home with Peleus and Thetis (4.869ff). In the former the gods of heaven and nymphs of Pelion are described as watching the departure of the Argo from Thessaly bound for Colchis. Chiron then comes down from Pelion and waves the heroes goodbye. His wife meanwhile holds Achilles on her arm and shows the child to his father Peleus as he departs with the Argonauts. The later passage describes the failed attempt of Thetis to make her son immortal. In this account Thetis addresses Peleus for the first time since their separation (4.856ff.), and then vanishes into the depths of ocean. Their separation occurred some time earlier when she disappeared in anger after her failure to make the young Achilles immortal. She tried to do this by placing him in the fire during the night, and anointing him with ambrosia during the day (4.869–72):

The attempt fails when Peleus happens to see his son's immersion in the flames, and gives out a terrible cry, whereupon Thetis throws the boy down, goes away herself, and does not return (873ff.).

On the subject of the Branchidae there are a few facts and some outstanding questions. The facts may be stated first. They are provided by literary evidence and one piece of archaeological evidence, which are generally accepted.

The aims and performance of Xerxes' fleet in the period before Thermopylai are mostly taken by students of the invasion as they are set out in Herodotus. A closer look reveals much of interest, as well as some puzzles. In this paper I address in particular the curious mooring which the fleet adopted at the end of its first day's voyage from Therma: πρ⋯κροσσαι ὅρμεον τ⋯ ⋯ς π⋯ντον ⋯π⋯ ⋯κτὼ ν⋯ας (‘they came to anchor, facing the sea, eight ships deep prokrossai’: 7.188.1), their next intended port of call, and the attempt to circumnavigate Euboia. In offering an explanation of what was happening and why, I am conscious of the sobering advice given for such investigations by Whatley, that ancient campaigns cannot necessarily be reconstructed as if those in charge saw what was best to do and got it done. That advice is now reinforced by Lazenby. Both of them seem to me, however, to underrate the logistical competence of Xerxes' naval high command. Without good logistics no campaign with triremes was even possible.

In adapting the story of the Great War to the taste of his own age Ephoros, himself a pupil of Isokrates and a professional historian, was led astray by the combined influences of rhetoric and rationalism; as neither the rationalism nor the rhetoric was of the best quality, the intrusion of both at this stage could have inflicted irreparable damage on the tradition of the war if the text of Herodotus had not survived to refute the inventions grafted on the authentic record by Ephoros.

‘Flute’, as Jenny Strauss Clay notes, is a mistranslation of αὐλ⋯ς since the ancient Greek aulos consisted of ‘two reed mouthpieces and two pipes, sometimes of different lengths, played simultaneously. Its dual structure permitted antiphonal execution; one pipe could produce the melody, the other, some sort of accompaniment or perhaps a drone.’ She believes (perhaps correctly) that the dual structure and dual sound of the aulos are implicit in the following passage in which Pindar describes Athena‘s invention of the art of playing this instrument (P. 12.6–17).

The issue of the recognition scene in Euripides' Electra, if not as ‘eternal’ as the controversy over the relative dating of the Sophoclean and Euripidean plays of that name, is certainly recurrent. After Eduard Fraenkel's resurrection of the problem at the end of his great commentary on Aeschylus' Agamemnon, the contributions of Hugh Lloyd-Jones and the late Godfrey Bond seemed to have settled the case in favour of authenticity. But soon after, David Bain and then M. L. West, G. Basta Donzelli and finally David Kovacs, all writing in the same journal, raised some new and awkward questions, which, at the very least, require more in the way of answers than they have yet received. The last word, as the saying goes, has not yet been spoken. In this article I try to provide the last word—no, that would be too much to expect, but further reflections on the issue—yes. In particular, I try to set the matter in a wider context, seeking analogies (both dramatic and extra-dramatic) for what, if w. 518–44 are Euripidean, the playwright may have been aiming at in this particular scene. Such analogies should be important, for scholars have generally by contrast stressed the uniqueness of the recognition scene: ‘in the extant remains of Greek tragedy we have indeed nothing’, says Bond, ‘comparable to the Electra parody’.

Near the climax of the ascent passage of the Symposium, Plato describes how the lover turns to gaze at the great sea of the beautiful and . While the phrase has been variously interpreted by commentators and translators, none has regarded it as particularly significant. In what follows we examine the contribution that the immediate context makes to the meaning of the phrase and take note of the link between the adjective ἄφθονος and two subsequent uses of φθον⋯ω, both with reference to Alcibiades. We conclude that in the two final scenes of the dialogue the repetition of ἄφθονος and φθον⋯ω has the same effect as the repetition of the well-studied adverb ⋯ξα⋯φνης. By virtue of these contextual associations, we suggest, the prepositional phrase acquires a new significance. Furthermore, on the interpretation developed here the dialogue's two final scenes encapsulate the view of the incompatibility of jealousy and philosophy that Plato sets forth more explicitly and at greater length in the Phaedrus and Republic.

There are various features of the language and exposition of the Eudemian Ethics (EE) that allow us to impute what might be called an ‘egalitarian’ outlook to its author. Each of these features, on its own, might be dismissed as of little significance, or as significant yet anomalous; but taken together, they constitute a body of evidence that cannot easily be put aside. The term ‘egalitarianism’ is of course imprecise, yet it serves its function well enough. I shall take it to signify a certain cast of mind which consists of at least the following cluster of dispositions: (i) being unwilling to view society as divided into ranks or classes (e.g. ‘the good’ vs. ‘the bad’; ‘the better sort of people’ vs. ‘the rabble’) or even to use language suggestive of such a division; but rather (ii) having a tendency to see the similarity of everyone with everyone else, by finding some good even among those reputed to be bad, and some bad among those reputed good; furthermore (iii) wishing to identify with the general run of humanity, or at least not being averse to doing so; and (iv) insisting on the fundamental equality and likeness of human beings, so that their inequalities and differences are regarded as secondary.

In chapter 7 of the third book of De anima Aristotle is concerned with the activity of the intellect (nous), which, here as elsewhere in the work, he explores by developing parallels with his account of sense-perception. In this chapter his principal interest appears to be the notion of judgement, and in particular intellectual judgements about the value of some item on a scale of good and bad. In this paper I shall argue, firstly that there is in fact a coherent structure and focus to this chapter, which has therefore unjustly been criticized as disorganized or corrupt; and secondly that, in the light of such a coherent understanding of the chapter as a whole, we can resolve the difficulties in interpreting the central passage concerned with cross-modal perceptual judgements, and thereby also throw some further light on the related passages in the second chapter of De anima 3, which had been directly concerned with that topic.

In Poetics chapter 9, Aristotle claims that the poet's function differs from the historian's. The historian should describe what has happened, but the poet should say ‘what sorts of thing might happen, that is, the things possible according to likelihood or necessity’ (1451a36–8). The difference is not between fiction and non-fiction. Some past events happened according to likelihood and are thereby candidates for poetic representation (1451b29–32). Rather, the poet differs from the historian with respect to the level of abstraction at which he considers the actions and experiences of agents. The historian should engage in accurate and thorough ἱστορ⋯α—‘research’ or ‘fact-gathering’—by carefully recording his or others' observations of particular events. The poet, on the other hand, looks for causal relations among fictional or non-fictional events, for he cares whether his composition has a plot with events that happen because of other events and not merely after them (cf. 1452a20–l). The poet may discern in the historian's materials some causally related events fit for dramatic or epic representation, but that is not the historian's concern. As Aristotle says in chapter 23, the historian should report ‘whatever befell one or more people during a particular period of time, each of the events relating to the others by chance’ (1459a23–4). The last clause is an overstatement; we have just noticed Aristotle's admission that some past events were likely to happen. Also, he elsewhere says that ‘future events will for the most part be like past events’, presumably because they share a similar causal structure (Rh. 1394a8). The remark's point is clear enough, though: the historian should report what happened whether or not the events exhibit explanatory coherence.

When the Argonauts reach the island of Lemnos, Apollonius of Rhodes tells us, they send their herald Aethalides to the ruler of the island. Such a means of establishing contact and requesting safe passage was the norm in the Homeric world; there heralds acted as intermediaries between commanders and subordinates or between groups of people. In preliterate societies, heralds facilitated communication: messages were transmitted through memorization and repetition rather than by means of writing. While verbatim repetition was no doubt a necessary feature of this form of communication, its wholesale transference into Homeric poetry was not necessarily the logical corollary. Nonetheless, we know of such repetitions precisely because of their appearance in the Homeric poems. It is now widely accepted that such passages are a result of the oral style of composition in which the oral poet repeats passages just as he uses shorter formulaic phrases. The debate embedded in the A-scholia of the Iliad suggests that repeated passages were a source of contention already in antiquity. While it is more common to see the scholiasts trying to decide which passage is ‘correct’ and which should be athetized, this provides evidence that athetization was not a unanimous impulse. The scholiast defends 2.60–71, part of which (65–9) is repeated for the third time, against Zenodotus:

His defence is based on context: it is necessary for the passage to be repeated for the sake of internal coherence. Clearly not all scholars believed all repetitions to be spurious padding.

So far as we can judge from his one completely preserved play and extensive fragments of others, Menander carefully worked out the movements of his characters on and off stage, so as to give an appearance of realism, within certain conventions, and avoid inconsistencies that might distract the audience. Menander's observed practice confirms the famous anecdote, according to which he regarded the construction of a plot as of primary importance, adding the lines as secondary. Thus a character who returns to the stage after an earlier exit always re-enters through the same stage door or wing by which he made his exit; if, for example, he makes his exit in the direction of the market-place, he will be seen by the audience to return from there. Although the ancient evidence is confused, it seems clear, at least, that convention allowed the Athenian audience to regard one wing as leading to the market-place, the other to the country. Similarly, dramatic time is carefully articulated by means of the conventional choral interludes which divide a play into five acts. Some acceleration of dramatic time is possible within an act, but major lapses of dramatic time take place between acts; if a character makes an off-stage trip of some length, for example to the market-place, his exit and re-entry are separated by a choral interlude. Within the act a strict unity of time is maintained and dramatic time (gespielte Zeii) does not greatly exceed performance time (Spielzeii).

Near the beginning of In Toga Candida, Cicero informed his audience of a private meeting between his two most serious competitors for the consulate and the managers of their campaigning funds. This meeting took place at the house of a nobleman whom Cicero did not name but to whom he attributed a signal notoriety in the practice of electoral corruption. Asconius offers a solution without hesitation: it was at the house of either Caesar or Crassus. He explains his choice: these two men were Cicero's most committed and influential opponents in his campaign for the consulate, and he has excellent evidence for their opposition: Cicero's own Expositio consiliorum suorum, no longer extant. The credibility or otherwise of this controversial work must be dismissed from any enquiry into the identity of the mysterious figure, however. Asconius, in naming the two alternative possibilities, discloses himself to be without authoritative evidence on the point. Nothing can have been said in De consiliis suis to identify the house, the meeting, or the notorious nobleman. Asconius' words reveal that his attempt at an identification is based on Cicero's assertion therein of an overt hostility to him on the part of both Crassus and Caesar during the campaign. His attribution of a covert ‘dirty tricks’ operation to one of them is no more than speculation.

The study of the circulation of literary texts in ancient Rome has taken on new significance lately. Recent work on Roman books and their readers has emphasized the difference between the dissemination of texts in the ancient world and publication as we moderns know it, and we have come to see that our understanding of Roman culture and their politics can benefit from a closer examination of how the Romans composed, recited, and released their books. Take, for example, Cicero and the readers of his philosophical works. In the Tusculans, the Academica, De Officiis, De Divinatione, and De Finibns Cicero promoted Latin, in terms very like those of modern linguistic nationalism, as a medium for intellectual discourse at the expense of Greek, and exhorted his readers to follow him in transferring philosophy from Greece to Rome. To choose to write philosophy at this time in Latin instead of Greek was, as Cicero put it, a practical means of increasing Rome's intellectual prestige, a campaign in which he invited his readers to enlist. But to whom was this appeal directed? Who, to Cicero's mind at least, would have been useful in achieving this political goal? From evidence in Cicero's letters to Atticus, we can largely retrace how he disseminated these philosophical books, reconstruct to some degree their original readers, and, most importantly, deduce the grounds on which Cicero selected them. Cicero's choice of audience, and the manner in which he assembled it, throws an interesting light both on his agenda in promoting Latin as a philosophical language as well as on the Roman culture of publication.

I begin by listing those manuscripts older than 1100 that have hitherto been known to editors.

This paper sets out in section I the most useful evidence we possess for the dating of Propertius Book 1, Tibullus Book 1, and Propertius Books 2a and 2b.2 The evidence squares with a sequence of publication: Prop. 1, Tibull. 1, Prop. 2a, Prop. 2b, which is what, in my view, literary considerations suggest. The most important, or at least most interesting, of these considerations are the signs of response and counterresponse between the two poets. I detect spirited ripostes by the poets, one to the other. Section II examines some Tibullan responses to Propertius Book 1, and section III some Propertian responses, in ‘Book 2’, to Tibullus Book 1.

Descende caelo, Horace's ode 3.4, challenges the reader with an elaborate Pindaric architecture embracing seemingly disparate elements. After an opening invocation (1–8), the poet discourses at length on how the Muses protect him (9–36), then abruptly notes that those goddesses also nourished Octavian after his recent military campaign (37–42). This breaks off into a composite Titanomachy/Gigantomachy (42–64), followed by a set of maxims (65–8) which the poet further illustrates with other mythical exempla (69–80). This paper contends that the relationship among these various parts comes into clearest focus in the five-line description of the god Apollo that closes the Gigantomachy (60–4). This passage lies at the heart of the entire poem's major interpretive issuespoetics, panegyric, allusion, and structure but its pivotal role in the ode deserves fuller acknowledgement.

Menelaus' question in 1050 has puzzled interpreters. Why would Euripides put a joke at the end of this scene? It is true that of all the scenes in this play, the Helen scene is the only one that could admit a joke without terrible discomfort. And there is already humour in it. Hecuba employs scornful laughter (983) and an amusing reductio ad absurdum (976–81) in her arguments against Helen. So a joke here is not as utterly ruinous as it would be, for example, in the scene where Astyanax is buried.

In a long and important sentence in the Timaeus (52b6–dl), Plato explains that, whereas that which truly or really is () cannot come to be in anything else, sensible things, being mere images, must necessarily come to be in something else, on pain of not existing at all:

Although we do not know the philosophical source these scholia derive from (Erbse very plausibly suggested Porphyry; I would argue for the De regressu animae), there can hardly be any doubt that we have here a new Pythagorean fragment which communicates basic notions about metempsychosis. Pythagoras is criticized for representing the soul as afflicted by pain and grief (λνπεῖται, θρηνεῖ) when it leaves the body before entering a new one. The reasons given for its distress need not detain us here, but this new Pythagorean fragment clearly offers a conclusive solution to the vexed question of Homer's tears in Ennius, alluded to in Lucretius 1.120ff.