The purpose of this article is to consider the problem of the ascribed to Varro and to attempt to show that, despite the doubts expressed by modern scholars, the balance of the evidence does support the traditional interpretation.

Appian, dealing with the ‘Triumvirate’ of 59 B.C., tells us: The usual interpretation of this passage has been that Varro wrote a political pamphlet, possibly in the form of a Menippean satire,2 against the First Triumvirate, to which he gave the title.There are obvious difficulties in this interpretation, which appears to conflict with what we know of Varro's relations with Pompey in the period before the formation of the Triumvirate and his actions afterwards.

One of the most important pieces of evidence which we possess concerning the judicial rights of Roman provincials, particularly their status in relation to the governor's tribunal, is provided by Cicero's brief outline of those provisions of the lex Rupilia, the Sicilian provincial charter, which dealt with judicial administration. The passage reads as follows:

Siculi hoc iure sunt ut, quod civis cum cive agat, domi certet suis legibus, quod Siculus cum Siculo non eiusdem civitatis, ut de eo praetor iudices ex P. Rupili decreto, quod is de decem legatorum sententia statuit, quam legem Rupiliam vocant, sortiatur. Quod privatus a populo petit ant populus a privato, senatus ex aliqua civitate qui iudicet datur, cum alternae civitates reiectae sunt; quod civis Romanus a Siculo petit, Siculus index, quod Siculus a civi Romano, civis Romanus datur; ceterarum rerum selecti iudices ex conventu civium Romanorum nr000ni solent.

In classical writing the description of personal appearance was attempted in various ways. At one extreme the mere ‘passport-identification’ was concernedto enumerate distinguishing characteristics in order to ensure, for example, that a runaway slave or a recalcitrant taxpayer could be identified.

In C.Q. N.S. xv (1965), 293 f., in a discussion of the popularity of theyounger Pliny's Letters in the late fourth century, I adduced three passages of St. Jerome which reveal acquaintance with the Letters. The list may be extended.

Anaximander explained the sun as an ejection of light or fire from an opening in the hollow rim of a kind of wheel which revolved around the earth. We are told that this wheel or circle of the sun is 27 times the size of the earth, and again that it is 28 times the size of the earth. These numbers have been thought to represent respectively the inner and the outer diameters of the sun wheel. This has been questioned by Kirk. Kirk assumes that the thickness or width of the rim of the sun wheel would be the same as the diameter of the earth. He argues therefore that there should be a difference of two units between the inner and the outer diameter.

The work of many scholars in the last hundred years has helped us to understand the nature and origins of the treatise which we know for short as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. The present state of knowledge may be summed up as follows. The work in its extant form dates from the Antonine period, but much of it was taken over bodily from an earlier source, thought to be the Movaelov of Alcidamas. Some of the verses exchanged in the contest were current even earlier, and some scholars have supposed that the story of a contest went back to the fifth, sixth, or even eighth century; but this is now much doubted.

‘Shameful are the scars inflicted by the sin of fraternal strife! What has ourunconscionable generation shunned, what abomination left undone? Ourgodless soldiery has held nothing sacred. I pray that Fortune may, on a new anvil, give our blunted swords another shape, to use against Massagetae andArabs!‘