In the first of his three magisterial articles on the Agamemnon H. L. Ahrens showed that all the evidence then available best fitted the conclusion that ⋯τ⋯ται derived from τ⋯νω and not from τ⋯ω. Subsequently Ed. Fraenkel in his own note on the word reviewed and supplemented the evidence gathered by Ahrens, and expressed the view that Ahrens' ‘discussion, details apart, is final’; and there seems to be widespread agreement that on the linguistic side at least Ahrens' argument cannot be refuted. If this means anything, it means that the sense of the word cannot be ‘unhonoured’ or ‘dishonoured’. Yet Denniston–Page in their commentary say that ‘”unhonoured” seems the only possible sense here’, and R. Fagles' recent translation, which generally rests on sound scholarship as well as poetic gifts, has ‘dishonored’. The principal reason for this persistent disagreement seems to be that the sense proposed by Ahrens for ⋯τ⋯ται has been thought to have rather less plausibility than the linguistic considerations that appear to lead to it.

In PCPhS 213 (NS 33, 1987), 92–104 at 93–6, Oliver Taplin suggests that the Getty vase published by J. R. Green in 1985 represents not Aristophanes' Birds but the first version of Clouds. The purpose of this note is to offer some support for this, while perhaps raising further problems.

Aristophanes' description of the stages of promotion in the Athenian navy recently received renewed attention, when Mastromarco and Halliwell enlisted it in their battle against the traditional opinion that Aristophanes' early career fell into two stages, a secret one of writing plays but not producing them, and a public one in which he undertook both activities. Mastromarco argues for a tripartite career, and Halliwell, who is against a too strict correlation, for a gradual development, a sort of a complex apprenticeship, which eventually he divides also into three stages similar to those discerned by Mastromarco. In summing up their position, MacDowell paraphrases the above passage according to its prevalent interpretation: ‘The nautical metaphor (541–4), with its progression from oarsman to prow-officer to helmsman, indicates that Aristophanes did not take over his task all at once, but by stages. But what were the stages?’

In his account of the great naval battle in 201 B.C. off Chios between the fleet of Philip II and the combined fleets of Pergamum and Rhodes, Polybius notes a curious exchange of ram blows that took place at one point:

Δεινοκρ⋯της μ⋯ν πρ⋯ς ⋯κτ⋯ρη συμπεσὼν αὐτ⋯ς μ⋯ν ἒζαλον ἒλαβε τ⋯ν, πληγ⋯ν, ⋯ναστε⋯ρου τ⋯σ νεὼσ οὔσησ, δ⋯ τ⋯ν πολεμ⋯ων τρώσας να⋯ν ὑπ⋯ τ⋯ *β⋯αϰα τ⋯ μ⋯ν πρ⋯τον οὐκ ⋯δ⋯νατο ϰωρισθ⋯ναι, κα⋯περ πολλ⋯κς ⋯πιβαλ⋯μενος πρ⋯μναν κρο⋯ειν κτλ.

Dinocrates, who was one of the commanders on the Pergamene side, attacked a Macedonian οκtêrês and, it would appear, struck it with his ram below the waterline; τ⋯β⋯αϰα is unattested elsewhere and its precise meaning is obscure, but the phase ὑπ⋯ τ⋯β⋯αϰα in this context clearly refers to a part of the oktêrêŝ hull that was immersed in water. In the process his own ship was hit; the blow that it took landed above the waterline because the oktêrês that delivered it was a ‘vessel that was anasteiros’ a word also unattested elsewhere. For well over a century there has been universal agreement that it means ‘with a high prow’.

In the most recent edition of this play (Bristol Classical Press, 1987) M. M. Willcock places an obelus before montes with the comment ‘monies and acerui get in each other's way’. But in view of its metaphorical use elsewhere in Plautus (e.g. Aul. 701, Mil. 1065, Mos. 352), prima facie suspicion does not fall on montes.

At 3.9.37–8, Propertius says that he will not bewail (sc. in epic verse) the destruction of Thebes by the Epigonoi or the earlier assault on the city by the Seven:

non flebo in cineres arcem sedisse paternos

Cadmi, nee septem proelia clade pari.

That nec…pari in 38 refers to the Seven, with Lipsius' septem for the manuscripts' semper, J. D. Morgan demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt in his discussion of the couplet in CQ 36 (1986), 186–8. But Morgan's chief concern in that discussion was with paternos at the end of 37, and it is his treatment of that adjective which prompts this note.

Night falls on war-weary Troy after a day of celebration, setting the stage for the final agony of the city:

uertitur interea caelum et ruit Oceano nox

inuoluens umbra magna terramque polumque

Myrmidonumque dolos

(Virg. Aen. 2.250–2)

On Virgil's lines excudent alii…(Aen. 6.847–53) there have been two recent studies, 1 and further items of bibliography from the last five years or so may be added. Nevertheless, there remains a good deal of uncertainty, even controversy, over Virgil's choice of Greek and Roman cultural achievements and over the literary antecedents of that choice.

At the end of the catalogue of Italian troops comes Camilla, the warrior-maid, leading her columns of Volscian cavalry. In a passage reminiscent of ll. 20.226ff. (the powers of the horses of Erichthonios) Vergil illustrates her seemingly superhuman speed and lightness of foot, before passing on to the impression she made upon the watching population who have swarmed out of their homes and fields to mark the finery of her appearance and equipment:

illam omnis tectis agrisque effusa iuventus

turbaque miratur matrum et prospectat euntem,

attonitis inhians animis ut regius ostro

velet honos levis umeros, ut fibula crinem

auro internectat, Lyciam ut gerat ipsa pharetram

et pastoralem praefixa cuspide myrtum.

Epode 10: the Mystery of Mevius' Crime

Horace's tenth Epode, an inverse propempticon, calls down dire curses on the head of a man named Mevius as he leaves on a sea-voyage.1 Scholars have naturally been interested in what Mevius had done to merit such treatment, but answers have been difficult to find, for nothing explicit is said on this topic in the poem; as Leo noted, ‘[Horatius] ne verbo quidem tarn gravis odii causam indicat’. This is in direct contrast with the Strasbourg epode usually attributed to Hipponax (fr. 115 West), which served as Horace's model in this poem; there it is clear that the similar curses on a departing sailor are caused by his breaking of oaths to the poet and betrayal of their previous friendship (15–16 ⋯ς μ' ἢδίκησε, λ⋯ξ δ' ⋯π' ⋯ρκίοις ἔβη, τò πρίν ⋯ταῖρος ⋯ώμ ). One might expect Horace to give some kind of indirect suggestion of the nature of Mevius’ offence, but even this is despaired of by Fraenkel: ‘There is no hint at the sort of crime which Mevius is said to have committed, nor is anything said about the man himself; he remains an entirely shadowy figure’. The best that scholars have been able to do is to follow the ancient commentary of Porphyrio in suggesting that Horace's Mevius is to be identified with the poetaster attacked by Vergil in Ecl. 3.90 ‘qui Bavium non odit, amet tua carmina, Mevi’. Though it is pleasant to think of Vergil and Horace, perhaps by now friends in the circle of Maecenas, ganging up on a luckless hack, there is, as Fraenkel points out, no mention in the tenth Epode that Mevius is a poet, and his literary incompetence, assuming he is Vergil's poet, does not seem to underlie or indeed warrant the bitter imprecations of the poem: Catullus might wish a dire fate on the works of a bad poet (e.g. Volusius – 36.18–20, 95.7–8), but to long for their author's shipwreck and consumption by gulls might indeed seem excessive.

primo pallentis hiatu

haeret adhuc Orci, licet has exaudiat herbas,

ad manes uentura semel.

Erichtho the Thessalian witch is conducting a necromancy: she has selected a corpse, applied her potions to it and invoked the powers of the Underworld to release its soul to deliver the prophecy. She specifies that this is a recent corpse whose soul has hardly entered the Underworld; hence she describes it as ‘still hesitating at the entrance to pallid Orcus’ chasm’ and as “a soul which will join the dead only once’. However, as Francken says, ‘“exaudire herbas” est absurda iunctura’. The problem lies in either noun or verb. The phrase must refer to Erichtho's magic; the choice is between spells and potion, herbas in the sense ‘Incantation’ is apparently unparalleled, but herbas as a reference to Erichtho's brew is perfectly acceptable, especially given the long description of her concoction of the revivifying potion and of her application of it to the corpse in the preceding lines, 6.667–84. Moreover, only a few lines later Lucan draws a contrast between uerba and herbae, spells and potion (6.768). If herbas is sound, suspicion falls on exaudiat; the occurrence less than ten lines earlier of the uncontroversial exaudite preces, 6.706, which suggests scribal repetition, strengthens the suspicion.