The received translation and interpretation of many of the technical terms current in the textile industry of the Roman Empire are inaccurate, because lexicographers have either fought shy of being precise, or have thought that they recognized in the ancient world technical processes which originated at a much later date. The evidence is often equivocal or insufficient, but may still yield details that have been overlooked.

The textile expression scutulatus, to take an example, deserves more attention than Blümner has devoted to it. When it refers to the appearance of a garment, Lewis and Short, s.v. scutulatus, translate ‘diamond or lozenge-shaped, checkered’. It seems worth while to attempt a more precise translation, and, if possible, to estimate the significance in context of the goods so designated.

The traditional interpretation of line 149 understands in praecipiti as a metaphor expressing the height that vice has reached in Juvenal's day. Vice is now ‘at its zenith’ (Mayor), ‘at its highest point’ (Hardy), ‘auf demGipfel’ (Friedlaender, Knoche), ‘at its acme’ (Ramsay), ‘a son comble’ (Labriolle and Villeneuve), ‘at a climax’ (Sedgwick), ‘at a dizzy height’ (Highet). Lewis and Short have a special sub-heading, II. B. 3. b. (β), for this example of praeceps (together with Pliny's accedere adpraeceps in Epp. 9. 26. 2) and translate ‘at its point of culmination’.

This is the first of two articles attempting a literary assessment of Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica. It will examine the poem from the beginning to 3. 474, and its successor will cover from 4. 58 to the end. Thus, there will be no overlap with matter already printed in my article, ‘The Hylas Episode in Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica’ (C.Q. N.S. xiii [1963], 260–7), and instances of the poet's application in other sections of the same literary principles as in the Hylas story may now be dealt with summarily. The episodes are treated in order of importance rather than of occurrence, with the emphasis at present on broad outlines rather than linguistic or metrical minutiae. Even within these limitations, this assessment does not aim at exhaustiveness. Where a section of the Argonautica is unremarkable and throws little light on Valerius' poetic method, pro re pauca loquar.

From the beginning of the seventeenth century it has generally been held that the second Medicean is the parent of all the other extant manuscripts. In two articles C. W. Mendell has demonstrated that Leidensis B.P.L. 16. B is the manuscript once owned by Rudolphus Agricola (d. 1485) and later by Th. Ryck, whose edition (Lugd. Batav. 1687) makes frequent allusion to its readings. Mendell's attempt to show further that L (= Leidensis) represents a tradition independent of the Medicean has found little support until recently, when E. Koestermann, in the course of preparing the latest Teubner edition of Annals (1960) and Histories (1961) became convinced from his own study of L that Mendell's view—in spite of some arguments of dubious validity—was essentially correct. In an article in Philologus (civ [i960], 92–115) and in the preface to his edition of Histories Koestermann has marshalled the arguments which he believes prove L's independence of the Medicean line of descent. Since the new valuation that Koestermann puts upon L has produced a drastic revision of both text and apparatus criticus in his new editions, it may be worth while to examine the evidence that Koestermann adduces in support of his belief in L's independence.

From the scholarly activity of the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. stem several collections of scholia to the poems of Virgil, most of which make copious reference to prose and verse composed in Latin before Virgil's time. The authors of these scholia were the last of a long line of commentators whose labours began soon after Virgil's death. Just as Virgil walked in the tracks of Theocritus, Hesiod, Aratus, Nicander, Homer, and Apollonius, so did his students in the tracks of the great Alexandrian expositors of the Greek poets. They sought to explain Virgil not only through Virgil himself, but also through the poets and prose writers, Greek and Latin, whom they imagined Virgil to have read. Thus we have scholia citing early republican literature in order to parallel words uncommon in or absent from the fourth-century classical syllabus, as well as unclassical usages, inflections, and constructions; in order to demonstrate ‘imitations’ on the part of Virgil; and in order to elucidate the structure of episodes of the three poems where Virgil appears to depart from the most commonly known versions of myth and history. Argument concerning the text or interpretation of a disputed passage is frequently based on appeal to the usage of Virgil's Latin predecessors.

[Plutarch] records that Augustus passed a winter on the island of Aegina, rather than in Athens, as a sign of his wrath toward the Athenians. Paul Graindor assumed that the most likely time for Augustus to have been angry with the Athenians was immediately after Actium, and so he dated [Plutarch]'s anecdote to the winter of 31/30 (Athènes sous Auguste [Cairo, 1927], p. 17). This is impossible.

The study of the republican Roman Senate was revolutionized by Professor Broughton's Magistrates, and to a lesser extent more recently by Professor Lily Ross Taylor's Voting Districts of the Roman Republic. Naturally, neither of these two great works rounded up all the available evidence without exception, and a considerable amount of mopping-up has been carried out. More remains to be done, however, and this article aims at providing some further information on republican senators, their tribes, and their origins, as an addendum to (in the first section) M.R.R. and its Supplement, and (in the second) the prosopogra- phical chapter of Professor Taylor's book.

Claudius Marius Victor (or Victorius), a rhetor of Marseilles (according to Gennadius), composed in the first half of the fifth century a metrical paraphrase of Genesis from the creation of the world up to the destruction of Sodom. The work, which amounts to something over 2,000 lines and is supposedly unfinished, is entitled Alethia, seasoned with occasional discussion of philosophic or other matter, and written with the expressed hope of improving the minds of the young. The text depends on a single ninth-century Paris manuscript (P), which contains errors that are numerous but in general rudimentary and susceptible of convincing emendation. The first serious edition—for the edition of J. de Gagny (1536), though it offered many useful emendations, was too full of licentious alterations, excisions, and additions, to rank as such—was that of G. Morel (1560). The next editor, G. Fabricius (1564), in spite of his awareness of Morel's edition, did little more than reproduce the depraved text of Gagny.

One of the gains to be reckoned from the study of nomenclature in the sepulchral inscriptions of the early empire is the gradual abandonment of attempts to distinguish between slave and freeborn on the basis of personal name or cognomen alone, especially when this is of Latin derivation. Nevertheless, one still finds personal cognomina in undated inscriptions adduced as sole evidence for the origin or status of individuals below senatorial rank. Thus in a standard work on freedmen in the early empire, recently reprinted, names such as Agilis, Amandus, Auctus, Communis, Donatus, Faustus, Felix, etc., are said to be commonly servile, but others such as Aquila, Bassus, Capito, Cams, Celer, Crescens, etc., are taken as ingenuous. The criteria used in making such a distinction are subjective and arbitrary and the statistics based on them are largely valueless. It is the purpose of this note to consider briefly on this question the evidence of the personal nomenclature of the Imperial slaves and freedmen. In this group, the Familia Caesaris, no problem of status arises, and the fact that the majority of their inscriptions can be dated, at least approximately, makes it possible to trace the chronological development of the use of cognomina ingenua by one important group of servile origin from the first to the early third century A.D. Moreover, such a development is useful evidence for change in the social structure of the early empire.

The status nomenclature of the Imperial slaves, as that of the Imperial freedmen, is important mainly for its bearing on the difficult problems of dating slave sepulchral inscriptions, but also as a means of determining who were Imperial slaves belonging to the Familia Caesaris with the significant social status this implied. Bang's careful but brief treatment of the subject, published in 1919, was not based on a complete collection of the material—admittedly difficult to obtain—and much has appeared in the interval. Moreover, a deeper analysis of the evidence necessitates some revision of his conclusions.

That Ammianus Marcellinus was a pagan is agreed on all sides. He was no Eunapius to vilify and slander the Christians, and no Macrobius to pretend that they did not exist; nevertheless, while not (at any rate overtly) hostile to the new religion, he still adhered to the old. It is, however, customary to quote as an illustration of his attitude to Christianity the numerous passages where he refers to things Christian in a curiously roundabout fashion, as if unfamiliar with the words he was using. Instances such as ‘Christiani ritus presbyter (utipsi appellant)’ (31. 12. 8), ‘coetus in unum quaesitus eiusdem legis cultorum (synodus ut appellant)’ (15. 7. 7), ‘inductus est (ut appellant Christiani) diaconus’ (14. 9. 7), would seem at first sight to justify the conclusion of P. de Jonge that ‘Ammianus speaks of Christianity as an alien religion which is not professed by him’.