There are still many passages in Heroides where editors prefer a poor variant or cling to an indefensible text. Some of these I touched on in reviewing Dome's new edition (Berlin, 1971), but shortage of space made it necessary to reserve others for discussion elsewhere. As Dörrie goes astray more often than most of his predecessors, this article may be regarded as a continuation of the review; but I do not discuss any passage where he is alone in his misjudgement.

ALL classical palaeographers are familiar with Persius' roster of writing materials:

Now we take the book to hand, and the two-coloured parchment purged of hair, and papyrus, and a knotty reed.

Of the items mentioned, only ‘two-coloured parchment’ presents any difficulty.I hope in this article to present at least a possible solution to this problem.

An obvious supposition would be that Persius is merely referring to the natural differences in colour between the two sides of a piece of parchment.

Niebuhr saw that several paragraphs had been lost from the beginning of the Caesar; Ziegler suggested that the lacuna extended to the end of the Alexander. Both hypotheses are confirmed, if the identification of two new fragments is admitted.

At 10. 11 p. 368, Zonaras is epitomizing the text of Caes.; he recounts the Story of Caes. 60. 3, and continues: Editors leave the provenance of the passage unspecified: ‘addita sunt pauca de nomine Caesaris‘ (Wolf). The correction of the vulgar error might perhaps be an inference of Zonaras himself—though such an original contribution to historical polemic would be unique; but the erroneous version, at least, must come from somewhere. It is not found in any of Zonaras' sources for this period, nor in any surviving book which he certainly knew. Nor is it likely to be an addition from his own general knowledge.

Justus of Tiberias played a part in the first Jewish revolt against the Romans. He was also the author of an historical work, or works, now lost. Various distinctions have been attributed to his writings; the loss of Jewish Antiquities comparable to those of Josephus, and of an account of the Jewish War far more reliable than Josephus', have at different times been regretted. Certainly, the writings would have been of great value to us, and it will be seen that it is not easy to make sense of the rather baffling evidence for their nature and contents. But perhaps it was not simply accident which preserved Josephus instead of Justus.

The treatise was in origin a polemic against the Erasistrateans in Rome whom Galen found to be in opposition to his own views. It is of interest not only for Galen's views on venesection but also for the fragments of the writings of Erastistratus contained in it. The text has not yet appeared in a modern critical edition. The Kühn edition of 1826 is the most recent, but Kühn did not go beyond the work of the Renaissance editors in dealing with the numerous corruptions of the text. The emendations proposed below are occasioned by the want of a satisfactory reading anywhere in the tradition.

The significance of the dating of Enmann's Kaisergeschichte in the controversy which has long surrounded the Historia Augusta is common knowledge to all scholars who have more than a nodding acquaintance with the period. Enmann himself concluded that the KG ended with or shortly after Diocletian's accession. This was a necessary hypothesis for Enmann in 1884 because the H.A. had clearly used the KG and the self-proclaimed authorship and dating of the former were generally accepted. None the less in Enmann's opinion the resemblances between Victor and Eutropius continued into the sole reign of Constantius II down to the Battle of Strasbourg in 357 and Enmann was compelled to ascribe this to a ‘continuation’ of the KG.