The Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus is a major source of our knowledge of the late Roman army. However, although himself a former army officer, it was not the intention of Ammianus to explain the institutions and organization of the late Roman army to his readers. We learn about these only from the incidental pieces of information which are scattered throughout his text. It was not his intention either to present us with the regimental histories of any individual units, yet repeated references to the more prominent and prestigious units were inevitable in a history such as his. This was particularly true in the case of the scholae palatinae because of their role as the bodyguard units of the emperors. It is my intention here to draw together such information as Ammianus provides about the scholae in order to demonstrate how, in a number of cases in particular, it is possible to reconstruct an almost complete list of their commanders for the period c. 353–364

Well over a decade ago now, John Moles drew attention to the fact that the words of Clytemnestra at Aesch. Ag. 1388ff. included some striking sexual imagery that had gone unnoticed. To summarize a rich and detailed discussion, he said: ‘Clytemnestra represents the dying Agamemnon as having an ejaculation of dark blood—and herself as rejoicing in reciprocal climax as her husband bespatters her—with his blood’. My purpose here is to draw attention to two more examples of this kind of language to be found in close proximity to the foregoing.

W. D. Furley, ‘Phaidra's pleasurable aidos (Eur. Hipp. 380–7)’, CQ 46 (1996), 84–90 is in part a response to my article, ‘ in Euripides’ Hippolytos 373–430: review and reinterpretation’, JHS 113 (1993), 45–59. Furley states that I suggest that aidos is ‘a euphemism for aidoia, the genitals, thus = sex’. This is an over-simplification. I argue (at pp. 45, 55, 56) that ‘in this context, is a euphemistic metonymy for ’; that ‘in terms of linguistic use, may be viewed as the natural reaction to the … just as is to ; and hence that ‘the linguistic associations and semantic nuances of are sufficient to allow the word, in appropriate contexts, to mean “sex”’.

Wordplay involving names is routine in Homer. Less common, but not rare, is wordplay that does not have anything to do with names. Thus, at Iliad 1.290f. there is a play on ; at 24.611 an implicit play on (people)/ (stone); at Odyssey 12.45–46 a possible play on .

The commentators have noticed the central role that wordplay performs in this epigram. Heraclitus the Magnesian is indeed a magnet, but it is the heart of the poet rather than iron that he attracts. As Gow-Page remark, does double duty. But that is only part of the story, for there lurks here yet a second play on words that reinforces the first.

The manuscripts attribute these lines with 1049–53 to Hecuba. This is accepted by all editors. But the fear of Polymestor as revealed in the sentence does not fit the death wishes Hecuba expresses e.g. in 167f., 231–3, 383–7, 391–3, 396; nor is it consistent with her scornful description of the blind king as in 1050.

I give the text as printed by James Diggle in his new Oxford Classical Text. His deletion of 1570–6 is rejected by Donald Mastronarde in his recent commentary. Apart from this, Mastronarde's text differs from Diggle's on only a couple of minor points which are immaterial to the main problems.

In Aristotle′s Nicomachean Ethics (E.N.), at 1149b15–16, there is a quotation: Aristotle does not tell us who wrote these words, and we now find the quotation as lyric fr. adesp. 949.2

Lines 4–5 of Antiphanes fr. 46 KA, an Athenian view of the stereotypical Spartan life, present several difficult, interrelated problems. The text as printed by Kassel- Austin is grammatically intelligible, although problematic, since καταϕρονέω is used absolutely elsewhere in old or middle comedy only at Amph.

In the course of studying ancient Greek diplomatic relations I have come to think that one item of evidence deserves a little more said about it than it has, up to now, received. Tod 11.154, entitled Athens aids Eretria: 357–6 B.C.', is a document whose significance in Greek diplomatic history has not, I suggest, been fully appreciated. It is a unique epigraphic record of a genre of diplomatic instrument that was available to states which wished to emphasize their non-belligerence. R. Bauslaugh has recently gathered the literary evidence for the use by neutral states of this type of instrument, prohibiting a state's citizens from serving as mercenaries for a foreign power, but he did not consider this decree, in which a state uses the same instrument to demonstrate its goodwill towards its allies.

Michael Choniates (c. 1138–c. 1222), a pupil of Eustathius of Thessalonica, who was Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Athens for some 25 years up to that city's capture by Frankish crusaders in a.d. 1205, is best known to classical scholars as the possessor of probably the last complete copy of Callimachus' Hecale and Aetia. He had brought with him from Constantinople many books of all kinds, and added to his collection when in Athens. Although an immense task, it would be well worth trying to identify all Michael's classical allusions, as an indication of how much ancient Greek literature was still available just before Constantinople too succumbed to the crusaders.

Having withered you while you live I will lead you down so that you may give recompense for the miseries of your slaughtered mother. And if anyone else of mortals has done wrong, committing impiety against god or any stranger or his own parents, you will see him getting his just deserts. For Hades is a great euthunos of mortals below the ground, he oversees all things with his tablet-writing mind.

The familiar crux in line 139, as obelized by Dawe, disappears in the new Oxford Text, whose editors accept the Triclinian reading . Their short critical note touches only on the metrical issue, citing discussions by Stinton and Diggle, in both of which acceptance of here is cautiously linked with recognition of the same responsion at Philoctetes 209/218 and Euripides, Medea 159/183. The note concludes with a reference (credited to Miss Parker) to p. 75 of an article by K. Itsumi.

Hanc quoque ‘iucunditatem’, si vis, transfer in animum (‘iuvare’ enim in utroque dicitur, ex eoque ‘iucundum’), rnodo intellegas inter ilium qui dicat

Tanta laetitia auctus sum ut nihil constet

et eum qui

Nunc demum mihi animus ardet,

quorum alter laetitia gestiat, alter dolore crucietur, esse ilium medium [Quamquam haec inter nos nuper notitia admodum est] qui nee laetetur nee angatur, itemque inter eum qui potiatur corporis expetitis voluptatibus et eum qui crucietur summis doloribus esse eum qui utroque careat.

If you would reflect that the part of the soul that in the former case, in our own misfortunes, was forcibly restrained, and that has hungered for tears and a good cry and satisfaction, because it is its nature to desire these things, is the element in us that the poets satisfy and delight, and that the best element in our nature, since it has never been properly educated by reason or even by habit, then relaxes its guard over the plaintive part, inasmuch as this is contemplating the woes of others and it is no shame to it to praise and pity another who, claiming to be a good man, abandons himself to excess in his grief; but [he] thinks this vicarious pleasure is so much clear gain, and would not consent to forfeit it by disdaining the poem altogether.

Cicero's dialogue De Finibus depicts three conversations between the author and his friends. In the course of these conversations Cicero depicts himself as addressing his interlocutors directly, using the vocative case, on 45 occasions; the other characters, however, never address Cicero at all. What is the reason for this imbalance?

When Lysidamus arrives on stage in Plautus′ Casina, he delightedly announces that he is in love with the slave girl Casina. He is returning, he says, from an expedition to buy perfume which he hopes has made him appealing to his beloved. Casina′s name is derived from the fragrant spice casia. Cassia and the related spice cinnamon originate in the Far East and were imported to Rome through Arabia or Africa.Like other ancient spices, cassia was used as perfume, condiment, and in medicinal and religious contexts.

In reviewing Ellis' OCT of Catullus, Housman scorned the ‘diction and metre’ of Carm. 64.37, ‘Pharsaliam coeunt, Pharsalia tecta frequentant’. Yet several subsequent editors have agreed with Ellis and have also refrained from emending Pharsaliam. Even if there has not been enough discomfort with the MS reading to put some editors off retaining it, they might yet welcome a piece of positive evidence to support this decision. I will make the case that a passage in Statius' Achilleid may indicate that the later poet was familiar with the line as the MSS have it.

Although modern scholars have expressed in various ways the view that the Gallus passage is unusual in its context,1 no editor or commentator during the past quarter of a century has questioned the ordering of the lines in which the Gallus passage occurs.2

Around 16 August of 45 B.C. Cicero wrote a brief letter to Atticus (Alt. 13.39) in which he reminds Atticus to send the books of the Epicurean scholarch Phaedrus that he had requested. The Greek words in the text of his request have been corrupted through the centuries