Statius' last, unfinished poem, the Achilleid, is a more varied and charming work than readers of the The baid could ever have imagined, and is perhaps the most attractive approach to this highly imitative and professional poet. It is generally agreed that both Statius' diction and his narrative form are greatly influenced by Virgil and Ovid: but if he considered the Theban poem as his own Aeneid, we might fairly see the Achilleid as more akin to the Metamorphoses; diction and epic devices may remain recognizably Virgilian, but the relaxed tone, the gentle irony and open humour take us into Ovid's world. As an illustration, the brief episode in which Thetis conveys her sleeping son from Thessaly over the sea to Scyros probably draws its original inspiration from Venus' substitution of Cupid for Ascanius in Aeneid 1: Venus' son procures his own arrival, but she spirits away the sleeping Ascanius; ‘at Venus Ascanio placidam per membra quietem/ irrigat et fotum gremio dea tollit in altos/Idaliae lucos’ (Aen. 1. 691–3).

Some of the manuscripts of Aelius Anstides include a short oration in the form of an encomium to an unnamed king. The oration is entitled in three manuscripts and in another. It has been pointed out that in the former group of manuscripts the title is not preceded by the words thus casting doubt on Aristidean authorship.

It is gratifying to read, in a recent issue of this periodical, Mr. A. A. Barrett's informed exposition of the syntax of this passage, even though he balks at the need to extract a grammatical subject for the verb deducit in 157 from the relative pronoun qua in the previous line. However his persuasive presentation of what he relies on as evidence in support of his suggested interpretation from the mosaics from Zliten in Tripolitania, which portray scenes in an amphitheatre, may seduce the unwary into an over-ready acquiescence in his proposal to read raeda in 157 for taeda of the manuscript tradition. Juvenal's words were correctly understood by T. Maguire as long ago as 1881, and the solution was restated with clarity in a note by W. V. Clausen recently.

The literary sources for the Flavian and Antonine periods of Roman history, it is a notorious and unhappy fact, where they exist at all, are infuriatingly fragmentary, frequently obscure, too frequently inaccurate or mendacious. Significant gaps still linger even in chronology; hence it can hardly occasion surprise that we are rarely permitted a glimpse of the political activity which preoccupied the emperors and Senate.

In her Greek and Roman Sundials (New Haven and London, 1976), Sharon Gibbs discusses (pp.105–17) with success the identification of the archaeological finds of ancient sundials with the description of the types given briefly by Vitruvius (De Arcbitectura, IX.8.1). There is, however, an important piece of evidence from another ancient literary source which, though it does not alter her conclusions, ought to be added and clarified.

additum et praesidium mille legionarii, tres sociorum chohortes duaeque equitum alae, et quo facilius novum regnum tueretur, pars Armeniae, ut cuique finitima, Pharasmani Polemonique et Aristobulo atque Antiocho parere iussae sunt. Corbulo in Syriam abscessit, morte Ummidii legati vacuam ac sibi permissam.

In Thucydides' account of Melesander's expedition with six ships to Caria and Lycia (2.69.1) there appears to me to be a difficulty which is universally ignored by commentators and fudged by translators. Thucydides describes the purpose of the expedition

Hoc tempore velut per universum orbem Romanum, bellicum canentibus bucinis, excitae gentes saevissimae, limites sibi proximos persultabant. Gallias Raetiasque simul Alamanni poputabantur; Sarmatae Pannonias et Quadi; Picti Saxonesque et Scotci, et Attacotti Brittanos aerumnis vexavere continuis; Austoriani Mauricaeque aliae gentes, Africam solito acrius incursabant; Thracias et diripiebant praedatorii globi Gothorum. Persarum rex manus Armeniis iniectabat, eos in suam dicionem ex integro vocare vi nimia properans, sed iniuste, causando, quod post Ioviani excessum, cum quo foedera firmarat et pacem, nihil obstare debebit, quo minus ea recuperaret, quae antea ad maiores suos pertinuisse monstrabat.

With these words the ‘first slave’’ of the Knights (usually identified as Demosthenes), encourages the Sausage-seller to take up the cudgels against the Paphlagonian, confident that the actor playing this role will not be masked. The exception proves the rule and it is generally concluded from these lines that portrait masks were customary in Aristophanic comedy.

Any educated Roman in late antiquity would immediately have recognized the figure of Catiline, for the simple reason that Sallust, together with Vergil, Cicero, and Terence, formed the core of the school curriculum. When his grandson starts school, Ausonius rejoices in a second chance to read the Catiline and the Histories (Ep. 22.61 ff.):

The form (Ap. Rhod. 1.685) has lately caused controversy. It is traditionally interpreted as poetic for but O. Skutsch has denied that iota could be lost in this way, pointing out that instead it could be a correctly formed future cf. with a root ending in the laryngeal (my addition). M. Campbell rejects this, and rightly claims that ApoUonius borrowed the line from the Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo 528:

In CR N.S. 10 (1960), 7, I supported L. Purgold's emendation of to in O. T. 230, accepted by Elmsley, wrongly discarded by all editors since, and now omitted even from the apparatus criticus of R. D. Dawe's recent Teubner edition of Sophocles. May I now add that the emendation was also defended, at greater length, by M. Furness in CR 13 (1899), 195–7? The 1899 editor of CR reproduced, at the end of Furness's article, the sueeinct and trenchant Latin in which, in the year 1802, Purgold defended his emendation.

In CQ N.S. 28 (1978), 242, Frances Mueeke, quoting Beroaldus, rightly understood this line to refer to a funerary practice. In default of ancient parallels the author offered us a modern one from a novel I vicerè by Federico De Roberto, first published in 1894. 1894. But even before De Roberto's novel was published, Vincenzo Padula, in his curious work Pauca Quae in Sexto Aurelio Propertio Vincentius Padula ab Acrio Animadvertabat (Naples, 1871), had explained Prop. 4.7.26 by reference to popular custom:

In the latest edition of Liddell and Scott's Lexicon appears the entry, —, fantastic, Gloss.’’ No more information is given. Gloss, refers to the Corpus Glossariorum Latirtorum edited by G. Loewe, G. Goetz, and F. Schoell. (Leipzig, 1888–1923). If one consults that work, however, one finds that does not appear in it. Nor does it appear in Liddell and Scott's Lexicon before the new, revised edition of 1925.

Haec quae est a nobis prolata laudatio obsignata erat creta ilia Asiatica quae fere est omnibus nota nobis, qua utuntur omnes non modo in publicis sed etiam in privatis litteris quas cotidie videmus mitti a publicanis, saepe uni cuique nostrum.

If any words are unmistakably Ciceronian, these are. Every schoolboy knew them. Generations of Latin prose composers have trotted them out with unassailable confidence. It seems almost indelicate to suggest that they are not Ciceronian at all; but it would solve the problem presented by Sallust Cat. 20.9 if this were the case. Sallust's placing of the hallowed words in the mouth of Catiline has always been something of a scandal, to be laughed off (if you can find a joke in it), or played down (Syme, Sallust, p.106, ‘If that is malice, it is not very noxious’’),

It seems clear that Virgil, Horace, and Tibullus knew, if not the third Sibylline Oracle itself, prophecies like it. An unnoticed parallel between that work and Horace may confirm this conclusion and afford a small insight into the Latin poet's art.

Mors Hamilcaris peropportuna et pueritia Hannibalis distulerunt bellum. Medius Hasdrubal inter patrem ac filium octo ferme annos imperium obtinuit, flore aetatis, uti ferunt, primo Hamilcari conciliatus, gener inde ob aliam indolem profecto animi adscitus et, quia gener erat, factionis Barcinae opibus, quae apud milites plebemque plus quam modicae erant, haud sane uoluntate principum, in imperio positus. (Livy 21.2.3–4)