The old proverb (‘poets tell a lot of lies’) can still more accurately be applied to their biographers.‘ Even the more plausible and psycho logically tempting details in the lives of literary figures derive from these authors’ fictional works, poems, and dramas, and not from the kind of source material biographers use today, letters, documents, eyewitness testimony. Critics and readers eager to establish some historical correlation between any ancient poet's life and his work should expect to be disappointed. But even if the ancient lives are useless to the historian or critic trying to explain what in Euripides’ experience compelled him to write about Medea, these stories are of interest to mythologists. If we stop being angry at the Lives for failing to be historical, and look at them rather as myths or fairy tales, some informative patterns begin to emerge.

Of all the explanations of this line the most sensible seems to be that first proposed by Beroaldus: ‘Conqueritur Cynthia sibi defunctae tegulam fractam mutilatamque sub capite fuisse suppositam, quum debuerit amator puluinos molles delicatosque subiicere.’ That Cynthia is talking about the performance of funeral rites is confirmed by Shackleton Bailey's discussion of 1.25 (CQ 63 (1949), 28 f.). In default of ancient parallels, I offer a modern one. In the last wishes of the Princess Teresa Uzeda in the novel I viceré by Federico De Roberto, first published in 1894, is included the provision:

Phidias’ absence from the survey of sculptors in Cic. Brut. 70 is curious, explanation in terms of differing histories of sculpture only partly convincing. I suggest that Cicero has valid literary motives and is wittily undermining the Atticist position by adaptation of what was a rhetorical topos, the parallel development of Greek prose and sculpture from archaic spareness to classical expertise and dignity: see Dem. Eloc. 14, D. H. Isoc. 3, p.59 U-R; more elaborate but partly deriving from Cicero and less homogeneous is Qu. 12.10.7–9. Cicero assumes the reader's knowledge of the commonplace, pointedly ignores the quality of grandeur and dignity, and develops a theory of technical progress on the basis of veritas and grace to attack the Atticists from their own preferences. The resulting model serves to demote Lysias, imitated by the Atticists but merely the counterpart of Calamis, strigosior (64) like archaic sculptures (cf. Dem. loc. cit. ) and superseded by later progress. The analogy thus obliquely repeats the brief but charged parenthesis in 66 that Demosthenes superseded Lysias.

The orthodox explanation of the syntax of lines 453–4 is that repeated by the most recent commentator, F. Bömer (P. Ovidius Naso Metamorphosen. Buch IV–V (1976), p.343): ‘neque adhuc epota parte ist Abl. absol.; der Gegenstand, mit dem Ceres den Jungen überschüttet, ist mixta … polenta.‘ The ablative absoluteis in itself unexceptionable (cf. Met. 5. 172-3, 9. 574-6), but the proliferation of three ablatives in two verses is awkward writing. As transmitted, line 454 is the product of a copyist who, as is often the habit of copyists, was confininghis attention to the verse on which he was engaged and still had ‘tosta … polenta’from line 450 echoing in his head. Unless I am much mistaken, Ovid wrote.

The various explanations and emendations so far offered for this passage do not seem to have solved its difficulties yet. While it is generally held that agrees ad sensum with the subject of the sentence (‘numerous children’), the sense of the adjective itself (‘hanging down without support’) appears far from satisfactory. Of the conjectures proposed till now only Jackson's isconsidered noteworthy by the latest editor of the play. Jackson, however, offersit as a ‘fair provisional remedy’ only.

There is no agreement about the supplement at the end of the first line. almost certainly refers to marriage, discussion of which is postponed till something becomes black or turns dark.

Theiler's (‘solange mir das Haar noch schwarz ist’) hardly fits thecontext, and Burkert's with the sense ‘when the grapes ripen’ (‘jetzt ist Frühling’) is not convincing. A metaphorical sense for ‘grapes’ is preferable, e.g. or, better, (Ebert-Luppe), (Slings), ‘when youwill be old enough to marry’; but the phrase comes with a jolt in the absence of any preparation or immediate follow-up: in the passages of Philodemus andHorace quoted as parallel by Ebert-Luppes the metaphor is not simply a singleword but is extended over two or three lines.

A number of enigmatic manuscripts of Plato have been identified during the last few decades. Thus Mercati (Studi e Testi 164(1952), 35) showed that Angelicus c.1.9 (w), which L. A. Post (The Vatican Plato and its Relations, pp. 73 f.) was unable to trace, is identical to Rossianus 17(558); N. G. Wilson (Scriptorium 16(1962), 393 n.2) proved that the long-lost Hassistenianus is no other than the Lobcovicianus in Prague University Library (this had already been suspected by H. Alline, Histoire du texte de Platon, p.237, n.3) Here is the solution of a thirdpuzzle.

This line, composed of only three words, occurs near the beginning of a speech in which Orestes, having revealed himself to his sister, is passing on to her and toa sympathetic chorus consisting of slaves in the royal palace at Argos, the gist of the instructions Apollo, through his oracle at Delphi, has given him about avenging his murdered father. The God, less merciful than the ghost of King Hamlet, has ordered him to kill his mother as well as her paramour.

How many kisses will be enough for Catullus? That is the question that opens Poem 7. The answer: as many as are the grains of sand in the Libyan desert, asmany as are the stars in the nightime sky. Yet in this poem sand and stars do notfunction simply as quantitative symbols. Each is in fact described in a mannerthat subtly alludes to the mouth – the organ from which Lesbia's kisses couldcome.