The Open University received its charter in July 1969, offered its first courses in January 1971, and produced its first graduates (with some ‘credit exemptions’) by the end of 1972. Those who originally planned it saw that many people who for various reasons missed their opportunity of university education at the usual stage of their lives could profit from it, provided that what was offered was home-based study in spare time. They saw too that radio and television offered an excellent opportunity for helping such study to be direct and personal. Students then are admitted with no entry qualification except the age of 21. We have built a few parameters into our selection procedure; we can control the proportion admitted to any one foundation course or from any one region of the country for example; but basically it is ‘First come, first served’. Typical students are the boy who has been to a poor school, has never been turned on, has left at the age of 15 and gone into industry, and in his twenties has suddenly become excited by what he is doing and at the same time has revealed a keen mind; the girl who with decent A levels has got married at 18, sees her family growing up, is aware that she has time for some study while they are at school, and will be able to take a full-time job in three or four years; the long-term prisoner needing a constructive occupation in prison and qualification for when he comes out; the working-class lad who has entered the police force and, by ability and application, has worked his way up from the beat; the retired industrial worker or bank manager who wants a positive purpose in his retirement; the teacher who has no degree, perhaps because the family could not afford more than a two-year course, and seeks more knowledge in his subject, as well as the increment applicable to a degree; the person well settled in one profession who would like to qualify for a second career before giving up the first; the taxi-driver who is interested in people and ideas, and wants to know what it is all about. We have them all, and many others.

Most modern studies of Roman agriculture have concentrated on the methods used for farming on a large-scale and on a commercial basis. This is not surprising since the classical writers on agriculture in Latin, Cato, Varro, and to a lesser extent Columella and Palladius, are mainly concerned with this aspect. And naturally so, since only the gentleman farmer could read them and profit by their advice. There is, as has been remarked by K. D. White, a serious lack of evidence about the life and work of the peasant farmer. This was, however, considered to be of great importance by the Romans themselves:

hanc olim veteres vitam coluere Sabini,

hanc Remus et frater, sic fortis Etruria crevit,

scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma.

TheMetamorphoses version has been culled for several anthologies. At line 206 editors comment that the Great Bear defines the north and Orion the south, leaving their readers to take Daedalus' instructions at their face value. Professor William S. Anderson, in his lovely new edition of Books vi–x, repeats the formula, observing by the way that Orion is visible in the northern hemisphere during two winter months only. Stop, please! I have a difficulty. A squadron commander who began a briefing for a daylight operation by telling his crews to leave their star charts behind, since they were going to fly all the way in formation, would be considered overdue for a long spell of leave before his oddities took a more dangerous turn. Why am I to suppose that Daedalus intends a night flight ? Aerial interception is not a risk. Cretan archery may be never so renowned, but any theory that Daedalus has decided to take off from the ‘monte minor collis’ (Ars Am.) under cover of darkness, as a precaution against ground fire, finds no support in the text of Ovid; nor does there seem to be any reason to suppose that the flight is to take place during those two months of winter when Orion is visible. Everything points to the contrary. From the moment both are airborne Daedalus is watching and criticizing his son's performance, and their progress is observed by fishermen, shepherds, and ploughmen, who are not usually night-workers with infra-red vision.

This article is an attempt to throw light on Virgil's narrative of the death of Turnus by comparing it to Homer's narrative of the death of Hector. It will begin with a summary of these two episodes.

A generation brought up with bicycles and cars takes for granted the necessity of lubrication. Yet consultation of the Encyclopaedia Britannica reveals that the earliest book devoted to a theoretical examination of the subject appeared in 1883; before that date, lubrication was based solely on rule of thumb and traditional experience. It is natural to enquire how far the Greeks and Romans advanced in acquiring this empirical knowledge.

Thus Horatio on the ghost of Hamlet's father. Good dramatic poetry; but here it must serve a baser turn, as an illustration of my theme. My question is this: when the spirit is being extravagant and erring, just what is it being ? The editors are quite willing to tell us. For example, Dowden, in the Arden Shakespeare, has the following notes: extravagant] wandering out of bounds, vagrant; ‘erring’, straying; and the Variorum Shakespeare takes a similar view. So Hamlet's father's ghost is simply wandering about away from the nether world to which it must return at daybreak.

It is well known that many poets, from Callimachus (Anth. Pal. ix. 507) down to those mentioned by Rosamund Harding on pp. 38—9 of her book An Anatomy of Inspiration (Cambridge, 1942), have preferred to compose their works by night. It is perhaps less well known that some poems are or claim to be the result of involuntary insomnia. One example is Catullus 1. Catullus had spent a day composing poetry in the company of his friend, the brilliant young ‘new’ poet Licinius Calvus (lines 1–16):

Hesterno, Licini, die otiosi

multum lusimus in meis tabellis,

ut convenerat esse delicatos:

scribens versiculos uterque nostrum

ludebat numero modo hoc modo illoc,

reddens mutua per iocum atque vinum.

‘Attica has a plentiful supply of stone,’ says Xenophon (Poroi i. 4),‘from which are made the fairest temples and altars, and the most beautiful statues for the gods.’ Athens was indeed blessed in its building stones, as in its fine clay. The immensely complicated geophysical processes which created the exquisite landscape of Attica produced a variety of useful and often beautiful materials, nicely distributed about the land. The stones are mostly limestones of different sorts. Marble itself is a limestone miraculously metamorphosed by titanic heat and pressure into its characteristic crystalline structure, thus forming in the body of the earth what M. Aurelius (ix. 36) aptly calls poroi, calluses or nodules. This has happened in many places, but in most the result consists of comparatively small lumps or thin veins; much rarer are the massive beds from which can be extracted the great blocks needed for the major architectural members of temples and other large buildings. In this too Attica is exceptionally favoured. More than one huge layer runs through the fabric of both Pentelikon and Hymettos; and other extensive beds lie near the southern tip of Attica.

Claudius's stay of sixteen days in Britain preceded one of the most famous triumphal celebrations in the history of the early Roman Empire. The emperor's own personal involvement in the conquest of Britain in A.d. 43 was negligible, but that he took the trouble to visit the new province and to receive the submission of eleven kings of Britannia is much to his credit. Claudius is known to have brought with him a great retinue of Roman senators, the Praetorian Guard, and perhaps also a detachment of Legio VIII, to overawe the defeated Britons. Four legions had been enough to crush them, yet here was the emperor with further reinforcements, including his crack Praetorians.

The ancients had no more difficulty than the modern commentator in distinguishing the attitude of the Stoics and the Peripatetics to men's emotions. On the one hand the Peripatetics believed that the emotions were given to man as a necessary part of his being, and though intended to be subordinate to man's reason, they were nevertheless capable of giving him help. The work of reason therefore can be compared to that of the vine-dresser, whose task it is to lop off the wild growth, but to cultivate and dispose the serviceable remainder. On the other hand the Stoics maintained that the passions were ‘συστολὴ ἄλογος’, an irrational mental contraction, and that the wise man would not be subject to any of them.

It sometimes happens that the plausibility of an interpretation of a passage in the Classics depends on our estimate of what is likely in human terms in any age. It may be worth while in such cases to adduce modern parallels. Here is an example.

Munro suggested long ago that, from its passionate tone, Catullus li (‘Ille mi par esse deo …’) should be taken as one of his first poems to Clodia, and that this (besides metrical equivalence) would account for his choosing the name of Lesbia as a pseudonym, the poem being a free translation of one addressed by Sappho to a Lesbian girl. Macnaghten and Ramsay develop this idea significantly in their introduction to the poem: ‘Probably the earliest poem to Lesbia, written perhaps in 62 B.c. It is a translation of Sappho's song to a Lesbian girl, chosen by Catullus, not because lover's language is in all ages the same, but as the safest way of revealing to Clodia the secret of his love. If she cared for him, she could hardly mistake his meaning; if not, it was only a translation after all.’