Twenty-Five years ago I was privileged to write a welcome to the infant Greece & Rome at its birth. Now I have been asked to welcome the adult journal, celebrating its Jubilee.

Athenaeus (xiv. 640 b–c) quotes from the Olbia of Euboulos, the Middle Comedy poet, some lines which begin ⋯ν τῷ γ⋯ρ αὐτῷ πάνθ' ⋯μο⋯—a phrase reminiscent of Anaxagoras for ancient hearers and for modern readers—and which continue, παρ⋯ προσδοκίαν, as follows: ‘“Everything together in the same place” will be for sale at Athens, figs, summoners, bunches of grapes, turnips, pears, apples, witnesses, roses, medlars, haggis, honey-combs, chick-peas, lawsuits, beestings, beestings-pudding, myrtle-berries, allotment-machines, irises, lambs, water-clocks, laws, indictments.’

Modern scholarship has devoted much time and ingenuity to the problem of the sources from which the Greek tragic poets drew the plots of their plays. It has been commonly assumed that somewhere in that largely unknown area of literature which lies between Homer and the fifth century b.c. most legends had already crystallized into more or less the shape in which we know them from drama; and that the Attic playwrights (with the possible exception of Euripides) made little more than minor alterations in tales already familiar to their audience. But there is little evidence to support this assumption, either in the scanty remains of Cyclic epic and choral lyric, or in the occasional remarks on the subject by ancient commentators. In this article I attempt to illustrate by a single example a different point of view: the belief that in dealing with this aspect of tragedy we should put the same emphasis on the creative artistry of the dramatists themselves which it has received from Kitto and others in discussing other sides of their work; and that where (as in most cases) the source of their version is unknown, the very fact that it is moulded to suit a dramatic purpose should lead us to give the author, rather than a hypothetical and perhaps imaginary tradition, the benefit of the doubt.

This article may be open to the charge of deviating unashamedly from its main subject, but any research into the sources of the fourth Georgic, or into Virgil's practical knowledge of apiculture—and it should be stated at once that there is no sure answer to the inquest— must eventually range over the whole of classical bee-literature. And it was curiosity over the sources of this Georgic which led me some years ago to set out on what proved to be a lengthy and meandering tour— starting with a short and disappointing excursion into Varro, and proceeding thence on a long road with numerous by-lanes until finally the course had been covered from Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Aelian, through Pliny and Columella, to the end of the journey in Palladius and the Geoponica.

One of the disadvantages of specialization is that other scholars often wish to make use of, but cannot evaluate, work in other fields. Moreover, it usually takes some time for a new theory to spread beyond the confines of a narrow specialist circle. The purpose of the present article is to summarize in English, and comment on, a new theory of the relationships of the Greek dialects and the historical facts to be deduced from them. The theory is mainly the result of the application to the ancient Greek dialects of the new technique of linguistic geography, which was first devised for the study of the Romance languages. The basis of what follows is an important article by E. Risch, following on a remarkable study by W. Porzig. The latter, though only recently published, was written some time ago, and some of its conclusions are disproved by the new evidence made available by the decipherment of the ‘Minoan’ Linear B script. Risch has been able to make some use of this, and it provides a valuable check on the soundness of the new theory.

In his two talks on Homer today Professor Dodds has given an excellent report on the Homeric question as it now is and presented his own moderate and pacific view with candour and persuasiveness. I am delighted to find myself in agreement with him in many questions, most of all in his appreciation of the work of Milman Parry. Milman Parry's proof that the Iliad and Odyssey were composed in an oral tradition is the most important and original contribution to the Homeric question in this century, and its importance is only gradually being seen. But Milman Parry's work does not seem to me to remove the creative poet from the Iliad and Odyssey, as some scholars, including Professor Dodds, seem to think. It shows only that their originality does not consist in their language, but in the use they put it to, and in the creation of plot and character.

The purpose of this article is to examine the belief that Cleon, the fifth-century Athenian demagogue, was not only violent and relentless but also venal and dishonest, and made money out of politics by taking bribes and misappropriating public funds. This view of his character had by the second-century a.d. become almost a commonplace of literature. To give only two examples, Aelian mentions the story (citing Critias as his authority) that Cleon was in debt when he entered politics but died worth 50 to 100 talents, and the scholiast on Lucian described Cleon as being ‘venal to excess’. The interesting point about this second comment, however, is its inappropriateness to the context, which calls for a reference to Cleon's rapacity rather than to his venality; this indicates to what an extent Cleon's reputation for bribe-taking had come to predominate over all his other qualities.

Few poems ever written have the poignancy of those in which Catullus finally turns aside from Lesbia and renounces her. They are the more poignant because of their finality, a finality clearly expressed as he deliberately looks back across the course of their love, and with that backward glance points his rejection of her. This is most clearly seen in the eleventh poem. When Catullus first came to Rome as a young provincial, he was doubtless encouraged by Metellus Celer (who had been in Cisalpine Gaul in 63 b.c. and presumably, like Caesar later, stayed with Valerius Catullus the elder) to visit Metellus' house on the Palatine. There he met Clodia. She overwhelmed him; and, unable to find words of his own in which to express this new and overpowering emotion, he turned to a poem of Sappho's, conveying rather than translating it in perhaps the first Latin Sapphics ever written (li).

In his Sather Lectures on Roman Satire, J. Wight Duff writes (pp. 160–1): ‘Indignatio facit versum, says Juvenal: “Wrath is the maker of my verse”. The author ought to know whence his main inspiration comes; and the thunder of explosive anger is abundantly audible in the earlier books. Yet there is a sense in which this familiar quotation tells only part of the truth. People can be immeasurably angry without achieving the satiric; for anger, to rise above mere invective into satire, must be artistically directed; and this is where Juvenal's own talents are necessary for the complete recipe.’

Nearly ten years have gone by since Dr. Cyril Bailey gave to lovers of Lucretius his edition of the poet in three volumes, winning for himself a crown, insignem cum laude coronam, after a lifelong quest and bestowing upon us an enlarged understanding of that wonderful work of antiquity, the De Rerum Natura, which holds in its ‘massive and magnificent whole’ many a valuable message for the modern world, could it but read them. At the outset of his commentary Dr. Bailey draws attention to a discrepancy that has often been discussed, namely that which lies between the literary masterpiece with which the poem opens, the invocation to Venus, and the Epicurean belief entertained by the poet that the gods neither govern the forces of Nature nor interfere in the affairs of men. On the one hand, Venus is addressed as a creative power with prayers for inspiration and assistance and for peace; on the other hand, we are told that the nature of the gods needs nothing of us, is untouched by anger, and is unmoved by merit; and if the reading of the manuscripts be retained, the second set of lines immediately succeeds and contradicts the first.

Generations of English editors, brought up to a rigid observance of the rules in the Public School Latin Grammar, have boggled at Horace's disregard of convention. It seemed indecent for the ablative of the agent to appear without its chaperon, the preposition ab. Some years ago a writer in the Classical Review faced the whole question afresh. He condemned Horace for omitting the preposition, though at the same time asserting that he could not have used it, because it was his rule never to represent the agent by ab with the ablative in lyric verse.