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”’.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

Commentators have generally been content to cite parallels for the phrase iucunda uoluptas at Propertius 1.10.3 without drawing attention to an interesting resonance which it may evoke

Many readers of Mynors' commentary must have been mildly puzzled by the last sentence of his note on 491: ‘Some sensitive modern ears catch an echo of the Homeric emathoeis, “sandy” and haima, “blood”’. In commenting on the same line, Thomas is less negative, but mentions only the blood, not the sand: ’Haemi … campos: given the force of pinguescere … V. surely intends a gloss—“plains of blood” (cf. Gr. haima)‘.2 He provides no further guidance as to who might be the owner of Mynors’ ‘sensitive modern ears’. For the record, the answer is George Doig, and his case is far stronger than Mynors' dismissive comment might be taken to imply.3 The first point in favour is (as Doig says) the inaccuracy of Vergil's geographic reference.

Ovid begins his overtly programmatic Amores 2.1 with the claim that Cupid, who had previously interfered with the poet's attempt to write an epic (1.1), has once again ordered him to reject epic subjects (this time, a Gigantomachia) and to compose a book of decadent love-elegies instead. Faced with this new task, the poet dutifully proceeds to warn that his elegiac verses are not suitable for the prudish but hopes that they will be read by lovers. Among the prospective readers are young men who, like Ovid himself, have been shot by Cupid's arrow:

It is a characteristic of Ovid's Heroides for each epistle implicitly to establish the dramatic time, context and motive for its composition by the particular heroine to whom it is attributed. In this way the poet is able to exploit the tension between the heroine's inevitably circumscribed awareness of the development of her story and the superior information which can be deployed by a reader acquainted with the mythical tradition or master-text which dictates what is actually going to follow: Penelope hands over a letter to a man whom the reader familiar with Homer can identify as Ulysses even if she cannot, Ariadne wonders whether Naxos is infested with tigers at a moment shortly before Dionysus and his tiger-driven chariot will arrive.

Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.243–4:

nec tu iam poteras enectum pondere terrae

tollere, nympha, caput, corpusque exsangue iacebas.

Tacitus gives lavish treatment to the mutiny of the German legions in the aftermath of Augustus' death in a.d. 14 and provides an excellent centrepiece in a speech (given in oratio recta) by Germanicus to the troops of the Lower German army at Ara Ubiorum (Cologne). After the harsh treatment of a delegation from Rome, Germanicus responded to requests that he send Agrippina and Caligula to safety. As the family was leaving the camp the troops surrounded Germanicus, who moved them to repentance by his speech. Previous writers have already discussed particular debts to Livy and to Virgil, but none has, I think, pointed to the most likely source for Germanicus' opening remarks: ‘Non mihi uxor aut filius patre et re publica cariores sunt…’. Goodyear dismisses the sentiment as a variety of the ‘commonplace’. that the state was more important than the individual and refers the reader to Béranger. However, none of these passages is as close or as pointed as the examples I consider below.

These famous words are generally taken to refer to the weighing of the dead Carthaginian's ashes, and I have no quarrel with that. However, I should like to bring i into the debate the commonly used Roman steelyard balance, the statera. This J bronze balance has an eccentric fulcrum. The scale pan is suspended from the shorter arm and the counterweight hangs from a loop which is free to move along a r graduated scale on the longer arm of the fulcrum.

In CQ 46 (1996), 591–5, I proposed an emendation to Plutarch, de Stoic, rep. 1048DE which included the adoption of the variant ἰσχύουσιν (found in X1 and F1) for the ἰσχύν otherwise attested in the MSS.