There is evidently no skene in the early plays of Aeschylus and the locale changes easily. But in the Oresteia (and afterwards) a skene fixes the locale, though only for what happens on the stage. In Ag. it represents an outer wall. In Choe. it is not at first in the arena of action and so not in the path of vision, but it represents the wall by 584 when Electra enters the house, or at least by 653 when Orestes shouts to a doorkeeper. In Eum. 1–234 the skene represents (unless I am mistaken) an inner wall; the stage is an interior; and when Apollo enters from the far side at 179 (to our surprise), he seems to be coming from the adyton. The orchestra is still a locale unbounded as it was before. The tomb of Agamemnon in Choe. 1–651 is thought an indefinite distance from the house, not merely a lion's leap away. A temple of Athene becomes the Pnyx at Eum. 566 and then the hill of Ares at 685.

The duplication ο τι…οποιν has caused much trouble. However, schol. on explains ο τι by αντι τον οποιον. The οποιον may well have begun life as an intramarginal gloss written against the beginning of 2–3, which the next scribe mistook for the first word of 3 in the text, and dropped the original first word, which on this hypothesis would not necessarily bear any literal resemblance to οποιον. As for what this word was, there are obviously many possibilities; if for instance it was οανοντος, that would make explicit the contrast between the dead Oedipus and νωνπωοαιν, in a manner helpful to the context.

A propos of his earlier attempt to demonstrate, by means of measurements, computer-enhanced images and laser technology, that the archon of IG i311 was Antiphon (418/17), not Habron (458/7), Mortimer Chambers now quotes with approval the favourable verdict of J. Tréheux: ‘la mésure des intervalles entre les lettres, la superposition des photographies multiples et, surtout, le bombardement du marbre par un rayon laser ont prouvé (les photographies en couleur A et B ne permettent pas d'en douter)

In his admirable commentary, Jeffrey Henderson notes the significance of posture and of physical setting. He does not remark that the statue of Leaina near to which Lysistrata and Kalonike are standing on the Akropolis was intimately tied to the obscure story of the later years in the Athenian tyranny. With minor variations of detail or colour the story was that Leaina, a hetaira beloved of Harmodios or Aristogeiton, had been tortured by Hippias after the murder of Hipparchos but, brave girl, had preferred to die than say yes, or indeed say anything. She bit out her tongue. The Athenians set up a bronze lioness, the work of Amphikrates, to commemorate her martyrdom.

In the extensive cast of characters named in Isaeus' On the Estate of Hagnias are two brothers, Chaereleos and Macartatus. The speaker, their brother-in-law, is anxious to impress upon the members of the court that neither was a rich man. ‘You are all my witnesses,’ he asserts, ‘that…they were not in the class of those who perform liturgies but rather of those who possess a modest estate.’ Chaereleos on his death left land worth no more than 3000 drachmas. Macartatus left nothing at all. ‘For you know,’ the speaker reminds his audience, ‘that he sold his land, bought a trireme, manned it, and sailed off to Crete, (you know it) because it was by no means a covert act—indeed, it furnished a topic for discussion in the Assembly, namely that he might cause a state of war instead of peace between us and the Spartans.…It turned out…that he died along with this property of his that he sailed off with. For he lost everything, both the trireme and his life, in the war’.(Is. 11.48–9)

In 180 B.C., in response to a treaty-breaking incursion into Galatia and a threat to Cappadocia, Eumenes of Pergamum marched against Pharnaces of Pontus. The route he took is described thus by Polybius (24.14.8–9):

παραγενμενοι δ' κ Καλπτου πεμπταῖοι πρς τν Ἅλυν ποταμν κταῖοι πλιν νζευξαν εἰς Παρνασσν. ἔνθα κα Ἀριαρθης τν Καππαδοκν βασιλεὺς συνμιξεν αὐτος μετ τς οἰκεας δυνμεως, κα (παρεισ)λθον εἰς τν Μωκισσων χώραν.

The phrase ei mihi is used fifteen times by Plautus. On all but one occasion these words introduce a new speaker. The single ‘exception’ is, I suggest, rather an error of transmission. I quote the line in context, Bac. 1171–4

NIC. Ni abeas, quamquam tu bella es,

malum tibi magnum dabo iam. BACCH. Patiar,

non metuo, ne quid mihi doleat

quod ferias. NIC. Ut blandiloquast!

ei mihi, metuo. SOR. Hie magis tranquillust.

1173 non – blandiloquast uno versu B 1174 SOROR B: B D

Readers of Plautus’ Poenulus are struck by the generally ‘sympathetic’ portrayal of the title character Hanno, a portrayal somewhat surprising to us since the play was produced shortly after the Second Punic War.1 Contrary to what we might expect, Hanno the Carthaginian is neither villain nor scapegoat, and he even exhibits the Roman virtue of pietas.2 However, Hanno's portrayal is not wholly positive, for Plautus delineates his character principally by endowing him with the negative stereotypes of Punic physiognomy, dress, speech, and behaviour familiar to his Roman audience.3 Hanno's Punic ethnicity is not merely an incidental matter of fact, as it is with his relative Agorastocles, but an essential part of his characterization that serves to isolate him from all the other characters of the palliata. While some of Hanno's vices—deceit, licentiousness, and effeminacy—are not exclusive to Carthaginians and are shared by other Greek characters in the palliata, there is one vice peculiar to Hanno. In this paper I argue that Plautus ridicules Hanno through arecurrent insinuation of incest. The insinuation of incest has not, to my knowledge, been noted previously, but our text does imply it in three conspicuous places.

This passage occurs in a series of examples of optical illusions which Lucretius provides in order to illustrate the way in which the mind can misinterpret the evidence of the senses. There are no manuscript variations relevant to the problem which I wish to discuss.

The situation envisaged is that in fording a swift river, a horse has come to a halt in mid-stream. ‘We’, that is, the rider, look down into the rushing water and get the impression that our horse is moving sideways and upstream, although the horse is in fact stationary. And wherever we turn our eyes across the water, everything seems to be in motion. The question is, what is meant by the word ‘everything’, that is, omnia in line 424? Bailey interprets: ‘when after looking down for some time at the rushing stream, we then look up at the objects on the bank, they all seem to be moving.! Similarly Leonard and Smith take the reference to be to’ all objects on the bank or all stones, etc., sticking out of the stream.’ In this case the words ‘assimili nobis ratione’ must be taken closely together: the objects on the bank seem to be moving upstream in the same way that we ourselves appear to do.

The fifth poem in Horace's first book of Epistles takes the form of an invitation to Torquatus to attend a dinner which the poet is preparing for that evening, the eveof the Emperor's birthday (line 9 eras nato Caesare). The fare will be simple but Horace will see to it that the furnishings, napkins, vessels and plates will be clean and bright and that the company and the seating-plan will be to Torquatus’ taste (21–6). Horace will get Butra and Septicius to be there, and Sabinus, too, as long as he is not kept away by a prior dinner engagement or by a girl he'd rather spend the evening with. With Torquatus and Horace, that makes four or five diners, so that there is room for others before the triclinium is full, although there shouldn't be too many; or, as Horace puts it (28–9):

locus est et pluribus umbris;

sed nimis arta premunt olidae conuiuia caprae.

Galen's intellectual autobiography, On my own opinions, has challenged, and frustrated, potential editors for over a century. It is preserved in Greek excerpts, in a Latin translation made from the Arabic and with a spurious conclusion, and, for its last three chapters, in a passage of continuous Greek that circulated under the misleading title of On the substance of the natural faculties. Around 1340, the Italian translator Niccolo da Reggio made an extremely faithful Latin version from a Greek manuscript of the last two chapters. Although by itself no one source offers a complete text of the treatise, together they apparently cover it in its entirety. The Latino-arabic version, called variously De sententiis, De sententiis medicorum, and De credulitate Galeni, is the most extensive, but, as a comparison with the surviving Greek shows, it frequently departs considerably from the wording, and even general meaning, of the Greek. Indeed, without the availability of many parallel passages elsewhere in the Galenic corpus, much of this Latin translation would remain unintelligible.

The praetorship of L. Rupilius is of great importance only to the biography of L. Rupilius. His consular candidacy has a wider significance, since his repulsa represents a reverse for his most prominent supporter, Scipio Aemilianus.

As the praetorship is not explicitly mentioned in the sources, its terminus non post quem is fixed by the consular candidacy. Scholarly treatment of the question is hard to come by. The terminus post quem for the candidacy of Lucius is his brother's candidacy (in 133); the terminus ante quem, Scipio's death (in 129): Cicero (Lael. 73) tells us that Scipio brought about the election of P. Rupilius, but failed to make his brother Lucius consul. Broughton classified L. Rupilius as ‘Pr. by 133 ’, and in this seems to have followed Münzer, who indeed considered L. Rupilius ‘Praetor gegen 620 = 134’, but added that he was a candidate ‘urn das Consulat für 623 =131 oder noch eher für 624 = 130’. Of course, if L. Rupilius was a candidate in 131 for a consulship of 130, then he was praetor by 133. A candidacy in 1294 can be safely ruled out: Scipio died in the first half of the year, in spring or early summer. But we cannot rule out candidacy in 130 for 129: Scipio might have preferred L. Rupilius to either consul of that year. The latest possible date for the praetorship of L. Rupilius is therefore 132.

To my Oxford Classical Text of Cicero's De Officiis, published in 1994, I add two footnotes.

The first is an important citation of Cicero in Augustine, which I missed thanks to my own incompetence. Maurice Testard, in his Saint Augustin et Ciceron remarks in Augustine's Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum not only the passage I note at Off. 1.7, but also 4.43 ( =P.L. 45.1361). Migne's text (repunctuated) reads as follows:

Sequitur ergo ut uerecundiam deponas, ac manente amicitia cum

magistro Cynicis foedereris: quos tamen aliquorum, ut Cicero in

Officiis refert, etiam Stoicorum argumenta comitantur. Arguunt

quippe communem honestatem, ‘quod ea quae re turpia non sint, uerbo

5 flagitiosa ducamus; ilia autem quae re turpia sint, nominibus

appellemus suis. Latrocinium perpetrare, fraudem facere, adulterium

committere, re turpe est, sed dicitur non obscene: liberis operam

dare honestum est re, nomine obscenum. Pluraque in earn sententiam

ab eisdem’ inquit ‘contra uerecundiam disputantur. Nos autem

10 naturam sequamur, et omne quod abhorret ab oculorum auriumque approbatione fugiamus.’.

In A.D. 357 while at Antioch the sophist Libanius wrote a letter to his friend Anatolius in which he congratulated him on his appointment as praefectus praetorio Illyrid. He expressed his pleasure at the conduct of Anatolius in his new appointment, and related a story which he had heard at Antioch from Musonianus, the praefectus praetorio Orientis. On his appointment, Anatolius had promised Constantius II that he would not ignore the misconduct of any official, whether civilian or military, whatever his rank. This promise had been put into effect almost immediately when one of the military commanders who showed cowardice against the barbarians was arrested.