Polybius' sources for his account of the First Punic War are not in question. It is agreed that Fabius Pictor and Philinus of Agrigentum, whom he criticizes didactically in i. 14–15, were his sole authorities. But, as Gelzer has most recently pointed out,1 difficulties soon appear when one begins to assign the various sections of the narrative to one or other of Polybius' predecessors. This task has frequently been attempted, and a good deal of common ground has been won. It is not my purpose in this paper to go over that ground again. What I propose to do is, first, to discuss the most recent article on Philinus of Agrigentum, which is in my opinion based on false principles and comes to novel, but wrong, conclusions; this done I shall try to relate what can be discovered with certainty about the character of Philinus' work to the general body of Hellenistic historical writing and historical theory. I hope that such a study may help to throw light on one part of Polybius' direct literary inheritance.

The Latin versions of Aristotle's Categoriae have never received much attention from the editors of the Greek text. J. Th. Buhle (Arist. Op. Omn. i, Bipont. 1791) and Th. Waitz (Arist. Organ, i, Lpz., 1844) availed themselves of Latin texts, but in a very unsatisfactory way; and since them the Latin field has remained unexplored throughout the last hundred years, in which both Hellenists and Orientalists have done much to increase our knowledge of the textual tradition of the Categ. It is the purpose of these pages to give a summary account of the Latin tradition and to contribute to a revision of the Greek text by a collation of Boethius' recently discovered translation with the best printed Greek and Oriental sources.

Although the decision of Pericles to abandon Attica to devastation in 431 has often been severely criticized, the conviction of Thucydides that his defensive strategy was sound has been widely accepted during the last half-century. On the other hand, the offensive side of his strategic plan, consisting mainly of using his fleet to raid coastal districts of the Peloponnese, has tended to be dismissed as unimportant by modern writers, while a few have condemned it as pointless and wasteful. Because Thucydides devotes so little space to these raids, it is tempting to regard them as minor operations, but his careful record of the naval and military resources engaged, together with his statement that the force which Pericles commanded in 430 was approximately equal to that sent to Sicily in 415 (6. 31. 2–3), shows that they were on a substantial scale. Their influence upon the course of the war was slight, but if Periclean strategy is to be fully appreciated, it is clearly important to inquire why they were undertaken.

The purpose of this paper is to put forward the hypothesis that the author of ‘Herodes περ πολιτας is Kritias. The speech bears Herodes’ name: did Herodes' well-known interest in Kritias amount to the transcription of a whole speech? The speech concerns Thessalian affairs at approximately the time when Kritias was in Thessaly: is it exactly the time? and is the tone what we would expect Kritias' tone to be? We have much description of Kritias' prose style, and a few verbatim fragments: does the style of this speech correspond?

From Patristic writings ample evidence can be gathered about the important part which hymn-singing held in Early Christianity. Until recently, however, Early Christian hymnography was known only from documents transmitting the text but not the music. The discovery and publication of a Christian hymn in Greek with musical notation was, therefore, bound to change the whole aspect of studies concerned with the history of Early Christian music. This happened, as is well known, in 1922 when, under No. 1786 of the fifteenth volume of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri A. S. Hunt edited a fragment of a hymn, dating from the late third century, together with a transcript of the music by H. Stuart Jones. For the first time it became possible to realize what kind of music Greek-speaking Christians in Egypt sang in praise of the Lord.

The peace concluded between Athens and Persia at the close of the Persian Wars (c. 449 B.C.), and usually known as the Peace of Callias, has been the subject of a new investigation by Wade-Gery, which is clearly destined to serve as the basis of further discussion of its problems. In the present article I shall confine myself to one point of special interest arising out of a novel clause which Wade-Gery reads into the treaty and formulates, exempli gratia, as follows: ‘In the area west of Sardis inhabited by Greeks, the King shall send no functionaries nor exercise any authority: his sole right shall be a yearly tribute of a fixed amount based on the survey of Artaphernes in 493.’

Recent discussion of the problems associated with glacie has been copious. It has arisen (C.R. lii. 56) out of Housman's note, which runs as follows: ‘glacie nemini, quantum scio, praeterquam mini et Schradero et Hadriano Valesio admirationem mouit: ceteris exploratum est frigore pisces maculosos fieri, eos praesertim qui torrentem cloacam, locum frigidissimum, penetrare soleant.’ In his 1931 reprint he added (p. xlvi): ‘Ruperti took exception to glacie, but only to its case’. Housman's ironically stated objection to the sense is indeed a formidable difficulty; though the other—the fact of the two ablatives and the vagueness of the former—is itself serious enough to provide an additional indication of corruption.

The tribute of two maidens to the temple of Athena in Ilium was discontinued after the end of the ‘Phocian’ war (346 B.C.). We have for this the evidence of the Epitome of Apollodorus 6. 22 χéων δ τν παρελӨντων μετ τν Φωκiκν πλεπoν ἱκτiδας πασαντo πμoντεσ. In Tzetzes' commentary to Lycophron 1. 1141 the same piece of information is given on the authority of Timaeus (pp. 335–6 Scheer = fr. 66 FHG), but Wilamowitz, among others, showed that Tzetzes arbitrarily (though perhaps not foolishly) transferred the name of Timaeus from the scholium on 1. 1155.3 The information remains valuable without the adornment of an illustrious name. We know from a story of Aelian, which ‘Suidas’ partially preserved in many fragments (Aelianus, fr. 47, Hercher, ii, p. 205), that the Locrians were compelled by the Delphic oracle to resume the interrupted practice and submitted the regulation of it to a King Antigonus, δ βασiλεὺς Ἀντγoνoς øεӨν oἱ πρσταξεκλρῳ δiακρiӨναi This King Antigonus can hardly be identified with Antigonus Doson for two reasons which must, however, be admitted to be not absolutely cogent. First, the interval between interruption and resumption would be one of more than a century, whereas Aelian (though he cannot be pressed too much on any interpretation) presupposes a shorter interval. Secondly, the ‘Lokrische Madcheninschrift’ made famous by A. Wilhelm, which is an evident terminus ante quern for the intervention of King Antigonus, can hardly be later than 230–220 B.C. Wilhelm, indeed, had suggested a date c. 270–240 B.C. His date has been affected by recent changes in Delphic chronology; but the balance of probability (so far as I can see) still favours a date nearer to 250 than to 200 B.C. Thus, the more natural alternative remains between Antigonus Monophthalmus and Antigonus Gonatas. Either agrees well with the interruption after the third Sacred War.

Although students of the fifth century A.D. have not been slow to recognize the merits of the ͉στορ⋯α Βυζαντιακ⋯ of Priscus, few efforts seem to have been made to under-stand this historian's methods of composition. The purpose of the present note is to indicate that the literary fashions of his time have exercised an unfortunate influence on at least one part of Priscus' work.

In an article published in the C.Q. of October 1937 I collected instances of the use of colloquial words and expressions in the dialogue passages of Euripides. It was there noted that a few of these expressions also appear in Aeschylus and Sophocles, and the purpose of the present study is to collect these, together with other instances of colloquialism which are found in the two earlier tragedians and not in Euripides. The colloquial element in the language of Aeschylus and Sophocles is, of course, much smaller than in Euripides, but is perhaps greater than is sometimes supposed, and the topic has apparently not been treated elsewhere.

In my translation of the Historia Animalium, now thirty-five years old, I pointed out a couple of passages where ἄνθρωπος stood in the text though νος seemed to be the appropriate word. It had not occurred to me for the moment, though it soon after wards did, that ανος was at hand to account for so curious a misreading. The same contraction has other misreadings to account for, as we may read in Cobet; but I do not know that this one has been drawn attention to.

Plato's examination of False Statement (Sophist 259 D–263 D) is, like many of his discussions in the later dialogues, a mixture of complete lucidity with extreme obscurity. Any English student who seeks to understand it will of course turn first to Professor Cornford's translation and commentary; and if he next reads what M. Diès has to say in the Introduction to his Budé edition of the Sophist he will, I think, have sufficient acquaintance with the views of modern Platonic scholars on the subject. For myself, at least, I have not gained any further understanding from other writers than these two.

Plutarch in his Life of Agis (chapter 11) describes the plots by which Lysandrus the ephor contrived to depose King Leonidas II. He meant to use against him one of the Spartan laws which forbade a member of the royal houses from begetting children by a foreign woman, and another by which he who went out of Sparta with a view to settling abroad was liable to the death penalty. But though apparently a case could be made out against Leonidas under these charges, Lysandrus did not simply proceed with the prosecution. After instructing confederates who would bring the case, he with his fellow ephors ‘waited for the sign’. What this meant Plutarch explains in these words: ἔστι δ⋯ τοι⋯νδε· δι' ⋯τ⋯ν1 ⋯νν⋯α1 λαβ⋯ντες οἱ ἔϕοροι ν⋯κτα καθαρ⋯ν κα⋯ ⋯σ⋯ληνον, σιωπῇ καθ⋯ζονται πρ⋯ς τ⋯ν οὐραν⋯ν ⋯ποβλ⋯ποντες. ⋯⋯ν οὖν ⋯κ μ⋯ρους τιν⋯ς εἰς ἔτερον μ⋯ρος ⋯στ⋯ρ δι⋯ξῃ, κρ⋯νουσι τοὺς βασιλεῖς, ὠς περ⋯ τ⋯ θεῖον ⋯ξαμαρτ⋯νοντας, κα⋯ καταπα⋯ουσι τ⋯ς ⋯ρχ⋯ς, μ⋯χρις ἂν ⋯κ Δελϕ⋯ν ἢ Ὀλυμπας χρησμ⋯ς ἔλθῃ τοῖς ⋯λωκ⋯σι τ⋯ν βασιλ⋯ων βοηθ⋯ν.

The word τερθρεία, which L. and S.8 derived (following Moeris) from τερατεία and translated ‘the use of claptraps’, is perhaps best known from its occurrence in Isocrates (Helen, § 4), but the new edition has spread the net more widely, citing Philo, Philodemus, Proclus, Galen, Dion. Hal., and giving its meaning as ‘the use of extreme subtlety, hair-splitting, formal pedantry’. This agrees better with the gloss / κενοσπονδία attributed to Orus of Miletus in Et. Mag. 753. 4. Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Plutarch each use τερθρεύομαι once. In the Helen Isocrates, condemning the futile ingenuity of the Sophists in writing encomia on such unworthy objects as salt and humble-bees, holds that such tours de force are immoral, as (i) tending to deceive, (ii) representing a literary form of the vice περιεργία. Τερθρεία, then, should take its place, as a recognized term for the idle over-elaboration of a banausic theme, in the vocabulary of Greek literary criticism. It does not, however, appear in Rhys Roberts's ‘Glossary of Greek Rhetoric’ appended to his edition of D.H.'s On Literary Composition. No doubt this is because τερθρεία does not occur in this or any other of D.H.'s Scripta Rhetorica. But D.H. himself uses the word in Antiq. Rom. (ii. 19). Similarly J. F. Lockwood does not discuss the term in his lists in C.Q. xxxi and xxxii, where he collects words which are used metaphorically by D.H. in literary criticism. The metaphor in τερθρεία is certainly not obvious; but the literary sense must have involved some transference of meaning, for it is not to be expected that the word τερθρεία sprang, in full panoply of critical significance, from the brain of the Muse of Rhetoric; and it is part of the purpose of this paper to point the way to an explanation, or at least to set forth some known facts about the word and its possible congeners.

cum prorepserunt primis animalia terris,

mutum et turpe pecus, glandem atque cubilia propter

unguibus et pugnis, dein fustibus, atque ita porro

pugnabant armis, quae post fabricauerat usus,

donec uerba, quibus uoces sensusque notarent,

nominaque inuenere; dehinc absistere bello,

oppida coeperunt munire et ponere leges,

ne quis …

uoces and sensus are not in pari materia; indeed, uoces notare is nonsense, as Gow says. The defect was first pointed out by Housman, J. Phil. xviii, pp. 5–8; his remedy was to transpose one word and read donec uerba, quibus sensus, uocesque, notarent, nominaque inuenere. I doubt if any scholar not already familiar with Housman's note could understand his Latin here without considerable analytical effort; and I cannot but think that Housman was for once demanding from a pair of commas a cabalistic virtue hardly resident in the seal of Solomon. Admittedly he supplies a long list — one page and a half—of illustrative dislocations; but in my opinion two objections remain. In the first place, ‘interlacing’ (as our Platonists now term a form of what Plato called hyperbaton) of the clauses A B in the form A B A B is quite frequent in Latin verse; but A B A B A is rare in the extreme, not to be found in Horace, not perhaps in any Latin author except Lucretius. Secondly, the insertion of uoces, ‘expressions’ generally (cf. Gow), in such a way as to disrupt the pair uerba nominaque ‘verbs and nouns’ would be awkward, and for Horace anomalous, in the most lucid of contexts; here it makes confusion worse confounded.

Although modern texts of Propertius have generally inclined to conservatism, there remains a number of cases where editors have chosen, in Housman's phrase, timidly to alter what they might without rashness have defended; or where the arguments so far advanced in favour of the best attested reading leave room for supplement.

Thus:

I. 6. 25 f. me sine, quem semper uoluit fortuna iacere,

hanc animam extremae reddere nequitiae.

extrema … nequitia Fonteine.

Sir D'Arcy Thompson's emendation of ἄνθρωπоς to ⋯νоς in several passages of the Historia Animalium (C.Q. xxxix, 1945, 54–5), and his explanation of the corruption as due to confusion between ⋯νος and an abbreviation both receive strong confirmation from a passage of Polybius, describing an allenged procession held by Demetrius of Phalerum, in which a similar emendation has already been made and widely accepted.