Among the many parodic elements in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes is the day-old baby's fart-omen. As is well-known, sneezing was considered prophetic in the ancient world, and the humour of the scene comes from the immediately preceding fart and the fact that Hermes’ bodily emissions are deliberate (σɉυ… øρασσάμευoζ ‘contriving’). Apollo has, in fact, gone in search of his baby brother on the basis of a standard bird-omen (note 2131 ‖ oìωυɂυ and 215 ‖༐σσυμέυωζ, echoed exactly in the later passage) and confronted with Hermes’ signs, he recognizes that the crepitation is just as much an omen as the sneeze, witness the plural τoúτoιζ oìωυoîσι a few lines later (303). We may compare a passage in Aristophanes’ Knights (638—42) where the Sausage-seller reports that he took courage before speaking to the Council from a good omen: a man farted to the right, ༐κ δπξιâζ ᾤπέπαρδε (639). Aristophanes’ formulation suggests to me that the composer of the hymn may be intentionally setting up a play on words (or even the possibility for a slip of the tongue or mishearing): the only difference between the verbal form ༐πέπταδε ‘sneezed’ (aorist to ༐πι-πτάρυuμαι, -πταíρω and its near-homophone ༐πέπαρδε ‘farted’ (aorist to ༐πι-πρδoμαι) is the (cross-linguistically trivial) reversal of the liquid and the dental stop.

On the northern frontiers, as on the eastern, Ammianus conceives of Rome's policy as fundamentally defensive. The essential requirement is to keep the barbarians out, or, if past negligence or failure has let them in, to drive them out, then keep them out for the future. But throughout his work there emerges a consistent constellation of themes.

At Aristophanes, Equites 230–2, one of the slaves who speak the prologue informs the audience that, when the Paphlagonian (i.e. Kleon) appears onstage, his mask will not resemble him, for the σκεϒoπoιoí (‘stage-property manufacturers’ vel sim.) were afraid to make one that depicted him accurately. In an important article, K. J. Dover argued that it must in fact have been very difficult to create easily recognizable portrait-masks, and suggested that the joke in Eq. 230–2 may be that the Paphlagonian's mask is horribly ugly but allegedly still nowhere near ugly enough. In response, D. Welsh, following an anonymous ancient commentator on Lucian, argued that Cratinus fr. 228 K-A shows that the historical Kleon had strikingly unattractive eyebrows. Had anyone wished to caricature the demagogue's physical appearance, therefore, he coule easily have done so, and portrait-masks may not have been so uncommon after all. Welsh's argument is at first glance quite appealing, and has been endorsed without further comment or argument by Sommerstein and Storey. I suggest, however, that the ancient commentator was confused, and that Cratinus’ remark is much more easily explained by reference to what is known about the use of facial expression as a communicative strategy in classical and early Hellenistic Athens, particularly as it appears in the comic poets. Kleon's eyebrows were probably no more ugly than those of anyone else, although he may have used them in an offensive way, and as Dover saw long ago, Eq. 230–2 cannot be taken as evidence for the use of portrait-masks on the late 5th-century comic stage.

In a discussion of the spread of Latin in ancient Palestine it has been argued that, apart from Westerners like Jerome who settled in the province and a number of translators from Greek into Latin and from Latin into Greek, three Latin authors whose works are extant may have been, with various degrees of probability, natives of the country. These are Commodian of Gaza, arguably the earliest extant Christian Latin poet; Eutropius, the author of a breviarium of Roman history, who apparently hailed from Caesarea; and the anonymous author of the Descriptio totius mundi et gentium, who certainly was a native of the Syro-Palestinian region, and conceivably of one of the Palestinian cities. Here I wish to discuss another case, which seems to me characteristic of the reluctance of scholars to admit that Latin, and Latin authors, were more prevalent in the East than is usually acknowledged. In fact, it may be not misleading to assert that the invariably adduced exceptions of Ammianus Marcellinus and Claudian as Latin writers from the East are exceptions by virtue of the quality of their work rather than by its very existence.

The purpose of this short note is to explain a joke in Aristophanes, Wasps. If the explanation is accepted, our knowledge of Athenian political and military history in the later 420s is enhanced.

The meaning of κερτομω and its congeners in Homer has been the subject of debate in this journal. Jones has argued that ‘to κερτομ⋯ω someone is to speak in such a way as to provoke (whether intentionally or not) a powerful emotional reaction’, whether of anger or fear, and thus means ‘“to utter stinging words at [someone]”, “pierce to the heart”, “cut to the quick”, rather than merely “provoke” This definition seems to work well enough for some cases, but certainly not for all, and especially not for the passage from which the whole controversy began: Iliad 24.649, where Achilles speaks to Priam ༐πικερτομέωυ. As Richardson says in his Iliad commentary, ‘there is no sign that Akhilleus’ speech has this direct effect [i.e. arouses fear] on Priam’. Jones's article was responding to an earlier one by J. T. Hooker, who attempted to ascertain the sense of Achilles’ ༐πικερτομέυ by surveying the usage of kertom- words throughout Homeric epic. He concluded that the basic meaning is ‘to taunt’ or, more abstractly, it ‘indicates the provocation of another person into behaving in a certain way, whether that is the behaviour desired by the speaker… or is not desired by the speaker’. The problem was that this definition did not seem to fit the very line from which his inquiry began, the words of Achilles to Priam. Hooker then hypothesized that the verse betrayed signs of an ‘imperfect adaptation’ of a different version of the poem in which Achilles taunted a defeated enemy or perhaps preserved his grudge against Agamemnon to its end. This explanation is unpersuasive.

A new look at Thucydides’ account of the debate at Sparta motivating the Spartan declaration of war (1.67–88) may provide a footnote to valuable past discussion. Chief concerns about the debate have always been (1) the uniqueness of the four-speech set-up; (2) the oddity of an Athenian embassy in attendance at a Peloponnesian League meeting; and (3) the unlikelihood that any detailed report of speeches made to the Peloponnesian League or Spartan assembly came to Athens. Thucydides' judgement concerning the cause of the Peloponnesian War is far more likely to have been based on his knowledge of past and present relations between Athens and Sparta and members of the Peloponnesian League (Ξυμπ⋯σα γνώμη) than on any information about an actual debate (τ⋯ ⋯ληθ⋯ς λɛχθ⋯ντα). But for τ⋯ δ⋯oντα he needed a confrontation which would not only dramatize both opposition I and characters of Sparta and Athens but also put them in historical context, that is, in their Persian War roles as recorded by Herodotus. Only in this way is it possible to explain peculiarities of this confrontation which appear to duplicate characteristics of the Herodotean debate involving Athens and Sparta before the battle of Plataea. Thuc. 1.67–88 is like Hdt. 8.140–4 in comprising four speeches of which the first (A) 1 is answered by the third (Cl) and the second (B) is answered by the fourth (C2). In each case Cl and C2 are spoken by representatives of a single people: with the Athenians in Herodotus’ debate answering two different peoples, and with two different Spartans in Thucydides answering two different peoples.

‘It is hard to become a truly good man': so Plato's Protagoras purports to understand the first line (Prt. 339d), and modern interpreters of the poem have followed him without exception.

It appears to have gone unnoticed that the simile used by Vergil at Aeneid 5.458–60 was appropriated by him from Apollonius Rhodius.

Euelpides and Peisthetaerus have just left Athens, looking for a better place to settle. Frightened by the arrival of Tereus' servant, they introduce themselves as birds. Peisthetaerus says that he is ‘Fearfowl, a Libyan bird’:

The literary contest of the two tragedians in Frogs is introduced by four stanzas redolent of Homeric combat, with their predominantly dactylic metre and a number of high-flown epic words. I am surprised that several editors prefer the reading ὑψὑλøωυ at 818, as íππóλοøος surely has a resonance of íπποκορυστ⋯ς of Iliad 2.1, etc. The readings and sense, however, of both halves of 819 have long been controversial. As Dover suggested in his 1993 edition (accepted more recently by Sommerstein) the MSS ‘linch-pins of splinters’ is less satisfactory than his proposed transposition to ‘splintering of linch-pins' (σὐáυδάλαμοí τε παραξουíωυ), which suggests a recollection of the dangers of chariot accidents or collisions, as in the funeral games of Il. 23. But the following expression ‘shavings of deeds’ is even more puzzling, and highly improbable, and Heiberg's emendation to σμιλο⋯, agreeing with φωτÓς (Euripides), is preferred by Stanford among others, though doubted by Dover.

The ordinary Latin words for ‘lonian’ are lonicus and lonius. Ovid does not use the former at all, and except for one problematical instance applies the latter only to the Ionian Sea (cf. OLD s. v.). Copyists, editors, and lexicographers, however, credit him, and him only, with Ioniacus, supposedly attested in two passages of almost identical wording:

The object of this note is to draw attention to a piece of evidence about the history of the Greek theatre which appears to have gone unnoticed, yet may be of some importance. Aelian in his Historia animalium 11.19 reports the fate of Pantacles the Lacedaemonian, who refused to allow some actors on their way to Cythera to pass through Sparta. Later, when performing official duties as ephor, he was torn to pieces by dogs.

The following works are referred to by author's surname only: H. W. Garrod, P. Papini Stati Thebais et Achilleis (Oxford, 1906); D. E. Hill, P. Papini Stati Thebaidos Libri XII [Mnemosyne Supplement 79 (Leiden, 1983)]; A. Klotz, P. Papini Stati Thebais (Leipzig, 1908; revised edn by T. C. Klinnert, 1973); R. Lesueur, Stace Thébaïde (Paris, 1990, 1991, 1994; 3 vols); J. H. Mozley, Statius (Loeb edn, London, 1928; 2 vols); J. J. Smolenaars, Statius, Thebaid VII [Mnemosyne Supplement 134 (Leiden, 1994)]; P. Venini, P. Papini Stati Thebaidos Liber XI (Firenze, 1970).

Tiberius' speech at the outset of the trial of Cn. Calpurnius Piso, as Tacitus reports it at Annals 3.12, sheds light on two discrepancies between relatio and response in the recently published senatus consultum de Cn. Pisone patre (hereafter SCPP).

Hamaker's conjecture κομâ (for τολμâ, sic) at Lysias 16.18 was adopted by Rauchenstein in his influential edition of 1869 and soon given powerful endorsement by Jebb and by Shuckburgh. Successive later editors and commentators have seen no reason to demur: Thalheim, Adams, Hude, Gernet and Bizos, Lamb, and finally Edwards and Usher all adopt κομâ, and, where they comment, unanimously cite Aristophanic parallels (especially Eq. 580) in support of a connection between longhaired affectation and ‘oligarchic’ affiliations; some also adduce the expression ảπ’ὂΨεως in justification. But this is an egregious instance of unwarranted tampering with a sound text. τóλμα is a quality conspicuously displayed by Mantitheus, on his own account of his character, words, and actions.

ῥαΨῳδ⋯σαι λ⋯γεται καí τó φλυαρ⋯σαι, τò áπλ⋯ς †λαβεíν (1. λαλεîν) κπ´ παγγεîλαι χωρíς †ἒργου τινός. This is how W. C. Greene (Scholia Platonica, Haverford, 1938) prints the last sentence of the Schol. ad Ion 530a ῥαψδν, which is repeated (with small changes) ad Rep. 373b and in Photius, Suda, Et. Magn., and Lex. Bekk. s.v.αφῳδοί.

At Dialogus 13.4, Tacitus makes Maternus decry the good fortune of the orators Vibius Crispus and Eprius Marcellus: ‘Nam Crispus iste et Marcellus, ad quorum exempla me uocas, quid habent in hac sua fortuna concupiscendum? Quod timent, an quod timentur? Quod, cum cotidie aliquid rogentur, ii quibus praestant indignantur? Quod alligati cum adulatione nec imperantibus umquam satis serui uidentur nec nobis satis liberi? Quae haec summa eorum potentia est? Tantum posse liberti solent’

The theme of the second declamation of Calpurnius Flaccus is ‘Matrona Aethiopem peperit. Arguitur adulterii’. In one of the excerpts (ed. L. Håkanson [Stuttgart, 1978], pp. 2, 6–10), the accuser is arguing that for a white woman with a white husband to produce a black child is certain proof of adultery, for individual races have fixed physical characteristics to distinguish them. I give the text as argued for by W. S. Watt (Eranos 94 [1996], 123).

So Ross, incorporating Bywater's transposition of ἂ συμβέβηκε τοîς αἰσθητοîς from 24 to 20. Thereby Aristotle distinguishes ‘the three types of objects of perception: (1) the ἲδια αἰσθητά, colour, sound, etc. (11. 18–19), (2) the objects to which these belong, but which are here described as being (in the order of our apprehension of them) contingent on the ἳδια αἰσθητά (11. 19–22), and (3) the κοιυà αἰσθητà, such as movement and size (11. 22–25)’—D. Ross, Aristotle De Anima (Oxford, 1961), 6; see also 289.