The paradoxographer Apollonius (Mirab. 40, p. 53 Keller) preserves the memory of a singular occurrence which Aristoxenus (fr. 117 Wehrli) had recorded as having happened in southern Italy in his own time. A strange insanity afflicted women. They would suddenly leap up in the middle of dinner, hearing the call of a voice, and rush out into the country.μαντενομένοις δ⋯ τοῖς Λοκροῖς κα⋯ ‘Ρηγίνοις περ⋯ τ⋯ς ⋯παλλαγ⋯ς το⋯ πάθους εἰπεῖν τ⋯ν θεόν, παι⋯νας ἄιδειν ⋯αρινοὺς †δωδεκατης† ⋯μέρας’

In an essay entitled ‘Cinna the Poet’ published in 1974, T. P. Wiseman forcefully countered the arguments of Monroe E. Deutsch and others against the identification of the ‘neoteric’ poet Cinna with the tribune Gaius Helvius Cinna, who after Caesar's funeral was torn to pieces by an enraged mob, mistaken by it for the praetor Lucius Cornelius Cinna, who had applauded Caesar's murder. The identification of the poet with the tribune is supported by Plutarch, Brutus 20.4, where the murdered tribune is called a ποιητικ⋯ς ⋯ν⋯ρ. As Wiseman says, ‘there are six other ancient accounts of the murder, drawn from a source or sources unknown; five of them call the victim a tribune of the plebs, and none of them says he was a poet. Impressed by this, many scholars have thought that the victim was not in fact the poet Helvius Cinna, and M. E. Deutsch suggested in 1925 that either (i) the phrase in the Brutus describing him as a poet is a gloss, or (ii) “the tribune also dabbled in verse but was not the famous poet”.’ Wiseman's refutation of the various arguments of Deutsch and his followers against the identity of the poet and the tribune seems to me quite cogent, but the debate shows no sign of having been brought to a close: G. V. Sumner concludes his review of Wiseman's essay with an argument that the tribune was probably somewhat younger than the poet, and the suggestion that the tribune may have been ‘the adoptive, and hence homonymous, son of the poet’.

Among the clothes Ariadne is wearing in this scene is a finely woven headdress which Catullus terms a ‘mitra’ (1.63). Commentators have defined this mitra variously as a ‘scarf’ (Ellis, Merrill), a ‘cap or bonnet’ (Fordyce) and a ‘kind of hairnet’ (Quinn).

In Greek literature, a ‘mitra’ is any piece of cloth worn by women in various ways to tie up their hair. While the word came to be used by Latin writers, it seems to have retained its specifically Greek associations. Varro refers to ‘mitra’ as a Greek word:

mitra et reliqua ferre in capite postea addita cum vocabulis Graecisd. (de Ling. Lat. 5.130)

When Wordsworth was eighteen he embarked on a series of translations from Virgil's Georgics. All that survives of them today is a series of rough drafts and jottings, among which is a short note in which he attempts to resolve the well-known crux at 4.228–30

Suppose we read it thus – ‘prius haustu parcus aquarum / Ora fove, etc.’ – and construe it thus:

First sparingly steep the mouth (‘ora’) of the hive in water (‘haustu … aquarum’).

Few details in Virgil's description of the underworld have elicited more comment than his treatment of the sinners Ixion and Pirithous

quid memorem Lapithas, Ixiona Pirithoumque?

quos super atra silex iam iam lapsura cadentique

imminet adsimilis; lucent genialibus altis

aurea fulcra toris; epulaeque ante ora paratae

regifico luxu; Furiarum maxima iuxta

accubat et manibus prohibet contingere mensas

exsurgitque facem attollens atque intonat ore

Scholars have long seen that Horace's treatment of Homer in this Epistle demands to be read in the tradition of moral allegory in which Ulysses becomes the type of the ‘man of virtue’ (‘rursus quid virtus et quid sapientia possit / utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulixen’, 17–18): on such a reading, Circe becomes an allegory of foolish passion ‘to which Ulysses’ companions give in through their stultitia, and because of which they lose their reason and become no better than animals. Antisthenes, from whose writings such an allegorising approach probably developed, was regarded as an early Cynic, and the idea became the special province of Cynic-Stoic philosophy; scholars have therefore felt justified in seeing this epistle as a criticism of Epicureanism, represented by the sponsi Penelopae, nebulones, Alcinoique … iuventus, from the point of view of a Cynic or a syncretistic Stoic.

In a recent issue of CQ, N. J. Lowe refers to the ‘slyly Catullan appeal to the language of pietas’ in [Tib.] 3.7 (4.11) 1–2 (‘Estne tibi, Cerinthe, tuae pia cura puellae / quod mea nunc vexat corpora fessa calor’?). In this he follows Matthew Santirocco, who comments on these lines: ‘significantly, the expression for love here is not just cura as before [sc. in 3.16 [4.10] 3], but pia cura. We recall the pietas Catullus proclaimed in his affair with Lesbia (cf. 76.2,5) and perhaps also pius Aeneas and all that pietas meant to the Augustan age, and then we realise that Sulpicia is now concerned not so much with the mere fact of Cerinthus’ affection as with its quality.

There is a persistent tradition of reading Propertius 1.10, according to which the Gallus addressed by the poem is the elegiac poet, and the poem itself is a description, not, or not only, of Gallus and his girl in bed but of Propertius reading Gallus’ love elegy.1 In CQ 39 (1989), 561–2, James O'Hara suggests that the phrase ‘in alternis vocibus’ in Prop. 1.10.10 is a hint at amoebean verse, and as such may refer to the amoebean elegiac experiments by Gallus which Fairweather argues are represented by the Qasr Ibrim papyrus. This may well be right. I suggest, however, that the primary metaphorical meaning of ‘in alternis vocibus’ is ‘in your elegiac verse’. Oblique hints at such a reading can be found in Ross (above n. 1), who describes 9f as ‘an extremely suggestive couplet’, and Hinds, in his discussion of alternus as a programmatic term in Ovid, Fasti 4.484.

Incongruity and anachronism characterize Ovid's treatment of the gods and mythological figures in the Metamorphoses; frequently the resulting discrepancy between the superhuman world of mythology and characteristic aspects of Roman society serves to pillory that society as well as to undermine the dignity of the traditional mythology. Linguistic parody is one of the tools Ovid uses to highlight these discrepancies. An example recently noted is that of the serenade delivered by Polyphemus the landlubber to his marine beloved, Galatea (Met. 13.789–869): by casting this in the form of Gebetsparodie, Ovid mocks the literary topoi of the paraclausithyron as well as reducing the heroic status of the mythological protagonists. I suggest that in Tiresias’ brief appearance in Metamorphoses 3 Ovid imitates the pedantic locutions of jurists’ language in order to demonstrate how trivial and undignified are the preoccupations of the bickering Olympians.

Pompey has been treacherously killed, his body decapitated and thrown into the surf. The faithful Cornelia cannot give her husband a proper funeral, but must be content to place on the pyre all that is left of his greatness. Commentators are not of much help in this place, most caught up in tralatician glossing and hence content to echo the scholiastic reference to Pompey's three triumphs. Thomas Farnaby thought of the funeral of Misenus in Aeneid 6; but one looks in vain to Grotius (1639), Oudendorp (1728), Burman (1740), Bentley (1760), Weber (1828–9), Francken (1896–7), Heitland-Haskins (1889), Housman (1926), Bourgery-Ponchont (1947), and Luck (1985) for the most important parallel, which is to Dido in Aeneid. I adduce the passages Heinze well described as examples of ‘das Idealbild eines heroischen Weibes’:

tu secreta pyram tecto interiore sub auras

erige, et arma uiri thalamo quae fixa reliquit

impius exuuiasque omnis lectumque iugalem,

quo perii, super imponas:

494–7) super exuuias ensemque relictum

effigiemque toro locat haud ignata futuri.

(507–8)hie, postquam Iliacas uestis notumque cubile

conspexit, paulum lacrimis et mente morata

incubuitque toro dixitque nouissima uerba:

‘dulces exuuiae…’

So a frenzied matron cries out to Phoebus as she rushes through an appalled Rome. In CQ 34 (1984), 454f. I pointed out that the words primos in ortus could not here bear their normal sense ‘to the far east’ (as taken by Duff, similarly Bourgery-Ponchont, and others), which in view of the next line would be geographically absurd, and, distraught as the lady was, even so highly improbable. I did, however, then think R. J. Getty right in taking the expression primos ortus as simply = ‘the east’, and adding ‘the epithet primos appears to be otiose’. But I now feel very doubtful about the epithet being viewed as otiose in order that the words may denote Egypt; quite different are the passages noted in OLD primus 6 ‘belonging to the rising sun, eastern’, as Stat. Silv. 1.4.73 ‘occidiias primasque domos’ in the cited Sen. Oed. 116 ‘miles… ausus Eois equitare campis / figere et mundo tua signa primo’ the literal meaning is no doubt ‘on the world's first edge’ (Miller, Loeb), but its development into ‘eastern’ is readily seen. Egypt, however, as viewed by Rome, is but the bare beginning of the east, and that is what primos must indicate above (note emphatic position): see OLD primus 10 b ‘the nearest part of, the entrance, threshold, or sim., of, noting e.g. Ov. Fast. 1.717 ‘horreat Aeneadas et primus et ultimus orbis’, Cic. Fam. 3.6.2. ‘te in prima prouincia uelle esse, ut quam primum decederes’. In a characteristic departure from their stock meaning Lucan's words primos in ortus must then mean ‘to the threshold of the east’, i.e. the delta of the Nile, as explained in the next line (684): contrast 7.360 primo gentes oriente = ‘the nations of the far east’ (Duff). For Egypt viewed as the beginning of the east, cf. Mela 1.9 ‘Asiae prima pars Aegyptus’, Plin. Nat. 5.47 ‘[Africae] adhaeret Asia, quam patere a Canopico ostio [Nili] ad Ponti ostium Timosthenes…tradidit’, Mart. Cap. 6.675 ‘Aegyptus… Asiae caput, 3 quae una ab ostio Canopi ad ostium Ponti habet… milia passuum’; cf. the close association of Egypt with the east in Virg. Aen. 8.687 ‘Aegyptum uiresque Orientis’. For the varied use of the word primus should be noted too Luc. 9.413f. ‘nee… plus litora Nili / quam Scythicus Tanais primis a Gadibus absunt’, ‘from Gades in the far west’ (Duff), ‘Gades the first place in the west’ (Haskins), i.e. the threshold of the Mediterranean.

Suetonius quotes a number of extracts from Augustus' letters, with the intention of showing that Augustus did not dislike Tiberius as much as some had held, and that he had a high opinion of Tiberius' military qualities. The first of these contains a somewhat vexed textual problem. It reads as follows (in Ihm's Teubner edition):

Vale, iucundissime Tiberi, et feliciter rem gere, ⋯μο⋯ κα⋯ ταῖς †μουιcαcαιcτ στρατηγ⋯ν. iucundissime et ita sim felix, vir fortissime et dux νομιμώτατε, vale.

In an earlier paper it was argued that in the famous chariot simile at the end of the first Georgic, Virgil imitates a passage from the Choephoroi of Aeschylus describing the onset of Orestes' madness. It was also suggested that Virgil may have been intentionally drawing a parallel between Octavian and the son of Agamemnon. Orestes avenged his father by murdering his mother Clytemnestra, but in so doing he deepened the guilt that afflicted Argos and thus gave new life to the curse that lay on the house of Tantalus. So too, perhaps, Virgil is warning Octavian that in seeking to avenge his ‘father’ Caesar by killing his murderers at Philippi he is precipitating civil war, and so continuing the cycle of blood-guilt which similarly afflicts the Roman people. If such a suggestion seems fantastic it can now be supported by analogy from an explicit parallelism of Octavian and Orestes in a passage of Claudian. The first part of the passage in question reads as follows:

Maurusius Atlas

Gildonis Furias, Alaricum barbara Peuce

nutrierat, qui saepe tuum sprevere profana

mente patrem. Thracum venienti e flnibus alter

Hebri clausit aquas; alter praecepta vocantis

respuit auxiliisque ad proxima bella negatis

abiurata palam Libyae possederat arva

The eunuch Eutropius began his ascendancy over Arcadius, Emperor of the East, in late 395, following the murder of the Praetorian Prefect Rufinus. Eutropius, despite his physical shortcomings, ‘sullied the Fasti’ by holding the consulate in 399. By the end of that same year, however, collusion between the barbarian general Gainas and Tribigild, leader of a rebellion of Ostrogoths in Asia Minor, resulted in Eutropius’ fall from power. He was exiled to Cyprus and executed shortly afterwards.

In the Res Gestae Alexandri of Julius Valerius, the manuscripts at 1.36 read Tyrum enim proteri mox pedibus haberi principis respondere. The use of habeo with infinitive as a virtual equivalent of the future tense is common in late Latin. Thielmann emended our text to read habere and is followed by the standard critical edition and by TLL. “Can haberi be defended? We ought to remember that auxiliary verbs are often ‘attracted’ into the passive when the dependent infinitive is passive, in the case of some verbs regularly, with others occasionally (consider coepi, incipio, possum, desino).b It is not impossible to believe that the text at hand reflects the same phenomenon.

John of Alexandria is an obscure figure. Little is known of his life: his floruit is placed in the first half of the seventh century A.D. He was a practising doctor; the exact significance of the epithet ‘sophista’ which is found on the superscription to his commentary on the sixth book of Hippocrates' Epidemics is uncertain: but it may indicate an interest beyond the purely medical. Apart from the commentaries on the Epidemics and De Sectis, the only other work ascribed to him with any certainty is a commentary on the Hippocratic text On the Nature of the Child, although four other works traditionally attributed to Philoponus and of a purely medical nature have been ascribed to him.

Several times in the past the question has been raised whether in Greece or in Rome there were any free-born citizens who would have been prepared to take over the management of a farm, a business thought to have usually been entrusted to slaves. In this connection the number of sources testifying to the manumission of Roman slave bailiffs has also attracted some attention. It must be said, however, that notwithstanding previous scholarly efforts to assemble the relevant testimonia, important evidence has been disregarded or simply overlooked; in addition, in one instance at any rate, a source was not yet available.