Zosimus, after recording the foundation and immense growth of Constantinople, introduces a digression directed towards his purpose of justifying paganism against Christianity. ‘It has often indeed occurred to me to wonder how, when the city of the Byzantines has grown, so that no other can compare with it for prosperity and size, there was no prophecy delivered from the gods of our predecessors about its development to a better fortune. With this thought in mind I have turned over many volumes of histories and collections of oracles, and with difficulty I happened upon one oracle said to be of the Sibyl of Erythrae or of Phaennis of Epirus. (For she is said to have produced oracles when in a state of possession.) Nicomedes, the son of Prusias, put his confidence in this oracle, and interpreting it in an advantageous sense he took up war against his father, Prusias, at the persuasion of Attalus.’ Zosimus proceeds to quote twenty-one lines of hexameter verse, which have come down in a rather corrupt state, but of which the general sense is reasonably clear. They consist mainly of an obvious post eventum forecast of the Gallic invasion of Asia Minor in the third century B.C.

A glance at Enk's commentary will show how much dispute there has been about the poem's coherence. In the past several scholars have proposed transpositions, but no scheme has won acceptance, and no modern expert advocates that procedure.1 Another way of understanding the poem's design might be through its modes of expression-exclamation, narrative, threat, etc.2 But this also proves unsatisfactory; for although a number of clear divisions can be made, the sections are too short and fragmented to be regarded as structural units. (We will find, however, that at three important points a change in the mode of expression accompanies and reinforces the divisions suggested by a different method of analysis.) A third approach might be made by following the direction of the poet's address-now to himself, now to Cynthia, now to the reader. But it is not always clear where the divisions come, and even when we agree on an approximation (i.e. ‘somewhere between line x and line y’), the break rarely coincides with a break in thought.3 So it is worth trying instead the approach indicated by the title. In doing so we shall note half a dozen cases where the method supports one textual reading against alternatives proposed.

‘It is not deceptae tabellae which reveal your conduct to me nor secretly given presents which incriminate you.’ So does Ovid, according to the vast majority of our MSS, complain of the openness of his mistress's infidelity (the point of this couplet does not emerge fully until line 13, ipse miser uidi…). Tabellae causes no difficulty - wax tablets traditionally carried elegiac love-letters1 - but deceptae, which obviously cannot bear its most usual meaning here, has often been declared corrupt. Burman favoured the variant decepto given by the ‘Sarravianus’ of Heinsius;2 it certainly qualifies mihi aptly enough but leaves tabellae without a much-needed epithet.3 Other editors have resorted to conjectures of widely varying distinction,4 of which easily the most seductive is Heinsius’ male deletae for mihi deceptae. It was prompted by the mihi deletae which appears in one fifteenth-century MS5 and would seem to derive considerable support from Ars Am. 3. 495–6 nec nisi deletis tutum rescribere ceris, | ne teneat geminas una tabella manus (cf. also Ars Am. 2. 395–6 et, quotiens scribes, lotas prius ipse tabellas | inspice: plus multae, quam sibi missa, Legunt).

Zosimus is speaking in this passage of the activities of Alaric in Aemilia as he tried to win Italian support for his puppet emperor, Priscus Attalus. ‘The other cities he won over with no trouble; but Bologna he besieged, and when it held out for many days and he was unable to take it, he went to the Ligurians, forcing them, too, to accept Attalus as emperor.

In Metamorphoses 1. 461–8 Ovid lists islands visited by Minos and brought into his realm during his journey from Crete to Aigina on the way to avenge the death of Androgeos in Attica.

The last book we shall have from the hand of Denys Page is an edition of that ‘talented but inscrutable writer’ the epigrammatist Rufinus.1 It is a model of its kind, distinguished by all the virtues we have come to associate with Page's work - erudition, intelligence and judgement. But on the long-debated question of Rufinus’ date he may be as much as three centuries out.

The Roman Senate in 144 B.C. instructed the urban praetor, Q. Marcius Rex, to repair the conduits of Rome's two existing aqueducts, the Appia and the Anio (later called the Anio Vetus), and to put an end to illegal use of their water by private citizens. Urban growth now demanded a more copious water supply, and so the Senate further I instructed Marcius to secure additional water for the city. Money was appropriated for this work, and Marcius' praetorship was prorogued for 143. At this point the decemviri objected to a plan for bringing water to the Capitol. The issue was debated in the Senate in 143, and again in 140; but on both occasions Marcius' gratia prevailed, and water reached the Capitol in a new aqueduct which Marcius himself had built. A statue of Marcius was erected in later times on the Capitol, behind the temple of Jupiter, to commemorate this grand achievement.1 An everlasting glory was in fact to be his in the name of the aqueduct whose waters earned poets' praises.

(1) Agr. 6. 4. The MSS give idem praeturae certior et silentium. Usually this corrupt passage is restored according to the conjecture of Rhenanus as idem praeturae term et silentium,1 because certior et does not make sense, although it has been pointed out several times that even this, the best of various suggestions as to how to solve the problem, is basically not satisfactory.2

In the literature on Rome's trade with the Far East, it is confidently stated that sandalwood and teak figured among the imports from India. The evidence offered is a passage from Per. 36. As it happens, the words in the passage taken to refer to sandalwood actually refer to teak, and those taken to refer to teak have nothing to do with it.

Aristides Quintilianus' dates are not known, but he can hardly be earlier than the first century A.D. or later than the third. Several passages in the early pages of his deMusica1 purport to record facts about the practice of much older theorists, in contexts which make it clear that his references are to the period before Aristoxenus. Since our knowledge of music theory in that period is extremely sketchy, it is obviously worth trying to assess the reliability of Aristides' information. Two of his references have often been recognized as being of special interest, and there is a third, to which, I shall argue, the other two are intimately related. The first (12. 12 to the end of the diagram on 13) records two systems of notation, alleged by Aristides to have been used by oί ⋯ρχαîoι. The second (18. 5 to the end of the diagram on 20) is the famous, or notorious, account of certain ‘divisions of the tetrachord’ which were employed by oί π⋯νυαλαιότατoι πρ⋯ς ⋯ρμoνίας. It is these, Aristides tells us, which are mentioned by Plato in the Republic.2 The remaining passage (15. 8–20) is superficially rather less exciting: it records the names and initial notes of the ⋯ρμoνίαι, or forms of octave scale, said to have been distinguished by oί παλαιoί, and says something about a method by which the πoιότης of each can be made clear. The information given here about the nature of the ⋯ρμoνίαι is familiar: it is to be found, for example, in Cleonides Eisagoge 19. 4 ff., where rather more detail is given, and where the names of the ⋯ρμoνίαι are again ascribed to oί ⋯ρχαîoι (19. 7: cf. also ‘Bellerman's Anonymous’ 62). I shall suggest, however, that Aristides' version has independent interest. What he tells us in the first two passages is found nowhere else.

The position on the question of divine providence of the Aristotelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c. A.D. 200) is of particular interest. It marks an attempt to find a via media between the Epicurean denial of any divine concern for the world, on the one hand, and the Stoic view that divine providence governs it in every detail, on the other.2 As an expression of such a middle course it finds a place in later classifications of views concerning providence.3 It is also of topical interest: Alexander's fullest discussion, in his treatise De providentia (On Providence) (surviving only in two Arabic versions), has only recently been edited and translated,4 although some aspects of his position had long been known from other texts preserved in Greek.5

Theurgy, the religious magic practised by the later Neoplatonists, has been commonly regarded as the point at which Neoplatonism degenerates into magic, superstition and irrationalism.1 A superficial glance at the ancient lives of the Neoplatonists, and in particular at Eunapius’ Lives of the Sophists, reveals a group of people interested in animating statues, favoured with visions of gods and demons, and skilled in rain-making. But when we look more closely at the works of the Neoplatonists themselves, rather than the stories biographers tell about them, we find a considerable diversity of attitudes towards theurgy and a number of attempts to fit theurgy into their philosophical system.