Herennius Philo of Byblos is the subject of a notice in the Suda, which states that he was a grammarian born in Nero's time who lived to such an advanced age that he was still composing works in the reign of Hadrian. The titles listed include: On the Acquisition and Choice of Books; On Cities and their Eminent Citizens; and On the Reign of Hadrian (= Fr. 1 Jacoby). His name, like that of Flavius Josephus, could imply the patronage of a Roman family; we may suppose that, like Porphyry and Maximus of Tyre, he was a Phoenicean by origin who had adopted the tongue and culture of the Greeks.

So Diggle's recent text and apparatus criticus; so too its predecessor in the Oxford series (Murray). Advocates of πντα δ' ξεῖλον ϕ ϕβον have, however, been in a considerable majority, and include Porson, Elmsley, Bothe, Weil, Wecklein, Nauck, Paley, Verrall, Meridier, and, more recently, Schiassi (1967) and Ebener (1972). But Page's objection (ad loc.) cannot be lightly dismissed: ‘With ϕ ϕβον here, σο must be understood; and the ellipse seems intolerable.’ To this I would add what appears to have been largely disregarded, namely that the contextual and thematic significance of δμον is an even stronger argument in its favour. Medea is ἄπολις (255, cf. 645–53 [ἄπολις 646], 386), having lost not only her home in Colchis (31–5, 166–7, 798–801) but also her new home in Corinth (139, 275–81, 359–60, 435–8). In a sense the fate cruelly forced upon the daughters of Pelias by Medea (487 πντα τ' ξεῖλον δμον) is now visited upon Medea herself, who finds herself deserted and alone (513). This isolation brings with it the realization that to those to whom she should be ϕίλη she is now χθρ (her family in Colchis, 506–8), while those whom she should be able to regard as ϕλoι are now χθρ (Jason, 467; even her children, 36, 112–14, 116–17; cf. the pointed, programmatic νν δ' χθρ πντα κα νοσεῖ τ ϕλτατα in 16). Her response? As Medea had done in Iolcus, so δμον τε πντα συγχασʼ Ἰονος | ἔξετιτι γαας κτλ. (794–5; cf. 114 πς δμος ἔρροι).

Procopius states that the Colchian Lazi had neither salt nor grain nor any other good thing; for this reason they always engaged in trade with the Romans around the Black Sea:

In response to Iolaus' cry for help, the chorus in Held, enter at a run (βοηδροµοντεс cf. 121), and the Parodos takes a form appropriate to that. Instead of choral song-and-dance, what follows, after an exceptionally brief non-strophic ‘entry’-passage, is an amoibaion first between the Chorus-leader and Iolaus, then between the Chorus-leader and the Herald, musical only as featuring some ‘half-chanted’ sequences in the Chorus-leader's utterances.

Philocleon, confined to his house by his son Bdelycleon, appeals to the chorus of heliasts, expressing his eagerness to join them as they journey to their courts:

Thomas Marshall, who became Rector of Lincoln College in 1672 and died in 1685, left to the Bodleian his collection of books and manuscripts. Two lists of the manuscripts appear in Edward Bernard's Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae (Oxford, 1697), i (1). 272–3, 373–4, but both omit what is now called MS. Marshall 140, which F. Madan in the Summary Catalogue describes as follows

Antigone and Ismene know that the situation of their father's grave must remain a secret to all except Theseus; but Antigone cannot help suggesting to her sister that they make their way back in the hope of setting eyes upon the burial place of Oedipus. How, Ismene asks her, can this be right in the sight of heaven? θμις δ πς τάδ'στί; μν | οὐχ ρις;

Christopher Carey, CQ 39 (1989), 287ff. sets out to explain the transition in Pindar, O. 8.52–5 from the story of the building of the walls of Troy to the praises of the trainer Melesias. ‘The myth of O. 8’, he writes, ‘tells of the role of Aiakos in the building of the walls of Troy. It closes with Apollo going off to his favourite haunts while Poseidon drives off to the Isthmus of Corinth, depositing Aiakos at Aigina on the way. The myth is followed by an opaque gnome.’

A good story bears retelling many times, and an appreciative audience will delight in debating its finer points; each participant is – of course – always convinced that only his memory, his understanding, of what the author said is the correct one.

In his article ‘Did the Athenians Regard Seduction as a Worse Crime than Rape?’, CQ 40 (1990), 370–7, Edward M. Harris rightly casts doubt on the value of Lysias 1.30–5, which has generally been accepted as evidence that the Athenians did indeed regard seduction as the worse of the two crimes. Euphiletos in this speech is defending himself on a charge of murder, and, as Harris says (p. 375), ‘Euphiletus’ presentation of the Athenian statutes regarding rape and seduction is dictated by the rhetorical constraints of his case. It is not a reflection of widely held social attitudes.'

Eustathios, in his commentary to Homer's Iliad 768.20–2 preserves two elements of Attic speech which could derive originally from comedy. Although neither of them appears as so much as a conjecture in standard collections, a possibility that they are quotations from a lost comedy merits testing. They may, as it turns out, even be fragments of a comedy by Kratinos. The argument for this possibility rests on a manner Eustathios (and other Greek writers) has of presenting evidence to support his general observations. The pattern is as follows: He will say that such-and-such a usage can be observed among the ancients, and then he will cite an ancient author in whose work he has observed such a phenomenon. A good, simple, short example of this presentation can be found at Eustathios' Commentary to Homer's Odyssey 1419.50–4; λλ κα πλλαξ ξ οὗ κα παλλακή κα παλλκια δ κατ Aἴλιν Διονσιον οὑ παλλήκια οἱ παδες, στιν εὑρεν παρ τος παλαιος οἲ δικαστήριον ἱστοροσιν πώνυµον τς Παλλδος. 'Aριστοφνης ἄκων κτεν σε τκνον. δ'ὑπεκρνατο π Παλλαδωι κτλ (Aristophanes, frag. 602 PCG).

The poet Philitas was so thin, they say, that he had to wear lead weights on his shoes to avoid being blown away by a gust of wind. We have two versions of the anecdote. First Aelian, Varia Historia 9.14:

The study of Homeric echoes and allusions in the Argonautica has overshadowed the influence of other literature, even when, as with tragedy, such influence is clear. The easiest framework for studying allusions to tragedy in Apollonius is comparison with the different types of allusion to Homer. Situations in the epic may recall situations and relationships in tragedy, and verbal similarities to passages in tragedy are also identifiable, despite differences of dialect and metre. The latter are often enhanced by rare words, as Homeric hapax legomena and other Homeric rarities establish allusions to the Iliad and Odyssey.

Duris of Samos is significant enough, among lost Hellenistic historians, for a paragraph or two to be devoted to him in most works on the history or literature of the period. For the last two centuries such paragraphs have been saying among other things that Duris went to Athens and studied under Theophrastus. But Athenaeus 128a, the source cited for this statement, does not support it unless a doubtful conjecture is admitted to the text.

The short treatise On the Cosmos, which most scholars believe to be not by Aristotle, has confidently been attributed to Aristotle by G. Reale and A. P. Bos. I do not wish to enter into their arguments for this attribution, because I believe it can be proved to be untenable.

At Argonautica 4.12–13, Medea, frightened and on the point of fleeing her home, 2 is compared to a young deer:

In lines 5–8 of his 95th poem Catullus contrasts the everlasting world-wide fame which P. Helvius Cinna's Smyrna will enjoy with the quick death which Volusius' I Annales will suffer before they get beyond the Po:

To Munro's conjecture, which has been accepted by Diels (1923), S. B. Smith (1942), Bailey (1947), Büchner (1956), Martin (1959), and M. F. Smith (1982), there is a serious, possibly a fatal, objection: the genitive plural of hiems is a grammarians' figment and never occurs in classical Latin (TLL s.v. 2773.84); while Lachmann's conjecture is palaeographically improbable. Read ad gelidas rigidasque pruinas; rigidas was omitted by haplography, a fecund source of corruption, and hiemis then supplied from the context to repair the metre. Cf. 2.431 denique iam calidos ignis gelidamque pruinam, 2.521 hinc flammis Mine rigidis infesta pruinis, and, for the collocation of the two adjectives, 2.858 nec frigus neque item calidum tepidumque uaporem.

Catullus' use of nutrices for the Nereids' breasts in line 18 of Poem 64 is not perhaps the most important problem in the poem, but it is not without interest and may have significance beyond its narrow context. This ‘weird preciosity’ (R. Jenkyns) has been integrated into a wider reading by Francis Cairns, who interestingly drew attention to Artemidorus 2.37–8 where to dream of Aphrodite emerging from the sea and naked as far as the ζώνη is a good omen for sea-travellers because her breasts are τροΦιμώτατοι. So too, to dream of Nereids and Amphitrite (cf. Cat. 64.11) is also a good omen. Cairns linked this passage to the persistent connections of Aphrodite and the Nereids with marriage, concluding that the Argonauts are presented with a very good omen as they set out and as the prospective bride and groom, Peleus and Thetis, meet. Cairns naturally finds support here for what we might call the ‘positive’ view of Catullus' heroic age, a view now apparently in the ascendant after the doubts created by John Bramble's well-known paper. Problems remain of course – Catullus 64 is not a dream – and the purpose of the present note is to keep debate alive by calling attention to a rather different set of considerations which complicate, rather than undermine, Cairns' reading.

This is clearly meant to ‘speak’, and offer thereby some clue to the interpretation. But what it ‘says’ is debatable. Most modern edd. settle for Ipsit(h)illa as the least badly attested form. The prominence of bidding in the poem best accords with the assumptions that the stem is indeed ipsa connoting ‘mistress of the establishment’ (cf. 3.8; OLD ipse 12, OLD ipsimus; ipsula, Pl. Cist. 450, issulo et delicio suo CIL 6.12156; ipsuma, Petron. Sat. 75. 11) and that the denotation is something facetious like ‘Miss Bossy-wossy’, ‘Imperia’, ‘Your nibsy-wibsy’.