I wish to argue, firstly, that the words τρεῖς δὲ καὶ σκηνογραφίαν Σοφοκλῆς at Poetics 1449a18-19 were not written by Aristotle; secondly that Sophocles is unlikely to have used scene-painting in our sense of the term. These two propositions are not interdependent, but do lend support to one another.

I

The deletion of τρεῖς δὲ καὶ σκηνογραφίαν Σοφοκλῆς was first proposed by G. F. Else. Few scholars have taken the deletion seriously (it is ignored in Lucas's edition), though it is cautiously revived by O. Taplin, who remarks that Else ‘brackets the words for a mixture of good and bad reasons’. That is my view also, but I believe that the bad reasons can be replaced with better ones.

A complicating factor is that Else also brackets the words that follow, from ἔτι δὲ τὸ μέγεθος to ἀπεσεμνύνθη, though he regards this as a largely separate issue. He may be right in this latter deletion; the difficulty of reconciling the development of tragedy ἐκ σατυρικοῦ with what Aristotle says elsewhere is certainly real enough.

It is widely accepted that distinctive polities of an institutional complexity sufficient to consider as ‘states’ first appeared in the Aegean area shortly after c. 2000 B.C. Most scholars would also agree that the origins of these palace-centred societies of Minoan Crete cannot be understood without extensive reference to developments taking place within and beyond the Aegean during a long formative period spanning the late fourth and the whole of the third millennia B.C. Yet that is an era so remote that it lies well beyond the reach of even the most enthusiastic adherent of Homer as a source of information about the Bronze Age, beyond any demonstrable relevance of later Greek memory in myth and legend, well before the period to which the Mycenaean Linear B tablets refer – indeed, before the existence of written records of any sort in the region, at least in a form we can read at present. Such a dearth of documentary evidence, even of a very indirect or secondary character, might seem prima facie to damn the investigation of the emergence of the first states on Greek soil as inherently speculative and, to a degree, that is so; but in many respects the same or similar problems have to be faced in studying the later emergence of the Greek city-state. As Snodgrass has reminded us, the ancient Greek political analysts provide a wide range of ostensibly confident statements about the nature and aetiology of many early legal and religious institutions, yet they have scarcely anything to say about the appearance of the political entity of which they themselves claimed citizenship and they throw very little light on the origins of what they were analyzing. Indeed, he claims ‘it is doubtful how far, if at all, contemporary consciousness of the emergence of a “state” existed.’

When Plato's and Aristotle's views on poetry are juxtaposed, it is usually for the purpose of contrast. Nowhere does the contrast seem to be so sharp as in the case of tragedy, by which both philosophers, agreeing in this at least, rightly meant Homer's Iliad as well as the plays of the Attic genre specifically given the name. While Plato made tragedy the target of his most fervent attacks on poetry, Aristotle devoted the major part of the Poetics to a reconsideration of the genre, in a sympathetic attempt, it is normally agreed, to defend it against Plato's strictures, and to restore to it some degree of valuable independence. The apparently fundamental opposition between the philosophers’ responses to tragedy can be regarded as expressive of divergent presuppositions about the status of poetry as a whole in relation to other components of culture: on the one side, the presupposition of Platonic moralism, by which poetry is subjected to judgement in terms of values, both cognitive and moral, which lie outside itself; and, on the other, of Aristotelian formalism, according to which autonomy can be established for poetry by turning the criteria of poetic excellence into standards internal and intrinsic to poetry's own forms. As Aristotle himself puts the point, in one of the Poetics’ more suggestive pronouncements, ‘correctness in poetry is not the same as correctness in politics or in any other art.’ Here, as often, an implicit response to Plato can be detected.

Horace, Carm. 1.12.33-40:

Romulum post hos prius an quietum
Pompili regnum memorem ac superbos
Tarquini fascis dubito an Catonis nobile letum. 35

Regulum et Scauros animaeque magnae
prodigum Paulum superante Poeno
gratus insigni referam Camena
Fabriciumque. 40
34 ac Hamacher an codd. 35 anne Curti Bentley
35-7 catenis nobilitatum Regulum Hamacher

There seems little point in rehearsing at length the arguments of Bentley, Housman (CP 94-6), and others: Cato has no place amongst the ancient kings of Rome. Nisbet and Hubbard make a case for Horatian eulogy of the republican, but not for the gross disruption of Horace's poetic history. They incline towards emendation. However, Hamacher's conjecture is rejected because it ‘disrupts the pattern of three-stanza groups and substitutes a clumsy and artificial phrase for what is crisp and incisive’, and Bentley's ‘more plausible’ suggestion because ‘nobile letum is so applicable to Cato's suicide’.

When, in the third stanza of Catullus' Sapphic poem 11, the tradition preserved by our earliest manuscripts (O, G, R) presented the text

siue trans altas gradietur Alpes
Caesaris uisens monimenta magni
Gallicum Rhenum horribilesque 11
ultimosque Britannos

R2 (Salutati) quickly restored metre to line 12 by transferring ulti– to line 11. At the same time he erased the –que of horribilesque, improving the sense, as we shall see, but leaving the line deficient by one syllable. This was the first recognition of the conflicting demands of sense and scansion in the line, as present in the twentieth as they were in the fourteenth century. Salutati made many such alterations in R, often with an eye to metre, but no manuscript authority lies behind them and we are free to accept or reject his corrections on their own merits. With the first only of these two accepted (as is normal), the lines present us with the notorious crux:

Gallicum Rhenum horribilesque ulti–

mosque Britannos

nec mora, perlectis rescribat multa iubeto:
odi, cum late splendida cera uacat. 20
comprimat ordinibus uersus, oculosque moretur
margine in extremo littera rasa meos.

The context is Ovid's instruction to Corinna's maid, Nape, to see that Corinna receives his message (written that morning on wax tablets) and that she writes back to him at length – unused wax on a tablet is a hateful thing to see. The problem is the word rasa in line 22. There are two ways in which it is commonly taken, one of them possible, though difficult, the other less difficult but less possible. The word means ‘erased’ (as in rasis tabellis at A.A.I, 437 etc.), which gives the sense ‘Tell her to cram the lines together in their rows, and may a letter she has erased at the edge of the margin delay my eyes.’ Thus Ovid wishes to draw out his reading of Corinna's reply by attempting to decipher a mistake she has made in an area of the tablet not normally covered – ‘some blotted letter’, in Marlowe's version, ‘On the last edge to stay mine eyes the better’. And so – where translations or commentaries allow us to see their mind – the word appears to have been taken by some early as well as a few modern editors of Ovid.

Recent interest in Hesiod has tended to concentrate on three broad aspects of his poems: their language, structure and myth. By contrast, their value as historical documents has been persistently underrated. This is a striking omission, as by general consent we have in the Works & Days a written source, giving detailed information about life in the early archaic period, for which virtually no other documentary evidence exists. Yet by comparison with the repeated and painstaking investigation of Homer as history, or even the poetry of Solon, Hesiod has been largely ignored.

Although it would be unrealistic to pretend that historians have never shown any interest in the Works & Days (see section VI), the use they have made of the poem has generally been either perfunctory and descriptive, or selective and focussing on isolated points. Typical of the former category is the treatment of Hesiod in the textbook on geometric Greece by Coldstream (1977). In his introduction, Coldstream warns the reader that the evidence for the ninth and eighth centuries is predominantly archaeological, but he does add a qualification (18): ‘On the other hand, Hesiod's Works & Days offers an authentic picture of a farmer's life in Boeotia at the close of the eighth century’, and in a later chapter (313): ‘The hard life of a geometric farmer is vividly described by the poet Hesiod.’

<Nocte> tamen insequenti ipso pervigilante in eodem loco alia excitata turris prima luce miraculo hostibus fuit. Simul et oppidi turris quae maximum propugnaculum fuerat, subrutis fundamentis, dehiscere ingentibus rimis et tum [xvi litt.] ṭọ [iii litt.] igni coepit; incendiique simul et ruinae metu territi Contrebienses de muro trepidi refugerunt; et ut legati mitterentur ad dedendam urbem ab universa multitudine conclamatum est. Eadem virtus quae irritaverat oppugnantem victorem placabiliorem fecit. Obsidibus acceptis pecuniae modicam exegit summam armaque omnia ademit. Transfugas liberos vivos ad se adduci iussit; fugitivos, quorum maior multitudo erat, ipsis imperavit ut interficerent. Iugulatos de muro deiecerunt.

Cum magna iactura militum quattuor et quadraginta diebus Contrebia expugnata, relictoque ibi L. Insteio [xvi litt.] ipse ad Hiberum flumen copias reduxit. Ibi hibernaculis secundum oppidum quod Castra Aelia vocatur aedificatis ipse in castris manebat; interdiu conventum sociarum civitatium in oppido agebat. Arma ut fierent pro copiis cuiusque populi per totam provinciam edixerat; quibus inspectis referre vetera arma milites iussit, quae aut itineribus crebris aut oppu [c. xxx litt.] facta erant, novaque iis per centuriones divisit. Equitatum quoque novis instruxit armis, vestimentaque praeparata ante divisa, et stipendium datum.

Maurice Holleaux, in the brilliant study which for so long dominated discussion of Rome's early dealings with the Greek East, argued that Roman aims in the First Macedonian War were strictly defensive. The Romans' sole purpose in forming alliances with the Aetolians and other Greek powers was, he held, to prevent Philip from crossing to Italy by obliging him to fight in Greece. Roman conduct showed how limited their interest in the war in Greece was: they fulfilled their obligations to their allies halfheartedly and in the end neglected them altogether, while they viewed the other Greeks simply as a source of booty. They regarded the compromise peace reached with Philip at Phoenice as entirely satisfactory, and their decision to renew war against him in 200 was a complete reversal of policy.

Although most aspects of Holleaux's interpretation of Rome's Eastern policy have generated great controversy, his treatment of the First Macedonian War has, except for certain specific points, received relatively little attention. While the significance of the Peace of Phoenice has been much discussed, most of those who have written on the war itself have been in broad agreement with Holleaux's views on the Romans' aims and conduct, and only a few brief protests have been registered. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap. I shall argue that Roman aims in the war were less limited and their conduct less half-hearted than has usually been supposed, and offer a new interpretation of the obscure last years of the war, based on a redating of the expedition of P. Sempronius Tuditanus and the Peace of Phoenice to 206.

I Άρετή, εὐδαιμονία: their translation

The key terms in my title pose problems of translation with which I can only deal in the most cursory manner. On ‘virtue’ for ἀρετἡ I need not linger at all, for whatever may be the general usage of ἀρετἡ, Socrates' use of it is fixed beyond doubt by the fact that whenever he brings the general concept under scrutiny – as when he debates its teachability in the Protagoras and the Meno – he assumes without argument that its sole constituents or ‘parts’ (μόρια μέρη) are five qualities which are, incontestably, the Greek terms of moral commendation par excellence: ἀνδρεία, σωφρούνη, δικαιοσύνη, ὁσιότης, σοφία. ‘Happiness’ for εὐδαιμονία is a more contentious matter. Leading Aristotelians, Ross and Ackrill, have claimed that ‘well-being’ would be a better translation. But in their own translations of the E. N. both stick to ‘happiness’ all the same. It is not hard to see why they would and should. ‘Well-being’ has no adjectival or adverbial forms. This may seem a small matter to armchair translators – philosophers dogmatizing on how others should do the job. Not so if one is struggling with its nitty gritty, trying for clause-by-clause English counterparts that might be faithful to the sentence-structure, no less than the sense, of the Greek original. And ‘well-being’ suffers from a further liability: it is a stiff, bookish phrase, bereft of the ease and grace with which the living words of a natural language perform in a wide diversity of contexts. Εὐδαιμονία perfectly fits street-Greek and Aristophanic slapstick, yet also, no less perfectly, the most exalted passages of tragedy.