Patient and unobtrusive service, faithfully rendered year by year, often by reason of its very familiarity receives less than its merited meed of recognition, but we are happy here to pay all honour to one of the editors of Greece & Rome, who, after twenty-five years' loyal service to this journal, must now on medical advice relinquish his post. A glance at the list of books reviewed, for example, in one year in vol. xvii, numbering 102 in all, is eloquent testimony to the impressive role so long sustained by the man to whom we gratefully dedicate this issue, Mr. E. R. A. Sewter. His many brief reviews, while making their point, have ever given illumination to senior scholars, schoolmasters, and others, who sought to know more of some classical publication than its title might well convey. A measure of Mr. Sewter's quality is to be seen in the gap he leaves behind him. Scarce twelve men nowadays could sustain the weight this rugged Ajax so lightly wielded. Mr. Sewter, as he withdraws into retirement, takes with him the gratitude, not only of the Press and Editorial Board, but also of the vast number of his readers who have benefited from his services. Once more we are given occasion to reflect upon that grand Shakespearian phrase—‘The constant service of the antique world’.

‘Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.’ Voltaire's epigramfits Greek literature like a glove. In school and university syllabuses, just as in our own private reading, we concentrate on the best authors; and a large number of the merely good authors stay on the library shelves, neglected and unread except by a steadily decreasing number of experts in forgotten fields. How many of us are on terms of easy familiarity with the bittersweet epigrams of Asclepiades, or that remarkably modern opening of Heliodorus' novel, or (for that matter) with the mimianiboi of Herodas?

Herodas was the major Hellenistic author of mimes. His work was singled out by the younger Pliny (Ep. iv. 3. 4) as the standard by which to assess contemporary poetasters in the field. Yet before 1889 he was no more than a name, to whom a few dull fragments could be assigned. In fact before 1889 the whole genre of Hellenistic mime, literary and non-literary alike, was a dark mystery, doubtless consigned to oblivion during the ages of Byzantine antischolasticism. To the immense popularity of mimes in late antiquity countless references in contemporary sources bear a distinctly scandalized witness. Some descriptions survived, a few definitions, many condemnations, but no texts.

In his biography of Cicero, Plutarch quotes from Augustus an admission that the future emperor had once made use of Cicero's lover of power (philarchia) by offering to support the orator for a second consulship in return for Cicero's help. This incident allegedly dates from the period after Caesar's death when Octavian feared that he would otherwise be left without political support.

The site of ancient Dystos in south-central Euboea deserves to be better known. The imposing circuit of the city wall with its main gate and eleven towers bears comparison with the fort at Eleutherae or the walls of Messene or Thasos. The numerous remains of private houses are of considerable interest for the history of Greek domestic architecture.

Legend informs us that the Amazons were women, that they were not only warlike but successful above average as warriors, and that they had no breasts. The masculinity of the second and third characteristics ought to make us highly suspicious of the accuracy of the first, and the explanations provided by the ancient Greeks do not bear any very close examination.

It has long been fashionable to believe that the Romans had little conception of natural beauty, and to assume that any sympathetic awareness of nature which they displayed could be accounted for in terms of their moral or utilitarian preconceptions. The moral relationship which in much of classical Greek literature was assumed to exist between man and nature had been reflected in and strengthened by the philosophical theories of Plato and, later, the Stoics. Yet this conception was already an anachronism by the time of the appearance of Lucretius' theory of Voluptas, and appears to have been progressively weakened in the later Republic and early Empire until in Ovid natural processes become the mere backcloth of human activity and emotion. Professor Segal has recently illustrated the employment of nature by Ovid as a literary symbol for the reflection of human emotion, and earlier work had revealed the emotional and moral attitudes to nature of Virgil and other poets, but it is questionable whether awareness of natural beauty as such, unalloyed by moral or emotional symbolism, is to be detected in Roman poetry, much less in Roman prose writing. This view may be supported by a careful scrutiny of Roman literature, where the reader will find it difficult to locate any obvious similarity to some of the commonest modern reactions to natural beauty; and further practical confirmation of this attitude may perhaps be derived from the apparent disdain of the Roman road-builders for any of those concessions to natural contours made by twentieth-century rural conservationists.

It might have been expected that the Cyclops, as our only complete surviving satyr-play, would attract wide attention among scholars. In fact, it has largely been neglected: no edition (and very little else) has appeared for over forty years in English. The present paper aims merely to suggest that the time may be ripe for reappraisal.

Many of the readers of Greece & Rome will have received a copy of the pamphlet ‘Classics in the Curriculum’ recently published by the Department of Education and Science in the series ‘Education Information’. Those who have not may obtain one gratis by applying to the Publications Officer, Department of Education and Science, Curzon Street, London, W.I.

Catullus' forty-fifth poem has become in recent years a focus for a certain amount of controversy. In this respect it has not been alone among the poems of Catullus' libellus; Catullan criticism has been undergoing a process of reassessment whereby a somewhat indiscriminate enthusiasm for certain poems has been challenged by an attitude in some cases more sophisticated, in others, perhaps, simply more devious. In the case of the poem under discussion, a traditional view, represented by J. Ferguson who quotes with approval Munro's estimate of the poem (‘the most charming picture in any language of a light and happy love’), has been rejected by several scholars who agree that the poem is, in some sense, ironical, while disagreeing in their reasons for so concluding. Before we examine their arguments we should, perhaps, be careful to define precisely what we mean by irony.

Admirers of Horace's Odes have cause to be grateful to Professor Gordon Williams for his recent edition of Book iii, with its illuminating and fascinating introduction and commentaries on individual odes. It is arguable, however, that he has misinterpreted iii. 19, ‘Quantum distet ab Inacho’.

At the end of Iliad ix we see the Achaeans confined in their camp by the Trojans. Under cover of darkness they hold a council of war, at which Nestor suggests (x. 204 ff.) the need for a reconnaissance to discover the Trojan intentions: this idea had also occurred to Menelaus earlier (37–8). It may be done either by ‘cutting out’ some enemy on the edge of the sleeping army (the word used is ⋯σχατόωντα, 206), or by overhearing a conversation (φ⋯μις, 207) which may give information. There is no suggestion of any further exploit, for the Achaeans are hard-pressed and at this moment it is information which they chiefly need. Nestor suggests that the exploit will bring much glory; there will also be a substantial reward. Diomedes volunteers to undertake the task, and selects Odysseus as his companion: others also volunteer, but Diomedes feels that Odysseus' cunning makes him the most suitable choice. When they set off, Athene, well disposed as always towards her favourite, sends them a good omen (274). Both men offer prayers to her for success; Diomedes also promises a sacrifice if all goes well. Odysseus in his prayer expresses the hope that they will return ‘after accomplishing a fine deed’ (ῥέξαντας μέγα ἔργον, 282). This phrase may be significant, for the attentive reader will ask himself whether the exploit as planned does really merit such a description.

The question ‘Is History an art or a science?’ will be familiar to anyone who has answered more than a handful of General Papers, and it is tempting to think of it, not as a real question, but as a sort of logical puzzle, rather on the lines of ‘Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?’ To set it aside, however, or to answer it on a purely theoretical level, is to disregard a problem which is as old as History itself and which concerns historians now perhaps more than at any other time. Is History subjective ? Must it necessarily reflect the ideas and values and conceptual framework of those who write it ? Is the historian by his very nature a distorting medium? Or is this merely an excuse that historians themselves have invented? Is it possible, after all, to be objective ? Are there such things as historical facts, and is it possible so to arrange these facts that they speak for themselves and not with a voice from another and alien age ? Behind these questions, and to some extent bound up with them, there is, of course, another: if History is subjective, is this necessarily bad, and if it could be objective would this be desirable?

Suetonius quotes some attractive specimens of Augustus' domestic correspondence. They include several sentences from letters to Tiberius by which Suetonius seeks to show that Augustus had a high regard for his adopted son as a military man and valued campaigner. One quotation (Suet. Tib. 21) is as follows:

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

Seneca's shortcomings as a tragedian are a commonplace of literary criticism. On the one hand, the style of Seneca's plays is condemned for being excessively rhetorical; long, undramatic speeches, full of mythological references, alternate with bombastic utterances; or, as J. W. Duff states, comparing Seneca with his Greek predecessors: ‘in the Latin plays one has entered a new world where genius has been replaced by cleverness, and an eminently classic directness of expression by rhetoric.’ On the other hand, Seneca's detractors claim that extravagance of style is matched by a propensity for gory detail, such as the notorious piecing together of Hippolytus at the end of Phaedra. Thus, according to F. L. Lucas:

if only to make up for the unreality of his ultra-academic drama [Seneca] tries to be vivid by being lurid, to stimulate the jaded imagination of his public by screaming atrocity. Seneca does indeed recall the man in Plato who had a morbid desire to view the corpses in the city ditch; long ashamed to yield to such an impulse, at last he ran to the edge and uncovered his eyes with the cry, ‘There, you wretches, take your fill’.