The Classical world continues to dwindle. The study of Greek has vanished altogether from very many schools and, in some places, even Latin hangs upon the uncertain future of administrative reorganization or the relaxation of faculty requirements. In the face of steady retreat, few can now afford the easy luxury of indifference and most admit to a rueful apprehension. What then is the future of the Classics? Unless the present drift is halted, the future must rest mainly with the Universities and it confronts them with a cruel dilemma. The glories of classical literature require the study of the classical languages, but this study, concentrated into three years, leaves scant time for literary glory or humane reflection. Yet literature can only survive if it is read and the study of a civilization can only be fruitful as long as it continues to provoke curious interest. Some will recoil from ‘popular’ or ‘general’ courses but no one should scoff at those who attempt them, for there perhaps lies our best hope that Classics will be more than the secret preserve of a devoted few. Such courses must inevitably walk a giddy tight-rope: if they include too much, they run the risk of drudgery, if they are content with too little, they may decline into that diarrhoea verborum so mercilessly pilloried by Wilamowitz. The state of equilibrium will be hard to attain, but it may be hoped that, with the continuing support of our contributors, Greece & Rome will be able to assist these new and crucial developments.

The mysterious writing on Cretan seals first attracted Arthur Evans to Crete. His own words are well worth quoting. ‘In the course of a visit to Greece in the spring of 1893 I came across some three- and four-sided stones perforated along their axis, upon which had been engraved a series of remarkable symbols. The symbols occurred in groups on the facets of the stones, and it struck me at once that they belonged to a hieroglyphic system. They were, however, quite distinct from Egyptian in character, and though they seemed to show a nearer approach to Hittite forms, it was evident that they belonged to an independent series. My inquiries succeeded in tracing these to a Cretan source. … I therefore determined to follow up my investigations on Cretan soil.’

Tacitus' Historiae begin in the middle of a series of civil wars: initium mihi operis Servius Galba iterum Titus Vinius consules erunt. This point of time leaves the revolts of Vindex and Galba behind and the revolts of Otho and Vitellius just about to begin. Such a plunge in medias res, more suitable for the novelist than the historian, was at one time sharply criticized. It would have been more logical, it was argued, to begin with the proclamation of Galba at the beginning of April A.d. 68, with the death of Nero on 9 June following, or with the death of Galba himself on 15 January A.d. 69. These points, or others even earlier or later, are better ‘natural breaks’ in the story, and consequently more satisfactory from the literary point of view than the arbitrary breaks of the calendar. On behalf of Tacitus it was maintained that in Roman historiography the annalistic method had the force of law (but what then of the starting-point of the Annales—ab excessu divi Augusti?), or that Tacitus took up the tale where some other historian, Cluvius Rufus perhaps or Fabius Rusticus, had left off (why then the long introduction extending to ch. II? Xenophon, for example, felt no such need for the Hellenica). Tacitus himself does not attempt to justify his choice of starting-point. In fact the use of the future tense (erunt) may be thought to imply that the matter is scarcely worth discussing at all. That was likely, I think, to have been Tacitus' hope and intention. If it was so, it has been realized in the most recent scholarship, which, having failed to make out a conclusive case for or against any other date, has fallen back on the belief that 1 January A.d. 69 was, faute de mieux, inevitable.

In this paper I propose to deal with some difficulties in Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus, of which some have been noticed before, others I think have not. I am going to propose an unorthodox explanation, not through any love of unorthodoxy, but in the spirit of Oedipus himself, who when faced with a puzzle could not resist following a fact to its logical conclusion. The Sphinx's riddle was not, after all, a very hard one; and Oedipus doubtless grew tired of being praised for ingenuity. My thesis too disclaims that dubious quality. Ingenuity is what many of us have been using all our lives to explain difficulties in this play which may after all be insoluble.

‘War with its strenuous exertions is the direct opposite of love with its languid sentimentality: nevertheless, that truism challenged ingenuity to invent reasons why they should not rather be considered as similar.’ This statement may serve as a basis for a survey of the use of the military metaphor in love poetry, in particular in Ovid's Amores, which illustrate the image in its most highly developed and perfected form.

This title is redolent of crambe repetita, and nobody is more aware JL of this fact than the present writer. Herodotos enjoyed an almost universally bad press from ancient critics for his alleged mendacity and gullibility, and his lack of the scientific spirit of historiography when compared with Thucydides. Modern critics, though more reasonable, have often tended to agree with this damning verdict, or at least to assume the superiority of Thucydides as unquestionable. A few years ago, however, the case for Herodotos was cogently stated by Arnaldo Momigliano in an inspiring article in History. I should like merely to set down and discuss again some examples of what Herodotos himself really says about his sources and methods, in the hope of assisting Momigliano's work of rehabilitation.

The bird I am going to write about is the owl. The owl cannot see at all in the daytime, and at night it is as blind as a bat. I do not know much about the owl, so I will go on to the beast I am going to choose. It is the cow. The cow is a marnai, and it is tame. It has six sides, right, left, fore, back and upper and below. At the back it has a tail, on which hangs a brush. With this it sends the flies away, so that they do not fall into the milk. The head is for the purpose of growing horns, and so that the mouth can be somewhere. The horns are to butt with. The mouth is to moo with. Under the cow hangs the milk. It is arranged for milking. When people niilk, the milk comes, and there is never any end to the supply. How the cow does it I have not yet realized, but it makes more and more. The man cow is called an ox, but what it eats it eats twice, so that it gets enough. When it is hungry it moos, and when it says nothing, it is because its inside is full up of grass.

The volume of scholarly literature on Aeschylus is already so large that an attempt to make even the minutest addition to it may well appear rash. But the standard literature has most often dealt with the dramatic technique of Aeschylus and with the moral or social issues raised by him. This is true even of Kitto's work, Form and Meaning in Drama. Thus, in his preface, he states, ‘The presumption with Aeschylus, Sophocles and Shakespeare, when he wrote Hamlet, is that the dramatist was competent. If the dramatist had something to say and if he was a competent artist, the presumption is that he has said it and that we, by looking at the form which he has created, can find out what it is’; that is to say, he was thinking of dramatic form. This article is concerned with an aspect of form which does not appear to have received sufficient attention. I would call it the ‘poetic’ aspect of form. ‘Poetry’ is not easy to define, but one of the ‘tentative formulas’ given by Lattimore expresses what I mean. ‘What is directed’, he said, ‘neither to the emotion nor the intellect but to the imagination is the poetry of the plays.’ Aeschylus is a poet even more than he is a dramatic artist. One would naturally, therefore, expect to find in his plays much of the stuff that is directed towards the imagination. This ‘poetic’ element is to a large extent communicated through the form, which will enhance his meaning or will even be an image of his thought. It is from this point of view that I propose, in this note, to examine the Oresteia, in the hope that it may throw some light on many of the peculiarities of construction that are so prominent a feature of the trilogy.

In laying out the plot of the Aeneid there were certain features to which Virgil was committed. They were connected with plot, treatment, and theme. As to plot: the outlines of Aeneas' wanderings from Troy to Tiber were so well known that Virgil was bound to follow them fairly closely. They were to Virgil what Holinshed's Chronicles were to Shakespeare. As to treatment: by current literary etiquette, a writer of epic was obliged to follow established models, especially those of Homer, both in the larger design and in the shaping of notable incidents. As to theme: the essential purpose of the Aeneid was to show that Aeneas was a man of destiny, called by the gods to lead a chosen people to an appointed home in Italy.