Volume 157, Issue 1

In this paper I propose to link [Hesiod] fr. 276 M.-W. (= 212 Most; from the Melampodia ) with the mythological narrative preserved on PSI 14. 1398, which relates the death of Teiresias. This narrative belong to a work that drew on the lost Melampodia (or a summary of it) and provides information regarding this Hesiodic poem that had hitherto escaped our notice. Regarding the type of text preserved on PSI 14. 1398, the scanty remnants of the papyrus’ second column, where we read traces of what appears to be κeuqein and dendroκomov, both poetic words, suggest that it must have been a prose text quoting poetry. Possibilities include (i) a text on the history of divination, such as Philochorus peri mantiκnv, which offered a historical overview of famous exponents of the mantic art and included poetic quotations, or alternatively (ii) a text that belongs to the commentary genre broadly conceived, perhaps even a text akin to the so-called ‘Homeric anthologies’.

The final words of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris are vexed by several difficulties concerning the distribution of lines to speakers. In IT 1490-1, the problem affects the general interpretation of the ending, which seems to suggest clearly that the Chorus survives and returns to Greece. If 1490-1 are delivered by the Chorus, as Seidler suggests, it is to be assumed that the Greek women are not allowed to go back home with Iphigenia, Orestes and Pylades: this explicit does not square with the evidence of the drama as a whole. The restoration of L’s attribution of the lines to Athena (Kovacs) would fit well with the ultimate destiny of the Chorus, yet it raises the problem of admitting an unparalleled metrical transition from trimeters to anapaests by the same speaker; moreover, it creates an awkward repetition and reduplication of the content of 1487-9. The attribution to Thoas, who is in any case unable to leave until 1489, solves the problem and gives a better sense to 1490-1: Thoas is here urging the Chorus to leave the stage and sail towards Greece, trusting Athena’s recent deliberations. The mistake of attribution in L may reflect an original distribution in which changes of speaker were marked at 1486 (or 1487), 1490 and 1492.

In the only surviving fragment of Aristias’ Antaeus (TrGF 9 F 1) a difficulty arises when one tries to make sense of the proper name ∫Antaiov, which, in the only source that transmits the fragment (Herodian’s On Lexical Singularity ), is featured just before what is usually considered to be the beginning of the fragment itself. Snell’s interpretation of ∫Antaiov as a piece of information provided by Herodian about the identity of the persona loquens is not convincing; however, the expunction of the word preferred by both Lehrs and Lentz is not justified either. Instead of interpreting ∫Antaiov as a word introduced by Herodian or as an explanatory gloss, this article suggests incorporating the proper name in Aristias’ verse and interpreting this new text as an acatalectic iambic tetrameter. As in dramatic poetry this kind of metre is found only in satyr play, it is worth reconsidering the evidence for attributing the Antaeus - the plot of which is far from certain - to this literary genre.

The paper examines the religious and philosophical concept of the personal daimon in the Greek magical papyri in relation to Greek philosophy and especially to the Neo-Platonist philosophers. Questions to be addressed are: What is the nature of the personal daimon? What is the relationship between the personal daimon and the individual and how is this relationship established in magic? Special emphasis is placed on the role of the magico-theurgic ritual of systasis in the process of establishing the relationship with the personal daimon. Finally, the paper examines the relationship between magic rituals, mysteries and philosophy, focusing on the issue of the internalization of the personal daimon.

This article pursues the earlier analysis by the same author ( Philologus 154/1, 2010, 55-75) concerning the use of ἁπλόω and ἅπλωσις in the texts of Plotinus and Marcus Aurelius. It shows that, in the Platonic tradition after Plotinus (Syrianus, Proclus, Damascius, Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite), the verb ὑπερ-απλοῦμαι, originally signifying: ‘to be spread out over’, acquires the particular philosophical meaning ‘surpass in simplicity’, but it does not have this meaning in De mysteriis Egyptorum of Iamblichus. Later, in Damascius, the philosophical signification of verbs of the root ἁπλ- is extended to ἀναπλόω, which begins to signify ‘simplify’, and not ‘unfold’.

Ever since Mommsen’s magisterial 1863 edition, the extortion law of the Tabula Bembina has been seen as a law of Gaius Gracchus. Since Mommsen’s intervention, only Carcopino and myself have seriously challenged the consensus. However, the sources imply that Gaius proposed a lex iudiciaria , not an extortion law, and, further, the role of the iudices editicii and the probability that chapters from the Lex Repetundarum on the reward for successful prosecutors were repeated in the Lex Tarentina of 104/3 BC together suggest that Klenze was right after all in identifying the law as the law of C. Servilius Glaucia. Lucilius’ apparent connection of the fierce Lex Calpurnia with Q. Scaevola’s trial in 119 or 118 BC seems to be the clinching evidence.

A comparison between ecl . 1 and ecl . 10 shows not only the deep differences of the new Virgilian pastoral poetry from Theocritus’ bucolic, but confirms that even Virgil lacked confidence in the power of poetry to solace real sorrow, an idea maintained throughout the whole Bucolicon liber . Interesting analogies between the first and the last eclogue help furthermore to explain Virgil’s farewell to his bucolic production.

In the traditional view, Martial’s epigram 9. 33 makes fun of a fictive character named Maro, who - thanks to his oversized phallus ( mentula ) - is applauded in the baths. This paper argues that the real concern of the poem are not (or not in the first place) physical body parts, but a literary corpus of obscene texts featuring the notorious mentula , namely the Priapea attributed to P. Vergilius Maro.

The Corpus agrimensorum Romanorum is a compilation of treatises on land-surveying which has been passed down to us in a manuscript from the sixth century AD (Arcerianus, Cod. Guelf. 36. 23 A). The best known authors included are Frontinus (ca. 40-107 AD), Hyginus gromaticus (lived during the reign of Trajan, 98-117 AD) and Siculus Flaccus (possibly third century AD). This paper addresses 11 passages in the corpus which discuss the origins of technical terms used in the text. Analysis of the content, language and style of these etymologies shows that they are later additions, which mostly originate from Varro, and should be deleted. It is also shown that, on palaeographic grounds, the order of a large body of text as found in modern editions must be reconsidered.

According to major Latin dictionaries, the word radius is attested as a terminus technicus for the geometrical concept ‘radius’ in Cicero’s Timaeus 17. In this study, however, it is argued that there is good reason to believe that Cicero did not use the word in this sense, but in a metaphorical expression in which radius mainly carries the well-attested sense of ‘rod (for drawing diagrams, etc.)’: paribus radiis attingi literally = ‘to be touched by equal rods’, that is to say, ‘to be equidistant’. The first and only convincing attestation of radius in the sense of ‘radius (of a circle, sphere, etc.)’ in ancient Latin literature is found in Calcidius’ Commentary on the Timaeus 59. It is suggested that Calcidius was influenced by Cicero’s translation and consequently adopted the word radius ; however, its technical sense of ‘radius’ was coined, deliberately or not, by Calcidius himself. As there are no other convincing attestations of this sense of the word in ancient Latin, not even in geometrical texts, it is suggested that the word radius never became a commonly accepted terminus technicus for radius in antiquity.

In the 1470s the Italian scholar and humanist Domizio Calderini (1444/46-1478) compiled a hitherto seldom noticed commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid . In his comments on Misenus’ burial the author draws on the archaic Law of the Twelve Tables several times. Calderini attempts to establish a link between the guidelines on burial (or more specifically on the curtailment of funerary luxury), as recorded in Tabula X, and the funerary ceremony as described in detail by Virgil, which also substantiates the Roman character of the passage. Although the parallels drawn up by Calderini are in general hardly convincing and his interpretative approach fails as a result, the explanations regarding the reading of the Twelve Tables given en passant by the philologist, who lectured at the Roman Studium Urbis , are of particular significance to both the history of classical philology and to the history of reception of this first Roman body of laws.