Volume 164, Issue 2

This article argues that the episode in Il . 24.552–658 involving Achilles and Priam brings out the hero’s ability to control his emotions – even if he did lose them momentarily – by means of his calculation of what will come next. This interpretation fits the compositional structure of the epic, whose closure is highlighted by the hero’s dramatized emotions in his encounter with the Trojan king.

In Melanipp. PMG 762 the reading βροτῶν (v. 1) of the MSS can be retained. The god invoked as “lord of the everlasting soul” (v. 2), generally identified with Dionysus-Zagreus, can be rather recognized as the Orphic Zeus.

The section 18b16–⁠25 of the famous chapter 9 of Aristotle’s De interpretatione presents two objections against the assumption that both members of a contradictory pair of future singular statements might be false. This section is unlikely to be genuine, because (1) the first objection is either directly begging the question or misusing a previous argument in a question-begging way, (2) the second objection includes irrelevant observations, and (3) the rebuttal of the said assumption interrupts the intimate connection between the immediately preceding and following sections.

The present contribution aims to investigate, from the point of view of text and content, fr. 95 K.‑A. of the comic author Philemon. The fragment, which likely belonged to the prologue of a comedy of name unknown, is spoken by Aere (perhaps an allegory), which provides a self-presentation of traits that are para-philosophical and, specifically, Presocratic. Line 2 of the fragment has been condemned by all editors to date, but through an analysis of the fragment’s textual tradition, the line’s syntactic structure and the parodic implications, it is proposed here to retain the line. Finally, reflections are offered also on line 3, considering it in accord with the textual choices adopted in relation to the preceding line.

Scholars and editors of Hellenistic epigram have often discounted the authenticity of dialectal variance attested in the manuscript tradition, either privileging the dialectal variant that conforms to the predominant dialect in the epigram or even choosing to change attested dialect forms to produce a uniform coloring. This article argues that the addresses to earth at lines 2 and 10 of Leonidas of Tarentum Anth. Pal. 7.440 = Gow/Page, HE 11 were originally Doric. I show that there are paleographic as well as literary grounds for the reading. In particular, the presence of Doric forms at these two points in the epigram evoke the language of tragic lament. The findings of this article have potentially significant implications for the editing of dialectal mixture in the Greek Anthology .

Lucian’s work De historia conscribenda not only presents reflections on how one should or should not write history, but also illustrates possible ways to represent the authorial activity of a historian (i. e. how one writes ‘metahistory’). In this, two basic forms can be distinguished, both of which can be understood from a narratological perspective as metalepses. In the first case, the historian is represented as the direct originator of the action; in the second he acts as a mere observer, but one who moves spatially in and with his action. Both forms of statement stand within traditions of motifs that can be traced from antiquity through to the modern era; yet Lucian nonetheless makes an innovative contribution by inscribing value judgements into the motifs. The result is the suggestion that the historian fulfils the role of observer, while the role of originator turns out to be more apt for the poet than for the historian. This permits far-reaching conclusions to be drawn about the conception of poetry and historiography as a whole.

This paper intends to offer a new supplement to a corrupt passage of the Epicurean inscription of Oenoanda. Smith, in the lacuna of Fr. 6, uses the phrasal term πρῶτα σώματα to indicate the atoms. The supplement is not satisfying as it is based solely on evidence drawn from non-Epicurean texts and Lucretius, who writes in Latin and is not always reliable for reconstructing the Epicurean terminology. In this article, I will try to demonstrate that πρῶτα σώματα is in fact a peripatetic – and subsequently stoic – term indicating the elements in general, which has never been used by any Epicurean author for polemical reasons. Finally, I will propose an alternative supplement.

The study pursues two aims. The first part is dedicated to the deciphering and editing of a new text preserved as palimpsest on a parchment bifolio. It belongs to a small collection of documents from the Cairo Genizah owned by the University of Geneva. The fragment reveals an extract from an early version of a Passion of St Plato of Ancyra, a saint who is best known through Byzantine menologia. His Passion was also reworked by Symeon Metaphrastes in the 10th century. However, the new text is closest to an anonymous pre-metaphrastic version available in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca . The second aim of the paper (developed in Part 2) is, therefore, to establish the relation between different versions of the Passion and locate the new witness from the Cairo Genizah in the history of the transmission of this text.

This article defends Baehrens’ reading cenam for caelum at Catullus 6.17 as more sensible than scholars have thought, based on allusions to Meleager, AP 5.175. It then proposes a new emendation to the line that is suggested by this Greek source.

The article proposes to re-examine the Lucretian formula naturae species ratioque (1.146–148 = 2.59–61 = 3.91–93 = 6.39–41), the meaning of which has prompted some critical debate. The examination begins from an analysis of rhetoric and argument in the sections in which the phrase occurs, with the goal of demonstrating that the meaning ‘rational vision of nature’ is more apt to the context and to Lucretius’ poetic and philosophical programme, which often relies on metaphors drawn from the semantic field of vision to describe the comprehension of natural phenomena and the didactic aim of the work. In the light of this, the final part of the paper discusses the textual problem concerning lines 6.56–57 (= 90–91), which are normally considered spurious but which can be understood better in the light of the Lucretian conception of philosophy (and of poetry) as penetrating vision.

This paper focuses on two lines of the poem Aetna that are generally considered to be corrupt (586–587). I suggest two emendations aimed at restoring a reasonable form of the text, consistent with the traditional portrait of the Pandionids. In order to solve the crux it is necessary to restore the two topoi related to the representation of the Pandionids after their metamorphoses: the place where they reside and the mourning song of the nightingale.

Scholarly efforts to detect playfulness in the address to Apollodorus at Pl. Symp . 172a are reviewed and found unsatisfactory. In keeping with the dialogue’s erotic theme and comic spirit, a small supplemental emendation of the address’s Φαληρεύς is proposed to effect a phallic mock-demotic à la Aristophanes, Φαλ<λ>ηρεύς.