§ 1. The dates for Peisistratus’ reigns and exiles in the Athenaion Politeia, as given in the papyrus, which is the sole authority for the text, are as follows.

In consulatu sexto et septimo postquam bella civilia exstinxeram per consensum universorum [potitus rerum own]ium rem publicam ex mea potestate in senat[us populique Romani a]rbitrium transtuli. There is very little doubt about the reading of the Latin text, except that the Greek has suggested to Schönbauer that ‘compos’ should be read for ‘potitus’. He urges that ‘compos’ has a ‘milder meaning’ than ‘potitus’ and has no connotation of the use of force. The change to ‘compos’ is worthy of consideration, but (...) suggests that the Latin ran ‘compos factus’ if ‘compos’ was used, and the phrase ‘compos factus’, though good Augustan Latin, is perhaps too retarding in rhythm to fit this place, though to that stylistic feeling too much weight should not be assigned. (shrink)

It may be affirmed with some confidence that on this topic no generally accepted solution will be found in default of new evidence, for which we can only faintly hope. Against certainty on the matter it would seem that the Everlasting has fixed his canon: quis iustius induit arma scire nefas. Dogmatism is out of place; we must be content with whatever theory is least difficult to reconcile with the texts and with a reasonable interpretation of the course of events (...) at the time and the comments on them of contemporary observers. The thesis advanced in this paper is that there are strong reasons for supposing that the Lex Pompeia Licinia contained a date by which Caesar's command ended, that this date was not the end of February of the year 50 or the year 49 or the end of December of the year 50, that it did not contain a clause forbidding the discussion of a successor to Caesar before March 1, 50, and that if the date ending his command lies between the end of February and the end of December of the year 50, it may have been in fact the Ides of November in that year. (shrink)

Before the year 1857, when Mommsen published his celebrated treatise Die Rechtsfrage zwischen Caesar und dem Senat, most scholars believed that Caesar's provincial command legally expired at the end of 49 B.C.; but Mommsen demonstrated the falsity of this opinion, and for nearly half a century it was an article of faith that the date fixed was the 1st of March. I may remark parenthetically that, although this date is usually quoted, it would be more correct to say the 28th (...) of February. In 1904, however, Otto Hirschfeld gave reasons for believing that Caesar's command was not expressly secured beyond March 1, 50; and although Ludwig Holzapfel vigorously defended the orthodox view, Hirschfeld remained for several years in possession of the field. In 1913 Walther Judeich, while admitting that Hirschfeld had worsted Mommsen, argued, ‘convincingly’ as Mr. F. E. Adcock thinks, that the date was December 29, 50. The writers of the article on Latin Literature in The Year's Work in Classical Studies , noticing the reissue of the third volume of The Correspondence of Cicero, remark that ‘the authors [Tyrrell and Purser] still hold the pious faith that Caesar's command in Gaul was to run out on the 1st of March in 49; it is a pity,’ they add, ‘in view of Hirschfeld and the rest, that they have not shown the English reader their grounds for that belief.’ I propose in this article to give mine for sharing it. (shrink)

This book survives superficial but fails deeper scrutiny. A facile, undiscerning criticism of Lectures in the History of Political Thought (LHPT) is that on Oakeshott’s own account these are lectures on a non-subject: ‘I cannot detect anything which could properly correspond to the expression “the history of political thought”’ (p. 32). This is an entirely typical Oakeshottian swipe – elegant and oblique – at the title of the lecture course he inherited from Harold Laski. If title and quotation sit awkwardly (...) we should remember that Oakeshott never prepared the text for publication – a fortiori he did not prepare it for publication under this title. Moreover, for Oakeshott the compound notion of ‘political thought’ does not denote much either (pp. 33–4). A positive characterization can, however, be made for the notion of ‘political experience’ or ‘intellectual organization’ (p. 42), a particular context-bound agglomeration ‘of sentiments, beliefs, habits of thought, aspirations and ideas’ (pp. 43, 45, 391, 393). This notion, with its enumeration and specification into Greek, Roman, medieval and modern political experience, structures the 32 lectures that comprise the book. Oakeshott’s notion of political experience has deep affinities (at least) with the style of political analysis followed by the Cambridge classicist, F.E. Adcock, in Roman Political Ideas and Practice (1964), a text surely not fortuitously included in the course reading-list for the original lectures. (shrink)

The encounter between Socrates and Thrasymachus in Republic I is notoriously baffling. Most of what is said seems straightforward, and the issues at stake are ones of common concern, but the argument remains elusive. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature and grounds of this elusiveness, and to show that some of it can be dispelled by a sufficiently free-ranging exegesis that bears in mind the general character of Plato’s writing.

F. E. Sparshott; IV—Avowals and their Uses, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 62, Issue 1, 1 June 1962, Pages 63–76, https://doi.org/10.1093/arist.

Of the platonic theory that four qualities make up the whole of virtue. I show that aristotle's repudiation of this scheme is more apparent than real.

Aim: To improve clinical and ethical understanding of patient preferences for information and involvement in decision making.Objectives: To develop and evaluate a clinical tool to elicit these preferences and to consider the ethical issues raised.Design: A before and after study.Setting: Three UK hospices.Participants: Patients with advanced life-threatening illnesses and their doctors.Intervention: Questionnaire on information and decision-making preferences.Main outcome measures: Patient-based outcome measures were satisfaction with the amount of information given, with the way information was given, with family or carer information, (...) and confidence about future decision making. Doctor-based outcome measures were confidence in matching information to patient preference, matching family or carer communication to patient preference, knowing patient preferences and matching future decision making with patient preference.Results: Of 336 admissions, 101 patients completed the study . Patient satisfaction with the way information was given and family communication improved after introduction of the tool. Doctor confidence improved across all outcome measures .Conclusions: Patient satisfaction and doctor confidence were improved by administering the questionnaire, but complex ethical issues were raised by implementing and applying this research. The balance of ethical considerations were changed by advanced life-threatening illness, because there is increased risk of harm through delivery of information discordant with the patient’s own preferences. The importance of truly understanding patient preferences towards the end of life is highlighted by this study. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Sidonius Apollinaris and the Fall of Rome, A.D. 407–485F. E. RomerJill Harries. Sidonius Apollinaris and the Fall of Rome, A.D. 407–485. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. xiv + 292 pp.“It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that the Roman Empire in the West collapsed without a sound in the fifth century, but that nobody understood that the catastrophe had occurred before Byzantine chroniclers woke up belatedly to the fact (...) in the sixth century.” Thus, Jill Harries sets out to prove that the Roman Empire was not a tree in the forest with no one to hear its fall, but that the aristocratic Sidonius Apollinaris heard it. Conversely, Sidonius’ own ambitions, attitudes, and sense of compromise “illustrate the wider political failure [End Page 663] of Rome in Gaul” (v). From the beginning we see her characteristic method of synthesis and analysis, as she proceeds both topically and chronologically to map the history of Sidonius’ Gallic world against his life and his concerns.Like “the death of Socrates,” however, “the fall of Rome” means different things. Harries defines the Roman Empire “purely in terms of a status system based on the ‘gradus dignitatum’ available to the aristocracy and [on] expertise in classical literature” (17). This definition is based on “the single most significant remark made by any contemporary western author on the end of Roman rule: ‘with the removal of the ranks of office, the only means by which the best men can be distinguished from their inferiors, hereafter the only mark of nobility will be knowledge of letters’” (16–17, translating Sid., Ep. 8.2.2). The view here is distinctly from Gaul, and mainly from Clermont: “Rome” is only an idea. Harries avoids the pitfall of writing a history of fifth-century Gaul as a whole, while also avoiding anachronism by adopting Sidonius’ viewpoint. This “fall” is, of course, a process, momentous but not instantaneous. We get a glimpse of a theoretical moment only, for the same process—with or without local awareness—repeated itself all over Gaul and the Western empire.The other terms in the title need clarification, too. The period A.D. 407–485 includes Sidonius’ lifetime (431[432?]-ca. 485) and ends, roughly, at his death, but it begins a generation earlier, the day after tens of thousands of non-Roman peoples crossed the Rhine into the empire on 31 December 406. There is an air of inevitability at first: the Rhine crossing, the political fragmentation of Gaul and Spain, dissensions between Romans and various Gothic leaders, the sack of Rome in 410, and the imposition of the Gothic emperor Attalus, “all had combined to undermine the credibility of Roman rule, and of Roman law, in the West” (66). The eleven chapters proceed chronologically, each weaving in the author’s main themes: the expanding effects of the Gothic arrival, the Gallic experience of Rome’s fall, and Sidonius’ perception of it.Even Sidonius requires definition, since he eludes us in his writings and is, often, an intellectual poseur, wrapped in the literary classicism of his age and social class: “his art mirrored life, but it could also distort it” (11). When he describes his beloved villa Avitacum, for example, we cannot tell what is real or unreal, so much does he echo the younger Pliny’s language. Then, in the 470s, Sidonius stopped classicizing and adopted a simpler, more preacherly style; yet, in the 480s, he changed back as a consolation for the fall of Rome. For these reasons, and because the often hard-to-read Sidonius has not yet found his literary expositor, Harries’ Introduction guides the historian to “what may be termed the political aspects of his technique” (3).The book’s argument is divided into two sections. Part I, “Lyon and Rome,” begins with the family history of the Apollinares and the Aviti, and ends with Sidonius in the urban prefecture at Rome, a scantily attested period, about which Harries writes provocatively. Herein are five chapters discussing (a) Sidonius [End Page 664] at Lyon and Arles, A.D. 430–455, (b) Avitus and the Goths, (c) Majorian, (d) Sidonius as Christian layman, A.D. 461–467... (shrink)

The internal paradoxes in the quantum measurement scheme related to violation of conservation laws, changes in entropy, absence of a dynamic description of collapse, Wigner's friend, as well as the paradox of violation of causality in the EPR experiment are shown to be partially circumvented in the measurement scheme of stochastic quantum mechanics.

The language of manuals may be used to discuss inference in measurement in a general experimental context. Specializing to the context of the frame manual for Hilbert space, this inference leads to state dominance of the inferred state from partial measurements; this in turn, by Sakai's theorem, determines observables which are described by positive operator-valued measures. Symmetries are then introduced, showing that systems of covariance, rather than systems of imprimitivity, are natural objects to study in quantum mechanics. Experiments measuring different (...) polarization components simultaneously are reexamined in this language. Finally, implications of the Naimark extension theorem for the manual approach are investigated. (shrink)

Nelson Goodman equates expression with metaphorical exemplification. That is, a character C in a symbol system expresses a property P if three conditions are fulfilled: C has P ; C exemplifies P ; and C has P metaphorically. Two points are emphasized. The first point is that a character actually is what it metaphorically is: sad music really is sad, really does express sadness, just as loud music really is loud. The decision to apply to works of art language that (...) is literally applicable only to persons is arbitrary, in that no reason can be given for it other than its felt aptness; but, once the decision to use the terminology has been made, decisions about which terms are applicable to which works are no more arbitrary than any other decisions about the applications of terms. The second point is that there is no intimate connection between the concept of expression as thus defined and the concepts of emotion or feeling. The latter merely furnish one common set of metaphors. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:66 IN DEFENCE OF KEMP SMITH D. C. Stove argues against Kemp Smith's contention that Hume's philosophy "was intended not to subvert but to endorse our natural beliefs" in general, and our belief in the Causal Principle in particular. His arguments are insufficient. Kemp Smith does not need to deny that the falsity of the Causal Principle is believed by Hume to be possible in the strongest of Stove's (...) three suggested 2 senses: it is not merely self-consistent, but the Principle is unverifiable and unconfirmable in the sense that no empirical proposition is relevant to its truth. However, to say flatly that its falsity is possible is to say that it is not impossible in any way at all; and that is what is at stake both in Hume's letter to Stewart and in the use Kemp Smith makes of it. If Hume had written a letter to Stewart or to any scientific enquirer urging him to desist from his labours on the ground that "something may begin to exist, or start into being without a cause," he would have been a fool, and in representing Hume's position in this way Stewart is in fact calling Hume a fool. It is not surprising that Hume is indignant. The problem is whether, and how, one can hold both that the Causal Principle is undeniably true and that it can be supported neither by deductive nor by inductive argument, and whether Hume on the most reasonable interpretation of his published works held both these views. Clues to the answer lie in the in tradition of sceptical philosophy, and in the difference between a cause and a reason. Hume's philosophy is indeed, as he says, 'very sceptical'. But scepticism is a kind of philosophy with a long history, from Sextus Empiricus to Bayle, and it is reasonable to suppose that Hume was aligning himself with this position, especially since so much of the argument in 67 the Treatise is derived from Bayle. But sceptics do not behave otherwise than ordinary men. Scepticism is not directed against everyday beliefs but again.st arguments: this is a point on which Sextus insists." It would not be the part of a sceptic to doubt that every event has a cause, but to refute all arguments purporting to show that such is the case. To assert "that any thing might arise without a Cause" would not be scepticism, but an inverse dogmatism: to infer from a philosophical argument a belief about the real world that is at variance with everyday belief. The crucial step in Stove's argument occurs in his gloss of Hume's claim that he had maintained "that our Certainty of the Falsehood of that Proposition proceeded neither from Intuition nor Demonstration; but from another Source" phrase "sic., experience, of course". This could be misleading. It could mean that Hume here claims that experience gives us reason to believe that the Causal Principle is true; and this Hume has denied, as Stove urges ad loc. But nothing in what Hume says in his letter requires us to interpret him thus. And his sceptical principles tell against it: an argument from experience, whether inductive or by analogy or whatever, is still an argument and thus liable to sceptical attack. What Hume could mean, and what Kemp Smith took him to mean, is that our experience causes us to regard the principle as necessary: experience is not a premise in any sort of argument at all, but a causal explanation for a universal propensity to believe in the Causal Principle. It is true that Hume's citation as analogues of such empirical affirmations as "That Caesar existed" is misleading. But it is not in fact the case that Hume represents these as in any way 'parallel' with the Causal Principle: he says only that, like it, They are believed without recourse to Reason and Intuition. In 68 point of fact, Stove is going a bit far when he says that this is (like "There is such an Island as Sicily") an observation-statement; but that point is hardly relevant here. It is worth noting that in the offending passage... (shrink)