Cicero's philosophical works are now exciting renewed interest, in part because he provides vital evidence of the views of the Greek philosophers of the Hellenistic age, and partly because of the light he casts on the intellectual life of first century Rome. This edition uses the 1997 Clarendon text by the acclaimed translator P.G. Walsh.

The following note is based upon a re-examination of the binding, the quire signatures, and the enumeration of the plays of Euripides in L first made at Florence in 1948 and checked in 1952. Its purpose is to suggest that conjectures are still current about L and the exemplar from which it was copied, which cannot be regarded as sufficiently supported by good evidence to justify their retention; and to attempt some further clarification of L's relationship with the MS. Palatinus (...) 287. (shrink)

The words I wish to delete in 48-9 spoil a ‘tricolon crescendo’ whose three members are clearly marked and whose verbs are perhaps deliberately varied in person and tense. The parataxis by means of hic is awkward, and the words seem to be a versified gloss. The Scholiast says : id est: to nobilis tantum et imperitus. nam de plebe, id est de humili familia, eloquentes exeunt, qui nobilium imperitorum causas defendunt; but that could be a paraphrase based on the (...) text as it stands in our manuscripts. (shrink)

In his article ‘Did the Athenians Regard Seduction as a Worse Crime than Rape?’, CQ 40 , 370–7, Edward M. Harris rightly casts doubt on the value of Lysias 1.30–5, which has generally been accepted as evidence that the Athenians did indeed regard seduction as the worse of the two crimes. Euphiletos in this speech is defending himself on a charge of murder, and, as Harris says , ‘Euphiletus’ presentation of the Athenian statutes regarding rape and seduction is dictated by (...) the rhetorical constraints of his case. It is not a reflection of widely held social attitudes.'. (shrink)

Hanc quoque ‘iucunditatem’, si vis, transfer in animum , rnodo intellegas inter ilium qui dicat Tanta laetitia auctus sum ut nihil constet et eum qui Nunc demum mihi animus ardet, quorum alter laetitia gestiat, alter dolore crucietur, esse ilium medium [Quamquam haec inter nos nuper notitia admodum est] qui nee laetetur nee angatur, itemque inter eum qui potiatur corporis expetitis voluptatibus et eum qui crucietur summis doloribus esse eum qui utroque careat.

This would be admirably clear and would give excellent sense, but it does entail the deletion of as an interpolation before Marshall is aware that is a word that is not likely to be used by an interpolator, but still feels able to propose its deletion and gives a detailed account of the way in which an interpolator might have approached the sentence. When one attempts to read the mind of an ancient scribe, all sorts of possibilities are opened up; (...) in this instance, it seems equally possible that a reader who, as Marshall suggests, was faced with … and was not able to understand the sentence because he failed to separate from and to see that was to be taken in the second clause, would have been inclined first at least to see whether sense could be obtained by separating from rather than to conjure up the word. (shrink)

as Denniston pointed out in his note on the passage, ‘is difficult’. Various suggestions have been made to explain it, from Kvicala's emendation on the analogy of Medea 923, to Parmentier's note, ‘la joue blanche ou claire, c'est-à-dire en sa fleur de jeunesse’; but none is altogether convincing or satisfactory. May one, then, advance the idea of retaining as the Oxford recension does, not on the ground of faute de mieux, but for the sake of the very striking image it (...) contains? How to Cite This Article. (shrink)