Lvcilivs, fr. 965 :quaenam uox ex te resonans meo gradu remoram facit ?Mr. Housman in the first number of the Classical Quarterly refuted and pulverized the attempt of Marx to emend this passage by writing quoia nam. ‘ Ex tecto ’ and ‘ ex aede’ have been suggested; but it is obvious that if ‘ ex aede’ is to be contemplated, emendation may go on S0009838800019431_inline1—scores of words could be found that would make sense. There is no context. If the (...) passage is to be emended at all, I suggest that Lucilius wrotequaenam uox EXTVOORERESONANS. (shrink)

The Hercules Oetaeus, whatever be its authorship, is closely related to the other plays, and often has what seem to be reminiscences of them, not always felicitous reminiscences. Often, of course, they are reminiscences of the other Hercules, and may supply a clue to the text of that play. Many of them were pointed out by Leo, but there is room for further investigation.

The ancient evidence about the Culex is collected by Miss Jackson in her article in the Classical Quarterly . There seems no reason to doubt that Lucan said ‘et quantum mihi restat ad Culicem!’; and, whatever Lucan meant by it, Statius turned it into a compliment for the poet by making Calliope predict the various works he would produce ‘ante annos Culicis Maroniani’ . In the Neronian age, we may take it, it was not an obscure or conjectural matter, but (...) one of common knowledge or belief, that a certain known poem, the Culex, was the work of Virgil. About the other opuscula there is no evidence as early as that. The Aetna and Moretum are ascribed to him dubiously; the Ciris, Dirae, Epigrammata, Priapea, Catalepton are attributed to him with more confidence, but not so confidently as the Culex. It almost looks as if the belief in the Virgilian authorship spread from the Culex to certain other poems which were in some way or other connected with it. Here there is admittedly a great difficulty for those who are inclined to deny or to doubt that it is Virgil's. Are not the facts most easily explained by supposing that it was Virgil's ? At all events it is in various ways improbable that it was written, and produced as Virgil's, at some time between Virgil's death and the youth of Lucan. It is difficult to imagine who would have a motive for doing such a thing, or who could do it successfully. So it is incumbent upon the sceptic to produce some plausible view of what may have happened. (shrink)

The dream related by Ennius in the first book of his Annales, in which the ghost of Homer appeared to him, has been the subject of much discussion. There are various pieces of evidence about it from which inferences can be drawn; sometimes, I think, too much has been inferred, sometimes too little. My chief object in this paper is to consider what exactly was the view held or expounded by Ennius regarding the nature of the soul and the conditions (...) under which a ghost appears. But I propose in the first place to review the evidence and to contemplate the dream as a poetic product, a thing which has its place in the history of poetry and its affinities with similar passages in other authors. (shrink)