In a recent paper Mr. Balsdon has condemned the ‘political barrenness of Cicero's thought and the thought of his political friends’. The speech pro Sestio, we are told, with its stress on otium, implies ‘an acceptance of the existing political and social conditions, of what Cicero describes as otiosae dignitatis … fundamenta , which the principes must protect and defend’. Defence of these was ‘a placid acceptance of the existing régime’ and the appeal for otium ‘the retort of Maître Pangloss (...) that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds’. (shrink)

ALL Roman historical writers use a naval terminology based on military parlance. Ships on the move in line ahead are an agmen navium, positions in the line are ordines , ships in a single file are said to move tenui agmine—in two columns are said to be birds in ordine navibus. In one passage the three posts in the column are described as prima navis, media classis, extremum agmen. To bring up the rear is agmen cogere.

Euxitheus son of Thoucritus was struck off the lexiarchicon grammateion of the deme Halimous, probably in the diapsephisis of 346/5 B.C. Speech 57 in the Demosthenic corpus is his reply to the demarch at the hearing of his appeal. This paper attempts to correct the stemma given for him in J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families 600–300 B.C., pp. 94–5.