The lack of stage directions in surviving Greek comedy which might give a clue to comic ‘business’ not clearly signalled or confirmed in the text is a considerable disadvantage to us, not least in some of the opening tableaux of Aristophanes. One thinks of restless father and snoring son in bed at the opening of Clouds, the jokes involving the incongruous entry of master, slave, donkey and baggage in Frogs, the preparations for launching the dung-beetle into space in Peace – (...) all scenes which demand visual as well as verbal effects in order to engage immediate attention and get the audience into a lively humour for what is to come. In the opening scene of Wasps between the slaves engaged in their nocturnal vigil over Philocleon, there are a number of points implied by the verbal references which seem to me to depend for clarification on their actions, and perhaps also the stage properties involved. (shrink)

In the second book of the De Musica, Aristides Quintilianus discourses at length on the educational value of music, drawing on many earlier sources, Pythagorean, Damonian, and of course Plato and Aristotle. In ch. 6 Plato's censorious views in the Republic are particularly referred to, but, like Aristotle in the eighth book of his Politics, Aristides takes a less severe attitude towards the pleasure-giving content of melody on appropriate occasions, and points to the natural human taste for such music: τς (...) δ σεως κα τ τοιατα παιτοσης, μποδίζειν μν δνατον, τν δ νσεων τν λιμον προκριτον. (shrink)

There can be few Greek prose authors who outdo Plutarch in fondness for elaborate similes, and a determination to sustain at length vocabulary appropriate to both objects of comparison within the simile, once it is embarked upon. In the essay Quomodo adulescens he uses a favourite image, in which a young man aspiring to be educated in quality literature is recommended to follow the example of the bee, which extracts material for its honey from the most pungent plants: μν ον (...) μλιττα υσικς ν τος δριμνττοις νθεσι κα τας τραχντταις κνθαις ξανενρσκει τ λειτατον μλι κα χρησιμτατον, ο δ παδες, ν ρθς ντρωνται τος ποιμασιν, κα π τν αλονς κα τπους ποψας χντων λκειν τι χρσιμον μωσγπως μαθησναι κα λιμον. In another such essay he elaborates this theme at greater length as follows. (shrink)

In the second book of the De Musica, Aristides Quintilianus discourses at length on the educational value of music, drawing on many earlier sources, Pythagorean, Damonian, and of course Plato and Aristotle. In ch. 6 Plato's censorious views in the Republic are particularly referred to, but, like Aristotle in the eighth book of his Politics, Aristides takes a less severe attitude towards the pleasure-giving content of melody on appropriate occasions, and points to the natural human taste for such music: τς (...) δ σεως κα τ τοιατα παιτοσης, μποδίζειν μν δνατον , τν δ νσεων τν λιμον προκριτον. (shrink)

The lines come from the messenger's speech describing the attack of the Delphians on Neoptolemus, a passage which I have discussed elsewhere in connexion with the tradition of Neoptolemus as inventor of the armed Pyrrhic dance. LSJ seem to be in several minds about the meaning and connexion of some of the words describing the missiles used by the Delphians. S.v. ‘σφαγεύς’, they give ‘sacrificial knife, spit’ uniquely of a word elsewhere meaning ‘slayer, murderer’, etc.. S.v. ‘βουπόρος’, they cite ἀμφωβόλοι (...) σφαγῆς … βουπόροι ‘spitst fit to pierce an ox's throat’—i.e. taking σφαγῆς as gen. sing., rather oddly dependent on βουπόροι. S.v. ‘ἔκλυτος’, they quote this passage, again uniquely, in the sense ‘easy to let go, light, buoyant, of missiles’. This last seems even less likely than Wecklein's ohne Riemen or the Budé's doubles dards sans poignée, which presumably invoke a rather frigid contrast of the true javelins fitted with thongs and the spits, sharp at both ends, which were pressed into service of a similar sort, but of course had to be thrown without this attachment: but these implements could hardly be described as ἔκλυτοι of thongs which they never had at all in the first place!With Murray's punctuation, since a combination of a, b, c τε, d is scarcely credible, σφαγῆς βουπόροι is presumably not to be taken as the description of a separate type of weapon, but as an explanatory appositional phrase with ἀμφώβολοι. This interpretation is found in the schol, ὀβελίσκοι σφάττειν δυνάμενοι and followed by Hermann and Paley. (shrink)