This paper addresses contentious line 35 of Hesiod's Theogony. It is fair to say that there is no scholarly agreement regarding the denotation of line 35. I first consider various previous interpretations and examine important archaic hexametric comparanda. Thereafter, I provide a new interpretation of line 35.

Abstract This article suggests a new syntactical interpretation of lines 25 and 26 of Hesiod's Theogony. Three infelicities are addressed: the awkward string of plurals in line 26, the unmotivated abuse of Hesiod, and a concern for logical sequence. I argue that, at lines 25 and 26, Hesiod creates a tableau vivant wherein the Muses juxtapose lowly shepherds with their own grandeur in preparation for Hesiod to move from shepherd to singer. Hesiod's proem develops a tighter logical thread when it is interpreted in this manner.

According to epinician discourse, gods, such as Zeus, grant victories to humans, and Pindar asserts an obligation to thank those gods who have granted these victories. Scholars refer to this sense of obligation, which may be referenced either explicitly or implicitly, as the xp epsilon o sigma-motif.1 The xp epsilon o sigma-motif plays an important role in the metaphysics of Pindar's epinician world,2 and I suggest that Pindar employs the xp epsilon o sigma-motif at Olympian 13.106, although the verse has not previously been interpreted thus.I provide William Race's text and translation for lines 103-106 both for the convenience of the reader and in order to contextualize my argument:

the narrative presence in Archilochus’ poems: the story of Deianira and Nessos (maybe an obscene version: fr. 286 W.) and that of Lyncaeus and Hypermnestra (fr. 305 W.), with Danaus as paradigma of a father’s perjury (see Lycambes). Moreover, there is one significant omission in the commentary on fr. 2: A. disregards the hypothesis of B. Gentili (widely accepted today) that the word ἐν δορὶ should be translated as ‘on the wood’, i.e. ‘on the ship’, and not as ‘on the sword’ (Riv. Fil. 93 [1965], 129–34). In effect, we can plausibly think of a symposium on the deck of a ship. A. makes the interesting choice to publish fr. 1 by Semonides (pp. 86–90); this poem is often missing from anthologies and is not very popular among scholars. It is an iambic poem, but at the same time it is a long ‘elegiac’ and pessimistic meditation on human life. The usual ironic and/or aggressive character of iambic poems is completely absent. It is tempting to identify the same imprint in the famous ‘Iambus on Women’ (fr. 7), the most radical example of misogyny. It is surprising that the theriomorphic form of the woman was not represented in the usual iambic tone (as in Aristophanes, for instance): as A. rightly states, ‘its humour has a serious side’ (p. 92), probably because it was intended for an aristocratic audience. A. also publishes the new elegy on the battle of Plataea by Simonides of Ceos, with a long commentary (pp. 219–31), by adopting the papyrus integrations of the first editors (P. Parsons and M.L. West). This is a particularly narrative elegy, both because ‘it represents a contemporary witness to the Persian Wars’ (p. 220) and because of a brief hymn (or invocation?) to Achilles preceding the usual invocation of Muses. The role of Achilles is disputed, but most likely the Greek hero is the paradigm of the leader of the Greek army, the Spartan king Pausanias. A. argues that the elegy was performed at a Panhellenic event, maybe in Plataea (‘plausible’: p. 222), but the original eulogistic link between Achilles and Pausanias paves the way to supposing that Sparta had commissioned this elegy and of course also its performance in loco. This is an insightful and serious work, with a careful analysis of the different texts. In a short volume we find a large number of new interpretations, very useful both to students and to professional scholars.

A NEW COMMENTARY ON OLYMPIAN 13 - (A.) Peri L’Olimpica XIII di Pindaro. Introduzione, commento e analisi metrica. (Hermes Einzelschriften 121.) Pp. 173. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2021. Cased, €46. ISBN: 978-3-515-13045-5.

SERGIO YONA and GREGSON DAVIS (EDS), EPICURUS IN ROME: PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES IN THE CICERONIAN AGE. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. x + 207, illus. isbn 9781108845052. £75.00. - Volume 112

Reviewed by: Ennius Noster: Lucretius and the Annales by Jason S. Nethercut Chris EcKerman Ennius Noster: Lucretius and the Annales. By Jason S. Nethercut. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. x + 260. Hardback, $99.00. ISBN: 978-0-197-51769-7. In this book, Nethercut examines the reception of Ennius’ Annales in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (DRN). I commend Nethercut both for thinking about polemical allusion at the macro-scale and for several original, insightful readings. The book, however, is not without its problems.1 In the introduction, Nethercut sets out his thesis squarely (2), arguing that Lucretius alludes to Ennius’ Annales to dismantle the Ennian thought-world that privileges teleological history and the importance of the Romans within that history. Nethercut suggests that Lucretius polemically alludes to what we might call Ennian metaphysics because Ennius’ vision of nature is incongruent with Epicurean truth. Nethercut homes in on five markers of Ennian style in Lucretius and argues that Lucretius creates “clusters” and “anti-clusters” (i.e., the absence of Ennian stylistic markers) of Ennianisms throughout the DRN. We are told that [End Page 491] Lucretius clusters “when he wants us to read a passage with Ennius in mind” (10); similarly, anti-clusters are pregnant with meaning since the reader reflects on the absence of Ennianisms in anti-cluster passages. In his first chapter, Nethercut confronts the wide-spread assumption that Republican epic poets developed their poetry with deference to Ennian aesthetic principles and that Lucretius’ didactic poem follows this trend. He argues that scholars have been too quick to accept Friedrich Leo’s pronouncements regarding the degree to which Republican epicists imitated Ennius and, thereafter, examines passages in which Roman Republican authors employ Ennianisms. Nethercut uncovers a tradition of aemulatio rather than of imitatio, observing that poets such as Accius, Furius and Cicero employ Ennianisms for the sake of, for example, parodying Ennius, capping Ennius and appropriating Ennius’s ideological value, rather than for the sake of aping Ennius. This is an important chapter. In his second chapter, Nethercut homes in on the manner in which Lucretius responds to Ennius as a “natural philosopher” (45). He builds argument on the presupposition that Lucretius titled his poem De Rerum Natura (45), but we do not know that Lucretius titled his poem thusly.2 Following Conte, Nethercut reads DRN 1.66–67 in relation to Il. 17.166–167, but I do not think that one should do so;3 nor do I find his suggestion (50–53) that Lucretius constructs Epicurus at 1.72–74 as Odysseus-like compelling.4 Thereafter, Nethercut shows how Lucretius polemically alludes to Ennius’ cosmic triad (i.e., earth, sea and sky), divine machinery and other natural phenomena so as to deprecate the Ennian vision of natura. He shifts his focus in the final section of the chapter, arguing that Lucretius dismantles both Ennius’ positioning of Rome as being at the center of the cosmos and Ennius’ conceptualization of Rome as being, in certain respects, coextensive with the cosmos.5 This chapter contains several thoughtful readings. [End Page 492] In his third chapter, Nethercut argues that “Lucretius alludes time and again to historical episodes and personalities in Ennius’ Annales that would appear to valorize Roman hegemony and exemplarity, only to strip them of whatever value these elements may have had in their Ennian context” (77), and he also submits that Lucretius has a “disdain for history” (79). In favor of the second argument, he cites 3.830–869. The Punic War is used in that passage, however, in relation to the so-called symmetry argument (used in relation to the idea that no-harm comes to the subject after death).6 Lucretius is making the argument that human experience, or rather non-experience, will be the same after death as it was before birth (cf. l. 840); thus, the passage provides no evidence that Lucretius has a “disdain for history.” Nor, I think, is Nethercut correct to say that Lucretius is making an argument “that the past does not affect the present” (86): it is a cornerstone of Epicurean doctrine that the past may powerfully affect the present, as pleasure, for example...

This note details correspondences between Sappho fr. 16 (V.) and the proem to Book 2 of Lucretius' De rerum natura. The author argues that Lucretius polemically alludes to Sappho.

Abstract This note details correspondences between Sappho fr. 16 (V.) and the proem to Book 2 of Lucretius’ De rerum natura. The author argues that Lucretius polemically alludes to Sappho.

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I provide a new interpretation of DRN 3.17-30 and 6.68-79, reading 3.17-30 in relation to Epicuru's teachings on the mental construction of gods and 6.68-79 in relation to popular religion. I also review 5.1161-1193, discussing the evidence that the passage provides for the idealist and realist theses.