It is always a pity to spoil an old joke, especially one that belongs to one's own profession, which has been repeated time and again, for generations, whenever a teacher of Greek is concerned with the passages in question; but when the hearty laughter is over and the last echoes of it from our obedient pupils have faded away, let us examine the Greek again.

There is still something to be said about these figures for the Athenian hoplite force, the more so as the most reasonable discussion of them, Meyer's, is spoilt by some unsound inferences and has in consequence not found support. Their difficulty is apparent: a muster πανσημει in 338 meant calling up all classes up to the age of 50 , and since Socrates fought at Delion and Amphipolis when he was in his late forties, and not at Mantineia when he (...) was over 50, we may assume that it meant the same in the fifth century; we also assume that ‘the youngest’ are those in their nineteenth and twentieth years, as in the fourth century, certainly after the reform of the Ephebeia, perhaps earlier ; military service ceased at 60. But how could the number of men in these twelve classes, 19-20 and 51-60, stand in the proportion of 13: 17 to the men between 21 and 50 ? They could not be more than a third, and might be less. (Beloch, 1923, tries to make the problem more difficult by the arbitrary assumption that the 13,000 citizen hoplites are all the men of 21-60, instead of 21-50. Meyer, who accepts Thucydides’ figures, forgets that there must have been ‘oldest and youngest’ metics, besides the 3,000 who marched into Megara. Busolt and Meyer also argue that the classes 51-60 will have suffered specially heavy losses in the battles of 459-445, while the eight youngest classes would have seen no fighting. (shrink)

The interpretation of in this context raises some nice problems. It is a term, a very flattering one, which had been appropriated to themselves by a certain class, in many cities at least, and by Dorians in relation to ‘Ionians and islanders’; it had thus become a cant phrase in current usage, the kind of phrase which when used tauntingly, as here, or ironically should be given inverted commas.

My inverted commas are intended; I mean, of whom are Schwartz and Jacoby thinking when they say that the History which was called Kratippos' was a forgery of the second or of the first century B.C. ? The reason for the question is this: most forgeries are of the form, ‘Here is an epigram by Simonides, a new chapter by Thucydides’; or ‘I, a humble scholar or an unknown person, X, have discovered the lost books of Livy, or a hitherto (...) unknown painting by Vermeer, or a privately printed edition of Sonnets from the Portuguese’; that is, the work forged is said to be by a famous person, the discoverer a relatively obscure one. Schwartz and Jacoby, however, say, or imply, that ‘Kratippos’ was the name of the forger, a man who lived, probably, in the first century B.C., and who deceived Dionysios of Halikarnassos and Plutarch ; but what did he assert that his history was ? Did he say, ‘I, Kratippos, have discovered a lost history dating from a generation after the end of the Peloponnesian war which is a continuation of Thucydides; authorship unknown’? Clearly not, for Dionysios says, and Plutarch quite plainly implies, that they took ‘Kratippos’ to be an author of the early fourth century. (shrink)

DR. G. Zuntz's excellent paper on these verses in Proc. Brit. Acad. xlii , 209–46, deserves all our thanks for the clarity and good sense of its exposition, and for clearing away much unnecessary comment that has been encumbering the fragment, especially Bignone's theory that it derives its philosophy directly from Aristotle's Protreptikos, with Körte's supplement that it is indivisible—that there is no break at v. 7; see Körte's Menandri quae supersunt , ii. 147–8. There is, however, I think, room (...) for further comment on Zuntz's interpretation of the lines, and on his view that die fragment known as Papyrus Didotiana b may belong to the same play, Hypobolimaios. (shrink)