The story of Orestes in Pindar's Pythian XI presents two problems. First, there is the manner of its introduction; as Wilamowitz says, ‘ganz ausserlich ist die Verbindung mit dem Mythos.’ After praising the victory of the Theban Thrasydaeus in the Pythian Games Pindar moves with astonishing abruptness to the story of Agamemnon's death and the vengeance of Orestes. At first sight nothing could be more superficial than the way in which Pindar passes to the myth. Thrasydaeus has glorified his home

⋯ν ⋯φνεαῖς ⋯ραισι πυλ⋯δ

νικ⋯ν ξ⋯νου Λ⋯κωνος 'ο;ρ⋯στα,

τ⋯ν δ⋯ φονευομ⋯νου πατρ⋯ς κτλ.

I begin with a paraphrase of Plato Laws X 887de, which has suggested the arguments to be developed in this brief article. ‘The Athenian’ speaks to the following effect:

‘How can one admonish in all patience those who deny the existence of gods ? For no sufficient reason they disbelieve the myths which, in infancy, they heard from nurses and mothers in sportive or in serious vein. They disbelieve also those myths which, at sacrifices, from boyhood onwards, they heard recounted in prayers and saw represented in spectacles. They reject the testimony of their own parents, nay, of all Greeks and barbarians, who by continual prayer and worship show clearly their unanimous belief in the existence of gods. Despising all these things, they lay on us the burden of refuting by reasoned argument their perverse opinions.’

Parisinus suppl. gr. 256 was written, to judge from the hand, not long after 1300. As far as the end of book VI the writer copied both text and scholia from a descendant of M. At that point another MS. came into his hands. This was no other than that ancestor of J which, as we saw on p. 87, had received valuable readings from the source ω. From this MS. the scribe now corrected what he had already written, copied the two remaining books, and added the two Lives before the text and the Epistula Dionysii ad Ammaeum after it. (That he went on to copy Demosthenes‘ Philippics and other works, and bound them up with the Thucydides, is not our concern.) From 1—for so, after Dain (see p. 86 n.), I shall style our MS.—was copied the MS. from which, after it had been perfunctorily corrected from another source, was copied X (p. 91).

Towards the conclusion of his interesting remarks (C.Q. XXX, 1–3) on the meaning of the Homeric phrase, τῇ δ' ἄπτερος ἔπλετο μ⋯θος, Professor J. A. K. Thomson writes, ‘When a classical author uses the word ἄπτερος it means “wingless” or “featherless” and nothing else,’ and he accordingly rejects Headlam's interpretation of ἄπτερος φ⋯τις at Aesch. Ag. 288 together with the same scholar's proposal to read at P. V. 707 ἄπτερος for the unmetrical αἰπνἰδιος (Headlam did actually propose either ἄπτερος or ⋯πτ⋯ρως but preferred the former.) It may be true that the phrase, ⋯πτ⋯ρῳ τάχει, which Headlam adduced in his note on the Agam. passage in support of his rendering, is not by itself convincing, but there are other considerations which Professor Thomson has, I imagine, overlooked. What follows is not an attempt to demonstrate that ἄπτερος does mean ‘wing-swift’ in Aeschylus, but only to suggest that there is evidence to show that the word could bear that meaning in classical Greek authors, and that Headlam's interpretation and emendation should therefore not be rejected out of hand.

It has frequently been observed that the Prometheus Vinctus shows certain Sophoclean characteristics of rhythm. In order to vary the rhythm of his iambics and to avoid monotony, Sophocles often knits consecutive trimeters closely together by placing at the end of one line some word which looks forward to the next line, and so precludes the reader from stopping for the natural pause after the sixth foot. Sometimes he uses in this way subordinating words which introduce a dependent clause in the next line (Antig. 311); sometimes proclitics (O.C. 495) or quasi-proclitics (O.R. 267). (Sometimes, too, he even allows elision at the end of the trimeter, but this peculiarly Sophoclean device does not concern us now.)

I purchased in 1902 from the sale by Sotheby of 2347 manuscripts and rare books the property of Henry White, of 30, Queensgate, a manuscript of Ovid's Heroides, no. 1629 in the catalogue, the examination of which has led me to some conclusions. An account of it may be of interest. I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. E. A. Lowe, our foremost palaeographist, who has most kindly examined my manuscript with great care and fixed its date and origin. This manuscript, which I call O, written on vellum in fine large characters somewhere in northern Italy, belongs to the middle of the fourteenth century. It contains 48 pages, measuring 10 inches by 7 inches, averaging 35 or 36 lines in the page. The initial illuminated letter of the first epistle shows a female figure dressed in a vermilion coloured robe with blue cuffs, representing apparently Penelope, on a blue ground with gold stars, and with borders illuminated with lake vermilion and burnished gold. The manuscript resembles in style two figured in the Palaeographical Society's facsimiles Vol. III., plate 221, Brit. Mus. Add. 31,032 early s. xiv, and plate 227 Brit. Mus. Add. 27,428 s. xiv. Dr. Lowe writes: ‘There can be very little doubt as to the origin of the manuscript. It is north Italian. The curious errors of spelling make one think of the province of Venice. It is quite likely that it was written in the Veneto, and then migrated to the province of Lombardia. The fly-leaves contain the name of the proud owners of your manuscript in the fifteenth century. John and Peter and Anthony and Simon and Francis de Nailate owned the book. Some of them went to the school of Master Baltrami of Lucino. As the word Milan (‘civitas Mediolani’) occurs in the back fly-leaf, it seems highly probable that this Lucino is the place between Milan and Como.’ Examples of the writings on the fly-leaves are:

Iste liber Ouidi est nostrorum uidelicet Petri < et > Antonii filiorum domini Johannis de Nailate pergentium ad scolas Bertrami de Lucino, qui est bonus doctor.

The early handbooks of rhetoric compiled by Tisias and Corax and their successors seem to have been directed entirely at successful speaking in courts of law. This was the art that Strepsiades set out to learn in the Philosopher's Thinking-shop; this, Isocrates complains, was the only object of technical writers on rhetoric before his time; and Aristotle, when he wrote the chapter that stands first in hisRhetoric, made just the same complaint: τ⋯ς αὐτ⋯ς oὔσμς μεθ⋯δoυ περι τ⋯ δημηγoρικτ⋯ και δικανικ⋯ και καλλιoνoς και πoλιτικωτ⋯ραςτ⋯ς δημηγoρικ⋯ς πραγματειας oὔςηρ ἤ oὔσης ἤ τ⋯ς περι τ⋯ ςυναλλ⋯γματα, πει μ⋯ν ⋯κεινης oὐδ⋯ν λ⋯γoυγι, περι δ⋯ικ⋯ξεσθαι π⋯ντες πειρ⋯νται τεχνoλoγειν. The art as the Sophists practised it was by no means so limited in its application: many of them were accustomed to playing the parts of statesmen and diplomats as well as of educators; and the most notorious field for their powers of oratory was of course the lecture or ⋯πιδειξις. But the systems of rhetoric that they devised and taught did not cover their own practice; and forensic oratory, as well as seeming the most commonly necessary kind at that time, was also, it must be said, the easiest to reduce to rule. Gorgias, it is true, professed to teach a rhetoric of more extended application, by means of which his pupils would be able to produce conviction in any public assembly;* but we must conclude that this wider field was at least very imperfectly treated in all the technical systems of the time. Plato shortly describes the position thus:μ⋯λιστα μ⋯ν πως περι τ⋯ς δικας λ⋯γεται τε και γρ⋯φεται τ⋯χνῇ, λ⋯γεται δ⋯ και περι δημηγoριας ‧ ⋯π ι πλ⋯o≠ δ⋯ oκ⋯κoα.

There are only two passages in the whole of the works of Plato and Aristotle in which the word σχoλ⋯ is given central position and philosophical significance. These are (1) the celebrated interlude in the Theaetetus of Plato (172–177) and (2) the predominantly educational discussion of the foundations of the ideal city in Aristotle's Politics, Bks. VII and VIII. It will be as well to begin by summarizing briefly the doctrine of these two passages.

In the de Abstinentia book I chapters 7–12 Porphyry gives an account of the views of Hermarchus, the Epicurean, on abstinence from animal food. This account, which is presumably derived from Hermarchus' work on Empedocles, would seem to preserve his actual words, for in chapter 9 (p. 91, 22) the word γωγε is used where it must refer to Hermarchus. It would be exceedingly careless of Porphyry, if he were merely summarizing or paraphrasing, to leave this word as it stands. (On the view here maintained see the Additional Note at the end.)

Since Bentley's attack upon the Greek letters of Euripides and Phalaris, scholarship has been inclined to look with suspicion upon other similar compositions, which have for the most part lain under a cloud of doubt. This attitude of doubt was certainly to be found in the scholarship of last century, though there has been a tendency of late years to attempt to restore certain of these groups of letters to their original position as genuine productions of the writers whom they claim as their authors. Such has been the case with Plato's letters; such also is the case with those of M. Junius Brutus, the tyrannicide. Condemned last century by both Westermann and Marcks, they found in Rühl a clever and successful advocate, who stoutly refuted these attacks. His task was rendered less difficult, in that Marcks, who alone adduced arguments to support his thesis, had not gone deeply into his subject, and his reasoning, therefore, was superficial. But the subversion of Marcks' arguments did not of itself establish the authenticity of the letters, and the positive reasoning of Rühl was hardly less deficient than Marcks'. A fresh examination of these letters, therefore, may be pardoned, if the conclusions differ from those of Rühl.