After Mr. Stuart (C.Q. v. i) and Mr. Hardie (ib. v. 2) I ought to be shy of speaking upon the Tragedies of Seneca. But Mr. Stuart and Mr. Hardie have stirred the dust that lay upon notes which I have had by me for some four years: and their papers encourage the hope that there is among English scholars some revival of interest in Seneca. I am afraid that I myself read Seneca for pleasure, with admiration for the justness of his moral sentiments and with affection for his style. Yet I can hardly be blind to the opportunities which his text offers to those who practice the art of critical divination.

To explain the meaning of the Prometheus the late Dr. Walter Headlam quoted the famous lines from theAgamemnon:

‘ Sing praise; ’Tis he hath guided, say, Man's feet in Wisdom's way, Stablishing fast for learning's rule That Suffering be her school….’ ‘This,’ he said, ‘is the school in which Prometheus himself is being gradually taught the wise humility; at present he is still in the rebellious stage. And it is with this idea that Io is introduced into the Prometheus Bound; she, too, is an example of the seeming cruelty of Zeus; but it is a blessing in disguise, for she is to be the mother of the blessed Epaphus, and it is a son of Zeus by Alcmena, a descendant of her own, that is to set Prometheus free.’

‘Ivravit in mea uerba tota Italia sponte sua et me belli quo uici ad Actium ducem depoposcit.’ In these words the Emperor Augustus clearly meant to suggest that the war in which he got rid of Mark Antony was none of his making, but was imposed upon him by the free and self-determined action of the Italian nation. Modern historians have unanimously refused to regard Augustus as a passive instrument in the hands of the Roman people at large; yet they have generally accepted his account of the oath-taking of 32 B.C. as the outcome of a spontaneous burst of enthusiasm in his behalf, which they interpret as the reflex result of the nation's resentment against Antony's un-Roman and treasonable behaviour.

Iacobvs Bernays uir sagacissimus, exposuit in Porphyrii de abstinentia libris exstare excerpta ex Theophrasti de pietate libro satis magna, quae antea partim inscientia, partim neglegentia uirorum doctorum erant neglecta. Ad haec fragmenta coniecturas quasdam profero, usus Nauckii editione altera (prodiit in bibliotheca Teubneriana anno 1886).

It might reasonably be argued that this question is one of those historical problems which form excellent subjects for the writing of essays, but which are far too complex to admit of a decisive answer, and consequently are much better left alone. No one man is responsible for a war between great powers, and the motives which influence the vast number of people, whose consent is necessary, can rarely, if ever, be identical. It is therefore comparatively easy to argue against any given motive which is asserted to be the one and only reason. Certainly the writer would make no effort to rake up the ashes of this controversy, were it not that in Dr. Grundy's recent work on Thucydides a new and ingenious theory is put forward concerning the vera causa of the Peloponnesian War.

The poetical remains of Dorotheus, on which I made some comments in the Classical Quarterly vol. ii pp. 47–61, have received from the cod. Vat. Graec. 1056 an increase of ten verses, published by Mr J. Heeg in catal. cod. astrol. Graec. vol. v part iii p. 125 and also in Hermes vol. xlv pp. 316–8.

Parmenides (Diels) i 37. . It is generally admitted that is unintelligible; people who ‘ can construe anything’ can of course construe this also. Others compare viii I, , and would read here. This is no more intelligible than the other, and it is pretty clear that both lines are corrupt, and that the phrase was originally neither nor .

Mr. Richards is justified in saying that is here indefensible, but he does not much mend matters by reading . Iocasta may have been a paragon of all the virtues, but what has that to do with it? No, the real correction is . ‘ To whom should I tell even greater things than this rather than to thee ?’

Acharnlans arg. I, line 17..

Ludwig Traube has remarked that ‘ Einer der sonderbarsten Abschnitte in der von Emil Baehrens rekonstruierten Anthologia latina (Poeta[e] minores, vol. iv., Leipzig, 1882) ist der, welcher die Gedichte Römischer Kaiser zusammenfasst, carmen 122–127 (Seite III ffg.).” Of these six poems he points out that Nos. 125 and 126 are early mediaeval epitaphs, No. 127, Hermaphroditus, is later mediaeval, and that Nos. 123 and 124, which were favourites in the Middle Ages, are improperly ascribed to the Emperor Hadrian. Of the remaining poem, No 122, he says nothing. It was first printed by Hermann Hagen in the Rheinisches Museum, xxxv, pp. 569 sqq. (1880), from the Berne MS. No. 109, a tenth century MS. of French origin, partly written in Tironian notes. Hagen gives a facsimile of the entry in the MS. which bears the title Octa. aug. This is the authority for attributing the poem to Augustus.