At the end of the twenty-eighth chapter of the eighth book of the Natural History Aristotle says: , and goes on to narrate a strange story of the method employed to procure the hybrid. Though the details are entirely fabulous, it has not been doubted that the Indian dog was a real animal. In de Generatione Animalium 746a34 he says more cautiously What then was this creature ? Sundevall declines to commit himself. Aubert and Wimmer think perhaps a jackal, for they hold that the θώς of Aristotle was no jackal. But apart from other considerations there is not the slightest reason for saying that θώς does not mean a jackal in Aristotle as much as in other authors; if some of his statements about it are not true, no more are most of his statements about the lion. Yet this absurd notion that the ‘Indian dog’ was perhaps a jackal is adopted in the Berlin Index 419a15. If we look to India for a dog really foreign to the Greeks we are of course at once confronted with the genus Cyon, familiar to all readers of the Jungle Books as the Red Dog; accordingly our problematical Indian has been identified also with this. One would not think that anybody who had ever seen a specimen of Cyon would dream of calling it a cross between a dog and a tiger. It is true, however, that Aristotle believed that the Laconian hound was descended from a cross between dog and fox (the ⋯λωπεκ⋯δεδ of Xen. Cyn. iii. 1 are also said to be so), and that the ancients were very reckless in making guesses of this kind; so the Arabs say that the cheetah is a ‘breed between the lion and the pard’! (Jerdon's Mammals of India, 1874, p. 114).

‘uester, de uno, per indignationem’ (though I hardly see what indignation has to do with it) says Achilles Statius at the first of these two places, and again ‘uester, de uno’ at the second. Muretus on the other hand explains ‘uestrae saeuitiae, ferocitatis illius, uobis omnibus, qui formosi estis, innatae.’ Most commentators have taken part with Muretus, and deny that uester in these two passages means tuus; nor is the usage recognised in the lexicons. But when it comes to explaining what, if not tuus, uester does mean, the interpreters are not agreed: they contradict one another, and they even contradict themselves.

When the first volume of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri was published in 1898, all lovers of Sappho must have been disappointed with the latter half of Blass's otherwise excellent restoration of this poem. The perusal of a recent article by J. Sitzler, in which later suggestions are discussed and fresh ones made, only serves to confirm this feeling of dissatisfaction. Sappho's extant work elsewhere combines a dignified simplicity of matter with a dignified simplicity of form. Any obscurity we find in it, is due rather to our ignorance of her dialect than to any real strangeness of thought or diction. By simple ideas, simple constructions, simple words, she produces a beauty all her own. It must be confessed that the latter half of the Ode to the Nereids, as it stands in any of the published restorations falls short of all else of Sappho's that we possess. It is just possible that in line II ⋯τοισι can stand as a feminine, but, grammar apart, nothing, surely, could be tamer than the sentence as it stands with the long relative clause beginning in line 13—‘When he heard the reproach, which used to cut him to the quick and restrain him amid the mirth of his fellow citizens, and which died away for a time only to be revived soon after.’ I hope to bring the poem a stage nearer satisfactory restoration by showing that there are grounds for rejecting some at least of the suggestions which contribute to this result.

Before proceeding to consider certain passages of Silius in detail I should like to enter a protest against the undue disparagement which has been meted out to this poet. The letter of Pliny (iii. 7), containing reflexions suggested by the voluntary death by which with stoical fortitude he sought release from the agony of an incurable tumour, presents to us a character which if not great was attractive; the character of a wealthy and kindly noble, who had made no enemies; one whose house was the resort of men of letters; a devotee of poetry, who worshipped Vergil with almost religious veneration; a lover of the beautiful, who found his pleasure according to the accepted Roman fashion in amassing works of art and tasteful country mansions. Pliny's terse criticism of his poem ‘scribebat carmina maiore cura quam ingenio’ is more just than that of modern critics. Though Silius is not a great poet, a poet he is, with merits distinctly his own. His Punica (which has no real hero) is hardly an epic proper, but is rather a chronicle in verse: as such its author displays considerable skill in the clearness with which he marshals the mass of events, and in the realistic force of his descriptions, especially that of the plague (xiv. 580 ff.), and those of the numerous battles, and particularly of the sea-fights (e.g. xiv. 539–556); and in the elaboration of geographical detail, where the vividness of the topographical presentation shows a well-trained eye and no common literary power (e.g. especially xii. 518 ff.) The numerous episodes which enliven the poem, such as the legend of Pyrene (iii. 420 ff.), the killing of the monster serpent (vi. 204 ff.), the pretty description of Pan (xiii. 326 ff), are executed with much imaginative fancy which recalls the manner of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Again there is a dignity and sustained elevation of language which results not unfrequently in vigorous, well-turned phrases of no ordinary merit. Such are the expression for an echo xiv. 365 ‘clamat scopulis clamoris imago,’ or for breaking through the ranks of the treacherous Greeks xvii. 425 ‘periuria Graia resignat,’ or again the fine line describing the sobbing sound made by water rushing into a wrecked ship's hull and out again xiv. 550 ‘mox sua ponto | singultante anima propulsa refunditur unda.’

Diss. III 1 23 Si ita locutus esset E., profecto Stoicus esse desiisset oblitus (I 20 16), i.e. quid esset inter naturam meam et naturam. Scio me uocatum iri ad III 1 30 ; sed ego audacter affirmo et teneo non magis hie quam illic ferri posse pronomen (σον, μον); aut quid, rogo, est ‘Quid habes quod accuses naturam tuam, quod natura tua marem te genuit ? Num feminas omnes natura tua gignere debuit?’? Vide quod ex Athenaeo (XIII 565 c) citat editor.

§ 2 Ego autem, iudices, quoniam qua uoce mihi in agendis gratiis commemorandoque eorum qui de me optitne meriti sunt beneficio esse utendum putabam, ea nunc uti cogor in eorum periculis depellendis, iis potissimum uox haec seruiat, quorum opera et mihi et uobis et populo Romano restituta est.

I. Latin interpres, miles etc. and the confix -et-, ‘errans,’ cf. -etum ‘allee.’

In Am. Jr. Phil. 28, 413 I derived the suffix in Gothic fram-aps ‘alienus’, Latin com-et- ‘socius– and Greek τ (from εται) ‘comites’ (cf Lith. svetis ‘hospes’) from the root et- ‘errare, ire’; and I proposed the name ‘confix’ for a suffix whose origin could be traced back to an original compounding element. I now find further evidence for the confix -et- in Latin interpret-, ‘go-between’; and I explain pr-et- as a fusion-product (‘blend’) of the synonymous roots PER-(in English fares) and ET- ‘errare, ire’. Nor is this explanation in conflict with the current comparison between interpres and Gothic frops ‘klug, verstandig’: it is simply that ‘go-between’ is nearer the meaning. The wisdom attributed to the wanderer, to the traveller in far lands,–an idea forever embalmed for English folk in Shakespeare's counter-turn.

IN the Sixteenth Satire, the first topic Juvenal takes up in detail is the impossibility of obtaining satisfactory legal redress from the praetorians. The account has two divisions: (1) you will have a bad time yourself in the military court, (2) and what friend will come to support you ?

The object of this paper is to supplement Dr. Zielinski's admirable articles on Hermes und die Hermetik (Archiv f. Religionswiss. viii. 321 and ix. 25) (1) by calling attention to a passage in Aristotle where the triad–Hermes, Pan, Logos –appears, and (2) by showing that there is some probability that the passage refers to a lost work of the rhetorician Alkidamas, the pupil of Gorgias.

As the apparent variant is in the text, Ludvvich alters the scholion into , which has not been found in any MS. so far. The only noticeable point prima facie about is that it (of I pers. pi.) is an (we have and ). Therefore I would read . Ludwich's index to his A.H.T. gives cases of the omission of ov or OVK in the scholia. We need not restrict There is too much tendency to restrict usage in matters of language. At one time it was believed that μ⋯ποτε was the property of Didymus! ‘passage’ does not occur (apparently) in the scholia we possess, τόπος however does (Ludwich, Index). Compare the note on H 96

⋯ν ἄλλῳ ὑβριτα⋯. We must supply in sense χωρ⋯ῳ, for the reference is to Callim. Del. 69, where this is the meaning of ⋯πειλητ⋯ρες.

ποιετ Heyler ' e libris suis scripsit pro says Hertlein. Neither verb looks very satisfactory; Julian probably wrote . The Celts tested, or were fabled to test, the legitimacy of children by throwing them into the Rhine; cf. Nonnus, Diunysiaca, xlvi. 54–62.

The Aeolic dimeter and trimeter constitute so considerable a part of Greek lyric and dramatic poetry that the correct apprehension of their form is a matter of great moment. The Greek metricians comprehended this rightly, in the main, but in the first half of the nineteenth century the doctrine of these learned men was supplanted by a new theory that attempted to apply the principles that underlie modern poetry to the explanation of the undoubtedly complex rhythm of these clauses. Many scholars persistently maintain this theory. It is not difficult to discover why it was invented (it is absolutely new) and why it remains attractive. That the quantitative rhythms and metres of Greek poetry should seem complicated to men whose language is accentual is inevitable, whereas modern metres and rhythms are notoriously simple. The limitations imposed upon poetic form by accentual speech are extreme. No modern poet, for example, has attempted Ionic or Cretic measures. Again Greek music was simple, and both music and dance were under the control of the singers, but modern music is a complex art, and casts language in an iron mould. Nevertheless musical expression must be the basis of comparison, so far as we allow ourselves to institute it, between ancient and modern rhythms. The attempt to conform Greek lyrics to the elementary—and uncertain—rhythms of modern poetry that is merely read or recited implies a fundamental misconception of relations. Greek lyrics were melic. Agathon, in the Thesmophoriazusae, sings as he composes. These Greek songs were never intended to be read by anybody, Greek or barbarian.

Having read Prof. Housman's article in the Classical Quarterly of October 1907, it seemed to me worth while, when I was in Madrid last year, to examine the MS of Manilius, Matritensis 31, in those places where Prof. Housman notes that the testimony of Loewe and of Mr Ellis disagree, with the result that I have found Loewe's account of the reading, as given by Prof. Housman, to be correct in all places except the following:

I propose . It may be noted that Longinus does not avoid hiatus after the vowels ν and ι, which possess an easy ‘glide’ accompaniment.