Few editors of Virgil have given these last three words a satisfactory sense: none, to my knowledge, has fully recognized their difficulty. The root of the trouble lies in the Roman repugnance for limiting words to a single, specialized, technical sense: licium and tela are, consequently, found with a variety of different meanings. Notwithstanding this difficulty, however, I hope to show that this passage has a meaning that is both simple and unambiguous.

It has been pointed out to me that in my article on ‘The Augustan Rules for Dactylic Verse’ (C. Q., XXXIV, p. 42) I misrepresented an observation of Maas as reported by Wilamowitz in his Griechische Verskunst, p. 53. Wilamowitz' words are: ‘Wenn Tibull und Ovid den Pentameter so bauen, dass die vorletzte Silbe betont wird, tun sie das nach dem Vorgange gleichzeitiger griechischer Epigrammatiker.’ This means, of course, that the Greek writers mentioned ended with a paroxytone word, not necessarily with a disyllable, as I assumed it to mean, and I apologize for the oversight.

The object of this article is to set forth certain evidence that emerges from a study of three of Plutarch's Lives, the Titus, the Paullus, and the Cato Maior, evidence which indicates that these Lives are based upon a definite type of biographical composition, and to suggest its possible origin and date. Since E. Meyer's article on the Cimon of Nepos and Plutarch, biographical sources have generally been assumed for the Greek Lives, and there has been a tendency to make the same assumption for the Roman Lives also, without, however, setting forth the evidence that might justify it. Uxkull Gyllenband maintained that biographies of Greeks and Romans, the sources of Plutarch, were written in the second century b.c., but he gives no evidence for his contention, which is indeed refuted by the observations of Jacoby. Mühl argued with some force that Plutarch's source for the Marcellus was a biography. There is good reason to doubt his conclusion that Plutarch has used a biography of Poseidonius; but the arguments advanced by Klotz for the thesis that the source was the annalist Valerius Antias are still less convincing. Liedmeier postulates a biographical source for the Paullus, but without doing more than asserting the general improbability that Plutarch here used a multiplicity of sources. It seems therefore desirable to collect such evidence as there is of a biographical source in these three Roman Lives of the second century b.c., and it is with such an attempt rather than with a priori considerations that I am here concerned.

This article does not attempt, except in a general way, to indicate Plutarch's sources for this Life, since any such attempt, in the absence of much of the relevant literature, is foredoomed to failure. It aims rather at showing the different types of biographical literature which grew up around this figure and which form the basis of Plutarch's Life, and to show what seems the most probable relationship of this Life to the biography of Nepos and to Cicero's Cato, both of which works have, in the present writer's opinion, been too readily assumed by some critics as Plutarch's sources. We may most conveniently deal with Plutarch's Life first, and then pass on to Cicero's and Nepos' presentations.

In the middle of September, 47 b.c., Cicero obtained a copy of Atticus' recently published Liber Annalis, which he was consequently able to use in preparing his Brutus (46 b.c.) and his Tusculans and De Senectute (44 b.c.). Atticus himself had consulted Varro's works on questions of literary history (Schanz, p. 330). Cicero, reading his friend's work, found himself in the thick of a controversy about the beginnings of Latin literature.

There can be no doubt about the object which Delphis was in the habit of leaving at Simaetha's house. The word ὄλπη is capable of meaning a ladle or jug for wine (Ion, fr. 10 N2ap. Ath. 11. 495 B), and the name is conventionally applied by archaeologists to a particular form of jug, but Delphis did not carry a jug about with him. What he took to the gymnasium or palaestra where he appears to have spent most of his time (8, 80, 97, 115) was the portable flask of oil, carried indeed by others, but, together with sponge and scraper, the regular equipment of the athlete. ὌΟλπις, which appears to be a mere synonym, also has the same two meanings. At Sapph. fr. 51 it is a wine-jug, but at T. 18. 45, where the Spartan girls will make libation of oil at Helen's plane-tree, the silver ὄλπις containing it is no doubt that from which they anoint themselves in their masculine way by the Eurotas (23).

InHermes, lxxiv (1939), p. 1 Professor M. Pohlenz publishes an article entitled ‘Plutarchs Schriften gegen die Stoiker’ which throws much light on these important sources for Stoicism. I had myself made a study of these works, and for the most part find myself in complete agreement, but in my opinion something can be added to his inquiry into Plutarch's sources; and I venture to think that the subject repays attention not so much for itself as because it illustrates an important principle, namely, that investigation of sources must be accompanied by literary appreciation: one must look not only for the flaws that will admit the dissecting knife but also for the intended structure of one's subject.

As bearing on the time of year of the celebration attended by Simichidas and his friends, I stated, on the authority of Miss Alice Lindsell, that the barley-harvest in Cos is normally over by the end of April; and I added that the barley-harvest ought to fix the time of the events recorded, but that the scene depicted in 131 ff. is evidently much later than April and that the modern dates do not fit T's setting. I was assuming that the threshing and winnowing of the barley, which is the occasion of the festival (155), took place immediately after it had been carried, but, as Miss Lindsell has pointed out, this assumption has no justification.

1. The use of the imperfect ἔτικτε ‘was the mother of’, with ἡ τíκτουσα; ἐνίκων, οἱ νικντες; ὁ διδούς is well known, and no doubt correctly explained. Reference is frequently made to Virgil's quem dat Sidonia Dido, but ἐδίδου seems not to be used, no doubt because it is so extensively used in the sense of ‘offered’.

In T. 7. 56. 3 περιεγíγνοντο seems to be a substitute for ἐνíκων, ‘were victorious’; cf. ἔφερε in Find. O. 10 (11), 74 ‘was prizewinner’ (‘panoramic’ use, Gildersleeve—using Shilleto's term)—the other winners all have an aorist. So too Pyth. 3. 44.

Among the remains of Archilochus is an iambic trimeter which is as mysterious as it is charming. Zenobius, who quotes it (v. 68), says that it was written by Homer and used by Archilochus in his Epodes. If he is telling the truth, it must, as Bergk saw, come from the Margites. But its origin and original purpose need not now concern us. The important fact is that Archilochus used it, and we ought to be able to discover how he used it. What was his precise intention when he quoted or composed the line

πόλλ᾽ οἰδ᾽ ἀλώπη ἀλλ᾽ ἐχνος ἒν μέγα,

what was the contrast he drew between the Fox and the Hedgehog, and how did he make use of it? Zenobius gives two aids, but neither is so easy as it looks at first sight. First, he says that the proverb was used ἐπὶ τν πανουργοτάτων, and secondly he quotes as relevant some lines from the Phoenix of Ion of Chios (fr. 38 Nauck, 81 von Blumenthal) about the hedgehog:

ἀλλ᾽ ἔν τε χέρσῳ τὰς λέοντος ᾔνεσα

ἢ τὰς ἐχίνου μλλον οἰζυρὰς τέχνας.

ὃς εὐτ᾽ ἂν ἄλλων κρεισσόνων ὁρμὴν μάθῃ,

στρόβιλος ἀμΦ᾽ ἄκανθαν εἱλίας δέμας

κεîται δακεν τε καὶ θιγεν ἀμήχανος.

It will be best to explain here, at the start, that I do not propose new etymologies for the words εὒξεινος (or ἂξενος) and πόντος. I regard, then, εὒξεινος πόντος as meaning ‘the hospitable way’. My purpose is to show how such a name came to be given to the Black Sea by the Greeks.

First, the word πόντος. The familiar explanation (so Boisacq) connects it with a series of words, of which I give the most important: Gk. πάτος (*pnto-) ‘trodden path’; Skt. pάnthāḥ ‘way’, fem. pathyā ‘id.’; Zend paθ ‘id.’; Arm. hun ‘ford, road’; Lat. pons ‘bridge’. Further, as a verb the root appears in Gk. πατεν ‘tread down’ and is given in Walde-Pokorny as *pent- (Ar. -th-) ‘tread, go’: W.-P. points out that the derived nouns (given above) mean ‘way’, and particularly a way that goes over or through water, as can be seen from the Armenian and Latin.

The elements which every schoolboy learns on beginning Latin Verse Composition include a number of rules which seem arbitrarily designed to make the game harder. In hexameters, he is told, he must have a masculine caesura either in the third foot or in the second and fourth, and end normally with a disyllabic or a trisyllable; in pentameters he must end with a disyllabic; and in neither line may a single monosyllable stand at the end. Rarely, in my experience, is any reason given him by way of redress, and he will search for one in vain in most of the school text-books, in introductions like Postgate's to Tibullus and Propertius, and in histories of Latin literature like Wight Duff's and Mackail's. This reticence may be due to the dissensions of experts on this subject and on the subject of Latin accentuation in general, but the theory that predominates in England, among those who hold a theory at all, explains so many of the phenomena that it deserves to be more widely and precisely known. The most detailed exposition of it is by E. H. Sturtevant, who summed up his analyses in a pair of articles in the Transactions of the American Philological Association in 1923–4. While his careful work is invaluable as marshalling the statistics and evidence, it errs on the side of excessive minuteness, and leaves room not merely for some additions, but for a different kind of treatment concerned less with bare statistics and more with poetic principles and historical development. Since Latin Verse Composition plays such an important part in English higher classical education, it seems desirable that a less technical and more accessible account should be available for English readers. Such an account I attempt to give here, keeping separate as far as possible the exposition and the consideration of the criticisms and rival theories that have been advanced.

Dr. Cyril Bailey and Dr. C. M. Bowra have most recently analysed Virgil's method of using the expressions of Lucretius and Ennius respectively, and Mile A.-M. Guillemin has lately added significant considerations to Father F.-X. M. J. Roiron's long examination of Virgil's method of using again his own former expressions. Since then other work has been done with the purpose of clarifying the less rational part of Virgil's self-repetition; it might be called complementary to the well-known researches of Mr. John Sparrow. With such a purpose I have tried to suggest how Virgil reached the strange phrase in the first Eclogue, rapidum Cretae, or cretae, Oaxen, by a not unparalleled confusion of the names of several different rivers and at least one town.

To his narrative of the Sacred War Diodorus appends an excursus on the fate of the Phocian leaders, describing at some length the adventures of Phalaecus and his mercenaries after their departure from Thermopylae (xvi. 61–3). The object of this excursus, whose substance probably derives from Demophilus, is to illustrate the terrible consequences of temple-robbery, but to modern scholars the story is interesting chiefly for its portrayal of the difficulties and hardships experienced by mercenary commanders. It does not appear to have been noticed that at the same time Diodorus unconsciously throws some light upon the mission of Timoleon to Sicily.

The epithet χαλκοκέραυνον has perturbed many, though the most recent English editors (Murray, Thomson, and Sidgwick) have printed it without comment. The new Liddell and Scott betrays uneasiness in its ‘epithet of the sea, perhaps false reading for χαλκαμάρυγος, gleaming like copper or bronze’. Overseas scholars flatly reject it. Wilamowitz poured scorn on it in his Interpretationen (p. 57, footnote 1) and commented in his larger edition (p. 68) neque intelligitur et frustra temptatum est. Weir Smyth obelizes it. Bothe, Hermann, Weil, and others offered emendations. In Bursians Jahresberichte, ccxxxiv, p. 104 (1932) W. Morel observed (apparently with a sigh of relief) Von Erz und Blitz befreit uns Bruhns χλιαρόκρουνον. This is emancipation indeed.

In a paper designed to prove that the technopaegnium entitled Σριγξ could not be by Theocritus, I said in 1914 that that question had a bearing of some importance upon the interpretation of the Idylls since the ‘Mascarade bucolique’ depended ultimately on the assumption that Simichidas in Id. 7 was Theocritus himself. If T. referred to himself elsewhere by that name (and the Syrinx so refers to him), the assumption would be justified; if someone else did so, he would, in company with the scholia and with the author of the barbarous verses beginning Σιμιχίδα Θεόκριτε which are prefixed to the Idylls in certain manuscripts, be merely drawing an obvious and possibly mistaken inference.

On Virgil's statement (Georg, ii. 385 f.) that in honour of Bacchus ‘Ausonii … coloni versibus incomptis ludunt’, Servius remarks: ‘id est, carminibus Saturnio metro compositis, quod ad rhythmum solum vulgares componere consuerunt….’

Obviously Servius is drawing a distinction between the Saturnian and other metres, as well as between the ordinary man and the man of letters. The unlettered compose their verses in the Saturnian metre, which is founded on rhythmus alone; the literary circles write theirs on some other basis.

Nearly every edition of Aeschylus published between 1782 (Schütz, first ed.) and 1852 (Hermann, posthumous ed.) contained readings from what were called ‘Askew's collations’ or the ‘Askew MSS.’—usually referred to as Ask. A, Ask. B, Ask. C, Ask. D, Ask. a, Colb. 1, and Colb. 2. These MSS., which were very briefly described, were stated in these editions to be Paris MSS. (with the exception of Ask. a, said to be in Askew's own library) which had been collated by Askew. Blomfield, however, discovered that Askew had transcribed all the collations from a note-book that had belonged to Needham, and Pierron accused Askew of deliberate plagiarism and unscrupulous dishonesty. The late Prof. H. W. Smyth in a recent note on the subject attempted to identify the ‘Askew MSS.’, and maintained the charge of plagiarism; but his conclusions were based on inadequate evidence, and were consequently partly incorrect. A full study of all the available evidence, a summary of which I give below, not only clears Askew's name of any plagiarism, but also establishes the identity of the MSS.

A Lasting tradition among the ancients marked Sicily as the birthplace and Tisias and Corax as inventors of the art of rhetoric: and in this tradition, legendary though it became, there is a stricter truth than in most of the stories related about the foundation of invented arts. We, with more elaborate historical views, shall still say of rhetoric that it was created at a certain epoch; and can still point to the Sicilians Tisias and Corax as its authors. Oratory, to be sure, has existed almost as long as speech. Its beginnings are prehistoric, and must in any case be imperceptible; and if by rhetorician we meant no more than one who uses speech with more than common effect, we might set the origin of rhetoric as far back as we chose, and could hardly bring it lower than the beginning of recorded literature. Indeed we are told that under the Antonine Emperors the eminent scholar Telephus of Pergamum wrote a book on Rhetoric in Homer, in which he illustrated from the Poet the whole contemporary system of the art down to the thirteen constitutions of Minucian; and in the same spirit the Venerable Bede, resenting the claim of the Greeks to have invented tropes and figures of speech, wrote a short work to show that they could all be found in Holy Scripture. But such inquiries, even when conducted less foolishly than by Telephus and less incompetently than by Bede, are irrelevant to the proper history of rhetoric. Let the practice of oratory have begun when it may, the first attempts known to us in Classical Antiquity to formulate a series of principles for the art of speech were made in the fifth century before Christ. These earliest systems were naturally very imperfect: they could not immediately be either comprehensive or well organized. But they were something that had not existed at all before: methodical principles for speaking. At the moment when these were first set out the art of rhetoric began.

The problem of the composition of Thucydides' History, first raised by Ullrich in 1846, has evoked a mass of controversial literature. In this article I shall confine myself to the main arguments and conclusions.

Thucydides' history is unfinished, not only because it breaks off at 411 b.c., but also because the style is uneven. The history of the Archidamian War to 424 b.c. and of the Sicilian War is fully polished and complete; the remainder is lacking in stylistic finish and particularly in the set speeches which characterize the completed books. This unevenness can be explained by the circumstances of Thucydides' life. For the period 431–424 b.c. he could obtain full information at Athens and, after his exile in 424 b.c., at Sparta and elsewhere; for the Sicilian War he could obtain full information in Sicily from the Siceliotes and from the Athenian prisoners. He was thus in a position to complete his history for these two periods. During his exile from 424 b.c. to 404 or 403 b.c. he lacked the information from the Athenian side, which was necessary for the completion of the remainder of his work. Further light is shed on the unevenness of finish by Thucydides' method of composition. He informs us (i. I) that he began his work at the beginning of the war, and (v. 26. 5) that he was watching and applying his judgement throughout the Twenty-seven Years War; and the statement (v. 26. I) that he wrote the history down to the capture of the Peiraeus implies his collection of material down to 404 b.c. The working up of this material must have been conditioned partly by the circumstances of the war; in particular, the conception of the Twenty-seven Years War (v. 26) cannot have been formed until after 415 or 412 b.c.