The statement in the second-and-third edition of Sommer's excellent Handbuch der lateinischen Laut- und Formenlehre (1914), p. 462, that the oldest scansion is diūtius, to say nothing of the unqualified assertion in our current grammars and dictionaries that the u in it and in diutissime is long or the regrettable silence of the principal editors of Plautus upon the subject, is of itself sufficient warrant for a brief discussion. The relevant facts are these:

1. Though diu is common enough in verse of all kinds, the comparative is not attested for any but writers in iambics, while the superlative appears to be confined to prose.

Evripides Rhes. 161 sqq. Dolon, having undertaken to visit the Greek lines as a spy, addresses Hector:

οủκûν πονεεîν μèν χρή, πο;νοûντα

μιαθòν φéρεαθαι. παντì γàρ προακε;íμενον

κéρρς πρòς ἔργῳ τ⋯ν χáριν τíκτει διπγ⋯ν.

During the British occupation of the western extremity of the Gallipoli Peninsula, a brief Greek inscription was discovered by Sergt.-Major R. S. Jones, 136 Company, Royal Engineers. A copy of this he sent to his relatives in Cardiff, and it was by them put before the Western Mail for explanation. Ultimately it came into my hands. I at once wrote asking what had become of the stone, and what was its position—whether above or below ground—when discovered But Sergt.-Major Jones had been killed by a shell on December 27, 1915, eleven days after writing his letter, and only two days after he had been recommended for the Distinguished Conduct Medal. Further information, therefore, was not obtainable; but the inscription appears to have been hitherto unknown. It is a splendid thought that we owe this new historical information to the interest and care of a soldier in the midst of perilous and toilsome duties. His commanding officer wrote that he was ‘my right-hand man ever since the company was formed at Buxton.’

The scholiasts supposed that it was Zeus, not Strife, who dwells γαíνσ Έν ŕίζησι, and Paley has punctuated the line accordingly. I do not in any case doubt that he is wrong, but if the Theogony is evidence, he can almost be proved so. In the Theogony the γης ŕίσα;ι are a kind of suburb of Tartarus, from which the author does not very clearly distinguish them. In his useful though somewhat desultory gazetteer of those districts he says that Styx dwells there apart from the gods, and that Iris only comes down when there are oaths to be administered in Olympus. Clearly Zeus is not at home in such a place. Strife herself is not enumerated in the Theogony among the residents, but her family is. Whatever she may be elsewhere, both in the Works and Days and in the Theogony she is the daughter of Night; and in the Theogony not only Night but also her two sons Sleep and Death reside in the district. Strife may appropriately keep them company.

In a paper recently published in this Review, I tried to show that part of the formal beauty of the Hercules Furens is due to a subtle treatment of the familiar doctrine that the tyrant's wealth and power are of trifling value compared with Sophrosune, the gain that is really gain. Perhaps some further notes on the dramatic use made by Euripides of these familiar ideas may be of interest. One object with which I started was to observe the use of the word τúραννος in Greek drama. Though the poets frequently enough use it merely as a convenient equivalent for βασιλεúσetc., popular feeling made it easy to suggest the meaning ‘tyrant,’ ‘bad King,’ or ‘Usurper’; and the poets use the ambiguity with great subtlety and in a manner which enables them to obtain fine effects of irony and scorn. What is more important is the fact that the notion of a tyrant with which we are acquainted in later Greek literature was already common-place in the fifth century, and that many dramatic effects depend on the recognition by the audience of the commonplace as such. Indeed, it is often the adaptation by the poet of the familiar ideas that lends formal beauty to compositions which, if we think simply of the plot, appear at first sight jerky or ‘epeisodic.’

The critical problems of the Third Decade of Livy have long been familiar to students. In Books XXI.–XXV. we have only the mutilated Codex Puteanus (P) of the fifth century and later manuscripts derived from it, directly or indirectly, at one or more points in its history. R, C, and most probably M, are copies of P, after it was corrected by P2 and probably P3. Here the problem in the parts in which P is preserved is to correct its numerous corruptions by conjecture as far as possible; and, where it is now defective, by comparing the later MSS. to arrive at their inter-relation and at P's original text, and then subject this text to the same process of criticism. Also a study of the corrections in the earlier of these MSS. may reveal the previous existence of other traditions and of other MSS. now lost—such corrections, e.g., as are made by P4, R2, and M2.

The wholesome severity of publishers' regulations restricted the small Teubner edition of Festus almost to the actual text of the archetype MSS. of Festus and his epitomator Paulus. The flimsy material to be picked up from mediaeval glossaries was excluded from this small and solid structure and reserved for the ampler space and freer air of a second volume, a volume which should attempt a reconstruction of Festus from Paulus' excerpts, like an antiquarian's reconstruction of the Forum from the ruins that now remain. In Goetz' Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum we have apographs of the chief MS. of each important glossary, and in his Thesaurus Glossarum Emendatarum we have all the glosses edited and arranged in dictionary form; but much spade-work has to be done before these glosses can be used by an editor of Festus. Some has been done already by a pupil of Goetz in a Jena dissertation (A. Dammann de Festo pseudo-Philoxeni auctore, 1894), who shows the so-called Philoxenus Glossary to be compiled in part from Festus, and collects and emends its Festus glosses. Yet even this piece of work is not complete. For our (we may say) unique MS. of Philox., a mere ninth-century MS. (of Laon ?), is an imperfec record of that large bilingual collection which has left so many traces of itself in the glossaries of the British Isles and of those parts of the Continent which received English or Irish culture. The Ab Absens Glossary, for example, printed by Goetz (C.G.L. IV. pp. 404–427) from a North Frankish MS. of Charlemagne's time, has (in the A-section) a number of Festus glosses from this collection which are not recorded in our MS. of Philox. and are accordingly ignored by Dammann.

Inter praecepta, quae Priapus amaioribus dat ad puerorum uoluntatem sibi conciliandam, hoc quoque est (I. 4. 41–44):

neu comes ire neges, quamuis uia longa paretur

et Canis arenti torreat arua siti,

quamuis praetexens picta ferrugine caelum

†uenturam amiciat imbrifer arcus aquam.

Vergil has a strong idea of personal fate. A certain fate becomes attached to a certain person (or community) and follows him all his life; then the fates are spoken of as the fates of that person. As a parallel one might quote the idea in Maeterlinck's essay ‘La Chance’ (in the volume, he Temple enseveli, 1902, pp. 229 sqq.). For both Maeterlinck and Vergil men are marked out, one might almost call it annexed, by good or bad fortune; yet both authors refuse to endow this good or bad fortune with personality: they deal with personal fates which yet lack personality.

It is a point of some interest to the historian of the social and intellectual development of Athens to determine, if possible, the exact dates between which the philosopher Anaxagoras made that city his home. As everyone knows, the tradition of the third and later centuries was not uniform. The dates from which the Alexandrian chronologists had to arrive at their results may be conveniently summed up under three headings, (a) date of Anaxagoras' arrival at Athens, (b) date of his prosecution and escape to Lampsacus, (c) length of his residence at Athens, (a) The received account (Diogenes Laertius ii. 7), was that Anaxagoras was twenty years old at the date of the invasion of Xerxes and lived to be seventy-two. This was apparently why Apollodorus (ib.) placed his birth in Olympiad 70 and his death in Ol. 88. I, thus giving the years 500–428 B.C. of our reckoning, (ib.) The further statement of Apollodorus that Anaxagoras ἤρξατο ϕιλοσοϕεῖν ⋯π⋯ Καλλίον has given rise to discussion; but when we remember that Demetrius of Phalerum had made what ‘Diogenes’ regards as an equivalent statement in his register of archons, and had said that Anaxagoras was twenty years old at the time, I think there can be no doubt of the meaning. Demetrius had clearly mentioned something about Anaxagoras which was looked on as giving the date at which he ‘began to philosophize,’ and had given his age at the time. The natural interpretation is that Demetrius mentioned the year of Anaxagoras’ arrival at Athens, and that this was taken as the time at which he ρξαtο φιλοσοφεlσ And it is further reasonable to suppose that this date was the source of the further statement of Demetrius, that Anaxagoras was born in or about 500 B.C. We may, I think, infer that Demetrius recorded the arrival of Anaxagoras in Athens under the year 480, giving his approximate age at that time.

The bilingual Philoxenus Glossary drew some of its materials from Festus de Signif. Verb. and occasionally mentions his name. Its Festus glosses have been collected in a Jena dissertation by Dammann. The Abolita Glossary (if we may so term the collection enclosed within square brackets in Corp. Gloss. Lat. IV. pp. 4–198) seems to have begun (in its original arrangement) with Festus excerpts. Before we can glean from these two glossaries every available scrap of evidence about Festus, we must try to complete and correct them. For of the Philoxenus Glossary (Philox.) we have practically only one MS., and that of the ninth century. It must have omitted many items and perverted the words of many others. The Abolita Glossary (Abol.) was associated (but not mixed up) with another, the Abstrusa Glossary (Abstr.), in Spain, and this composite collection (Abstr.-Abol.) passed into Italy. The MSS. are, we may say, only two, and of each a certain number of leaves are missing. The older and better MS. (Vat.), an uncial codex of the eighth century, was written apparently in Central Italy; the other (Cass.) was written two centuries later at Monte Cassino. They show us Abol. not in its original form, but rearranged in a not too strict alphabetical order (between AB- and ABC-). The St. Gall Glossary was compiled from (1) Philox., (2) the composite Abstr.-Abol., and supplies some of those Festus glosses of Philox. and Abol. which are omitted in our MSS. It seems to have been a Bobbio compilation (but see below). Our best MS. was written in rude uncials at St. Gall in the eighth century.

In proportion to their numbers the Semitic peoples have exercised a greater influence on the course of human history as a whole than any other of the large races of mankind. As far as our records carry us, it appears that the early spirit of exploration and adventure, as distinct from racial migration, had its origin with them. Even in Homeric times, the Phoenician trader or pirate was a familiar feature of the Mediterranean world. Greece, commonly regarded by us as the home of true culture, admitted that she owed to Phoenicia her first introduction to the art of writing. Semitic establishments were spread over the whole of the ancient world, and the only state that ever seriously contested with Rome the sovereignty of the world was Carthage. Though not famed more for military prowess than other races, the Semitic branch of mankind in the seventh century of our era swept over northern Africa and western Asia, overflowing at two points into Europe itself.

In an interesting article in the Journal of Roman Studies (Vol. V., Part I.) Prof. Jefferson Elmore reopens the vexed question as to the nature and object of the ‘declarations’ provided for in lines 1 to 19 of the Heraclean Table, and claims to have discovered a fresh clue more satisfactory than any so far propounded. As I have recently committed myself in opposition to the hypotheses of Hirschfeld, Legras and Nap, to what is at least a partial reaffirmation of Mommsen's explanation, and as I find Prof. Elmore's suggestions contrary to the evidence, and seriously wanting in cohesion and consistency, I shall venture to subject them to some examination and criticism.

The present essay, reposing on phenomena of derivation and semantics, will attempt to establish a more objective basis for the syntax of the impersonals. As a matter of syntax, the subject is of vital interest for the living Germanic tongues, and with these the essay begins. It will continue with a discussion of the phenomena of the Latin impersonals, and seek, by the help of living English usage, to establish upon a correct psychological basis the definition and derivation of the least elusive impersonals of emotion in Sanskrit and Latin.

A Manuscript belonging to the Municipal Library at Tours (No. 843, formerly 416, fols. 75a-101a) of the beginning of the thirteenth century contains a portion of a Commentary on Donatus, compiled in the middle of the ninth century by Sedulius of Liège. This copy was left unfinished by the scribe, and the Commentary comprises only about two-thirds of the Ars Minor. A brief note on the manuscript was contributed by Charles Thurot to the Comptes rendus de l' Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in 1870.

On p. 118 I said(à propos of W.D. 742) that the injunction of Pythagoras παρà θνσíαν μ⋯ ⋯ννχíζον, quoted by Goettling with a false reference, might be illuminating in its context but that I suspected it of being a figment. My suspicions were unfounded. The reference, as Mr. A. B. Cook has kindly pointed out to me, is Iambl. Protrept. 364 K.; but Iamblichus's explanation—that ‘nails’ stands for one's remoter kinsfolk, οíον ⋯νεψιáδαι ⋯ πατραδ⋯λφων γαμβρονοτιδεîς ⋯ τοιοντοí τινες, with whom one should renew relations on festal days—does not seem very helpful.

The abbreviation-symbols of the Romans, found in ancient uncial MSS., may be roughly divided into three classes:

(1) Those peculiar to juristic writing, e.g. R.P. ‘res priuata’ (any case), Q.D.R.A. ‘qua de re agitur.’ They are properly called ‘notae iuris.’ They abound in the famous Verona MS. of Gaius(uncial, ‘fifth century’).

(2) A few used in histories, etc., e.g. R.P. 'respublica' (any case), Q. ‘Quintus’ (any case). Valerius Probus, who compiled a manual of ancient Notae, calls this class ‘notae publicae’. They appear in such MSS. as the codex Puteanus of Livy (uncial, ‘fifth century’); and since they have been transferred into modern editions of the Latin historians, etc., no one is at a loss to interpret them nowadays, although they puzzled mediaeval scribes.

(3) Symbols of ordinary words of frequent occurrence in any type of literature, e.g. Q. ‘que.’ It is this class which is the subject of this article.