With B. M. Pap. 273 (described and in part published by Kenyon in the Album Gratulatorium in honorem H. van Herwerden, Utrecht, 1902, pp. 137–142), which consists of a number of fragments from a papyrus book containing an unknown epic on the subject of Dionysus and his Indian expedition, is bound up a small fragment, evidently by a different hand. This (Pap. 273b) I have recently identified as from the Phaenomena of Aratus; and I therefore publish it here. Apparently no papyrus fragment of this poem has yet been discovered; there is, however, at Berlin (Pap. Ber. 5865) a portion of a commentary on Aratus, which has been published by Maass in his Commentariorum in Aratum Reliquiae, Berlin, 1898, pp. 556–558.

súr[ru]pŭít, at vs. end, Capt. prol. 8, 760, 1011. One would like to read similar forms in Men. 510, and in Poen. prol. 66, , but these are by no means sure.

I DO not think that it is at all generally known that among the Egyptian antiquities given by Grant Bey to the Museum at Aberdeen there are a considerable number of papyrus fragments, Greek, Coptic,1 Hieratic, Demotic, and even Latin and Arabic, which except for an inspection by Prof. Sayce and a passing visit of Dr. Grenfell have up till now been left unexamined. That indeed is my only reason for trespassing in a branch of Palaeography with which I am quite unfamiliar; and it is in the hope of inciting some experienced papyrologist to turn his attention to them that I publish the following fragments. In the case of the Greek fragments lack of time combined with a mistrust of my powers of deciphering the more illegible non-literary hands forbade me do more than select the most promising literary fragments. Among these Homer naturally predominates; but the gem of the collection is a lyric fragment, which may fairly certainly be ascribed to Alcaeus, though Dr. Grenfell who first noticed it attributed it to Sappho. A fragment of Demosthenes, a fragment of Dioscorides, and a vellum fragment of a Latin Bible, were the only others which I succeeded in identifying; but these, with the few tragic, comic, and medical fragments which I also reproduce, are, I think, first-fruits sufficient to show that the crop would not be barren, if it found a competent gleaner.

Professor Tucker in the C.R. vol. xi. pp. 341 sqq. has revolutionized our notions of ‘doubtful syllables’: we have now learned that such syllables are normally short, and that lengthening is the licence.

The Homeridae bear the name of Homer, and should point a path by which we may climb to his personality. In antiquity they were known to be a γένος, a constituted family-corporation, though the accounts of the functions they fulfilled are scanty. Modern criticism, with its usual fluctuation, began by taking them at their apparent value; then adopted from a Roman grammarian a rationalistic explanation of them; invented other similar rationalistic explanations; and finally my lamented colleague Mr. Binning Monro robbed them of all significance by treating the word as an adjective, an equivalent of Ὁμηρικοí Men who are called Sons of Homer should not be lightly dismissed, and it may be worth while to go over the familiar evidence once more in the hope that this obvious avenue to Homer may not turn out a blind alley.

In the Niobe of Aeschylus, Niobe, we are told, ἕως τρίτης ⋯μ⋯ρας (corr. by Vict, to τρίτου μ⋯ρους) ⋯πικαθημ⋯νη τῷ τάφῳ τ⋯ν παίδων οὐδ⋯ν φθέγγεται ⋯πικεκαλυμμένη. So in the Ransom of Hector, otherwise known as the Phrygians, ᾽Aχιλλεὺς ⋯μοίως ⋯γκεκαλυμμέος οὐ φθέγγεται πλ⋯ν ⋯ν ⋯ρχαῖς όλίγα πρòς ‘Eρμ⋯ν ⋯μοιβαῖα (Vita Aesch.).

The vexed question of the exact significance of the name of Mavortius in the old Putean MS. of Prudentius (Par. Put. 8084) has again been called into court in the recent discussions of the Mavortian recension of Horace, and is fully treated in Dr. Bick's Horazkritik seit 1880, pp. 31–35. As Dr. Bick has done me the honour of subjecting my former articles on the question to his criticism, I feel called upon to say something in defence of the view I maintained. I willingly grant him that perhaps I laid too strong a stress on the connection of the question with Horatian criticism; but I do so, I fear, not as a convert to his arguments in favour of the view that Put. is merely a copy of a MS. that had Mavortius' autograph written in it, and that therefore that name is part of a lost subscriptio, but precisely for the contrary reason, that I consider I was too much influenced by former advocates of that view. That there is no ground for assuming the name to be part of a lost subscriptio I am more than ever convinced, and my object here is to endeavour to show that the whole argument based on a false premise.

The spaced words are commonly rendered either (1) ‘desiring to ward off from his head,’ or (2) ‘expecting to strike his head.’ Of these two renderings the first gives to κεφαλ⋯ς βαλεῖν a sense which is seemingly without example and which the two words can hardly bear, if they can also bear the meaning given to them by the second rendering. The meaning which this second rendering gives to them is their natural meaning (βαλεῖν=τε⋯ξεσθαι, Gildersleeve): on the other hand μενοιν⋯ν does not mean, and cannot mean, ‘expecting.’ It means ‘strongly desiring.’ ‘Expecting it to strike his head’ would be μένωνοἱ κεφαλ⋯ς βαλεῖν, and this, I suggest, is what Pindar wrote.

Cicero, in his letters (Fam. 9, 22), writes the following sentence (§ 2): memini in senatu disertum consularem ita eloqui: ‘hanc culpam maiorem an illam dicam?’ potuit obscenius? ‘non’ inquis ; ‘non enim ita sensit’ Wherein does the coarseness lie? Critics (cf. Tyrrell in his edition of the letters) find in (il)lam dicam a word ‘ landicam,’ which they define by ‘clitoris’. But possibly culpam is, whether by equivoque or by definition, the offending word (cf. Shuckburgh's translation, 3, p. 295, where, after characterizing the interpretation just mentioned as far-fetched, he suggests an equivoque between culpam and culleus).

A Cautious man, as I said at the outset, will not edit Lucilius; for it is an editor's business to pronounce an opinion on all the difficulties in his author, and when the author is in fragments the opinion will oftener be wrong than right. But a critic of Lucilius who is not also his editor, and can pick and choose among the pieces, is in a somewhat happier case; and I will now go on to attempt the correction or elucidation of certain passages where I seem to myself to have arrived at probable conclusions.

Are not the editors rather too easy-going, when they admit on the authority of Hephaestion these spondaic endings? In the second passage nothing is easier than to invert the order of ⋯λλ⋯ντας and τ⋯κωνας, reading oὔτ' ⋯λλ⋯ντας πoιηησóμεθ' oὔτε τ⋯κωνας, for oὔτε … oὔτε seem also required. Cratinus is not quite so easily corrected, but one may perhaps suppose that he really wrote something like ⋯ να⋯ς ⋯μ⋯ν ὡς πειθαρχ μ⋯λλoν τoῖς πηδαλ⋯oισι. If it were not for the poetical character of line I (πóντoν, αὖραι, ⋯ρ⋯μαι), we should doubt whether we ought not to write ἵ να for ὡς, but it may be right, though obviously the first and second lines have no immediate connexion. The spondaic ending is made even less probable than it would otherwise be by the fact of the fifth and sixth feet also being spondees.

This verb is of quite general signification in Plautus ‘facit, reddit, comparat,’ and the like. Minuter definitions are given by the glossists, e.g. συνκᾱττúει ‘sews together’ (this sense in Men. 426, 467), arte facit aut componit, conflectit; cf. also concinnatura κόλλσις (‘a gluing together’). In view of Latin ciet ‘moves, stirs, shakes; excites, rouses; causes, occasions,’ and of Greek κινεȋ ‘sets in motion, moves, removes; changes, alters, sets agoing, causes, calls forth,’ we might define concinnat by ‘moves, draws, puts together, joins.’

I do not profess to understand lines 5 and 6. It is however clear that one λέγει is due to the other, and the first seems most likely to be wrong. On that assumption, which is the usual one, I would suggest ⋯θέλεις to take its place.

Did the Romans in their dealings with other nations outside Italy know of any international laws, and did such laws ever crystallise from scattered observances into a general system? This is an interesting question, but one not easy to answer.

De benef. I. i i p. i i (Hosius): Inter multos ac uarios errores temere inconsulteque uiuentium nihil propemodum, uir optime Liberalis, dixerim, *quod beneficia nee dare scimus nee accipere. Sequitur enim, ut male conlocata male debeantur; de quibus non redditis sero querimur; ista enim perierunt, cum darentur.

It is universally held and in all classical Greek Grammars taught that in their numeral system, the ancient Greeks denoted the figure for 6 by the digamma or vau, that for 90 by the koppa, and that for 900 by the sampi or sanpi. On a closer examination, however, this doctrine proves erroneous and requires correction.

In Grenfell and Hunt's Hibeh Papyri, Vol. I, recently published, there is an interesting but obscure fragment, composed of sayings apparently ascribed to the famous poet. I submit two or three suggestions on them.

Epist. 14 15 p. 39 12 Hense: ‘quid ergo? utique erit tutus, qui hoc propositum sequetur?’ promittere tibi hoc non magis possum quam in homine temperanti bonam ualetudinem, et tamen facit temperantia bonam ualetudinem.