Hosius and others have suspected v. 87 on the ground that it is omitted by most of the good MSS. But the omission, as Weber saw, is due to the similar endings of vv. 86–87 (cura-hora). It is difficult to see how a student of Lucan could convince himself that any other person is the author of v. 87, which not only improves the passage, but is wholly in keeping with the gloomy fatalism of Pompey as represented by Lucan in many other places. Francken's objection that the emphatic me should have a pronoun contrasted with it may be sufficiently answered by a reference to vv. 396–398 of the same book; many instances from other authors could be added.

In his elegiacs Ovid did not permit the elision of the final syllable of an iambic word ‘in an arsis (as Palmer on Her. l.c. expresses it), i.e. first syllable of dactyl or spondee.’ See L. Müller, De re metrica, ed. 2, p. 341. These two are the only lines in which this rule is transgressed, for in Trist. II. 296, which used to appear as

stat Venus Vltori iuncta, uir ante fores

was brilliantly restored conjecturally by Bentley, and has since been found to be the actual reading of our best manuscript, the Marcianus. The soundness of the text in the two lines obelized above is still open to question.

The bear, says Hierocles, is aware that its head is easily injured, and instinctively uses its paws as a protection. The three following lines in the papyrus are badly damaged– καν εί π.ε … δεηθεί Του | βαλανεíον <lacuna of twenty letters> κρημν | πáλιν ύ;β <nineteen letters> εθεíησιν ε | αυΤήν. This is followed by a description of what the bear does when it is pursued and comes to a precipice. It inflates itself (άσκώ βοιήσασα πεπνενμαΤωμéνώ παραπλήσíαν) and trusts to the inflation to break its fall. It is hardly possible to restore the damaged lines. Von Arnim thinks that the sense required is: ‘wenn die Bärin, vom Jäger verfolgt, eines Bades bedarf oder auf ihrer Flucht an einen Abgrund kommt,πáλιν ύπ<оστéψασα έπì τоùς δικоντας> èψίησιν εαψτήν’ But a sensible bear would hardly think of taking a bath when pursued by the hunter. It might take to the water; but the Greek for this would be somewhat different. As I read the passage, there is no reference to the bear as pursued by the hunter till line 34, where I would read πоιεî δè τò τοιóνδε <δικομéνμ>, since the phrase εί δ υν διοκμéνμ in line 38 is resumptive, and implies that the pursuit must have been alluded to before. But before line 35 H. is only describing what the bear does to protect its head in the ordinary routine of its life when it is not harassed by the hunter. It wants a bath, and finds that it cannot reach the water without clambering down an overhanging bank (ϰρημνóς) It will not climb down head foremost, but guards its head by sliding backwards down the bank. As the bear would want its bath because it was hot, it is perhaps not too hazardous to conjecture that some phrase such as ϰℵν ει π<ι>ε<ζομéν πνíγηι δεμθεíν του β. should find its place in line 31.

The following note s have been made during a long-continued study of Aeneid vii. (and viii.), with a constantly growing conviction of the priority of these books in point of composition. They deal with internal evidence and literary correspondences only. Examination of the metre has not produced any very definite results, so when I note d in one of the most recent articles on Vergilian metre z the statement that ‘a comparison and analysis of the separate books of the Aeneid does not give any results worthy of note ’ (with an exception that has not much bearing on this investigation), it seemed that these note s might appear without further waiting, though their argument is almost entirely subjective.

The statement of Donatus (or Suetonius) that Vergil wrote the Culex at the age of sixteen (cum esset annorum XVI.) seems to be regarded by most scholars as too good to be true. It is a very long time since it was first suggested that XXVI. should be read for XVI., and the proposal has not yet fallen from favour. The apparent justification of this view is found in a passage of Statius' Genethliacon Lucani (Siluae II. 7), where Calliope is represented as foretelling the literary achievements of Lucan. It is the purpose of the present paper to examine this supposed evidence.

Aelivs donatvs, the note d grammarian of the fourth century of our era, wrote commentaries on Terence and Virgil. The commentary on Terence has been preserved, though in a curiously heterogeneous form which thus far has defied analysis. The most plausible supposition is that our present text is a conflation of two commentaries, one by Donatus himself, and one by Euanthius, whose work was obviously utilized for part of the introductory note on comedy. But even if this is the right statement of the question, the question remains to be solved. The problem of the commentary on Virgil is, unfortunately, more simple, or at least is universally adjudged more simple. We have extant Donatus's life of Virgil, his dedicatory letter to Lucius Munatius, and his introductory remarks on Bucolic poetry. The commentary itself, save for scattered references in later grammarians, glossaries, and commentaries, has been lost.

Sirs,—In response to your request I have been excerpting for your Summaries the last—itself a summary—instalment of Glotta, VI. I find there so much belittling censure of my own studies that I am prompted to ask the privilege of a few words with your readers on the criteria of belief in etymology.

When we read the Latin Grammarians' Rules of Prosody, we are puzzled now and then. (They are to be found in the Prosody-sections of Keil's Grammatici Latini, and deal mainly with the Dactylic Hexameter and with Virgil.) One thing that puzzles us is their silence about the features of difference between Latin Prosody and Greek. They often seem to take it for granted that Virgil's Prosody is identical with Homer's. This point of view is perhaps not surprising, since these Grammatici often speak of Latin as a mere dialect of Greek (Charisius 292, 16 K. ‘cum ab omni sermone Graeco Latina lingua pendere uideatur’; Diomede 3II, 3 ‘cum ab omni sermone Graeco Latina loquella pendere uideatur’). But it has its disadvantages. Every scholboy knows that moeniă Troiae is as natural in Virgil as TєίεΧεă Τροίηs would be unnatural in Homer; and every school-manual of Latin Prosody confines its examples of a Mute and Liquid (1) lengthening, (2) not lengthening a preceding syllable to examples of a Mute and Liquid in the middle of a word. If it mentions Catullus' impotenti̅ freta, it calls this a Greek, not a Latin type. Not so the Grammatici. Diomede's examples of a short syllable before FR, FL are (429, 3 K):

ore fremebant talia flammato.

These forms would result regularly from the longer forms, audivisti, etc. The v drops out between two like vowels, and these then contract immediately (cf. divitis > ditis). Both the long and the short forms are used, but the intervening forms audiisti, etc., do not occur in early Latin, just as diitis is not found. (This is the ordinary explanation, and quite sufficient, but see under Class 5.)

In his edition of this author Buecheler translates the words of Mim. III. 72 πρός σΣ Τñς κοΤΤίδος ψυχñς by ‘per capitale tuum ingenium,’ but affords no explanation as to how he arrived at this sense. May I suggest another interpretation to which Modern Greek seems to me to lead? The equivalent of κοΤΤίς is now πουλί or πουλάκπουλί μου or πουλάκι or simply πουλάκ‘my little birdie,’ i.e. ‘my darling,’ is the most frequent endearing term of the Greeks. See Vlachos's Λεξικòν ‘Eλληογλλικòν ν πουλί 'πουλί μουmon chéri, mon amour, ma poulette.’ Therefore, πρóς σε Τñς κοΤΤíδος ψυχñς I fancy, means, ‘I implore thee by thy darling soul.’ The expression seems to have come down to us intact in sense, and only altered in so far as new words have been substituted for the obsolete ones. Of such a phenomenon I have given several curious examplesin my Notes tn the Gospels

This well-known passage refers to the growth of latifundia, a symptom of Rome's decadence. In v. 170 ignotis is generally taken to mean ‘unknown to the owners,’ and thus, it seems to me, the point of the passage is missed. There is a double antithesis; longa is contrasted with breuίa, parua, and ίgnotίs with notίs, ίnlustrίbus, or the like. The latter antithesis is implied in Camίllί, Curίorum; the other is left to be understood. In the good old days farms were small, but were cultivated by the most eminent citizens, men like Camillus and Curius Dentatus; now these small farms are combined to form latίfundίa, managed by nobodies (ίgnotίs), whether slaves or tenant farmers. The juxta-position of longa and sub ίgnotίs is intentional.

The Teubner edition of Festus de Verborum Significatu had scarcely appeared when Professor Anspach announced (in the Deutsche Literaturzeitung of November 29, 1913) his discovery of a MS. of Isidore's Etymologies (A 18 of the Vallicelli Library, Rome) with some Scholia taken from Festus. Last Easter, in the limited time at my disposal, I transcribed from the MS. the greater part of this Isidore Commentary and, later, received a transcript of the remainder from Abbe Liebaert some weeks before his death. Although hampered by the deficiencies of our University Library, I am unwilling to keep this new evidence any longer from students of Festus.