This paper is an attempt to elucidate the senses in which this place-name is used in Homer; to assign meanings to the Homeric terms Achaean, Iason and Pelasgic Arge, to ‘Argive’ as a synonym for Greek, and to establish the nature of the Argos over which Agamemnon ruled. I take the Homeric poems as the unity which they profess to be, and which they must be for historical enquiry. Whatever liberties Homer took with his materials (and I credit him with as free a hand as any one has allowed to Pisistratus)it is plain he was careful to respect events. The effort to distinguish between old and new in the Iliad and Odyssey has caused needless and fruitless encumbrance to the official historians, such as Busolt; the Unitarian position has given us the remarkable results of Professor Myres' (paper on the Pelasgians, J.H.S. 1907, 170 sqq.). The consistency of Mr. Myres' account, and I venture to hope of mine, allows a fresh inference back to the homogeneity of the poems which are their source.

A Page of this MS, which however I discovered independently, is reproduced by M. Chatelain in his Paléographie des Classiques Latins, and for an account of the codex I refer to vol. ii. p. 11 of that work. The volume consists of four parts: (1) Juvenal, ff. 1–47; (2) Persius, ff. 48–59; (3) Horace, ff. 60–93; (4) Juvenal, ff. 94–113. This last part contains Sat. i. 1–ii. 66, iii. 32–vi. 437, i.e. two intermediate leaves, the two outside double leaves of the first quire of eight, of 34 lines on a page, have been lost. The quires b and c are disordered. Foil. 94v–97 contain i. 1–ii. 66, ff. 98–105, v. 98–vi. 437, ff. 106–113, iii. 32–v. 97.

Paley, in his note on Eur. Hel. 1301, says, ‘The choral ode which here follows, though beautiful in itself, is liable to the charge of being unconnected with the subject of the play.’ He adds that the ode ‘is both difficult and corrupt.’ And as far as I am aware, no one has yet succeeded in explaining away the difficulties, or restoring the more corrupt sentences.

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).

Strabo i. 2. 2O. ἢ τ⋯ν Θρᾴκην oὐκ oῖδε (sc. ⋯ 'Oμηρoς) μ⋯ πρoπ⋯πτoνσαν π⋯ραν τ⋯ν Παιoνικ⋯ν κα⋯ Θετταλικ⋯ν ⋯ρ⋯ν ; ⋯λλ⋯ κα⋯ τα⋯την τ⋯ν ⋯φεξ⋯ς κατ⋯ τo⋯ς Θρᾷκας ɛἰδ κα⋯ † oὐ κατoνoμ⋯ζων τ⋯ν τɛ παραλ⋯αν κα⋯ τ⋯ν μɛσoγα⋯αν M⋯γνητας μ⋯ν τινας … καταλ⋯ γɛι κ.τ.λ. It is true that oὐ is contrary to the sense, but those who reject it should explain how it came into the passage. Read ɛὖ κατoνoμ⋯ζων …

‘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.

In Hermathena, vol. xiv., pp. 338–359, Professor Charles Exon attempts to prove that the nom. and dat.-abl. pi. of deus were disyllabic in Plautus. The argument upon which he lays most stress is briefly this: Plautus uses iambic words shortened by the law of breves breviantes in the thesis (i.e., the accented part of the foot) of iambic and trochaic verse about twice as often as he does in the arsis, whereas the long monosyllable cor occurs in dialogue with equal frequency in both parts of the foot. In this respect the nom. pl. of deus agrees with the shortened iambi, and should therefore, he thinks, be considered one of them.

liii. 6. Seneca says that we try to conceal from ourselves the fact that we are ill, and can do this for a time. ‘Dubio et incipiente morbo quaeritur nomen, qui ubi ut talaria coepit intendere et utrosque dextros pedes fecit, necesse est podagram confiteri.’

‘Let me refresh your memory; there is no harm in going over what you have heard several times. Five will not admit the character of evenness, nor will ten—its double—admit that of oddness. Now, this latter term is actually itself an opposite of another term, but none the less it will not admit the character of oddness; no more indeed will 3/2 or the other terms of this series—the ‘half’—admit the character of wholeness, nor yet will ⅓ and all the other terms of that series.’

For the following notes, which are mainly on the Life of Apollonius, I have taken Kayser's Teubner text (1870) as the foundation, and my references are to the Olearius paging in his margin.

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.

M. Antoninus Imperator ad se ipsum recogn. I. H. Leopold, Oxonii (Scriptorum Classicorum bibliotheca Oxoniensis).

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.’

⋯κολούθησις which has most MS. authority, may very well be right, though it expresses an action or course of conduct rather than a condition of mind. But ⋯κολουθο⋯σα would seem possible. Is not some word lost parallel to ὑπομενητικ⋯ and governing the genitive το⋯ ὑποληφθ⋯ντος, e.g. ⋯ποτελεστικ⋯, which occurs a few lines below (πιλοπον⋯α ἓξις ⋯ποτελεστικ⋯ οὗ ἂν προ⋯ληται)? The genitive has at present no construction.

The passage containing this verb is in Resp. v. 450 B: χρυσοχο⋯σοντας οἴει το⋯σδε ν⋯ν ⋯νθ⋯δε ⋯φῖχθαι,⋯λλ’ οὐ λ⋯γων ⋯κουσομ⋯νους; The situation is dramatic. Socrates, to his own mind, has just finished a discussion of the one part of his ideal state, and is intending to go on to the other. Polemarchus, however, seizes him by the cloak and at the same time whispers to Adeimantus. Then Adeimantus tells Socrates that they will hold him by force, until he explains further some words of his that have aroused their interest, and finally Thrasymachus adds that they are unanimous in this decision. Socrates replies that they know not what a swarm of explanations they are stirring up. ‘Seeing this swarm,’ says he, ‘I let it pass, that it might not bother us greatly.’ Then Thrasymachus replies: ‘But do you think these persons have come here for gold-hunting (χρυσοχο⋯σοντας), and not to hear explanations?’

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.

In reading the last six books of Platos Laws in Prof. Burnet's excellent edition I notice some passages the corruptions in which seem to me to be due to that very common fault of copyists, false change of case usually due to the preceding word or words.

The line is preserved in a passage of Consentius ‘De Barbarismis et Metaplasmis’ (Keil's Gramm. Lat. v. p. 400, 9): sicut Lucilius ‘ore corupto’; dempsit enim unam litteram per metaplasmum, r; et Ennius ‘huic statuam,’ etc.

Diss. I 1 16 —κα⋯ φαρακ⋯φτομεν συνεχ⋯ς, τ⋯ς ἄνεμος φνεἄ; ‘βορ⋯ας’.