The Platonic Commentators.—After Cicero the Academy is no more than a few names to us for nearly five centuries. The nearest that we get to contact with it in this period is in the writings of Plutarch. He was himself a student there, and was well read in the books of Plato and the commentaries thereon.

The political situation in Hellas in the early part of 419 B.C. was extremely promising for the Athenians.

Alcibiades had succeeded in 420 in concluding an alliance with Argos, Mantinea and Elis, and although the Fifty years Truce of Nicias had not yet been formally denounced and the alliance with the Argives and their allies was purely defensive, yet the star of Lacedaemon was to all appearances on the wane. Alcibiades had brought off successfully his first great coup and had begun his ascent towards the principal place in the leadership of Athens.

‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin’ not only ‘of little minds,’ but of some classically trained minds as well. And it is surprising to see how this has caused certain unevennesses in ancient authors to be trued up. Aristophanes, for example, we are toldby a late venerable scholar, never permits a change of meter in a single speech directed to the same person; and to get rid of the two deviations from this rule, the framer of it cut down the seemingly good trochaic tetrameters in the Peace(299 sq.) to iambic trimeters, and then put line 555 before line 553 and took the three lines 555, 553, 554 from Trygaeus and assigned them to the coryphaeus. It is conceivable that if we possessed the thirty-three lost comedies of Aristophanes the editor might have had more and harder surgery on his hands.

This passage has caused much discussion and much variety of opinion, and it still remains doubtful whether the later commentators in their efforts at exact interpretation have been more successful than the earlier ones. The general sense is sufficiently clear. Medea is making an apology to the Chorus of sympathizing Corinthian ladies for her delay in appearing before them. So far all are agreed. The difficulties, real or unreal, arise when we begin to inquire what form the apology actually takes. First of all there are doubts as to the meaning of το ὺς μ⋯⋯ μ⋯⋯ᾂπο. in the Scholia. we have a gloss μῂ όρώμνοɩ είναɩ. and the explanation το⋯ Xωρίςεσθαɩ καì ᾂτ⋯ν ποθεν ⋯μμάτων είναɩ. Many scholars have taken exception to this view on two grounds, as stated by Verrall ad loc, because (I) ‘the sense of motion is not there, and (2) there is no reference to any eyes in particular.’ He requires either authority or analogy for this. As far as the absence of motion is concerned, it is sufficient to refer to Thuc. 1, 7 αί δ⋯ παλαɩαί(πόλεɩς) ᾀπ⋯θαλ⋯σσης μ⋯λλον ῲκίσθησαν id I, 99ἳναμῄ ᾀπ οἲκου ⋯σɩ,γ. Il. B 292 μένεν ᾀπ⋯ ᾑς ᾀλòΧοɩο. Then there is the analogous expression αί γàρ δῂ μοɩᾀπ οὒατος ώδε γένοɩτο (II.Σ 272, cf. X 454). As to the second objection, why is it necessary that the eyes of anyone in particular should be referred to ? There is no more ambiguity here than there is in Il Ψ 53 θâσσον ᾀπ ⋯ϕθαλμ⋯ν, where the meaning is ‘so as to be out of sight, not of me or you, but of everybody.’ In fact, it could not be maintained with any show of reason that ᾀπ⋯ϕθαλμ⋯νand ᾀποὒατς could not mean ‘out of sight’ and ‘out of hearing’.

All students of Greek epigraphy are familiar with the abecedarium discovered in 1805, ‘prope Bastam (the modern Vaste) ruri quodam dicto Melliche,’ by Luigi Cepolla, amongst whose papers (still preserved at Lecce in the Biblioteca Provinciate, Misc. Castromed. D. 29. 18) Mommsen found and published it in his Unteritalische Dialekte (1850). Cepolla's copy, though inaccurate, is not so bad, as I hope to show, as has usually been supposed. To be sure, he proposed to interpret an alphabet as a complete inscription, and actually ‘translated’ it! Nor, I think, could it be properly deciphered until more Messapic inscriptions than were known to Mommsen had been collected and their alphabet more closely studied. It has, however, long been recognized that the Vaste alphabet should be rightly regarded as essentially a Messapic (rather than a Greek) alphabet, although, as is well known, the alphabet of the Messapic inscriptions agrees in the main with the Tarentine-Ionic variety of the Western Greek alphabet; but the proposed explanations of Cepolla's transcript of the Vaste alphabet have been most diverse, not to say perverse—certainly they have been largely arbitrary. They may be sought in the places cited in the footnote below.

In these days no edition of a classic, least of all of a ‘new’ classic, can claim to be final; and since the able editor of the Cambridge Herodas has found reason to reconsider some of his readings, there is clearly room for an independent examination of the text. This paper embodies the result of several weeks' close study of the papyrus in 1923 and 1924. To save space I have begun a note with a new line only where it is of more than usual interest. By the use of a letter of thicker type I mean that there are traces consistent with that letter, but not necessarily with that alone—which seems to me the only way by which Herodas can be saved from the restorer who regards doubtful letter-traces as equivalent to a gap. I begin with three passages which seem to me to stand in a class apart.

(1) In Cicero, In Vatinium, § 29, occur the words: ‘ Fecerisne foedera tribunus plebis cum ciuitatibus, cum regibus, cum tetrarchis?’

With this are to be compared:

(2)Ad Fam. I. 9, 7:‘In quo omnia dicta sunt libertate animoque maximo de ui, de auspiciis, de donatione regnorum.’

(3)Att. II. 9, I:‘Irnprobitate istorum, qui auspicia, qui Aeliam legem, qui Iuniam et Liciniam, qui Caeciliam et Didiam neglexerunt … qui regna quasi praedia tetrarchis … dederunt.’

The religious value which we are entitled to attach to instances of purification in the Homeric poems is extremely small. It is important at the outset of the inquiry to get away from pre-conceived ideas founded on later religious practice, in the light of which the Homeric examples are instinctively interpreted. Chapter and verse from fifth century and later parallels is not necessarily authority for reading a religious significance into the account of an apparently secular act in Homer.

This paper sets out to answer four apparently unconnected questions, which, however, I hope to show to be parts of one question:

(1) Why did Haimon kill himself over the body of Antigone?

(2) Why did Philinnion return for three nights to her father's house?

(3) Why is it unlawful(ού θέμɩς) to leave a story unfinished?

(4) Why is a magician sometimes torn in pieces by his own devils, or otherwise destroyed by his own magic?

This famous iambic line is described—alike by commentators on the New Testament and by writers on the Greek drama—as a quotation in the first place from the lost Thaïs of Menander, and it is further stated that it was there borrowed from some play of Euripides no longer extant. In view of the revival of interest in Euripides during recent years, it seems worth while to examine the line in detail, and to see whether, in the light of our present knowledge, any further information can be extracted as to its precise source.

Horace has told us that the author of a literary work,

qui uariare cupit rem prodigialiter unam,

falls into absurdities. Much more likely to meet this fate is the interpolator who has the same ambition. The above four lines are a case in point; for it is fairly certain that if this Hymn were presented to readers as it came from the hand of its author, the whole passage with its phenomenal bull and its four pacifist dogs which apparently had agreed together not to bark and bite, ‘as is their nature to,’ would not be found in the text. Undoubtedly it is true, though it is by no means a marvel (θαμα), that the bull which was somewhere else and the dogs which were following in his wake were not taken by the infant cattle-lifter who was satisfied, as he well might be, with a trifle of fifty cows. The veracity of the interpolater in this regard may, therefore, pass without question, and furthermore his knowledge of epic metre does not fail seriously till he reaches the fourth line, although ό δ ταρος is not really epic and λλων not ἄλλων is required in the opening line, for he certainly did not mean, as he unwittingly says ‘other bulls,’ but ‘the others, the cows.’ After ο μνἔλειθεν (not οἳ μν as a recent edition has it) it is quite out of the question that οĩ τε κύνες ὃ τε ταȗρος, two flagrant examples of the later article, should follow.

The precise position to be assigned to the Categories in the Aristotelian system has always been somewhat of a puzzle. On the one hand, they seem to be worked into the warp of its texture, as in the classification of change, and Aristotle can argue from the premiss that they constitute an exhaustive division of the kinds of Being (An. Post. I. 22, p. 83 b 15). On the other hand, both in the completed scheme of his logic and in his constructive metaphysic they retire into the background, giving place to other notions, such as causation, change, actuality and potentiality. Investigation has, moreover, been hampered, especially in Germany, by attempts to correlate them with the Kantian Categories, with which they have obvious points of contact. But Kant's formal a priori concepts by which the mind makes for itself a world, to use Mr. Bosanquet's phrase, imply an attitude to knowledge and reality so utterly opposed to the Aristotelian that the comparison has tended to confusion rather than elucidation. Scholars now realize better that the Aristotelian Categories can only be understood in connexion with the problems of Aristotle's own age.

From the time when Friedrich Conrads published1 the first systematic study of the method of composition employed by Vergil in the Aeneid it has been recogmzed that Bk. III. is especially involved in the contradictions existing between the various parts of the poem. It is not my purpose in this paper to attempt an exhaustive study of this aspect of Bk. III.; the industry of classical scholars in the last half-century renders needless further repetition of this sort. I wish merely to present a few suggestions which may help to reconcile the passages generally regarded as hopelessly contradictory.

My colleague, Professor W. M. Lindsay, invites, or challenges, me to reply to his note on ‘Ciris’ (Class. Quart. XIX., pp. 103, 104); I can but take him at his word.

Professor Lindsay seeks to identify the two birds Haliaetus and Ciris, and finds the task an easy one; he identifies Ciris with a Tern confidently and categorically. We learn (he says) ‘from Gallus' epyllium … that it was a sea-bird with red legs, so rapid in flight that it always evaded the swoop of the sea-eagle. What can this be but a tern?’

In common with other poems of the Appendix Vergiliana, Copa has incurred the a priori suspicion of forgery or post-Virgilian imitation. But if, as I have tried to show, Copa was written under the direct and immediate influence of Theocritus, that suspicion can no longer be permitted to colour and confuse the enquiry into Copa's date and authorship. The poem has acquired the right to do battle with the Eclogues on equal terms for the palm of priority.

Interpretation of this ode has not been very happy in spite of the care lavished upon it by editors obviously determined to extract some sort of consistent sense. That Horace started from Pindar's Olymp. II. is evident enough; when and why, under what stimulus, or for what occasion he wrote is not so clear. The older commentators do not give much help. I believe, however, that in attending to the list of gods, demi-gods, and Roman heroes given in the ode we have a chance of coming somewhere near to an adequate understanding of the poem.

Mr. P. H. Ling's suggestion that the famous line ϕθε⋯ρουσιν ἤθη χρ⋯σθ' ⋯μιλ⋯αι κακα⋯ stood at the beginning of a play of Euripides seems to me to lack anything like cogent proof. A gnomic verse of this sort—to take the characteristics of the line in the order given by Mr. Ling—may indeed begin a play, as in the fragment of the Stheneboia (Nauck, 661) which he quotes; but it may also begin a speech, as Hec. 864; or come early in a speech, cf. Heracl. 2; or alone in stichomythia, as Alc. 540; or late in a speech, as Med. 561; or at the end of one, as Supp. 510. In other words, there is no position which it may not have. As to its lack of ‘any particle or conjunction to connect it with what preceded or followed,’ how does Mr. Ling prove that it was not preceded by γιγνώσκων ὅτι, cf. Med. 560; or that the previous line did not end in γάρ, like Hec. 551, Supp. 361; or that this line is not the end of a longer sentence, like Alc.

Others must have shared my surprise at reading the two articles on this subject in the Classical Quarterly (XIX., pp. 22 sqq., 92 sq.), one by Mr. P. H. Ling, writing ‘in the light of our present knowledge,’ and one by Professor H. J. Rose. Among the Hibeh Papyri (I. 7) is a fragment of an anthology which hereabouts contains quotations from Tragedy and Epicharmus. It gives four verses, the last of which was rightly identified by the editors Grenfell and Hunt. Of the lemma only a spot of ink on a loose fibre remains.