In spite of the high reputation which Solon enjoyed in ancient times as a conciliator, the record shows the collapse of his plans for social stability in his own lifetime. This collapse was perhaps caused by events beyond his control or influence, and if it was social and economic change in Attica subsequent to his reforms that brought about a new revolutionary situation, and opened the way for the tyranny, the question is, What changes of such a nature took place in this period? In this connexion it would be well to review very briefly what evidence we have about Peisistratos' following in Attica.

The advantage of our traditional method of spelling Greek names and titles as though they were Latin and pronouncing them as though they were English (often with a fine disregard of quantity, Crito, Meno, though we scorn such as confuse the penultimate vowel in Man-tinea and Tegea), is just that it is traditional: we are used to it, especially with our eyes, and the visual appearance of a word is important. But we may lose too much by clinging to tradition; no one, I think, wants to revert to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva for Greek gods, nor even to Ulysses for the Greek hero; and in the process of changing to the Greek names we have created two anomalies, Asclepius and Heracles, which are neither Latin nor Greek, nor traditional English.

Odysseus, with Herakles, was a favourite character in that mythological type of comedy which we know only in titles and fragments, though it was well liked in antiquity. The purpose of this article is to collect these stray pieces, to present Odysseus as he appears in this tradition, and to suggest reasons for his popularity on the comic stage.

The Civil War of 49 B.c. is one of the most important wars of European history, if only for the fact that it ended an old world order and paved the way for a new one which was to endure in Europe for nearly two thousand years. It is also one of the most dramatic wars of history, perhaps the most truly ‘tragic’, in the Greek sense of the word, of them all—so ‘tragic’ that it has never found a poet to do it justice, or to bring its leading characters fairly upon the stage. It was certainly the most unnecessary of wars. It involved the whole of Western civilization, and yet no really deep-seated emotions or animosities, racial, national, social, or even individual, caused the conflagration. It was, in fact, nothing but a trial of strength, with no constructive objective in view, between two men, highly educated, humane, related by marriage, not unfriendly to one another, members of the same society and the same clubs, as it were, whose interests, even, need not have been incompatible. It is generally agreed that the great majority of the senatorial aristocracy very definitely did not want the war; and it seems quite clear that the small minority, of some twenty-two, who did were powerless to commence it or wage it without the will and leadership of Pompeius. It is also agreed that Caesar, while prepared to fight for his skin and his dignitas, and to that extent responsible, did not want war and made sincere efforts both to avoid it and to stop it.

The first few hours on Greek soil are a fantastic and whirling jumble. Tumult is too feeble a word for the excited and inextricable chaos that is Peiraeus. The road thence to Athens must be at once the busiest and the worst in Greece. The main streets of the city are bedlam. Then suddenly, as a glimpse of the Parthenon is won, the mind skips the last twenty-four centuries and is lost to today. When it returns and you look about you, you might reasonably wonder where in time you are. The signs in the streets and the shops—ΟΔΟΣ ΤΡΙΠΟΔωΝ or ΑΡΤΟΠωΛΕΙΟΝ—are they ancient or modern? ‘All the Athenians … spent their time in nothing else but either to hear or to see some new thing.’ They live today, as they have always done, by talk and argument, be it over St. Paul's teaching or merely the price of a newspaper. Generations of foreign influence, Roman onwards, have left Greece unchanged, uncertain itself which century it is living in. The Unknown Soldier of modern war is represented by a dead hoplite, and beside him are written up two sentences from Thucydides.

It almost seems a sort of impertinence to add yet another layer to the many records (recently estimated as numbering some 230,000 books) of Roman experiences and impressions. Can there possibly be any vision of the Eternal City, any reaction to its manifold variety and continuity, which has not already been set down, romantically or painstakingly according to the writer's ability? Yet it may be that each new generation, even each new visitor, enjoys a private and different view of Rome, and experiences something unfelt by the multitudes of previous explorers. To attempt to translate that vision, to reduce it to words for others to share, is a sure recipe for another attack of nostalgia; and who would wish to escape that?

It is not perhaps generally recognized that the description of the coast of Latium in the seventh book of the Aeneid, in the passage which is often called ‘The Gathering of the Clans’, is in the form of a periplus—literally, ‘a sailing round’. The places and natural features are named in order from the mouth of the Tiber as far as Tarracina (modern Terracina) as if they were seen from the sea by one coasting along the shore. Accounts of this kind are frequent in ancient geographers. Virgil followed a familiar pattern in the six Unes in which this stretch of coast is described:

‘Those who plough thy glades, Tiberinus, and the sacred shore of the Numicus, and work the Rutulian hills with the ploughshare, and Circe's ridge, the fields over which Jupiter Anxurus holds sway, and Feronia rejoicing in her green grove; where lies Satura's unhealthy marsh, and cool through sunken valleys Ufens seeks his way, and is lost in the sea.’

‘Messages were divined by soaking oak leaves in the holy spring. Oak leaves have veins rich in tannins, and I find that by soaking such leaves in dilute iron sulphate solutions hieroglyphics are produced on the dry leaves which could easily pass for distorted Greek characters. On one occasion I succeeded in obtaining characters that perhaps could have been read καιχ ρομε; and it is interesting to note that Gallaeus records a message reading καὶ ‘Ρώμη ῥύμη.’

There are two regions of Italy which might properly be called ‘Virgil's Country’. One is Mantua and its neighbourhood, where the poet spent his early days on his father's farm and witnessed the turmoils and miseries of the civil wars that ensued on the death of Julius Caesar; the other is the Naples area, where, after settling early in the thirties B.c. on an estate at Pausilypon, Virgil spent most of the rest of his life in comparative freedom from anxiety. The Eclogues describe the experiences of his younger days and his emotional and spiritual reactions to the great upheavals of the late forties B.c., while the Georgics were completed in ‘ignoble ease’ on the cliffs overlooking the Bay of Naples from the north. It was here, too, that the Aeneid was composed. The poet carried with him from the district of his birth vivid impressions which contributed much to his peculiar artistic outlook and which remained indelibly with him to the end of his life; but it was at Pausilypon that his art and thought reached the peak of maturity.

A phrase of Mr. Middleton Murry in his chapter on the imagery of Shakespeare suggests some interesting possibilities of literary speculation. Noting the odd association of dogs and sweetmeats in four widely separated tragedies Murry remarks: ‘What is to be noted is that the image, having its roots in some vital experience, grows steadily more complex.…’ He goes on to suggest that the origin of a notion so obsessive lay in some unpleasant memory of Sir Thomas Lucy's hall.

Latin begins, as we all know, with roses for sailors and Principal Parts; necessary items, not readily associated with τὸ καλόν. It is true that when people give us the reasons why the classics should still be studied in schools one always finds the argument that the varied richness of Greek Literature, and the few but incomparable masterpieces in Latin, should be made accessible to the educated European. The child should be given the key to this treasure-house, which he may turn if he chooses after a glimpse of the treasure within. If one points out that the key offered to the young treasure-seeker (who by that time has usually seen plenty of more alluring treasure elsewhere) appears rather rusty and unhandy, the answer is given—not unsympathetically—that no genuine treasure is to be won without an effort. This axiom is so manifestly true that it silences protest.