The casual reader, on seeing these lines, might be forgiven for the thought that Lord Byron had the crossword puzzle in mind when he wrote them. In an uncertain world nothing is more certain than that this was not the case. Byron died in 1824. The crossword puzzle was born, at least in its popular modern shape, almost precisely a century later. Its history begins suddenly. Neither in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of 1921, nor in the twelfth edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, dated 1922, does the crossword appear at all. But from the year 1923 references to it become increasingly frequent. In 1924 a popular work entitled The Crossword Puzzle Book was published. In 1925 there was a reference to crosswords in Punch. In 1926 the thirteenth edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica had a short article on it. In 1928 the crossword puzzle was mentioned in Galsworthy's Swan Song. From that time every good standard dictionary or work of reference has included it. These facts document its emergence as a literary phenomenon in Great Britain. The history of the crossword in the United States is very similar, except that it would appear to have achieved stardom in the popular firmament a few months earlier in that country than in this.

Among the episodes from Caesar's De Bello Gallico that strike a Dutchman most (and this will equally apply to the English, I suppose) are those that treat of the sea. When we read how at the landing in Britain the Roman ships are too large to reach the coast, and how the soldiers leap from the vessels and wade fighting through the water, we can vividly imagine such a scene. Not that we see troops land every day, all Dutchmen are acquainted with the North Sea and its flat beach, so that a perusal of this passage evokes familiar ideas. Personally I find the episode of Caesar's campaign against the maritime States in Brittany very interesting. Now we discover a very similar situation in our own regions, then again we come across differences. Driven by a desire for personal observation we set out to this part of France during the summer holidays to see if Caesar's description agrees with the present situation, and how far the aspect of modern Brittany elucidates the passage in Caesar. And this has in no small measure proved to be the case.

Of all Latin writers whose works have come down to us there is none so live as Plautus, and none more calculated to give a modern reader the real ‘feel’ of Latin. He is worth reading for this alone, apart from the fun to be got out of his comedy, and there is much to be said for using him judiciously in the elementary stages of Latin teaching. But unfortunately not all his plays are of equal merit, and for most people selection is desirable. For that reason attention in this article will be confined to five plays—Rudens, Mostellaria, Aulularia, Miles Gloriosus, and Menaechmi—which in themselves are worth reading for sheer entertainment, and which also incidentally illustrate the influence of Plautus on modern drama. Any reader who masters these may be sure that he has got nearly all that is best and most characteristic in Plautus, and will have enjoyed himself into the bargain.

One day last April it was my good fortune to spend a few hours on the famous hill of Hissarlik. Being only a dabbler in archaeology, I felt little dismay that my time there was so short; even a brief visit would be sufficient to get a vivid impression of the setting and geographical background of the Iliad. It is doubtless a pleasant fancy to imagine the Trojans hauling the wooden horse, some with foreboding, others with exultant shouts, up the steep ramp which the archaeologists have laid bare; and to be told by an expert that a bit of broken pot that one has casually picked up dates from the time when the Greeks are alleged to have sacked Troy should send a thrill through the heart of any one who boasts a classical education.

The First Punic War is a record of a dismal wastage of human life and of strategic ineptitude. Briefly the Roman mistakes may be summed up as follows. First, the popular assembly which accepted the alliance with Messana seems to have failed to realize that the Carthaginians were bound to try to eject them from Sicily; to fight Carthage Rome needed a navy; she had none of her own and even in the treaty with Hiero asked for no naval assistance. Secondly, Rome made her struggle in Sicily much harder because she alienated all the Greeks by her ungenerous treaty with Hiero and by the massacre of non-combatants at Agrigentum. Thirdly, she was very slow to realize that the only way to get the Carthaginians out of Sicily was to strike at Africa; Agathocles in 310 had already pointed the way. Fourthly, Regulus failed to enlist willing Numidians in his cavalry, although a strong cavalry was essential on the plains of Africa. Fifthly, Regulus was left with far too small a force. Lastly, Rome continued to change the command and appoint inexperienced men, though few were quite so incompetent as Regulus who, when faced by the elephants and phalanx of Xanthippus, massed his legionaries, thus making them an easy prey to the Carthaginian battering ram.

Tiberius was taking exercise in the water-garden. He had dismissed his attendants and given orders that he was not to be disturbed; with bent head and brooding pace he passed and repassed the fountain, finding no solace in its pleasant sound for the unpleasing memories that chafed him. ‘Slaves! born slaves!’ he muttered as he walked. It is a hard fate to love liberty and justice, and to be at once the guardian and the ruin of both. A shout of laughter broke his meditations, and a cry from several voices, ‘Bravo! Do it again.’ Tiberius frowned; but the disturbance ceased before he had decided that it must be stopped. He went on walking, and was once more sunk in troubled cogitation when the noise broke out afresh. Brief as before, it nevertheless put an end this time to all hope of quiet thought: to expect interruption is to be all the while disturbed. Now really angry, for nature and training alike were affronted by this disregard of his command and of his comfort, Tiberius turned towards the sound, not without curiosity, for it came from the audience-chamber, usually deserted at this hour. His rapid entrance was unobserved, so intent was the group of household servants at the other end. It is a rare experience for an emperor to remain unnoticed, and Tiberius found his anger subsiding into ironic amusement as he approached them from behind and no one turned. His great height enabled him to look over their heads and see a young slave mouthing and gesticulating in a manner that struck him as familiar. It was very like—yes, surely it was an imitation in dumb show of the speaker he had last heard that morning in the courts.

The object of this article is to plead that Lucan is an underrated poet, and well worth reading at length. It is assumed that many readers of Greece and Rome have not read more than, at most, books i and vii, and such other pieces as may have met them from time to time in unseens.

Callias, son of Hipponicus, inherited the greatest fortune of his day, lived throughout the latter half of the fifth century and the first thirty years of the fourth century, spent his money lavishly, and died poor, or at least a good deal poorer. He must have been a prominent personage in Athens, yet owing to his lack of interest in politics and war, one hears little of him in history books. He presents a small problem to the biographer: there are two sources of information about him, one friendly, one hostile, and the fitting together of the two into a portrait is an entertaining occupation.

Amidst the conflict of opposing forces in these twenty years since the Armistice—social, political, literary, economic—one of the most acutely debated questions emerging from the tumult is, In what faith (if any) can an intelligent man and woman believe? The large popular demand for books on religion and its relation to art, psychology, reality, politics, and ethics, together with frequent written or broadcast pronouncements by responsible religious authorities, leave no doubt about the increased interest in non-material problems. Popular articles appear in the evening papers by deans, bishops, and laymen, and even sporting ‘stars’ appear in print with religious views. Furthermore, we hear the Voice of Under Thirty accompanying Nero amid the wreckage of ideals and faith, whose validity would seem to have died with Queen Victoria.

All writers are to some extent consciously interested in the technique of their art; many of them far more so than is generally realized. The majority follow the principle Ars maxima celare artem, and do not allow us more than a glimpse into their workshop; many a lyric that delights us by its apparent spontaneity has been hammered out slowly and shaped and altered until its final form contains hardly a trace of the original creation. The late W. B. Yeats in his Autobiography says:

‘Metrical composition is always very difficult to me. Nothing is done upon the first day, not one rhyme is in its place; and when at last the rhymes begin to come, the first rough draft of a six-line stanza takes the whole day. Sometimes a six-line stanza would take several days, and not seem finished even then.’

Only a few years ago Professor Carcopino of the Sorbonne published a book entitled Ce que Rome et l'Empire remain doit à la Gaule. For the classical scholar brought up under the Victorian régime this was turning the tables with a vengeance: from time immemorial, people, and classical historians in particular, had looked to Rome and Greece as the origin of all that was worth mentioning in the inheritance of western European culture from the ancient world. And now a famous scholar, and a classical one at that, unexpectedly wrote a book on what Rome owed to Gaul, and put up such a very good case for Gallic civilization that it is no longer possible to ignore it. Since then further researches have shown that the Gallic contribution to Gallo-Roman culture and through it to our heritage down the ages was considerable. While it is still too early to give a reasoned and detailed account of this Gallic contribution, we can at any rate state that Professor Carcopino's book and the work of other historians both before and after him have forced us to reorientate our ideas about the early influences which combined to form what we call modern western European culture. To-day we hear all kinds of fancy theories put forward to suit the national consciousness of various peoples, which all attempt to show that one or the other people has contributed most to the building up of our modern world. I do not think it will ever be possible to divide up and allot the various component parts of our culture to the different formative elements; but it is true that there are certain historical facts which will not admit of negation and simply cannot be ignored, however much this or that national consciousness might like to ignore them.

Polybius was born at Megalopolis in Arcadia, which was one of the staunchest members of the Achaean League in its last desperate stand for freedom in the second century b.c. The Hellenistic civilization had been unable to achieve permanent unity in Hellas, and in the second century petty quarrels between neighbouring states seemed likely to overshadow the real danger from without. The dynasties of Ptolemies, Seleucids, and Antigonids were becoming divided amongst themselves; Rome was growing and inevitably meeting opposition from Carthage; Greece was liable to become the battleground, or else fall a prey to the victors. Credit for being the pioneer in the policy of arousing the dormant Achaean League to a realization of its ideals of Greek union and freedom belongs to Aratus of Sikyon: for the accomplishment of the task of uniting the Peloponnese against the danger which threatened, three men are chiefly responsible, Philopoemen who became head of the League after the death of Aratus (213 b.c.), Lycortas, and his son Polybius. All three were natives of Megalopolis, a city which was itself originally an experiment in unity.

It is a commonplace that Greek drama is more intellectual than modern. We look for marks of this intellectualism in the speeches, the dialogue, the characterization, the method of supplying relief of tension in the most tragic situations, and the maintaining of the old convention by which action takes place off the stage, so that the interest of the audience is sustained by vividness and clarity of narrative rather than by actual portrayal of incident; but we seldom look for it in the actual construction of the dramas. Yet here too it can be seen. A good example is Euripides' Troades, which is but a poorly constructed play, if judged by standards which require a play to have a plot founded on incident, but not so poorly constructed if a theme be allowed to take the place of a plot.

It will be agreed, I think, that the reading of Virgil is an indispensable part of the school Latin course, especially for the Sixth Form. Assuming that Virgil will continue to be set for the School Certificate Examination, I suggest that the following ideas are feasible. At all events they are the result of experience gained in Fifth and Sixth Form work.

Although Professor Murray in his edition of Aeschylus' plays puts Prometheus between Persae (472 b.c.) and Septem (467 b.c.), many students nowadays show a tendency to place it in the last period of the poet's work. For instance Mr. W. F. J. Knight (J.H.S. lviii, 1938, p. 53) says:

‘It is important to regard all the extant plays of Aeschylus, and at least some of the plays that are lost, as a single sequence of developing poetic thought. Accordingly, at the end, when Aeschylus solves the hardest problem of all, the marriage of Heaven and Earth, something like the Prometheia with a satanic Zeus might almost have been predicted…. In fact the metaphysical argument may even have some force in determining the date and authenticity of the Prometheia.