I DO not think that it is at all generally known that among the Egyptian antiquities given by Grant Bey to the Museum at Aberdeen there are a considerable number of papyrus fragments, Greek, Coptic,1 Hieratic, Demotic, and even Latin and Arabic, which except for an inspection by Prof. Sayce and a passing visit of Dr. Grenfell have up till now been left unexamined. That indeed is my only reason for trespassing in a branch of Palaeography with which I am quite unfamiliar; and it is in the hope of inciting some experienced papyrologist to turn his attention to them that I publish the following fragments. In the case of the Greek fragments lack of time combined with a mistrust of my powers of deciphering the more illegible non-literary hands forbade me do more than select the most promising literary fragments. Among these Homer naturally predominates; but the gem of the collection is a lyric fragment, which may fairly certainly be ascribed to Alcaeus, though Dr. Grenfell who first noticed it attributed it to Sappho. A fragment of Demosthenes, a fragment of Dioscorides, and a vellum fragment of a Latin Bible, were the only others which I succeeded in identifying; but these, with the few tragic, comic, and medical fragments which I also reproduce, are, I think, first-fruits sufficient to show that the crop would not be barren, if it found a competent gleaner.

In the Niobe of Aeschylus, Niobe, we are told, ἕως τρίτης ⋯μ⋯ρας (corr. by Vict, to τρίτου μ⋯ρους) ⋯πικαθημ⋯νη τῷ τάφῳ τ⋯ν παίδων οὐδ⋯ν φθέγγεται ⋯πικεκαλυμμένη. So in the Ransom of Hector, otherwise known as the Phrygians, ᾽Aχιλλεὺς ⋯μοίως ⋯γκεκαλυμμέος οὐ φθέγγεται πλ⋯ν ⋯ν ⋯ρχαῖς όλίγα πρòς ‘Eρμ⋯ν ⋯μοιβαῖα (Vita Aesch.).

This verb is of quite general signification in Plautus ‘facit, reddit, comparat,’ and the like. Minuter definitions are given by the glossists, e.g. συνκᾱττúει ‘sews together’ (this sense in Men. 426, 467), arte facit aut componit, conflectit; cf. also concinnatura κόλλσις (‘a gluing together’). In view of Latin ciet ‘moves, stirs, shakes; excites, rouses; causes, occasions,’ and of Greek κινεȋ ‘sets in motion, moves, removes; changes, alters, sets agoing, causes, calls forth,’ we might define concinnat by ‘moves, draws, puts together, joins.’

De benef. I. i i p. i i (Hosius): Inter multos ac uarios errores temere inconsulteque uiuentium nihil propemodum, uir optime Liberalis, dixerim, *quod beneficia nee dare scimus nee accipere. Sequitur enim, ut male conlocata male debeantur; de quibus non redditis sero querimur; ista enim perierunt, cum darentur.

That family of Manilius' MSS which is now usually called the second, and is designated by the letter β, made its first decisive entrance into criticism in the year 1739. The early vulgate had shaped itself out of hybrid copies in which the tradition of the two families α and β was indistinguishably blended; one good and ancient representative of α, the Gemblacensis, was brought into employment by Scaliger in 1600: but the testimony of β was never disengaged and isolated until Bentley's edition made public the readings of the Leyden codex Vossianus 390. The next member of the family to emerge was Matritensis M 31, discovered in 1879 by Gustav Loewe and brought to general notice in the middle of 1893 by the simultaneous publication of two papers,—one by Mr Breiter in the Neue Jahrbuecher vol. 147 pp. 417–423, one by Prof. Ellis in Hermathena no. xix pp. 261–286. Two other MSS closely akin to this, Vrbinates 667 and 668 in the Vatican library, containing the first 82 verses of the poem, which the Matritensis has lost, are employed in an edition of Book i which I published in 1903.

Since Hermann first suggested the likelihood of a considerable loss of verses from the text of the Heraclidae it has been generally assumed that the play has suffered either from some mischance in the copying of the manuscript or else at the hand of an interpolator. Hermann held that the end of the play had been lost: ‘Fabulae extrema pars videtur intercidisse, in qua fieri non poterat quin de Macaria referretur, eaque res solitis celebraretur lamentis.’ Kirchhoff places the lacuna after line 629: ‘Post hunc versum multa desunt. Macariae narratio et Alcmenae matris [sic] lamentationes cum chori cantico integro; novit hanc fabulae partem auctor argumenti: **ταύτην μ⋯ν εὐγεν⋯ς ⋯ποθανο⋯σαν ⋯τίμησαν αὐτο⋯ δ⋯ τοὺς πολεμ⋯ους ⋯πιγνόντες παρόντας εἰς τ⋯ν μάχην ὥρμησαν.’ Wilamowitz argues against the assumption of a ‘mechanischer Ausfall’ of a whole passage, and maintains that the play has been revised by a fourth century régisseur in order to adapt it to the capacity of his theatrical troupe.

In the middle of the third book of his Histories, Tacitus records some movements in the western provinces occasioned by the events of 69. The troops in Britain, he says, were partial to Vespasian, who had served there with distinction in the reign of Claudius, and a party was formed in his interest.