Some day, it may be, a betterGreek scholar and more skilful emendator than I will summon to hisaid from among scientists familiar with the Levant a botanist, aherbalist, a herpetologist, and an entomologist, empanel forconsultations a small body of medical men who have practised in theNear East, and produce an annotated text and translation of Nicander;and when this has been done it will be possible to read him, notindeed with pleasure, but with a good deal less labour and vexationthan attend the process at present. Meanwhile, those whose dutyobliges them to struggle through the Theriaca andAlexipharmaca with the aids now available stand in no need ofthe injunction not to forget him which the author has appended tothose two poems.

I Am not proposing in this essay to treat at length and in detail of the metric of other lyric poets. In most cases questions of metre are intimately involved with questions of text, into which so many other considerations enter that in dealing with them proportion would be lost, while metrical analysis of such material would still remain largely speculative. What follows is therefore little more than a general account of the principles of composition which these poets appear to me to follow; I have, however, indicated a few passages where emendations made purely on metrical grounds and widely accepted seem to me, in the absence of responsion, based on too ready a desire to reduce all poems to the best-known formulas of versification.

In consulatu sexto et septimo postquam bella civilia exstinxeram per consensum universorum [potitus rerum own]ium rem publicam ex mea potestate in senat[us populique Romani a]rbitrium transtuli.

There is very little doubt about the reading of the Latin text, except that the Greek has suggested to Schönbauer that ‘compos’ should be read for ‘potitus’. He urges that ‘compos’ has a ‘milder meaning’ than ‘potitus’ and has no connotation of the use of force. The change to ‘compos’ is worthy of consideration, but suggests that the Latin ran ‘compos factus’ if ‘compos’ was used, and the phrase ‘compos factus’, though good Augustan Latin, is perhaps too retarding in rhythm to fit this place, though to that stylistic feeling too much weight should not be assigned.

The ‘four famous cruces’ (Gow, ed. p. 4) of this satire are as interesting as notorious. I regard the first as solved, since I cannot imagine anybody (Horace included) improving upon Postgate's line 13 (see below). But I find instead a hitherto undetected but quite palpable flaw in the opening words.

Of the unusual grammatical constructions which Statius employs for the sake of variety and novel effect, among the most remarkable is his use of the ablative case. There are striking instances at Th. 8. 157, Th. 10. 309, Ach. 1. 219, Ach. 2. 129; and W. C. Summers was led to say: ‘We see some traces in Valerius of the lax use of this case which became almost a disease with Statius, who employs it for almost any kind of idea.’ There are three passages in Statius which have been misinterpreted or emended through the failure to recognize a use of the ablative to which he was especially prone—the local ablative where the poetic dative of ‘motion towards’ would seem more normal. I shall first list examples of this use in Statius where there is little or no doubt about interpretation or reading, and in the light of this accumulated evidence consider the three passages which are disputed.

In a well-known quotation from Speusippus in the Theologumena Arithmeticae (82.10 de Falco), said to have been derived from Pythagorean sources, especially Philolaus, occur the following sentences: And again a little later: Similarly Sextus Empiricus (Math. 10. 279–80), drawing evidently on a relatively early Pythagorean source, writes as follows: And Aristotle himself writes of the Pythagoreans (Met. 1036b12): There were, in fact, certain Pythagoreans who equated the number 2 with the line because they regarded the line as ‘length without breadth extended between two points’; and likewise the number 3 was equated with the plane and 4 with the solid.

post hos elefantorum fulgentium formidandam speciem et truculentos hiatus uix mentes pauidae perferebant; ad quorum stridorem odoremque et insuetum aspectum magis equi terrebantur. (Amm. Marc. 25. 1.14.)

COKNELISSEN, Mnemosyne, xiv (1886), 280, comments: ‘Non intellego fulgentium. Minime audiendus est Wagnerus, qui fulgentes elephantes dictos esse contendit ob cutem glabram. Corrigendum puto ingentium. Porro non satis intellego quomodo hiatus elefantorum militibus pauorem incutere potuerit. Wagnerus, qui omnia con-coquere solet, interpretatur proboscidas. Nescio an scripserit A. barritus.’

Maas's annotation on Fr. C, col. I in his edition of the new fragments (C.Q. xliv. 8–11) says: ‘fortasse conferendi Diod. 13. 66. 6; Xen. Hell. 1. 3. 16–22; Dionys. Byz. Anapl. 13’.

The comparison of Fr. C, col. I with the passage in Dionys. Byz. De Bospori Navigatione 13 seems to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the city referred to in the fragment is Byzantion. Consequently the supposition that the papyrus tells the story of the siege of Byzantion—dealt with in the other two passages quoted by Maas—becomes almost a certainty.

The expression used in the Periplus M.E. has attracted a certain amount of attention. It is generally held to mean ‘a legal mart where foreign trade was officially allowed and taxed’ (E. H. Warmington, Commerce between the Roman Empire and India, pp. 53, 57): and this translation has sometimes been made the ground of comparison with the treaty ports of China or the échelles of the Levant. On closer examination of the usage of the Periplus M.E. it seems difficult to accept this meaning, and possible to suggest another.

Ancient rhetoric divided the questions which concerned the orator into the definite and the indefinite, quaestiones finitae and quaestiones infinitae, the former concerned with particular persons and occasions, the latter without any such reference. To take a simple example from Quintilian, ‘Should one marry?’ is a quaestio infinita, ‘Should Cato marry?’ a quaestio finita. The distinction was introduced, or at any rate first clearly formulated, by Hermagoras in the second century B.C., and became an established part of rhetorical theory. The Greek term for the indefinite, or general, question was none of the various Latin equivalents used by Cicero attained general currency, and the Greek term prevailed.

So Hall and Geldart's text and critical note. The latter needs a correction and an addition: R gives (so, too, ΣR, which has ; γ is found only in B and the Aldine edition, R and V omit it.

What is the object of Van Leeuwen says ‘mente suppl.xwhich seems to me inconsequent if not nonsensical. Starkie, printing a dash after the word, notes ‘as the sentence is interrupted by Philocleon, it is impossible to know what was meant to be the object of this verb’. This does not seem very satisfactory. Rogers apparently takes the verb as used absolutely and translates ‘you'll strike by and by’. Coulon, not unnaturally dissatisfied with these explanations, reads and translates ‘tu vas te faire lapider’, adding a note ‘on jetait des pierres aux fous; cf. Otseaux 524’. Starkie also mentions this possibility and attributes its origin to the scholiast—wrongly, for the gloss shows that the scholiast did not take as meaning ‘will be pelted as a madman’. In any case all this is very far-fetched. And there is a further point: the strange future active, is found elsewhere only at line 222 of this same play and nowhere else in Greek. It is therefore rash to postulate an entirely unparalleled middle form of this, and that, too, in a passive sense. Had he intended this meaning Aristophanes would surely have written.

The development of the law of libel at Rome during the second and first centuries B.C. is important for an understanding of the changing attitude on the part of society towards public criticism. This article attempts to trace the development from Naevius to Augustus, by bringing together the scattered references in our literary and legal sources, and, by setting them in their historical perspective, to make the attitude of society towards criticism more easily discernible.