In the Classical Quarterly for April, 1933, Professor Cornford maintains that the ‘Two Ways’ of Parmenides are not meant as alternatives: ‘The Way of Truth and the Way of Seeming are no more parallel and alternative systems of cosmology, each complete in itself, than are Plato's accounts of the intellectual and sensible worlds.’ I wish here to try to support his general view, which seems to me to be indisputably correct, while differing from Professor Cornford in some important details.

Quomodo versus lyrici legendi sint, plerumque inter metricos constat, licet de origine singulorum versuum vel colorum dubia moveantur; at ne illud quidem confirmari potest in genere illo peculiari, quo multae strophae Pindari et Bacchylidis et nonnullae poétarum scenicorum compositae sunt. Quod in talibus versibus maxime conspicuum est, hoc est, quod metra τоû ἲσоυ et διπλασíоυ γéνоυς; in eis coniunguntur vel coniungi videntur, ita, ut ambitus utriusque partis aut par aut non multum maior minorve sit. lam antiqui metrici parum compertum habebant, qua ratione eiusmodi versus explicarent. Cum maior pars ceterorum versuum lyricorum (puta glyconeum ac pherecrateum, phalaecium, alia metra aeolica; versus logaoedicos; ionicos) etiam post Alexandri aetatem in usu essent et doctrina grammaticorum hanc quoque materiam complecteretur, pauca versuum illorum vestigia remanebant, postquam chori lyrici et dramatici conticuerunt. Habemus quidem Meliambos Cercidae eodem genere carmina pangere conati, quo clarissimi illi veteres, sed eos perlegentes statim sentimus artem intermortuam non ab isto Megalopolitano nova vita donatam esse; nihil enim frigidius cogitari potest, quam si quis oda pindarica recitata ad Cercidae versus se convertat eosque alta voce pronuntiare conetur. Metrici graeci et romani praeter paucos versus eosque singillatim genus nostrum non tractant nee quisquam ex eorum numero de genere toto disseruit. Horatium et suamet ipsum arte prae ceteris excellentem et doctrina metrica haud mediocriter imbutum non aliter ac nos huius aevi philologos nescire, quomodo carmina pindarica ab ipso poeta componerentur, ex Oda notissima (IV 2) patet, in qua Pindarum quisquis studet aemulari frustra in re desperata desudare perhibetur. Ad universam lyricorum graecorum artem pertinent, quae a Cicerone in Oratore (55, 183) affirmantur, qui tamen clausulis orationis numerosae operam dans rem metricam non neglexit: sed in versibus res est apertior, quamquam etiam a modis quibusdam cantu remoto soluta esse videatur oratio, maximeque id in optima quoque eorum poëtarum, qui λυρικоí a graecis nominantur, quos, cum cantu spoliaveris, nuda paene remanet oratio. Causam hanc vel maximam esse puto in nullo alio carmina pangendi genere musicam, saltationem, metrum tam arte cohaesisse; cum poësis non iam pars habebatur ῥυθμιξου, quod φθ⋯γγοδ, σχ⋯μα, συλλαβ⋯ definiebant, ut Aristoxeni terminis utar (fr. III Westph.), via stabilita ambitum singulorum versuum ac colorum statuere conarentur et indoloem pedum metricorum conicendo indicarent.

I. It has long been a standing puzzle why the women at the festival of Mater Matuta (the Matralia, June 11) prayed, not for their own children, but for their sisters' offspring. The attempts to connect it with any sociological phenomenon are purely absurd, and would not have been noticed but for their association with one or two famous names and the complete ignorance of non-European systems of relationship prevailing among the scholars of an older generation. There is no system under which a woman is closer akin to her sister's children than to her own; for under father-right a nephew or niece is further off than an own child, and if the system be pushed to the most logical and most absurd extremity, so as to make a child kin to his father only, not his mother, then he is also no kin to his mother's sister; under mother-right, which Rome never had in any form whatsoever, the mother is still nearer kin than the maternal aunt; while if ever there was, anywhere in the world, a classificatory system so pure and rigorous as to make no distinction between the actual mother and any other woman of the same age-class, then mother and aunt were in the same degree of kinship to every member of the younger generation. No ritual explanation I know will bear investigating. Yet the fact is handed down to us on good authority, probably that of Verrius Flaccus, the most likely common source for Ovid and Plutarch.

IN C.Q., 1933, 3/4, PP. 208–221, the passages in Herodotus where the subject of a clause is referred to pronominally in the same or a dependent clause were collected and classified according to the nature of the grammatical dependence. This was done to discover Herodotus' practice in using, or not using, the reflexive, so that the knowledge might serve as a guide in the recension of Attic authors, whose ⋯αντ and αὺτ are constantly and inevitably confounded with αὺτ. In the present article I shall classify on the same scheme the 1,150 relevant passages of Thucydides, referring constantly to the habits of Herodotus already established, and noting the lessons which result for future editors of Thucydides' text. Some preliminary remarks are necessary.

In a former paper I endeavoured to show that the myth in Plutarch's de facie is a conscious imitation on a small scale of the Timaeus of Plato, and that therefore we might conclude that Plutarch, who regarded the Timaeus as serious philosophy, intended the main point of his own myth, the derivation of mind, soul and body from the sun, moon and earth respectively, to be taken literally. This conclusion will be equally true of the myth of the de genio, if it can be shown, first, that the two myths present what is essentially the same psychological theory, and, secondly, that there is no internal inconsistency in the myth of the de genio, such as to justify von Arnim in concluding that it consists merely of two incompatible doctrines from different sources arbitrarily placed by Plutarch in juxtaposition. The present paper is an attempt to establish these two points.

The publication in 1907 of the Berlin papyrus containing Sappho's poem τεθνάκην δʹ ⋯δόλως θέλω κτλ posed in the clearest possible form the problem, already highly controversial, of the metrical structure of the Glyconic and its associated metres; and many answers have been suggested to the question ‘What is the peculiar nature of the Glyconic line which permits of its being related to two types of line apparently constructed on quite different principles?’ What follows is an attempt to consider this problem once more, with reference to other simple types of line which seem to provide analogies for the process which I believe to have occurred.

The similes of the Sun, Line, and Cave in the Republic remain a reproach to Platonic scholarship because there is no agreement about them, though they are meant to illustrate. I propose to analyse the form of the argument, a clue that has never been properly weighed. The Greek theory and practice of analogia and diairesis give good evidence about the method that Plato adopted; if this usage were respected, the analogical argument would not be so loosely interpreted, and the double diairesis and proportion that the Line actually is could not be mistaken for a classification. I hope also to show that Plato's terminology is definite and consistent; here too ancient usage helps to establish his meaning.

In Professor Ferguson's renewed study (above, pp. 190–210) of these similes he has introduced a very detailed and careful analysis of Plato's analogies in order to explain and support his interpretation. He has also attacked the view which I put forward in 1932, and I should like to say something in defence of that view, not in any polemical spirit, but from a perhaps too obstinate belief that my reading of the passage does rest on solid foundations. I will not attempt any comprehensive discussion of Professor Ferguson's theories, either in their earlier or their present form, but merely try to indicate what seems to me the real issue between us.