As I had rejected en bloc references to Bacchanalia as indications of date, it was a mere chance which led me, after the above had left my hands, to look up Cas. 980 ‘ nunc Bacchae nullae ludunt,’ quoted in Schanz, R. Lit.3, p. 78 (q.v.). As this affords an excellent opportunity of testing my conclusions, perhaps a word or two will not be out of place.

οὐδ γρ εδεης νδρ νον οὐδ γυναι

πρν πειρηθεης ὥσπερ ποζγου,

οὐδ κεν εκσσαις ὥσπερ ποτ’ ς ὥριον λθών.

πολλκι γνώμην ξαπατσ’ δαι.

ς ὥριον A (Par. suppl.gr. 388), σώριον the rest.

The starting-point of Plutarch's dialogue de communibus notitiis is a claim made by the Stoics that Providence sent Chrysippus to remove the confusion surrounding the ideas of ἔννοια (conception) and πρόληψισ (preconception) before the subtleties of Carneades were brought into play. Unfortunately our surviving information on the subject is so much less full than could be desired that it has again returned to an obscurity from which there are only two really detailed modern attempts to remove it. The one, by L. Stein (Erkenntnistheorie der Stoa, pp. 228–276), is most unsatisfactory; the other, by A. Bonhöffer (Epiktet und die Stoa, pp. 187–232), though of the greatest value in many ways, is vitiated by the fact that it constructs a system from the use of the words by Epictetus and then attempts to attach this system to the old Stoa in the face of the evidence of the doxographers, which is emended or violently interpreted to suit Epictetus. Even if Epictetus were in general a good authority for the technicalities of Chrysippus—and in the opinion of H. von Arnim he is not— this would not be a sound method of procedure. The only safe way is to take first the statements which can be attached to the Old Stoa, and having obtained our results from these, to see whether Epictetus does in fact agree.

The Gods and Typhon.—The story of how the gods took bestial shape to hide from the fury of Typhon is several times told in Hellenistic and Latin authors. There seems no room for doubt that it is an aetiological myth, intended to explain the cult of beasts in Egypt, and also, in one or two versions, the sacredness of fish in Syria. That in one form, that given by Antoninus Liberalis, it goes back to Nikandros (presumably the Ετεροιούμενα) is reasonably certain. The doubtful point, to my mind, is whether it can be traced much further, and, in particular, whether it was known to Pindar, as is commonly assumed. The authority for supposing that he knew and referred to it is a single passage of Porphyry, de abstinentia III. 16 (= Pindar, frag. 91, Bergk). It runs: Πίνδαρος δὲ ἐν προσοδίοις παντας τοὺς θεοὺς ἐποίησεν ὃτε ύπὸ Τυϕῶνος ἐδιώκοντα οủκ ἀνθρώποις όμοιωθέντας ἀλλὰ τοις ἂλοις (ἀλόγοις Wesseling) ζῴοις έρασθέντα δἐ Πασιϕάης Δία γενέσθαι μἐν ταῦρον νῦν δὲ ἀετὸν και κύκνον.

Caper in his section on the preposition ex cited Ennius, Ann. 309:

nauibus explebant sese terrasque replebant,

and declared that Virgil used the verb with this antique sense in Aen. 6, 545:

discedam; explebo numerum reddarque tenebris,

i.e. ‘minuam vestrum numerum.’

This we are told in Servius' note, which begins: Ut diximus supra, explebo est minuam. Thilo gives no reference to any such previous words of Servius, and I have failed to find them. Can it be that Servius has carelessly transcribed a note of Donatus, and that Donatus had discussed ex minuens at Geo. 2, 65, or 4, 145 ? Donatus' note on Terence, Hec. 755, is Explere exinanire Terentianum est; the passage of Terence is:

eas ad mulieres huc intro atque istuc iusiurandum idem

polliceare illis: exple animum îs teque hoc crimine expedi,

i.e., relieve their mind of suspicion against Pamphilus and free yourself from this charge. The phrase recurs in the next Scene (785; 787):

illis modo explete animum.

i atque exple animum îs, coge ut credant.

In making the following suggestions I have assumed the chronological possibility of allusions in the Aetia Prologue on the one hand to the quarrel with Apollonius Rhodius, and on the other to Arsinoe II. (obiit 271–270 B.C.). That such a combination is possible is maintained by Rostagni in Rivista di Filologia, 1928, pp. 1 sqq. The textual supplements offered here, while intended to support the double hypothesis, differ from his in some points; notably in regard to the question of where the allusion to Arsinoe is to be introduced into the text of Callimachus (see below). It need hardly be said that the supposed allusions to the queen and to the rival poet do not necessarily stand or fall together. In the case of the former it might not be altogether incredible (pace R.) that such an allusion should have been made after her death; whilst the most obvious consequence in regard to Apollonius would be that, if a date before 270 B.C. be accepted for the Prologue, his birth would have to be placed as early as possible—say, 295–290 B.C. However this may be, it is here sought to complete, in the above sense, certain passages in the Prologue (P.) with the aid of the British Museum Scholiast (S.). In regard to the latter a fresh study of the original text by the editor (Mr. H. J. M. Milne) has been utilized, to say nothing of his valuable suggestions and criticisms; in the case of P. the facsimile in Ox. Pap. XVII. is depended upon. The silence of S. on some of the supposed points may fairly be adduced in objection to them; but it may be noted that he does not comment on Πυγμαίων (P. 14), and that his exposition, where it can be checked, seems to be somewhat hasty and unbalanced. Further, we do not know what may have preceded the portion of his work which has survived.

In the small Teubner edition (p. 2) a warning is given that the alphabetical arrangement of these books may be medieval. Our MSS. of the Compendiosa Doctrina all come from one archetype, which had a misplaced leaf, many gaps, many ‘doctored’ passages, and a large number of scribal errors. And that archetype I believe to have been preserved in some English monastery library.

The recent paper of J. Harward (Classical Quarterly, XXII., pp. 143–154) on the seventh and eighth Platonic Epistles deserves an answer. He suggests that Plato's statement at the beginning of the seventh Epistle, that he had received a communication from the friends of Dion, is a literary fiction. Supposing then that this suggestion is correct, he maintains the view that Plato, having no knowledge of the death of Dion's son before his father's assassination in 354 B.C., refers to him as Hipparinus without qualification in the seventh Epistle (324a), and as Dion's son, giving no name, in the eighth Epistle (355e).

Probably no philosopher of antiquity has occasioned more daring speculations and the expression of graver doubts than Posidonius. On the one hand it has been argued that he was purely a man of science and hardly a Stoic philosopher at all. On the other hand he has been called the first and greatest Stoic mystic who under Oriental influence spurned the body as vile and earthly. Reinhardt has of late years resolutely maintained that the importance of Posidonius in the history of thought lies in his having originated a completely new Vitalism, and that his conception of the world is one in which ‘Subjekt und Objekt, Geist und Wissen, Mensch und Gott, νος und ζω durch eine im Bewusstsein neu erwachte Kraft sich einen und durchdringen: durch die “Sympathie.”’ Among other German scholars Geffcken holds that Plotinus borrowed much from Posidonius, and Jaeger roundly declares that if Posidonius had but found a place for the Platonic Ideas, there would have been nothing left for Plotinus to find. Schmekel and Bréhier have both stated that modifying the Platonic Theory of Ideas Posidonius established an identification between the Ideas and the Spermatic Logoi of Stoicism.

In view of the fact that another word for ‘mourn,’ namely Gr. ποθέω, is cognate with θέσσασθαι O. Ir. guidiu, Welsh gweddïo, Avest. jaiδyāmi, all meaning ‘beg pray,’ and with Lith. gedéti ‘mourn,’ it will perhaps not seem improbable that Lat. lugeo is cognate with Lett, lūdzu ‘I beg, pray’ (German bitten, flehen, beten, einladen, are the renderings given in Mühlenbach-Endzelin, Lettisch-Deutsches Wörterbuch, where illustrative quotations may be found). The infinitive of the Lettish verb is lūgt, and contains the same stem lūg- as Lat. lūctus (from *lūg-tu-s). The form lūdzu (Ist sing. pres. indic.) comes in the first place from *lūg-yō, but the type of present to which lūdzu (Ist plur. lūdzam) belongs in Lettish results from a fusion (cf. Endzelin, Lett. Gramm., p. 611) of earlier types which have remained distinct in Lithuanian. One of these types is that of Lith. aviù (Ist plur. ãvime, infin. avéti), which, according to Bezzenberger, BB. 26. 169 sqq., and Schulze, Sitzungsber. d. Preuss. A kad., 1904, 1439 sqq., corresponds to the second conjugation in Latin. If that correspondence is accepted it is at least possible that the Lett, form lūdzu corresponds exactly to Lat. lugeo.

Hiller vonGaertringen says of this inscription: ‘Lapis in obscuro loco collocatus est. In ectypis nihil fere dispeximus … Lectio e Koehlero et Velseno componenda est.’ I did not find the stone till my last morning in Athens: it is E.M. 6600; it is extremely illegible, and I had not time to move it to a really good light. But there are a few things to add, and the length of line can, I believe, be determined.