Styx—river of Hell! Why, there is magic in the very name. What memories of our childhood it conjures up! Charon, the grim ferryman, his fearful eyes aglare. Shades of men and heroes thronging the phantom shores. Ghosts and monsters, and yet more ghosts. Aye, and older legends too. Silver-footed Thetis dipping her babe, and the gods themselves swearing dread oaths on its waters. But how many of you, I wonder, when you read those stories at school, realized that the Styx actually existed? Well, it does; and I decided that if ever I had the good fortune to go to Greece, I would endeavour to visit it.

The second implication of the Trojan legend may be stated briefly by saying that the Romans were descended from the vanquished, and not the victors, in the Trojan war. Most writers completely ignored this implication. Some rode majestically above it and pointed to the contemporary greatness of Rome, which they regarded as Troy's final triumph. Other writers, meditating, as was frequent in the ancient world, on the rise and fall of great cities, contrasted the rise of Trojan Rome with the fall of Greece, as though the balance disturbed by the sack of Troy had been restored by a consequent reversal of fortunes. In certain cases one feels that the author is simply reflecting as a philosopher, and citing Greece and Troy as examples of the fulfilment of a natural law; but usually the tone is not disinterested, and one has the impression that Roman writers are primarily concerned in extolling Rome, while Greeks lament the wretchedness of Greece. Typical of the latter are the poems of the Greek Anthology which speak of the deserted place where Mycenae once stood. Alpheios of Mytilene, for example, writes thus:

Ἄργος, Ὁμηρικὲ μῦθε, καὶ Ἑλλάδος ἱερὸν οὖδας,

καὶ χρυσέη τὸ πάλαι Περσέος ἀκρόπολι,

ἔσβεσαθ' ἡρώων κείνων κλέος οἵ ποτε Τροίης

ἤρειψαν κατὰ γῆς θειόδομον στέφανον.

ἀλλ' ἡ μὲν κρείσσων ἐστὶν πόλις' αἱ δὲ πεσοῦσαι

δείκνυσθ' εὐμύκων αὔλια βουκολίων.

When the B.B.C. were about to broadcast excerpts from Euripides' Electra spoken by a Greek actress, they judged it advisable to warn listeners that ‘the modern Greek pronunciation of the ancient language is somewhat different from that prevailing elsewhere’ (Radio Times, 19 September 1952). Listening to that broadcast, I wondered how any man could find it in his heart to exchange for the exquisite delicacy of the native pronunciation of that most poetic of languages the clumsy makeshift which we call our ‘reformed’ pronunciation.

In 1948 the Oxford University Press published a new Classical Dictionary, the combined effort of many scholars and embodying the fruits of the latest research. About the same time another publisher issued a new edition of another classical dictionary, that of John Lemprière. This was the work of a young man, begun when he was an undergraduate at Oxford and completed when he was 23, and it was first published over a century and a half ago, in 1788.