The importance which the Romans attached to the family is well known, and it is natural enough that in early times the Roman boy received his only education at home. Plutarch to be sure would have us believe that Romulus and Remus went to school at Gabii, but his story is not to be taken seriously: it is simply an attempt to present these legendary characters as human beings, living the sort of life with which the reader himself was familiar. As we approach history we find several mentions of schools in Livy: the master of Falerii has won eternal infamy by delivering his pupils as hostages to the Roman general, an act with which many of his profession have sometimes felt a certain ambiguous sympathy. But it is idle to speculate on the truth of such tales: we may take the statement of Pliny (Ep. viii. 14) suus cuique parens pro magistro as substantially correct for the time before the First Punic War.

The importance which the Romans attached to the family is well known, and it is natural enough that in early times the Roman boy received his only education at home. Plutarch to be sure would have us believe that Romulus and Remus went to school at Gabii, but his story is not to be taken seriously: it is simply an attempt to present these legendary characters as human beings, living the sort of life with which the reader himself was familiar. As we approach history we find several mentions of schools in Livy: the master of Falerii has won eternal infamy by delivering his pupils as hostages to the Roman general, an act with which many of his profession have sometimes felt a certain ambiguous sympathy. But it is idle to speculate on the truth of such tales: we may take the statement of Pliny (Ep. viii. 14) suus cuique parens pro magistro as substantially correct for the time before the First Punic War.

There are some to whom Roman remains have no appeal; there are others to whom a fragment of Samian ware is of more value than the Vaphio cups. Both classes are to be pitied. The former are naturally the more numerous; the latter perhaps do more harm. For such an attitude is not merely a sign of a lack of aesthetic sensibility; it tends to alienate people of aesthetic sensibility from the study of antiquities. To tell a person of taste to admire the Corbridge lion as a first-rate work of art simply has the effect of estranging him from the study of Roman Britain altogether.

Anaxagoras was a man of one book; and that book, save for a few quotations in other authors and several summaries, is lost. A very potent and tantalizing book it must have been, to judge from all that we hear of it; the opinion of antiquity, preserved in Diogenes Laertius, was that its doctrines were expounded ‘in a pleasant and lofty style’, and the fragments which remain confirm this judgement. It was not merely a philosophical or scientific treatise; it was a work of art, in which the style rose and fell with the subject-matter.

Halicarnassus was the birth-place of two historians, Herodotus and Dionysius, though Herodotus is better known: both, however, left their native place for the metropolis of their day, Herodotus for Athens, at that time the mistress of a growing empire, Dionysius for Rome. ‘I took ship to Italy,’ he says of himself, ‘at the time when the Civil War was brought to an end by Augustus Caesar, in the middle of the one hundred and eighty-seventh Olympiad, and I have spent in Rome the twenty-two years which have elapsed between that time and this. I have learnt the Roman language thoroughly and made myself acquainted with the national records; and throughout the whole of this period I continued working on matters connected with this history.’ We gather, then, that he migrated to Italy about 30 b.c. This period was particularly important in Roman history. The revolution, the seeds of which had been sown as early as 13.3 b.c., by Tiberius Gracchus, had after its various vicissitudes come to an end for the time being, Julius Caesar, the champion of the people, having become in all but name the monarch of the Roman world. With his murder in 44 b.c., since the Republic could not be restored, the struggle for supremacy began again: the murder of one man meant the repetition by others of the same process by which he had obtained his power. Augustus and Antony emerged as the chief rivals for the vacant throne, and Augustus at Actium secured it; a fact all must have realized in spite of the fair-sounding names of liberty and republic. That a contemporary should write a true account of the events about this time was vitally necessary. Augustus, when established in power, began to gather around him a literary circle including Virgil, Horace, and Livy, under the patronage of the distinguished Maecenas.

Aristotle'sPoetics has centuries of tradition behind it as a substitute for first-hand appreciation in dramatic criticism, and this work has lent colour to the old view that the characters of Greek tragedy were all ‘idealized types’ in a performance in which the plot was the thing. This is because Aristotle explicitly puts plot above character in his list of the essentials of a tragedy, and when he comes to treat of character has little to say which appeals to us. But the pure tragic drama of human feeling depends entirely on its success in eliciting sympathy with its characters. Of this art Sophocles, like Shakespeare, is the acknowledged champion. Aeschylus is inspired to ‘justify the ways of God to man’, Euripides is concerned to question the ways of man to his neighbour. When Aeschylus added characterization to his loftier qualities, he produced in the Agamemnon the greatest play ever written, but we do not suspect his ‘Prometheus’ of character drawing any more than Shelley's. And in Euripides, as sometimes in Shaw, the characters are so under the thumb of the theories that we forget to take much personal interest in them. But in Sophocles we are not distracted by the prophet or the propagandist, and we can let his pathetic, human people stir in us their own hopes and sorrows.

It is now time to deal with the much-discussed and much-abused passage of Isidore, Orig. xviii. 60 ff. The account begins: ‘De Tabula. Alea, id est lusus tabulae, inventa a Graecis …; tabula luditur pyrgo, calculis tesserisque.’ After explaining the meaning of pyrgus (dice-box), calculi, and tesserae, Isidore continues with a section entitled De Figuris Aleae, a description of the board; then follow the names of the throws, remarks on the best way of throwing, and a description of the movement of pieces; the account ends with the statement that owing to its immoral tendencies the game was forbidden by law. Now, if this passage is read as a whole and without bias, it is clear that Isidore is giving a methodical account of one particular game, which he calls ‘Alea’ or ‘Tabula’.

The study of classical board games offers a most fertile field for conjecture, yet at the same time yields a distressing paucity of certain fact. Hasty conclusions of all kinds have been drawn from the sources available, both as to the nature of the games and as to methods of playing them; encouraged by the cheerful ambiguities of our authorities, investigators have not hesitated to equate Greek games with Roman, or both with those of Egypt and the Orient if occasion suited, and to lay down rules for the one deduced entirely from the other. Actually, the most sober caution is necessary. We are not justified in deriving the games of one country from those of another; but when a game obviously conforms to a definite type as played throughout the ages in various parts of the world, then we may justifiably make certain assumptions concerning it; for example, in the case of those Roman games which are of the backgammon type we may reasonably infer that they were played in a certain way. Beyond that we cannot go, and the utmost care is needed not to pervert the tradition of ancient authors, vague and obscure as it so often is. It is especially important to note that none of these games, either Greek or Roman, had any connexion with chess. There is no proof that the latter was derived either from the πέντε γραμμαί or from the ludus latrunculorum; any such claim is quite invalidated by the anachronisms and impossibilities involved. Thus ‘chess’, even as a loose translation of a term such as πεττεία, so commonly found, is inaccurate and misleading. If this paper is less inconclusive than many previous accounts, it is due to the help freely given me by Mr. H. J. R. Murray, who has put at my disposal his own notes and suggestions, backed by his expert practical understanding of board games and his unique knowledge of their comparative history.

Aristotle's Poetics has centuries of tradition behind it as a substitute for first-hand appreciation in dramatic criticism, and this work has lent colour to the old view that the characters of Greek tragedy were all ‘idealized types’ in a performance in which the plot was the thing. This is because Aristotle explicitly puts plot above character in his list of the essentials of a tragedy, and when he comes to treat of character has little to say which appeals to us. But the pure tragic drama of human feeling depends entirely on its success in eliciting sympathy with its characters. Of this art Sophocles, like Shakespeare, is the acknowledged champion. Aeschylus is inspired to ‘justify the ways of God to man’, Euripides is concerned to question the ways of man to his neighbour. When Aeschylus added characterization to his loftier qualities, he produced in the Agamemnon the greatest play ever written, but we do not suspect his ‘Prometheus’ of character drawing any more than Shelley's. And in Euripides, as sometimes in Shaw, the characters are so under the thumb of the theories that we forget to take much personal interest in them. But in Sophocles we are not distracted by the prophet or the propagandist, and we can let his pathetic, human people stir in us their own hopes and sorrows.

‘As I battled with this wind, miserable and blue-nosed, I reflected that if—which heaven forfend—I had had to write a copy of verses about it, I should have called it Eurus, coupled with the most horrific epithet to be found in the Gradus; further, that it was a pity that no one had ever thought of names for the golfing winds. The names of the winds, that one used in doing Latin Verses, gave one a distinct picture of their different personalities, even if it were not quite the same picture that a Roman young gentleman would have had. One thought of them, I am afraid, not as blowing from any particular quarter, but as fitting into a particular part of those jig-saw puzzles called Hexameters and Pentameters. Thus those two entirely opposite characters, Boreas and Zephyrus, seemed to me rather like one another in that they were both sulky, disagreeable creatures who declined to help one in one's utmost need, namely, in getting the end of the line first. They would do no more than fill some position in the middle. That is to be a fair weather friend indeed, since every one knows that when once you have got your tag for the end the deuce is in it if you cannot fit in the rest somehow. Eurus and Auster were far more obliging; they were good, willing fellows, who would lend a hand anywhere in reason if you were not too fussily particular about the sense. Favonius was not trustworthy. As long as he was only wanted to serve in a hexameter he was friendly and useful, but try to use him in a pentameter, and he would plant his four feet firmly on the ground like an obstinate mule so that nothing could be done with him.’

Chaereas and Callirrhoe, the earliest extant Greek Romance, ascribed to Charito of Aphrodisia, is a melodrama of no slight vigour. Here is its plot.

One of the most recent of the new approaches to the study of Latin is associated with the name of Mason Gray. Mason Gray was Director of Ancient Languages in the East High School and in Junior High Schools, Rochester, N.Y. His theory is expounded in The Teaching of Latin (D. Appleton & Company, New York, 1929, 8s. 6d.) and finds practical expression in Latin for To-day, Parts I and II (Ginn & Company, London, 1932, 1933, 3s. 6d. and 4s. 6d.).

The study of classical board games offers a most fertile field for conjecture, yet at the same time yields a distressing paucity of certain fact. Hasty conclusions of all kinds have been drawn from the sources available, both as to the nature of the games and as to methods of playing them; encouraged by the cheerful ambiguities of our authorities, investigators have not hesitated to equate Greek games with Roman, or both with those of Egypt and the Orient if occasion suited, and to lay down rules for the one deduced entirely from the other. Actually, the most sober caution is necessary. We are not justified in deriving the games of one country from those of another; but when a game obviously conforms to a definite type as played throughout the ages in various parts of the world, then we may justifiably make certain assumptions concerning it; for example, in the case of those Roman games which are of the backgammon type we may reasonably infer that they were played in a certain way. Beyond that we cannot go, and the utmost care is needed not to pervert the tradition of ancient authors, vague and obscure as it so often is. It is especially important to note that none of these games, either Greek or Roman, had any connexion with chess. There is no proof that the latter was derived either from the π⋯ντε γραμμα⋯ or from the ludus latrunculorum; any such claim is quite invalidated by the anachronisms and impossibilities involved.

A country so situated that its growth depends on sea-power and foreign trade heads an alliance against an emperor bent on adding a good part of Europe to his dominions. The emperor is defeated; and in an ample stretch of comparatively quiet years the champion of freedom finds opportunity to take the lead among its neighbours in the arts of peace. At home, democratic institutions are developed towards their logical completion; abroad, ambition is satisfied by consolidating an empire overseas. A golden age of prosperity and progress—or so it will seem when men look back upon it from the darker days that are to come. For an expanding prosperity has to reckon with the jealousy of commercial rivals; and an expanding empire is not always welcomed as a boon by the countries it penetrates and absorbs. There is a growing tension. A continental power, whose citizens are trained to the highest pitch of military efficiency, declares war. The States are grouped in two alliances, neither of which is strong enough to overpower the other or to inflict a fatal wound. No soldier of genius appears on either side, and the war drags on in a series of futile successes and futile defeats. The strain of anxiety and the release of those ugliest passions which, in time of war, assume the name of virtue, demoralize the combatants. The tacit conventions that lie at the base of civilized life are called in question or openly denied. Men lose faith in democracy, and even in freedom; they come near to losing faith in life itself. Somewhere at the heart of their being a nerve snaps; and when the war of exhaustion comes to a disastrous close, they are left disheartened and listless, unable to believe in a future worth the effort they lack the driving power to make.

If you take a walk round the exhibition of Greek and Roman Life in the British Museum, you will see there many fascinating domestic articles of antiquity, brooches, kylices, mirrors, lamps, and many of them you will find to be decorated with pictures of domestic life, of girls and boys, men and women in their natural happy surroundings. What more natural, then, that they should have with them the pets they loved and played with? Their dogs, their rabbits, their quails, cocks, sparrows, geese, their cats, their parrots, cranes, crows, and even their monkeys are all to be seen if we look with a discerning eye.

Most of us are aware that Rome possessed a harbour town at the mouth of the Tiber and that the ruins of the town are well worth a visit; but how many of us know the story of Ostia, the extraordinary interest attaching to it, the information it supplies on the economic life of Rome, and the great difficulties the Roman engineers had to face in constructing a really serviceable harbour ? Ostia lies about 20 miles from Rome, and for us, thinking in terms of motor-cars and trains, it is far from easy to imagine and to realize how long and difficult this journey must have seemed in the earliest times when the Romans first sought to establish connexion with the coast—not to speak of the dangers to which a traveller in those days must have been exposed. On arrival, we see the far-stretching ruins of the city lying before us in deep silence, for not merely its inhabitants have left Ostia but the sea and the river as well. The tawny Tiber, carrying down sand from the mountains, is the chief cause of the coastline shifting yearly no less than nine yards farther away; the river too has changed its bed and, in doing so, deprived Ostia of the last vestiges of her former greatness.

There died on 26 December, last year, in the little A Somersetshire village of Hinton St. George, a master of English and maker of many dictionaries, one who, to quote from Mr. C. L. Graves's lines in Punch:

There has recently been unearthed from the Governors' minute book of a public school in the north of England a list of books which formed the school library in the year 1707. It provides some interesting sidelights on the educational ideas of the time.

One of the most recent of the new approaches to the study of Latin is associated with the name of Mason Gray. Mason Gray was Director of Ancient Languages in the East High School and in Junior High Schools, Rochester, N.Y. His theory is expounded in The Teaching of Latin (D. Appleton & Company, New York, 1929, 8s. 6d.) and finds practical expression in Latin for To-day, Parts I and II (Ginn & Company, London, 1932, 1933, 3s. 6d. and 4s. 6d.).