It has been pointed out to me that in my article on ‘The Augustan Rules for Dactylic Verse’ (C. Q., XXXIV, p. 42) I misrepresented an observation of Maas as reported by Wilamowitz in his Griechische Verskunst, p. 53. Wilamowitz' words are: ‘Wenn Tibull und Ovid den Pentameter so bauen, dass die vorletzte Silbe betont wird, tun sie das nach dem Vorgange gleichzeitiger griechischer Epigrammatiker.’ This means, of course, that the Greek writers mentioned ended with a paroxytone word, not necessarily with a disyllable, as I assumed it to mean, and I apologize for the oversight.

The object of this article is to set forth certain evidence that emerges from a study of three of Plutarch's Lives, the Titus, the Paullus, and the Cato Maior, evidence which indicates that these Lives are based upon a definite type of biographical composition, and to suggest its possible origin and date. Since E. Meyer's article on the Cimon of Nepos and Plutarch, biographical sources have generally been assumed for the Greek Lives, and there has been a tendency to make the same assumption for the Roman Lives also, without, however, setting forth the evidence that might justify it. Uxkull Gyllenband maintained that biographies of Greeks and Romans, the sources of Plutarch, were written in the second century b.c., but he gives no evidence for his contention, which is indeed refuted by the observations of Jacoby. Mühl argued with some force that Plutarch's source for the Marcellus was a biography. There is good reason to doubt his conclusion that Plutarch has used a biography of Poseidonius; but the arguments advanced by Klotz for the thesis that the source was the annalist Valerius Antias are still less convincing. Liedmeier postulates a biographical source for the Paullus, but without doing more than asserting the general improbability that Plutarch here used a multiplicity of sources. It seems therefore desirable to collect such evidence as there is of a biographical source in these three Roman Lives of the second century b.c., and it is with such an attempt rather than with a priori considerations that I am here concerned.

In the middle of September, 47 b.c., Cicero obtained a copy of Atticus' recently published Liber Annalis, which he was consequently able to use in preparing his Brutus (46 b.c.) and his Tusculans and De Senectute (44 b.c.). Atticus himself had consulted Varro's works on questions of literary history (Schanz, p. 330). Cicero, reading his friend's work, found himself in the thick of a controversy about the beginnings of Latin literature.

InHermes, lxxiv (1939), p. 1 Professor M. Pohlenz publishes an article entitled ‘Plutarchs Schriften gegen die Stoiker’ which throws much light on these important sources for Stoicism. I had myself made a study of these works, and for the most part find myself in complete agreement, but in my opinion something can be added to his inquiry into Plutarch's sources; and I venture to think that the subject repays attention not so much for itself as because it illustrates an important principle, namely, that investigation of sources must be accompanied by literary appreciation: one must look not only for the flaws that will admit the dissecting knife but also for the intended structure of one's subject.

Among the remains of Archilochus is an iambic trimeter which is as mysterious as it is charming. Zenobius, who quotes it (v. 68), says that it was written by Homer and used by Archilochus in his Epodes. If he is telling the truth, it must, as Bergk saw, come from the Margites. But its origin and original purpose need not now concern us. The important fact is that Archilochus used it, and we ought to be able to discover how he used it. What was his precise intention when he quoted or composed the line

πόλλ᾽ οἰδ᾽ ἀλώπη ἀλλ᾽ ἐχνος ἒν μέγα,

what was the contrast he drew between the Fox and the Hedgehog, and how did he make use of it? Zenobius gives two aids, but neither is so easy as it looks at first sight. First, he says that the proverb was used ἐπὶ τν πανουργοτάτων, and secondly he quotes as relevant some lines from the Phoenix of Ion of Chios (fr. 38 Nauck, 81 von Blumenthal) about the hedgehog:

ἀλλ᾽ ἔν τε χέρσῳ τὰς λέοντος ᾔνεσα

ἢ τὰς ἐχίνου μλλον οἰζυρὰς τέχνας.

ὃς εὐτ᾽ ἂν ἄλλων κρεισσόνων ὁρμὴν μάθῃ,

στρόβιλος ἀμΦ᾽ ἄκανθαν εἱλίας δέμας

κεîται δακεν τε καὶ θιγεν ἀμήχανος.

The elements which every schoolboy learns on beginning Latin Verse Composition include a number of rules which seem arbitrarily designed to make the game harder. In hexameters, he is told, he must have a masculine caesura either in the third foot or in the second and fourth, and end normally with a disyllabic or a trisyllable; in pentameters he must end with a disyllabic; and in neither line may a single monosyllable stand at the end. Rarely, in my experience, is any reason given him by way of redress, and he will search for one in vain in most of the school text-books, in introductions like Postgate's to Tibullus and Propertius, and in histories of Latin literature like Wight Duff's and Mackail's. This reticence may be due to the dissensions of experts on this subject and on the subject of Latin accentuation in general, but the theory that predominates in England, among those who hold a theory at all, explains so many of the phenomena that it deserves to be more widely and precisely known. The most detailed exposition of it is by E. H. Sturtevant, who summed up his analyses in a pair of articles in the Transactions of the American Philological Association in 1923–4. While his careful work is invaluable as marshalling the statistics and evidence, it errs on the side of excessive minuteness, and leaves room not merely for some additions, but for a different kind of treatment concerned less with bare statistics and more with poetic principles and historical development. Since Latin Verse Composition plays such an important part in English higher classical education, it seems desirable that a less technical and more accessible account should be available for English readers. Such an account I attempt to give here, keeping separate as far as possible the exposition and the consideration of the criticisms and rival theories that have been advanced.

To his narrative of the Sacred War Diodorus appends an excursus on the fate of the Phocian leaders, describing at some length the adventures of Phalaecus and his mercenaries after their departure from Thermopylae (xvi. 61–3). The object of this excursus, whose substance probably derives from Demophilus, is to illustrate the terrible consequences of temple-robbery, but to modern scholars the story is interesting chiefly for its portrayal of the difficulties and hardships experienced by mercenary commanders. It does not appear to have been noticed that at the same time Diodorus unconsciously throws some light upon the mission of Timoleon to Sicily.

In a paper designed to prove that the technopaegnium entitled Σριγξ could not be by Theocritus, I said in 1914 that that question had a bearing of some importance upon the interpretation of the Idylls since the ‘Mascarade bucolique’ depended ultimately on the assumption that Simichidas in Id. 7 was Theocritus himself. If T. referred to himself elsewhere by that name (and the Syrinx so refers to him), the assumption would be justified; if someone else did so, he would, in company with the scholia and with the author of the barbarous verses beginning Σιμιχίδα Θεόκριτε which are prefixed to the Idylls in certain manuscripts, be merely drawing an obvious and possibly mistaken inference.

Nearly every edition of Aeschylus published between 1782 (Schütz, first ed.) and 1852 (Hermann, posthumous ed.) contained readings from what were called ‘Askew's collations’ or the ‘Askew MSS.’—usually referred to as Ask. A, Ask. B, Ask. C, Ask. D, Ask. a, Colb. 1, and Colb. 2. These MSS., which were very briefly described, were stated in these editions to be Paris MSS. (with the exception of Ask. a, said to be in Askew's own library) which had been collated by Askew. Blomfield, however, discovered that Askew had transcribed all the collations from a note-book that had belonged to Needham, and Pierron accused Askew of deliberate plagiarism and unscrupulous dishonesty. The late Prof. H. W. Smyth in a recent note on the subject attempted to identify the ‘Askew MSS.’, and maintained the charge of plagiarism; but his conclusions were based on inadequate evidence, and were consequently partly incorrect. A full study of all the available evidence, a summary of which I give below, not only clears Askew's name of any plagiarism, but also establishes the identity of the MSS.

A Lasting tradition among the ancients marked Sicily as the birthplace and Tisias and Corax as inventors of the art of rhetoric: and in this tradition, legendary though it became, there is a stricter truth than in most of the stories related about the foundation of invented arts. We, with more elaborate historical views, shall still say of rhetoric that it was created at a certain epoch; and can still point to the Sicilians Tisias and Corax as its authors. Oratory, to be sure, has existed almost as long as speech. Its beginnings are prehistoric, and must in any case be imperceptible; and if by rhetorician we meant no more than one who uses speech with more than common effect, we might set the origin of rhetoric as far back as we chose, and could hardly bring it lower than the beginning of recorded literature. Indeed we are told that under the Antonine Emperors the eminent scholar Telephus of Pergamum wrote a book on Rhetoric in Homer, in which he illustrated from the Poet the whole contemporary system of the art down to the thirteen constitutions of Minucian; and in the same spirit the Venerable Bede, resenting the claim of the Greeks to have invented tropes and figures of speech, wrote a short work to show that they could all be found in Holy Scripture. But such inquiries, even when conducted less foolishly than by Telephus and less incompetently than by Bede, are irrelevant to the proper history of rhetoric. Let the practice of oratory have begun when it may, the first attempts known to us in Classical Antiquity to formulate a series of principles for the art of speech were made in the fifth century before Christ. These earliest systems were naturally very imperfect: they could not immediately be either comprehensive or well organized. But they were something that had not existed at all before: methodical principles for speaking. At the moment when these were first set out the art of rhetoric began.

In line 1171 of Aeschylus' Agamemnon the MSS. read μή The remainder of the sentence, after μή, is much disputed, but I am not concerned with finding the true reading of it. The whole sentence runs, in the MSS., as follows: ἄκος δ' οὐδὲν ἐπήρκεσαντὸ μὴ πόλιν μὲν ὥσπερ ον ἔχει παθεν: which appears in Thomson's Oresteia as:… ἐπήρκεσεν τὸ μὴ oὐk ἔχειν πόλιν μὲν ὥσπερ ον ἔχει. It is the note on this passage in Thomson to which I wish to draw attention. It is from Headlam, and says, in justification of reading μὴ οὐκ, that in such phrases the scribes, finding μὴ οὐ, constantly omitted οὐ as περιττόν. It adds that οὐ should always be restored, at any rate where there is any trace of it.

It is no longer the fashion to imagine Herodotos a liar when he tells marvellous stories, for some of his most extraordinary statements have long since been shown to contain at least a substantial measure of truth. It is perhaps not sufficiently realized, however, that on occasion he misleads his readers and himself by too much critical unbelief in his materials and consequent application of the crude methods of mythological investigation then current. In other words, he often rationalizes in the only way then possible, superficially altering the story so as to rid himself of the incredible details, or at all events, as I think, attributing to the actors motives which a somewhat drily rational mind could understand and approve or condemn. It is of course well known that at least the former method was a commonplace of the sophists, whose influence on Herodotos is manifest and widespread; it has been said, indeed, that it is much older than they and characteristically Ionic. L. Radermacher finds traces of it in the Odyssey itself and adds that, although we can sometimes catch the rationalizer (or Fälscher, as he impolitely calls him) at work, we cannot be sure of always doing so and ‘müssen annehmen, dass der Glaube an die Geschichtlichkeit ihrer Sage manche griechischen Autoren früh verführt hat, sie geschichtlicher zu erzählen als eigentlich erlaubt war’. This is a true and useful statement. Modern criticism has long learned to set aside ancient allegorizations of myths, about which I need say nothing, for the subject has been repeatedly and well handled by my colleague, Dr. J. Tate; it has often, however, confused ancient interpretation of myth with ancient criticism of saga. Euhemerism indeed is usually recognized for what it is, although even this is not always so; but uixere inepti ante Euhemerum multi, and their efforts are by no means always distinguished either from allegorizing or from real sagas. For an example of the former confusion I may refer to Stallbaum's note on Plato, Phaedrus, 29 C-D, where the reader is referred to the account given by Lobeck of the rise and growth of allegorization. But Plato says nothing at all of allegories in this passage. He quotes, with ironical admiration of its ‘wisdom’, a version of the story of Boreas and Oreithyia according to which she. was knocked off the Areiopagos, or some other place, by a strong north wind, and so was killed and consequently said to have been carried away by Boreas. He adds that it would be a laborious and dismal business to go through all the tales of wonder in that way, rationalizing the Hippocentaurs, Gorgons, Chimaira, Pegasos, and the rest out of existence; a wise saying which was uttered in vain for Palaiphatos and his kind. However, most moderns know a myth from a saga and an allegory from a crude rationalization which accepts the story as true except for the incredibilities and is quite ready to believe, for instance, in Romulus if we will but postulate that he was not snatched up to heaven but murdered and his body hidden. There is a much more subtle snare, consisting of a story which, although rationalized, is well told, and Herodotos in this respect can be a notable offender, for he never tells a story ill.

In a recent number Mr. O. J. Todd has discussed the clumsy scansion of a line in a Delphic oracle, and has called fresh attention to the problem of the Pythia's prophesyings in verse. The chief difficulty consists in the differences between the indications on this subject as given by our various sources. The conventional phrases in most authors from Pindar and Herodotus until late periods describe the responses as uttered by the Pythia herself. This picture seems to imply that the Pythia originated the verse form of the oracle. But this view would take no account of the existence of the official known as the προφήτης whose business was evidently to deliver the response to the inquirer.

1. HEFT. O. Hoffmann argues that Weichbild (wikbilede) originally denoted a wooden or stone sign set up in a wik (village where traders live, market-place) to denote the possession of the ius mercatum constituendi. Hence it came to denote the privilege itself and finally the community possessing this right. H. Hendriksen connects cura with Sk. śeṣaḥ ‘remainder’, the basic meaning being ‘leaving over, saving up’, hence ‘watch, care’. The root *keis *kois he also finds in κίστη. *keis is an extended form of *kei and = ‘leave lying’. lētum is connected with latere, a semantic parallel being Mid. Ir. cel ‘death’, Lat. celare. Lith. kišù, kìšti further is derived from *keis, although the exceptional treatment of the palatal is difficult to account for. Sk. ślakṣṇáḥ ‘slippery, soft, fine, delicate’ is derived from *slēg seen in λήγω, λαγαρός. E. Lewy writes on (1) a-priori construction of speech types, (2) primitive I-E. inflection, (3) Sakian miscellany. He (4) connects idus via Etruscan with the Sumerian itu ‘month’, (5) discusses the sound -tsch- in Mod. Germ., and (6) connects Gabel with geben.

The Editors wish to apologize for an error on p. 4 of the General Index of vols, i–xxxii, where the article on ‘The Portents in Horace’ is attributed to Miss G. Hirst. The author is Miss M. E. Hirst.