Not a little speculation has been expended on the Genius in ancient and modern times. I propose very briefly to recapitulate the known facts about him, examine the chief explanations, and give what I consider the true one.

The discovery of upwards of a score of fragments of stagshorn with inscriptions in a North Italic alphabet closely resembling the Venetic, but also in the use of some symbols (a and h) showing affinities with the ‘North-Etruscan’ alphabet, was reported in a careful record of the excavations in which the fragments came to light (excepting the first piece of horn, which was accidentally discovered by a carpenter), written by Pellegrini for the Notizie degli Scavi for 1918, pp. 169–207. Some account of the excavations, with a description of the horn fragments and suggestions concerning the possible nature of the deity to whom they were offered, I attempted to give in a paper read before Section H of the British Association at Hull in September, 1922, reserving for the present article notes on the alphabet and text of the inscriptions, as well as all discussion of dialect. My chief object here is to deal with the forms which the inscriptions show, and to attempt to provide answers to the questions: (1) Is the language of these inscriptions Indo-European or not? (2) To what people or race are they to be assigned?

Like most of the other poems contained in the Appendix Vergiliana, the Copa still arouses controversy with respect to authorship and date. While the tendency of contemporary criticism may fairly be summarized as favourable to acceptance of the tradition which ascribes this poem to Virgil, nevertheless there are not wanting respectable voices to declare the Copa a post-Virgilian imitation of the Eclogues; nor are the pro-Virgilians decided as to the period to which it should rightly be assigned.

The numbers prefixed are those of Dr. Mackail's Select Epigrams, edit, iii., 1911. Those subjoined, enclosed in parentheses, refer to the Anthologia Palatina.

The Sallustian Suasoriae are far from being works whose origin and authenticity can be claimed as matters of earth-shaking importance. As forms of composition their interest is mild; linguistically they are less valuable than bizarre; and as historical records theysuffer from the defect of most Suasoriae—that the author cannot advise about the past and is compelled to deal chiefly with the potentialities of the future. But in spite of this it is not without reason that in Germany much attention has been paid to these few pages of Latin during the last twenty years. If they are what they seem to be, their evidence, such as it is, must at least be taken seriously. And this evidence is not without promise; for not only do these pieces contain several scraps of otherwise missing information largely about the prosopography of the last century B.C., but in general they purport to express the views of Sallust—a man who was no fool, even if his ability was not so great as has some-times been alleged—on the political and economic difficulties of Rome during the closing phase of the career of Julius Caesar. Material of this kind cannot lightly be neglected; but at the same time the significance, both of the author's suggestions and of his casual references to events inthe past, will depend to a great extent on the author having been Sallust himself, and not a member of some rhetor's establishment writing perhaps a hundred years or more after the events with which he pretends to be contemporary. So though there may be no welcome for yet another addition to the literature of a subject whose bibliography is already long, it may still be worth while to make some observations which will perhaps help to show that, wherever the true conclusion about the authenticity of these pamphlets may lie, at least it does not lie in the direction which has been taken in recent years by several scholars—in particular by Pöhlmann and Eduard Meyer.

These are the facts about the manuscript tradition of this line. The history of the interpretation is as follows. The early editors, knowing that penicillus tectorius in Pliny, N.H. 28. 235, means ‘a plasterer's brush,’ assumed that peniculus tectorius in Plautus meant the same, since there is no ascertainable difference in meaning between penicillus and peniculus. They accordingly translated, ‘as wind scatters the leaves or scatters the hairs of a plasterer's brush.’ About 1560 Turnebus saw that it was not likely that the wind could have much effect upon a brush made, as Pliny tells us, of bristles (saetae), and was the first to darken counsel by emending peniculumt. to paniculam tectoriam, ‘ut paniculae leuissimae arundinis, qua integi uillaticae domus solent, intellegantur.’ He quotes Plin. N.H. 16. 158 for a description of the reed used for thatching, and doubtless has in mind, though he does not quote it, Rudens 122, quin tu in paludem is exicasque hanindinem qui pevtegamus uillam. The difficulty about this interpretation is that the panicles or tufted heads of reeds were no more likely to have been used in the ancient mode of thatching than in the modern. If any were left in the completed thatch it would be by an accident, and they would not be a marked feature of the countryman's roof. Pareus thought that Tumebus had acted ‘too dictatorially’ in departing from the manuscripts. He therefore restored the established text, and took it to mean ‘a brush made of a horse's tail.’ But this did not dispose of the difficulty, and succeeding editors—Lambinus, Dousa, Taubmann—all followed Turnebus.

It is a familiar story that on April 5, 56 B.C., Cicero made a motion in the Senate concerning Caesar's Campanian land law, and that this action of his was one of the reasons for the conference of Luca. Query: What were the terms of the motion?

Some time ago in this journal (XIII. 19) I asked for light on this common phrase of Lucretius, quoting three of its occurrences, and being especially interested in the last (where the final syllable of tempore is elided):

6, 230 Et liquidum puncto facit aes in tempore et aurum.