Few editors of Virgil have given these last three words a satisfactory sense: none, to my knowledge, has fully recognized their difficulty. The root of the trouble lies in the Roman repugnance for limiting words to a single, specialized, technical sense: licium and tela are, consequently, found with a variety of different meanings. Notwithstanding this difficulty, however, I hope to show that this passage has a meaning that is both simple and unambiguous.

This article does not attempt, except in a general way, to indicate Plutarch's sources for this Life, since any such attempt, in the absence of much of the relevant literature, is foredoomed to failure. It aims rather at showing the different types of biographical literature which grew up around this figure and which form the basis of Plutarch's Life, and to show what seems the most probable relationship of this Life to the biography of Nepos and to Cicero's Cato, both of which works have, in the present writer's opinion, been too readily assumed by some critics as Plutarch's sources. We may most conveniently deal with Plutarch's Life first, and then pass on to Cicero's and Nepos' presentations.

There can be no doubt about the object which Delphis was in the habit of leaving at Simaetha's house. The word ὄλπη is capable of meaning a ladle or jug for wine (Ion, fr. 10 N2ap. Ath. 11. 495 B), and the name is conventionally applied by archaeologists to a particular form of jug, but Delphis did not carry a jug about with him. What he took to the gymnasium or palaestra where he appears to have spent most of his time (8, 80, 97, 115) was the portable flask of oil, carried indeed by others, but, together with sponge and scraper, the regular equipment of the athlete. ὌΟλπις, which appears to be a mere synonym, also has the same two meanings. At Sapph. fr. 51 it is a wine-jug, but at T. 18. 45, where the Spartan girls will make libation of oil at Helen's plane-tree, the silver ὄλπις containing it is no doubt that from which they anoint themselves in their masculine way by the Eurotas (23).

As bearing on the time of year of the celebration attended by Simichidas and his friends, I stated, on the authority of Miss Alice Lindsell, that the barley-harvest in Cos is normally over by the end of April; and I added that the barley-harvest ought to fix the time of the events recorded, but that the scene depicted in 131 ff. is evidently much later than April and that the modern dates do not fit T's setting. I was assuming that the threshing and winnowing of the barley, which is the occasion of the festival (155), took place immediately after it had been carried, but, as Miss Lindsell has pointed out, this assumption has no justification.

1. The use of the imperfect ἔτικτε ‘was the mother of’, with ἡ τíκτουσα; ἐνίκων, οἱ νικντες; ὁ διδούς is well known, and no doubt correctly explained. Reference is frequently made to Virgil's quem dat Sidonia Dido, but ἐδίδου seems not to be used, no doubt because it is so extensively used in the sense of ‘offered’.

In T. 7. 56. 3 περιεγíγνοντο seems to be a substitute for ἐνíκων, ‘were victorious’; cf. ἔφερε in Find. O. 10 (11), 74 ‘was prizewinner’ (‘panoramic’ use, Gildersleeve—using Shilleto's term)—the other winners all have an aorist. So too Pyth. 3. 44.

It will be best to explain here, at the start, that I do not propose new etymologies for the words εὒξεινος (or ἂξενος) and πόντος. I regard, then, εὒξεινος πόντος as meaning ‘the hospitable way’. My purpose is to show how such a name came to be given to the Black Sea by the Greeks.

First, the word πόντος. The familiar explanation (so Boisacq) connects it with a series of words, of which I give the most important: Gk. πάτος (*pnto-) ‘trodden path’; Skt. pάnthāḥ ‘way’, fem. pathyā ‘id.’; Zend paθ ‘id.’; Arm. hun ‘ford, road’; Lat. pons ‘bridge’. Further, as a verb the root appears in Gk. πατεν ‘tread down’ and is given in Walde-Pokorny as *pent- (Ar. -th-) ‘tread, go’: W.-P. points out that the derived nouns (given above) mean ‘way’, and particularly a way that goes over or through water, as can be seen from the Armenian and Latin.

Dr. Cyril Bailey and Dr. C. M. Bowra have most recently analysed Virgil's method of using the expressions of Lucretius and Ennius respectively, and Mile A.-M. Guillemin has lately added significant considerations to Father F.-X. M. J. Roiron's long examination of Virgil's method of using again his own former expressions. Since then other work has been done with the purpose of clarifying the less rational part of Virgil's self-repetition; it might be called complementary to the well-known researches of Mr. John Sparrow. With such a purpose I have tried to suggest how Virgil reached the strange phrase in the first Eclogue, rapidum Cretae, or cretae, Oaxen, by a not unparalleled confusion of the names of several different rivers and at least one town.

The epithet χαλκοκέραυνον has perturbed many, though the most recent English editors (Murray, Thomson, and Sidgwick) have printed it without comment. The new Liddell and Scott betrays uneasiness in its ‘epithet of the sea, perhaps false reading for χαλκαμάρυγος, gleaming like copper or bronze’. Overseas scholars flatly reject it. Wilamowitz poured scorn on it in his Interpretationen (p. 57, footnote 1) and commented in his larger edition (p. 68) neque intelligitur et frustra temptatum est. Weir Smyth obelizes it. Bothe, Hermann, Weil, and others offered emendations. In Bursians Jahresberichte, ccxxxiv, p. 104 (1932) W. Morel observed (apparently with a sigh of relief) Von Erz und Blitz befreit uns Bruhns χλιαρόκρουνον. This is emancipation indeed.

On Virgil's statement (Georg, ii. 385 f.) that in honour of Bacchus ‘Ausonii … coloni versibus incomptis ludunt’, Servius remarks: ‘id est, carminibus Saturnio metro compositis, quod ad rhythmum solum vulgares componere consuerunt….’

Obviously Servius is drawing a distinction between the Saturnian and other metres, as well as between the ordinary man and the man of letters. The unlettered compose their verses in the Saturnian metre, which is founded on rhythmus alone; the literary circles write theirs on some other basis.

The problem of the composition of Thucydides' History, first raised by Ullrich in 1846, has evoked a mass of controversial literature. In this article I shall confine myself to the main arguments and conclusions.

Thucydides' history is unfinished, not only because it breaks off at 411 b.c., but also because the style is uneven. The history of the Archidamian War to 424 b.c. and of the Sicilian War is fully polished and complete; the remainder is lacking in stylistic finish and particularly in the set speeches which characterize the completed books. This unevenness can be explained by the circumstances of Thucydides' life. For the period 431–424 b.c. he could obtain full information at Athens and, after his exile in 424 b.c., at Sparta and elsewhere; for the Sicilian War he could obtain full information in Sicily from the Siceliotes and from the Athenian prisoners. He was thus in a position to complete his history for these two periods. During his exile from 424 b.c. to 404 or 403 b.c. he lacked the information from the Athenian side, which was necessary for the completion of the remainder of his work. Further light is shed on the unevenness of finish by Thucydides' method of composition. He informs us (i. I) that he began his work at the beginning of the war, and (v. 26. 5) that he was watching and applying his judgement throughout the Twenty-seven Years War; and the statement (v. 26. I) that he wrote the history down to the capture of the Peiraeus implies his collection of material down to 404 b.c. The working up of this material must have been conditioned partly by the circumstances of the war; in particular, the conception of the Twenty-seven Years War (v. 26) cannot have been formed until after 415 or 412 b.c.

Orestes, like Hercules Furens, deals with madness and crime; but, whereas in the latter Euripides treats his subject with Aeschylean mysticism, in this play he attempts a pathological study of criminality. For subtlety of psychological insight this play is comparable to Hamlet, but it is far more dramatic than Shakespeare's play. In fact, the first impression made upon the reader is that it is ‘good stage’, an opinion shared by the actors of the fourth century. Yet it has not infrequently been condemned by modern critics; and some, instead of understanding it, have written almost as though it had no point at all. The main difficulty is the contradictory statements made about Orestes' guilt. In one place Orestes will openly blame Apollo (e.g. 11. 28–31 or 11. 591–6); in another he admits to being tortured by a guilty conscience (11.395–6). This is a division in Orestes' mind, which is the victim of more than one contradiction; it is not inconsistency on the author's part. Further, Euripides is describing a process of demoralization, not a state; and therefore what is true of the characters in one part of the play is not necessarily true at another. As the play is dynamic, interpretation too must be progressive and take the form of a running commentary.