The Republic represents the good life as some sort of harmony or composition between the different interests of which the threefold nature of the soul makes it capable. The rational factor, τ λολιστικν, not only chooses which impulses shall be satisfied and which rejected but is credited also with impulses of its own, such as the desire for knowledge, to the importance of which the Republic testifies by various strands of argument. But in Plato's attempt to prove the goodness of this mixed life he may be thought to have relied too much on arguments about its pleasantness. If he had really meant from the first to prove against Thrasymachus that the just life is more prolific in pleasure1 than the unjust, he would have had to undertake the task of proving a necessary connection between just activities and pleasant states of feeling which could scarcely exist unless feelings were under the control of the will. If this had been his intention, the whole weight of the argument would rest on the two comparatively short passages in Book IX (581–3, 583–6) in which he makes first a dubious appeal to experience and then, by an equally dubious piece of metaphysics, attempts to reinforce his ethical conclusion by denying the reality of such pleasures as might tend to throw doubt on it.

The remarkable poem in which Aristotle addresses ‘Αρετά and honours the memory of his dead friend Hermias is fortunate in being well preserved. The complete text is given by Athenaeus XV 696a and by Diogenes Laertius V 27, and these authorities are now supplemented by the papyrus of Didymus’ Commentary on Demosthenes, which leaves few of the textual problems in need of a solution. But the poem still raises some questions. It is not clear what kind of poem it was; its literary antecedents and affinities have not been fully studied; its contents still call for some remarks. In spite of Wilamowitz's brilliant treatment and Jaeger's acute comments it is puzzling enough to justify a few words of discussion.

C. Cornelius Gallus requires brief introduction or none at all. A poet in his own right, the friend of Virgil and of Pollio, Gallus is enshrined for ever in literature—and in literary legend, for the inept fictions of Servius and his tribe will survive the most damaging of revelations, remembered even when refuted. Not only that—Gallus is a conspicuous figure in the social and political history of the revolutionary age.

The two tractates forming the treatise of Plotinus, called rather misleadingly, to the modern mind, ‘On Providence’, have attracted attention mainly because of the remarkable stress laid in them on the doctrine of the Logos, which marks an interesting development of Plotinus' latest thought and brings the treatise into an apparently close relation to other systems with which the philosophy of Plotinus has little in common. I do not, however, in this article wish to discuss the Logos doctrine of these tractates, but rather to compare certain other aspects of the thought of the treatise with their probable sources in the work of earlier thinkers, and in particular to draw attention to a curious and unexpected parallelism of thought in one passage. I think that conclusions of some interest for the history of Greek thought in general can be drawn from such a comparison.

In the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge there is a papyrus fragment, hitherto unpublished, of Euripides' Medea. It was written early in the 2nd century A.D., or possibly at the end of the 1st century A.D. The hand is a good round medium upright, similar to that of P. Oxy. 1810, possibly a little older. The stop and apostrophe in Fr. 1 line 1174 were evidently added later. There are several smudges and blots. Elisions only. There were 35 lines to a column.

As stated in C.R. LI, p. 168, the Jerusalem palimpsest of Euripides had been collated by Tischendorf, Papadopoulos Kerameus and Horna Mr. D. L. Page's edition of the Medea takes account of the present collation, which in its turn owes much to the acumen of Mr. Page and to his kindness in allowing me to include some of his results (indicated below by the initials D. L. P.) obtained from independent photographs. Each of the above-named scholars has found reason to correct and add to his predecessor's work, and this is natural, since not only is man not infallible but more and more is also required of a collator as time goes on.

De Anima A 2, 404a 27=Diels, Vorsokratikev 5th edition 68a 101: ⋯κεῖνοςμ⋯γ⋯ρ ⋯πλ⋯ς ψυχ⋯ν ταὐτ⋯7nu κα⋯ νο⋯ν. τ⋯ γ⋯ρ ⋯ληθ⋯ς εἶναι τ⋯ φαι7nu;⋯7mu;ενον; and a 30–31: οὐ δ⋯ χρ⋯ται τῷς δυν⋯7mu;ει τ7iota;7nu;⋯ τ⋯ν ảλ⋯θειαν, ảλλ⋯ ταὐτ⋯ λγ;ει φυχ⋯ν κα⋯ νο⋯ν.

2. Metaph. Г 5, 1009b 12=D.v. 5th ed. 68A 112: ὂλως δ⋯δι⋯ τ⋯ ὐπολαμβ⋯νειν φρ⋯νησιν μ⋯7nu; τ⋯ν αἲσθησιν, τα⋯την δ εἷναι ảλλο⋯ωσιν, τ⋯ φαι7nu;⋯μεν7nu; κατ⋯ τ⋯ν αἷσθησι7nu; ⋯ξ ⋯7nu;⋯γκης ⋯ληθ⋯ς εἶναἰ φασιν.

The old ritual word macte was only vaguely understood even in Republican times. As is well known, the ancient critics connected the word with magis, magnus, and explained it as magis auctus (so Servius on Verg. Aen. IX. 641; Nonius 81, 18; Paul. Fest. p. 112, Lindsay). A glance at Walde's Wörterbuch reveals that many attempts have been made in modern times to solve the mystery; but the formidable equipment of the modern philologist has yielded little better results than the popular etymology of the ancients, the most favoured view to-day seeing in mactus the PPP of a verb mago (so L-H p. 405) with macto as the frequentative which replaces it. The supposed semantic development of this verb, originally meaning ‘to increase’, has been set forth by Warde Fowler in a well-known passage (Rel. Exper. 182 f.), to which recent authorities have accorded their assent and praise: ‘the vitality of the deity … was really increased by placing on the altar the organs of life of the victim’. But this is a solution which ignores half the problem: macte and mactare are used not only of the deities but also of the victim (despite Warde Fowler and others, see below). One can perhaps understand lovem mactare as ‘to magnify J.’, but not even by the most superficial analogy can we find a transition from here to the meaning typified in mactare vinum. Yet this is one of the most frequent usages of the word. So deep a gulf lies between the two semantic spheres of the verb that some scholars have sought to find in it two different verbs (so Walde). But this is a counsel of despair which the editor of the Thesaurus dismisses with a non recte. We must agree, then, with Hey (A.f.l.L. XIII, 223 ff.) that the modern explanation is ‘sicher eine unrichtige’ and with Meillet-Ernout that there exists ‘aucune étymologie claire’. It is, therefore, surprising that so ill-founded a preconception should lead investigators to ignore or even dismiss important evidence which the ancient authorities offer for the solution of this problem.

The greatest confusion prevails among modern writers as to the use of the side-entrances in New Comedy and its Latin derivatives. The statements on this subject made by editors and others, whether confident or hesitating, differ widely from one another, and are seldom supported by any real consideration of the ancient evidence. In 1933 Professor Mary Johnston published a careful treatise, entitled Exits and Entrances in Roman Comedy (W. F. Humphrey Press, New York), in which she discussed the internal evidence afforded by the Latin plays, and came to the conclusion (page 151) that ‘on the stage of the Roman theater the side-entrance to the right of the spectators was used for entrances and exits of characters from and to the city and the forum, and that the side-entrance to the left of the spectators was used for entrances and exits of characters moving from and to the port and foreign parts, and, probably, from and to the country as well.’ With regard to Greek usage, Professor Johnston was content to accept the orthodox view ‘that the side-entrance (parodus) at the spectators’ right led to the harbour or the market-place and that at their left into the country, since the scene was regularly placed in Athens and since these were the actual topographical relationships in the Athenian theater’ (Flickinger, page 208). Her conclusion, therefore, involved a discrepancy between Greek and Roman usage as far as the harbour was concerned.

In C.Q. 1935, 72–82 and 150–163 I published some observations on Herodotus which were the by-product of a translation. Those which follow are the similar by-product of a lexicon. It says much for the delusive simplicity of Herodotus that it is still possible to reap a critical crop from an author who has been read by Reiske, Dobree and Cobet. Had van Herwerden not edited Herodotus, the harvest would have been twice as large.

The very ingenious and closely reasoned article of Mr. L. R. Palmer (C.Q. XXXII, p. 57) seems to us to deserve examination, the more so as we totally disagree with his views, both from the point of view of etymology and that of Religionsforschung. To put his conclusions briefly, he supposes mactus to be derived from a hypothetical verb macio, signifying ‘bespatter, sprinkle’; mactus then would properly mean ‘sprinkled’(with wine, blood, milk or some other fluid used in sacrifice), and might also be used of the substance which was sprinkled or poured, thus accounting for the double construction of the secondary verb mactare (aliquid alicui or aliquem aliqua re). In particular, Mr. Palmer supposes that macte uirtute alludes to the blood with which the warrior thus addressed is besprinkled, and so to his tabu condition. To the whole of this construction we object, holding that the old derivation from the root MAG is correct (though a verb *mago is as hypothetical as Mr. Palmer's *macio) and that mactus signifies ‘increased’, ‘made greater or stronger’, mactare properly ‘to put someone in the condition of being mactus’, and by an easy transition ‘to sacrifice a victim’ (to a deity, to make him mactus).