No one has as yet done for Italy what Rohde's Psyche did for Greece, and the reason is not far to seek. Rohde had at his disposal a large amount of literary material, of which no one could doubt that it represented Greek feeling and practice of various ages; but the investigator of the corresponding Italian field is met with a twofold difficulty. He must in the first place discard a great deal of the written records, because they clearly reflect, not native ideas, but those which were common to the ancient world in Hellenistic times. He is then left with a very few scanty documents, which refer, not to Italy as a whole, but practically without exception to Rome, or, at any rate, to districts strongly Romanized. To add to his perplexities, he has a great mass of archaeological evidence for all ages, from the palaeolithic onwards, which, as it is unwritten, he must interpret as best he may, bearing in mind the very wide margin of error in all such attempts, and reconcile, if he can, with what the classical authors tell him.

The whereabouts of this ancient town is of interest in the Leukas-Ithaka controversy, but unfortunately there is little information on which to fix it. The data may be said to be one passage in the Odyssey and one in Thucydides. In the former, ω 377–8, Laertes is wishing he were young again,

οἷος Nρικον εἷλον υκτμενον πτολεΘρον, κτν ἠπεροιο, Kεϕαλλνεσσιν νσσων

Some years ago, when discussing Theocr. 22. 177 sqq. (C.Q. XIII. p. 22), I suggested that Theocritus had been a little careless in envisaging the circumstances which he is describing, and had written as though a duel normally resulted in the deaths of both combatants. That still seems to me the probable explanation of the difficulty with which I was dealing, and, as I then said, the oversight with which I charged Theocritus is venial enough, for in fact two deaths result from the particular duel which he is about to describe. He is concerned with the drama, not with the setting, and if the setting proves to be of cardboard, the play is after all the thing.

Since the time of Brunck there has been a more or less general acquiescence in his substitution of πνθώμεθα for πνθομεθα, inasmuch as there is no obvious reason to be alleged in support of the optative. Campbell, it is true, found the optative more in accord with the feeling of the blind and weary Oedipus; but who will listen to this nowadays? Therefore it is the more surprising that Radermacher should retain the optative as expressing the eager wish to attain the goal, basing himself on J. M. Stahl's Syntax of the Greek Verb, p. 482. For Stahl, who admits the existence of certain exceptional instances to be justified in this sense, expressly excludes from the category this passage as well as El. 57 and 760, and seeks to limit the scope of his pronouncement to the writings of Aristophanes, Xenophon and the Orators—a curious combination.

In writing on a subject in which the most significant words have been used in quite different senses by modern authors, I think it most prudent to begin by defining my terms. By rhythmical prose I mean all prose in which the writer consciously follows a definite scheme in order to obtain particular cadences at the close of the period or within it, and this whether the favoured cadences are marked by quantity or by accent. I subdivide rhythmical prose into metrical and accentual. The latter term explains itself. In spite of Aristotle's familiar opposition of ṕÅθμóσ and μτρ¿ν, I use the word ‘metrical’ of quantitative prose, both because the term ‘quantitative prose’ seems to me cumbrous, and because to the speakers of any modern language metre is the natural opposite of stress accent, whether in prose or in verse; and Aristotle's terminology, which takes no account of stress accent, may reasonably be displaced by the modern distinction. (For the beginnings of this later usage in post-classical theoreticians cf.

The revival of interest in Greek metre cannot be without an influence on the text of Pindar. In some ways this influence may have been for the good, but in one respect a theory based on insufficient evidence seems in danger of corrupting the text. The theory is briefly that in his dactylo-epitrite poems Pindar occasionally equated a choriamb — ∪ ∪ — with an epitrite — ∪— — or — — ∪ —. This theory has been stated explicitly by two leading Pindaric scholars, Otto Schröder and U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf. In the Prolegomena to his Editio Maior, p. 13, Schröder briefly states his case for what he calls ‘metathesis metrica.’ Moved by the fact that in iambic and Ionic metres a short syllable may be substituted for a long, and vice versa, he is convinced that the same applies to the metres of Pindar.

A Previous article in this journal gave some account of Terence quotations in Priscian. A similar account for Servius is necessary. Umpf en bach's summary is far from accurate; and it has the serious defect that no distinction is made between Servius proper and the material peculiar to the enlarged Commentary. With Thilo's warning that the evidence is all against the assumption that the enlarged Commentary is a truer representation of what Servius himself wrote, we should, in any problem relating to Servius, confine ourselves strictly to what we know to be his work.

οὐδ γρ εδεης νδρ νον οὐδ γυναι

πρν πειρηθεης ὥσπερ ποζγου,

οὐδ κεν εκσσαις ὥσπερ ποτ’ ς ὥριον λθών.

πολλκι γνώμην ξαπατσ’ δαι.

ς ὥριον A (Par. suppl.gr. 388), σώριον the rest.

Probably no philosopher of antiquity has occasioned more daring speculations and the expression of graver doubts than Posidonius. On the one hand it has been argued that he was purely a man of science and hardly a Stoic philosopher at all. On the other hand he has been called the first and greatest Stoic mystic who under Oriental influence spurned the body as vile and earthly. Reinhardt has of late years resolutely maintained that the importance of Posidonius in the history of thought lies in his having originated a completely new Vitalism, and that his conception of the world is one in which ‘Subjekt und Objekt, Geist und Wissen, Mensch und Gott, νος und ζω durch eine im Bewusstsein neu erwachte Kraft sich einen und durchdringen: durch die “Sympathie.”’ Among other German scholars Geffcken holds that Plotinus borrowed much from Posidonius, and Jaeger roundly declares that if Posidonius had but found a place for the Platonic Ideas, there would have been nothing left for Plotinus to find. Schmekel and Bréhier have both stated that modifying the Platonic Theory of Ideas Posidonius established an identification between the Ideas and the Spermatic Logoi of Stoicism.