súr[ru]pŭít, at vs. end, Capt. prol. 8, 760, 1011. One would like to read similar forms in Men. 510, and in Poen. prol. 66, , but these are by no means sure.

The Homeridae bear the name of Homer, and should point a path by which we may climb to his personality. In antiquity they were known to be a γένος, a constituted family-corporation, though the accounts of the functions they fulfilled are scanty. Modern criticism, with its usual fluctuation, began by taking them at their apparent value; then adopted from a Roman grammarian a rationalistic explanation of them; invented other similar rationalistic explanations; and finally my lamented colleague Mr. Binning Monro robbed them of all significance by treating the word as an adjective, an equivalent of Ὁμηρικοí Men who are called Sons of Homer should not be lightly dismissed, and it may be worth while to go over the familiar evidence once more in the hope that this obvious avenue to Homer may not turn out a blind alley.

The spaced words are commonly rendered either (1) ‘desiring to ward off from his head,’ or (2) ‘expecting to strike his head.’ Of these two renderings the first gives to κεφαλ⋯ς βαλεῖν a sense which is seemingly without example and which the two words can hardly bear, if they can also bear the meaning given to them by the second rendering. The meaning which this second rendering gives to them is their natural meaning (βαλεῖν=τε⋯ξεσθαι, Gildersleeve): on the other hand μενοιν⋯ν does not mean, and cannot mean, ‘expecting.’ It means ‘strongly desiring.’ ‘Expecting it to strike his head’ would be μένωνοἱ κεφαλ⋯ς βαλεῖν, and this, I suggest, is what Pindar wrote.

A Cautious man, as I said at the outset, will not edit Lucilius; for it is an editor's business to pronounce an opinion on all the difficulties in his author, and when the author is in fragments the opinion will oftener be wrong than right. But a critic of Lucilius who is not also his editor, and can pick and choose among the pieces, is in a somewhat happier case; and I will now go on to attempt the correction or elucidation of certain passages where I seem to myself to have arrived at probable conclusions.

I do not profess to understand lines 5 and 6. It is however clear that one λέγει is due to the other, and the first seems most likely to be wrong. On that assumption, which is the usual one, I would suggest ⋯θέλεις to take its place.

Did the Romans in their dealings with other nations outside Italy know of any international laws, and did such laws ever crystallise from scattered observances into a general system? This is an interesting question, but one not easy to answer.

Epist. 14 15 p. 39 12 Hense: ‘quid ergo? utique erit tutus, qui hoc propositum sequetur?’ promittere tibi hoc non magis possum quam in homine temperanti bonam ualetudinem, et tamen facit temperantia bonam ualetudinem.

In the proper punctuation of this passage I have been in part anticipated by Francken, who saw that the apodosis to the conditional clause was to be sought in 235–7. But, as the second edition of the Teubner text still keeps it in its primitive incoherence, I make no apology for dealing with it here.

The first few chapters of Caesar's Bellum Civile are notoriously untrustworthy. Much has been done by Nissen, Schmidt and others towards re-telling the story more truthfully, but our accounts are not yet fully satisfactory. Caesar's statement that he met the tribunes only after crossing the Rubicon is at first sight startling and does not accord with the story as told by Plutarch and Appian; for both of these historians make much of the fact that Caesar exhibited the tribunes upon their arrival to his army, thus stirring the soldiers to action. Plutarch and Appian are evidently following Pollio, who was with Caesar on the day of crossing: they ought therefore to furnish testimony of some weight. Suetonius makes no direct statement about the matter, but the order of events as given by him seems to place him in agreement with the statement of the Bellum Civile. We have therefore Pollio, Plutarch (twice), and Appian against the words of the Bellum Civile and Suetonius; or, more simply, Pollio against Caesar, both of whom were eye-witnesses of what occurred that day. Pollio, moreover, is the critic who questions the veracity of these very commentaries. Our acceptance of one side or the other can, therefore, hardly depend upon preponderance of authority. It will be a question of probability and probability I think we shall find resting with Plutarch and Appian. The only objection against adopting this conclusion at once, is that it seems to assume that Caesar has falsified to his own disadvantage.

‘In forming our estimate of tragedy, let us first consider its externals—the hideous appalling spectacle that the actor presents. His high boots raise him out of all proportion, his head is hidden under an enormous mask; his huge mouth gapes upon the audience as if he would swallow them; to say nothing of the chest-pads and stomach-pads with which he contrives to give himself an artificial corpulence lest his deficiency in this respect should emphasize his disproportionate height.’.