Whatthe influences were which led to the development and formulation of the so-called Theory of Ideas, usually associated with the name of Plato, is a question of perennial interest. And the interest has been increased by the vigorous controversy that, during the last ten years, has been conducted round the question of the exact part played by Socrates in the development of this theory. All the available evidence on the question is accessible and familiar to students of Greek thought, and has been worked over many times. But as there is still no unanimity among scholars as to its true interpretation, it may be worth while to go over the ground once more, even if the only result is to confirm some view which has already been put forward and disputed.

The object of this article is to discuss, defend, and supplement the only definite piece of evidence we possess which deals with the musical scales(or Harmoniai)referred to by Plato in the Republic (398D–399C). In this first section I shall consider the list of scales given by Aristides Quintilianus and suggest the source from which it is derived; in the second part the employment of certain abnormal intervals will be established and elucidated; and finally the evidence of the preceding sections will be reviewed from the standpoint of the Pythagorean musical theory.

The new historical inscription from Epidaurus has provided us with a unique piece of documentary evidence on Greek federal constitutions. In this article I propose to study the principal points of constitutional interest contained in it. I have based my text on that of Professor Wilcken and M. Kougeas; and I follow Professor Wilcken and Mr. Tarn in identifying the new document with the constitution which Demetrius Poliorcetes imposed upon his pan-Hellenic League in 303–2 B.C.

In his recently published book on Early Latin Verse Professor Lindsay says (p. 4): ‘The MSS. of Terence have not yet been all collated; at least, collations have not yet been published. And for a critical edition there is as yet nothing better than Umpfenbach's (shall we say?) pre-scientific volume…;’ (cf. p. 225). I therefore thought it not out of place to give an account (not a collation) of the better of two MSS. recently acquired by the Cambridge University Library. My attention was drawn to it by my father, Dr. Postgate, who had noted its reading of exclusti in Eun. 98 (which none of Umpfenbach's MSS. read, but Donatus confirms), and he has helped me with the preparation of this paper. I have also to thank Mr. Sayle for allowing me to quote the official description of the MS.

In the first part of this paper an attempt was made to show by various considerations that the second Suasoria of cod. Vat. lat. 3864 cannot be the work of Sallust. There still remains, however, a final argument which, partly because through some mischance it has never been elaborated before and partly because it leads to a slightly more definite conclusion than the foregoing, deserves separate and fuller statement. The critic whose name is most closely associated with the view that these two Suasoriae are not by a single hand is Hellwig; and though his work is now generally ignored—to some extent perhaps because he omitted the more convincing reasons for the theory he was urging—a fresh examination of the evidence may suggest that, so long as he is merely combating the assumption of single authorship, Hellwig is on the right lines. After that, unfortunately, he goes completely astray: in trying to prove that the second Suasoria is Sallustian and the first an inferior imitation, he is wide of the mark. Had he only taken a hint already available in Schenkl's review of Jordan and backed the first as authentic, he might have saved his successors much controversy.

These minute annotations, put together for a paper read to the Cambridge Philological Society on February 15, are mostly taken from jottings which I made some thirty years ago in the margin of Leo's edition. There they would have stayed, but for the appearance in 1918 of the Illinois index uerborum compiled by Messrs Oidfather, Pease, and Canter, which is not merely what its title promises, but also aims at recording the conjectures of the present century, and has enabled me to cancel three or four proposals which I found anticipated. Other people, from Dr U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff downward, so often print emendations of mine as their own, or indeed as anyone else's, that I am even more anxious than I otherwise should be to avoid printing as mine the emendations of other people.

It is exxtraordinary what difficulties have been found from ancient times in the extract from Empedocles (fr. 100 Diels) containing his theory of respiration, and preserved by Aristotle, De Respiratione 7, p. 473 B1.

The Thebaid is not easy reading, and copyists (and at times, I fear, editors) have not helped to make it easier. There are many pitfalls in the language of Statius, and words cannot be taken always at their face value. I have erred myself and suffered. It may be of interest to give a few instances.

The passage here discussed, VIII. 6. 33, occurs in one of the lacunas, and we are thus deprived of the help of the great mutilated MSS., and have to fall back upon A. (Ambrosianus I.) and G. (the scribe who in the eleventh century filled up the lacunas in the mutilated Bambergensis. In § 31 Quintilian, in the course of his treatment of tropes, has reached onomatopoeia, and in § 32 that subdivision of the last-named, or perhaps we should say the kindred subject, which he calls πεποιημένα This was as follows: uix ilia quae πεποιημένα uocant quae ex uocibus in usum receptis quocumque modo declinantur, nobis permittimus, qualia sunt ‘sullaturit’ et ‘proscripturit,’ atque ‘laureati postes’ pro illo ‘lauru coronati’ ex eadem fictione sunt. Sed hoc feliciter eualuit.

The purpose of this paper is to indicate the slightness of the foundation on which a commonly received doctrine about Roman funerals rests, and to discuss a point in connexion with the ritual of funera acerba.

The word νóoς (νoύς) must, if it is inherited from Indo-European, be a word of the λóγoς type, and come from Indo-Eur. nósos, nówos, or nóyos, since a consonant must have been lost, and it is known that only s, w, and y vanished between vowels in Greek. Neither nóyos nor nówos can be traced with a suitable meaning in any Indo-European language; nóyos, on the other hand, would be a very probable ancestor of Skr. nayas. The senses of nayas are, I submit, sufficiently close to those of νóoς to lend some support to the identification. They are: ‘leading, performance, behaviour, worldly wisdom, policy, fundamental principle, system, theory.’

In the 'nineties the Celtic philologist, Whitley Stokes, told us in Common-room, that he once awoke muttering an incomplete stanza:

Like an ogress making progress

Through the spare-ribs of a child.

Could anyone complete it for him ? A former Newdigate prizeman, after reflexion, produced this:

Stern endeavour will be ever

By some welcome find beguiled,

Like an ogress making progress

Through the spare-ribs of a child.

In this journal (XII. 171, A Seventh-Century English Edition oj Virgil) I showed that an English monastery-teacher's marginal interpretations of Virgil had furnished material to the English group of Latin Glossaries—Corpus, First Amplonian (or Erfurt I.), Second Amplonian (or Erfurt II.), etc.; also that this English edition (if we may dignify it with the name ‘edition’) had no connexion with that Spanish Virgil whose ‘glossae collectae’ make Professor Goetz' so-called Virgil Glossary (C.G.L. IV. 427–470) and furnished material to the Abolita Glossary (cf. Weir, C.Q. XII. 22; Lindsay and Thomson, Ancient Lore in Medieval Latin Glossaries, pref. p. viii).