The genesis of the Greek prose romance is still in large part shrouded in darkness, in spite of the researches of Erwin Rohde, one of the greatest scholars of the last generation. The reasons are evident; the material at our disposal is far too scanty, the loss of early specimens of this literary form is far too great to allow of a flawless reconstruction of the history of the Greek romance. The same lacunae have also prevented us from obtaining as complete an insight into the sources of the extant romances as would be desirable. Rohde conjectured that the genre was the result of a skilful combination of mythological narrative and adventure novel; Warren thought that the Greek prose romance had about the same origin and took the same development as the old French prose romance—that is, it developed out of the epic. At all times scholars have been aware of the fact that the great role which love plays in the Greek romance has a parallel in the tragedies of Euripides, who may be considered the first tragic poet to introduce the love theme on the stage. But so far as I am aware, it has not been pointed out that Euripides was drawn upon for whole episodes in order to enrich the plot of the novel. Yet such seems to have been the case for one of the best-known passages of the Apollonius Romance, as I shall endeavour to show in the following pages.

‘Tu tuo praecipitante iam et debilitato tribunatu auspiciorum patronus subito exstitisti …; tibi M. Bibulus quaerenti se de caelo seruasse respondit idemque in contione dixit, ab Appio tuo fratre productus, te omnino, quod contra auspicia adoptatus esses, tribunum non fuisse. tua denique omnis actio posterioribus mensibus fuit, omnia quae C. Caesar egisset, quod contra auspicia essent acta, per senatum rescindi oportere; quod si fieret, dicebas te tuis umeris me custodem urbis in urbem relaturum.’

Dr. Rice Holmes has thrown a flood of light on innumerable passages in Caesar's Commentaries, but in one small matter he has, as I hope to show, darkened counsel. In his recent work on the Roman Republic and the founder of the Empire (Vol. III., pp. 369–71) his anxiety to retain the MSS. reading III. in Caesar (Bell. Ciu. I. 30. 2), ‘Mittit … in Siciliam Curionem pro praetore cum legionibus III.,’ leads him to pervert or neglect the plain meaning of other passages in Caesar. He holds that ‘Curio was not sent to Sicily with any legions,’ and that the ‘Domitian cohorts,’ which Caesar says (Bell. Ciu. I. 25. 1) he sent to Sicily straightway from Corfinium, are identical with the three legions which Caesar (Bell. Ciu. I. 30. 2, u.s.) says he sent with Curio from Brundisium. Dr. Holmes believes that this was what Caesar really meant, though he expressed himself loosely. Let us see how it agrees with Caesar's other statements.

Professor E. Linwood Lehman (of the University of Virginia) writes to point out that Professor W. M. Lindsay, following Christ, Metrik, p. 59, is in error in this note, as Gellius (N.A. VI. 7) gives Annianus, and not Probus, as his authority for the alleged older accentuation exáduersum, and Annianus only stated this as a matter of opinion.

In this paper it is proposed to be argued that the tendency in Latin known as the ‘Iambic Law’ is actuated by one cause, and one only—viz., the intensity of the prior syllable of the two. ‘Intensity’ means higher tone and increased force of utterance (plus sonat, Keil, 4, 426; acuto accentu elatum, as Charisius (K. I, p. 227) says of ut exclamatory). It is of three kinds:

(1) Initial—proper to the first syllable of a disyllabic, tetrasyllabic, or pentesyllabic word of a sentence or (as Bentley first noted) of a verse.

(2) Appropriate to the sense of interrogatives (which therefore must normally stand first) and other words of natural emphasis, such as ego, or the expletives pol, malum, or imperatives, or words like at and sed, before which there is a pause in Latin.

(3) Attaching to particular words in a particular context because of the meaning of the sentence (cf. Donat. ad Phorm. 341, acuenda uox in eo quod ait, ‘tibi’).

In discussing the authorship of the first suasoria preserved in Cod. Vat. Lat. 3864 I said that an argument against its Sallustian origin had been found in the words ‘paulo ante hoc bellum’ of 4, 1. By this phrase the author marks an interval of twenty-seven years, and I suggested, as had been done before, that perhaps this is hardly the way ‘in which a man still under forty would refer to so long an interval which had ended only four years before he was writing.’ The elasticity of Latin words indicating number and magnitude is familiar, but by the kindness of Dr. Rice Holmes I have been reminded of a place where some of the more interesting examples have been collected. Dr. Postgate, on p. lxxiv of his edition of Lucan VIII., mentions among other Caesarian passages B.C. 3, 106, 1, where the few days concerned in ‘Caesar paucos dies in Asia moratus’ are something like three weeks; and B.G. 3, 20, 1, where ‘paucis ante annis’ dates an event which probably happened either twenty-one or twenty-two years before the time with which the narrative is concerned. To these Dr. Holmes would add Cic. in Cat. 3, 1, 3, and, by way of contrast, Caesar B.C. 3, 25, 1. In the former the ‘eruption’ of Catiline on the night of November 8–9 is described by Cicero on December 3, twenty-four days later, as having occurred ‘paucis ante diebus’: in the latter a period of scarcely three months is ‘multi menses.’

May I call the attention of English scholars to a remark by Professor Heinze in his review of Professor Frank's Virgil, a Biography, viz. that the Culex was a favourite present for schoolboys in Martial's time (Mart. 14, 185)?

How all the difficulties vanish if we regard it as Virgil's first publication, a mere tale for a schoolboy, written to help young Octavian in the Greek Mythology class-work! A peg on which to hang this memoria technica had been, we may suppose, supplied to Virgil by a recent incident in Octavian's neighbourhood, the wonderful escape of a goatherd from a serpent.

In my previous article I argued that certain of the later MSS. of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, and especially those which I call Class I., are to a large extent descended from a lost copy of F, made before the rent was torn in Book VIII., and therefore before the writing of ϕ; and I inferred that it was likely that the evidence of these MSS. would prove a valuable addition to that of ϕ in places where F is now illegible. In the following pages I shall prove that this hope has been fulfilled.

These words occur in Appian's account of the riot which led to the death of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus in 133 B.C. The tribunician elections had been adjourned from the previous day, and Gracchus, who irregularly sought re-election, had with his supporters taken possession of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. The assembly broke up in disorder amid wild rumours that Gracchus had deposed all his colleagues or had declared himself tribune for the following year without election or had actually demanded the diadem. The Senate meanwhile had been in session in the temple of Fides, and upon receipt of the news from the Capitol Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio urged the consul, Publius Mucius Scaevola, to crush the tyrant. When he declared that he would not put any citizen to death without trial, Nasica, calling loudly upon those who desired the safety of their country to follow him, mounted the Capitol at the head of a considerable body of Senators and led the attack on Gracchus and his partisans.