The object of this paper is to enquire how far we can trace in the works of Horace the use of the plural forms of the first person which have been pointed out by Professor R. S. Conway in his essay on The Use of the Singular nos in Cicero's Letters (Camb. Phil. Soc. Proc., Vol. V., Part I., 1899), from which it appeared that the idiom throws valuable light upon the inner workings of Cicero's mind.

Polybius II. 39. 9: ο μν λλá γε καί πεр тŵν μφσβηтοтμΈνων πÉрεψαν θηβαîοι καί λακεδαιμόνιοι μόνοις рŵν Έλλήνων Χαιοας, ο πρòς рήν δùναμν ἀποβλÉψανрες, σΧÉδον γαρ λαΧασрην рòрε γεрων έλλήνωνεîΧον рó δÉ πλεαον, εας νήν πασрν καα ὅλην καλοκαγαθααν Strabo VIII.

Mr. Norman H. Baynes thinks that the conclusions which I reached in my essay on the ‘Chronology of the Ninth Book of the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius’ are ‘difficult to believe.’ That is due, he says, to the fact that I based my reconstruction ‘on one of the most doubtful sections of that book’—that in which Eusebius states that the Emperor Maximin wrote his letter to Sabinus after he received the ‘Edict of Milan.’ From it I inferred that the letter was dispatched early in 313. No doubt Eusebius' assertion raises difficulties. But when a contemporary witness of high authority speaks it may be wise not to reject his evidence before the difficulties which seem to overthrow it are scrutinized. In the present instance the difficulties seem to me to vanish on examination. But Mr. Baynes appears to have overlooked my attempt to deal with them. His own view of the date of the letter is expressed in a single sentence ‘In November of 312 Maximin would receive news of Constantine's victory [at the Milvian Bridge], and as a result he issues the letter to Sabinus permitting Christian worship late in 312.’ But where is his evidence? All I can find is that in his edict of toleration Maximin affirms that ‘last year’ he wrote the letter. ‘This passage proves that that letter dates from the year 312.’ Yes, if Maximin's year began in January. But is that certain? In the East, New Year's Day was not uncommonly in September.

The succeeding pages were destined, had matters gone otherwise, to form one section of a chapter devoted to the text of those deservedly neglected authors whom, after a mortal illness released Anton Westermann from the task, Rudolf Hercher marshalled between the two covers of the Didot Epistolographi. That chapter, in its turn, was to have been the last in a volume of Adversaria, and, if the truth is to be told, perhaps not the least important function of some of my proposals was to supply a colourable pretext for dealing with passages of other writers (especially Clement of Alexandria and Libanius) whom I had not treated in the body of the book.

There seem to be five manuscripts of the Aethiopica of Heliodorus which are of value for establishing the text:

To these may be added with some doubt three others:

Deinde qui minus grauis esset iis senectus, si octingentesimum annum agerent quam [si] octogesimum ?

This sentence has to do with people who complain that the evils of old age have come upon them all too soon. Cicero rejoins that they would be of exactly the same mind, even though they had a life ten times as long to look back upon.

I prefix to this paper for convenience of reference the three extant chapters of the law:

K.L. III. Quae colonia hac lege deducta quodue municipium praefectura forum conciliabulum constitutum erit, qui ager intra fines eorum erit, qui termini in eo agro statuti erunt, quo in loco terminus non stabit, in eo loco is, cuius is ager erit, terminum restituendum curato, uti quod recte factum esse uolet: idque magistratus, qui in ea colonia municipio praefectura foro conciliabulo iure dicundo praeerit, facito ut fiat.

In the Classical Quarterly for January, 1925, p. 5, last line of note 1, for ‘Posidonius’ read ‘Crantor’.

The purpose of the following notes is to draw attention to certain glosses in the Philoxenus glossary, and to discuss points arising out of them. The numeration of the glosses is that adopted in the forthcoming critical edition of this important bilingual dictionary.

The Dative or Ablative of this ‘plurale tantum’ (Charisius 33, 7 arid 549, I) was used by one of the earlier Republican writers. It is quoted by Ps.-Placidus (see Jouvn. Phil. 34, 254) from a MS. which had the marginal note ‘capillis muliebribus ante, id est a fronte, pendentibus.’ These marginal notes were often direct traditions from the earliest glossographi, the ‘glossematum scriptores,’ who provided material also for Varro and Verrius Flaccus, either directly or through the writings of earlier grammatici.

According to Walde's Etymological Dictionary, Latin spēs is cognate with spatium and with Old Church Slavonic spěchĭι. Under spatium he refers us to Skt. sphāyati, ‘swells out,’ ‘grows out,’ sphīta, ‘fat,’ ‘flourishing,’ and a number of Baltic-Slavonic and Germanic words, from which I will select O.E. spēd, ‘speed,’ and Lith. spēti, ‘have time for something,’ ‘to be quick enough.’ In place of this etymology I venture to suggest that spēs must be connected with another Lithuanian spēti, which is duly recorded in Lalis's Lithuanian-English Dictionary. It means ‘guess,’ ‘conjecture,’ or ‘suppose,’ and occurs not only uncompounded, but also in the compound , ‘guess,’ ‘divine,’ ‘solve’ (a riddle). The Lat. spes means no doubt ‘hope,’ but it also means ‘expectation,’ which comes nearer to the meaning of the Lithuanian words.

A Few years ago Professor Souter made the suggestion that the curious custom of beginning each page of a MS., or each column of a page, with a large letter might be of African origin. He was struck with this feature while examining a fragment, newly acquired for the British Museum, of the celebrated Codex Palatinus of the Gospels (formerly at Vienna, MS. 1185, now at Trent), which is supposed to give us the African text of the New Testament. In reply to the suggestion, the present writer submitted a list of eighteen MSS. in which this usage is illustrated. As most of the MSS. are manifestly Italian, the African origin of the practice was shown to be untenable. Quite recently another theory has been put forward, localizing the practice within still narrower limits. According to Professor Weinberger, the use of a capital at the beginning of each page would seem to be a peculiarity of MSS. coming from Cassiodore's library at Vivarium; and he proceeded to use this feature as a touchstone for detecting Codices Vivarienses. Impressed by the unusual interest attaching to this feature, I began to assemble all the instances I had, and to look for others. I collected a list of nearly fifty items, an inspection of which showed me at once that in registering the phenomenon under discussion I had unwittingly drawn up a list of very ancient MSS. The list does not, to be sure, hold all our oldest MSS., but most of those it holds are, as will be seen, among the oldest. In other words, the use of a large letter at the beginning of each page is clearly a custom of very great antiquity. This being so, it seemed useful to interrogate these MSS. further, in order to ascertain what other practices they have of interest to palaeographers.