Lucretius is not only one of the most inspired but he is also surely the most modern of the ancient poets. In what breast of all those that love the Camenae did not the news of three volumes of the poet from the hand of Cyril Bailey awaken something of the divina voluptas atque horror? When the reader rises from the study of this new edition he will certainly have concluded that his notitia, as the poet calls it, of what was to be there has been far surpassed by the reality; but he will say too that the deed is a timely one, for Lucretius alone has the scientific outlook of the present age. Possessed of the theories of Democritus and Empedocles he looked out on a world which in many important respects was much the same as our own, with this outstanding difference, that science for him was wedded with great poetry and for us it is not. He is modern then, but he is unique among the moderns, and no thoughtful man who reads Latin can afford to be without him. Scholarship has reaped the field and brought in a rich harvest, but there still remains one corner of the corn uncut. Physicians, as their art requires, assess character and motive in their patients. To some extent their methods can be applied to poetry, and it is due to Lucretius to make the attempt with him. The similarity of his view of the world to ours makes him seem like one of ourselves, but in the divergence all the advantage lies with him.

Few places in the world can possess more historical associations than the small stretch of country that reaches from Naples west-ward to the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is known as the ‘Campi Flegrei’, ‘the Burning Fields’, on account of the volcanic activity that has characterized it from the earliest times, and which the recent eruption of Vesuvius shows to be still a formidable feature of the neighbour-hood. In a space of some fifty square miles it contains names which have become the commonplaces of history and legend—Baia, Cuma, Pozzuoli, Averno—places associated for ever with a thousand famous and infamous men—Nero, Ovid, St. Paul, Hannibal, Augustus, Gregory the Great, Totila, Petrarch, Garibaldi. But for many it will be best remembered and most eagerly studied as the scene of the sixth book of the Aeneid; for the story of the Trojan hero's descent to the regions of the dead, while it is one of the greatest pieces of imaginative writing in existence, has a solid foundation in reality. Not only its atmosphere but also its topography can be recaptured to this day in the ‘Campi Flegrei’ a few miles from Naples.

That Virgil was well acquainted with this district is beyond doubt, even without the evidence of the sixth book of the Aeneid. The Georgics were written at Naples; and the poet, as friend and admirer of Augustus, must have spent many days among the emperor’s favourite haunts, examinig the famous landmarks and whatching the progress of the great engineering programmes that were being carried out in the Gulf of Pozzuoli.

Most people to-day are familiar with the elephant at the Zoo, and it is curious to recall that this vast, flabby-looking creature was first seen by Western men as a terrible and well-nigh irresistible weapon of war. When Alexander's men refused to follow him beyond the river Hyphasis in 326 b.c., one of the chief causes of their fear was a rumour that the people on the other side owned a squadron of ‘particularly large and courageous elephants’—six thousand of them, says Plutarch: and the Macedonians had recently seen all they wanted of elephants in their battle against Porus on the river Hydaspes. They had done their best against them, and indeed had won the day; but it had been a grim business. ‘The elephants’, we are told, ‘employed their massive bulk and their great strength in terrifying fashion; some men perished when they were trampled under foot, weapons and all, and their bones crushed to pieces; others were caught up in the elephants' trunks, lifted high in the air and dashed back to earth—and came to a shocking death. And many men were instantly killed on being gored by the beasts' tusks, and pierced clean through the body.’

The reproach of careless organization has become a commonplace in the criticism of the Ars Poetica. Some commentators have been satisfied with merely putting on a derogatory label. Others have tried transposing passages in order to reduce the work to a system. Others, with or without appeal to Horace's sources, have tried in various ways to discern or to reconstruct some plan underlying the alleged disorder. None, so far as can be discovered, have made a successful attempt to find the key to the argument in the mode and manner of its presentation.

The aim of this paper is to suggest such a key; to show that the proposed key is valid for the interpretation of all Horace's work; and particularly to show that the proper application of the key reveals in the Ars that lucid and logical thought-structure that is a constant characteristic of the Horatian manner.

Horace is a writer of one idiom only. His method in all his works is an essentially ‘lyrical’ method, whether he is working on lyrical material proper or on satire, epistle, or didactic verse. The seeming casualness of the Ars is a mannerism of the lyrical style. Everywhere in Horace a disarming informality appears on the surface. But closer reading reveals a lucid and closely patterned sequence of thought. Once the lyrical manner is understood, once the key to its interpretation is applied, Horace's typically clear logic, in ode, satire, or treatise stands revealed.

These random jottings, the fruit of a recent re-reading of the poems of Martial, will not, it is earnestly hoped, be regarded as an attempt to appraise the work of the poet as a whole, though they may perhaps take as their starting-point Martial's critical estimate of his own epigrams.

§ I. Augury

The legend that Aeschylus met his death when a bird of prey, possibly a lammergeyer, dropped a tortoise upon his bald head is apocryphal, but is at least as old as Sotades. It suggests that he was assoiciated with augry in popular belief. This view is supported by another statement in the Aìσχλoν βìоς, as well as by references in the extant plays and fragments.

According to the former the poet, while in Sicily, produced a play entitled αì Aìτναi or αi to mark the occasion of the foundation of Aìτνη by Hiero—oiωνi∊óμ∊νoς βìoν ἐγαθòν τoiς σu;νoiκí∊oνσi τὴν Πóλiν. It is very probable that oiωνi∊óμ∊νoς is employed here in a loose, non-technical sense, but it is also possible that the play included a description of the omens which were observed at the spot where the city was founded.

It used to be said that, as far as schools were concerned, Roman history ended at 31 b.c. Nowadays it ends at a.d. 180. No doubt that date is a convenient stopping-point; but the later centuries have in them just as much as the earlier to instruct our generation and to thrill the imagination. The events which this paper describes justify, I think, that contention.

The historical landscape of the Greeks was bounded to the north by the Scythians, a fierce race renowned for milking mares (Hesiod Fr. 55 Rzach), for drinking wine without water (Hdt. vi. 84; Athenaeus 427 a–c), and for living not in fixed houses but in house-wagons, the Mongol yurt (Aeschylus, Prom. Vinct. 709 sq.; Hdt. iv. 46). Plato mentions them along with the Thracians as representatives of those in whom the spirited part of the soul predominates, meaning that they acted with indomitable energy but without their actions being guided by reason (Rep. 435b). The Athenians, quick to espy anyone's good points, employed them as policemen (Aristoph. Thesm. 1017, Lys. 451).

TheNew English Dictionary defines the word ‘motto’ as being ‘originally a word, sentence or phrase attached as a legend to an “impresa” or emblematical design and serving to explain or emphasize its symbolic import’. A wider definition of the word follows, in which two epithets are prominent—‘short’ and ‘appropriate’. The rightness of the former is emphasized by the etymology of the word under discussion. Indeed, the very word ‘motto’ is of modern use, since our forefathers preferred to speak of their ‘word’. This certainly is a caveat against undue prolixity. Of the mottoes listed below, most consist of four or fewer words.

This scene constitutes the first meeting between Antigone and her sister Ismene since their dramatic parting at the end of the first scene, in which, as Jebb says (Antig. Introd., p. xxix), there has been shown to be ‘a spiritual division which no emotional after-impulse can cancel’. It is plainly seen that Ismene can never rise to taking part with Antigone in Polyneices’ burial; Antigone realizes this; so do the spectators, and no further scene should be required to emphasize it.

One of the services which Mr. S. A. Handford has rendered to classical teaching in this country is his adoption of the word ‘habit’, rather than ‘rule’, as applied to the sequence of tenses in Latin. 1 For to most people, and especially to the learner, the word ‘rule’ has the finality of something which must be obeyed. But ‘rules’ of grammar and rules of conduct are very different things. Grammar is the systematic analysis of phenomena observed in a language, and a grammarian's ‘rules’ are simply the formulation of habitual modes of expression which he has observed in the language which he is studying. If his observation has been faulty or incomplete, the ‘rule’ which he formulates may be inadequate or false. And so a ‘rule’ which appears to run counter to common sense must provoke suspicion.

My father, like perhaps most of his generation, despised the commentary added to a text as an unnecessary aid meant for bad scholars and lazy schoolboys; and as for translations he regarded them simply as dishonest. But in these days, when classical learning has once again become a pleasure rather than a duty or a way of life, an expensive but a delightful luxury, we are no longer prepared to admit even Euripides in the rags of a bare and ill-printed text. Only the Muses of Homer and perhaps Virgil need hope for a seat on our laps by the fireside, unless they have put on all their attractive best. The rivalry of good publishing houses has made us Epicureans (or do I mean Eclectics?), whose favouritism towards this writer or that is at least in some part dependent on the charm of his commentator and the skill of his printer.

‘A participle of a verb of knowing and perceiving governs an infinitive, not a participle.’