Mr. Macdonald's attack on the -orum -arum heresy is welcome. But statistics seldom carry much weight; the best way of convincing schoolmasters (and, perhaps, certificate examiners) that the Romans had not the slightest objection to the gerundive with repeated -orum or -arum is to confront them with plenty of examples. I hope the following will be of help to Mr. Macdonald in a crusade which deserves all success.

The essence of the adventure story is, above all, travel. If the author is to indulge his reader's taste for the wonderful and the marvellous, he must, if he is dealing with anyone but the most sophisticated reader of science-fiction, do it in a way that provides a scale against which the wonders may stand out. A strange being may be brought to familiar surroundings, or alternatively, and much more commonly, a neighbour, as it were, may be projected into a foreign environment, about which he later gives us his account.

The non-specialist student of Latin has been with us for a long time, but he has become a somewhat imposing problem nowadays. When Latin was a compulsory subject for matriculation, he partook of the nature of the seed which fell by the wayside or on stony ground, and his subsequent growth frequently proved to be as chancy as his habitat; but now more interest is being taken in him and his particular needs, perhaps because Latin has once more the opportunity of becoming a subject in its own right. The pride of place which it has lost in the school curriculum ought not to be regretted, for it was based on false values. Tradition, in its loosest and worst sense, may be said to have kept Latin alive; and, paradoxically, tradition, in terms of methods and convictions, has very nearly strangled it. Now that it has been freed from its unenviable position, the time is ripe for a reconsideration of its proper function.

Today, so we are told, there are two main views, held in Moscow and Peking, concerning the way in which the West will ultimately meet its fate; the one view that Western society can and should be overthrown by military force, the other that because of its own internal contradictions and weaknesses Western society will destroy itself without needing to be subjected, at any rate in any large degree, to external force—it will inevitably give way to the superior organization of society as revealed by the gospel of Karl Marx. This difference of opinion illustrates once again the topical relevance of the problem of the decline of the Roman Empire which has been well emphasized by F. W. Walbank, for it is paralleled by contrasting explanations of the fate which overtook the Roman world. Naturally the orthodox Marxist has not failed to emphasize the internal causes of the decline of Rome, thus providing himself, deliberately or otherwise, with an admirable historical basis for his belief as to the eventual outcome of contemporary events. But it is by no means, of course, only historians of Marxist outlook who have placed the emphasis on internal rather than external factors. Even Edward Gibbon, whose view, summed up in the famous words ‘I have described the triumph of Barbarism and Religion’, is regarded by Toynbee as a classic exposition of the view that civilizations lose their lives as the result of successful assaults upon them by external powers, recognized what might more properly be regarded as internal causes; as when he speaks of the decline of Rome as ‘the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness’ or in his approval of the judgement that Septimius Severus was ‘the principal author of the decline of the Roman Empire’.

The basilisk, or cockatrice, is no longer a familiar animal. It was, however, well known in the Middle Ages from St. Isidore's alarming account, which was very widely quoted in the bestiaries:

basiliscus graece, latine interpretatur regulus, eo quod rex serpentium sit, adeo ut eum videntes fugiant, quia olfactu suo eos necat; nam et hominem vel si aspiciat interimit. siquidem et eius aspectu nulla avis volans inlaesa transit, sed quam procul sit, eius ore conbusta devoratur. a mustelis tamen vincitur, quas illic homines inferunt cavernis in quibus delitescit; itaque eo visu fugit, quem ilia persequitur et occidit. nihil enim parens ille rerum sine remedio constituit. est autem longitudine semipedalis; albis maculis lineatus. reguli autem, sicut scorpiones, arentia quaeque sectantur, et postquam ad aquas venerint, δροφ⋯ βους et lymphaticos faciunt. sibilus idem est qui et regulus. sibilo enim occidit, antequam mordeat vel exurat.

In view of the attention now being paid to translation machines, it is of interest to recall a composition machine which was made over a hundred years ago and is still functioning. When wound up and set in motion this remarkable machine is capable of producing over 26,000,000 different Latin hexameters. With rare exceptions each line scans and makes sense. Typical lines are:

MARTIA CASTRA FORIS PRÆNARRANT PROELIA MULTA

PESSIMA REGNA DOMI PRODUCUNT VULNERA MIRA

TURPIA TEMPLA FERE PROMITTUNT JURGIA DENSA

The inventor (Fig. 1) was an eccentric genius named John Clark, who was born at Greinton in Somerset in 1785. After leaving school he lived for a time with his uncle at Glastonbury until about 1809, when he settled in Bridgwater. At first he was a grocer, and then about 1817 he became a printer. In his spare time he invented a pneumatic mattress and also patented a water-proof cloth. To his great financial loss he later sold this patent to a certain Mr. Mackintosh, who developed the Mackintosh raincoat and made a fortune. His own fortune (such as it was) came from his Hexameter Machine.

As a teacher of Classics in West Africa I was often questioned about the value of ‘highly academic studies’ to people who had apparently only just emerged from their own primitive society and who had many other and more important things to learn. It is perhaps significant that no criticism of the teaching of Latin, at least, has been heard by me from Africans themselves, and certainly not from those most concerned, the pupils in secondary schools. This may, of course, be due to material reasons; young Africans have notoriously good memories, which are of considerable help in the lower reaches of Latin teaching and in the presentation of set books at examinations, and therefore Latin is considered a reasonably safe option at School Certificate level (or its equivalent). I do not, however, believe that this is the whole story; Latin, if competently taught, has a great deal more to offer to an African child, for there are considerable similarities between (early) Roman and African religious, social, and domestic customs—those, in fact, common to tribal societies.