Within the sanctuary of Artemis, on a small plain just east of the Sacred Harbor of Delos, lies a tomb dating from Minoan times which remained holy throughout most of antiquity. Modern investigators call it the sema of the Hyperborean Maidens, identifying it with a tomb which Herodotus says is “on your left as you enter the Artemisium” (4.34). Here, he was told, lay the remains of two maidens, Hyperoche and Laodice, who had once brought a tribute to the goddess Eileithyia from the Hyperboreans and had died on the island; here, in their honor, the boys and girls of Delos placed locks of their own hair. Callimachus, writing around 270, seems to know of this tomb; he does not mention it, but he says that the Delian girls offer their hair to the daughters of Boreas, Upis, Hecaerge, and Loxo, who once brought a tribute from the Arimaspians. The boys now give “the first-fruits of their beards” to honor some men who escorted the “Arimaspian” maidens to Delos (Hymn 4.278 ff.). And Pausanias says that the Delian maidens used to cut their hair in honor of Hecaerge and Opis (1.43.4).

The designation of one, and only one, of the Twelve Apostles is recorded to have been changed, with the result that he became known by a name different from (or else supplementary to) that which he bore originally: Simon (Simeon) bar Jonah, “called Peter,” the most prominent of the band. The circumstances of his renaming are recorded somewhat differently by the Evangelists. Mark (iii. 16) mentions the change summarily when he tells of the despatch of the Twelve on their mission; John (i. 42) associates it with Simon's original summons, near the scene of John's baptizing in the Jordan; Matthew (xvi. 18) describes the episode at greater length, bringing it into relation with Simon's recognition of Jesus as Messiah at Caesarea Philippi: while Luke overlooks the circumstances. Thus while there is no serious contradiction in the New Testament story about the details, there is on the other hand imperfect consistency, and it is legitimate to reconsider the matter ab initio. Attention will be directed here therefore to a neglected parallel, which may conceivably throw light on the problem.

In 1797–98 Coleridge wrote a series of five autobiographical letters in which he presumably recounted everything which he remembered or had been told regarding the period from his birth (21 October, 1772) to his departure from Christ's Hospital in 1791. As it turned out, these first recollections were only a beginning, for Coleridge continued to add to them for the greater part of his life, the most notable additions being contained in the Biographia Literaria and in the biographical notes which he gave to James Gillman. When all of the recollections are assembled, they present an account of the boy Coleridge which would seem hardly creditable even if it were consistent, and it has seemed much less creditable when it is compared with the account furnished by the juvenilia. For this reason, perhaps, the account given by the recollections has presented a problem to biographers. Some of them have dismissed it altogether as a creation of Coleridge's over-active imagination; others have respected it by ignoring the juvenilia or by dealing with the recollections and the juvenilia separately, as if they related to two different persons. In no instance has anyone attempted to reconcile the two accounts. It has seemed to me that such a reconciliation ought to be attempted; for, to the extent that the recollections are dependable, they should provide an invaluable clue, not only to an understanding of Coleridge's early writings, but, more importantly, to an understanding of the basis and direction of his mature thought.

Somebody has said that Mencius, though he lived almost twenty-five centuries ago and belonged to an alien culture, is more intelligible to us today than our own Jonathan Edwards of Connecticut. There is some truth in this remark.