Readers of St. Jerome's works are familiar with the fact that he often quotes Greek and Hebrew words in the course of these, sometimes depending on his master Origen, sometimes depending on his personal knowledge of both languages, which was considerable. In the autographs of these works it was his custom to place a line over the top of such words, as a sign that they were foreign. Really old manuscripts of Jerome's works, apart from Vulgate MSS., are now rare. Such as were known to Traube are listed in his Hieronymi Chronicorum codicis Floriacensis fragmenta Leidensia, Parisina, Vaticana phototypice edita (Lugd. Bat.1902). But good early minuscule MSS. of his works in many cases preserve these horizontal lines, and record the Greek and Hebrew words with considerable accuracy. As time goes on, the lines tend to disappear, and Latin transliterations, with or without the Greek, become more and more common. Most of the editions of Jerome are defective in two respects among others: they were not based on the oldest and best manuscripts, and the editors did not know very much Greek. It is hoped that the details furnished below will have some interest for students of Greek writing in the latter part of the fourth century.

Within recent years the subject of Ruler-Worship has attracted a great deal of attention from scholars, and much has been written upon it from various aspects, notably by those who are specialists in ancient religion. If I appear then to be trespassing I can only plead in excuse that the subject is of great, indeed of absorbing, interest for anyone who is a student of ancient civilization, and especially of the Roman Empire. What I offer here are some fruits of my reading in the ancient authors and the modern interpreters of their thought: all that can be done, of course, in short compass is to stress some results already ascertained, and to offer some observations of my own in the hope they may prove useful. But my debt to other scholars is obviously large: let me here mention with gratitude Adcock, Altheim, Bolkestein, Edson, Ferguson, Gow, Immisch, Pfister, Pippidi, K. Scott, Tarn and O. Weinreich, but above all A. D. Nock and Miss L. R. Taylor, who after Beurlier have contributed so much to advance our knowledge of ruler-cult. Sometimes I have ventured to prefer my own opinion, but I can echo the amiable Vitruvius in declaring— “neque alienis indicibus mutatis interposito nomine meo id profero corpus neque ullius cogitata vituperans institui ex eo me adprobare, sed omnibus scriptoribus infinitas ago gratias.”

It is known that from a very early period the burial customs of the Egyptians included the making of portrait statues of the dead in stone or other materials. Many of these, such as the ‘Sheikh-el-beled’ in Cairo, the Prince Hem-On in Hildesheim, and the ‘Scribe’ in the Louvre, are among the finest works of Egyptian art. We know also that this ancient custom survived in Egypt until about the beginning of the Christian era, and it has often been asserted that the type of the archaic statues of the Greeks was decisively influenced by the contemporary works of the Egyptians. For these reasons the question of the origin of the Egyptian tomb statue has a general interest, outside the sphere of Egyptology.