Egypt has not yet given us a Greek original of Plautus, unless the paltry Hibeh fragments (I, p. 24) belong to the original of the Aulularia. (For the pro and con, see Blass, Rhein. Mus. 62, 102; Leo, Herm. 41, 629.) If they do, then Plautus departed widely from the Greek. And that is what one would expect. Read any ‘sermo’ in Plautus (in sermonibus Plautus poscit palmam) and see how recklessly he abandons himself to the vagaries of his humour. Clearly no ‘icily regular’ Greek is his guide there. Still a ray of light has come from Egypt that illumines one dark spot in Plautus, the end of the first Scene (or rather Act) of the Bacchides. The two sisters retreat into the house after a line which appears in our editions in this form (v. 107):

‘ If Rome, addlepate that she is, misprises a thing, let that be no concern of yours. For at Rome every living soul—ah, would that I might utter it! But utter it I surely may, when I consider what dismal old squaretoes we are from the day when we are boys no more. Then, then—forgive me (I don't wish it, I can't help it)—but (this spleen of mine is to blame) I do burst out laughing.’ Down to the middle of u. n my text and punctuation are those of most editors, and I shall uphold them against the MS readings retained by Casaubon and recalled by Buecheler. From that point onward the punctuation is my own, except that it partly agrees with K. F. Hermann's, adopted in 1910 by Mr Leo.

An aspect of Pisistratus, which has not hitherto been utilized in this question (see p. 50), appears to justify another presentment of the evidence which connects him with the Homeric tradition. I shall endeavour to be brief and not to repeat what is common property or irrelevant. The literature and the bearing of the controversy are given with his usual clearness by P. Cauer, Grundfragen der Homerkritik,2 pp. 125 sqq. Cauer's private doctrine, that Homer was for the first time written down by Pisistratus, I consider sufficiently refuted by C. Rothe, Die Was als Dichtung, pp. 5–13. Fantastic views lately promulgated in England are1 dealt with conclusively to my mind by Mr. A. Lang, The World of Homer, pp. 281 sqq., to whose account nothing for controversial purposes need be added. On looking back over the literature I find myself most in agreement with Hans Flach, whose treatise, Die litterarische Thdtigkeit des Peisistratos, 1885, has been unduly depreciated. I shall have to repeat my own views expressed in the Classical Review, 1901, p. 7; 1907, p. 18; and in the Classical Quarterly, 1909, p. 84

In the last number of the Journal of Philology (xxxii. 63, p. 136) a change of punctuation in Sophist 244 C, together with a new interpretation, is proposed. To this serious exception must be taken; or perhaps not too serious, because the proposal can hardly be due to anything but haste and want of revision.It is not only in disagreement with a familiar idiom, but is easily seen to be inconsistent with the context, which can have barely received attention.The passage is as follows: ξE. On this Apelt, in his new edition of Stallbaum's Commentary, has written quite rightly, respondet antecedenti illi ut non opus sit mutatione…. Ceterum ad totius loci sensum nihil interest, utrum an scribatur.

The supposed difficulties of this famous passage are set forth in Conington's notes. In reality they have been created by a misunderstanding, and chiefly through forgetfulness that the English of pauci is ' only a few.' In vv. 743–747 the sense is not (as Page takes it) that the souls dwell in Elysium ' until lapse of time hath removed the ingrown corruption.' This would surely require donee … exemerit …purumque reliquerit.The fact is that Anchises is explaining his own presence in Elysium at so early a date after his death. If souls require a prolonged purgation before reaching Elysium and the laeta arua, how comes it that he himself is already there ? The answer is—because he is one of the few in whose case the process was a short one.Quisque suos patimur Manes, says he, and the length and nature of the purgation depend upon what your Manes deserve and require. ?‘ All souls go through such punishment and refining as are necessary.We each suffer our own Manes (i.e. suffer what they merit), and only a few of us are so fortunate as to enjoy the happy fields before a long period has removed the impurities (i.e. only a few of us enjoy that privilege without having to pass through a long experience of the kind).’ He is himself one of those who have so escaped (his stains having been but slight), and hence his presence here to meet Aeneas so soon after decease.

On this Dr. Gow, in his excellently businesslike school edition, remarks: ‘The MSS are divided between publicum, Apulicum, and Ponticum. Of these readings, the first is nonsensical; the second unmetrical; the third incredible,’ and he therefore adopts Palmer's sublicis. To that alteration there are strong objections: (1) the position of the merely conjunctive et: (2) the fact that sublicae do not suggest wealth: (3) the technical improbability of the termination in -is being converted into one in -um.

Bücheler assigns this epitaph to the Caesarian epoch: and it is clearly not of later date. The fifth line is corrupt. Bücheler suggests tentatively the insertion of the word dilecto after Cadmo. That will indeed give us a verse of six feet. But we shall not be much the happier. We shall still have to believe that a member of the gens Heluia married, circa 100&50 B.C, a husband of the name of Cadmus Scrateius. He must have been the public executioner: for I know of no other Cadmus in Rome; and he bore no very good reputation, and very little deserved the epithet dilectus, for the commentators upon Horace 5. i. 6. 39 speak of him as ‘ notae crudelitatis.’ He must be supposed to have taken the name Scrateius to make himself more terrible. But where in all the Graeco-Roman world he found it, it is impossible to guess.

In an article in the Classical Quarterly of October, 1911, Mr. Guy Dickins criticized certain views put forward by Mr. Cornford, by the writer of the article on Greek History in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and by myself, on the statements made by Thucydides as to the cause or causes of the Peloponnesian War. Mr. Dickins makes three statements as to the views which he supposes me to hold. Not one of the three statements is even approximately correct.