Everyone interested in Latin Etymology knows the last word on mehercle, that the old vocative of meus is prefixed to the old Second Declension form Herc(u)lus, Voc. -lě. Without discussing whether this explanation is wholly true or partly wrong, I wish here to disqualify two pieces of evidence. Both originate from a marginal annotation on Rufinus' translation of Eusebius' Church History (4, 9, 3 ‘illud mehercule magnopere curabis’) in, I think, a seventh-century English MS. These marginalia were used for the Leyden Glossary and for the common source of the E E (Épinal and Erfurt) and Corpus Glossaries. The compiler of Leid. transferred them unaltered to his pages; and in the section devoted to Rufinus glosses we find (§ 35, 19) Mehercule: mi fortis. The other compiler often recasts them for dictionary purposes. He gave this item the form Herculus: fortis (Ep. 11 A 26 = C.G.L. V. 364, 23 = Corp. H. 54). But of course the original annotation mi fortis was a mere lucky guess, and the substitution of ‘Herculus’ for Hercules was sheer ignorance.

I Purpose in this essay to declare by means of a few chosen examples the theory and method upon which I have for over twelve years been proceeding to the restoration of the text of Propertius. I had always hoped to present my results first in their final form; but the long delays and the immediate circumstance of war compel me to a partial presentation of what is now in all essentials a finished work. The examples I choose are mostly those which I used in 1911 in a paper read before the Philological Societies of Cambridge and Oxford; nothing but detail has been changed in any part of my theory since that date.

Bergk in his Griechische Litertur geschichte, Vol. I., pp. 708, 709, 710, 715, and elsewhere, rejected all verses in the Odyssey where reference is made to Eurynome, a servant or attendant in the palace of Odysseus. His comments on p. 715 concerning the first verses of the twentieth book are typical: ‘Right at the beginning of this book the appearance of Eurynome shows the activity of the imitator. This very passage proves beyond a doubt that Eurynome had no part in the original poem, and that a later bard arbitrarily used her name instead of the name of Eurycleia, who was the true female attendant in the old form of the Odyssey.’

There is a note of uneasiness in many modern appreciations of Sophocles, and particularly of his Electra. A symptom is the familiar apology that, after all, he was the perfect artist. Jebb himself betrays a certain moral discomfort in the midst of his enthusiasm for the brightness of the morning sun that greets the righteous avenger. Professor Murray has the courage to state as a challenge the criticism which less candid writers hint by inuendo. By the very frankness of his indictment he helps us to face, instead of shirking, the issue. Unlike Euripides and Aeschylus, he says, Sophocles takes the story exactly as he finds it:

He knows that those ancient chiefs did not trouble about their consciences: they killed in the fine old ruthless way.

The fabulist Phaedrus, or Phaeder if that was his real name, was unhappy in his life, and ill-fortune pursued him after death. In addition to accidental corruption and the interpolation which this provoked, his five books of verse have suffered from disruption and partial conversion into prose. Restoration of the original, so far as that original is capable of being restored, is neither simple nor easy. The sources of the text are diverse and different. None of them can be trusted, but none on the other hand may be neglected. A short account of them is requisite in order to make what follows immediately intelligible.

IX. 6. 12. (The young nobles of Capua describe the bearing of the Romans released from the Caudine Forks after having passed under the yoke.)

iacere indolem illam Romanam ablatosque cum armis animos; non reddere salutem, non salutantibus dare responsum, non hiscere quemquam prae metu potuisse.

84 B. ζῆν τε οῐεται οὕτω δεῖν … καὶ… ἀϕικομένη ἀπάλλαττεσθαι. Surprise has been expressed at this nominative after οἲεται δεῖν. Cf. Magna Moralia II. xi. 31, οὐκοἲ ονται δεῖν αὐτοι ϕιλεῖν ἀλλ ὑπὸ τῶν ἐνδεεστέρων οἲονται δεῖν αὐϒοῖ ϕιλεῖσθαι. Herodian Hist. I. X. 4, ῲήθη δεῖν μέϒα τι δράσας κατορθῶσαι . Isocrates ix. 30, οὐΧ ἠϒήσαϒο δεῖν χωρίον καταλαβὼν και τὸ σῶμα ἐν ἀσϕαλείᾀ καταστήσας περιιδειν.… Either such phrases were so common that οἲομαι δεῖν came to be thought of as a single word, in which δεῖν did not count, or else this use comes from adding δεῖν superfluously to a primitive use of οἲομαι with an infinitive. It is of course common enough to say οἲομαι ϕιλεῖν in good Attic for ‘I think fit to love.’ I should prefer the latter hypothesis myself: οῐομαι is properly to ‘carry’ or ‘bear’ so οἲομαι ϕιλείν is ‘I propose to love,’ and then δεῖν was added, especially when οἲομαι had come to mean ‘I think.’ There is a good instance of the primitive use of οἲω in Odyss. xix. 312, ῶδʹἀνὰ θυμὸν οἲεται surely this is simply ‘it is borne in upon my mind,’ ‘je suis porté à croir’. Anyhow οἲομαι or ἡ ϒοῦμαι δειν may be followed by a nominativeand infinitive.

It seems to have been assumed that Lucretius elides final s promiscuously, as Ennius does, at any part of the line. The following statement of facts will show that the truth is very different: I take all cases where the reading appears certain. (1) He has twenty-eight such elisions at the end of the fifth foot, including the emended ii. 623, 975, 986, v. 1410; (2) ten at the weak caesura of the fifth foot, including the emended iii. 198, 1016, v. 949, 1106. But except in these two positions the elison is quite rare and exceptional. I will begin the exceptions by giving (3) a peculiar group: ii. 5, omm' sit. 458, omnibu' sunt (Lamb.), 1079, aliquoiu' siet (Gronov.), iv. 493, coloribu' sint, 1152, corpori' sunt, 1268, opu' sunt, v. 456, minoribu' sunt, 1445, priu' sunt; all these are from the first four feet, but evidently to Lucretius a combination like opu' sunt is very different from, say, opu' fit. Indeed, I take it that opusit was to him just one word like necessest; the following s in sit and sunt helps, perhaps, and so the solitary instance in Catullus is before s; at any rate, this group is obviously exceptional. There remain (4) only two elisions at the end of the fourth foot, iv. 1035 and the emended vi. 972; two at the end of the second foot, immutabili' in i. 591, and immortalibu' in v. 53, both due to correctors and both words of a form which is rare at the opening of a line; one in weak fourth caesura, iii. 905; one at end of first foot, i. 978. You will hardly believe me, but those are all.