The old question whether or no the doctrine of ‘intermediate mathematical objects’ ascribed to Plato by Aristotle (Met. 987b14, 1059b6) is to be found in the Divided Line of Republic vi, has been recently raised again in a careful and lucid discussion by Mr. W. F. R. Hardie. I may clear the ground by saying at once that I agree with that part of Mr. Hardie's chapter which deals with those criticisms of the traditional view that have been put forward by Prof. Ferguson and the late Prof. Stocks; nevertheless I do not believe that the objects of the third segment are intermediate between Forms and Sensibles: I propose to argue that they, like the objects of the highest segment, are Forms.

Arcturus is a very suitable person to tell us the ὑποκεíμενα of the play. During the night preceding the action he has produced the storm which is to bring about the dénouement of the plot (11. 66 ff.):

illorum navis longe in altum abscesserat.

ego quoniam video virginem asportarier,

tetuli ei auxilium et lenoni exitium simul:

increpui hibernum et fluctus movi maritimos.

nam Arcturus signum sum omnium acerrimum:

vehemens sum exoriens, cum occido vehementior.

In vol. xxxii of this Journal, pp. 220 ff., we published a rejoinder to Dr. L. R. Palmer's ingenious article (ibid., pp. 57 ff.) in which he derived macte, mactare, and macula from a hypothetical verb *macio ‘to sprinkle’. We objected to this construction, holding that the traditional derivation of macte from the root of magnus was more satisfactory, and discussing in some detail the evidence brought forward by Dr. Palmer in support of his theory. Alas! Dr. Palmer has taken our criticism neither kindly nor seriously, and, while accusing us in his spirited reply (vol. xxxv, pp. 52 ff.) of using ribaldry instead of argument, he is himself rather selective in answering our objections. Both this circumstance and the fact that his article contains a number of mistaken assertions compel us to restate our case.

Regarded aesthetically the Oedipus Coloneus is unsatisfactory. The plot is episodic, consisting of a series of incidents which, except that they involve a single hero, and are derived from the previous history of that hero or his ancestors, are unrelated. That is to say, while Sophocles has in all his other plays combined the two to perfection, he has here given his content precedence over his art. The aim of this paper is to consider one or two aspects of that subject-matter, which seemed to him to be so important.

‘Saepe stilum vertas’, says Horace; and he had excellent company in his friend Virgil, who wrote the Aeneid at the rate of only about 900 lines a year, and spent hours in licking his verses into shape. It would have been instructive to sit at the elbow of these two poets, to see what they altered and what they rejected. It is clear, e.g., that there were certain caesural arrangements which Virgil deliberately affected and others which he as deliberately avoided. But what of the care taken by these and other classical authors in arranging sounds in relation to mood or idea? This present incomplete essay is written frankly with scepticism in regard to dogmatic comments on certain particular points. It has been perilously easy to frame legislation on the basis of a predilection bolstered up by one or two instances. Even in the field of syntax we have seen generalizations on too narrow a foundation. An editor of Andocides enunciates ‘a very important principle of the language, which is rigidly observed by the best writers; viz., that, when a participle and a verb of different government are referred to the same object, the case of that object depends on the participle and not at all on the verb… Shilleto's remarks on this point (Dem. Fals. Leg. 152.182. 272) must be excused, as evidently written hastily.’ But a casual cast of the net brings up about a score of violations of this principle from Homer to Menander. Where does the editor propose to draw the line between the respectable and the declassé Greek writers? Aristophanes, though cited in support, is actually flagrantly lawless in the matter; and with him must go not only Homer and Hyperides but Sophocles, Euripides, Menander, Xenophon, Lysias, and Plato, leaving among the élite, as cited by this editor, only Thucydides, Antiphon, and Aeschines; and one is entitled to doubt even their rigid observance of the law until they have actually been brought to court. In problems of rhythm, also, one has to be careful to use evidence as against preconception. When an editor hacks and fits the dactylics of Ennius so as to eradicate all feet beginning with two short syllables, it is as impious as recarving a statue by Daedalus because it does not conform to the canon of Polyclitus; and one may be forgiven if now and then one interprets the editor's corr. in his apparatus criticus not as correxi but as corrupi.

In C.Q. xxiii. 2 (1929) Dr. C. M. Bowra examined the Ennian phrases in the Aeneid which Virgil adopted but transformed. Bowra, whose object was to investigate the reasons which led Virgil to make slight changes in these echoes, naturally had nothing to say about those borrowings which remained unaltered in Virgil. Of these, perhaps the most striking is the allusion to Q. Fabius Maximus Cunctator in v. 846 above. The following points can be noted about the line:

1. It is not a subconscious, or apparently purposeless, reminiscence of familiar words, a habit of which the best-known example is Aen. vi. 460, invitus, regina, tuo de litore cessi, cf. Cat. lxvi. 39.

Until the issue of Altheim's book Roemische Religionsgeschichte there was little doubt about the correctness of Wissowa's view that the two groups of the diindigetes and the di novensides combined with each other represent the whole of theRoman pantheon, the di indigetes being the old, indigenous deities of the Roman people, inherited so to speak from the days of Romulus, the di novensides the new deities, imported in historical times from foreign peoples. This view has now been abandoned, owing to Altheim's arguments. Besides this, Altheim and later C. Koch have proved that the proximity of the expressions divi novensiles and di indigetes in Livy's report about the devotio of P. Decius Mus (viii. 9) does not in itself justify the conclusion that the di indigetes and the di novensides are linked together in such a manner that the solution of the problem of one group involves that of the other. Hence the questions arise, first, what is the nature of the di novensides or of the di indigetes, and whether either of these questions has been satisfactorily answered; secondly, is it possible to establish any relationship between these two groups of deities, and can such a relation be usedas a starting-point from which to investigate the nature of the other group? In choosing this line of research it seems to me that an attempt to solve the problem of the novensides rather than that of the indigetes promises greater success. I shall, therefore, treat the di novensides in the first part of this paper.

The long expected volume xviii of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri is now in our hands. Besides important pieces of Callimachus, it contains many exciting fragments of early Greek poetry. Most of them were in a state of apparently hopeless mutilation, but have been triumphantly restored by the unsurpassed learning and inexhaustible patience of Mr. Lobel. The new treasures provide ample material for prolonged investigation. At present I only want to draw attention to an interesting fact emerging from the commentary on Hipponax (2176).

At the Editors' request, I have given this paper the final revision which Mr. Morrison has not time to give. This was needed chiefly in II, in the establishment of the stemma, and in the early part of IV. In these parts Mr. Morrison must not be held responsible for the details, though I have endeavoured to give his conclusions. In II the credit is his for the identification of the sororis filius in Quintilian, Inst. Or. xi. 2. 14, as Antiochus, for the view that Antiochus is an Aleuad, and therefore the three Echecratidae also, and for the consequent interpretation of Thuc. i. i n (viz. that Myronides attacked Pharsalus not as Orestes' town but as the strategic gate to Thessaly). In IV I found it difficult to revise Mr. Morrison's detailed interpretation of ‘Herodes’ and have omitted much. It will be understood that this procedure does little justice to his views, though I have tried to suppress nothing which bore directly on his main argument.

In June 1922 Rothstein, in his courageous and ingenious attack on Schwabe's generally accepted chronology of Catullus' poems, made these two surprising statements:

(1) The liaison with Lesbia began later than 57 B.C.

(2) All short poems are later than 57 B.C.

To maintain the first statement Rothstein denied (pp. 8ff.), against strong evidence, that poem 68 referred to Lesbia. To explain the second he assumed gratuitously (p. 31) that Catullus carelessly lost all his short poems written before 57 B.C., preserving only long ones, and among these the datable poems 68 and 65+66.