Old Latin we have Sjögren's Zum Gebrauch des Futurums im Altlateinischen (Uppsala, Lundström, 1906; price 63.), in which the relation of the future to the subjunctive and other kindred questions is discussed; and Leo's Der Saturnische Vers (Berlin, Weidmann, 1905; price 58. 6d.), a work in which the difficulties involved in a purely "accentual” theory of the Saturnian and the relation of the Saturnian to Plautine verse are ably set forth. A useful treatise on Latin accents is Ahlberg's Studia de Accentu Latino (Lund, Möller, 1905; price 3s.), the special interest of which is its discussion of the secondary accents, or, as he calls them, "rhythmical" accents, which long Latin words admit of in addition to the principal accent. The accentual element in Latin verse has been discussed by the present writer in The Classical Review, xx. p. 156 ff., where it is pointed out that the last two feet of the Latin hexameter normally begin with an accented syllable (digésta per ánnum), and that the second colon of the pentameter in its most perfect form begins with two accented feet (órtaque sígna canam); and the question of the secondary accent on words of the form of is incidentally raised (whether àduenientem, etc., or, as maintained by Exon in C. R. xx. p. 31 ff., aduènientem). These accentual laws of dactylic and other kinds of verse may be used as an argument in favour of the pronunciation Músăque, not Musáque, as demanded by the old rule of the Latin grammarians, which is repeated in most modern treatises, even the most recent, but which common sense has, I believe, generally disregarded in practice; cf. Virg. Aen. i. 248, 640, 722, etc. This question may now be regarded as finally set at rest by Wagener in his Beiträge zur lateinischen Grammatik und zur Erklärung lateinischer Schriftsteller (Gotha, Perthes, 1905; Heft 1, price 1s. 8d.) on words compounded with the enclitics -que, -ue, -ne, where the accentuations Músăque (but Musáque), líminaquè (cf. λóyos éσtív), etc., are definitely established; for lines to illustrate these accentuations see Virg. Aen. iii. 91, vii. 186; Ovid, Met. x. 308, etc.

Among special points of grammar on which new light has been thrown during the past year may be mentioned sequence of tenses in Caesar, discussed by Postgate in The Classical Review, xix. pp. 207 ff. and 441 ff., where it is shown on the basis of an analysis of the Bell. Gall. and Bell. Civ. (made by Savúndranâyagam, a former student of Univ. Coll., London), that the choice of tense in Oratio Obliqua depends chiefly on the question what tense would have been used in Oratio Recta, but partly on the tense of the introducing verb (in over two-thirds of the instances the historic present takes primary sequence), partly on the nuance of meaning to be expressed, partly probably on rhythm. Prohibitions in Greek are under discussion by Naylor and Headlam (ib. pp. 26-36, and vol. xx. p. 348). Skutsch, working on the lines of Wharton (Etyma Latina, 1890), whose priority he acknowledges, explains refert as rēs (nom. sing.) fert; for the loss of the s he compares frigefacio from frige(n)s facio. Thus, quid refert?" What is the bearing of the thing ?"-cf. Cic. pro Cluent. 4, 9, Ut intellegatis quid res ipsa tulerit, quid error affinxerit, "What was the bearing of the case itself and what fictions grew up around it through a misconception." Meā in meā rēfert is explained as due to a misunderstanding of refert, as though its first part were an ablative. Originally, hoc meă res fert meant my interest involves this" ("the bearing of my case is this"); see Archiv für lat. Lexicographie und Grammatik, ed. by Wölfflin, xv., Heft 1 (Leipzig, Teubner, 1906; price per annum, 14s.).

66

=

Wagener (op. cit.) shows that the gen. plur. of mensis in classical times is ordinarily mensum (mensium or mensuum are later); that the perfect and supine of ferio are (with securi) percussi, percussum, (with foedus) ici, ictum; and that post diem tertium means "on the third day" (the day after to-morrow), not "after the third day," and discusses the origin of the usage. He deals with an interesting case of asyndeton in his discussion of Horace, Sat. i. 9, 69, hodie tricensima sabbata, showing conclusively that it means

"to-day is the festival of the new moon and a sabbath,” the coincidence of the two festivals marking a specially holy day; Horace was well acquainted with Jewish customs. The meaning of tricensima is established from Commodian and the scholiasts. The same interpretation was given fifteen years ago by Stowasser, but has passed unobserved.

Good work has also been done in the field of Old Latin by Exon, in papers contributed to Hermathena, 1900-1905, the last (No. XXXI.) maintaining that in the first and fifth declensions the Old Latin endings of the genitive singular (ai, ei) differed both in form and scansion from those of the dative singular. In the American Journal of Philology, xxvi. 1 (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press; price per annum, 12s.) the evolution of Oratio Obliqua is discussed by Schlicher on a psychological basis somewhat like that of Dittmar; on this theory Gildersleeve comments, ib. xxvii. 2, that "to derive the whole structure of Optative Or. Obl. from dephlogisticated surprise does not commend itself absolutely." The first number of the new American quarterly journal called Classical Philology (Chicago University Press; London, David Nutt, 1906; price per annum, 14s.) contains an article by Hale on certain difficult instances of the 2nd pers. sing. pres. subj. with indefinite subject, in which he arrives at the paradoxical conclusion that in these instances the subjunctive "expresses a general statement of fact"-in other words, that the subjunctive sis in quantum habeas, tantum ipse sies tantique habearis (Lucilius 1120, Marx), tanti quantum habeas sis (Horace, Sat. i. 1, 62), has simply the force of an indicative (=es). The same journal contains an article on the evidence of Latin inscriptions as to the division of Latin words into syllables, by Denison, in which it is shown that the rule ordinarily given in grammars, that in dividing the syllables of a word the Romans placed with a following vowel as many consonants as may stand at the beginning of a word (e.g. fru-ctus, ma-gnus, o-mnis, i-pse), is contradicted by the inscriptions in a large number of cases-79 per cent.

of the instances containing the consonants cn, ct, (ctr), (nct), dn, gn, mn, pn, ps, (mps), pt, (mpt), (ptr), sb, sc, scl, sm, sp, st, (nst), (nstr), str. Thus in these groups of consonants the inscriptions favour vic-toria (not vi-ctoria), benig-nus (not beni-gnus). The question where one syllable ends and another begins is important for prosody and metre; and new light on it is very welcome.

E. A. SONNENSCHEIN.

XVII

TEXTUAL CRITICISM AND PALAEOGRAPHY

In the course of the last century the MSS. of nearly all the Latin authors were examined, classified, and, where necessary, collated. The manuscript tradition of each text was traced back to one or two archetypes, usually belonging to the period of the Revival of Learning under Charlemagne, or, in a few favoured cases, dating from the fourth century onwards. The corruptions which had found their way into the text in successive transcripts of these archetypes were detected and removed. This century will see the investigation of Latin texts pushed to a much earlier stage. The archetypes themselves must be traced back to rival editions of an author which were current in the second, third, and fourth centuries; and we shall have to decide whether a variant reading is the deliberate perversion of the text by an ancient editor, or the "first thought" of the author himself, or else a mere accidental miswriting; if the last, whether the error is of ancient date or has come from the pen of a mediaeval scribe. To distinguish between an ancient and a mediaeval miswriting is very difficult, since ancient and mediaeval scribes had much the same temptations, to omit one of two neighbouring similar words or syllables, to substitute a familiar for an unfamiliar form, to copy into the text some suprascript explanation of a difficult word or construction. The Egyptian papyrus-fragments of Greek authors, such as Plato and Thucydides, often exhibit exactly the same trivial miswritings as the mediaeval MSS. of these authors. There are two possible explanations in each case-one that the