and have been transported to a new station between 345 and 349 in the vain hope of providing them with an appropriate context."

The text of Cicero hardly admits, as yet, of these remote inquiries, for the extant MSS. have not hitherto been fully discovered classified, and collated. This work is being done for the Orations by the Oxford editor,1 A. C. Clark, who in a recent pamphlet has succeeded in tracing the history of an important MS. and of its descendants. Of similar purport is Peterson's account 3 of the Vatican Codex of the Verrines. But although our manuscript material for Cicero has not yet been used to the full, a new instrument for textual criticism has been furnished by a St. Petersburg professor, Th. Zielinski.a He makes certain additions (not universally accepted) to the discoveries of previous writers on the same subject, and, with the help of wonderfully copious statistics, compels our belief that Cicero, in constructing his periods, affected certain types of cadence-e.g. essě viděātăr—and that the true reading may be selected from a divergence, or rescued from a corruption, or else defended against some editor's alteration, by reference to these types. Thus a sentence of the third Catiline Oration ends with superārě potuērūnt. Madvig conjectured potuerint ; but, since this would substitute an abnormal for a normal cadence, Zielinski rules out the conjecture. Time will tell how far his conclusions are to be accepted. Certainly every editor of Latin prose authors must henceforth inquire whether particular cadences are affected in their periods.

So poor is our manuscript material for Catullus, all derived from a MS. now lost, which was brought (back?) to Verona about 1300, that the smallest addition is welcome. Hale,

1 M. Tulli Ciceronis Orationes, pro Sex. Roscio, de imperio Cn. Pompei, pro Cluentio, in Catilinam, pro Murena, pro Caelio:.. recognovit Albertus Curtis Clark. Oxford (Clarendon, Press), 1905. The Vetus Cluniacensis of Poggio. Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1905. (Anecdota Oxoniensia: Classical Series, Part X.)

3 American Journal of Philology, XXVI. iv.

Das Clauselgesetz in Cicero's Reden. Leipzig, 1904.

who some years ago found in the Vatican a neglected MS., has in a recent article given reason for belief that this MS., which he calls R(omanus), stands on the same level as the Oxford MS. (0) and the Paris MS. (G), the most faithful transcripts of the lost archetype. Let us hope that he will at long last fulfil his promise of giving us a complete collation. We can hardly expect from it anything more than some slight improvements of the text, so recently edited by Ellis.2 As a specimen we may take the restoration of the concluding line of Catullus's complimentary address to Cicero (xlix. 7): Quanto tu optimus omnium's patronum.

The hopes excited by the announcement of the discovery of a new MS. of Tacitus's Agricola, in a private library at Jesi in North Italy, have been disappointed. Ramorino3 tells us that almost the whole of the Tacitus portion is by a recent hand, and that the few ninth-century leaves show no important variant. The MS. is, however, of some value for another text it contains-viz. Dictys Cretensis "Ephemeris Belli Troiani."

A fragment of an Epitome of Livy has been found in Egypt by Grenfell and Hunt. But another fragment, variously ascribed to Livy and to Cornelius Nepos, and known as the "fragmentum Cortesianum," has been deservedly consigned to oblivion by the leading authority on Latin Palaeography. It was brought before the learned world in 1884 by Cortese (then a schoolmaster, now a professor) as the content of a palimpsest leaf, discovered in the binding of an old edition. It is now proved to be a forgery. From it comes the statement, which has found its way into some textbooks of Latin Literature, that Albinus dedicated his History to the poet Ennius.

1 "Catullus once more" (Classical Review, xx. p. 160).

2 Catulli Carmina: . . . recognovit Robinson Ellis. Oxford (Clarendon Press), n. d.

3 De codice Taciti Aesino nuper reperto. Rome, 1905.

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part. iv. (p. 90).

5 L. Traube, Palaeographische Forschungen. Vierter Teil. Munich, 1904.

1

And, to pass from fragments of authors to authors who only survive in fragments, Lucilius has been veritably "brought to life" by the successor 1 of Buecheler at Bonn. Of the last five Satires we can now, with the help of the five or six hundred extant lines, get a fairly complete notion. Marx in his Prolegomena has recovered for us all that can be known or guessed of the life of the poet and the publication of the several poems. In one point I think he has erred, in the conclusions which he draws from Nonius Marcellus's Dictionary of Republican Latin regarding the arrangement of a large number of the fragments. But that is a mere trifle compared with the successful restoration of Lucilius's words and the explanation of his allusions.

W. M. LINDSAY.

1 C. Lucili Carminum Reliquiae: recensuit enarravit Fridericus Marx. Leipzig (Teubner), vol. i. 1904, vol. ii. 1905.

XVIII

PAPYRI

THE 1905-6 ranks as an eventful one in papyrus year annals, though more on account of the discoveries than of the publications which it has witnessed. The latter, however, have been by no means inconsiderable, especially those of the non-literary class. The literary output has not been large. The lengthiest new classical work is the anonymous commentary on Plato's Theaetetus, edited by Diels and Schubart in Part II. of the Berliner Klassikertexte (Berlin, Weidmann, 1905), the series inaugurated by the commentary of Didymus on Demosthenes' Philippics IX-XII (same editors, 1904). There are seventy-five columns of the Theaetetus commentary, covering p. 142 to p. 158 a of the dialogue; but it is a singularly insignificant composition, on which the scribe's calligraphy seems rather wasted. The principal result is the support given to the readings of the Vienna MS. (W), confirming the views of the latest editor of Plato, Prof. Burnet. An appendix to the commentary gives fragments of two philosophical treatises of small value, and an extract from Plato's Laws, which was certainly written at least two centuries later than the date suggested by the editors. A third part of the same series, which is devoted to medical and scientific texts edited by Kalbfleisch and Schöne, is of less general interest. It includes some of the Ps.-Hippocratean letters, several columns from an anatomical work, a fragment on the treatment of constipation, etc.

Of better quality than these are some fragments of two

comedies obtained from Fayûm mummy-cartonnage, and edited by Jouguet in Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, xxx. pp. 103-49. There is one substantial piece, consisting of four consecutive columns, or about ninety lines. These came early in the play, which clearly belongs to the New Comedy and which Blass, who has assisted the editor, suggests may be Menander's Apistus; but there is no real evidence for the identification. On the verso of this fragment are two Iambic prologues, probably referring to the comedy on the other side. One of them, which is complete, and gives a bare outline of the plot, is a curiosity of versification, every second line repeating its predecessor with the words in the reverse order. This recalls the acrostic prologues prefixed to the plays of Plautus. A few literary fragments are incorporated in the Papyrus Th. Reinach (Paris, Leroux, 1905), the only valuable text being that of an ostracon previously published in Mélanges Perrot (1903). This is to be classed with the Mimic literature to which Egyptian papyri have recently made such important contributions, and the character portrayed is that of a drunken lover, apparently holding a dialogue with a friend. Some pieces of a universal chronicle of about the sixth century, edited by Bauer and Strzygowski in Denkschriften d. Akad. d. Wiss. zu Wien, phil.hist. Klasse, li. pp. 1-118, are remarkable for a profusion of roughly executed coloured miniatures.

To turn to extant classics, the late Sir R. Jebb's edition of Bacchylides is noticed in another section (p. 125). The papyrus of Isocrates' De Pace, collated by Kenyon in Classical Texts from Papyri in the British Museum (1891), has now been transcribed at length by H. I. Bell in Journal of Philology, xxx., where some new pieces of the roll make their first appearance. A few small fragments of Aristophanes' Knights and Lysistrata, published by Grenfell and Hunt in Mélanges Nicole (Genève, George & Co., 1905), are noticeable on account of the rarity of papyri containing any part of the extant works of the poet. They are, however, of the Byzantine period and of little value for critical purposes.