Professor Nicole has replied to the contributors towards the Mélanges by dedicating to them an edition of a Geneva Latin papyrus (George, 1906), inscribed towards the end of the second century with part of a catalogue of statues and bas-reliefs, which the editor thinks were preserved at Rome. Some elaborate studies by Crönert on the Epicurean Colotes and other philosophers, based upon a revision of the Naples papyri, of which some amended texts are given, appear as Part VI. of Wessely's Studien zur Palaeographie (Leipzig, Avenarius, 1906), along with a series of school exercises edited from a fourth or fifth-century Egyptian papyrus by Jouguet and Perdrizet. The latter consist of lists of words, aphorisms of Diogenes, part of the prologue to the first collection of Babrius's Fables, and some Iambic γνῶμαι, of which the first very appropriately is ἀρχὴ μεγίστη τοῦ φρονεῖν τὰ γράμματα: this verse, like several of the others, is new. The whole forms a very interesting relic of the Greek elementary school. With regard to the Herculaneum papyri at Naples, it is satisfactory to learn that the collection has now been placed under the care of Sr. D. Bassi, who has rearranged it, and promises an edition of an unpublished moral treatise of Philodemus, as well as a periodical in which information will appear from time to time.

In the department of theology, Deissmann has issued the first volume of the Heidelberg papyri, where the chief item is twenty-seven leaves of a seventh-century book containing portions of Zechariah and Malachi, the text apparently having affinities with the recension of Hesychius (Heidelberger Papyrus-Sammlung I., Septuaginta-Papyri, with sixty plates; C. Winter, 1905). The publication includes short pieces on vellum of Exod. xv., 1 Sam. ii., Mark vi., Acts xxviii., and James i. Some small papyrus fragments of John xii. and of the Protevangelium of James, edited by E. Pistelli in Studi Religiosi, 1906, Fasc. II., proceed from the Italian excavations at Hermopolis.

Among the publications of non-literary documents the first place is taken by Part III. of the Petrie Papyri, edited

by Mahaffy and Smyly (Cunningham Memoirs, Dublin, 1905). This voluminous work contains a revision of the texts previously published in Parts I. and II., together with many new ones, all derived from mummy-cartonnage of the third-second century B.C., and it is an indispensable source of information for the student of early Ptolemaic Egypt. Papyrus is now known to have been employed in the manufacture of mummy-cartonnage much later than has hitherto been supposed, for the most recent fasciculus (IV. 3) of the Berliner griechische Urkunden (Weidmann, 1905) consists of a series of contracts of the reign of Augustus, which were obtained from Abusîr mummies. A somewhat later period than that covered by the Petrie Papyri is illustrated by the Papyrus Reinach referred to above, which include a number of texts dating from the end of the second century B.C., from Tehneh. Another large volume is vol. i. Part II. of the Florence Papyri (Milan, Hoepli, 1906), containing seventy texts, edited by Vitelli, of the Roman and Byzantine epochs. Of the most useful Archiv für Papyrusforschung (Leipzig, Teubner), only one thin part (III. 3) has appeared; the principal contributions are a Graeco-Latin report of a trial, from the Cairo Museum (Collinet-Jouguet), and notes by Wilcken on the Geneva papyri.

Excavations for papyri were undertaken last winter by Rubensohn on behalf of Germany at Ashmunên (Hermopolis) and Elephantine, and by Grenfell and Hunt at Oxyrhynchus. At Elephantine were unearthed some extremely early Greek contracts, which will throw much light on the chronology of Ptolemy Soter. The work at Oxyrhynchus was remarkably successful (for a detailed account see the Archaeological Report of the Egypt Exploration Fund for 1905-6), resulting in the discovery of a leaf from a lost Gospel and of some very important classical texts, of which an announcement was made in The Times of May 14th. Paeans of Pindar, fragments of Sappho, Bacchylides, and Cercidas, part of the Hypsipyle of Euripid es

pieces of a non-extant history of Greece (perhaps by Cratippus, who is said to have continued the work of Thucydides), and new Thucydidean scholia, figure among the additions to Greek literature, while extant classics are represented by texts of Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus, Isocrates' Panegyricus, Demosthenes' c. Boeotum, a leaf from the Catiline of Sallust, etc. Of these the fragments of Pindar and the new historian, with those of the Symposium and the Panegyricus, all of which are very extensive, will form the principal items in Part V. of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, to be published next year; it will besides include the Gospel leaf, fragments of the Acts of Peter and of John (the latter apparently new, the former previously known only in Latin), and a few other texts. An announcement is also made from Berlin (Sitzungsber. d. Berl. Akad., March 22nd, 1906) of a number of poetical pieces, to which the next part of the Klassikertexte will be devoted. Among them are fragments of Hesiod's Catalogues, Sophocles' 'Axaιŵv Σúλλoyos, Euripides' Phaethon and Cretans, two unidentified comedies, Aristophanes' Acharnians, and Nonnus. The next volume of the Florence Papyri, too (ed. Comparetti), is to have a literary section, composed of Homeric fragments, scholia on a lost play of Aristophanes, part of a philosophical treatise, etc. ARTHUR S. HUNT.

P.S.-Another most important literary discovery, which was made in Egypt last spring and the nature of which has just been made public, demands a brief mention. A modern house at a site in the neighbourhood of Assiût had collapsed, and an excavation beneath it carried out by the order by M. G. Lefebvre, the local inspector of antiquities, disclosed a small chamber in which were found a number of Greek and Coptic papyri, including several leaves from a fifth-century MS. of Menander. Over 1,200 lines are preserved nearly complete, of which 500 are from the ETITρÉπоVтes, the original of the Hecyra of Terence, 500 from an unidentified comedy, 190 from the Пepukeipoμévn

(not coinciding with the fragment published in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part II.), and 70 more from the commencement of a fourth play, also not yet identified. These texts will shortly be edited by the fortunate discoverer for the Cairo Museum, to which the papyrus belongs.

A. S. H.

XIX

LITERATURE

IN the history of Classical Literature a foremost place among the publications of the past year must be assigned to the eighth volume of the first division of the encyclopaedic work entitled Die Kultur der Gegenwart, and dedicated to the German Emperor. The volume in question supplies a professedly "popular," but really learned, account of the Greek and Latin Literature and Language, under the title of Die griechische und lateinische Literatur und Sprache, 464 pages, large 8vo, 12s. bound (Teubner, Berlin and Leipzig). The 236 pages on Classical Greek Literature are contributed by Professor Wilamowitz, and the 60 corresponding pages on Latin by Professor Friedrich Leo, not to mention chapters by other able writers on later Greek and Latin Literature and on the Greek and Latin Languages. The past year has also seen the publication of the fourth edition of Professor Wilhelm Christ's well-known history of Greek Literature down to the age of Justinian, a volume of nearly one thousand large octavo pages, concluding with an appendix of portraits of Greek authors (19s. 6d. bound; Beck, Munich). Meanwhile, the compact Manual of the History of Greek Literature, produced by Alfred and Maurice Croiset in 1900, has appeared in a useful English translation, which deserves. a place in all school libraries (10s. 6d. net; 1904, Macmillan, New York). A concise account of the same subject was given by the late Sir Richard Jebb in the course of little more than seventy large octavo pages, being his contribution to the Companion to Greek Studies edited for the Cambridge University Press by Mr. L. Whibley in 1905 (18s. net, pp. 672).