One of the principal editions of Greek Classics during the past year has been Sir Richard Jebb's Bacchylides (pp. 524, demy 8vo, 15s. net; Cambridge University Press). It is well described as follows by Mr. S. H. Butcher in his contribution to The University Press Bulletin for January, 1906:

The general plan is uniform with that of the Sophocles; it has an Introduction, Critical Annotations, Commentary, Translation, and Appendices. The scale of the book finds its justification in the number of complicated problems opened up by the discovery of poems which had been lost to the world for some fourteen centuries. Since the editio princeps was published by Dr. F. G. Kenyon in 1897, a large literature has gathered round the poems. Jebb has not only explored this mass of critical material, but has also applied to it a searching and independent judgment. Nothing is omitted that is relevant to the subject-the dialect, the metres, the papyrus, the style, the myth, illustrations from archaeology, are all discussed.

The poems are presented in their complete literary and historical setting with a learning that never lacks freshness. Among the topics treated in the General Introduction special interest attaches to the remarks made on the relation of Bacchylides to Pindar, on the rapid decline of taste in the Greek lyric, and on the points of resemblance that may be traced between Bacchylides and Horace.

The text has since been published separately (1s. 6d.), in a form that will be useful as a textbook in schools, where Bacchylides will be found a more suitable subject than his greater but less lucid contemporary, Pindar.

Side by side with Sir Richard Jebb's admirable Introduction to Homer, which ought always to retain its present place among works intended primarily for the use of students, we now have a Handbook of Homeric Study, by Professor Henry Browne, of University College, Dublin (pp. 363, small 8vo, 6s. net; Longmans), which may be commended to the notice of schoolmasters. In matters connected with the "Homeric Question" it is partly inspired by the late Professor Geddes' Problem of the Homeric Poems. Among the twenty-two illustrations, perhaps the most interesting is the reduced facsimile of a page of the important Venice MS. of the Iliad, which will help the student to understand what

is meant by the Venetian scholia, and by the critical symbols used by Aristarchus. The intelligent study of the Homeric poems has also been aided by Dr. Rouse's annotated edition of Matthew Arnold's volume, On Translating Homer (pp. 200, crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.; Murray).

In the department of the Greek Drama, Mr. A. S. Way has added to his verse-translation of the whole of Euripides (and of Homer) a similar rendering of the Septem and the Persae of Aeschylus (3s. 6d. net; Macmillan). Matthew Arnold's Merope has been reprinted (together with Mr. Whitelaw's translation of the Electra of Sophocles) by Mr. Churton Collins (pp. 171, 3s. 6d.; Oxford, 1906). Dr. Verrall has given us an interesting volume of Essays on the Andromache, Helen, Hercules, and Orestes of Euripides (pp. 304, 8vo., 7s. 6d. net; 1905, Cambridge University Press). A handy edition of the Acharnians of Aristophanes has been produced for the same publishers by Mr. C. E. Graves (pp. 143, 3s.), while the MSS. of Aristophanes have been examined in the first part of a monograph by Professor J. W. White of Harvard, recently published by the University of Chicago Press.

The text of the Greek Bucolic Poets has been edited (2s. 6d.) for the Clarendon Press by Professor Wilamowitz, who has also published a monograph on the history of the text.

The Speech of Demosthenes against Meidias has been edited for the Cambridge Press (pp. 192, 9s.; 1906) by the well-known author of the Greek Moods and Tenses, Professor W. W. Goodwin of Harvard, who had previously produced a masterly edition of the De Corona (pp. 378, 12s. 6d. ; 1901), which has also been published in a form adapted for use in schools (pp. 304, 68.).1

Not a few of the less familiar Greek authors have been introduced to English schoolboys in Mr. E. C. Marchant's English edition of the Greek Reader of Professor Wilamowitz, which

1 Mr. Wyse's important edition of the Speeches of Isaeus was published by the same Press in 1904 (pp. 735, 18s. net).

includes passages from all ages of Greek Literature selected largely for their interest in connexion with the subject-matter.

In Latin Literature the first place in this brief retrospect may be justly assigned to the publication of the second and concluding volume of Dr. Postgate's Corpus Poëtarum Latinorum (pp. 562, 25s.; George Bell & Sons), including fourteen Latin poets, the best known of whom are Silius and Statius, Persius and Juvenal, Phaedrus and Martial. Professor Phillimore has produced a useful Index Verborum to Propertius (4s. 6d. net; Clarendon Press). In the text of Tibullus from the same publishers (2s.), Dr. Postgate has supplied what has been well described as "a finished and tasteful edition of a most finished and tasteful writer"; while Professor Housman has edited a text of Juvenal editorum in usum (4s. 6d. net; Grant Richards), to which a reviewer in The Athenaeum would have "offered an unqualified welcome, but for the regrettable tone of the Introduction." Mr. T. R. Glover's admirable Studies in Virgil (10s. 6d. net; Arnold, 1904), dealing with the literary value and meaning of the poet's work, may be regarded as sufficiently recent to be included in this retrospect.

Mr. A. C. Clark's excellent text of Cicero's Speeches pro Sexto Roscio, de imperio Gnaei Pompeii, pro Cluentio, in Catilinam, pro Murena, pro Caelio, has been reviewed by the present writer in The Classical Review for February, 1906 (38.; Clarendon Press). Schoolmasters who use this text in class may find it interesting to study in connexion with it Mr. Clark's Anecdoton Oxoniense (8s. 6d. ; same publishers), which has been described in the same review as "a masterly piece of work, and an excellent model of critical method.” Professor Dougan of Belfast has produced a laborious and painstaking edition of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, Books I. and II. (10s. net; Cambridge Press, 1905).

The Annals of Tacitus have been translated by Mr. A. V. Symonds in Dr. Reich's New Classical Library. The result has been described by a writer in The Athenaeum as "a fluent and very readable narrative" (3s. 6d. net; Sonnenschein).

In this connexion it would be unjust to pass over the able translation of the Annals produced a little earlier than the period covered in this notice by Professor G. G. Ramsay, of Glasgow (158. net; Murray, 1904). Professor Merrill's Select Letters of the Younger Pliny (68.; Macmillan, 1903) has been recently followed by an equally welcome edition of Book VI., by Mr. Duff (2s. 6d. ; Pitt Press Series, 1906).

Among recent publications dealing with various portions of the history of classical learning there are three of special importance, which have been produced in Germany, France, and Italy respectively. The first of these is a survey of the progress of classical studies during the last twenty-five years, edited by Professor W. Kroll under the title, Die Altertumswissenschaft im letzten Vierteljahrhundert (pp. 546, 8vo, 14s. ; Reisland, Leipzig). The second is a history of classical education from Ausonius to Alcuin by M. Roger, entitled, L'Enseignement des Lettres classiques d'Ausone à Alcuin (pp. 457, large 8vo, 10fr.; Picard, Paris), reviewed by the present writer in The English Historical Review for April, 1906. The third is the romantic story of the recovery of the Greek and Latin Classics in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, narrated with perfect mastery of learned detail in Professor Remigio Sabbadini's Scoperte dei Codici Latine e Greci (5fr.; Sansoni, Florence), reviewed by Mr. A. C. Clark in The Classical Review for May, 1906. Part of the same ground has been recently traversed in the present writer's History of Classical Scholarship (2nd ed., 10s. 6d. net, pp. 702; 1906) and in his Harvard Lectures on the Revival of Learning (4s. 6d. net; 1905), both published by the Cambridge Press. It is a pleasure to conclude by welcoming Mr. P. S. Allen's Clarendon Press edition of the Latin text of The Letters of Erasmus (vol. i., 18s. net).

Any accidental omissions in the above retrospect will be kindly excused on the ground that it has been written at a single sitting, and at the shortest possible notice.

J. E. SANDYS.

XX

ROMAN BRITAIN

RECENT additions to our knowledge of Roman Britain concern principally the small permanent forts by which the north and west were held down, and in particular the forts at Melrose in Scotland, Ribchester, Manchester, and Melandra in the north-west of England, and Holt, Merthyr, and Colbren in Wales.

Of these, Melrose deserves first and longest notice. Here was a fort planted high above the Tweed, in a field named from its débris Red Abbey Stead, close to the village of Newstead and two miles east of Melrose itself. The site had long been known as that of a fort (Corpus, vii. 1080-1 and reff. there). It has now (1905-6) been excavated in large part by Mr. James Curle, with far more skill and supervision than fall to the lot of most excavations, and with specially striking results. We can discern the outlines of a fort covering some fourteen to sixteen acres—an unusual area, which considerably exceeds the average of the small permanent forts (four to nine acres), and falls far more considerably short of the average legionary fortress (forty-five to fifty acres). This fort was rebuilt or reoccupied at least once, and perhaps twice, after its first foundation. Of the first period, little remains save its ditches, buried beneath later work. The second fort, which was not very much larger, apparently possessed a stone rampart (partly built over the earlier ditch) and many stone buildings inside it—a large head quarters of partly normal plan with abnormal features, especially an "Exercierhalle" of the type familiar on the German Limes, but hitherto unknown to