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ships under the Empire, the idea being to push them on to high office faster than the ordinary person could rise.

There are left for consideration two histories of Rome of very different compass and aim. In The Roman Empire, 29 B.C. to 476 A.D.,1 Stuart-Jones has accomplished a most difficult task, to write a short and popular account of the whole period of the Empire. Following everywhere the best evidence, and embodying the results of the most recent research, he has succeeded in giving a lifelike and clear narrative, which should be found of the very greatest value both to teacher and scholar, wherever outlines of history are to be taught.

Six volumes of the French translation of Ferrero's Grandeur et Décadence de Rome are now available. Any history which attempts to give a serious explanation and analysis of the transition from the Republic to the Empire is necessarily of importance. Ferrero's work has qualities which will appeal to all who care for the good presentation of the results of modern research. He has the rare faculty of refusing to write unless his matter is presented to himself in a complete and vivid mental picture. In composing this realistic picture he is inclined to take his own modern environment back with him to Rome. Everywhere we meet "movements," "tendencies," and "causes,” above all such as are social and economic, so that the book actually reeks of the modern economic atmosphere, and an illusion of intimate and detailed knowledge is created, where after all only the most important events and motives have been chronicled. Nevertheless, Ferrero is far too good a scholar to be materially led astray from dependable evidence. Perhaps his book will stimulate interest rather than advance knowledge.

A few miscellaneous works may be noticed. I have not

1 T. Fisher Unwin (The Story of the Nations Series), 1908, maps, stemmata, list of dates, index, and many illustrations, 5s.

2 Paris, Plon-Nourrit et Cie., 3.50 frs. per volume; also four volumes (bound) of English translation by Zimmern and Chaytor, Heinemann, 1907, 6s. net each; the original is being published in Italian.

been able to obtain Mary B. Peaks's book on Noricum and Raetia. It is the first instalment of a projected history of these two provinces, and seems to be a careful compilation from epigraphic sources, including lists of various kinds, such as the names of officers found there. A series of municipal Italian histories by young Italian scholars 2 has been started under the direction of Beloch. Lenze and Rabenhorst discuss the intricate question of the chronology followed by the annalist L. Piso (cf. Pliny, N. H. viii. 16, etc.). A second volume of Mommsen's collected historical papers has appeared.*

Those who are anxious to find a subject for research, might turn their attention to the question of Roman influence in the East from the second century B.C. onwards. The growth of Hellenism in the West has been elaborately analysed, but the very subtle progress of Romanism in the East has not so far been carefully investigated. L. Hahn 5 has made a collection of infiltrations of Roman vocabulary into the Greek language, and has opened up the whole question in a general way. The mutual ebb and flow of Romanism and Hellenism during Byzantine times is skilfully traced by Dieterich."

LOUISE E. MATTHAEI.

1 The general civil and military administration of Noricum and Raetia (reprinted from vol. iv. of Chicago Studies in Classical Philology, 1907).

2 Fregellae, by Colasanti, L. 6; Pinna Vestina, by the same, L. 5; Aquinum by Grossi, L. 8.

3 Philologus, 1907, pp. 531-61, 604.

4 Berlin, Weidmann, 1908; 15 m.

5 "Zum Sprachenkampf im römischen Reich," Philologus, Supplementband x., pp. 677-716. This is to some extent an abridgment of his larger work Rom. u. Romanismus im griechisch-römischen Orient, Leipzig, Dieterich, 1906; 8 m. (bound, 10 m.). The sketch from Philologus separately, m. 1.40.

6 Neue Jahrbücher f. d. klass. Alterthum, vol. x. 1907, (Erste Abtheilung), pp. 482-99.

XII

GRAMMAR, LEXICOGRAPHY, AND METRIC

A VERY important contribution to the question of the original" meaning or the "fundamental" meaning (Grundbegriff) of the subjunctive and the optative moods has been made in a paper by Professors Oertel and Morris of Yale, entitled "The Nature and Origin of Indo-European Inflection (Harvard Studies, vol. xvi.). The authors disbelieve in the whole method involved in the search for fundamental meanings of inflexions, whether of verbs or of nouns. They hold that all inflexions had originally only a vague meaning or no meaning at all, and that the inflexions of the subjunctive and the optative were at the start "practically synonymous," and were only gradually "adapted" to express the meanings which we know in the developed language. All such meanings were, according to this theory (which agrees in the main with that of Ludwig in his Agglutination over Adaptation), acquired meanings. What the original meaning (if any) of the modal inflexions of the subjunctive and the optative was, the authors do not say; but they sketch the history of these two moods as follows:-In the Indo-European period the modal formatives, ie, i, and the long thematic vowels -e-, -ā-, -ō- had substantial identity of meaning. In the Germanic branch of the family all but one of the synonyms disappeared, the only survivor being i. Sanscrit and Greek, on the contrary, utilised the formal

differences as carriers of more or less important differences of meaning: ie. they developed two distinct moods (the optative and the subjunctive); but Latin employed the synonyms to complete one paradigmatic whole: fac-s-i-s, amē-s, fer-ā-s, s-iē-s.

To discuss this paper with anything like the thoroughness which it deserves, would far exceed the limits of this article. The general tendency of the doctrine will be familiar to readers of Professor Morris's Principles and Methods in Latin Syntax (1901). It is enough to note here that the theory set forth with conspicuous vigour and ability by the two Yale professors contravenes the whole position of the historical syntacticians. The following quotations will indicate roughly the point of view of the authors:-" Schooled as our minds are in logical operations and analytical thinking, we are too prone to analyse the semantic content of a form in a manner foreign to the primitive speaker.. A truly logical and well-defined concept like 'future time' or 'potentiality' requires a very considerable amount of logical acumen and effort: it stands, not at the beginning, but at the end of a long line of development." "Out of many uses, varied and shifting within a certain range, arose slowly the consciousness of common elements of meaning, by which single uses were bound together into groups, and smaller groups into larger." Attention, then, should "not be fixed upon resemblances, in order to discover genealogical lines of connexion, but upon differences in meaning and use, in order to detect and reconstitute the smaller groups out of which the later 'type of usage' was formed." The application of these principles to one of many burning questions of syntax may be seen from the following quotation from Morris's earlier work (though the authors recognise that they are concerned not with the practical procedure of the class-room so much as with a problem of pure science). "The Potential Subjunctive' does not exist, has had no source, has no connexion with the Volitive Subjunctive' (which also does not exist), and therefore has no history."

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