book, Kaiser Constantin und die christliche Kirche.1 Of purely

dynastic interest is Sandel's dissertation on Die Stellung der Kaiserlichen Frauen aus dem Julish-Claudischen Hause.2

3

Constitutional history has been comparatively neglected. Professor Haverfield has discussed a critical passage on Augustus' principate (Ann. 1. 2), pointing out the difficulties of the usual interpretations, and suggesting that the words must be referred rather to the titles than to the powers of the emperor. In the same article, in dealing with Ann. 1. 10, the author contends that Tacitus has in fact used the Monumentum Ancyranum, giving echoes of the exordium as a reply to Augustus's apologia.

Besides this article there have appeared two excellent pieces of research on special points. Stech has diligently compiled a list of Roman senators from Vespasian to 'Trajan,* and Stein 5 has worked out the details of a small period of Imperial government, extracting the utmost from the epigraphic evidence. Imperial chronology is represented by two articles by Holtzapfel, which establish exactly a large number of dates for the reigns of Nero, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, and by a list of consuls under the Empire, worked out by Liebenam.7

8

Finally, there may be mentioned two papers of more general interest: V. Chapot on Les Romains et Cypre, and Toutain on Le Progrès de la vie urbaine dans l'Afrique du nord, both in the Mélanges Cagnat. The first of these discusses the relations of Rome and Cyprus from the Second Century B.C. till far in the Empire, and lays especial emphasis on the importance of the strategic position of Cyprus during the Republic.

1 Leipzig, 1913; 3 m.

F. E. ADCOCK.

2 Diss. Giessen., Darmstadt, 1912.

3 Four Notes on Tacitus, J.R.S., 1912, pp. 195 ff.

4 Leipzig, 1912; 12 m.

5 Die Kaiserliche Verwaltungsbeamtens unter Severus Alexander. Jahresbericht der Isten Deutschen Staatsrealschule, Prag, 1912.

6 Klio, 1912, pp. 183-493; 1913, pp. 289-304.

7 Fasti consulares imperii Romani, von 30. v. Chr., Bonn, 1912.

8 Chapot, pp. 59-83; Toutain, pp. 319-47.

XV

GREEK RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY

THE last year has not witnessed the production, in England at least, of any works of primary importance in the sphere of Greek religion and mythology. Prof. Murray's Four Stages of Greek Religion1 is a short treatise that is sure to be widely read, both by scholars and those who have a cultivated interest in religious literature. The style is charming throughout with Prof. Murray's characteristic urbanity and gentle grace. But the critical reader will probably feel that the exposition is very unequal when he compares the first half of the treatise with the second. The first is concerned mainly with prehistoric origins, with hypotheses concerning the beginnings of religious things and religious forces. Prof. Murray does not convince us here that he speaks with authority on these difficult and complex questions. The anthropology that he brings to the task is less relevant than would have been a more intimate acquaintance with the Minoan - Mycenaean phenomena. And throughout this first part, one may venture to say, there is too much uncritical dogma and too little scientific self-distrust. But the last two chapters, "The Failure of Nerve,' and 'The Last Protest,' show the writer at his best and in his true métier; for he is here concerned with the higher religious thought of a later age that expressed itself most copiously in literature; and few are better qualified than he by intellectual sympathy

1 New York, 1912 (based on a course of lectures delivered in April 1912 at Columbia University).

and spiritual insight, as well as by a wide and thoughtful literary reading, for dealing with the later ages of Paganism. Its last struggle with Christianity, with which, as Prof. Murray well shows, it had so much in common, produced many phenomena of deep interest for the student of religion, and Prof. Murray can reveal these with a sure hand and a delicate penetration.

Another work, claiming the serious attention of students of Hellenism, is by the pen of a younger Oxford scholar of great promise, who here makes his début in the literary world, Greek Divination, a Study of its Methods and Principles,1 by Mr W. R. Halliday, formerly Craven Fellow. The writer has had the advantage of a broad and disciplined training on the newest lines of anthropology, and he brings this to bear on an important subject that had not hitherto been illuminated by the modern method of scientific interpretation. After two introductory chapters on Magic and Ritual, in which he gives a clear exposition of the ideas conveyed in Dr Marett's Threshold of Religion, he proceeds to his main thesis, that divination in general, and Greek divination in particular, is a development-he seems at times inclined to say a degeneracy-from a prior magic; that the ancestor of the prophet was the magician, that mana,' the will-power to make things happen, is the earlier fact to reckon with; inspiration, or the power merely to foretell things, the later. He establishes this thesis most effectively in regard to word-magic, and gives interesting illustration of the belief that 'talking about a thing makes it happen' (pp. 36-43), which explains the widespread dislike of the prophet of evil as being himself an evil agent. He then proceeds to an interesting analysis of the various Greek methods of divination which had been collected in many earlier treatises, and in each he endeavours to disentangle the magical from the merely prophetic process which becomes associated with gods or spirits. In this part of his work his main thesis is often obscured, or seems to

1 Macmillan, 1913, pp. 309.

fail in application, and yet his analysis of the phenomena is generally valuable for instance, he marks with clearness and skill (pp. 120-24) the three stages in the divinationsystem and magical rites practised at sacred springs, the first based on the vague mana' of the water itself-he might have quoted the Hesiodic injunction to pray into the divine water'; the second on the vague presence of a nameless nymph or fairy; the third on the definite personality of a hero or saint who has come and captured the spring. It is a pity that on p. 155 he is tempted to spoil this statement of a succession of stages by representing it as a theory of evolution-'the well becomes no more than the instrument or the appurtenance of the god or hero thus evolved'; for this seems to imply the serious misapprehension that Herakles, or Achilles, or St Elias, who happened to appropriate a well, was evolved from the older watersprite. As regards the 'offerings' thrown into the spring, he is justified in his view that these had originally a magical purpose of establishing communion, and that the aspect of them as a gift - offering to the hero or deity is later; but he fails to give us clear examples of these two different acts; the throwing of gold and silver cups into the spring of Amphiaros at Oropos is a salient example of 'theistic' service, but it is not quoted as such (p. 135). There is a noticeable lack of clearness in his effort to distinguish the different functions of magic and religion in his chapters on Kleromancy and Augury. And his work generally gives the impression of bold and original thinking that is not yet clarified and consistent. A serious defect in his equipment, which he might amend, is his philological inexactitude in the handling of texts. But the work is in many ways a valuable contribution to a difficult problem, and raises high expectations concerning Mr Halliday's maturer harvest.

The only other continuous treatises that have been produced this year bearing directly on our subject are various special works belonging to the Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten, edited by Richard Wünsch and

Ludvig Deubner. Of these the most important in regard to its subject and its extent is Friedrich Pfister's Der Reliquienkult im Alterthum, of which the second 'halfband' has recently appeared.1 This work deserves high praise for its strenuous and copious collection of material; and much of the theory and argument is well-considered and sane, though many of the problems are not handled with sufficient thoroughness and penetration. His leading theory is still that which Usener's authority has made canonical in some quarters-that the hero was a faded god; but as he is aware that there may be exceptions, he tries to establish criteria whereby we can detect the aboriginal Oeos in the hero; for instance, initiation to a hero, his burial in a temple, the rite of dedicating one's hair to him, are taken as proofs of original godhead. We may suspect these criteria, for they would tend to prove that Dryops, the eponymous ancestor of the Dryopians, Patroklos, the friend of Achilles, and Nelson, who was buried in Westminster Abbey, were faded gods. He is convinced that all the leading Homeric heroes, Agamemnon, Achilles, Helen, etc., were pre-Homeric deities; but he scarcely gives any justification of the faith that is in him (p. 543), nor does he appear to have thought the whole problem searchingly out; in the meantime a late record that certain communities offered sacrifice to an epic hero, ws Oew, proves nothing concerning his aboriginal divinity; for the people who deified an Alexander or a Hephaistion could easily deify an Achilles. Yet in other points he shows good judgment and careful criticism: he exposes the futility of Bethe's theory that transplants all Homeric heroes and heroic incidents to the soil of Greece, and he corrects Deneke's rash induction that the old Ionians were innocent of hero-worship (p. 578). Finally, on p. 604, he arrives at a clear conception of the strong formative influence of the Homeric epos upon hero-cult, and points out that Rome, having no epos, had no native hero-cult, for a hero without a strong legend is a barren fiction. His book, indeed, 1 Giessen, 1913, pp. 297 (Töpelmann).