The great number of contradictory statements which confront us when we examine the various explanations of Anaxagoras' philosophy make it more than usually important to decide what is to be admitted as first-hand evidence and what is not. I purpose, then, to begin by accepting the barest minimum of data, and I shall try to exclude any direct comments upon Anaxagoras' work by later writers. Sufficient justification for such a course may be found in the bewildering masses of confusion which have gathered around his teaching.

‘All the difficulties in the theory of forms arise from their separation.’ This recurrent criticism of Aristotle's is, of course, one of the principal obstacles in the way of any reconstruction of the Platonic metaphysic. To begin with, it is flatly denied by Plato himself in the use of such words as μέθεξις, παρoυσία and κoινωνία. It must also be rejected by the orthodox account of the Forms which takes them to be immanent, constitutive principles in the world of everyday life, like a Law of Nature or the Concrete Universal of Hegel. Finally, modern philosophy has made it clear that this view of universals is right and necessary if thought and language are to exist, and it is therefore tempting to attribute it to Plato.

As my suggestions have been unfavourably criticized in Professor Ridge-way's article on ‘Euripides in Macedon’ which appears in the current number of the Classical Quarterly, perhaps I may be permitted a few words of explanation and reply. Professor Ridgeway's article in its latter part is chiefly directed against the thesis I endeavoured to support in the Classical Review of 1921, pp. 52 sqq., to the effect that our Rhesus is probably not the genuine work of Euripides. Space does not permit me to do more than refer to a few of Professor Ridgeway's strictures; but I would ask readers not to accept his statements of my views without reference to my original article. The context often makes all the difference. Thus, for example, when I am arguing that a strong case can be made against Euripides on the score of language, I am made to be dealing with the whole issue of authenticity. Indeed, if Professor Ridge-way's judges were to sum up at nisi prius on the lines suggested for them, they would soon become the by-words of their profession.

If all or any of our MSS. dated from 800 or 900 B.C., it might be of importance to note θέλεις for the regular epic form ⋯θέλεις and even to print it so in the text, otherwise it is negligible. More worthyof attention is the punctuation after ⋯μo⋯μαι. The presence of ὑπίσχoμαι in the next line is held to justify the stop given above, otherwise the comma, as in Gemoll's edition, would be sufficient or more than sufficient. For in accordance with Homeric usage (cf. A 76, Y 313–5, K 321, etc.) we might read:

πατρòς κεϕαλήν μέγαν ὃρκoν ⋯μo⋯μαι

μή μέν ⋯γώ μητ' αὐτòς—ὑπίσχoμαι—αἴτιoς εἶναι.

Sentences of the form si sit … esset crop out at rare intervals in the literature of classical Latin, deviating so sharply from what might be called the standard forms of conditional speaking that they have commonly been regarded with more or less suspicion.

A. I begin with some emendations founded on familiar evidence.

(a) ii. 9. aspice quos summittat humus formosa colores.

In each of the following verses of the stanza from u. 9 to u. 14 natural and spontaneous beauty is the subject (sponte sua, solis, indociles, natiuis, nulla arte). Verse 9 has seemed unsatisfactory because it lacks the very point which it should introduce. All the emendations have attacked formosa because it is repeated in u. 11: morosa, Housman (which would rather mean ‘wayward’ or ‘crabbed’), dumosa, nemorosa, muscosa, and other even less probable adjectives have been suggested.

This paper is a contribution to the question of how far Polybius fulfilled that part of an historian's duty which consists of acquiring information; it gives an instance, small in itself no doubt, where he definitely neglected to obtain good information which lay to his hand, and preferred to repeat a commonplace untruth of the literary hacks.

I have never read the two great stanzas of Odes III. 3 without a feeling that the above phrase was rather inadequate, according to what I suppose to be the accepted translation. I base the word ‘accepted’ on Forcellini, and Lewis and Short, who give the reference under the head of propositum, ‘purpose,’ ‘intention,’ ‘resolution,’ ‘design.’ But the capacity of sticking to some particular purpose is not a very noble quality, and if we take the phrase in the wider sense of general tenacity of purpose, I do not feel that we get the ‘iustus’ of the ode, though we may perhaps get a person who is likely to succeed in life. Taken in this way, ‘tenax propositi’ suggests (as much as anything) the portrait of Henry VIII., with his gross face and striding legs, dominating the English Church and the High Table of Trinity. I shall perhaps be told that the context shows the meaning. It may no doubt prevent the phrase from being misleading, but it does not make it worthy of its setting. I may add that in the other two places, where I know of its occurring, it has no very lofty meaning. In Ovid Met. X. 415, ‘propositi tenax’ is used to describe the persistent efforts of Myrrha's nurse to find out what is the matter. In Quintilian XI. 1, 90, in a discourse on mild equivalents, we are told that the ‘pertinax’ may be spoken of as ‘ultra modum propositi tenax.’

My hope (Class. Rev. 34, 105) of an edition of the quotations in the Liber Glossarum has at last been realized in Professor Mountford's excellent Quotations from Classical Authors in Medieval Latin Glossaries (= Cornell Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. XXL), New York and London (Longmans, Green and Co.), 1925.

That is, Saturno Augusto sacrum. Gaius Memmius Pudens sacerdos intrauit sub iugum libens animo. Intrauit sub iugum is peculiar to this text, but it is reasonable to suppose that the plain intrauit used in other inscriptions of priests of the African Saturnus is a shorter equivalent. Professor Schulten has suggested that some symbolical act indicating the assumption of priesthood is thereby indicated. We may go a little further.