This article is chiefly concerned with a well-known passage of that extraordinary miscellany, the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus, in which the author follows his usual habit of illustrating a thesis by quoting from comedy. In the pages considered here (vi. 267e–270a) he draws his examples from a series of plays now lost—the Plutuses of Cratinus, the Beasts of Crates, the Amphictyons of Telecleides, the Miners and Persians attributed to Pherecrates, the Sirens of Nicophon, and the Thurio-Persians of Metagenes. This string of quotations, full of cookery-book vocabulary, constitutes our main evidence about the comic poets' treatment of the theme of the land of Cockaigne, Schlaraffenland, the idler's or glutton's paradise. On the basis of this evidence many sweeping generalizations on this subject have been made, some of them so wide of the mark that it may perhaps be worth while to attempt one more review of a passage already often discussed, in the hope of arriving at a fresh assessment of its true significance.

Discussion of such a passage usually involves study of the extracts cited, and leads on to the hazardous business of trying to form some conception of the plays from which they are drawn. But before one follows this well-trodden path there is a more general question to be considered, the answer to which may give some guidance on the way. What is it that Athenaeus' quotations illustrate? The speaker in this part of the symposium, the philosopher Democritus of Nicomedia, has been discoursing about servants, and has already cited the Savages of Pherecrates to show that there was a time when people had no slaves, but did all their own work (263 b).

Servius in his note on Aeneid iv. 92 comments that Virgil uses the epithet Saturnia of Iuno only ‘when she is about to do mischief, for he knows that the planet Saturn has a baleful influence’. An astrological interpretation of Virgil is doubtless interesting, but if, as none will question, Virgil is a poet before he is an astrologer, the only satisfactory explanation of an epithet is one that elucidates its poetic significance. An examination of Virgil's use of the epithet Saturnia does, I think, make it clear both that the epithet has poetic significance and that its significance is intimately bound up with Iuno's role in the poem. Her intervention in the action of the Aeneid determines that action in a way that distinguishes it from the interventions of the various gods and goddesses in the actions of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and even from the interventions of other gods in the Aeneid itself. Venus behaves in the Aeneid in much the same way as the Homeric gods and goddesses do. She is at hand to perform little miracles for her son, as Athena was at hand to help Odysseus or Telemachus. Now it is a striking fact that the epithets used of Venus in the Aeneid have no special significance. On twenty-one occasions she is referred to as Venus without an epithet, once she is Venus aurea, and four times she is Cytherea. These are all conventional, and agree well with the conventional nature of Venus' intervention in the action.

The medical literature of the Greeks from the classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods is very full and of inexhaustible interest for the history of science, but its public, even among scholars, is small, particularly in Great Britain. On the theoretical and technical side independent study is likely to remain the preoccupation of a few, but on the practical and human side there is abundant material of historical and social interest that deserves to be more widely known. Among that material the present article is concerned only with the evidence from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., the first age of scientific medicine among the Greeks. Some is to be found in commonly read authors, such as Plato, but for fuller details the only contemporary source of much value is the Corpus Hippocraticum, the mixed collection of medical writings from these centuries which has reached us under the name of Hippocrates, but in fact contains treatises, essays, pamphlets, and notes by the most various authors, as their styles and contents show.

For English readers by far the most useful edition of any large part of the Corpus is the four volumes of the Loeb Hippocrates—i, ii, and iv by Dr. W. H. S. Jones, and iii by Dr. E. T. Withington, containing the surgical books. But this is not exhaustive; for the complete Corpus the most recent edition is still the ten volumes of Émile Littré, Œuvres complètes d'Hippocrate (Paris, 1839–61). This, like the Loeb, has translations opposite the text, introductions, and a few illustrations; it is now a rare book and still valuable in spite of its age.

‘In the last lines of the poem he [Aeneas] killed Turnus, after relenting, just for revenge, in memory of Pallas, whom Turnus had killed, and because he saw the belt of Pallas, which Turnus was wearing. It was sheer vindictive vengeance. At the end of the Aeneid, Rome is sure; but we do not know that Dido would have liked the new Aeneas as much as the old.’ (Jackson Knight, Roman Vergil, p. 142.)

If the death of Turnus is an act of sheer vindictive vengeance which assures the foundation of Rome, then the Aeneid is, ultimately, a national epic, no less, but no more. Is this interpretation valid?

It is true that, after a moment of relenting in which the life of Turnus hangs in the balance, Aeneas sees the belt of Pallas, and, overcome with fury, kills Turnus. This is an act of vengeance, but what for?

The reference to the belt of Pallas leads us back to the tenth book. The death of Pallas at the hands of Turnus is described, not as an event of importance in itself, but in close parallelism and contrast to the death of young Lausus at the hands of Aeneas. These two deaths, which are the first outstanding events of the war, are carefully introduced: the book opens with a council of the gods, the return of Aeneas, a catalogue of the Etruscan forces which he is bringing with him, his encounter with the nymphs who warn him of the situation, and finally his landing.

The Polish nation adopted Christianity in A.D. 966, but the new faith was very slow in reaching the people, as the services were all in Latin and the clergy were unacquainted with the language of the country. Even the elementary schools were conducted in Latin. The pupils sat in a hut on the bare earthen floor in summer and on bundles of straw in winter.

Except in the institutions in which the instructors were immigrant Germans, where the instruction was given in German, Latin was the only language used in the schools of Poland. The Latin Psalter was the only book in the whole school; the pupils had no exercise books; but they managed to learn some grammar and arithmetic and sang the Latin songs used in the services of the Church. In these circumstances education could make but little progress. Before the end of the thirteenth century the higher clergy issued an edict forbidding the appointment of any person who did not know the Polish language, and enforced the decree with all the authority of the Church; but, as in other European countries, Latin was the official language of the Polish University. The Academy of Cracow was founded by Casimir the Great and raised to the status of a University in 1400, richly endowed by the young Queen Jadwiga, who at her death bequeathed to it all her jewels.

In the sixteenth century the University attained great fame, and Germans, Czechs, Hungarians, and Swiss came in numbers to hear the lectures of the professors, especially the great astronomer Copernicus.

The men of the Renaissance looked to classical antiquity for models not only of literary elegance but also of conduct to imitate and outrival. Even Hernán Cortés and his companions were heartened in their struggles by the examples of the classical world, as is clear from the account of one of them, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who was not a literary man and wrote his True History of the Events of the Conquest of New Spain in protest against the conventional distortions of the professional historians.

When Cortés proposed to his followers the burning of their boats, which would prevent anyone from slinking back to Cuba and secure the additional strength of the sailors but at the same time meant throwing off the authority of the Governor of Cuba, he first emphasized that his company must look for aid to God alone and then ‘drew many comparisons with the heroic deeds of the Romans’. They replied in the words of Julius Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon,1 that the die was cast (ch. 59). The comparison with antiquity was later used against Cortés by seven fainthearts who complained that not even the Romans or Alexander of Macedon or any other famous captains whom the world had known had ventured to advance with so small an army against such vast populations. Cortés admitted this, but retorted that with God's help the history books would say far more about them than about their predecessors (ch. 69). His fondness for comparisons with the Romans was parodied when he overcame the forces of Narvaéez sent after him by the Governor, for a negro jester cried out that the Romans had never done such a feat (ch. 122).