Pindos, the mountain range between Thessaly and Epeiros, is not without renown. It appears first in Pindar (Pythian ix. 15), where in its ‘storied dells’ Kreousa gave birth to Hypseus by the love of the river-god Peneios. It, or more likely the town of the same name in Doris, was known to Pindar (Pythian i. 66) as the home of the Dorians, and it appears in Aeschylus and Sophokles—in the former (Supp. 257) as the north-western boundary of Pelasgos' realm, in the latter (Fr. 249) as the source of the Acheloos. Kallimachos, Theokritos, and Orpheus refer to it, and in Latin it is at least as old as Virgil. We find it in Horace, Propertius, Ovid, Lucan, Silius, and Valerius Flaccus,3 and in the course of antiquity it acquired a reputation as a lofty, wooded mountain which persists in Claudian and through the Dark Ages. Once more it is the setting for an amour of Apollo; Paion's mother, Liagore, receives leech-craft as the price of her favours (Faerie Queene, iii. 4. 41); and the same Spenser praised the whiteness of its snow (Prothalamian, 40). Wordsworth, as he wondered at the torrent at the Devil's Bridge, asked:

‘Hath not Pindus fed thee, where the band Of Patriots scoop their freedom out, with hand Desperate as thine?’

and it was about the Pindos range that, in 1940, another band of patriots repelled the Italian invasion of their country and won the first Allied victory of World War II.

The modern miss will sometimes ask, ‘Did the ladies in ancient Greece and Rome use “make-up”?’ They most certainly did. It would, indeed, be true to say that nearly all modern artificial aids to beauty had their counterparts in classical antiquity: hair, eyebrows, eyelids, eyelashes, and cheeks all had their own ‘preparations’ guaranteed to enhance woman's natural charms.

In Homer, both sexes after washing anoint themselves with oil, but of cosmetics in the usual sense of the word there is no trace. Soon, however, the Greek ladies, finding, we are told, that the sedentary life imposed upon them by convention caused their complexions to fade, eagerly adopted those devices that the Eastern races had so long employed to add to their charms; and it is clear that the ladies of Rome became even more enthusiastic than their sisters in Athens in their endeavours to improve upon nature.

Frequently my lady did not bother to use cosmetics when at home—Quando videri vult formosa domi? Juvenal asks in disgust—but on special occasions, or when going to meet an admirer, she appeared in all her brilliance. The aid of white lead (Ψרμύθιοѵ, cerussa) was often called upon to produce a fair complexion, although its use cannot have been wholly free from risk; or a chalky powder (creta) was employed. Means of reddening the cheeks were obtained from the alkanet root (ἂγχoυνσα)—a dye which is still used to-day; from the crushed fruit of the mulberry (συκἁμινoν, morum) or the elderberry(acinus ebuli); from the poppy (papaver); and from a plant which we cannot identify (παιέρως) but which was guaranteed to give ‘that schoolgirl complexion’ a darker tint could be obtained from a composite preparation known as purpurissum.

This salutary series got off to a flying start with W. F. Witton's article upon a subject in bad need of treatment—the gerund and gerundive. Textbooks and grammars, when discussing the use of ‘gerundive attraction’, waver, through many shades of loosely expressed opinion, from a prudent silence to a complete prohibition of the use of this construction when it involves a genitive plural with nouns of the first and second (or sometimes all) declensions. The basis of this prohibition is the allegedly ugly sound of -arum -arum and -orum -orum. In connexion with this construction Witton not only perpetuated a heresy but confirmed it in clear and forthright language. He concludes his discussion with this statement: ‘Thus we arrive at the rule that in normal Latin the gerund does not govern an accusative unless for the purpose of retaining the distinctive neuter termination, as in aliquid agendo, or to avoid a sequence of genitive plurals: consiliorum tuorum cognoscendorum causa was too much of a mouthful even for Cicero.’ Let us now see what is Cicero's practice in reality.

In his notes T. E. Page often points out Virgil's ‘accommodation of sound to sense’. Postgate declares ‘Spondees are employed to express Seriousness or Melancholy’. But spondees of course are employed otherwise as well; and in general we are often warned against finding in the text what the poet did not intend. The cautioners too should beware, of missing a relevant point.

The mysterious writing on Cretan seals first attracted Arthur Evans to Crete. His own words are well worth quoting. ‘In the course of a visit to Greece in the spring of 1893 I came across some three- and four-sided stones perforated along their axis, upon which had been engraved a series of remarkable symbols. The symbols occurred in groups on the facets of the stones, and it struck me at once that they belonged to a hieroglyphic system. They were, however, quite distinct from Egyptian in character, and though they seemed to show a nearer approach to Hittite forms, it was evident that they belonged to an independent series. My inquiries succeeded in tracing these to a Cretan source. … I therefore determined to follow up my investigations on Cretan soil.’

It was towards the close of his life in 43 B.c. that Cicero wrote the three books of the de Officiis. The attractions of a philosophical treatise whose theme is moral duty are likely to appear slight to the modern reader, especially if that reader thinks its author to be merely the purveyor of second-hand ideas borrowed from Greek sources. Yet the de Officiis epitomizes, in an intensely Roman way, the political beliefs and ideals of the Senatorial order at Rome as the Republic finally succumbed to autocracy. The political philosophy of the ancients may be more immediately relevant today than their ethical speculation, for, while it is folly to interpret political activity as if the Roman Republic enjoyed a two-party system composed of left-wing populates and right-wing optimates, it is true that much of the turmoil generated during the last century of the Republic was related to proposals for agrarian reform and the redistribution of land; similarly, much of the debate currently being conducted between supporters of the rival ideologies is centred about the ownership of property and assets. Perhaps we may be encouraged to survey the de Officiis more sympathetically if we approach it as political scientists and as students of this subject mindful of the writings of another ancient, the historian Thucydides, and his opinion that, human nature being a constant, situations will repeat themselves in the same or a very similar form.

Callias, son of Hipponicus, inherited the greatest fortune of his day, lived throughout the latter half of the fifth century and the first thirty years of the fourth century, spent his money lavishly, and died poor, or at least a good deal poorer. He must have been a prominent personage in Athens, yet owing to his lack of interest in politics and war, one hears little of him in history books. He presents a small problem to the biographer: there are two sources of information about him, one friendly, one hostile, and the fitting together of the two into a portrait is an entertaining occupation.

The physical shape of Attica has not altered appreciably since ancient times; Attica is far too well founded for that in the remote geological structure of the Aegean. But Attica is a promontory, an akté, plunged in the sea at the far end of the main watershed of peninsular Greece; and filled also with abrupt and lofty mountains, which prevent it from being ‘easy to oversee’ (eusynoptos) in the sense prescribed by Aristotle for his ideal city-state. Consequently the ground-plan, the ‘shape’ of Attica on a map of Greece, has been differently interpreted by different observers.

On the modern map, based on ‘trigonometrical’ measurement of angles subtended by bases of exactly measured length, Attica appears as a wedge-shaped promontory, one side of which lies between Piraeus and C. Sunium, the other between Sunium and the bend of the coast south of Rhamnus. The angle between these two coasts is about 45 °, or half of a right angle. West of Piraeus, the island of Salamis, seen from the sea, not only looks like part of Attica, but conceals the great ingression of the Saronic Gulf into the Bay of Eleusis. And north of Rhamnus, even on the modern map, few people realize that the coast runs much more nearly west than north—bearing about 300° from Rhamnus to the Euripus Strait; so completely does Euboea insist on its immemorial connexion with Attica, and disguise the fact that from Parnassus east-ward into Attica the Greek mainland is an isthmus, lying nearly east and west, and only about 24 miles broad between the bays of Livadostro (anc. Creüsa) on the Corinthian Gulf, and Skroponeri on the Euboean channel, on the border between Boeotia and Locris.

In 1695, in the last decade of his literary activity, Dryden borrowed (as he tells us) two months from his Virgil, and published a prose translation of the Latin poem De Arte Graphicâ by the Frenchman, Charles Dufresnoy; and to it he prefixed his well-known essay, ‘A Parallel betwixt Painting and Poetry’. Among Dryden's critical writings, this may justly be regarded as the worst. Here Swift's jibe about the Prefaces seems to be justified—how they were

meerly writ at first for filling,

To raise the Volume's Price, a Shilling.

In September ad 1, on the occasion of his birthday, Augustus wrote to Gaius, his adopted son and grandson by Julia and Agrippa, complaining about his age, stating that he had