BRIEF MENTION.

In Milton's copy of Pindar preserved in the Harvard Library, there are references to Lykophron, as appears from Bibliographical Contributions ed. by JUSTIN WINSOR, No. 6 (On the Sumner Collection); and having this in mind, I missed in the Index of Authors of Dr. OSGOOD's Classical Mythology of Milton's English Poems (A. J. P. XXI 234) the name of Lykophron. True, Milton's allusions to mythology are not so recondite as Lykophron's, but they are both Alexandrian poets, though Milton's singing robes, heavily embroidered as they are, float in the empyrean while Lykophron is kept waddling on the ground by the patchwork quilt with which he has invested himself. And so I conceived the somewhat idle scheme for last summer's holiday of reading Milton and Lykophron side by side, a project that was further quickened by the appearance of Signor CIACERI'S La Alessandra di Licofrone. Testo, traduzione e commento (Catania, Giannotta, 1901). A trip to Europe, however, brushed this cobweb out of my brains with sundry others and I leave the subject to some despairing doctorand.

Few scholars now-a-days read Lykophron and almost all who do read him claim a reward of merit by writing something about him. 'Aujourd'hui,' says Croiset, cited by CIACERI, 'il n'est à peu près aucun savant qui ne recule épouvanté devant cette avalanche de phrases interminables et inintelligibles.' For my own part, I have found Lykophron taken in broken doses positively amusing. What could be more absurd, for instance, than his bombastic paraphrase of the old verse: πολλὰ μεταξὺ πέλει κύλικος καὶ χείλεος akpov, which appears in the following travesty:

ὡς πολλὰ χείλους καὶ δεπαστραίων ποτῶν

μίσῳ κυλίνδει μοῖρα παμμήστωρ βροτῶν (vv. 489-90.)

And yet there are other lines in which the mimicry of Aeschylean manner is not so bad, and one would like to call up the shade of Mr. Arnold who believed in test verses (see my Essays and Studies p. 134) and ask his judgment as to Lykophron's description of one of the grand figures in Hades, Minos, to wit:

τοῦ νεκροτάγου τὰς ἀθωπεύτους δίκας

φθιτοῖσι ῥητρεύοντος ἀστόργῳ τρόπῳ (νν. 1399-1400.)

The obscurity of Lykophron lies, of course, in the vocabulary and in the mythological allusions. Of the 3000 words, says CIACERI, which make up the 1474 verses, more than 1350 figure in Reichardt's index as poetica, rariora et audaciora and 326 are not found in other writers. In the explicatio obscurorum verborum appended to Scaliger's wonderful rendering, in which the great scholar tries to translate glossematic Greek by glossematic Latin, there are only about 140 words, and of these between a fourth and a third are conveniently taken from Festus. In spite of Cicero's unconscionable brag about the wealth of the Latin language, with which Scaliger's father, Julius Caesar, would doubtless have sympathized, Latin toils after Greek in vain. It is a queer performance, even to us who are imperfectly acquainted with Lykophron's sources, and it is amusing to recognize in one patch Hipponax, and in another Sophokles, here Aischylos and there Aristophanes, a bit of Euripides' half mocking archaisms here and an Homeric puzzle there. This industrious flea, this πόδαργος ψύλλα, (ν. 166) who keeps us guessing as to his whereabouts, has skipped over the whole range of classic Greek poetry. He has read his Pindar, as Milton found out, and the Pindaric scholar may learn something from him; and the annotator of Latin poetry might consult with profit an author whom the docti poetae of Rome may well have used as a test of their knowledge of Greek mythology,-a harder test than the Ibis of Kallimachos. At all events, if I were editing Persius again I should not fail to cite on the Prologue 9 Lykophron's λan@pov kioσav (v. 1319) which seems to have escaped Casaubon and Jahn. A chatty old Italian traveller, Pietro della Valle, tells us that when he was in Constantinople he made a great show at small cost by having his heels shod with silver horseshoes, and Lyko. phron's baser metal may serve the same end to an ambitious

commentator.

The mythology is bewildering, and to some tempers nothing can be more exasperating than the endless succession of quizzes; and yet there are glimpses that have made me at least less forlorn. So when we read of Δίσκου μεγίστου τάρροθος Κυναιθέως (ν. 400) and learn that this Aiokos, this stone which Rhea gave to Kronos in lieu of his offspring is Zeus himself, lo! out of the waves of mythology a pun emerges. Aiokos is 'Jovelet' or 'godling' or if you choose 'godkin'; and Rhea kept the word of promise to the ear and broke it to the hope. But CIACERI fails to notice this as von Holzinger failed before him.

CIACERI'S text is that of Kinkel with few, and those not very noteworthy, exceptions. His translation, though too much of a paraphrase, will be welcome to those who have not time to

puzzle out Lykophron's way of putting things or to study the elaborate commentary, which shows that, like his countrymen, the editor has tried to master all the literature-all the commentators from Potter to v. Holzinger and a goodly number of monographs among which an American scholar figures, W. N. BATES in Harvard Studies, Vol. VI p. 78. To be sure, v. Holzinger's learned work which is only six years old would be a satisfying portion to most scholars, and CIACERI, who is evidently a young man, might have waited a few years before attempting so difficult an author. Still he has gleaned here and there after v. Holzinger and his edition has its uses, so that it would be ungracious to signalize little errors, such as a reference on v. 395 to Soph. Ai. 1142, which has nothing to do with Aias, the son of Telamon or Aias the Οιλῆος ταχὺς υἱός. In the Introduction he does not undertake to commend Lykophron to the affection of scholars but insists on the importance of a better knowledge of our author than has been shown by Christ, who, says CIACERI, has asserted unreservedly, senz'altro (p. 540), that vv. 1226-1280 and vv. 1446-1451 are interpolations because they speak of the arrival of Aeneas in Latium and of the power of the Romans, things of which there could scarcely have been, according to Christ, any knowledge in Greece at the time of Lykophron. But Lykophron was the pupil of an Italiote, was himself for many years a resident of Rhegium, had made his reputation before he went to Alexandria, and one of the passages obelized seems to have been written after the victory at Sentinum (295 A. D.). But it makes one shudder to think how many mistakes there must be in every history of any literature and the attentive reader of Christ must have noticed that his pregevolle manuale is no exception.

A history of Greek literature which should have for its norm the influence of the Hellenes on English letters and English speech would reveal curious disproportions. The authors, who have perished or live on only in scant fragments, often bulk more largely than the most voluminous writers whose works have been preserved, and the semi-mythical triumphs over the historical. Demokritos and Herakleitos are household words and Arion is as familiar a name as Euripides. The one line of Epimenides of Crete, lodged in the Epistle to Titus, is as indelible as the one line of the comic poet, that has been burnt into the First Epistle to the Corinthians, and if the name of Epimenides is not so familiar as that of Pythagoras, it is because Rip Van Winkle has effaced the earlier sleeper, whereas the transmigrationist has no modern rivals. At all events it is safe to say that the story of Epimenides will always attract more readers than the story of Parmenides and that M. DEMOULIN'S prize essay on Epimenide de Crète (Bruxelles, Lamertin) has the advantage of a popular subject, though the author has handled it in the orthodox fashion of the erudite.

The preliminary study deals with the life of Epimenides in Diogenes Laertius; and what a task he undertakes who has to do with the 'sources' of that cento, USENER has set forth in his Epicurea, as we all remember. (A. J. P. X 229). According to a later investigation of the same scholar the foundation of Diogenes goes back ultimately to the Διαδοχὴ τῶν φιλοσόφων of the Alexandrian scholar, Sotion, but everybody knows what 'ultimately means. Before Sotion's work reached Diogenes it had been pawed over again and again, and into the fabric thus handled the compiler has introduced material from later authorities. A more mechanical, brainless proceeding it is hard to imagine, but there is a certain fascination in trying to follow the way in which the text has been stitched together. In the chapter consecrated to Epimenides Theopompos is the author most frequently cited, but he would be innocent who should suppose that Diogenes made any direct use of Theopompos. It was Theopompos who first treated in any detail the legend of Epimenides but Hermippos who flourished about 200 B. C., was the first to make a systematic collection of the traditions that were in circulation about the mysterious personage, and added to the story of Theopompos extracts from Timaios and Sosibios. But between Hermippos and Diogenes, there are several intermediaries. When we come next to examine with M. DEMOULIN the history of the tradition, we find that the remains of Epimenides are too doubtful or too scant to yield anything except the fact that he must have figured as an inspired prophet and a master exorcist. To Xenophanes, who flourished about 500 B. C. Epimenides was a legend and a legend which the free thinker of Kolophon could hardly have respected. Then the silence of a century or more falls on the wonder-worker. He is not mentioned either by Herodotos or Thukydides and the first trace of him is an Ionian logograph, Leandros or Maiandros, who gives nothing more than a surmise as to his date. It is not until we reach Plato that Epimenides comes out into the light, but the passage of the Laws in which he is mentioned (1, 642 D) brings him from the time of Solon, when he is supposed to have purged Athens of the Kylonian pollution, down, down to the year 500, the date of the prophecy in which he foretold the oncoming of the Persian war. Various solutions have been offered. Zeller makes Philip of Opus the scapegoat here as elsewhere. Diels supposes that Plato's Epimenides is not the Epimenides of history but the Epimenides of literature, Epimenides being a convenient sponsor for an oraculum ex eventu, and M. DEMOULIN thinks that Plato is amusing himself at the expense of the credulous and ignorant Cretan of the dialogue. The most obvious explanation, which M. DEMOULIN consigns to a footnote, is that of Rohde. The great age which Epimenides is said to have reached, 299 years, according to one estimate, would have enabled him to span a century with the greatest ease and really in all matters of chronology, Plato, being himself one of the immortals, exhibits a lightness of heart

that is most reprehensible from a prosaic point of view. But this Brief Mention has grown to unreasonable dimensions and I cannot undertake to follow M. DEMOULIN through the rest of the history of the tradition nor outline the biography of Epimenides which forms the second part. The main thesis that the author desires to uphold is the historical existence of Epimenides, the purifier of Athens from the Kylonian pollution, about whose figure have gathered the floating legends due in large measure to the inventions of Orphic and Pythagorean authors.

In Vol. X 470-480 of the Journal I gave a pretty full summary of CONSTANTIN RITTER'S Untersuchungen über Plato, the most elaborate study since Campbell's on Plato's language as a criterion of chronology. The contributions of Dittenberger, Frederking, Schanz and Gomperz have also been noticed in the Journal from time to time-cf. III 376, VI 387, VIII 506, IX 378,-and one of my former students, Dr. G. B. HUSSEY, published in X 437-444 a special treatise on the use of certain verbs of saying in Plato. But since that time the Journal has taken little notice of this line of research. Perhaps the discovery of some sad mistakes in RITTER'S statements may have disheartened me (XI 389). Perhaps I grew a little weary of the abuse of statistics in other directions (XIII 123). Perhaps the new work did not seem to be especially important. True, the appearance in 1897 of LUTOSLAWSKI'S big book, Origin and Growth of Plato's Logic, challenged my attention, heralded as it had been by sundry articles of the same author, but it did not reach me in time for effective use in the work of my Plato year and now Lutoslawski is an old story.

The caveats that have been entered against the stylometric method are not without weight and have been fairly stated in GOMPERZ'S Griechische Denker (II 233). Time is not the only element in the shifting use and my own studies elsewhere have only confirmed me in the belief that the department is often more potent than the period. A later work may have been designedly composed in the tone of an earlier dialogue; a habit may be taken up and after a while dropped. There is the retour de jeunesse so characteristic of genius; there is the inevitable question of revision, the inevitable question of Plato's combings and curlings and plaitings. But the subject has its fascination for all that and I have not been able to shut my eyes to G. JANELL'S Quaestiones Platonicae in the twenty-sixth Supplementband of the Neue Jahrbücher. I pass over the first part which gives the unavoidable review of the work that has been done down to Lutoslawski, who, by the way, has not found universal acceptance even among those who work in stylometry. 'Lutoslawski's angewandte rechnerische Methode,' says von Arnim 'ist ein Irrweg.' Still JANELL believes in spite of Zeller, (A. J. P. X 471) that there