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Thesaurus Linguae Latinae Editus Auctoritate et Consilio Academiarum Quinque Germanicarum Berolinensis Gottingensis Lipsiensis Monacensis Vindobonensis. Vol. I, Fasc. I. Leipzig, Teubner, 1900. 7 marks.

It was inevitable that the laudatory epithets commonly affected by literary criticism in these days of systematic over-valuation should become as empty and colorless as the books which they ought never to have been forced to describe. But classical scholars may take pride in the thought that the much abused 'monumental' resumes all its proper value and significance in being applied to this great work of their department. The title itself, in its severe classical simplicity, indeed, in its very typography, has every right to suggest prototypes in marble and bronze. It is inscribed on a work truly monumental whether we consider its growth, proportions, importance or permanence. Nor do I now recall any single achievement of scholarship so utterly beyond the possibility of accomplishment by any one man and, at the same time, so distinctly and literally the work of a nation.

The Thesaurus was dreamed of, even cast in outline, by Friedrich August Wolf in the closing hours of the eighteenth century. One hundred years later, in the closing hours of the nineteenth century his dream begins to assume reality in the first section of a work which had already lingered for nearly half a generation in the sphere of the more vivid future. An account' of Wolf's plans and views was published in 1820, four years before his death. If their realization then would have prevented their realization now, we may be thankful that he met the usual disappointment of those whose ideas are so far in advance of their time. Comparative philology, historical grammar and syntax, scientific criticism of texts, epigraphy-all that makes the foundation and value of a great thesaurus as we understand it—were in their infancy. Thousands of inscriptions were yet to see the light, the riddle of Plautus was yet to be solved, critical editions did not exist. But, although it bore no fruit at the time, the great idea of the founder of modern scholarship was never forgotten, and with the rapid advance of philology the need of its realization became more and more urgent.

1 See his Kleine Schriften II, p. 1192 f.

The second attempt' came when Maximilian II of Bavaria offered ten thousand gulden to defray the expenses of such a publication. Karl Halm of Munich then invited Ritschl of Bonn and Fleckeisen of Frankfort to join with him in a committee of arrangements. Buecheler, whose ability and scholarship were supplemented by youth-an indispensable qualification for a task which could not be finished in less than twenty years-was selected as the future editor. The committee met at Bonn to discuss and mature their plans on the first of April, 1857. Unfortunately, the traditional associations with that particular day of April were ominous of the fate of those plans in the immediate future. The next year Halm embodied the matter in a paper read before the Philological Association in Vienna. The character and scope of the work as he then presented them were, in the main, those which are now adopted. The plan was received with marked approval, competent scholars rapidly presented themselves as co-workers, in many cases, even the business arrangements with Teubner had been made for the complete lexicons of single authors. These were the necessary preliminary and foundation of a thesaurus, as Wolf himself had pointed out sixty years before. But unexpected difficulties encountered by the committee were followed by political complications. The approaching war with Italy forced Maximilian to withdraw the promised financial support, and the projected work had to be abandoned. Again it was well. Migne's Patrologia would have been the basis of Christian Latinity, the corpus of inscriptions had not been begun, the Latin glossaries were not available, and how many really critical texts of even the standard Latin authors can be dated prior to 1860?

The third, and finally successful, struggle for the Thesaurus did not begin until 1882, the year that von Woelfflin succeeded Halm and Halm's ambitions at Munich. In that year Professor Woelfflin published his Aufgaben der lateinischen Lexikographie (Rhein. Mus. 37, 83-123). Its immediate result in the fall of 1883 was the first number of his Archiv für lateinische Lexikographie und Grammatik mit Einschluss des älteren Mittellateins, als Vorarbeit zu einem Thesaurus Linguae Latinae mit Unterstützung der k. bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften herausgegeben. This well-known journal has had the greatest influence in promoting and crystallizing the plan of the Thesaurus as now adopted.

It was felt to begin with that as a private enterprise the Thesaurus was an impossibility. It also became clear that the combined financial resources available to the Berlin and Munich

1 M. Hertz, Verhand. der Philologenversammlung zu Görlitz, vol. 40 (1889), p. I f.; Ber. Berl. Akad. 1891, p. 671 f.; Woelfflin, Arch. 1, 2; 2, 485; 7, 509; Heerdegen, Lat. Lex.,3 p. 520 (Müller's Hdb., vol. 2).

2 Verhand. der Philologenvers. 18 (1859), p. 6; Heerdegen, 1. c. 3 See Woelfflin, Archiv 7, 507.

academies would be insufficient. Finally, in 1889, Martin Hertz, in his opening address before the Philological Association at Görlitz' suggested the plan of enlisting in the enterprise not only the three great academies of Berlin, Munich, and Vienna, but also other learned societies. It seems to have been partly in consequence of Hertz's suggestions that the Prussian minister of education held a conference at Berlin on the 15th of February, 1891, to which Hertz, Mommsen, Vahlen, and Diels were invited. It was the general impression then that the Prussian government would supply the necessary means and Hertz was delegated to prepare a memorial of the significance, history, organization, and probable expense, of the Thesaurus. His results were presented after consultation with Buecheler, Dziatzko, von Hartel, H. Keil, C. F. W. Müller, von Woelfflin and Teubner. They appeared in the Sitzungsberichte of the Berlin Academy, 1891, p. 671 f. and form an important document in the case.

The next two years were spent in discussion and preparation. Late in 1893 a plan based upon the outline presented to the committee by Professors Buecheler and Woelfflin was finally agreed upon. It was estimated that the Thesaurus would be completed in twenty years. Of this period, five to seven years had to be set aside for the collection of material, before an article could be written or a line published. The net expense, reckoned at about five hundred thousand marks, was assumed by the five great learned academies of Berlin, Göttingen, Leipzig, Munich, and Vienna. These are represented by a joint committee of management and supervision, consisting of Diels, von Wilamowitz, Leo, Ribbeck-and after Ribbeck's death in 1898, Brugmann-von Woelfflin, von Hartel, and afterwards, by co-optation, Buecheler. The last details were settled at the Göttingen conference of 1894, and in July of the same year the actual collection of material began.

The so-called Meusel system was the one adopted. A slip containing ten to fourteen lines of text was mechanically reproduced as many times as there were words in the passage. In number one, the first word was underlined, in number two, the second, and so on. When the entire text was exhausted the slips were arranged alphabetically in drawers and the result was a complete index verborum et locorum of the author. Moreover, not only the best texts were used, but all texts were revised and, whenever necessary, were furnished with brief marginal annotations by competent authorities.

In this way was compiled a complete index of all Latinity, including inscriptions, down to the Antonines. From that period until the seventh century, which is about the time when the oral tradition of cultivated Latin was finally broken, only certain authors, for example, Apuleius, Commodianus, the Vulgate, and part of Tertullian, have a complete index. To these should be

1 Verhandl. der Philologenvers., vol. 40, p. 1. 2 Gröber, Archiv, I, p. 35 f.

added all the poetical inscriptions and the Latin glossaries published by Loewe and Goetz. Others, for example, Ammianus Marcellinus, have a complete index of words but not of instances. The remainder were "excerpiert," that is, examined by the most competent authorities and an index made of whatever, in their best judgment, would be of any value for lexical purposes. Not only usage but, which is equally important, non-usage, was noted. The committee was, of course, the first to acknowledge that contraction to "excerpts," even for the latest period of Latinity is to be regretted. To err is human, and no human learning may foresee which words can become all-important in some future investigation. But time as well as money have their limitations. Finally, some "excerpts" were made from the usage of scholastic Latin in modern times.

Enthusiasm, industry, and an excellent organization made it possible to complete this stage of the great task in the fall of 1899, within six months of the estimated minimum of time. The two centres of storage and arrangement had been Göttingen and Munich, but it now became clear that, as long as the material was divided, the purpose of it would, in large measure, be defeated. The Göttingen half was therefore transported to Munich and the whole placed in the "Bureau of the Thesaurus," four rooms in the third story of the Munich Academy. The slips, of which there are more than four and a half millions, are arranged alphabetically by authors. The authors are arranged in chronological order. Three thousand drawers, each containing fifteen hundred slips, are required.

The second stage, compilation and publication, formally began on the first of October, 1900. The editor in chief is Dr. F. Vollmer, already known for his edition of the Silvae of Statius. He will devote his entire attention to the work until it is through the press. He and his associate Dr. Oscar Hey, former secretary of the managing committee, are assisted by Doctors G. Dittmann, W. Bannier, W. Otto, A. Klotz, E. Lommatsch, P. Rabbow, E. Diehl, G. Lehnert, A. von Mess, H. Oertel, K. Prinz and E. Bickel. Etymology and derivation are in the hands of R. Thurneysen and W. Schulze, Romance relations and connections, in those of W. Meyer-Lübke.

Volume I, part 1, and volume II, part 1, have already appeared1 and others will follow regularly and as rapidly as possible. When completed, which cannot be earlier than 1915, the work will consist of one hundred and twenty-five of these parts, forming altogether twelve volumes of about a thousand pages each.2

1It was decided to publish the volumes in pairs in order to avoid the delay otherwise certain to be caused by the length and difficulty of some articles as compared with others, Dr. Lommatsch, for example, had to give eight months to the compilation of Ab.

2 The mathematically inclined may be interested to learn that, as each folio contains 83,000 letters and each part will average fifteen folios, Teubner's outlay, in the matter of type-setting alone, will have been upwards of 160,000,000 letters, by the time the Thesaurus is completed.

In the brief but sufficient introduction of two pages giving an account of the work and signed by the five academies one seems to recognize the elegant Latin of Professor Buecheler who, officially at least, is the one surviving link with the gallant attempt of 1858. Next follows an alphabetical list of Latin authors together with the editions used and the roll of scholars who prepared them for the card-index. The text is handsomely printed in double columns and, for convenience of reference, the lines are numbered. One observes with pleasure that the articles are signed by their compilers and that the honor of the first article, a prima littera, was given to Professor Woelfflin.

The method of arrangement and development followed by the compilers, which is the final result of years of discussion' will be better understood by the quotation of a sample article than by description. Within the space at my command, perhaps the best for this purpose is Prinz's treatment (vol. 2, pp. 238 and 239) of apiscor.

"apiscor, aptus sum, apisci. [cf. c. ind. apnōti 'adipiscitur,' med. apayeiti 'contingit, adipiscitur, fortasse c. apio apere. Th.] PAVL. FEST. II aptus cum propria significatione intellegatur, poni tamen solet pro adepto, sicut apisci pro adipisci. Non. 74 apisci : adipisci. 68 apisci invenire. GLOSS. apiscitur: consequitur; apisci adipisci; apiscendae Toù éπITUXEîv. Schmalz Zeitschr. f. d. Gymnasialw., 1881, p. 104. Kalb, Juristenlatein, p. 11 sqq. Vox adamata Tacito, qui ea tamen nusquam usus est nisi in annalibus. TER. Phorm. 406 apiscier sine iusta causa legitur ex Bentlei coniectura pro tradita forma adipiscier.

I deponens: I proprie: Acc. trag. 436 obviam ense it (ens. id codd.), quem (que codd.) advorsum aptus alter in promptu Occupat. PLAVT. Epid. 668 sine me hominem apisci. SIS. hist. 94 postero die legatos Iguvium redeuntis apiscitur. LVCR. 6, 1235 nullo cessabant tempore apisci[t] ex aliis alios avidi contagia morbi. LVCR. 5, 808 crescebant uteri terram radicibus apti. Cic. Att. 8, 14, 3 eum nescio quo penetrasse itineribus occultandi sui causa an maris apiscendi (adipiscendi M2). 2 translate: EPIGR. inc. Gell. 1, 24, 3 (Plauto tribuit Gellius) postquam est mortem aptus Plautus, Comoedia luget. TITIN. com. 2 prius quam auro privatae purpuramque aptae simus (abtesimus, subtesimus codd.; purpuraque ap te Bücheler). PACVV. trag. 168 (NON. 234 aptus pro adeptus) quod ego in acie † celebro obiectans vitam bellando aptus sum. PLAVT. Rud. 17 litem apisci postulant peiurio. Capt. 775 hereditatem sum aptus. TER. Haut. 693 deorum vitam apti sumus. LVCIL. 542 ut ego effugiam quod te inprimis cupere apisci intellego. 757 si id quod concupisset non aptus <foret>. Cic. leg. 1, 52 ad finem bonorum, ... quoius

1Heerdegen, o. c.: W. Streitberg, Indog. Forsch., vol. XI, Anz., p. 272 Brugmann, id., vol. X, Anz., p. 371; Diels, Elementum, etc.