TACITUS. ANNALS, XI. 27. HAUD sum ignarus fabulosum visum iri tantum ullis mortalium securitatis fuisse in civitate omnium gnara et nihil reticente, nedum consulem designatum cum uxore principis, prædicta die, adhibitis qui obsignarent, velut suscipiendorum liberorum causa convenisse, atque illam audisse auspicum verba, subisse, sacrificasse apud deos; discubitum inter convivas, oscula complexus, noctem denique actam licentia conjugali. All the commentators on this passage are dissatisfied with the word subisse and busy themselves with conjectural emendations. Thus it has been proposed to insert templa, ædis, genialem torum, or jugum; or to read, in place of subisse, nupsisse or suffisse. Not one of these corrections seems to us to carry conviction. We are inclined to keep the text as it stands, and to repeat verba mentally from the preceding clause, supposing that subire verba may be used as the correlative of the common phrase præire verba. The words audisse auspicum verba, subisse, will thus refer to the repetition of concepta verba in the ceremony of confarreatio. HENRY JACKSON. THUCYDIDES II. 90. Οἱ δὲ Πελοποννήσιοι, ἐπειδὴ αὐτοῖς οἱ ̓Αθηναῖοι οὐκ ἐπέπλεον ἐς τὸν κόλπον καὶ τὰ στενὰ, βουλόμενοι ἄκοντας ἔσω προαγαγεῖν αὐτοὺς, ἀναγόμενοι ἅμα ἕῳ ἔπλεον, ἐπὶ τεσσάρων ταξάμενοι τὰς ναῦς, ἐπὶ τὴν ἑαυτῶν γῆν ἔσω ἐπὶ τοῦ κόλπου, δεξίῳ κέρᾳ ἡγουμένῳ, ὥσπερ καὶ ὥρμουν· ἐπὶ δ ̓ αὐτῷ εἴκοσιν ἔταξαν τὰς ἄριστα πλεούσας, ὅπως, εἰ ἄρα νομίσας ἐπὶ τὴν Ναύπακτον αὐτοὺς πλεῖν ὁ Φορμίων καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπιβοηθῶν ταύτῃ παραπλέοι, μὴ διαφύγοιεν πλέοντα τὸν ἐπίπλουν σφῶν οἱ ̓Αθηναῖοι ἔξω τοῦ ἑαυτῶν κέρως, ἀλλ ̓ αὗται αἱ νῆες περικλῄσειαν. Dr Arnold remarks upon this passage-"The Scholiast says that ènì is here used for Tapá. It would be better to say that ἐπὶ it has a mixed signification of motion towards a place, and neighbourhood to it; expressing that the Peloponnesians sailed towards their own land (i. e. towards Corinth, Sicyon, and Pellene, to which places the greater number of the ships belonged; compare chapp. 9, 3 and 85) instead of standing over to the opposite coast, which belonged to their enemies: and at the same time kept close upon their own land, in the sense of ἐπὶ with a dative case.” Mr Grote rejects this interpretation for the following reasons : 1. Corinth and Sicyon were so far from the scene of the action that Thucydides was not likely to mark direction by reference to them. 2. Only a part of the fleet came from those cities, several of the Peloponnesian ships belonging to Elis and Leucas, and many to towns not lying in the line of the Isthmus. 3. Tì with an accusative of locality naturally expresses motion towards or against, not motion upon. 4. If the Peloponnesian fleet kept close along the coast of Peloponnesus, there was nothing in its movements to alarm Phormio for the safety of Naupactus or to draw him against his will into the strait. 5. The Peloponnesians did not wish to sail eastward into the open gulf, as they would thus have given Phormio the room necessary for those nautical manœuvres in which he was so much their superior. These arguments have always seemed to me conclusive against Dr Arnold's interpretation, in which Mr Shilleto apparently acquiesces. On the other hand Mr Grote is clearly wrong in translating Tv čavτŵv yŵv “the land of the Athenians," as has been shown by Mr Shilleto in his well known pamphlet. If then, on the one hand Mr Grote's is the right conception of the Peloponnesian manœuvre, and on the other the words in the text do not bear his interpretation, it is worth while to consider whether they can be emended. Mr Grote's argument seems to indicate that the error is in the word avrov. The only corrections of it which I find proposed by the commentators are αὐτῶν mentioned by Mr Shilleto), and Ναυπακτίων (Krüger). Either of these makes sense of the passage, but avrov is bald, and NavTaкTiwv is too wide a deviation from the reading of the manuscripts. I venture to suggest έναντίαν. This easy alteration gives the required sense in the form which we should expect Thucydides to use in describing the manœuvre as planned and executed by the Peloponnesians. Moreover the phrase ἐπὶ τὴν ἐναντίαν γῆν is in exact accordance with the phrase ἐπὶ τὴν Ναύπακτον in the succeeding sentence, which describes the effect which the movement was intended to have, and had, upon the operations of Phormio. HENRY JACKSON. PROFESSOR CONINGTON. THE readers and wellwishers of our Journal, while sharing in the universal regret for the death of Professor Conington, have a special cause to lament the loss of one who had been among the ablest and most zealous contributors to the present, as well as to the former series, and who we fondly hoped would long have continued to lend to this work his name and learning and ability. About the very time that the news reached us of his death, there came into our hands two books, his own translation just published of the satires and epistles of Horace, and Nauck's new edition of the Fragments of Euripides. The learned Editor makes honourable mention and no slight use of a paper by Prof. Conington that appeared in the old Journal fifteen years ago. These two productions, so different in kind, are striking examples of the great range and variety of his work, and of its excellence as well. For, backed by the opinion of those on whose taste and judgment he relies, the writer of this notice does not hesitate to say that he believes this Horace to be on the whole perhaps the best and most successful translation of a Classic that exists in the English language. The author in his preface to this his latest work speaks doubtfully of its claims to success, and thinks that Gifford's Juvenal is probably the best version of a classic in our language. We assert our belief that Horace is more difficult to translate than Juvenal, and that his translation is more faithful, more equal, more brilliant even, than Gifford's. One is almost astounded at Prof. Conington's power and fertility, when one remembers that within the last six or seven years he had begun and completed translations of almost all Horace, the whole of the Aeneid, and one half of the Iliad, the last a tribute of duty and affection paid to the memory of a lost friend. All these translations, though opinions will differ as to their relative merits, are excellent in their kind, and all are composed in elaborate rhymed verse. Just think of the time it took so ready and practised a writer as Pope to translate the Iliad. Yet, strange to say, we can assert on our own knowledge that Conington looked on these translations almost as 'parerga,' and that they occupied but a small portion even of these six or seven years. For the last fifteen years he had performed the duties of his professorship with a laborious fidelity that would have left an ordinary man time for little else. Yet during that same period he had brought almost to its completion his voluminous edition of Virgil, which displays a minute diligence, as well as a fine taste, a delicate discrimination, and a mastery of language, which (experto credite) it requires long study properly to appreciate. We are greatly mistaken if for years to come it does not leave its mark on all subsequent editions of classical authors, published in this country: a good criterion of genuine power. He died at the age of 44 and seems always to have been troubled by a certain constitutional inertness which often rendered exertion oppressive. Yet what we have mentioned is but a part of the work which he achieved. While yet a Bachelor, he published a careful edition and verse translation of the Agamemnon, and in 1857 a most elaborate edition of the Choephoroe, which by some caprice of fortune never had the success it merited. He was fond of referring to this, and would assert with the candour which so marked him that he thought this the best of all his works in that kind. And in truth he was always yearning to be again at Aeschylus, his 'primus amor', which he would have liked to be his 'cura recens', his Nemesis, as well as his Delia. But duty sternly forbad. Yet all these varied literary occupations were insufficient to satisfy his craving for knowledge and improvement. His various reviews and articles, extending over many years, prove what an enlightened sympathy he felt with the literary, political and theological movements of his time, a sympathy ever |