With the chapter on "Plato and Aristotle" the author enters upon the main course of his work and describes with great skill the foundation of Greek philosophy, upon which the towering structure of later religious theory was built. From this point the book proceeds steadily and confidently toward its goal in Christianity. The chapter on the "Victory of Greece over Rome" contains much that is irrelevant; the description of early Roman religion, in particular, might be spared, since this quaint religion had no important influence on the thought of the Greco-Roman world. One would have welcomed in its stead a clear account of Jewish religious ideas, to which for some reason the author gives very slight attention. The other oriental religions, however, and their vogue in the western half of the Roman Empire are admirably described. One finds here the fulness of detail and the sympathetic treatment which he expects from a scholar who has labored diligently in this particular field. The whole second half of the book is admirably composed. The difficult problems of selection and restraint have been successfully solved; and under the author's expert guidance one feels that the mysteries and complexities of later religious philosophies are really simple and comprehensible after all. The discussion is always impartial and objective, but also always sympathetic, even in the case of the most bizarre efforts of humanity to adjust itself to the divine government of the universe. The essential lack of unity in the book and the inappropriateness of the title should be apparent from the chapter-headings in the Table of Contents when the book is first opened. But the reader becomes more convinced of these things and more regretful when he has discovered how ably and how successfully the author has handled his proper theme. One could hardly send a student to a better brief exposition of the Hellenic and pagan elements in Christian theology and of the sources of these elements in Hellenic and post-Hellenic philosophy. And it is unfortunate that the title was not so chosen as to attract the many readers who would profit by this exposition. The world needs to be better acquainted with the Hellenic element in Christianity. The Protestant cult of the Old Testament has warped the conception of Christianity in the popular mind, and Professor Moore has done a real service in setting forth clearly and dispassionately the vast debt which Christianity owes to the enlightened thought of Greece and the West. IVAN M. LINFORTH BERKELEY An Index to Facsimiles in the Palaeographical Society Publications. Arranged as a guide for students in palaeography. By LINDLEY RICHARD DEAN. Princeton: The University Library, 1914. Pp. 55. This index will be a welcome relief to those who wish to find their way through the wilderness of facsimiles published by the Palaeographical Society. It includes both the Palaeographical Society and the New Palaeographical Society publications, for which the English editors published separate indexes (1901 and 1914). The arrangement of the English indexes is as follows: I. Chronological; II. Authors and Subjects; III. Country of Origin; IV. Character of Handwriting; V. Ornamentation; VI. Scribes and Artists; VII. Materials Other than Plain Vellum; VIII. Present Owners; IX. Former Owners. Of these the Princeton index omits III, V, VI, VII, and IX. It retains the others, though in a different order; it adds one: Order of Publication. In the vast majority of cases the student of palaeography will therefore find what he wants in the new index-and in a more compact and comprehensive form. A single line is devoted to each facsimile and contains the following information: (1) author, title of work, with citation of chapter and line photographed, where feasible; (2) library where the document is preserved; (3) place of publication, i.e., series and plate; (4) language and style of writing; (5) date. This order is invariable in all the indexes. The slight inconvenience caused by the fact that the alphabetical order is determined by the initial word of the item in one list only is more than overbalanced by the gain in accuracy and uniformity. The libraries are arranged in general according to the town or city, but the British Museum is listed under B; the Egyptian Exploration Fund, under London; and Westminster Abbey, under W. A few corrections should be made. The Oxyrhynchus Livy, listed under Egyptian Exploration Fund (Pap. 658), now belongs to the British Museum (Pap. 1532); the British Museum Pap. 729 is now dated 672? instead of c. 577; Laurentianus 32, 16 is now dated 1280 instead of 1281. In the list of abbreviations read Pluteus for Plutus. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO CHARLES H. BEESON Roman Cursive Writing. By HENRY BARTLETT VAN HOESEN. Princeton University Press, 1915. Pp. viii+268. This book, which is an enlargement of a Princeton doctoral dissertation, is an important contribution to Latin palaeography. The writer has studied practically all the extant material known up to the year 1910 in original, photograph, or facsimile. The new Egyptian material, dating from the first to the fifth century, has at last made it possible to reconstruct the process of the development of the Roman cursive by closing the gap long existing between the wax tablets and the Ravenna papyri. The results will not be final, for new discoveries will alter the picture here and there; but in the main we can now follow the evolution of the script from the beginning of our era to the middle of the seventh century, which the author has set as the limit of his investigation. The initial chapter contains a historical sketch of the study of palaeography, a discussion of the names of the various scripts and the theories as to their origin, with full citations of the literature. The second chapter (pp. 21-31) deals with the epigraphical material. Here the alphabets are treated collectively. The third chapter (pp. 32-224), dealing with the papyri and ostraka, forms the bulk of the book. The documents (about 150) are arranged generally in chronological order, though of course the date is often only approximate or tentative. Under each papyrus the author gives, where possible, a description of the document, its provenance, the contents, and a bibliography. The abbreviations and ligatures are listed and the alphabet is described. This description is supplemented by 18 plates containing 41 alphabets interspersed through the chapter. Chapter iv (pp. 225-241) contains an excellent summary of the history of the cursive alphabet. There are three appendixes. The first gives a list (incomplete) of Greek papyri that contain Latin subscriptions. The second contains the bibliography (also incomplete). The third gives a list of abbreviations found in Latin papyri that can be dated. This is an extract from the Transactions of the American Philological Association, XLV (1913). Four plates A-D give tables of alphabets of the epigraphical material, and six more contain alphabets of various papyri. Reference is constantly made to the plates in the body of the book. In the bibliography one misses Kopp's great work, Palaeographia critica, and the publications of the New Palaeographical Society; Wattenbach's Scriftwesen should be cited in the third edition and Arndt-Tangl in the fourth-the fourth edition is referred to in a footnote on p. 17. A few items consist of an author's name alone, without the name of the work, the date or place of publication. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO CHARLES H. BEESON T. Lucretius Carus. Of the Nature of Things. A metrical transla- Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men a Latinist might question the italicized words, for if they were translated back into the Latin it is improbable that the retranslator would hit on the Lucretian words; and yet those very Latin words are integral parts of the poem. The distinction between mater and genetrix, Roma and Aeneadae, cara and alma, signa and stellae, is almost the difference between prose and poetry, and the Latin words taken together strike a peculiar stylistic note. One may adequately translate a simple statement of fact like Macrobius' triplicabis septem et faciunt viginti unum, but even statements of fact have frequently set a trap, in which, by reason of the ambiguity of English words, the unwary reader is caught. Thus in a recent magazine article Aristotle's remark that money is "barren" is given an entirely false gloss. Translation and interpretation must go together, and the most direct path to correct interpretation lies in the knowledge of the original language from which the translation has been made. Yet those who are ignorant of foreign languages ought not to be debarred wholly from a knowledge of foreign literature; but let them not think for a moment that they are getting the real thing. The present vogue of translations and the efforts to multiply them may in the end weaken the reputation of classical literature or give a false conception of the value of the second-rate authors. Munro's translation of Lucretius is a condensed commentary and quite unreadable. Bailey's is a fine example of academic English; the earlier English renderings for one reason and another do not at present merit consideration. Professor Leonard's version is noteworthy in many respects; he uses clear-cut English for faded Latin metaphors-"untangle" for expediam; homely phrasing-"puts the fat on goats and quails"; archaisms"to dure and dreer the mighty forces"; and there are many examples of boldness and simplicity, of roughness of meter and ruggedness, and he has often been happy in imitating the sweep of the hexameter-all of which are Lucretian qualities. On the other hand, at times his verse lacks the stateliness and sublimity of the original; he is too literally etymological, as "in these my country's leaves" (chartis), and repeatedly, as might be expected, he adds to the Lucretian thought, as "telluric soil" for tellus, and “curst Lucanian oxen "where "curst" is not in the Latin. Intruded metaphors are not uncommon: "vain dingdong" for sonitus, "blue deep of heaven" for caerula caeli. Actual errors are few and some perhaps debatable, such as "navy's admiral" in v. 1227, "shining" for nitentibus in i. 372. Perhaps he has overshot the mark in "ether's skiey coasts," "pell-mell horses," and "fire ball" for faces. But there are many happy turns and some strong lines: "a weary while to tell the whole," "by the prodigious reaches of the sky," "interstices and paths, coherencies," "the lack-speech years," "of mighty menacings forevermore." The close of the fourth book gives the only close translation and interpretation in English of an important part of the poem that has been neglected for obvious reasons. The first three hundred lines of Book v are very well done. It is to be regretted that Giussani's text has been followed with its numerous and generally unaccepted transpositions. The book may be commended to Latinists and the general public. It is unquestionably the best metrical translation of Lucretius into English that has yet appeared. W. A. MERRILL UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA The Diamond. A Study in Chinese and Hellenistic Folk-Lore. By BERTHOLD LAUFER. Field Museum of Natural History, Publication 184, Anthropological Series, Vol. XV, No. 1. Chicago, 1915. Pp. 75. The first fifteen pages of this learned study are the ones of chief interest to students of the classics. In the Memoirs of the Four Worthies or Lords of the Liang Dynasty, written by Chang Yüe (667-730 A.D.), a story is told about an island in the Western Sea (Mediterranean) where there is an inaccessible ravine in which precious stones lie. The inhabitants throw flesh into this ravine. Birds pick up the flesh in their beaks and as they fly, they drop the precious stones. The men of the country are clever workers of gems, which are called Fu-lin after the name of the country. Fu-lin is the Chinese name for some part of the Roman Empire, probably Syria. A legend similar in all its essential features is found in Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia in Cyprus in the fourth century. Dr. Laufer points out the close likeness of this legend to the story of the Arabians and their curious method of obtaining cinnamon told by Herodotus iii. 111, and to a somewhat similar tale in Pliny N.H. xxxviii. 33, but prudently refrains from attempting to link them closely. The source of the legend he finds in the Hellenistic Orient. To one already impressed with the fact that Hellenistic artistic motives influenced early Chinese and even Japanese art in a marked degree, the thesis is in itself reasonable, and Dr. Laufer's proofs are convincing. There are two further points of interest in this study for the classicist and archaeologist. The author is convinced (pp. 42-46) that the adamas of the ancients was actually the diamond, but concludes that ancient gemworkers did not understand the process of cutting and polishing diamonds to add to their luster (pp. 46-50). The study contains other information which will be attractive chiefly to Sinologists and to those interested in the history of the diamond. In this pamphlet Dr. Laufer has presented another useful link of the broken chain of evidence which connects Hellenistic-Roman civilization with the Far East. Curiously enough the classical archaeologist and the classicist seem to regard the evidence upon this new sphere of Greek influence either with suspicion or with apathy. UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN W. L. WESTERMANN |