not very consistent professor of a philosophy to which Horace did not assent, we may see that a previous butt was being made the subject of some further banter. We do not know much of Iccius, but clearly Horace rallied him good-naturedly, and as he is indicated by the poet to have been a dependant of Agrippa, the advice to accommodate Pompeius Grosphus," who would be sure only to ask for what was becoming (the trifle that he had set his heart upon being the imperial lady who became Agrippa's wife) the lines may have seemed to the first readers of the Epistles as clever a hit as anything in the volume. The remainder of the piece accords well with such an interpretation.

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92. On No. 13 to Vinius Asella a remark elicited by Sellar's observation that the books he is to carry are not sermones but carmina is all that is necessary.

The Three Books are in my opinion there referred to, and the difficulty found by Sellar as to the arduous nature of the journey indicated, is swept away if the publication did not take place in B.C. 23, when Augustus was in Rome, but three years later, when he was absent in the East, and to reach him Vinius would not at most have to travel from the Sabine farm to the capital, but from Rome to Brundisium (past Lanuvium, see my notes on III. 27) and thence by sea to Samos or Greece.

93. On Epistle 14 you have yourself written. I would only add here my reasons for accepting your interpretation of the word "moratur " (in some of the MSS. "moretur "). In the first place, Horace does not say—as he is so often rendered--that his "pietas," and "cura" detain him in Rome. That is pure assumption. Neither does he mention the Aelii who bore to the agnomen Lamia. Their inclusion in this galère may be due to a deduction not even so logical as that of the fond mother whose son could not be drinking by nights because he was " always so thirsty in the morning." On the other hand, your contention that, as in the 5th line Horace slips into the third person in speaking of himself, so he balances this in the next one by a similar mode of indicating the person addressed, has substance, and congruity with his style. When this is fortified by the knowledge that Horace frequently uses "moror," as we use the corresponding word "stop," in the sense of offering an obstacle (cf. Epist. I. 1, 23, I. 3, 5) I cannot admit that resort to a gratuitous assumption and to a doubtful conclusion is at all necessary for the translation of the passage and in addition to these considerations are the other very cogent ones against such a rendering urged in your "Studies" (p. 107). Your interpretation therefore does not appear to me one of those "ingenuities" which scholars may dismiss on a mere ipse dixit, but one of those specimens of insight

which illuminates Horace's works, and shows us their true significance and beauty (cf. notes on Ode III. 17 in my Trans.).

I may remark also that the phrase rumpere claustra is in much better accord with the meaning you give to "moror" than with that which it generally receives.

94. We now come to Epistle 16, for I pass over that to Numonius Vala with the remark that it well suits its environment. The address to Quinctius is a most important contribution to the body of Horatian poems directly concerned with Murena. After extracting what we can of his history, and examining Horace's allusions to it, one finds oneself in a position to interpret this Epistle in a manner which, if it be incorrect, is assuredly astonishing. Let me begin by remarking that any notion that Horace's "Optime Quincti" is a congenial friend has to face great difficulties. If he was, then Horace is exhibiting his regard by writing him an "open letter " which conforms rather with the ethics of "yellow" journalism than with “urbanity," yet this seems to excite no surprise, and the fact is passed without notice that "dear Quinctius" is afterwards to his face called, in effect, a thief and a profligate, and (mark the significance of it!) one who has broken his own father's neck, etc. (cf. my notes on II. 2, and supra § 23),

for, after the way in which Horace introduces these words, and after the meaning of which an examination of Augustus', Maecenas', and Murena's history enables us to attach to them, can anyone doubt that what Horace denies to be appropriate taunts for himself, he intends to fasten upon the Quinctius whom he prays may be kept in doubt by Jove (the disposer of his affairs and Rome's) whether the people are on his side or their own, with the illuminating addendum "Augusti laudes agnoscere possis ? "

95. When one first observes the name Quinctius, one naturally turns to Ode II. II, addressed to a Hirpinus Quinctius, to see if there are traces of connection. My previous notes to the Ode supply the answer that would be received from me. I say, yes, in contradistinction with the Pompeius of II. 7 and the Grosphus of II. 16, the evidence of identity here leans all one way. Between the "wolfish " Quinctius of the Ode and the "Optime Quincti " of the Epistle, who seems to have rejoiced in what Carlyle calls the "vulpine " instincts, there are signs of relationship.

Each has the marks and emblems by which Horace enables us to recognise-through historic fact-the man whose conduct and career so closely concerned both his actual and his literary life. The difficulties in interpreting the name Hirpinus, remarked upon by Mr Wilkins as unsolved, find at any rate a

chance of solution on my view of the Odes, Epodes, the second book of Satires, and these Epistles. Murena is the wolf-like man, the Thaliarchus of Ode I. 9, who is interested in Soracte, the home of the Hirpini or Sorani; he is a Licinius, and on the sound of his name there is perhaps a play in the Lycaon of Ovid. (Met. I. 165) who was transformed into a wolf, and whose plot, banquet and fate, will be discussed later on.

96. In addressing him Horace begins with a description of his own farm. Though shorter, it is more beautiful than the rural description in Beatus ille (Epod. 2); and it is in the same train of thought, and written to emphasise a precisely similar contrast with the "me pascunt olivae, me cichorea levesque malvae " of Ode I. 31. "Tu, you, Murena, despise the quiet and well-ordered life of which these are the concomitants. You," Horace says in other places,

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must have your choice wines, your heaps of money gained in dishonour, or through the grasping disposition which makes you a slave, and a prey to nameless fears which show themselves in the sweats of paroxysmal terror that not even your unguents can suppress. This, I take it, is the train of thought of the first twenty-five lines, in which the reference to Thrace and its river Hebrus, so significantly used in the Odes, should be noticed. "You rightly live,” says the poet (v. 17) if you make it your care to be