hearing the mature conclusions of one whose judgment and learning have already done so much for Babrius. Of Mr. Davies's version we have already spoken incidentally. It is close and faithful, but wants facility. Even where the individual lines are expressed with ease, the effect of the whole is frequently that of too great compression and slowness of movement. The rhymes are generally accurate, but there are a few instances like beheld, held (p. 142), and in one place (p. 208) broth is paired with forth. Babrius would be nothing without his style, and any want of grace or finish therefore is sure to be noticed in his translator. CRITICAL NOTES. τοιαῦτά φασι τὸν ἀγαθὸν Κρέοντα σοὶ Soph. 'Antig.' 31, 32. THIS passage seems to me capable of yielding a satisfactory sense without the need of having recourse to the construction proposed by Dr. Kennedy, which is, to say the least, an unusual one. Let it be supposed that Antigone had said τοιαῦτά φασι τὸν ἀγαθὸν Κρέοντα σοὶ κηρύξαντ' ἔχειν. Everyone would have seen then that the use of σo was perfectly obvious, indicating that faint notion of the concern of the party addressed, in the statement made so common in similar cases; why should we not go a step further, and conceive that having used, inadvertently as it were, a pronoun which, though not necessarily implying more than this faint notion of her sister's concern with Creon's doings, might yet, as it stood, be taken to mark Ismene as the party chiefly interested. The speaker corrects the probable misapprehension by immediately adding an emphatic mention of herself, uol, not μo, to which he further calls attention in the following parenthesis, éyw yàp xáμé? I, at least, see nothing far-fetched in such an explanation; and if there should appear to be anything of the kind, I believe it will be found to arise from the mere fact of an analysis having been attempted at all; an experiment which, if tried on any of the simpler forms of 1 Reprinted from the Classical Museum, No xxii. ordinary conversation, would produce a similar effect of apparent subtilty and refinement. There is another passage in Sophocles, which might, I think, be advantageously discussed by the readers of the 'Classical Museum.' It is from the Edipus Tyrannus,' 44, 45 :— ὡς, τοῖσιν ἐμπείροισι καὶ τὰς ξυμφορὰς ζώσας ὁρῶ μάλιστα τῶν βουλευμάτων. Most of the commentators, I believe, agree with Wunder in making the general sense to be consilia hominum pendentium prosperum eventum habent, τὰς ξυμφορὰς being taken with τῶν βουλευμάτων, as in Thuc. i. 140, τὰς ξυμφορὰς τῶν πραγμάτων, where the Schol. renders ξυμφορὰς by άлоßáσss. Not to mention that one would wish to ἀποβάσεις. see ξυμφοράς placed nearer to βουλευμάτων, an objection doubtless capable of being obviated, but still not wholly without force in a doubtful passage, the sentiment which the words are made to convey appears to be a very flat one. The Chorus had been exhorting Edipus to suggest some remedy if he should have chanced to derive any from gods or men; and surely it is not very forcible immediately to back this appeal by the remark, that experienced men are generally found to have the issues of their counsels more prosperous; the power of xal being, suppose, that not only are their plans well formed, but their success signal. My own suggestion, which I make with considerable hesitation, is to separate uuopas from βουλευμάτων, and understand the latter as formed by μάλιστα in the sense of μᾶλλον : Since I see that, with men of experience, even casual knowledge is (often) more effective than counsels of reason;' a position at any rate sufficiently to the purpose, and agreeing well with the doubtful language held just before εἴτε του θεῶν φήμην I àvòpòs 425 ἀκούσας εἴτ ̓ ἀπ ̓ ἀνδρὸς οἶσθα που. Some may wish to take ξυμφορὰς with βουλευμάτων as the carnal part of counsel, but the other explanation seems less forced. It might also be proposed to understand the passage, since I see that, even with the experienced, our calamities are more vigorous than what counsel can do,' were it not that xaì ought then rather to have come before τοῖσιν ἐμπείροισι. And now, as this paper has already begun to assume a miscellaneous character, I wish to be allowed to correct two or three oversights a specimen, I fear, of a much larger number in my recently published edition of the 'Agamemnon.' However few, assuming your readers may be acquainted with the work, I should be sorry to stand accountable for any of the errors contained in it, in the eyes even of a single individual, longer than I can possibly help. On 10, 11, I have raised the question, whether the accusative absolute is not merely a figment of the grammarians. I ought at least to have marked off the cases where the accusative occurs after os in an apparently absolute sense, though here writers seem agreed that the words depend on some implied verb. The passage from Plat. Gorg.' p. 495, c. quoted from Jelf (who treats it especially from the instances with ws, though he supposes ὡς ἔτεον to be put for ὡς ἕτερον οὖσαν), probably belongs to this class, and so does not require the explanation I have given. 6 In the note on v. 308, I inadvertently included va among the illative particles which are found before the optative with or without a evidently with only a small modification of the sense. I certainly did not mean to prejudge the question against the commentators, who contend that iva, as a conjunction, is never found with ἄν. I retract also the qualified assent given in the note on v. 601 to the doctrine that av diminishes the contingency of the optative. Another position adopted by Haupt on v. 902, about av with the participle, appears to me now to be questionable in itself, and not required in this particular passage. The account given of où and u in a note on v. 491 is not strictly accurate, asserting, as it does, too broadly, that où never denies with reference to anything that has gone before. In such a passage as Eur. ' Bacch.' 271,272, θρασὺς δὲ δυνατὰς καὶ λέγειν οἷός τἀνὴρ κακὸς πολίτης γίγνε ETαι Youν oux xv, the negative clause (as has been remarked to me by a friend) clearly does influence the sense of the whole, indicating the reason why a confident man becomes a bad citizen, quippe qui mente careat. This passage may help us to amend our plea, and suggest that the distinction between où and in such cases is as follows:-o denies absolutely, though not always independently, as the denial may be put forward as the ground of a proposition; p gives a denial neither positive nor independent, but checking the sentence as a hypothetical condition; thus pǹ vov xwv would mean if he has no sense,' merely stating a possibility assumed solely for the sake of supporting the truth of the previous declaration; où, as this word has even more than ordinary force, it is a matter of fact denial, and something more; the confident not only has not sense, but, by virtue of his confidence, cannot have; n, on the contrary, does not deny the matter of fact at all; a confident man may or may not have sense; indeed, it rather implies that in some cases he has sense, by particularising the case of his not having it as leading to a certain result. It will be safest then to say, as a general rule, that où denies always absolutely, |