think, by Mr. Paley. The interpretation I propose for the passage is supported by the last line of the poem : Fallaci dominae iam pudet esse iocum. On vs. 12 of the same elegy Mr. Paley suggests that the pila held in the hands of Roman ladies to keep them cool was rock crystal with water inside. This may be true: but what is the meaning of this? the cold feel, attributed to crystal, arose from the notion of its being mineralised ice.' Bolingbroke asks: Oh, who can hold a fire in his hand By thinking on the frosty Caucasus ? And since the time of Shakspeare it has been allowed that it is difficult to become warm, by thinking of intense cold. It is not difficult however, it seems, to become cool by the same process. For according to Mr. Paley's words, it was possible for the Roman ladies to cool their hands by imagining they held ice in them, while really holding rock crystal. I do not, however, seriously suppose Mr. Paley to intend this: but of his exact meaning I am uncertain. Müller, the latest and worst editor of Propertius, has exhibited much ingenuity in unnecessarily altering the text, but nowhere has his perversity been more conspicuous than on III. xxiv. 49, 50: Tu prius et fluctus poteris siccare marinos Altaque mortali deligere astra manu. The second of these lines is one of the finest in Propertius. Deligere is a word properly applicable to gathering flowers or fruits: so Ovid Her. iv. 30, 'tenui primam deligere ungue rosam.' Rem. Am. 190: 'Temporibus certis maturam rusticus uvam Deligit.' Hence 'gathering the stars, set high in heaven, with mortal hand' is to my mind a very beautiful metaphor to express an impossibility. Müller however objects to it, and spoils the line by reading deripere, and Mr. Paley declines to stand forward in defence of deligere. One of the few conjectures not absolutely irritating made by L. Müller on Propertius is his reading epe Chii for Erethei or Erechti of the MSS. in III. xxvi. 28, not that it is a good emendation, but that an emendation is wanted here. The common reading there is: Aut quid Erecthei tibi prosunt carmina lecta? Nil iuvat in magno vester amore senex. 'Erecthei' is explained 'Athenian,' i. e. Aeschylus. The obvious objection to this is that there were many illustrious Athenian poets besides Aeschylus, and therefore he could not justly usurp the title of the Athenian. Epe cannot, however, stand in the line at present along with carmina. Müller would have had to show that carmina was an explanatory gloss on the Greek word epe and that poetae was expelled on the introduction of carmina. But this demands too many alterations. I have little doubt that Epimenides of Crete is the poet referred to, and read Cretaci with Kuinoel and Jacob and the Ed. Rheg. and vatis for lecta with the Naples MS. On 'longas manus' in IV. vii. 60, Mr. Paley has not brought forward any new light. The line can hardly be sound. On IV. v. 7: O prima infelix fingenti terra Prometheo! Mr. Paley tells us there is an allusion in 'prima terra' to the 'princeps lutus' of Hor. Od. i. 16, 13. Is this a misprint, which has lasted through the first edition to be repeated in the second? Or has Mr. Paley mixed up Horace's clay (limus) with Juvenal's mud (lutum)? Mr. Paley, in his first edition, stood by terunt, in IV. xiii. 10. Quaeque terunt fastus Icarioti tuos : which he explained by the common saying, 'to take the shine out of a person.' The meaning would then be 'girls who outdo Penelope in disdain,' or 'throw her into the shade.' This I think was correct, and I regret that Mr. Paley now reads the easy gerunt from Guiet. In most cases it is a dangerous thing to prefer an easy common word to a difficult one in the MSS., and terunt is quite sufficiently supported by Tac. Ag. 9: 'et vincere inglorium et atteri sordidum arbitrabatur.' Iterant would be better than gerunt. The commentary in the fifth book is the most improved part of the new edition. It is on the whole very well edited, good points are frequently made, illustrations and translations are more abundant. Mr. Paley, in 1866, published some verse translations from the fifth book, of considerable merit, and he has interspersed some of his poetical renderings through the notes with good effect, and the book contains at least one certain restoration by him, Doryxenium for Dorozantum in v. 21. It is a pity, however, that there should be a refined blunder in the very first line : : Hoc, quodcunque vides, hospes, qua maxima Roma est, The first line seemed to defy mistranslation: 'All, far as your eye can reach, stranger, where mighty Rome now stands.' Mr. Paley translates 'quodcunque vides'-' whatever it may appear in your eyes, large or small. 'Degitur hoc vitae quodcunque est,' which he quotes from Lucretius, would not establish the sense he gives, even if Lucan had not written Jupiter est, quodcunque vides.' The most ridiculous mistranslation, however, in the book is on v. 6. 27, where the legend of the floating isle of Delos, fixed by Apollo, is mentioned (cf. Aen. iii. 75): Cum Phoebus linquens stantem se vindice Delon, where se vindice is thus explained, 'under threat of his vengeance', meaning, says Mr. Paley, 'that he would have punished it for not standing, by finally reducing it to the former condition of instability.' This is too absurd. Fancy Arcitenens menacing the island: 'Now, Delos, look here, I've steadied you once, but, by the waters of Styx, I'll never steady you again!' 'Se vindice' is 'through his interference,' 'through his championship,' and was a common legal expression in this sense: se assertore,' as Barth correctly explains it. Mr. Paley, as usual, has a second string: or, perhaps, under his protection,' which is nearly the meaning. On v. 4. 22, Excidit is wrongly explained, 'she forgot to take up the pitcher.' It is 'the pitcher slipped from her grasp through her forgetful hands' (and in all probability, was broken). The passage quoted by Mr. Paley proves this to be the meaning, and disproves the interpretation he gives to the line. v. i. 33: Quippe suburbanae parva minus urbe Bovillae. Mr. Paley was here content with one interpretation, and that, I think, the true one, in his first edition: 'Bovillae was less of a suburb when Rome was small,' just as a century ago Richmond was less of a suburb to London, or Kingstown to Dublin, than at present. He now adds another, taking parva urbe' for the ablative of quality: 'Bovillae was of a less small and insignificant size.' To this there are two objections besides the objection that ablative of quality must not include the whole comprehension of the subject: first, there is nothing to mark the period referred to, if 'parva urbe' is not taken as the ablative absolute; secondly, I doubt whether urbe could be applied to Bovillae in any case. In line 36, I think tibi should be read for ubi: Et stetit Alba potens, albae suis omine nata: 'And Alba then was standing a powerful town, &c.; by yonder road you had a long distance to travel to Fidenae;' because, like Bovillae, Fidenae was then considered to be a good way from Rome. It was five miles. Or perhaps a period is indicated before the Via Salaria existed, and the time may denote the sinuous course of the old road, so that it really took one a long time to get Fidenae. Mr. Paley does not observe that both stetit and potens, in 35, are strong predicates. Alba was destroyed by Tullus, and never was rebuilt. The corruption ubi arose from the copyists making the same mistake as Mr. Paley about stetit, and thinking that the position of the town of Alba was here described. Mr. Paley's translation will best explain the error: Alba stood on the road which brought you to Fidenae by a long route.' This, as Mr. Paley himself observes, is not likely to be genuine, as Fidenae lay in an opposite direction to Alba from Rome. In support of tibi, compare quodcumque vides, in v. 1, and ista (yonder), v. 9. The objects around are being pointed out to a stranger. It is, however, just possible to give a good translation to the text as it stands, by translating 'ubi' when, not where: 'And Alba was then standing, a powerful town, what time it was a long journey to Fidenae by yonder road.' There are many other passages which call for comment from a reviewer, but those which have been criticised will serve to bear out the statement I have advanced, that the present edition still falls very far short of being a perfect or even a satisfactory edition of the poems of Propertius. I should however, feel guilty of ingratitude, if the remarks I have felt called upon to make should chance to hurt the feelings of a scholar to whom, in common with all classical students of this generation, I owe so much; they are written with no such intention, but in the hope that he will soon issue a third edition, and reconsider the passages to which exception has been taken. And these poems well deserve to be presented to the reader in as perfect a form as possible. For Propertius is a poet |