videlicet, pluralism, unitarianism, and a combination of both. He states that the eclectic scheme was the work of the Ionian and subsequently of the Sicilian Muse, that is, of Heraclitus and Empedocles. To this scheme of eclecticism he gives in his adhesion. The Eleatic school had proclaimed existence to be one; the Physical school had maintained existence was essentially plural; Plato combined the two into one formula-existence is v kaì moddá. His obligations to Pythagoras are too obvious to require specification. The greatness of his genius is best shown by his having assimilated something from every preceding thinker.

NOTES ON THE LETTERS OF CICERO TO ATTICUS. By ROBERT YELVERTON TYRRELL, A. M., Fellow of Trinity College, and Professor of Latin in the University of Dublin.

THE edition of the Letters of Cicero to Atticus, published by I. C. G. Boot at Amsterdam in 1865, was a great boon to students of Cicero. If we except the brief explanatory notes of Ernesti, and the School Editions by Matthiae and Hofmann of a selection from the Letters, no explanatory notes on this portion of the works of Cicero had ever been essayed except by Schütz and Billerbeck. But thorough criticism must precede exegesis, and this proposition, true of all the remains of classical antiquity, is especially true in the case of Cicero's Letters, where the context often affords so little aid, that the discovery of the true reading depends solely on the proper estimating of the respective values of different MSS. Schütz found the criticism of his author in a very imperfect state, and he cannot be said to have left it very much improved. Wild conjecture was carrying on a youøn Eevías against Cicero's own words, and judgment was going by default. Each of the successive editors felt that unless he had attacked some passage hitherto unimpugned, he had lost a day; "what the canker-worm had left, the palmer-worm had eaten ;" and we should soon have had to be content with a little Cicero to relish our Bosius (whose very clever guesses were constantly being introduced into the text on the faith of his MSS. with ponderous Latin eulogies), were it not that it was discovered by Theodor Mommsen that of his three codices he had invented two, and misrepresented the third. This was indeed a strange state of mind which led Bosius to feign MSS. of Cicero, and Henri Etienne to fabricate codices of

Euripides, for the purpose of recommending their own conjectures. One can hardly suppose that desire of fame dictated the fabrication, for surely to gather from the context, or from some parallel passage, or from some ancient testimony, or from perfect sympathy and rapport with one's author, or from the conflicting testimony of confessedly wrong MSS., a word or words which the consensus of scholars would recognise as being certainly or even probably the very words of the writer on whom one is engaged, must be regarded as a greater intellectual feat than to have seen those words in a MS. which no one else ever saw or could have seen. But perhaps fame for erudition was then coveted rather than fame for cleverness, or (to take the most charitable view) perhaps Bosius or Stephens feeling unmixed confidence in the soundness of his conjectures thought any fraud pious which should vindicate for Cicero or Euripides words which they believed to be the genuine and authentic utterances of those two great masters of style.

When Boot set about his edition of the Letters of Cicero to Atticus the condition of the text was very much improved. He had before him the results of the critical labours of Wesenberg, Klotz, and of "magnus ille Turicensis" Orelli. The great Zurich critic would probably have left little to be added by his successors, but that he was not aware of the fictitious character of the codices of Bosius. And yet Bosius' own account of the manner in which he gained possession of his vetustissimi codices might have excited suspicion. His Codex Decurtatus (commonly called Y) he obtained "a gregario quodam milite cum aliis aliquot libris calamo exaratis, ex bibliothecae cuiusdam sacrae direptione, tamquam e periculosissimo naufragio, servatum." His Codex Crusellinus (X) he thus describes :"adiutus sum praeterea codice quodam excuso Lugduni, qui olim fuerat Petri Cruselli, medici apud nostrates celeberrimi; ad cuius libri oras doctus ille vir varias lectiones appinxerat, a se, ut ipse dicebat, diligentissime et summa

fide e vetustissimo et castigatissimo libro Novioduni descriptas."

Bosius' readings when not conjectures are taken from R, the Editio princeps Romana, or from readings of R given in the margin of the Edition of Cratander. Now R is founded on the Med., and so is I, the Editio princeps Iensoniana published in Venice; R generally gives the reading of M a prima manu, while I as a rule accepts the marginal or superscribed corrections. So that X and Y having been exploded, we must rest in the last resort on the authority of Med., except in so far as we have some little help in the few variae lectiones cited from the Codex Tornaesianus (Z) by Lambinus and Turnebus, for we cannot rely on those quoted as from Z by Bosius.

Boot has, as a rule, shown great sagacity both in deciding between rival conjectures and in rejecting all when he has something better of his own to propose. I shall refer (confining my observations for the present to Books I.-VI.) only to those passages in the criticism or explanation of which I take a different view from his.*

I. i. 5.

"Hermathena tua valde me delectat, et posita ita belle est ut totum gymnasium eliu ana@ma esse videatur."

On the vulg. λíov ȧválnua Boot justly remarks that whether we interpret these words to mean solis donarium or locus soli consecratus, he does not understand why Cicero should have expressed himself so obscurely. Yet few will award to his own conjecture the praise of superior perspicuity. Reading eius àvá@nua he explains: "Hermathena illa ita excellebat inter cetera ornamenta gymnasii, ut hoc eius causa exstructum, ei dedicatum videretur." There is no other attempt to correct without remodelling the whole sentence.

I have in every case given the reading of the Medicean (M), in a few cases adding those of R, I, or Z.

In the absence, as it seems to me, of any plausible conjecture on this passage, I would suggest ýλíov ävaμμa, ‘a blaze of sunshine.' The word avaμμa is one common in the Stoic philosophy, with which Cicero was very familiar. The Sun was described by the Stoics in a phrase attributed to Heraclitus as ἄναμμα νοερὸν ἐκ θαλάττης. Light and brilliancy were regarded by the Romans as the best qualities in a house. In Plaut. Most. III. i. 105-110 Tranio tells Theuropides that Philolaches has bought a house; Theuropides asks, what kind of a house; Tranio replies, speculo claras, clarorem merum, to which bene hercle factum is the answer. Claror merus applied to a house seems to me a very similar expression to λíov åvaμμa applied to a gallery of objets d'art.

Isolated Greek words are always found in the Med. written in Roman characters. It is singular that Med. is here reported to have a Greek while the other characters are Roman. How does this happen? I have little doubt that this is a case of misreading of the MS. The Roman M in manuscripts was very like a with a vertical instead of a horizontal stroke, or rather, like a → lying on its side. How could a stand among the Roman characters? Not because there is no one symbol for → in Latin; for would a copyist hesitate to represent → by th, who in the preceding word eliu had represented ou by the Latin equivalent u ?

I. 16. 13.

"Sed heus tu! videsne consulatum illum nostrum quem Curio ȧroléwow vocabat, si hic factus erit, fabam mimum futurum."

The attempts to explain fabam mimum and the conjecture famam mimum rest on a corrupt passage of Seneca, and are forced in the highest degree. Perhaps fabam should be fabulam, and mimum a gloss on fabulam. If it were one of those interlinear glosses which abound in Med., this would account for the misreading of fabulam. The sentence would then mean, "the rank enjoyed by us Consulars, which Curio used to call a deification, will be a by-word." Mimum could not have been Cicero's word.