is no resemblance between A or B and L.G. Probably the gloss is a variant of Isid. Etym. 13, 21, 20, but ' means ' is unusual. Can this originally have been part of the gloss on Rutupina above? The spelling, unless it is a mere blunder on the part of the scribe, is without parallel.1 ZM 5 Zmirna (Smy-): urbs Lidiae quam Meles fluuius cingit. Is this an abbreviation of Solinus (40, 15) or a gloss on Statius, Silu. 3, 3, 61, which reached the Lib. Gloss. through an intermediate source? The former suggestion seems more likely, when it is remembered that extracts from Solinus occur elsewhere in the Lib. Gloss. UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, KING'S COLlege. M. L. W. LAISTNER. 1 The Thames must surely be meant. Apart in Gildas, while Bede favours Tamensis. from the classical writers, Thamesis occurs once MACROBII: AITHIOPIANS AND OTHERS. MR. LAST's very interesting note (Class. Quart. XVII., pp. 35-36) is so ingenious and the Egyptian evidence falls so pat that it deserves to be right, but I very much doubt if it is. In fact the Aithiopians do not stand alone, and the context of their longevity deserves consideration. If that context is recalled, it may appear that 'to say that the legend was attached by the Greeks to the Aithiopians through their remoteness from the Mediterranean world is no explanation' is itself a hard saying. The tradition, to which the Aithiopian Macrobii of Herodotus belong, begins with Homer and runs right through classical antiquity. They are a species of the genus 'gentle savage,' fortunate in the enjoyment of those primitive excellences, ethical, social, and physical, which were alleged to be characteristic of 'natural man.' Of such, who were certainly difficult to find nearer at hand, it was believed or pretended that the dwellers upon the extreme fringes of the known world consisted. In Homer these coxaтoi avôpov are represented on the north by the horse-milking Abii, the most righteous of men, and on the south by the blameless Aithiopians, to whose banquets the Olympian deities periodically repair. As geographical knowledge increased the borders of the known world were pushed back, and with them the hypothetical races of 'natural man.' The Hyperboreans recede further and further to the north and east (the 'Indian Hyperboreans' of Megasthenes the Uttara Kurus of Indian legend); the Seres, Indians, or inhabitants of some island in the Indian Ocean supplant or supplement the Aithiopians. The number and variety of these = 54 MACROBII: AITHIOPIANS AND OTHERS semi-fabulous peoples were increased by the new inventions of travellers' tales and by philosophic romancers or romantic philosophers, who found in them the convenient machinery for the attractive presentation of Utopias. The whole story, of course, is to be found, together with a collection of the pertinent references, in the second chapter of Rohde's Griechische Roman. Now among the characteristics peculiar to this genus of 'natural man,' which recur again and again in its various species, will be found to be the physical attributes of abnormal height and a more than ordinary span of life. It is true, I think, that neither Scyths nor Aithiopians are stated by Homer to possess these possibly enviable peculiarities, but already Simonides and Pindar attributed to the Hyperboreans a thousand years of life (Strabo XV. 57, 711). Thenceforward the chain of testimony to the longevity of 'natural man' will be found to be continuous right through classical literature and on into the medieval. Thus in the fifth century after Christ Palladius tells of Taprobane ἔνθα εἰσὶν οἱ λεγόμενοι Μακροβίοι (PseudoCallisthenes, ed. Müller, III. 7); and the Ophionikoi of Timokles, a peculiar species of the 'natural man' family, who derived their longevity from eating snakes, are echoed in the Prester John literature of the twelfth century, and in the passage of Roger Bacon about the dragon-taming Aithiopians who have lately arrived in England, France, Italy, and Spain, 'et in istas terras Christianorum in quibus sunt dracones boni uolantes.'1 ་ Now surely the Aithiopian Macrobii cannot be explained without reference to this long consistent tradition. Are we then to suppose that the fons et origo of the whole business is the hypothetical mistake of 'Long Lived' for Long Bows'; and that Hyperboreans and others were infected with longevity by Aithiopians through false analogy based upon an undistributed middle'-viz. Aithiopians are Macrobii : Aithiopians are a species of 'natural man': therefore all species of 'natural man' are Macrobii ? If so, the alleged mistake as to the meaning of Macrobii must have become accepted doctrine some time before Herodotus, if Pindar and Simonides knew of Hyperboreans who lived a thousand years! The alternative is to suppose that the Aithiopians were originally 'Long Bows'; that when they became included in the family of 'natural man' the mistake that they were 'Long Lived' was made, because Hyperboreans and others were Macrobii in this sense. If so, it would seem probable that the mistake occurred before Homer, who quite unmistakably ascribes the Aithiopians to the genus of 'natural man'! Is it not a good deal more probable that longevity was a characteristic of the 'natural man' from the very early days of that picturesque invention, and that the explanation of Aifíomes Maкpoßío is in fact to be found after all in their location as ἔσχατοι ἀνδρῶν ? THE UNIVERsity, Liverpool. 1 For the 'Opovíкo and other classical longlived snake-eaters, see Rohde, op. cit., p. 219. Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science II., p. 243, first drew my attention to the connexion between the passage in Roger Bacon (cf. ibid., p. 657) and the Letter of Prester John. I do not think that Bacon copied directly from the twelfth-century version of the Letter of Prester John to which Zarncke (Abhandl. d. Kgl. W. R. HALLIDAY. Sächs. Gesells. d. Wiss. VII. 913) refers, but the matter was clearly a marvellous commonplace which goes right back to Timokles. This is worth mentioning, because it completely disposes of the theory of Wiener that Bacon is alluding (nearly two centuries before it seems actually to have taken place) to the migration of Gypsies into the countries of Western Europe. SUMMARIES OF PERIODICALS. LITERATURE AND GENERAL. American Academy at Rome. Papers and Monographs. II. 1923. Lily Ross Taylor, Local Cults in Etruria. The general plan of this work is the same as that adopted in R. M. Peterson's Cults of Campania (Vol. I. of the same series, already noticed). It is rather a collection of the known material concerning the Etruscan localities than an original work, and in the preface the authoress disclaims any attempt to write 'a general study of Etruscan religion.' On pp. 29-229 the known sites in Etruria (defined as the seventh Augustan region of Italy) are reviewed in geographical order from south to north, and the evidence for each given briefly but critically. In the first and concluding chapters (pp. 1-28; 230-254) are given respectively a summary of Etruscan history and a brief account of the results arrived at by study of the material. Professor Taylor agrees in substance with the Herodotean account of the origin of the Etruscans. She holds with Pigorini that the Villanovians were descended from the terramara people. She supposes the Etruscans proper to have been relatively few in number, most of the gods worshipped by them in Italy to have been of native origin, and their own contribution to have been confined to their system of divination and to certain externals of ritual such as costume. On a number of minor points she offers views of her own, mostly already published by her. American Journal of Philology. XLIV. 2. April-June, 1923. Maurice Bloomfield, The Art of Stealing in Hindu Fiction. Continues the encyclopedic treatment of Hindu Fiction planned some years ago.' E. G. Sihler, Strabo of Amaseia: His Personality and His Works. Suggests that Strabo became the protégé of Augustus through the influence of the Stoic Athenodorus of Tarsus, who taught them both; and discusses the extant work of Strabo, concluding that the historical and political memorabilia and the 'cultural records' contained in it are more important than the actual geography and were more interesting to the author himself. M. P. Charlesworth, Tiberius and the Death of Augustus. Examines the story that Livia and Tiberius poisoned Augustus, and suggests that it originated among the supporters of Julia and the elder Agrippina, but that it played its part as a source for Tacitus and was responsible for the bias against Livia which appears first in the Annals. J. Whatmough, The Abbreviation of Vester and a Vercelli MS. Adds another (VI. 381 in Liber Glossarum) to the known instances of the very rare contraction uēri, etc., for the oblique cases of Vester; and gives a brief report of the Vercelli MS. of the Liber Glossarum, which is one of those not seen by Goetz. H. C. Nutting, Cicero: Cato Maior, 82. Discusses the interpretation of . . . tanta esse conatos . . . nisi. . . cernerent and suggests that, unlike the following clause, this clause is not a 'contrary to fact' condition, but that the meaning is 'they did not . . . without hope of immortality.' The sense would naturally be expressed by sine magna spe immortalitatis, actually found in Tusc. I. 32. H. C. Tolman, The Seoruguin Photograph of the Nakš-i-Rustam Inscription. Gives twenty-four emended readings of the ancient XLIV. 3. July-September, 1923. Maurice Bloomfield, The Art of Stealing in Hindu Fiction, Part II. R. S. Radford, Tibullus and Ovid, Part II. Details the great number of verbal parallels (phrases, half lines, etc.) which unite the Tibullus Appendix' with the received work of Ovid, but which never occur in the genuine Tibullus, and adds a running commentary which shows in every case whether the Ovidian words and idioms are peculiar to Ovid or are common to Catullus, Vergil, and Propertius. W. H. Kirk, Ne and Non. Gives a list of 'volitive' (ne-neue) and consecutive' (non-neque, etc.) negatives found with facere, its compounds, and words of similar meaning, and discusses some examples at considerable length. W. A. Oldfather, The Date of Plato's Laws. Brings forward Demosthenes XXIV. 139 (delivered 353/2), where Locri is called πódis evνopovμévn, to support the inference from Justin XXI. 3. 9, that Dionysius' capture of the citadel of Locri took place in 352 B.C., and that consequently Laws I. 638b was composed later than that date. Hermes. LVIII. 1. 1923. W. Judeich, Griechische Politik und persische Politik im V. Jahrhundert v. Chr. H. Gomperz, Ueber die ursprüngliche Reihenfolge einiger Bruchstücke Heraklits. U. v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Lesefrüchte. Miscellaneous notes on Lysias, Hypereides, Theocritus (VIII.). F. Vogel, Die Kürzenmeidung in der griechischen Prosa des IV. Jahrhunderts. An attack on Blass' view that this rule is peculiar to Demosthenes. MISCELLEN: W. A. Baehrens defends Mommsen's date (93) for the praetorship of Pliny the Younger against Otto. R. Heinze holds that in Virgil. Bucol. VII. 41-44, Thyrsis is not speaking for himself, but in the name of Galatea. LVIII. 2. 1923. E. Howald, Ionische Geschichtsschreibung. An attempt to account for the laxity with which Herodotus judges political treachery. H. is the product of Kaufmannskultur.' K. Barwick, Ueber die Proömien des Lukvez. E. Maas, Diktynna. On Oxyrhynchos papyrus 661. The narrative is concerned with the story of BritomartisDiktynna. E. Leuze, Die Feldzüge Antiochos' des Grossen nach Kleinasien und Thrakien. A. Körte, Die Zeitbestimmung von Hypereides' Rede für Lykophron. MISCELLEN: J. Mussehl interprets Martial IX. 95, Alphius ante fuit coepit nunc Olphius esse, etc. Alphius was once Athenagoras, Alpha or Number One, but now Ath. is married he is a mere Omega. This contrast is common in paederastic literature. F. Jacoby on Pap. Ox. 1801 and Phylarchos. Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, etc. LI./LII. 3, 4. 1923. 3. O. Schroeder, Die Religion Pindars. A useful sketch. R. Heinze, Die horazische Ode. A subtle study of the differences between ancient and modern lyric poetry, between Horace and the Greeks, and between the first three books of the Odes and the fourth.-4. W. Schur, Zwei Fragen der älteren römischen Verfassungsgeschichte. An elaborate discussion of the origins of the republican constitution, with especial reference to the Centuries, the Consular Tribunate, and the Consulate. Schur offers a large number of definite conclusions, lucidly stated. P. Geigenmüller, Harmonien und Dissonanzen bei Dio, Plutarch und Favorin. A detailed and sympathetic account of the moral and philosophical views of these three men. |