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DEC 12 1918
LIBRARY

The Classical Weekly

Published weekly, on Mondays, except in weeks in which there is a legal or a School holiday, from October 1 to May 31, at Barnard College, New York City. Subscription price, $2.00 per volume.

Entered as second-class matter November 18, 1907, at the Post Office, New York, N. Y., under the Act of Congress of

March 3, 1879

Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized on June

VOL. XII, No. 8

28, 1918.

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Expertly Edited for Sight Reading

JANES'S SECOND YEAR LATIN
FOR SIGHT READING

Furnishes a wide range of choice in sight
reading including interesting selections
from Books III-VII of the Gallic War,
selections from Book III of the Civil War,
and six of the Lives of Nepos.

BARSS'S THIRD YEAR LATIN

FOR SIGHT READING

Covers more than twice the amount specified by the requirements of The College Examination Board and is intended for classes which have read the Manilian Law, the Archias, and the First and Third Catiline orations.

These books are more than mere compilations of suitable material for sight reading; they have been specifically edited for this purpose; matters of syntax and history have been reduced to the minimum; the footnotes include the meanings of the less usual words, unusual meanings of common words, synonyms, and hints on derivation.

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Has always held a preeminent place. It presents only those
facts which are necessary to an intelligent reading of the
simplest connected discourse. The exercises are short and
simple. Beginning with Lesson XIII selections based on
Xenophon's Anabasis prepare the pupil for reading the com-
plete story rapidly and with interest.

Many points which could be omitted, but which are of value for further study, are included in the Appendix.

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Entered as second-class matter November 18, 1907, at the Post Office, New York, N. Y., under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879 Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized on June

VOL. XII

28, 1918.

NEW YORK, DECEMBER 9, 1918

THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY RECENT ADDITIONS

(Continued from page 50)

Sir Arthur Hort's translation, in two volumes, of Theophrastus's treatise on plants, is, apparently, the first English rendering of that work. The translation of this treatise takes up all of Volume I and more than half of Volume 2. In the latter volume there is an Index of Plants (437-483), which gives, in the alphabetical order of their Greek names, the plants named by Theophrastus. There is a short Appendix of Unnamed Plants (484-485), plants which, though Theophrastus gives them no name, he describes so well that it has seemed possible to identify them. Finally, there is a Key to the Index, in two parts: I.-List of Plants Mentioned in the Enquiry Under Botanical Names (487-493); II.-List of Plants Mentioned in the Enquiry Under Popular Names. These Indexes are of very great value; in his Preface Sir Arthur Hort explains that the identifications of plants in the Indexes are entirely the work of Sir William Thistleton-Dyer. The translation has been reviewed by Mr. Clifford Allbutt, in The Classical Review 32.36-38. In The American Year Book for 1917, page 733, Professor W. A. Heidel describes this translation as "a masterful rendering of a work of the greatest interest and difficulty, requiring great knowledge and accuracy".

Students of Petronius in particular will welcome the volume which gives in translation some of the Greek Romances. In this connection reference may be made to an elaborate work, The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction, by Dr. Samuel Lee Wolff (ix + 529 pages, Columbia University Press, 1912), and to the article entitled Greek Romances, in the book, English Literature and the Classics, essays collected by G. S. Gordon (reviewed by Professor Van Hook in THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 8.125-127). In a paper entitled Petronius and the Greek Romance, Classical Philology 12.158-172, Professor C. W. Mendell held that

The novel of Petronius is not, strictly speaking, a realistic novel, but rather an erotic romance and belongs to the developed, not to the early type, of romance1.

A complete translation of the Greek Anthology every student of the Classics will welcome, whether he

For support of the view that Petronius's work is realistic see e. g. the two discussions by Professor Abbott, in The Common People of Ancient Rome, 117-144, and in Society and Politics in t Rome, 115-130.

No. 8

approves all its renderings or not. Mr. Paton's renderings are good. His first volume gives a version of Books 1-6, whose subjects are as follows: Christian Epigrams; Christodorus of Thebes in Egypt; The Cyzicene Epigrams; The Proems of the Different Anthologies; The Amatory Epigrams; and The Dedicatory Epigrams. Volume 2 supplies renderings of Books 7 and 8, Sepulchral Epigrams and The Epigrams of Saint Gregory the Theologian. Volume 3 deals with Book 9, The Declamatory and Descriptive Epigrams. Volume 4 is concerned with Books 10-12, The Hortatory and Admonitory Epigrams, The Convivial and Satirical Epigrams, and Strato's Musa Puerilis. Volume 5, covering Books 13-16, deals with Epigrams in Various Metres, Arithmetical Problems, Riddles, Oracles, Miscellanea, and Epigrams of the Planudean Anthology not in the Palatine Manuscript. In The Classical Review 31.142-144, Mr. J. U. Powell warmly praised Volume I of Mr. Paton's rendering; he implies an equally high opinion of Volume 2 in his notice of that volume in The Classical Review 32.33-34. In Classical Philology 13.221-222 Professor Shorey comments favorably on Volumes 1-3. In The American Year Book for 1917, page 733, Professor Heidel characterizes the translation in Volume 2 as admirable and the Introduction as valuable.

A translation of Strabo's Geography should be of service to many, if only as a help to the understanding of the innumerable passages to which references are made in the Commentaries on authors Greek and Roman. Mr. Jones's volume covers Books 1-2. On this rendering see Miss Geneva Misener, in Classical Philology 12.446-448. Professor Heidel, in The American Year Book for 1917, page 733, describes it as serviceable, but as falling below the standard generally maintained in The Loeb Classical Library. It is but fair to note, however, that Professor Jones, in this volume, was not wholly free; he was working with unfinished materials bequeathed to him by the death of Professor Sterrett.

Professor Nixon's first volume on Plautus gives a rendering of the Amphitruo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, and Captivi. The second gives renderings of The Casina, Cistellaria, Curculio, Epidicus, and Menaechmi; of the first three of the plays covered by this second volume there is no edition in English. On the merits of Volume I, see Professor Kellogg, in Classical Philology 12.325-326, and Professor Sonnenschein, in The Classical Review 31.199-201. I have myself carefully compared, several times, the translation throughout Volume I with the text. Often I like the translation very much. It is full of life and vigor (at times, indeed, especially in the rendering of the expletives, the straining after vigor is far too manifest); it often hits off extremely well the spirit of a passage; there is a conscious effort to vary the tone of the translation, as the tone of the original varies (particularly in paratragoedic passages does Professor Nixon seek to indicate the tone). The translation is not free, nor yet

is it close; in many places, where I should be glad to know exactly Professor Nixon's views of the syntax of the Latin, I am unable to determine precisely his opinion. I have read only part of the second volume, but in that part I seemed to feel a toning down of the exuberance manifested now and then in the first volume. On the whole, then, the two volumes are to be heartily commended.

Several other volumes of The Loeb Classical Library I have studied with some care, e. g. the two volumes of the rendering of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, by Professor Miller, and the volume containing the translation of the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid 1-6, by Professor Fairclough. In his renderings of the more lofty and serious passages of the Aeneid Professor Fairclough seems to me often very happy; I find him unsatisfactory at times in his translation of the Eclogues. Here his rendering often strikes me as too heavy; he misses the playful element which I find frequently in the Eclogues, as I believe Horace found it (see my paper, in The American Journal of Philology 38.195-199, on Horace's famous phrase, molle atque facetum, said by him of the Eclogues, in Sermones 1.10.44, and my notice of Dr. Dutton's pamphlet, Reflections on Re-reading Vergil, THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 11.57-58, 65-66). The book is praised by A. D. G. (= A. D. Godley?) in The Classical Review 30.203.

It is notoriously difficult to get a book through the press without typographical and other errors. During the past three or four years the difficulties in the way of handling the volumes of The Loeb Classical Library, for American authors, with two General Editors of the Library in England, with the compositors and the publisher in England, must have been very great. Yet some sorts of things remain unbelievable, until they in fact happen. For example, how can four competent scholars overlook the fact that a translation at a given point is based on a text different from that on the opposite page? In the Loeb Library edition of Ovid, the text of Met. 1.52-53 is printed as follows:

Inminet his aer, qui quanto est pondere terrae,
pondere aquae levior, tanto est onerosior igni.

There is no critical note of any sort on this page of the book. The Teubner text (Merkel, 1900) has no comma after 52, and gives, in 53, pondus aquae levior, with no hint of variant reading. Now Professor Miller's translation runs as follows:

The air hung over all, which is as much heavier than fire as the weight of water is lighter than the weight of earth.

In this translation Professor Miller defies at once his own text and his own punctuation.

The next three lines of the text, in Professor Miller's book, run as follows:

illic et nebulas, illic consistere nubes
iussit et humanas motura tonitrua mentes
et cum fulminibus facientes fulgora ventos.

The translation is as follows:

There did the creator bid the mists and clouds to take their place, and thunder, that should shake the hearts of men, and winds which with the thunderbolts make chilling cold.

How is "chilling cold" got from the text? The Teubner text gives frigora in 56, without hint of variant.

Again, in 1.225 occur the words haec illi placet experientia veri. These are not reproduced at all in the translation. In many other places there are no English equivalents for important words or phrases of the Latin original. In 1.192 the text appears thus:

sunt mihi semidei, sunt, rustica numina, nymphae What the comma is doing after the second sunt the translation fails to indicate: "I have demigods, rustic divinities, nymphs", etc. After 1.81 there is a period, instead of the necessary comma (this may, to be sure, be a case of broken type). In 1.99 sine militis usus appears! In 1.267 read rorant pennaeque sinusque (not pennaequae). In 1.355 read duo for quo; after 1.347 set a period, not a colon. All these errors have been found in a few verses. In connection with such things as these one is inclined to draw a very sharp indictment against the English General Editors, partly because, as is well known, they take a very active part in determining the final form of the various translations, partly because they are closer to the printers and the publishers of the Library.

(To be concluded)

С. К.

A STUDY OF DIETETICS AMONG THE ROMANS1 The Romans were masters of many arts. Perhaps not least of these was the art of dining, an art which, though humble, seems destined to occupy a considerable portion of man's time and attention, for civilized man, however cultured, cannot live without cooks. Latin literature, especially that of the late Empire, abounds in references to Roman meals ranging from the simple fare of the rustic, consisting chiefly of vegetables, to the elaborate menu of the urbane Roman of Imperial days, or the wealthy gentleman rusticating at his country villa. Indeed, that delightful old gossip, Suetonius, even tells us what the Emperors ate, and how they ate it. A more interesting theme, however, than the exaggerated side of Roman luxury is the frequently neglected consideration of the daily fare of the average

This paper was read at the Twelfth Annual Meeting of The Classical Association of the Atlantic States, at the Drexel Institute, Philadelphia, May 4, 1918.

citizen. This consisted, in early days, at least, of grain, fruit, and vegetables, for the Romans of the good old days favored a vegetable diet and partook of meat sparingly and only on festive occasions. Mr. Warde Fowler saysla,

The needs of the poorer classes in respect to food and drink were small. Italians and Greeks then, as now, were almost entirely vegetarians. Grain and vegetables were the staple food of the poor man in town and country.

Indeed, the early Romans were designated as pultiphagonides by Plautus2, because the national diet consisted of a kind of porridge called pulse, which was composed of meal, salt, and water. Vegetables were chopped fine and added to this dish, which preceded even bread as an article of diet. Juvenals presents a picture of the good old days when the peasant's little farm supplied the whole family-the master, his wife, three sons, a home-born slave-with its daily fare. On the humble board huge bowls of smoking porridge awaited the elder brothers of the family, who from the plow homeward plod their weary way. Later, in the reign of Vitellius, the one road to influence in the Roman world was to provide sumptuous banquets and glut the insatiate appetite of the Emperor, but the early Romans knew nothing of such preferment, lived the simple life, and dined on vegetables.

Our information in regard to this vegetable diet, and the esteem in which it was held, may be culled not only from medical writers, Celsus and others, from that ancient edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Pliny's Natural History, and from writers on agriculture, but also from menus and references scattered elsewhere in the pages of Latin literature.

Virtue and simple living were always synonymous to the Romans. So highly did even the later members of that nation think of a vegetable diet that both Seneca and Martial represent Romulus as preferring a dinner of turnips even in the heavens. Pliny says that the Samnite envoys found Manius Curius Dentatus, the conqueror of Pyrrhus, cooking his meal of turnips on the hearth. The envoys felt that no gift which they could offer would tempt a man who was content with such plain fare for his daily food. Horace10 warmly expresses his approval of a vegetable diet. And again, this son of a freedman longs for the peace of the country, its simple fare, and its divine companionship1":

'O when shall I sit down to my beans, and with them a dish of rich garden stuff which needs no sauce except the fat bacon?'

Cena deum is the name by which he dignifies this humble fare. This dinner of herbs would be accompanied by a feast of reason and a flow of soul'. That even Horace did not always scorn a well served

meal, however, seems to be the implication of his slave Davus13, who says,

'If you do not happen to have an invitation to dine out, you praise your meal of herbs and call yourself a lucky man, but let Maecenas invite you to his table at eventide and off you go'.

Even in days later than those of Horace, philosophers preferred a simple diet culled from the garden. Aulus Gellius tells us11 that Taurus the philosopher entertained him at dinner when he was in Athens. The substance of this meal consisted of aula una lentis Aegyptiae et cucurbitae inibi minutim caesae. Tacitus15 informs us that, when Nero was ravaging the provinces to satisfy his prodigality, Seneca lived on very simple fare. Wild fruits which grew in the woods were his food, and he quenched his thirst at the waters of a clear stream.

The diet of the soldiers also consisted more largely of grain and vegetables than of meat. Tacitus 16 and Caesar" both mention as a hardship the fact that on certain occasions the soldiers had no food but meat with which to satisfy their hunger.

Another proof, if one were needed, of the esteem in which vegetable diet was held is the frequent mention, in Latin literature, of gardens. The garden and its products were highly honored in ancient Rome. There, as in our own country at the present day, every one was expected to do his bit by cultivating his garden. Catols says that, when a man was considered a good farmer, it was the highest compliment which could be paid him. Columella deemed the garden a theme worthy of poetry, and the Elder Pliny tells us19 that even the kings of Rome cultivated gardens with their own hands. The same author 20 says that the kitchen garden was under the supervision of the mater familias and that she was considered worthless if it was not carefully tended, for then the family would be reduced to the necessity of living on meat. Again, Pliny says that at Rome it was from the garden that the lower classes procured their daily food. Juvenal22 speaks approvingly of Epicurus, whose pure mind to one small garden every wish confined. Pliny23 even calls our attention to the rather surprising fact that cognomina were derived from the garden.

'Let the garden have its full share of honor, for from it men of the highest rank have been content to borrow their names'.

The Valerian gens, Lactucini, took its name from lettuce. The Lentuli, Fabii, and Caepiones were indebted to the garden for theirs also.

In addition to the evidence of the esteem in which gardens were held by the Romans, and to expressions favoring a vegetable diet, examples of vegetable menus are also found. A few may be cited. The earliest, perhaps, is that of a slaves' convivium which is found in Plautus25. It consists of nuts, olives, figs, beans, and lupine.

1a Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero, 32.
*Poenulus 54.
Pliny, N. H. 18.83.
Tacitus, Hist. 2.95.
812.16.
Compare Cicero, C. M. 55; Plutarch, Cato 2; Aulus Gellius

*Blumner, Die Romischen Privataltertümer, 162.
$14.166 ff.
"Apocolocyntosis 9.5.

1.14 (for the story of Fabricius).
10 Epp. 1.12.7 ff.

11Serm. 2.6.63 ff. 12Serm. 2.6.70 ff.

13Serm. 2.7.29-34-
B. G. 7.17.3.

219.57.

2319.59.

148.8. 15 Ann. 15.45. 16 Ann. 14.24. 18 De Agricultura, Introd. 2-3. 1919.49. 2119.51. 2213.122; 14.319. Pliny. N. Η. 18.10. 26 Stichus 690 ff.

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