NOTES. CATO'S FINAL m: A NOTE TO QUINT. INST. OR. I 7, 23; IX 4, 39. I 7, 23 quid? non Cato Censorius dicam et faciam dicae et faciae scripsit eundemque in ceteris, quae similiter cadunt, modum tenuit? quod et ex veteribus eius libris manifestum est et a Messala in libro de s littera positum. IX 4, 39 . . . et illa Censori Catonis dicae faciaeque m littera in e mollita. Unfortunately, the text in both passages is corrupt at the important point. In the first the Codex Ambros. (A) gives dice et face, Codex Par. Nostrad. (N) dice et facie, which Halm adopted in his edition, while both Bonnell and Meister print dicem et faciem, evidently believing that Quintilian is here speaking of a weakening of final -am to -em. That this assumption is incorrect is shown by the words et a Messala in libro de s littera positum. In his book on the letter s Messala discussed the weakened final s (Quint. IX 4, 38)-so far as our knowledge goes he did not touch the question of weakened final syllablesand therefore, whatever he said on the subject of the letter m was probably confined to m final. This helps establish dicae et faciae, the reading of the two oldest manuscripts, Codex Bernensis (Bn.) and Codex Bambergensis (Bg.), both of the tenth century, as the correct manuscript tradition, and I have therefore, with Gertz, adopted it in the text above. In the second passage our best authorities are the Codex Ambrosianus and the second hand of the Bambergensis, both of which show dicae hac eque; Gertz, however (Emendat. Quintil. in Opusc. philol. ad Madvigium missa. Havniae, 1876), restored the correct reading from the first book. The first passage has not been generally understood, but, so far as I know, the passage from the ninth book has been taken at its face value, and the statement that Cato used an e to represent the sound of final m is generally accepted. (So Bennett, Appendix, p. 17; Lindsay, Latin Language, p. 61; Seelman, Aussprache des Lateins, p. 362.) Yet a little reflection will raise a question as to the correctness of Quintilian's statement. Certainly the letter e can never have properly represented an obscured or diminished m (Quint., 1. c., §40 neque enim eximitur [sc. m littera] sed obscuratur), and Cato would have preferred the common device of dropping the final m to the use of so arbitrary a symbol as e. We are justified, in fact, on à priori grounds in believing that Cato used some sign nearer the letter m itself to express the obscured nasal. I venture then to conjecture that Cato wrote, not e, but M turned on its side,, placed either after or over the vowel. That this symbol in the free hand of the copyist should have been confused with E is not strange, and Quintilian's statement (1. c., §39), quae in veteribus libris reperta mutare imperiti solent, et dum librariorum insectari volunt inscientiam, suam confitentur, shows the natural consequence of this misunderstanding. If my conjecture be correct, the words m littera in e mollita must be regarded as an early gloss which under the circumstances easily made its way into the text, unless, indeed, we wish to believe that Quintilian himself did not understand Cato's device. m Yet this conjecture, based simply on à priori reasoning, would have little value; it is possible, however, to give it a high degree of probability from the analogy of other similar devices. It is well known that in Augustus' time Verrius Flaccus used half the letter to represent the faint sound of final m (Velius Longus, KGL. VII 80, 17-20 set Flaccus, ut . . . m non tota, sed pars illius prior tantum scriberetur, ut appareret exprimere non debere). Furthermore, the common abbreviation in manuscripts, a stroke over the vowel, a, was in all probability originally an abbreviated m, as is shown by the parallel forms a, a, à; and finally my conjecture receives strong support from the usage in certain Langobard manuscripts, e. g. re rem, a am, etc. (cf. Wattenbach, Anleitung zur lat. Palaeographie', p. 70). The abbreviation 3, which from the fourteenth century is used to represent final m, is probably a general abbreviation and cannot be regarded as a form of m. But the analogies I have mentioned give sufficient support to my conjecture, which, I believe, throws some light on two awkward passages. CLIFFORD HERSCHEL MOOre. THE ATHENIAN SECRETARIES. A Confirmation. In §13 of a treatise on the Athenian Secretaries, published last April as No. VII of the Cornell Studies in Classical Philology, I endeavored to show that during the two hundred years following 304/3 B. C., as in the thirty years preceding 322/1 B. C., the Prytany Secretaries followed one another in the official order of their tribes. Wherever the sequence of the tribes of a group of secretaries was known, that sequence was found to be the official order, and four cases were instanced, in which the year fixed for the archon by the official order of the secretaries' tribes coincided with the year which had to be ascribed to the archon for other reasons. At that time, these four archons were the only ones after 299/8 B. C. whose colleagues in the secretaryship we knew, and whose exact year could be determined. Now two others can be added to the list. 3 1) Dionysius of Halicarnassus' fixes the archon Nikostratos in the year 295/4 B. C., and his testimony is almost universally' accepted by the many scholars who in recent times have investigated the chronology of this period. According to my canon the tribe Aiantis should have furnished the secretary for 295/4 B. C., and, through the kindness of Dr. A. Wilhelm, I am now able to state that an unpublished inscription of Nikostratos' year shows the secretary to have belonged to the deme Phaleron, of the tribe postulated. Hence it is seen that the troublous times of Lachares' tyranny did not disturb the official order. 2) A senatus consultum* found recently at Delphi, and to be published in an early number of the Bull. de Corr. Hell., is dated precisely, in the year 112 B. C., by the names of the Roman consuls, L. Calpurnius (Piso) and M. Livius (Drusus). Fortunately, the translation of this document into Greek was made by 1 De Dinarcho, 9. 2 Schubert, R. (Hermes, X (1876), p. 447 ff.), thought that the archon for the year 301/0 B. C. was wanting in Dionysius' list, and, consequently, that Nikostratos belonged to 294/3 B. C., but Ladek, Fr. (Wiener Studien, XIII (1891), p. 117), has shown that this is impossible. 3 Cornell Studies in Class. Phil. VII (1898), p. 50. Bull. de Corr. Hell. XXI (1897-98), p. 583 ff. and p. 600. 5 Mommsen, CIL. I, p. 535. the Athenian treasurer at Delphi, who, in order to date the decree from the Attic standpoint, added to the names of the Roman consuls that of Dionysios, the Athenian archon for the same year. On the basis of the official order, Dionysios had already been assigned by me to 112/1 B. C.1; for the secretary for Dionysios' year belonged to the tribe Aiantis, and Aiantis was the tribe demanded for 112/1 B. C. by the official order, if it continued unbroken from 304/3 B. C. on. That it did so continue seems to me to be proved, now that we know that Dionysios was archon in 112/1 B. C. CORNELL UNIV., ITHACA, N. Y., Νου. 16, 1898. W. S. FERGUSON. PINDAR, NEMEAN III 62. This is a passage that has raised abundant controversy. No one, however, so far as I am aware, has yet observed (1) that one of the scholiasts had before him a reading materially differing from any of the textus recepti, and (2) that the scholiast's reading, which removes all difficulty from the passage, can be restored by the alteration of a single letter. is: Omitting stops (as to which editors differ), the current reading “ καὶ ἐγχεσφόροις ἐπιμίξαις Αἰθιόπεσσι χεῖρας ἐν φρασὶ πάξαιθ ̓ ὅπως σφίσι μὴ κοίρανος ὀπίσω Some take xeipas év ḍpaoì máέail' together, in a physical sense: others take ἐν φρασὶ πάξαιθ' in a mental sense, and associate χεῖρας with ἐπιμίξαις. Bergk emends πάξαιθ ̓ ὅπως into πάξαι θάπος. But the concluding words of the scholium that is numbered 3 in Prof. Bury's edition run thus: “avrì roû eis ñépas äyou." It is, I think, obvious that, instead of xeîpas, this scholiast read reîpas, a Pindaric form occurring in the 2d Olympian, and equivalent to reîpap or πέρας. This rare form would, in the context, be most easily corrupted into χεῖρας. I therefore have no hesitation in restoring Teîpas and translating: "And that, having come hand to hand with the Ethiop spearmen, 1 1 Cornell Studies, VII, p. 58. 2 CIA. II 475. ་ he might fix his heart on the execution of this intent-namely, that their chief should never return,” etc. This reading and rendering is made certain by the earlier half of the above-mentioned scholium, viz. "nayiws (MS λayiws) λoyiσairo Kai Kpivo," i. e. "might firmly determine and also bring his determination to execution," which is an admirable paraphrase of the condensed expression “ πεῖρας ἐν φρασὶ πάξαιθ'.” Does not the emendation I suggest also give to ones a more idiomatic significance? R. J. WALKER. |