SCELERATUM FRIGUS

In Virgil's Georgics, ii. 256 occurs the phrase: sceleratum exquirere frigus. The use of the adjective has attracted the attention of commentators from Servius on, and various supposed parallels have been adduced without bringing much additional light to the passage. There has been pretty generally overlooked, however, a discussion by Saint Jerome (Ep. 121. 10, p. 879 Vall.), where, speaking of certain Cilician provincialisms in the language of Saint Paul, he remarks: nec hoc miremur in apostolo si utatur eius linguae consuetudine in qua natus est et nutritus, cum Virgilius, alter Homerus apud nos, patriae suae sequens consuetudinem, sceleratum frigus appellet. Doubtless this criticism is borrowed by Jerome from his teacher Donatus (cf. Lammert, De Hieronymo Donati Discipulo [1912], pp. 38-39). Did the Patavinity of Livy perhaps consist in as slight but yet definite features as this by which Virgil betrayed his native district?

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

ARTHUR STANLEY PEASE

BOOK REVIEWS

Martial, the Epigrammatist; and Other Essays. By KIRBY FLOWER SMITH. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1920. 171 pp. $2.00.

In this volume Professor Wilfred Mustard has collected a number of papers written by his friend and colleague, Kirby Smith, late professor of Latin in the Johns Hopkins University. Besides the essay which gives its title to the book there are chapters on "The Poet Ovid," "Propertius; A Modern Lover in the Augustan Age," and also in a different vein "Pupula Duplex." The other papers are of a wholly different type: "The Classics and Our Vernacular," "The Future Place of the Humanities in Education," and "Some Boyhood Reminiscences of a Country Town." At the end of the volume are given some of Professor Smith's metrical translations and original verse.

The collection comprises only some of the less technical of Professor Smith's writings, but the choice of material made by the editor within these limits is notably felicitous; it exemplifies both the author's special interests and the range of his erudition. In the essays on Martial, Propertius, and Ovid we see his love of literature for its own sake, his subtle appreciation of its various forms and that gift of analysis which brings home to the reader -as it did in the old days to his students at Johns Hopkins-all those qualities of the poets, whether emotional or technical, which made their poems what they were. Many writers of "essays of appreciation" have but a superficial knowledge of their subject, but these essays by Professor Smith are based upon an exhaustive study of the poets and an unrivaled command of the literature of the departments to which they belonged. After reading them one knows Martial, Propertius, and Ovid as never before.

While Graeco-Roman elegy constituted Professor Smith's chief interest, he had a distinct bent for the study of folk-lore, and this side of his mind is illustrated by the article on the pupula duplex. Here we see his erudition, his familiarity with authors obscure and little read, his love of the curious in custom and literature, and his skill in interpretation.

In the papers "The Classics and Our Vernacular" and "The Future Place of the Humanities in Education" we see our author as an apologist for classical culture. To me, and, I think, to many of his students and colleagues, this is his most unfamiliar rôle. He loved the classics so dearly, he believed so thoroughly in their educational value, that a formal defense of them must always have seemed to him a superfluity and a bore. But

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secretaries of associations must have papers for their meetings and Kirby Smith was always ready to help. The essays, moreover, are good, and it is characteristic of him that in the first of them instead of repeating all the time-worn arguments, so old, so tattered, and so frayed, he selects a single one, the value of the classics for the study of English and the development of an English style, and elaborates it in a way that is at once genial and vigorous, persuasive and effective. In the "Humanities in Education," among other good points, he draws attention to the character of German education in the period before August, 1914:

Now it is safe to say that for more than a generation the most obvious and striking characteristic of German education was that, apart from being highly organized and relentlessly thorough, it has been more exclusively scientific and technical than any system of education has ever been in any part of the world. Not content with its own proper domain, science and the scientific attitude had sought and found a "place in the sun" in practically every department of human activity. The Humanities undertook to save themselves by protective assimilation; but the final result of the effort was that at the outbreak of the war there was hardly a handful of classical scholars subject to the draft who could ever hope to command or deserve the recognition given to their illustrious predecessors. G. J. LAING

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Livy. With an English translation by B. O. FOSTER. Volume I. Books I and II. ("Loeb Classical Series.") London: William Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1919. xxxvi+447. 2 maps. $2.25.

The excellent quality of this first instalment of Professor Foster's proposed thirteen-volume translation of Livy assures us of at last having a good rendering of all that remains of the historian's work. The only complete translations now available (Holland's, London, 1600, and Baker's 1797) are old fashioned in vocabulary and style, and in other respects also are far from satisfactory.

Professor Foster has equipped his work with a much more substantial introduction than is to be found in other recently published volumes of the Loeb series. In it he discusses most of the outstanding questions connected with Livy: his life and social position, the plan of his history, its style and technique, the use of epitomes, and the manuscript tradition. Limitations of space prevented his treating any of these topics in detail, but his command of the field, his admirable sense of perspective, and his compact style have enabled him to include in small space a surprising amount of valuable information.

The Latin text has been set up from the last edition by Weissenborn and Müller, but many changes have been introduced from the Oxford text by Conway and Walters. The text of the Periochae is that of Rossbach. The translation is of distinct merit. It adheres closely to the original, but is couched in idiomatic English. If any criticism is to be made it is that in some passages, especially in the matter of periodic structure, it follows the original too closely. This is especially noticeable in the translation of the Preface, which is the least successful of the translator's efforts. Just how far this close adherence to the original represents Professor Foster's own ideal of translation or the standard fixed by the editorial board of the series the reviewer is not in a position to state.

In a few cases the translator's English is open to criticism: e.g., page xxiii (Introduction), "Caligula. . . . lacked but little of casting out their works"; page 15, where we have the pleonastic "affirm for certain"; page 19, "ordered the children to be committed to the river"; page 27, "chose out those of the cattle"; page 33, "the city was .. reaching out its walls." It is doubtful, moreover, whether the style of the translation gains anything by the use of archaisms like "avouch" (p. 1), "in menacing wise” (p. 25), and "added these words withal." As regards correctness and accuracy the translation takes high rank, and it is only occasionally that renderings are found which might be criticized on the ground of vagueness or inaccuracy as on page 31, "purple-bordered toga" for toga praetexta (it was red, not purple); and page 37, "taking her to Thalassius" for Thalassio ferre, where the meaning is that "she was being carried off for Thalassius." These are, however, minor points, more or less inevitable in so large a task as Professor Foster has undertaken.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

G. J. LAING

Die germanische Urgeschichte in Tacitus Germania. Von EDUARD NORDEN. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1920. x+505.

The quotation from Jakob Grimm on the title-page aptly indicates the nature and scope of this volume: "nirgends wo europäische Geschichte beginnt, hebt sie ganz von Frischem an, sondern setzt immer lange dunkle Zeiten voraus, durch welche ihr eine frühere Welt verknüpft wird." For the author's discussion of the ethnology of the Germania grows into a critical analysis of the history of primitive Germany, in which with striking acumen and great erudition he estimates the contributions and traces the relations of Posidonius, Procopius, Caesar, Pliny the Elder, and Jordanes. He does not however confine himself to literary sources. The latest results of archaeological research are also presented and effectively woven into the fabric of his argument.

The range of the volume may be seen from the chapter titles: I, Die Germania im Rahmen der ethnographischen Literatur des Altertums;

II, Quellenkritisches zur ethnographie europäischer Völker; III, Herakles und Odysseus in Germanien; IV, Auf den Spuren der Bella Germaniae des Plinius; V, Die Entstehungsgeschichte des Germanennamens: WortInterpretationen; VI, Ethnologische, onomatologische und geschichtliche Folgerungen. Berührungen von Kelten- und Germanentum. To these chapters (each of which is a substantial treatise) are added several appendixes: (1) Zur Überlieferung der Germania; (2) Stiltechnisches zur Germania; (3) Eine Polemik des Poseidonios gegen Artemidoros über die Ethnologie der Kimbern; (4) Columnae Herculis; (5) Die helvetische Einwanderung (by H. Philipp); (6) Die Ethnographischen Abschnitte Caesars über Suebi und Germani; (7) Zwei Stationennamen am Niederrhein; and (8) Alamanni Stamm- und Volksname.

One of the most interesting parts of the book is the discussion of the influence which Pliny's Bella Germaniae has had not only upon the Germania but upon other works of Tacitus. That Pliny was one of Tacitus' sources has of course always been known (the historian himself refers to him): Ann. i. 69 (15 A.D.) tradit C. Plinius, Germanicorum bellorum scriptor; ibid. xiii. 20 (55 A.D.) Fabius Rusticus. Plinius et Cluvius), but no one has analyzed the relations of the two authors with such thoroughness and plausibility as Norden. He has made use of the work of all his predecessors in the field (he pays special tribute to Münzer's monograph Die Quelle des Tacitus für die Germanenkriege), and has added substantial contributions of his own. That Pliny is Tacitus' source in all the passages which Norden discusses is something which not even he would claim as finally demonstrated, but in every case he has made a strong argument, and one finishes the reading of the chapter with the feeling that Pliny's work on the German wars is not so hopelessly lost as has always been supposed.

In the purely ethnological sections of the book Norden shows the same amazing range of erudition and ingenuity of combination that we have learned to look for in all his writings.

The limits of the subject of the volume have prevented the author from discussing with the same detail as the ethnological relations such questions as the original purpose of the Germania, the occasion of its publication, and its literary technique. He does, however, touch upon all these problems. In regard to the first, he thinks (p. 30) that Tacitus wrote the monograph with a view to insertion (in abbreviated form) as an ethnological excursus in his historical work; that, having this in mind, he delayed its publication, and that no one can now say whether its subsequent appearance as a separate monograph ever had his authorization. On the technique of the Germania we have some suggestive comments in the second Appendix (Stiltechnisches zur Germania). This is a phase of the subject upon which Norden is especially qualified to speak, and we can only regret the brevity with which he discusses the relation of the Germania to the recognized type of ethnological composition as illustrated by Hecataeus and Herodotus.