Evonμa póvel, as though in a part of a river, where there was a long and dangerous winding, the sailors used this piece of flattery by way of propitiating the Nile; but this does not fully clear up the passage here. That this proverb was so used may appear from the words of Athenæus, xii. 516, Τὸν τόπον καλοῦσι Γυναικῶν ἀγῶνα, γλυκὺν ἀγκῶνα: “ they call the place of the women's contest' pleasant bend; " which last may mean, a specious term to cover their ignominy. Casaubon does not explain it here it seems applied to such as speak one thing and mean another.

P. 259, § 90. Falling asleep.] The Greeks usually slept at noon in summer, as it is still the custom in Italy and Spain, and in other hot

countries.

P. 259, § 91. TETTIywv.] The tettix, in Latin "cicada," is an animal with wings, the size of a man's thumb, of a dark brown colour, which sits on the trees and sings, that is, makes a noise like a cricket; but much more shrill, and without any intervals, which grows louder as the sun grows hotter. Some supposed it to live on the air, others, on dew only. It does in reality live on the exudations of plants, having a proboscis, like flies, to feed with; but is capable of living a long time, like many of the insect race, without any nourishment at all. The tettigometra, which is this creature in its intermediate state between a worm and a fly, was esteemed a delicacy to eat by the Greeks.

P. 261. The Eleatic Palamedes.] Quintilian, iii. 1-10, informs us, that the person here meant is Alcidamas of Elea. Diogen. Laert. ix. 25, takes it to be meant of Zeno Eleates, who is looked upon as the inventor of disputation and of logic, and who was at Athens when Socrates was not above eight years old, that is, above fifty years earlier than the time of this dialogue; but his contemporary Empedocles was the first who cultivated rhetoric as an art, and taught it to Gorgias, who published a book on that subject.

P. 270. Noũ Tε kai avoiαç.] He (i. e. Anaxagoras) attributed the disposition of the universe to an intelligent cause, or mind, whence he himself was called Nous. He was nearly of the same age with Pericles, and came to Athens Ol. 75, 1, where he passed about thirty years.

P. 275. This discourse of Thamus (or Jupiter Ammon) on the uses and inconveniences of letters is excellent; and he gives a lively image of a great scholar, that is, of one who searches for wisdom in books alone.

LYSIS.

THERE is no circumstance in this dialogue to inform us when it happened; but it is certain that Plato wrote it when he was yet a young man, before Ol. 95, 1, for Socrates heard it read. The scene of it is in a Palæstra, then newly built, a little without the walls of Athens, near the fountain of Panops, between the Academia and the Lycæum. The interlocutors are, Socrates; Hippothales and Ctesippus, two young men of Athens; Lysis, a boy of noble birth and fortune, beloved by Hippothales; and Menexenus, also a boy, and cousin to Ctesippus, and friend to Lysis. The characters are, as usual, elegantly drawn; but what is the end or meaning of the whole dialogue, I do not pretend to say. It turns upon the nature and definition of friendship. Socrates starts a hundred notions about it, and confutes them all himself; nothing is determined, the dialogue is interrupted and there is an end. Perhaps a second dialogue was designed on the same subject and never executed. As to all the mysteries which Serranus has discovered in it, they are mere dreams of his own.

The first part of this dialogue is of that kind called MaιEVTIKós, "Obstetrical," and the second part, Пepaσrikós, "Tentative.”

N. B. The discourse with Menexenus is intended to correct a boy of a bolder and more forward nature than Lysis, by showing him that he knows nothing; and leaves him in the opinion of his own ignorance. The second title of the dialogue is a false or an incorrect one, for friendship is only by accident a part of it. The intent of the whole seems to be, to show in what manner we should converse with young people according to their different dispositions.

NOTES ON THE GREEK TEXT.

P. 204-211. Thus far the dialogue is very easy and elegant, particularly the short conversation with Lysis, which is an example how children of fortune and family ought to be treated, in order to correct that arrogance which those advantages are apt to inspire, and to win them gradually to reflection and good sense.

P. 206. The Hermæa.] A festival celebrated in all the places of education for boys. We see here how little the severe laws of Solon on this head were observed, which particularly forbade grown persons to be admitted on that occasion, as we learn from Æschin. in Timarch.

P. 211. "Oprvya.] The passion of the Athenians for fighting quails and game-cocks is well known. See Plutarch in Alcibiade.

P. 214. The wisest.] Empedocles, perhaps, who ascribed the first formation of things to this friendship, "Αλλοτε μέν φιλότητι συνέρχομεν uç iv aπavтa, &c. as stated in Diogen. Laert. viii. 76, or Anaxagoras, who taught that the Universe was made up of small bodies consisting of similar particles, as we learn from Diogen. Laert. ii. 8.

P. 219. After drinking hemlock.] A quantity of wine, drunk after the cicuta, "hemlock," was believed to prevent its mortal effects.

P. 223. It was late.] It was a law of Solon, that school-rooms were to be closed before sunset.

ALCIBIADES I.

THE title expressing the subject of this dialogue (like that of Lysis) is wrong. Dacier rightly observes, that the titles are commonly nothing to the purpose; but he is strangely mistaken in saying, they are of modern invention, and that Diogenes Laertius makes no mention of them. That author actually mentions them all, and from his account they appear to be more ancient than Thrasyllus, who lived probably under Augustus and Tiberius, and who seemingly took them to be all of Plato's own hand.

The true subject certainly is, to demonstrate the necessity of knowing one's self, and that, without this foundation, all other acquisitions in science are not only useless, but pernicious.

The time of this dialogue is towards the end of Alcibiades' nineteenth year, which (as Dodwell reckons) is Ol. 87, 1. Socrates was then about thirty-nine years old.

NOTES ON THE GREEK TEXT.

P. 106. To mount the platform.] Boys when they had undergone the Aokipaoia, "Scrutiny," before the Thesmothetæ, who presided in the court of Heliæa, see Lysias in Diogeiton. p. 508 and 515; Aristoph. Vesp. 576; and Antiphont. de cæde Choreutæ, p. 143, ed. Steph.; and were enrolled among the men, though they were for a year excused from nndertaking all Λειτουργίαι, "Public Duties," seem to have been at liberty, at this time of the republic, to vote and speak in the assembly of the people. Therefore, Potter (Archæolog. i. 17) is not correct when he affirms that they could not speak there, who were under thirty years of age. They could not indeed be chosen into the senate, &c. till that age.

Ρ. 106. Γράμματα και κιθαρίζειν.] The usual education of the Athenian children from seven years old to fifteen. See Eschines de Axioco, p. 94, ed. Le Clerc, and Aristoph. in Nubibus, vs. 961.

P. 122, § 37. There is a care to not one of the Athenians.] Of old the court of Areopagus were inspectors of the education of youth. The members of it divided that care among them, and each of them in his province took note of such fathers as gave not their children an education suitable to their fortune and way of life, as Isocrates shows at large in his beautiful Areopagitic oration. At what time their vigilance on this head began to decline, I cannot fix; but it was probably towards the beginning of the administration of Pericles, when the authority of that venerable body was lessened and restrained by Ephialtes, that is, before Ol. 80,1; yet I find the form of the thing still continued, though not the force of it: for Æschines, in Axioch. p. 367, § 8, speaking of the discipline young men were subject to, from about the age of eighteen to twenty, says that "The whole period of youth is under Moderators, and the selection of those who are placed over youths by the council of the Areopagus. The "Sophronistæ" here mentioned, are distinct from the Areopagites; being the name of a magistracy described in Etymolog. Magn. in Zwppovioraí, as certain officers, chosen by votes, ten in number, one for each ward, who have the care over the temperate conduct of youths.

P. 122, § 39. Already for many generations.] We are not told, I believe, by any other writer, that the use of money was so early introduced into Lacedæmon; but there is a passage of Posidonius in Athenæus, vi. 233, that throws light on the subject. Plutarch says, that money was not even allowed for the uses of the state, till after the siege of Athens and its surrender to Lysander, when that point was carried after a great struggle; although, at the same time, it was made capital to apply it to private occasions. This happened twenty-seven years after the date of this dialogue.

ALCIBIADES II.

THIS is a continuation of the same subject; for what is said on prayer is rather accidental, and only introductory to the main purpose of the dialogue. It is nothing inferior in elegance to the former. Some have attributed it to Xenophon, but it is undoubtedly Plato's, and designed as a second part to the former.

I could be glad if it were as easy to fix the time of it, as Dacier would persuade us, who boldly fixes it Ol. 93, 1, but there are facts alluded to in it, that will neither be reconciled to that date, nor indeed to one another; and besides, it is better to allow Plato to be guilty of these inaccuracies in chronology, than of those improprieties of character which must be the consequences of Dacier's supposition. It is plain that Socrates continues, as in the preceding discourse, to treat Alcibiades with a certain gentle superiority of understanding, and that he prescribes to, and instructs him in, a manner extremely proper to form the mind of a youth just entering into the world, but ill-bred and impertinent to a man of forty years of age, who had passed through the highest dignities of the state and through the most extraordinary reverses of fortune. Plato himself may convince us of this, by what he makes Socrates say in the first Alcibiades, p. 127, § 48: "But now you ought to take courage. For if you had perceived that you were suffering so at the age of fifty, it would have been difficult to take care of yourself. But now you are at the very time of life, when it is meet for you to perceive it.”

The principal difficulties are that he speaks of Pericles as yet living, who died Ol. 87, 4, and of the murder of Archelaus king of Macedon as a fact then recent, which did not happen till Ol. 95, 1, the same year with Socrates's death, and near five years after that of Alcibiades.

NOTES ON THE GREEK TEXT.

P. 141. Ta Taidika.] Craterus conspired with Hellenocrates and Decamnichus to murder that prince, (Archelaus of Macedonia,) as he was hunting. Aristotle calls him Cratæus, and gives a fuller account of this conspiracy than any other author. Aristot. Politic. v. 10. Archelaus had promised him one of his daughters in marriage, for he had two, but gave one to the king of Elimea and the other to his own son Amyntas.