This is the third selection of major works on the Scottish Enlightenment and includes the same combination of hard-to-find and popular works as in the two previous collections. Contents: An Essay on the Natural Equality of Men [1793] William Lawrence Brown, New introduction by Dr. William Scott 308 pp An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue [1733] Archibald Campbell 586 pp The Philosophical Works [1765] William Dudgeon, New introduction by David Berman 300 pp Institutes of Moral Philosophy (...) For the use of Students in the College of Edinburgh [1769] Adam Ferguson 340 pp A Comparative view of the State and Faculties of Man with those of the Animal World [1774] John Gregory 426 pp An Apology for the Life and Writings of David Hume, Esq [1777] Samuel Jackson A Letter to Adam Smith, On the Life, Death and Philosophy of his friend David Hume Esq [1777] George Horne (Bishop of Norwich) 252 pp. (shrink)

The Argument from Inferiority holds that our world cannot be the creation of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being; for if it were, it would be the best of all possible worlds, which evidently it is not. We argue that this argument rests on an implausible principle concerning which worlds it is permissible for an omnipotent being to create: roughly, the principle that such a being ought not to create a non-best world. More specifically, we argue that this principle is plausible (...) only if we assume that there is a best element in the set of all possible worlds. However, as we show, there are conceivable scenarios in which that assumption does not hold. (shrink)

In C.Q. XXVII. 178–181 Mr. S. G. Owen has raised some interesting questions, but it may be doubted whether he has in every case discovered the correct solution. Panntalia 30, 6: quaeque sine exemplo in nece functa uiri. Mr. Owen's pronece removes the hiatus, but I think has no other merit. The sense ‘a death for a death,’ even if not necessarily or best represented by repetition of the same term, is at least not happily represented by such combination of (...) euphemism with dysphemism; ‘in place of the slaughter of her husband, she finished her days.’ Read funere, and you get an expression characteristic of this school; Paulinus of Pella applied it to death; patris de funere functi 236, ‘of my father's death,’ i.e. funere defuncti, cf. 241 defuncti patris. But Paulinus of Nola applied it also to a vicarious death, Christus … morte mea functus, carm. 31, 191 . Both were pupils of Ausonius. (shrink)

‘A sweet life without lamentation’ renders Mr G. Thomson, who discusses the passage in C.Q. XXVIII 74 f. That is beyond question what this Greek will naturally and properly mean; if there were any doubt, his citations dispel it.

Since 1944, attempts at progress in the interpretation of the text of the Bacchae must inevitably express themselves mainly in terms of respectful disagreement with Professor Dodds's edition published in that year. 20–24. Dodds's text was justly called in question by Kitto , 65), but there is only one available remedy for this complex; those who work it out for themselves will find that they had been anticipated by Wecklein in his text and school edition.

Recent discussion of the problems associated with glacie has been copious. It has arisen out of Housman's note, which runs as follows: ‘glacie nemini, quantum scio, praeterquam mini et Schradero et Hadriano Valesio admirationem mouit: ceteris exploratum est frigore pisces maculosos fieri, eos praesertim qui torrentem cloacam, locum frigidissimum, penetrare soleant.’ In his 1931 reprint he added : ‘Ruperti took exception to glacie, but only to its case’. Housman's ironically stated objection to the sense is indeed a formidable difficulty; though (...) the other—the fact of the two ablatives and the vagueness of the former—is itself serious enough to provide an additional indication of corruption. (shrink)

On οδ γγελός τίς κτλ. Jebb writes: ‘The sentence begins as if γγελός were to be followed by λθε:but the second alternative, συμπράκτωρ όδοû suggests κατεȋδε [had seen, though he did not speak]: and this, by a kind of zeugma, stands as verb to γγελος also.’ In support he cites only an atrocious zeugma from the MS. text of Hdt. iv. 106; but this has been corrected, as anyone may now see who will examine the text and apparatus of chs. (...) 106 and 107 as presented in Hude's edition. (shrink)

Astronomy has been known to profit on occasion from the observations of amateurs; and so perhaps, in its less technical passages, could the Astronomica. I venture to dispute the emendations of Mr. Shackleton Bailey in the first two items of his learned Maniliana.

τυτθòν δ' σσονπωθεν λιτπτοιο γροντος γενναίαις σταφυλαîσι καλòν ββριθενλω τν λίγος τις κρος φ' αμασιαîσι φυλσσει μενοσ' μφ· δ νιν δ' λπεκες μν ν' ρχως φοιτ σινομνα τν τρξιμον, δ' π πρ πντα δóλον τεχοισα τò παιδίον ο πρν νησεν φατ πρν ρίστοισιν π ξηροσι καθίξη. ατρ γ' νθερίκοισι καλν πλκει κριδοθραν σχοίν φαρμóσδων· μλεται δ ο· οὒτε τι πρας οὒτε φυτν τοσσνον, σον περ πλγματι γαθε.

In the last number of C.Q. Mr. A. D. Knox has drawn up a list of Theocriteans who, he suggests, ‘have all of them made the most elementary mistake’ of failing to consider the possibility at least that it is the Boy, and not the Fox, who is the subject of καθξ in Id. I. 51. From that list he will have to with-draw two names, Gow and Campbell. This construction, which Mr. Knox propounds as a novelty, had been (...) suggested by Mr. Gow in C.R. XLIV., pp. 9–10. For my part, I am not ingenious, and that syntactical possibility would no more have occurred to me independently than would Mr. Gow's three renderings of it, two of which are ‘until he sets her vinous breakfast upon a more solid basis’ and ‘until he sets her grapes on toast’; as little could I ever have thought, with Mr. Knox, of ‘the obvious necessity’ for this fox ‘of rest after a heavy meal’; still less of those further inevitable eventualities1 at which he hints with such delicacy in his quotation of Aelian V. 39. In regard to these and all such matters, to my mind ‘it were to consider too curiously to consider so.’ For even in Greek which represented for my ears some such English as ‘until she set him a-breakfastant upon the dries,’ if there was one thing with which I was completely satisfied it was with the Fox as subject; that seemed so perfectly in keeping both with the happy playfulness of the passage and with the richly idiomatic φατ as applied to a graven image of an animal. But from the fact that I criticized Mr. Gow's note it is obvious that I was familiar with his idea. (shrink)

In C.Q. XXVI. 45–51 I contended that in Aesch. Agam. 1227–30 Cassandra describes Clytemnestra in terms of a Greek proverb, the proverb of the Treacherous Hound; and I restored the passage thus:— νεŵν δ' παρχоς 'Ιλоν τ' νασττης оκ оδεν оα γλŵσσα μιστης κννς λεξασα κα σνασα φαδρ', ооν δκоς Ατης λαθραоν δξεται κακ τχν.

‘ “I desire”’ Jebb, whose note I now take as read. In this and my ensuing discussion I seek to show that never has that meaning. The scholiast's note is a sophism, and Jebb's is another. Jebb says that the primary sense is to love; he prudently leaves unstated the next step in the fallacy, that to love might mean to have just fallen in love with; and he concludes that poetry ‘could easily draw’ the sense to desire. Actually applies (...) as between parents and children, rulers and their subjects, and to other not necessarily amenable persons or not prima facie acceptable things with whom or which one has to associate continually ; its general sense is to ‘do with’, to brook; it ranges from like to either extreme, be fond of or tolerate. In its various nuances it resembles which never means to ‘desire’. (shrink)

cum prorepserunt primis animalia terris, mutum et turpe pecus, glandem atque cubilia propter unguibus et pugnis, dein fustibus, atque ita porro pugnabant armis, quae post fabricauerat usus, donec uerba, quibus uoces sensusque notarent, nominaque inuenere; dehinc absistere bello, oppida coeperunt munire et ponere leges, ne quis … uoces and sensus are not in pari materia; indeed, uoces notare is nonsense, as Gow says. The defect was first pointed out by Housman, J. Phil. xviii, pp. 5–8; his remedy was to transpose (...) one word and read donec uerba, quibus sensus, uocesque, notarent, nominaque inuenere. I doubt if any scholar not already familiar with Housman's note could understand his Latin here without considerable analytical effort; and I cannot but think that Housman was for once demanding from a pair of commas a cabalistic virtue hardly resident in the seal of Solomon. Admittedly he supplies a long list — one page and a half—of illustrative dislocations; but in my opinion two objections remain. In the first place, ‘interlacing’ of the clauses A B in the form A B A B is quite frequent in Latin verse; but A B A B A is rare in the extreme, not to be found in Horace, not perhaps in any Latin author except Lucretius. Secondly, the insertion of uoces, ‘expressions’ generally , in such a way as to disrupt the pair uerba nominaque ‘verbs and nouns’ would be awkward, and for Horace anomalous, in the most lucid of contexts; here it makes confusion worse confounded. (shrink)

The ‘four famous cruces’ of this satire are as interesting as notorious. I regard the first as solved, since I cannot imagine anybody improving upon Postgate's line 13 . But I find instead a hitherto undetected but quite palpable flaw in the opening words.

Professor H. J. Rose's article in C.Q. xxxiii. 69 f. has advanced the study of this perplexing passage in two important respects. He has observed that, in order to determine the ‘eye’ as metaphorical, ỏΦθαλμός requires a dependent genitive, and he has therefore restored μεαλν πολων to this relation by punctuating as above instead of after πολίων And he is surely equally right in maintaining that this plural genitive must have a plural reference; it must mean ‘of great cities’ and (...) not ‘of Cyrene’. For although there is a figure called pluralis maiestatis, such obscurity in the use of it seems too affected, such ambiguity too perverse; a poem honouring the prince of Cyrene will refer to this famous city in unmistakable terms. (shrink)

I present first what I take to be a more interesting item than the others. O.C 716–19. δ' ερετμος κπαγλ' λα χερ σ ✝παραπτομναπλτα θρσκει, τν κατομπδων νηρῄδων κλουθος. The above is Pearson's text, except that I have transferred the last syllable of his 716 to the beginning of my 717. Careful consideration of the metre of this stasimon has convinced me that 716 is rightly regarded by Schroeder as an ionic trimeter ; further, that 717 is what most people (...) call a glyconic, as is also 718. Naturally therefore I follow Hermann and Jebb as regards the text in 704, and have thus no use for the three conjectures mentioned by Pearson as substitutes for our admittedly corrupt παραπτομνα. (shrink)

In C.Q. N.s. iv , 10–12, I gave an elaborate diagnosis of the morbid symptoms in sense and syntax of the traditional text. I then proposed , rendering ‘as I now am doing, without success’. Professor W. M. Edwards wrote to me that he accepted ‘this very helpful analysis of the trouble', but not my emendation, on the ground that O.'s admission of failure would be ‘a factual statement requiring ’.

That after that is just too ghastly. Jebb's citations are no parallels; the difference is that and have both precisely the same reference. Read ‘which reflections … time-honoured as they are’. In this well-known construction a term which logically belongs to the antecedent is deferred and inserted in the relative clause—‘for emphasis’.