The opening question is not answered anywhere; it is merely a rhetorical question, and Horace might have begun, Nonne mirum est, Maecenas, quod nemo . . . vivit, laudat...? In line 108 we should read nemo ut sibi carus or quia nemo ut avarus (ut = sicut.)

Pp. 453-58. Ueber Alkiphron. F. Buecheler. Notes on Ep. I 9, 3; I 15 [I 12], 3; IV 15 [II 3].

Miscellen. Pp. 459-61. F. Jacoby. Sosiphanes. We may recognize two tragic poets named Sosiphanes. The elder was a contemporary of Alexander the Great, and lived, perhaps at Athens, 357-313/2. The younger brought out his plays in Alexandria. He was born 306/5; he lived under Philadelphos, and was commonly reckoned as one of the Pleiad.-Pp. 461-2. F. Jacoby. Die Beisetzungen Alexanders des Grossen. The body of Alexander was buried in Memphis by Ptolemaios I; it was afterwards removed to Alexandria by Ptolemaios II.-Pp. 462-7. W. Heraeus. Sprachliches aus den Pseudoacronischen Horazscholien. Notes on the words hocannivus (vulgar for hornus, hornotinus; cp. Ital. uguanno, etc.), titilli, trimorfa, maulistria, viripotens, pergiras, etc.-Pp. 467-71. K. Lohmeyer. Eine Ueberlieferung der Briefe des jüngeren Plinius in Verona.Pp. 471-5. V. Szelinski. Zu den Sprichwörtern der Römer. The first instalment of a collection of Latin proverbs supplementing Otto's collection.-Pp. 476-80. E. Ritterling. Zur Geschichte der leg. II Traiana unter Traian.

Pp. 481-99. Zu den Persern des Timotheos. S. Sudhaus. Textual notes.

Pp. 500-10. Eine Rathsversammlung auf einem italischen Relief. W. Helbig. Interpretation of a frieze of the sixth century B. C. found at Velletri in 1784. It probably represents an officer of the arquites reporting to the king and his counsellors on the movements of the enemy.

Pp. 511-28. Zur altgriechischen Tracht. J. H. Holwerda. In the earliest period of Greek history, both men and women wore the same simple garment, the Homeric pâpos. This was afterwards known as the Doric costume, to distinguish it from the finer Ionian dress. The men wore it as a xλaîva, the women as a Téλos. After the Athenian women had received their Ionian costume (Herod. V. 88), some of the richer men began to wear the female "overtunic"; but about the beginning of the fifth century they resumed the earlier garb, which the common people had retained all along. Even the women gradually gave up their new Ionian costume, and the revdúrns of the fifth century was in time displaced by the old Doric iuáriov.

Pp. 529-37. Zu der Rede des L. Marcius Philippus aus Sallusts Historien. J. Steup. Textual notes on §§ 3, 10, 16, 17.

Pp. 538-45. Untersuchungen zur römischen Kaisergeschichte (continued from p. 390). A. v. Domaszewski. V. Denkmäler aus der Zeit des Maximinus Thrax.

Pp. 546-51. Euripides als litterarischer Kritiker. L. Radermacher. The passage in the Electra, 538-44, is an interpolation.

Pp. 552-97. Studien über Ciceros Schrift de oratore. W. Kroll. A long study of Cicero's indebtedness to Antiochos of Askalon, with special reference to the excursus in De Orat. III, 54-143.

Pp. 598-623. Thessaliotis und Pelasgiotis. F. Solmsen. The Sotairos inscription (Athen. Mittheil. 21, 110, 248 ff.) is studied for the light it throws upon the language and history of northern Greece.

Miscellen. Pp. 624-26. F. Buecheler. Eine Verbesserung Petrons. In Petron. XXXV, we may read "super sagittarium oclopectam." This word occurs in a leaden tablet (Bulletin archéologique du comité des travaux hist., 1902, p. 418). It is to be connected with πῆξαι (= ὀφθαλμοπήκτης). In Petronius it perhaps means a kind of fish.-Pp. 627-33. S. Krauss. Neue Aufschlüsse über Timesitheus und die Perserkriege.-Pp. 633-35. E. Ritterling. Caparcotna Leğğün in Galilaea.-Pp. 636-37. L. Radermacher. Die Zeit der Asinaria. The writer finds in line 124, me hunc scipionem contui, a play on the name of a Scipio who was in the theatre when the comedy was first produced. Possibly this was P. Cornelius Scipio, curule aedile in 212 B. C.-Pp. 638-40. H. Wegehaupt and A. Brinkmann. Zum Orakel von Tralles.-P. 640. Mittheilung des K. D. Archäologischen Instituts. Obituary notice of Hans von Prott.

HAVERFORD College.

WILFRED P. MUSTARD..

Beiträge zur Assyriologie und semitischen Sprachwissenschaft, Bd. V. Hefte 1-2, herausgegeben von FRIEDRICH DELITZSCH und PAUL HAUPT. J. C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig, 1903.1

The first part of this volume of the Beiträge consists of a long treatise by Bruno Meissner of Assyriological fame, entitled "Modern Arabic Tales from Iraq" (pp. I.-LVIII. and 1-148). After mentioning and discussing his sources (pp. I.-VI.), the author gives a most interesting grammatical sketch of the Iraq idiom. I note a number of correspondences with the modern

For the report on the last Heft of the Beiträge, Vol. IV, see A. J. P. XXIV 96-100.

southern Egyptian dialect of Arabic. Thus, the Qaf Nuqtetên is pronounced with the value of hard g and the Jim is sometimes pronounced dyim, both of which phenomena appear in the Arabic of Assouân, Egypt. The penult is usually accented, as ektibau (p. XIV.) "they wrote", which is, of course, a common Bedouin peculiarity. The 1 p. pl. is eḥna, instead of naḥn (p. XV.). The 3 p. prefix of the imperfect of the verb is ii and not simple i as in parts of Syria and in Mosûli. On the other hand, I observe that there are peculiarities which smack of the Bedouin Arabic of Syria. Thus Kaf is palatalized into č, which never occurs in Egyptian Arabic. The negative is generally má and not muš, as in vulgar Syrian and Egyptian and the final negative -š is not seen in the verbs; cf. Egyptian mâ yedrubbůš "he will not strike him" (also Syrian). The use of fared as a sort of indefinite article is peculiarly striking, as in fared wâḥid “a certain one". Meissner gives fifty-five of the stories in transliteration and translation (pp. 1-101) and closes his book-for it is really a complete book-with a few Exkurse (pp. 102-111) and a very useful glossary of the Iraq dialect (pp. 112-148.).

The second Heft is a treatise by R. Vollers on the Mutalammis poems (pp. 149-231), a work which the author began as long ago as 1896 in Cairo. After discussing his sources (pp. 149-231), he gives the Arabic text with textual notes of seventeen of the poems and follows it up with the text and translation of twentyfour fragments (pp. 204-211). The German translation of the longer poems is given pp. 212-223. Vollers supplements his work by a register of metres and rhymes. Most of the metres are Tawil. He gives also a list of personal, place and star-names, as well as the Assyrian and Hebrew words and Biblical passages which he has cited (pp. 224-227). The Heft closes with an appendix giving the life of one Hibatallâh Ibn Aš-Šagari (pp. 228-229) and Nachträge, pp. 230-231.

As an Assyriologist I must express my regret that the supply of Assyriological matter appears to have run dry in these numbers of the Beiträge, but the loss will no doubt be made up in due time. Both the Arabic articles just mentioned are highly useful productions, the first for the account of a prominent modern dialect and the second from the point of view of pure literature. One cannot help thinking, however, that they would have appeared to better advantage in some Beiträge zur allgemeinen semitischen Sprachwissenschaft.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

J. DYNELEY PRINCE.

BRIEF MENTION.

Quite apart from any theoretical questions, the practical handling of the prepositions in any given language is a matter of exceeding complexity. Read the elaborate articles on prepositions in English that have appeared from time to time in the 'Englische Studien.' Watch the run of prepositions in England, if you are an American; in America, if you are an Englishman. 'At' and 'in', 'in' and 'on' are as troublesome as i c. gen. and érí c. dat. And yet the prepositions are inevitable, the mastery of them a gnomon of one's familiarity with the language, and since the appearance of Mommsen's memorable book, since the founding of Wölfflin's Archiv, the literature of the prepositions in Greek and Latin has become enormously swollen, and it is almost impossible to keep pace with the tide of doctoral dissertations that agitate the subject. In most of those that I have examined the work does not seem to have involved much brainfag. The categories are taken from the ordinary manuals and all that is needed is care in counting-a homely virtue. But so is cleanliness a homely virtue, and the variations in statistics suffice to show that behind the most seductive array of decimals there may lurk a gross error. I have known an investigator, of whom I had reason to expect better things, to strike an average from the page number of the second volume, oblivious of the fact that there was a first. I have known another of greater note to get his columns interchanged. I have known-but if I go on, I may expose my own shortcomings in the simple matter of numeration and those who are curious in such matters can find my confessions elsewhere. But even if the figures are unassailable, even if the averages are so high as to make any possible error a negligible quantity, one asks: What is the result? What can be the result of statistical work with prepositions? Occasionally the usage of an author as determined by the statistics may help in a question of textual criticism, nay, even in a question of genuineness, but when it comes to prepositional usage as an index of style, the problem taxes the resources of the grammarian, of the rhetorician. Whose senses are so keen as to notice a variation of even ten per cent. in the total use of prepositions? One goes through the whole mass of statistics-and little abides except what any attentive reader might have observed without the statistics. And yet I welcome the statistics, especially those that deal with entire ranges of literature such as Lutz's work on the orators, such as the latest addition to the Schanz Beiträge, Die Präpositionen bei Herodot u. andern Historikern, von Dr. ROBERT HELBING (Würzburg, Stuber).

Genetically, it is true, the consecrated formula Epic, Lyric, Drama will not hold, nor its prose counterpart, History, Philosophy and Oratory; and Usener has recently protested against the Hegelian triad, which still dominates the history of literature, has protested against the doctrine that Epic, Lyric and Drama present the natural order of development and succession (Archiv für Religionswissenschaft VII 26). Compare also A. J. P. XXIV 231. But genesis is one thing, crystallization another. For me the definition of literature is written art; and as the technique of the great spheres of art is calculable, it may well fall under the rubric of statistics. And so without attempting to do for HELBING what I did for Weber (A. J. P. IV 416–444, VI 53-73), for Sturm (A. J. P. IV 89-92) and lately for Fuchs (A. J. P. XXIV 388-407), I will allow myself to touch on some points that may or may not be of interest to the average Hellenist.

In the General Part, HELBING gives a statement as to the frequency of the prepositions in Herodotos, and the first page of this part is significant enough to any one that has a decent knowledge of Greek. We are in another world from that of the orators, another domain from that of standard Greek prose. The statistics of oúv (73), ává (64) and ȧμpi (34) alone suffice to show that. σύν, ἀνά and ἀμφί are remnants of the epic shell out of which the historian has emerged. You may write a dissertation, a dissertation has been written-not guiltless of Ebelingon ává in Homer. Your chapter on ává in Thukydides must needs be brief. oúv has a short shrift in Isokrates. auoi clings with both hands and both feet to poetry. Like the dual it is picturesque. Like the dual it is doomed. Debbert, De praepositionum epí et aupi usu Thucydideo (p. 29), has not much to say about the two Thukydidean examples of audí. Fortunately or unfortunately all this has been common property for a generation.

But if the first page lacks novelty, the very next is disillusioning. That there is in language a regular and natural trend towards an increasing use of the prepositions is an article of faith. And Bréal in his 'Sémantique' has some interesting remarks on the subject. But the frequency in the use of prepositions in the different historians as measured by the Teubner page does not bear out this assumption and HELBING emphasizes the fact that the order is not Herodotos, Thukydides, Xenophon, but Xenophon, Herodotos, Thukydides,-Xenophon the latest of the three, being in the Anabasis actually scant in the employment of prepositions. Polybios, it is true, abounds in prepositions and Krebs has been at the pains to tell us why. To me the analysis of the