the equivalency of eùpeîv and ảλpeîv in these technical expressions misled the grammarians into explaining ἀλφησταὶ by εὑρετικοί ?

For an interesting discussion of this word see an article by Mr. F. F. Fletcher in Hermathena, No. 1, 1873, where the view which is maintained above, and which seems to have originated with K. F. Hermann, is enforced at length. We have adopted some of the arguments put forward in that article.

NOTE, PAGE 24; Book ii. 244-5.

There are here two main lines of interpretation, (1) taking åvdpáσi πλεόνεσσι to be governed by μαχήσασθαι, as in the text. In this case it is best to regard the tone of Leocritus as defiant. He answers the taunt of Mentor, who in 241 had called the wooers #aúpovs, by retorting it. So far from being raûρo, he would say, we are кaì nλéoves, we actually outnumber you. The subject to μaxńσaσ0ɑι will be Mentor and his party.

(2) Taking Tλeóveσσ with åpyaλéov :—‘it would be hard for you, even if you were more in number than you are, to fight with us about a feast.' According to this, wλeóveσσɩ is suggested by noλλoì lóvres at the end of Mentor's speech in 241. The sense is decidedly improved by this rendering: but there is one fatal objection against it as our text stands. If the received reading, ei mλeóveσσi μáxoɩтo, in 251, be right, it seems decisive in favour of Tλeóveσσt in 245 being similarly governed by the verb, paxhoaobai. This difficulty is avoided by the reading of the Schol. in 251, ei nλéovés oi éñoɩto, ‘even if Odysseus had the larger following.'

We have not ventured to introduce this into the text, as being deficient in authority, though it certainly adds point as well as simplicity to the passage.

Another suggestion of the Scholiast is to retain the MSS. reading in 251, and regard πλεόνεσσι in each case as equivalent to σὺν πλεόνεσσι. 'fight with more men on your side.' The general sense would then be much the same as in (2), but such a use of the dative may be pronounced impossible, and is not justified by the Attic phrases oтрATO, στόλφ μάχεσθαι,

NOTE, PAGE 36; Book iii. 162.

ἀμφιέλισσαι = recurvata.

Ships thus described had probably a curved beak at either extremity, raised high out of the water. In the reliefs at Medinet Habou, there is

a picture of a sea fight between the Egyptians under Ramses III. (12001166 B.C.) and those maritime peoples of the Mediterranean, among whom it has been usual to recognize the ancestors of the Achæans, Etruscans, and Sicilians.

The ships of these pre-homeric sea-kings might be called åμpiédioσa; they are lofty in prow and stern, and either extremity is finished off with a curved bird's beak, which rises high out of the water. The vessels of the Egyptians are low at prow and stern, and have not that raised and fenced half-deck on which the warrior stands in our engraving. This is the place where Odysseus posted himself when he meant to offer battle to Scylla of the rock. (Od. xii. 229, 230):—

εἰς ἴκρια νηὸς ἔβαινον πρώρης.

If this be the correct explanation of åμpiéλooal, it must be remembered that the term would no longer apply to Greek vessels of the sixth century, as represented in the vases of that period. The prow was by that time constructed for ramming purposes, for which the high birds' beaks of the early Mediterranean vessels were not at all adapted. An example of the Homeric ship, or something like it, is painted on a very old vase in the Cesnola collection. (Cesnola's Cyprus, pl. xlv.) Like the vessels in the Egyptian reliefs, this galley has its prow and stern recurvatae, built high out of the water and protected by lofty bulwarks. On the whole subject consult M. Chabas, Études sur l'Antiquité Historique, pp. 309-313 (Paris 1873), from which our sketch is borrowed. We may recognize the vessels of early Mediterranean sea-rovers in the Egyptian reliefs, without committing ourselves to the ethnological theories either of De Rougé or Brugsch.

NOTE, PAGE 38; Book iii. 244.

Legal advisers, Síкas-Nestor's knowledge of.

Nestor, as a very old man, and one who has been reigning in three generations, is credited with great knowledge of customary law. There is as yet, just as in Iceland, no class of men who have a monopoly of this knowledge, like the Irish Brehons, but probity, kindliness, and experience, give certain persons a recognised status as expounders of custom. Thus of the aged Njal it is said: 'Of good counsel he was, and ready to give it, and all that he advised men was sure to be the best for them to do. Gentle and generous, he unravelled every man's knotty points who came to see him about them.' For the same reason, Nestor is the best adviser of Telemachus.

This sense of dikaι, 'dooms,' 'judgments,' may be paralleled by certain usages of iura in Latin.

NOTE 10, PAGE 43; Book iii. 378.
Τριτογένεια.

6

This is a hieratic epithet of which the exact meaning may perhaps have been unknown to Homer himself. The 'honour-giving names' of the gods are probably of the utmost antiquity. According to one theory current among the ancients Tpiroyéveia means born from the head,' (TρITά, caput, in Cretan). This explanation connects Athene with the very old legend of her birth from the head of Zeus. Antiquitatem arguit ipsa figmenti cruda, indigesta et agrestis indoles,' says Heyne (Apollodor Bibl. Obss. p. 16). The Märchen of an armed and beautiful maiden who sprang to the light from the body of a king is still current in Zacynthus (Griechische Märchen, von Bernhardt Schmidt, Leipzig. 1877). The Zacynthian fairy tale may be a lingering version of the old myth, or the old myth, cruda et agrestis, may have been borrowed by the higher mythology from a Märchen like that which survives in Zacynthus. According to another classical hypothesis, Athene was called TpToyéveia because she was born beside the stream Trito, in Boeotia, or in Thessaly, or by the lake Trito in Libya. It has been pointed out that Trito is the Sanscrit trita, 'water,' and thus Tpiroyéveia may originally have meant 'born from the water.' It is worth remarking that the local name Trito, in Greece, and in Libya alike, must originally have meant no more than the water,' like our

Avon. It seems not improbable that the white races of Libya, the Tahennu, may have been akin by stock and language to the early Greeks. Thus, when the post-Homeric Greeks made the acquaintance of the Libyans, they found their own local names in Africa.

NOTE 11, PAGE 50; Book iv. 66.

Honourable Messes of Meat.

The chief men in the Odyssey are honoured with a particular portion of the meat. Compare the ancient Irish custom of the Brewy's caldron (Senchus Mor, i. 49), 'His own proper kind of food is got out of it for each person; as, for example, the haunch for the king, bishop, and literary doctor; a leg for the young chief; the head for the charioteers, a steak for the queen, a “croichet” for a king opposed in his government, or a tanist of a monarch,' etc.

From Mr. Gill's

NOTE 12, PAGE 95; Book vi. 101.

Ball-dance and Song.

Songs and Myths of the South Pacific,' it appears that a shipwrecked wanderer might even now have the fortune of Odysseus, and meet maidens playing choral games of ball, to the accompaniment of very pretty songs quoted in Mr. Gill's book.

NOTE 13, PAGE 177; Book xi. 156.

The Living among the Dead.

τέκνον ἐμόν, πῶς ἦλθες ὑπὸ ζόφον ἠερόεντα

ζωὸς ἐών;

The difficulty which Anticleia finds in accounting for the presence of a living man among the dead is precisely that of the Daughters of Death, in the Kalewala, when the living Waïnamoïnen tries to enter Tuonela, the Finnish Hades. We translate their speech in the metre of the original:

Then the daughters of Tuoni,

Then the daughters of Manala,

Took the word and spake in answer

To the old Waïnamoïnen,

How hast thou come to Manala?

We have in the text followed Curtius (Etym. No. 518) in supposing aw po to be connected with deípw, St. ȧfep, and to mean 'dangling.'. This agrees with one of the explanations of Schol. В, рeμаσтоí. Mr. D. B. Monro of Oriel Coll. has, however, pointed out to us the philological objection to the combination aw, where we should expect either ew, as in μετέωρος, or no, as in μετήορος, or nw, as in ἀπήωρος (Od. xii. 435). He therefore would take awpos in the usual sense, ‘unripe,' 'unformed,' and see a contrast between the dwarfed feet and the great growth of neck, the contrast being marked by ToL.... dÉ TE. Compare line 86:

τῆς ἦ τοι φωνὴ μὲν ὅση σκύλακος νεογιλῆς
γίγνεται αὐτὴ δ ̓ αὖτε πέλωρ κακόν,

where there is a similar contrast between the feeble voice and the monstrous form. aurós is often the body, as opposed to intangible things like the voice or the soul.

This would give a very satisfactory sense to the passage. But the philological objection above mentioned ought not, we think, to be counted decisive against the other explanation. The difficulty of connecting the Homeric form ἄωρος with ἀείρω, μετ-ήορος, etc. is not greater than the difficulty of connecting the Attic form alwpew with the same words; yet it is impossible to separate aiwp-éw from deíp-w and μeт-hopo-s.

NOTE 15, PAGE 247; Book xv. 225.

The Saga of Melampus.

Neleus, Poseidon's son, had a daughter, Pero, the fairest of women, and to none would he give her but to the man that would lift the kine

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