Proceedings for December, I908 xxvii

the millstone and the depths of practical and theoretical reprobation. To ignore
upon principle and not upon constraint the sweet, flutelike modulations of the
Greek accent in rendering and teaching Greek verse is to mar upon principle
the natural life of Hellenic speech and to forfeit the finer charm of quantitative
rhythm, substituting wooden mechanism for life and cheap handicraft for beauty,
while babbling upon principle the sacred things of the Muses withal. It may not
be given to every one adequately to recall the silenced music, but every scholar
of feeling and insight knows that ample achievement crowns loving effort. Ar-
ticulatory infirmity and aesthetic obtuseness furnish fair occasion for honest con-
fession, not scientific ground for pedagogical propagandism and charlatanry; cf.
Quint. Inst. Or. xii, 10, 33.
To ignore the acutely graduated stress of the Latin accent as it rhythmically
alternates and coincides with ictus, is not only to violate the sanctity of natural
speech, but to blunder irredeemably in rhythmic interpretation, missing altogether
the secret of Saturnian art, and substituting for the accentuo-ictual rhythm of
classic verse a humdrum rhythm of lifeless structure with its monotonous thump,
oblivious to the very essence of Latin rhythmic art, which, like the noble speech
that bore it, has always been characterized by a rhythm of accent contrasted
and harmonized with a rhythm of ictus by the rhythmopoeic mediation of the
bi-accentual tripudium.

8. Certain Numerals in the Greek Dramatic Hypotheses, by Pro-

fessor Roy C. Flickinger, of Northwestern University.
It is well known that the ancients designated the productions of the great
Greek dramatists by numbers., The remains of this system, however, are scanty,
being confined to the following items: arg. Soph. Antigone. VXEKrTat U& r
3pagba roUro TptaKOO-TTrv 36ETepov; arg. Eurip. Alcestis.- 7- 3p&aa tiot'O'q t?; arg.
I, Arist. Aves.- et 6& Xe'; and Grenfell and Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, IV,
p. 7 : AwOvvoE[aXetav3pos

Kpar [etvov.

Inasmuch as these numerals have become known one at a time, discussion of the
subject has been perennial but cannot be said to have yielded a satisfactory
conclusion.
The last instance, which has only recently been published, furnishes a clue to
the following results: If we follow Dindorf in reading Le' for Xe' in arg. Aves, the
numbers are capable of a uniform interpretation. They were a library device
and were assigned the plays represented in the Alexandrian collection according
to the date of their production. A second version of a play, if only published
and not actually produced, was given a number immediately following that of the
first version -a practice which explains the error of Anonymous arg. v. Nubes
concerning the second Clouds. At least nineteen plays of Euripides preceded the
Alcestis. Cratinus' Dionysale. andros was probably brought out in 445 B.C.
Bekker, Anecdota Graeca, p. 430, I5, and Photius, p. 426, I2, have probably been
erroneously cited in this connection, but in any case would readily accommodate
themselves to the above explanation.

The paper will be published in Classical Pzilology.

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 Proceedintgs for December, I908 xxix

sinice piercing his ankles and the roughness of the first few days here in the
mountains didn't impair his vitality. We brought happiness to a childless royal
pair and gave Corinth a promising future king."
Promoted to an easier service, the slave witnest the affray. On his return to
Thebes (the chronological difficulty raised here by Earle is imaginary) it was im-
possible for him to tell the simple truth about the affair. Imagin his saying,
" One lone-girded man, armed with a staff, fell upon us, killed the king and all
the others, and I alone am escaped to tell the tale." The incredible story would
hay endangered the slave himself, tho as told by Oedipus it contains no improb-
ability. Oedipus had been unusually vigorous from his birth; the blow happened
to fall on a fatal spot; the deth of the king dazed the others and made them
useless. Accustomed to deference, Oedipus was just then in no mood to be trifled
with, abandoning a throne, as he was, for exile. His temper, which Laios' ac-
tion showed was honestly inherited, was thoroly roused and made him all the
stronger in his fight with the cowed attendants. But the slave felt driven to the
more plausible story of a robber band, which delayed discovery on the part of
Oedipus. Then at Thebes, when it was proposed to make their benefactor king,
we calnnot imagin this business carried thru without inquiry into his antecedents.
Corinth and Thebes were in communication, of course. Oedipus was shown to
be a prince; his supposed Corinthian blood was no more a bar to marriage with
lokaste than Merope's Dorian birth had been a bar to her marriage with Polybos
of Corinth. There was no known obstacle to the plan which was adopted, of
making him and lokaste joint king and queen (579) -as were William and
Mary of England. The only man who knew of an obstacle was the slave of
Laios. To him the whole situation became clear the moment he learned that
Oedipus was the son of Polybos. From that moment his life was dominated by
the fear that he might become the instrument of revealing the facts, to the
(lestruction of Oedipus, lokaste, and himself. When suddenly summoned to the
palace, he could not but fear that the day of doom had come. The sight of
the Corinthian turned his fear to certainty. From that point he could only fight
desperately to stave off the catastrophe.
It is that third summer in the mountains, when the slave learned what had
become of the infant, that is in a way the keystone of the dramatic structure.

io. The Britons in Roman Poetry (Lucretius, Catullus, Vergil,

Horace), by Dr. Richard M. Gummere, of Haverford College.

Instead of the Romans in Britain, a study for which there is very little direct
evidence, the substance of this paper is concerned with the Britons as the Romans
saw them, especially in their poetry.
Seen from this light the early inhabitants of Britain are not to be considered
in the mood of Tennyson or of Malory, nor as sacrosanct Druids and bards,
but as a subject territory in its relations with Rome,-a far-away tribe: pen-
itus toto divisos orbe Britannos.
The changes in the island, and the effect of the Conquests. Pytheas and his
successors. Caesar. Tacitus. Differences of treatment in the two last-namiied.
Caesar a masterly journalist, Tacitus a psychologist. Whether permanent or not,

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