Miss Steuart, in her recent edition of the Annals of Ennius, prints the notorious line, ‘O Tite, tute, Tati, tibi tanta tyranne tulisti,’ among the fragmenta spuria, and shows that the attribution of it to Ennius is late and uncertain. That it is old is shown by the fact that it is quoted in the Ad Herennium. Miss Steuart classes it among the ‘freak’ lines by which Hardie thought Lucilius illustrated his hundred kinds of Solecism.

1. The use of the imperfect τικτε ‘was the mother of’, with τíκτουσα; νίκων, ο νικντες; διδος is well known, and no doubt correctly explained. Reference is frequently made to Virgil's quem dat Sidonia Dido, but δίδου seems not to be used, no doubt because it is so extensively used in the sense of ‘offered’. In T. 7. 56. 3 περιεγíγνοντο seems to be a substitute for νíκων, ‘were victorious’; cf. φερε in Find. O. 10 , 74 ‘was prizewinner’ —the (...) other winners all have an aorist. So too Pyth. 3. 44. (shrink)

1. The use of the imperfect τικτε ‘was the mother of’, with τíκτουσα; νίκων, ο νικντες; διδος is well known, and no doubt correctly explained. Reference is frequently made to Virgil's quem dat Sidonia Dido, but δίδου seems not to be used, no doubt because it is so extensively used in the sense of ‘offered’. In T. 7. 56. 3 περιεγíγνοντο seems to be a substitute for νíκων, ‘were victorious’; cf. φερε in Find. O. 10, 74 ‘was prizewinner’ —the other (...) winners all have an aorist. So too Pyth. 3. 44. (shrink)

Although much has been written in the attempt to date individual plays of Plautus—too often, unfortunately, an attempt to make bricks without straw—little has hitherto been done to determine the approximate chronological sequence of the plays as a whole. Yet this appears the most obvious necessity if any advance in scientific criticism is to be made. Not till this is done can we see the bearing of the innumerable facts which have accumulated in the extensive Plautine literature of the last (...) fifty years. No one would dream of a scientific criticism of Shakespeare which did not take into account the chronology of the plays. This is equally true of Tennyson and Browning, though the method has not yet been as systematically applied to literary as to musical criticism. Think of a writer on Bach or Mozart, Beethoven or Schumann, who mixed up indiscriminately early and later work! If we could only arrange Plautus' plays in something like chronological order, a flood of light would be thrown on details of technique which at present escape us; the utility of the Lexicon Plautinum would be doubled. (shrink)

1. IN the C.Q.xxxiv , pp. 118 ff., I wrote on ‘Some Uses of the Imperfect in Greek’ . It occurred tome to check the suggestions there made by examining all the instances in one author. I had no hesitation in choosing Herodotus, who of all authors, except perhaps Homer, presents the most baffling diversity of types . For purposes of comparison I also read Thucydides and Xenophon's Anabasis 1–4. It would appear that Thucydides retains something of Herodotus' freedom, Xenophon (...) comparatively little. (shrink)

1. IN the C.Q.xxxiv, pp. 118 ff., I wrote on ‘Some Uses of the Imperfect in Greek’. It occurred tome to check the suggestions there made by examining all the instances in one author. I had no hesitation in choosing Herodotus, who of all authors, except perhaps Homer, presents the most baffling diversity of types. For purposes of comparison I also read Thucydides and Xenophon's Anabasis 1–4. It would appear that Thucydides retains something of Herodotus' freedom, Xenophon comparatively little.