A

rent anted their boys

at word team their bread-and-butter

1 teal truning tor the mind.

Echion,

t dealer (jud not retrain from boasting

dant of a professor, of whom it

Pag us to the choie arty that much learning had mide am in u! ·

How in that rat of mine, to be quite one of your and an 17 1 Cour times all his spare time he spends ite knows his Greek well enough, and is getting up mus Latin all right .. Now I've bought the boy so nyaw books: Ihould ake him to get up a little of that at home: there's money in that job, and of book-learning he's had enough; if he doesn't are for it after all I shall make him a barber or an or, better still, a barrister, nothing can rob you of a good trade except death. Every day I tell him: "My lad, whatever you learn, you learn for your own advantage. You see "Poderos who's at the bar, if he hadn't put his mind into learning hd have nothing to keep the wolf from the door. A year or two ago he was a market porter with packages on his neck, and now

"he pleads against the best advocates of the time. Learning's "money, and a trade never dies."

Trimalchio himself, although he had two libraries, one of Greek books and one of Latin, had not greatly profited by them. He could quote a tag of Virgil, and professed at dinner to estimate the comparative merits of Cicero and Publius Syrus, saying (possibly a true judgment) that Cicero was the better scholar but Publius the finer man. He preferred, however, the mimes and especially the broad Atellane farces, so that he made the company of players whom he had bought devote themselves to this very low branch of dramatic art. The servant of Habinnas (the undertaker mentioned above) also recited Virgil without much pressure, but displeased the fine literary sense of the narrator of the scene, who was sitting near him at table, by interlarding the 'Aeneid' with lines from low farces. His master frankly confessed that he much preferred to hear him imitating with his unaided voice a flute or an organ or, best of all, a muleteer cracking his whip. The host had a finely confused knowledge of mythology. 'Come,

' dear Agamemnon,' he says; 'can't you remember a piece ' about the twelve labours of Hercules, or about Ulysses, how 'he twisted the Cyclops' thumb with a pork-chopper? I used ' to read about him when I was a boy, in Homer, and I remem" 'ber how

'I saw the Sibyl at Cumae

(One said) with mine own eye:

She hung in a cage, and read her rune

To all the passers-by.

Said the boys, "What wouldst thou, Sibyl?"

She answered, "I would die."'*

He also relates the story that Hannibal, after the capture of Troy, made a huge bonfire and melted up in it every kind of metal, the alloy resulting being the origin of the Corinthian compound used for plate. He thinks that Cassandra killed her children, whose corpses were so vividly represented on his silver flagon that you would think them alive; that Daedalus shut up Niobe in the Trojan Horse: and he summarises very neatly the recitation given by his Homerists:

* Translated by D. G. Rossetti.

'You must know that Diomede and Ganymede were two brothers and Helen their sister; Agamemnon ran off with her, and put a stag in her place for Diana; in this part Homer explains how Troy and Tarentum are at war, and how Agamemnon won and gave his daughter to Achilles, and so Ajax went mad, and after that the story very soon winds up.'

It was at least usual and proper to profess some familiarity with literature, even if the result were but a confusion of mind. This general impression is quite borne out by the evidence of Pompei, which is remarkable as pointing to a more general literary culture than would have been expected. Among the three thousand inscriptions that have been recorded (some of them scribbles of a word or two only, and many of them dealing with such unpoetical subjects as the coming municipal elections) there are, excluding all the doubtful instances, at least six quotations from Virgil, four from Ovid, three from Propertius, two allusions to known Greek epigrams, and even the opening words of the poem of Lucretius, which is perhaps a more surprising citation than any of the others, though these may have been borrowed by the Epicurean poet from some older and more popular writer. A moment's comparison of these allusions with the corresponding epigraphy of to-day is enough to show that literature must have percolated much further down in those days than it is now able to do; even a single allusion to a great poem or indeed a verse of any literary merit at all would be a surprise among the scribblings on a modern wall. Of the many other Latin inscriptions in metrical form, some are no doubt derived from writers whose works are now lost to us; but others are either the compositions of those who chalked them up, or else verses which were repeated from lip to lip at the time. The latter is presumably the case when the same rough lines are found several times, written with slight variations, by different hands. A good selection of all these is given, with translations, by Professor Abbott, in his little essay on the poetry of the common people. With the Pompeian inscriptions he has combined evidence from elsewhere, both epitaphs and the few scraps of popular versification preserved in the quotations of literary writers. The general result of his investigations seems to be in accordance with that reached above, that there was a fair amount of acquaintance with poetry to be found in quite

the lowest classes-far more than in the classes analogous to

them to-day.

Whether the conditions of life among the lower orders of the Roman Empire in the first century convey any lesson which may be useful to modern society is a question to be discussed by the sociologist, the moralist, and the student of political economy: the classical scholar has received lately a good many sharp reminders that his business, when it is not merely that of developing the mind of youth, is purely investigation, and that the use of his results must be left to others, whether they be historians or of one of the other classes of philanthropic and social reformers just mentioned. It does however seem possible that, considering the large amount of work that has lately been done on this period (for the books mentioned at the head of this article are but a fraction of those produced on the subject of late years), the time may now be approaching when it will be possible to form a judgment on the whole condition of Roman society and perhaps to apply its lessons to our own times. Herculaneum, however rich its yields, is not likely to add much to our knowledge of the common people, as it was essentially a watering-place frequented by the highest classes. But with the evidence we at present possess, it should not be beyond the powers of a real historian to draw a picture of the social life of the ordinary Roman of the lower classes which would, for some at least, surpass in interest the story of the wars and politics of the great. STEPHEN GASELEE.

TRANSLATION AND PARAPHRASE

I. Fragments of Empedocles. By W. E. LEONARD. Kegan Paul. 1908.

2. A Book of Greek Verse. By W. HEADLAM. Cambridge. 1907. 3. Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology. By J. W. MACKAIL. Longmans. 1894.

4. Between Whiles. By B. H. KENNEDY. George Bell and Sons. 1877.

WHEN said be a mile rattlesnake,

THEN Emerson said 'We like everything to do its office, whether it be a milch-cow or a rattlesnake,' he assumed, perhaps somewhat too hastily in the latter case, that all the world understands the functions which a milch-cow or a rattlesnake is called upon to perform. No one can doubt that the office of a translator is to translate, but a wide difference of opinion may exist, and, in fact, has always existed, as to the latitude which he may allow himself in translating. Is he to adhere rigidly to a literal rendering of the original text, or is paraphrase permissible, and, if permissible, within what limits may it be adopted? In deciding which of these courses to pursue, the translator stands between Scylla and Charybdis. If he departs too widely from the precise words of the text, he incurs the blame of the purist, who will accuse him of foisting language on the original author which the latter never employed, with the possible result that even the ideas or sentiments which it had been intended to convey have been disfigured. If, on the other hand, he renders word for word, he will often find, more especially if his translation be in verse, that in a cacophonous attempt to force the genius of one language into an unnatural channel, the whole of the beauty and even, possibly, some of the real meaning of the original have been allowed to evaporate. Dr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, in an instructive article on Translation contributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica,' quotes the high authority of Dryden as to the course which should be followed in the execution of an ideal translation.

'A translator [Dryden writes] that would write with any force or spirit of an original must never dwell on the words of his author. He ought to possess himself entirely, and perfectly comprehend the genius and sense of his author, the nature of the subject, and