[1] The recent book of August Fick upon the place-names in Greek lands shows that the great majority are not Greek, and this is particularly the case with Attica, the purest home of culture, showing that even here there survived a large indigenous population. This is the new signification of the Athenian claim to be autochthonous, or native children of the soil.

[2] The readers of my Rambles and Studies in Greece will remember how I was once shipwrecked in the very harbour of Ægina, and compelled to seek hospitality in a modest private house. When I saw the woman of the house in the morning, by the light of day, I shouted to my companions that one of the figures of the Parthenon had walked into the room. The splendid type was there in its perfection.

[3] The Odyssey of Homer, the two tragedies on Œdipus of Sophocles, the Birds and Frogs of Aristophanes, the Pythian odes of Pindar, not to speak of smaller gems such as the scraps of Sappho and Simonides, the Idylls of Theocritus.

[4] Of course this common inference may be quite mistaken. Artificial things are often a real and great improvement on nature.

[5] This is probably the case with Hipponax.

[6] This remark is from Hare’s almost forgotten Guesses at Truth, an excellent book.

[7]

is straight from Æschylus.

[8] I know no translation of the whole seven plays of Æschylus that I can recommend, though there be many admirable versions of the Agamemnon, but among the English reproductions of Sophocles let me call your attention to that of Mr. Whitelaw, of most of Euripides to that of Mr. Way. Both of these are eminently the work of scholars who are also poets.

[9] I need hardly add that the brilliant comedies of Aristophanes are to be found in the well known books of J. Hookham Frere and of Mr. Rogers, who has quite recently brought out another play.

[10] I say fresco because this is usually occupied with historical scenes.

[11] The reader can now consult the brilliant and suggestive Thucydides Mythistoricus of Mr. Cornford on this aspect of the historian and his work.

[12] Book iii., 82-4

[13] Cf. for example what Herodotus tells us in his fourth book of the affairs of Cyrene.

[14] I must refer the audience for details to the chapter on Thucydides in my History of Greek Literature.

[15] The minutiæ of rythm and harmony to which they condescended are such that I could not possibly make them clear to you in a short passage of a lecture, but must refer you to the chapters on Isocrates and Demosthenes in my History of Greek Literature.

[16] Cf. § 457 of my Greek Literature.

[17] On this Cf. §§ 416, 437 of my Greek Literature.

[18] An exception may be made for the genuine letters of which we have found the actual originals among the papyri of Egypt. Here we find, among Greeks scattered abroad, the offspring of adventurous and mercenary soldiers, all the urbanities of modern letter writing. All the Roman formulæ of politeness we find in Cicero’s letters, were derived from this source—the long current Greek forms of correspondence.

[19] If Shakspeare’s Romeo and Juliet ends not in happiness, but in disaster, the devices of the play—the sleeping drug, the hiding in the tomb where the lovers again unite, these are the stock devices of our Greek novels, so clearly, that the story must have been derived through Italian versions from a Greek novel of this kind. Boccaccio was clearly influenced by this literature.

[20] The first beginnings of music, in the form of whistles or pipes, are found among prehistoric remains of people who had never learned to write, but only to draw pictures.

[21] In the rudest cases the house was not excavated but was built on the surface, and then covered with a mound of earth.

[22] The inner lintel stone 30 feet long, 16 deep, and over 3 thick, weighs about 112 tons. The dromos is 115 long and 19 wide. The doorway is 17½ feet high and 8 feet wide at the top swelling to 8½ at the ground. The whole chamber about 50 feet high and 50 across the floor. Read description in Baedeker, p. 324.

[23] The beehive chamber I take to be an importation from northern and central Europe and therefore probably due to that strain in early Greek civilisation.

[24] Villari’s Studies, p. 258.

[25] God—says Herodotus in the famous dialogue of Xerxes and Artabanus on the fugitive character of human happiness—God, that has given to man a sweet taste of life, is found grudging in his dole.

[26] Nothing is more striking in the old churches of such towns as Lüneburg, Wismar, Rostock, than the representation of the Crucifixion on the carved wooden work used as the reredos in various chapels as well as over the high altar. The main figures are in high relief, the crowd standing in front of them in the clear, all coloured richly and in many colours as well as gilding. But for the painful subject, these triumphs of the carver are perhaps the most splendid in mediæval art. The magnificent tombs of the Dukes of Burgundy at Dijon are their worthy rivals in stone.

[27] The foaming heads of the horses of the rising sun at the left corner of the east pediment of the Parthenon are a splendid exception to this calm in the angles of the pediment, and the subdued calmness of the horses of Selene, which represent her setting, accentuates this exception.

[28] This I tell you from the first-hand evidence of my son who was for years in the Solomon Islands and saw it done a hundred times by natives, but never even after desperate efforts by any European.

[29] A curious exception is now to be made for the panels with portraits of the dead found on mummy cases of the first and second centuries in Roman Egypt.

[30] And yet there were several ignorant and random attempts made to reproduce it with modern harmonies.

[31] This is the view advocated in the Tract on Music by Philodemus, large fragments of which were recovered on a charred papyrus from Herculaneum. There is another fragment of a similar character recently discovered and printed by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt.

[32] Viz.: 1 + 3 = 2²²; 1 + 3 + 5 = 3²; 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 4², and so on.

[33] There is even an arithmetical proof mentioned by Aristotle that the ratio of side to diagonal of a square cannot be one of whole numbers.

If it were, the ratio will be that of two numbers in its lowest terms, and hence one must be even and the other odd, else both were still divisible by 2.

Now let b = 2c then 4c² = 2a² and 2c² = a² ∴ a is even and b odd, which is absurd.

[34] Readers who wish to prosecute this subject further will find the best exposition of it in Prof. Smyly’s paper in the volume of Essays dedicated to Prof. Nicole of Geneva.

[35] Heron, περἰ Αὐτοματοποιητικῆς, caps. iii. and iv.

[36] See my Epoch of Irish History, last chapter.

[37] His theory is laid down in several now forgotten books brimful of learning. It is the theory of four fundamental harmonies, or elements, the relations of which produce in every body health and disease.

[38] πάρ γἀρ έμοἰ θάνατος,, said Agamemnon, according to the copy which Aristotle quotes.

[39] ἐπἰ ῤήτοις γέρασι πατριας βασιλείας (Pol.).

[40] Χρέων άποκόπη and γῆς ἀναδασμός

[41] The abortive attempt of Agis III. of Sparta only led to his own ruin.

[42] Centesimæ usuræ

[43] The phrase of “sound mind and deliberate intention” (Νοῶν καἰ φρονῶν) points to what is told repeatedly in the speeches of Isæus; on questions of disputed inheritances, even if a will were proved genuine and fully attested, it could be set aside if proof were given of undue influence, such as lunacy, the effects of a philtre, or the cozening of women, even the testator’s wife. The cases he argues might occur to-day, and be discussed in like manner.

[44] In the Transactions of the Academy of Turin, 1826.

[45] It happened May 28, 585 B.C.

[46] So Tennyson in a poem of his boyhood.

[47] De Finibus, lib. iii., sub. fin.

[48] 2 Cor. vi., 9, 10.