sublime is the idea of God presented in the Bible, who by the word of his power spoke into existence the material out of which he formed the universe." We have no reason to suppose the editor other than orthodox; but it seems to us his abundant citations from the ancient poets and philosophers, and his plan of parallel passages, have all the effect of commending the heathen writings and depreciating the Bible in the eyes of the young, and wholly uncalled for in an elementary book designed for them. 66 The editor's explications" are probably as good as any. But what do they all amount to? Take the Fall of Phaethon, p. 136. "Aristotle states that in the days of Phaeton (when?) flames fell from heaven which consumed several countries. Eusebius supposed the event to have happened about the time of Deucalion's flood. St. Chrysostom thinks in the chariot of the sun, guided by Phaethon, he recognizes the fiery chariot of Elias, and is disposed to lay considerable stress on the resemblance of his name to "Hhos, the sun. If any part of the Biblical history forms the subject of this history, it is more probably the destruction of the cities of the Plain, the stoppage of the sun in the days of Joshua, or the retrogradation of the sun in the days of Hezekiah." This is worse, a great deal, than those inept and barren commentaries on the Bible, which run, 'this passage may mean, so and so; or it may mean, so and so; or perhaps the meaning is, so and so; leaving the reader to the sage conclusion, the passage may mean something if one only knew what it did mean. The truth is, the explanation of the fables, for the most part, is irretrievably lost, in the distance and darkness of a world that by its wisdom knew not God. The fables, woven and tinted by the master's hand, are beautiful, exquisitely beautiful; but they are like the dissolving views of the magic lantern, form without substance; if, rustic-like, we attempt to touch them, there is nothing there. The editor has admitted several fables of bad moral tendency. We instance the story of Callisto. It is altogether too gross in its dress and too horrible in its principles, to find a place in a book designed for ingenuous youth. The story, stripped of its gaudy dress, is just this. Jupiter finds Callisto alone, represented as innocent and pure, deceives her by assuming the form of Diana her patron, forcibly abuses her. Diana cruelly banishes her from her chorus without judge or jury; and Juno, with studied malignity, changes her into a bear, while pleading for mercy. And yet the editor says, in his explication, "the fable abounds with good moral lessons, as it tends to display the effects of crime upon the person who indulges it. The grove, once so pleasant to her, and the conscious woods, are her aversion; so occu 1848.] Brooks's Edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses. 775 pied is she with thoughts of her guilt, that she almost forgets her bow and quiver; the silent lip, the abstracted manner, the downcast eye, the fallen countenance, the timid look, the sudden flush, and the slow step, indicate the degradation that have come upon her spirit." What a misrepresentation! She was conscious of no guilt-she could not be, for the fable represents her as a feeble but resisting sufferer, in the grasp of the artful and powerful deity. She was conscious of degradation but not of guilt. She was simply the victim of the malignant cruelty of two deities, and the blind cruelty of a third. The explication compared with the fable of Ovid, is a painful confusion of moral distinctions, and with both editor and author it is a violation of poetical justice which makes the blood curdle. Whatever explanation may be given as the ground of the fable, that which will arrest the attention of the student is the poetry of Ovid, and it seems to us, the chief moral to be drawn, is the abominable nature of heathen idolatry. If such were the gods, what must have been the people? Answer, Romans, chap. ii. It is true the mythology may be studied to advantage here and the Latin is simpler than Virgil's. But these advantages are dearly purchased, at the hazard of exposure to such flagrant elements. Ovid is beautiful, often exceedingly tender and moving. What can be more tender than Io writing her name in the sand, and the misery of the father at the disclosure? What more moving than the story of Procne and Philomela? What more moving, tender and graphic, than Ceyx and Alcyone? But how he prostituted his graphic pen and inflammatory pencil-dangerous to the sternest virtue-is notorious. No excellences atone for this. What better is Satan for putting on an angel's shining robe? The best way to guard dangerous paths is to block them up. Expurgated editions of lascivious authors are slight defences to the fascinating fields. We would therefore forego the alleged advantages and adhere to the no less tender and moving and graphic Virgil-incomparably more chaste -as the initiatory of classic poetry. Let Ovid be reserved for a maturer age and for other purposes; but when it is too late, the man deplores the curiosity of the youth, and is compelled, from stage to stage of his inestimable probation, to adopt the confession, "I see the better and approve, but pursue the worse." History of the Greek Alphabet, with Remarks on Greek Orthography and Pronunciation. By E. A. Sophocles, A. M. Cambridge: Geo. Nichols. 1848. 12mo. pp. 136. In the first part of this treatise, Mr. Sophocles has given the substance of the Traditions and Fictions concerning the Alphabet;" subjoining the passages, in which they are found, from the Greek and Roman writers. These accounts will be interesting to the curious student, and though often as absurd as they are contradictory, they are important as showing all that the ancients pretended to know of the origin of the alphabet. The theories of the Alexandrine grammarians on this subject are ingeniously explained. The "History of the Alphabet," and "Remarks on Orthography," form the second part. The facts on which this portion of the work is based, are drawn chiefly from the Greek Inscriptions, collected and edited by Boeckh. For the fac simile of the characters, which the reader will wish to see, he is referred to the work of Gesenius on the Remains of the Phenicians, and to Franz's Elementa Epigraphices Graecae. Liberties taken with orthography and etymology by the ancient grammarians, and innovations they made for the sake of fancied or real analogies, are discovered by this examination of inscriptions. Many false views which have been propagated quite to our own times are thus corrected, and the true forms restored. The Digamma, about the existence and use of which there has been so much speculation and debate, is admirably treated here, and a list of digammated words added with their forms as appearing in Latin and the Teutonic tongues, which well deserves the attention of the student. The select inscriptions and portions of inscription introduced to illustrate the progress of Greek orthography are rendered easily intelligible by the versions into the common dialect and the observations by Mr. Sophocles. The "Remarks on Orthography," and the facts presented in this connection are also of great importance as incidentally furnishing unimpeachable testimony on the subject of "Pronunciation," with the discussion of which the volume closes. The interchange of the vowels and diphthongs, and the mutations of the consonants show, at least, what was their relative sound. The "Roman mode of writing Greek Words," and the "Greek mode of writing Latin Words," are fully and accurately given with illustrations. "Romaic or Modern Greek Pronunciation,"—which is vernacular to Mr. Sophocles, and on which, therefore, as here represented, 1848.] Review of Owen's Thucydides. 777 scholars may confidently rely even in the minutest points,-next follows, with the "Probable Ancient Pronunciation." In treating of the latter, he has been guided by ancient authorities, where they existed, and in cases wherein he has been obliged to offer his own conjectures, he has followed the dictates of a sound judgment, and we are the more inclined to receive his hypotheses as he seems neither to make them unnecessarily nor to substitute them for facts. This work, though unpretending in its form, is very valuable and trustworthy, valuable as ably discussing questions, which meet the student at the very beginning of his studies and constantly recur as he proceeds, trustworthy as coming from one of the most accomplished and judicious Greek scholars now living. We have here given a mere syllabus of its contents, but propose in some future number to examine the work in detail, and to consider the questions of which it treats. ARTICLE XII. REVIEW OF OWEN'S THUCYDIDES. By James Hadley, Assistant Professor of Greek in Yale College. The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides; according to the text of L. Dindorf; with Notes, for the use of Colleges, by John J. Owen, Principal of the Cornelius Institute. New York: Leavitt, Trow & Co. 1848. 12mo. pp. 683. THUCYDIDES is not the earliest Grecian writer to whom we give the name historian; yet the earliest of historians could not have been more thoroughly original. Alike in the conception and the execution of his work he shows himself independent of his predecessors. He has his own notions as to the scope and aim of history. Others had been mythographers, annalists, story-tellers; it was his purpose to be. something widely different. He could not content himself with reproducing the mere form and surface of the past, in a bare chronicle of outward actions and appearances; he sought to account for the past, to show how that which had been came to be. Nor in this attempt was he satisfied with attributing everything singular or mysterious to VOL. V. No. 20. 66 an ever ready supernatural machinery. In the public life of States he saw the product of natural causes, the work of human agency, in which the common character of man is seen under the modifying influences of diverse political conditions. Man acting through the social and civil forms which man has organized to shape his action-this is the great idea of Thucydides. Hence his continual eagerness to get behind the outward act, to bring out the circumstances and the motives in which it had its origin, and thus to show that it was nothing capricious, arbitrary, unaccountable, but the very thing which was to be expected from such a character in such a situation. Hence too his confident belief that what has been will be; history, having its foundation in the nature of man, which is always essentially the same, must present essentially the same phenomena from age to age. With this view he does not hesitate about applying to the past the maxims of the present, as in his exhibition of heroic times; nor does he doubt that the present will reappear in the future, and so writes his book as a xrnμa is dɛí, that men may derive instruction from its precedents in every similar concurrence of events. Thus history-historic writing —is in his view the past giving lessons to the future; and its proper effect, to make that future not essentially different from the past, but only wiser and better. Original in his conception of history, Thucydides is no less original in historical criticism. Unlike his predecessors, he does not receive with simple faith everything which he has heard. He balances evidence; he weighs authorities; he discusses probabilities; he is ever on his guard against deception. Everything claiming to be fact is subjected to a strict examination; and rigorously set aside unless it can make good its claim. In Thucydides, cautious, penetrating and exact, the modern historiographer finds his best authority, his main reliance for the earlier times of Greece. Other writers of antiquity may be fuller in their statements; in many instances they do no more than make the darkness visible; but when Thucydides, though with but half a sentence, touches on any subject, a ray of light has darted into the gloom. The historian, plodding wearily along, as through a quagmire, unable to discover solid footing-if he chance to find a passage of Thucydides lying in his course-feels that he has at length secured one firm spot, on which he can abide with confidence, and from which he can form some judgment as to what is safest in his future progress. In the Peloponnesian war Thucydides found a subject every way worthy of his powers. It was a crisis in his country's history. The annals of the preceding half century are chiefly occupied with the |