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Holland's Translation of 's Roman Questions Plutarch's Roman Questions: Philemon Holland's translation, edited with intro ductions by F. B. Jevons. (Bibliothèque de Carabas, Vol. VII.) 10s. 6d.

W. Warde Fowler

The Classical Review / Volume 7 / Issue 07 / July 1893, pp 322 - 323 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00198270, Published online: 27 October 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00198270

How to cite this article: W. Warde Fowler (1893). The Classical Review, 7, pp 322-323 doi:10.1017/ S0009840X00198270

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Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 130.216.30.116 on 08 May 2015 322 THE CLASSICAL E.EVIEW. surely be asserted without fear that the ally improving into shape the old poems, defence of the Iliad as a whole is no longer what a noise we should have heard about it. possible to any one, that the poem has been They could not have got their new editions a great deal meddled with, and in fact, in accepted when nations already appealed to the words of Mr. Darwin, ' in such a muddle the old ones as sacred books. No one can every man must hope and believe as he can.' seriously suppose that this does not apply It is a realm of irians and eiKaa-ia, nothing as much to Odyssey as to Iliad. Yet we that can be called ouo-nj/xij. have German critics bringing down the date One consideration is forced very promin- of the Odyssey to the second half of the ently forward by this book, the great seventh century, nay to the middle of the antiquity of the poems as we have them. sixth. Such notions might be left to jostle ' We may see how little Athens, with all her with circle-squaring and flat-earth philoso- advantages, could interpolate the poems, by phy, if it were not for the fact that Prof. the very scarcity of allusions to the city Jebb in a moment of weakness has declared How very little even an ambitious and poetic in his generally so admirable book on Homer state could do in the way of interpolating. that Kirchhoff's late date cannot be proved She could not introduce the Aristeia of a wrong. Mr. Lang has proved it wrong with local hero' (p. 71). In 's time the as much cogency as can possibly be expected text appears to have been fixed almost as in a literary problem. much as it is now. Moreover by that date Space fails me to speak of the charming we have epic poets imitating the old ones, introduction, of the chapters on other epics, men whose names we know, men who would Greek and barbarian, among which one be ambitious for glory. Supposing such men would have liked to find the epic of the Cid to undertake and to be able to carry out included, and on archaeology. decently the task of working over and actu- ARTHUK PLATT.

HOLLAND'S TRANSLATION OF PLUTARCH'S ROMAN QUESTIONS.

Plutarch's Roman Questions: PHILEMON his information on so many points of curious HOLLAND'S translation, edited with intro • detail ? How far does he reflect the learning ductions by F. B. JEVONS. (Bibliotheque of Varro and Verrius Flaecus, and did that de Carabas, Vol. VII.) 10s. 6d. learning come to him through the Greek medium of Juba, the most learned of the IT was a happy thought to reprint, in a kings 1 At what period in his life did he series so handy and attractive, this quaint put these questions together, and what is translation of a very curious work. Hol- their relation to his Eoman Lives ? Did he land's Pliny and Plutarch are almost unique then know even in the haphazard among translations. They not only repro- way which he acknowledges in his Life of duce their originals with sufficient accuracy 1 He is so liable to make to be useful, but they give them a fresh and serious blunders of detail in writing of the a genuine literary value. They contain an Romans, that it may be dangerous for extraordinary wealth of English, and a unclassical folklorists to be using his quaint felicity of phrase, which should make material without some kind of criticism to them better known than they are to students guide them. A single error may lead, and of English literature, who might in reading often has led, to a whole train of wrong them kill two birds with one stone. Let us reasoning. hope that other fragments of them may find But Mr. Jevons's introduction, though it editors as good as Mr. Jevons. could not supply this kind of criticism, is The volume is issued chiefly for the benefit full of valuable suggestions. He begins of students of religion and folklore, and Mr. with an account of the Roman religion,— Jevons's introduction is entirely devoted to almost the only one, strange to say, which those subjects. There are however other has been published in our language for many questions of intfferest suggested by Plutarch's years; this occupies nearly eighty pages, work, which would doubtless have found and is followed by sections on sympathetic place in the introduction had the size of the magic, and more especially on the mysterious volume allowed. Where did Plutarch find qualities of beans, and on Aryan marriage, THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. 323 which is treated of at considerable length. difficulty of the subject. He seems, if I In dealing with this last question, he speaks may say so, to be able to speak with perfect as an authority, and I shall not attempt to confidence of ideas and practices of which we criticize his account further than to say that hardly know anything until they had it is most lucidly and happily expressed, and already begun to be overlaid with other will repay careful reading. ideas and practices imported from Greece. In dealing with the great bean-puzzle he There is much truth, no doubt, in his main does not seem to me very successful. Beans contention, which may be expressed in the appear as 'medicine' in so many different words he quotes from Preller, that the ways, that it is hardly to be expected that belief of the Romans in gods may be termed we should be able to arrive at any explana-" more rightly pandaemonisin than polytheism. tion which will cover them all; the puzzle But he seems to me to push this view a is not of supreme importance, and can wait little too far,—much farther at any rate for its solution awhile. Meanwhile it may than Preller himself would have counten- be judicious not to stir up the mud by anced. He seems to rely on Mommsen and random conjectures. Mr. Jevons concludes even on Ihne, and also on writers of that beans were eaten by the Romans at Religumsgeschichte. The latter I should be funeral feasts in order ' to convey the propa- disposed to distrust in their dealings with gating powers of the deceased to his the Romans, and even Mommsen himself kinsmen '; and he quotes Pliny's statement has been chiefly occupied with other matters. that ' the spirit of the deceased was in the But, fortified with these, he contrasts the bean.'1 I would invite his attention to a Roman religious ideas in the strongest way genuine bit of old Italian folklore preserved with those of the Greeks. The Greeks had by Ovid ; he may be able to co-ordinate it ' gods, myths, and oracles : the Romans had with his view, though I confess I cannot do none of these. Such definite assertions so to my own satisfaction. Writing of the need qualification. I must not be led into Lemuria in May, as celebrated in the Italian a lengthy criticism, but I will venture the household, Ovid gives a common receipt for opinion, based on the studies of several getting rid of ancestral ghosts (Fasti v. years, that the Romans had not only the 429 foil.). Among the items we find the material out of which gods, myths, and following: oracles are made, but also had gone some way towards their development when they Cumque manus puras fontana perluit unda, were invaded and conquered by Greek Vertitur, et nigras accipit ore fabas, ideas. It is hardly to be believed that Aversusque iacit. Sed dum iacit, ' Haec ego Greek personal gods should have found so mitto,' congenial a soil in the minds of a people ' His' inquit ' redimo meque meosque who, to use Mr. Jevons's expression, had only fetiches to worship. We used once to fabis.' believe that English feudalism dated from Hoc novies dicit, nee respicit: umbra the Conquest; more careful research has putatur shown that practices akin to those of feu- Colligere et nullo terga vidente sequi. dalism had long been growing in England,— that the Conqueror did not force on us a When he has said ' Manes exite paterni' nine wholly new system. In the same way I times, he may look round, and the rite will think it might be shown that the Greek be completed. Again, when describing the religious forms were engrafted in Italy on .Feralia in February, he gives a graphic ideas which were already beginning to picture of an old woman performing various approximate to them : and further, that the magical tricks, while she 'septem nigras versat contrast which Mr. Jevons so strongly in ore fabas' (ii. 571 foil.). accentuates should not be looked at simply Mr. Jevons's account of the religion of as a contrast between Greeks and Italians, the Romans, which occupies the first few but rather as one between the highly literary sections of his introduction, is remarkably form of the religion of the educated Greek clear and explicit, considering the extreme and the undeveloped ideas of the ordinary 1 As a matter of fact Plutarch does not say that Greek as well as the ordinary Italian. beans were eaten on these occasions ; the word he uses is XP<">"T<1"- Pliny (A*. IT. xviii. 118) says ' parentando adsumitur'; and so also Festus (s. v. W. WARDE FOWLER. fabam), ' parentalibus adhibetur sacrificiis.'

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