OF ARTS AND SCIENCES : JUNE 14, 1864. 329 



Five liuudred and thirty-sixth Meeting. 



June 14, 1864. — Adjouened Annual Meeting. 



The President in the chair. ), 



Mr. F. H. Storer was elected a member of the Rumford 

 Committee, to fill the vacancy left at the annual election. 

 Professor Goodwin presented the following papers : — 



I. Note on Thucydides, I. 22. 



In the following passage of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (^Art. Rhetor. 

 XI. 2, p. 398 R.) we find the original of the famous saying, History is 

 philosophy teaching hy examples. (See Bolingbroke's Letters on His- 

 tory, No. 2, p. 14.) 



IlaiSeta apa iaTiu fj emev^is Tav rjdaii/. tovto koi QovKv8i8r]s eoiKe 

 Xe-yeii', Trepi IcrToplas Xeycoi' on koi I (tt op i a (piT^ocrocfiia e (tt\v e k 

 TrapadeiyfidraV ''"Oo-ot Se ^ovXrjaovTai tS)v re yevofxevav to (Ta(f)€s 

 (TKOTreiv koi Ta>v p-eWovrcov rrore avdis Kara to dpdpanretou toiovtcov koi 

 7rapaTr\T](Ti(ov eaecrdai w^eXt/^a, p^pJjfr^at tois naXaiais iuTopiais. 



It will be seen that Dionysius professes to give merely the idea 

 contained in the passage quoted from the preface of Thucydides 

 (I. 22). That passage, however, as it stands in our editions of Thu- 

 cydides, contains no such idea. It reads : oo-ot be ^ov\fj(TovTai tSuv re 



yevofievav to cra(f)es aKOTreiu Koi Ta>v fj.e\X6vT(ov eaeadai, acpeXifxa Kpivfiv 



avTQ apKovvTcos e^et. It is commonly translated, / shall be well content, 

 if so many as shall wish to have a clear view, not merely of the past, hut 

 also of what will in all human prohability he like or analogous (to the 

 past) in the future, shall judge my work {avTo) to he proftahle. The 

 difficulties in the way of this interpretation are wellnigh insuperable, 

 and one of the acutest modern editors, Krtiger, gives up the passage, 

 in his last edition, as utterly hopeless. At all events, it is certain that 

 Dionysius found a veiy diifei-ent idea in the passage as it stood in his 

 day. It will be noticed that he makes the word a>(f)€Xtna a part of the 

 relative clause introduced by oaoi ^ovXTja-ovTai. This suggests at once 

 a slight change in the punctuation of the common text of Thucydides, 

 which will, we think, remove the chief difficulties both in construction 

 and sense. We propose to remove the comma after eaea-Oai and to 

 insert it after Kpiveiv, so that the construction shall be : oo-ot ^ovXrjo-ovTat 



tS)p T€ yevop.iva>v to (Ta(p€S aKoirelv Koi tu>v fieXKovTcov acpeXifia Kpiveiv, 



avTa dpKovuras e^fi. The phrase t5)V neWovTcop ox^eXijia Kp'iveiv will mean 



