492 PROCEEDINGS OP THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



case nothing is left of Ussing's argument, since even Cicero does not 

 hesitate to treat a Greek dative like a Latin ablative (cf. Att. 5, 21, 14 : 

 de ivSofAvxy probo idem quod tu). 



1 A characteristic Hellenism is the use of the genitive corresponding to 

 the comparative than, as 105, 23 : superiora inf er lor um fieri contractiora : 

 22, 2 : ut ne longius sit alia ah alia saglttae missionis. This Grecism is 

 found in Apuleius, as in Met. 3, 11: statuas et imagines diguioribus 

 meique maioribus reservare suadeo^; De Dogm. Plat. 1, 9 : animam 

 . . . omnium gignentium esse seniorem. In Tertullian, Apol. 40 : maio- 

 rem Asiae et Africae terrain ; in the Latin translations of Irenaeus and 

 Hermes Pastor ; very frequently in the oldest Latin translation of the 

 Bible (Itala), as I Maccab. 6, 27 : maiora horum facient. The Vulgate 

 here has the regular construction : maiora quam kaec, and mostly so, but 

 occasionally the genitive has been retained, comp. Wolfflin, Archiv, VII, 

 p. 117 ff. The above-mentioned reviewer in the Athenaeum says that 

 this "slipshod Greek genitive is not avoided by Plautus and Ennius." 

 I should have been much obliged to him for indicating the places. I 

 thought I knew my Plautus pretty well, but I have never found it.' — 

 Here we should have the strongest evidence of late authorship which we 

 have thus far reached if we could really feel sure that Vitruvius used the 

 Greek construction of the geuitive of comparison. That he did so, seems 

 to have been doubted by no recent writer on the subject of this geuitive, 

 and it is defended either on the ground that he was following Greek 

 sources (Wolfflin, Archiv, VII, 118; Sittl, die lohalen Verschledenheiten, 

 p. 114), or by pointing to traces of this use in even earlier writers. 

 These traces were of course what the reviewer in the Athenaeum had in 

 mind, and that he is somewhat unjustly treated by Ussing will be granted 

 by anybody who will take the trouble to read Schmalz, Lat. Gramm., 3 

 p. 253, n. 1. Even Wolfflin in the very article cited by Ussing points to 

 these traces in Plautus. But in Vitruvius it must be confessed that we 

 have no longer ' traces,' and that, if we take the passages as they are 

 usually taken, without further investigation, the real Greek genitive of 

 comparison is found in him for the first time in Latin. 20 Is it, however, 

 certain that the two passages cited by Ussing 2 ? are properly taken ? The 



25 The reading here of niei depends upon the 'manus recentissima' of cod. F 

 (Vliet, p. xiii). The manuscripts themselves have meis, and Vliet reads mentis. 



26 I cannot accept Varro R. R. 2, 5, 10, cited by Sclunalz, as a certain case. 

 See Keil's note on it. 



27 A third, cited by Praun (p. 79) and Wolfflin {Archiv, 7, 118), is not a genitive 

 of comparison as has already been noted by Nohl ( Wochensclirift f. kl. Phil. 3, 



