122 BARON WALKENAER ON THE 



SECTION I. 



CRITICAL EXAMINATION, ETC. 



1. Preliminary. 



This section being, as I have just observed, only prepara- 

 tory in reference to the principal object of the memoir, no 

 application of modern names to the interpretation of passages 

 in ancient authors will be made in it. We shall content 

 ourselves with examining the meaning of ancient words, with 

 such assistance as a knowledge of the sense in which the 

 ancients themselves employed them may afford us. The 

 circumstances or peculiarities attending this use will, in the 

 second section, enable us to interpret ancient names, i. e. 

 to ascertain those in the language of naturalists with which 

 they correspond, which are the only ones connected with 

 definitions and descriptions sufficiently explicit to enable us to 

 determine the objects intended. We shall only give a 

 secondary consideration to popular names. 



The names given in ancient, and often in modern, languages 

 to objects, the differences between which would not attract 

 the notice of superficial observers, were often of a general 

 description, and common to many kinds, and therefore very 

 vague. A single word was sometimes used for beings of a 

 very different nature. Scholiasts, grammarians, and lexico- 

 graphers, by their false distinctions, frequently added error 

 to confusion, and occasionally the prodigious erudition of 

 commentators still further perplexed the matter. It appears 

 to us that the best way to acquire an exact and complete idea 

 of the notions each of the names in question represents, will 

 be to examine every passage in which they occur, and to 

 endeavour to ascertain the various meanings which have been 

 attached to these names when they have been employed in 

 different significations. By this method we shall be enabled 

 to found our opinions and conjectures with greater certainty 

 on ancient passages ; and we shall also be less exposed to 

 the danger which so many, before they were aware, have 

 fallen into, and some indeed knowingly, of selecting those 

 passages only in the writings of the ancients which supported 



