SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE PHILEBUS OF PLATO, ETC. 161 
Homer, Iliad, B. XVIII. v. 119. dpyadgos yddoc suggests itself 
to me as the original of Horace’s “ splendida bilis” (Sat, II. iii. 141). 
I have never been able to persuade myself that such a master of 
epithets, as Horace undoubtedly was, would have allowed himself to 
use such an apparently meaningless epithet as splendida, without 
some special reason. Now this verse df Homer’s would seem to 
have passed into a proverb (the description of yédos, in the verses 
immediately preceding it, is quoted by Plato, Phileb. 47 E.); and it 
is probable that Horace, with this phrase of Homer's floating idly in 
his memory, wrote splendida as a translation of dpyadgos, not stopping 
to reflect that this word was from a different root than the similar 
sounding derivatives of dpyé¢ “ bright and glistening.” Horace him- 
self tells us, in more than one passage, that he repeatedly conned the 
Homeric poems; and we frequently find scraps from the Iliad and 
Odyssey, literally rendered and introduced, apparently, quite as 
much for the purpose of displaying Horace’s archeological lore, as 
from the appositeness of the quotation. If this assumption of mine 
be correct, it curiously illustrates Pindar, Pyth. IV. v. 109.  Aevxatc 
mOjcavta ¢peotv—where it has been suggested (Donaldson’s note ad 
locum) that Pindar has miscopied Homer's ¢peot Aevyakinae mOycas. 
Apropos of derivations, I find, in the Lexica, the word dpvdpdc 
variously derived from dyavpds and from an Indo-European madra. 
A much simpler derivation would be from the Homeric apvdrs “all 
together,” 7.¢., confusus as opposed to distinctus. 
Xenophon, Anab. V. vii. 25. xat exviyero Goris vetv pHnetbyyavev 
éxotdpsvos. This passage illustrates, in the most striking manner, 
the necessity for attention to the distinctions of tense in the Greek 
verb. I have never seen it correctly translated. Xenophon is 
deploring a tumultuous spirit which had developed itself among the 
soldiers. He says that, owing to their menacing behaviour on a 
certain occasion, many people had been so much alarmed that they 
had éast themselves into the sea in their efforts to escape, ‘“‘and who- 
ever did not happen to know how to swim was in a fair way for 
being drowned.” If éxviyero had signified “was drowned,” as it is 
usually rendered, Xenophon would not have failed to dwell upon the 
loss of life occasioned by this outrage. 
Livy, B. IX. ep. 16, furnishes an example of a far more amusing, 
but perhaps more excusable, mistranslation than the above. Writers 
of Roman history gravely tell us that Papirius Cursor was such a 
