18 



ARCHAEOLOGY. 



ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 



rather than the received text. Nine of the manu- 

 scripts are new classical fragments. One of these 

 is a part of a Sapphic ode, supposed to be by 

 Sappho herself, in a badly mutilated condition. As 

 represented iii tin- attempted restoration by Prof. 

 F. I'.lass. of Halle, it appears to have belonged to 

 an ode in which the poet sought reconciliation with 

 her brother Cliaraxus. whom she had offended. A 

 fragment of a work on chronology includes the 

 tii lie of Alexander the Great. The death of the 

 great rnn.iiicn.i- is recorded two lines after a refer- 

 ence to the Olympic games. A chapter on rhyth- 

 mic art . ascribed to Aristoxenus, has the peculiar 

 interest that not one of the lyric passages cited 

 which are unfortunately all brief in support of the 

 author's argument is from extant poems. In the 

 fragments from known poets and prose authors 

 (t hive of them Latin), all dating from the Roman era 

 in Kgypt (not earlier than the first century, A. D.), 

 the readings agree closely with those of the better 

 medieval manuscripts, and thus give an additional 

 proof of the great trustworthiness of our Greek 

 texts. The largest part of the collection consists of 

 private papers contracts, bills, children's exercises, 

 and other documents, " whose very triviality gives 

 them now a peculiar interest." These are arranged 

 in two groups: (1) papyri of the first four cen- 

 turies, and (2) papyri of the sixth and seventh 

 centuries. They include wills made by persons sane 

 and in their right minds and duly attested by wit- 

 nesses, in one instance as many as six, registrations 

 of live stock and slaves, leases of lands, notes from 

 and to bankers, minutes of a trial made by the 

 presiding judge, reports of public doctors, papers 

 concerning the sale or emancipation of slaves, ex- 

 emption from military or other public service, the 

 return of wills to testators for revocation, a cook's 

 monthly bill, private letters, and invitations. 

 These last are of peculiar interest on account of 

 the illustrations they afford of the social and 

 domestic relations and customs of the people of the 

 time. In one. " Cheracmon requests your company 

 at dinner at the table of the Lord Serapis to-mor- 

 row, which is thej 15th, from the ninth hour" 

 (about 4 o'clock) ; in another, " Herais asks you to 

 dine to celebrate the marriage of her children at 

 her house to-morrow, which is the 5th, from the 

 9th hour." The latter invitation does not neces- 

 sarily point to the marriage of two couples on the 

 same day, but to the intermarriage of a son and 

 daughter, which was common in Egypt. One of 

 the letters is from a lady in Oxyrynehus request- 

 ing a friend to release a number of articles from 

 pawn: a white veil, a handkerchief, two bracelets, 

 a necklace, a large tin flask, etc. At the end the 

 writer prays for her friend's health and sends greet- 

 ings to a person named Aia and to all her friends. 

 Another lady's epistle is a letter of condolence, 

 composed with a feeling of helplessness. l',ut . after 

 all, what can "one do in the face of such things! 

 Therefore comfort yourselves. Farewell." In a 

 long business letter the writer sends a key which 

 he would have sent earlier had there been'a Mack- 

 smith in the neighborhood. He also sends six 

 quarts of good apples, and desires his correspond- 

 ent to buy him a silver seal and match a pattern 

 of white violet color. In the postscript he adds 

 that he wants an obol's worth of cake for a nephew. 

 A IK>V in a letter to his father, who is going to 

 Alexandria, wants to go with him. and threatens: 

 " If you will not take me with you I will not write 

 you a letter, I will not speak to'you, I will not say 



nl-liy to yon. . . . Send me a lyre, I beg of yoii. 

 ,ou don't, 1 will neither eat nor drink. There 

 now, I pray for your health." This letter betrays its 

 boyish origin in its bad spelling and defective com- 

 position. Some of the legal documents contain 



curious personal descriptions of the parties con- 

 cerned. " I am forty-four years of age," writes a 

 man in his will, " I have a scar on the left side of 

 my neck." A woman registering a slave is de- 

 scribed as " about fifty years of age, of middle 

 height and fair complexion, with a long face and a 

 scar on the left foot." The rent of a piece of 

 ground was, to be paid partly in kind, partly in 

 money. The kind payment was to consist of a- 

 fixed quantity (subject to allowance for a bad 

 season) of fresh, clean, unadulterated wheat with 

 no barley in it, measured with a bronze-rimmed 

 measure. In some instances such statements ap- 

 pear as " I, Theon, the son of Theon, have signed 

 for him, as he does not know letters." 



Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt continued their exam- 

 ination of the papyri during the summer of 1898. 

 Among the new additions to classical literature to 

 Nov. 1 were a considerable fragment of Menander's 

 neplKfipofiem} ; part of a treatise on meters; some 

 early scholia on the twenty-first book of the Iliad, 

 written by the grammarian Ammonius ; and some 

 fragments of a tragedy on the subject of Niobe, 

 perhaps by Sophocles. 



Ancient Underground Canals. In the prose- 

 cution of engineering works near Tunis two very 

 large underground vaulted canals have been discov- 

 ered directed toward the ruins of Carthage. While 

 considerable labor will be required to lay bare the 

 whole work, the part already exposed reveals large 

 subterranean chambers containing riches which 

 may have been intended for statues. Large s.tair- 

 ways of red marble give access to them. 



ARGENTINE REPUBLIC, a federal republic 

 in South America. The President is elected for six 

 years by electors chosen in the several provinces. 

 The national Congress consists of a Senate of 30 

 members, 2 from each province, elected by the 

 legislatures, and 2 from the capital district, elected 

 by an electoral college, and a House of Deputies 

 composed of 86 members, elected in separate dis- 

 tricts by direct popular vote. Vice-President Jose 

 E. Uriburu was proclaimed President on Jan. 22, 

 1895, for the remainder of the term ending Oct. 12, 

 1898, upon the resignation of Dr. Saenz Pefia. Dr. 

 Rafael Igarzabal was elected Vice-President in 

 September, 1897. The Cabinet at the beginning of 

 1898 was composed as follows : Minister of Foreign 

 Affairs, Dr. Amancio Alcorta ; Minister of Finance, 

 Dr. W. Escalante : Minister of Justice, Worship, 

 and Public Instruction, Dr. Benjamin Belaustegui ; 

 Minister of War and Marine, Lieut.-Gen. N. Levalle. 



Area and Population. The area of the repub- 

 lic is 1,778,195 square miles, that of the provinces 

 being 515,815 and that of the territories 1,262,380 

 square miles. The population enumerated in the 

 census of May 10, 1895, according to the revised 

 returns, was 3,954,911, of which number 3.851,542 

 were in the provinces and 103,369 in the territories. 

 The population consisted of 2,088,919 males and 

 1,865,992 females. There were probably 60,000 

 persons not enumerated, including 30,000 Indians, 

 and at least 50,000 Argentinians were living or 

 traveling abroad. Buenos Ayres, the capital, had 

 726,917 inhabitants on July 1, 1897, of whom more 

 than 346,000 were of foreign birth. The total num- 

 ber of foreigners in the republic at the time of the 

 census was 1,004,527. 



Finances. The revenue of the Federal Govern- 

 ment for the year ending March 31, 1896, was 

 $32,052.951 in gold and $29,468.174 in paper. The 

 expenditure amounted to $46.891.221 in gold and 

 $92,122,343 in paper. For 1897 the expenditure 

 was estimated at $19.957,402 in gold and $83,335,- 

 168 in paper. The estimated revenue for 1898 was 

 $32,049.454 in gold, chiefly from import and export 

 duties, and $40,546,009 in paper from internal taxes, 



