[76] 



SYLVA CBITICA 



CANADENSIUM. 



1—6, 



BY THE REV. JOHN McCAUL, LL.D., 



President of University College, Toronto. 



1. In Cicero, Fhil. II., c. xxxi., ai-e tlie following words, of which I 



have never seen any interpretation that I believe to be correct : 



" hominem nequam ! quid enim aliud dicam ? magis proprie niliil possum 

 dicere." 



The ordinary acceptation of nihil possum dicere is, ''I can give no 

 name magis proprie than nequam." I am inclined to think that it 

 should be — " I can call thee magis proprie ' thou nothing.' " Cicero, 

 when he said nequam, had not reached the limit of revilement, for he 

 might have said nequissimum. I would translate the whole passage 

 thus : " O good for nothing man ! for what else am I to call thee ? Yes ! 

 I can give thee a name more peculiarly thy own — ' thou nothing.' " It 

 is remarkable that we have in Horace {Sat. II., vii., 100) these words — 

 nequam and nil — in j axtaposition, in a similar sense : 



Nequam et cessator Davus; at ipse 

 Subtilis veterum judex et callidus audis: 

 Nil ego, si ducor libo fumante. 



We find other examples of this use of the word nil (or the eqiiiva- 

 lent nihil) in Cicero — e. gr., Epist. Famil. vii. 27, te nihil esse cognos- 

 ceres, and in Divin. Verr. li, nihil fueris and 15, nihil est, nihil 

 potest. Similarly obSkv is used in Greek, e. gr., Eurip., Orest. 718) 

 d) 7:Xt)V yovauor: oovexa arpaT-qXareTv TaXX" oudkv, x. r. X. 



2. In the Ephemeris Epigraphica, 1877, Yol. III., pp. 113-155, are 

 the Additavienta by Prof. Hiibner to the Inscriptions of Britain as 

 given by him in the 7th volume of the " Corpus Inseriptionum 

 Latinarum." They have been chiefly supplied by Mr. W. Thompson 

 Watkin. Among the remarks given there is the following : " Ad n. 

 906. In C. A. latere custodem armorum Buechelerus coniecit pro- 

 babiliter. Titulus igitur ita legendtis videtur esse : d{is) M(anibus, 



