206 Royal Irish Academy. 



third century B.C. differed from that of the more recent MSS. As Dr. 

 Mahaffy remarks, only in one case do the papyri confirm the con- 

 jectural emendation (jov for tw) of a modern critic; and the one 

 different reading which strikes us as forcible, and which might 

 conceivably have emanated from curae secundae of Plato himself, is 

 di/SpaTToSajSr; for ^vrjd-q in the Phcedo as an epithet of the vulgar 

 sort of courage.^ But, apart from the interest of having before our eye& 

 portions of Plato's works, transcribed probably within a hundred years 

 of his death, these and the other classical fragments have, as we shall 

 see, a real and great value when regarded from another point of %dew. 



Before passing from the literary remains, I must not omit to 

 specify one of them, the treatment of which required and elicited the 

 exercise of Dr. Mahaffy's sagacity as well as his wide acquaintance 

 with all that bears on the history of Greek literature. This was a 

 passage which, at first sight, looked as if it was a portion of the well- 

 known tract of the Contest of Somer and Sesiod. The tract mentions 

 the Emperor Hadrian, and on this might have been founded an 

 argument to show that some of the papyri were of much later origin 

 than that which had been assigned to them. But Dr. Mahaffy wa& 

 enabled, using researches of certain recent Continental critics, to show 

 that the tract in question was only a rifacimento, but little altered, of 

 a much older treatise, written, most probably, by Alkidamas in the 

 filth century B.C., and which is doubtless the source of the passage in 

 the papyri. 



IS'ext after literaiy relics, we are prompted to inquire as to 

 materials for elucidating the general history of the times of the early 

 Ptolemies, to which, as we shall see, these documents are unquestion- 

 ably to be referred. Such information would be welcome, for our 

 regular sources for the period are more than commonly scanty ; indeed, 

 in dealing with its events, as Dr. Mahaffy says in his Empire of the 

 Ptolemies, "we stumble about in darkness and uncertainty." jS^ow, 

 there is one document which gives some account of contemporary 

 public transactions. It is almost certainly, as Dr. Mahaffy has seen, 

 a letter written during the war waged by Ptolemy III. (Euergetes) 

 against the Syrian King, Seleucus Kallinikos, to avenge the murder 



1 But it is improbable that tbe epitbet av^p. sbould bave been used in 68 E and 

 introduced again in 69 B. I believe shriQt] to be tbe rigbt reading in the former 

 place. 



