50 REV. PROFESSOR D. S. MARGOLIOUTH, D.LITT., ON 



that all would agree with the statement in the second line of the 

 second paragraph on page 39, and they would also feel that to 

 decipher and interpret these anagrams, as Professor Margoliouth 

 had done, was a similar " miracle of ingenuity." We, therefore, in 

 the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were not altogether behind 

 those wonderful men who had flourished in such remote times, for 

 to decipher such a puzzle was almost, if not quite, as wonderful as 

 to invent it. 



Mr. Prickard had admired immensely the extraordinary 

 ingenuity and diligence of his friend, Professor Margoliouth. It 

 was wonderful that an ancient poet should have managed to wrap 

 up his meaning in this cryptic framework, but it really seemed to 

 be even more wonderful that now at length, in the twentieth century, 

 his interpreter should have come. He had no right himself to speak 

 on Homeric study, but one point seemed to him to require explana- 

 tion, and that was how the very acute minds that had dealt with 

 Homer in past centuries had failed to give any indication of these 

 cryptic revelations. Plutarch, who so intensely enjoyed anything 

 ingenious, failed to indicate that anything of this kind might lie 

 behind the Homeric poems. For the rest he would rather hear the 

 effect on the present audience of the very remarkable paper to 

 which they had listened. It would be a great relief to have done 

 away with a period of assumed "oral tradition," and to have a 

 definite literary date connected with the poems. 



Mr. E. J. Brooks said that the Greek poet Theognis, who wrote 

 elegiacs about 546 B.C., stated in his poetry that he had " put 

 his seal upon it in such a way that no one else shall plagiarize it." 

 Yet after a careful search, he (the speaker) could not find any 

 editor or critic who had any definite idea as to what the seal was. 

 Perhaps Professor Margoliouth knew the cryptogram of Theognis 

 or would yet be able to discover it. 



Mr. E. W. Maunder said he thought the Victoria Institute 

 was exceptionally favoured that afternoon by the paper which 

 Professor Margoliouth had set before it; the paper itself was so 

 very remarkable in its novelty, originality and importance, and this 

 was the very first time that Professor Margoliouth had communi- 

 cated it to the world. He did not feel at all competent to criticize 

 the point round which the whole paper turned — the question of the 



