Ephemeris, VII

F. HAVERF1EED

general was about tovanish wholly. Sliall vve call our Cornish evidence defective? Perhaps we may be saved from that counsel of despair by scattered facts wliich suggest that Britain enjoyed unostentatious prosperity at t lie end of the third and duringtbe first bail' of the fourth centuries. Then, certainly, its towns and villas seemto hâve been fully inhabited and new villas were perhaps beingbuilt. In the Mendiplead région, faint. signs appear of a more active life than lmd obtained for a bundred years, and this activity must bave concerned thelead. Then, also, as the panegyrist Eurrienius tells us, Britain abounded witli artisans who could be sent to build at Autun and elsewhere in Gaul, and, as a later writer, adds, she could export large (juantities of corn to Lower Germany, Perhaps, too, we can then trace elTective administration. Il was probably Constantius Cblorus who, about AD 300, organised the forts of the Saxon Shore : it. was lie, or some ruler who lived near bis lime, who built or rebuilt forts at Cardiff and elsewhere. The many milestones of Constantine the Great and bis contemporaries, wliich occur ail over Britain, near Hadrian’s Wall, on the South Welsh coast and soforth1 2, may not ail indicate road-making : some of them indeed miglit be memorial slabs rallier than milestones. But they prove t.liat the places where they occur were effectively lield andthese places include the coasts and the nortbern frontier.

This prosperity did not lasl. Before 350 the Emperor Constans bail to cross the Channel and drive back the Picts*. Aller 369 aid was more often and more urgently needed and, as coins testify, the Britisli villas then began to be abandoned as unsafe or to lie pillaged and burnt. But in the obscurity wliich soon falls deep on (lie bistory of Britain, one fact, preserved in a legend, illuminâtes Cornwall. About the year 600 or 610 — so writes the contemporary biographer of John I be Almsgiver — an Alexandrian seaman sailed to Britain witli corn, relieved a famine and returned witli a line cargo of tin3. Doubtless the corn h ad sold well, and the seaman, or, at least the biographer, ascribed the timely voyage to the interposition of the Saint. But the tin is not deseribed as a strange or novel cargo, and we may tliink

1. A new example was found lately at Worthing in Sussex, on the sonth coast of England.

2. Ammianus, XX, I. Compare the coins in wliich victorious Constans appears on a galley and lhe contorniate medal BONONIA OCEANEN.

3. Leontiua, Vita loannis Eleemosynarii, 13, in Aligne, Pati'ol. Graec, XC1II, Acta Sanctorum, III, 115 (ed. Paris, 1863) ~ 23 lauuary. Celzer, Historische Zeitschrift , XXV, 1-38, and Leontios von Neapolis (Freiburg, 1893).

CORNISH TIN

tliat others also traclecl in iL without saintly aid. The Alexandrians ol that agetraded widely, and the Byzantine reconquests in Africa and Spain (AD 552-623), which included Atlantic ports, may well hâve facilitated direct intercourse between the Levant and the lands of the western Océan. Il is the last that we liear of Cornish fin in antiquity. Commejicing with romance, passing on to a not unattractive reality, its history ends with a pleasing legend*.

F. Haverfielo.

1. Greek was not unknown in Ireland in the seveuth century. But it may be doubtful ’whether tbis was due to direct intercourse with the Levant or to the influence of Southern Gaul.

MORCEAU DENATURE DE PLAUTE

[Captiui, vers 9o et suivants.)

Le morceau dont il va être question est un chaos. Pour y remettre quelque ordre je propose des hypothèses hardies peut être (encore personne ne eonteste-t il qu’il y ait au moins transposition d’un groupe de vers), mais précises, et qui, à tout le moins, visent à poser nettement certaines questions. 11 ne sera traité expressément que de ce qui intéresse l’ordre à rétablir; tout ce qui n’est pas connexe à ce problème sera expédié dans une annotation critique (d’ailleurs allégée des variantes inutiles). Les leçons des mss. sont empruntées à Lindsay, qui, en 1900, adonné une édition annotée de la plus haute valeur documentaire, indispensable à quiconque travaille sur les Captifs.

Pour la clarté, il m’a paru pratique de présenter les vers disposés selon l’ordre conjectural que je propose, l’ordre inintelligible donné par les mss. étant indiqué par des numéros inscrits en marge. Ces numéros sont 93-101, 108-125, 125‘-125VI. 11 n’y a rien dans les mss. entre 101 et 108 ; les numéros 102-107 ont été attribués à la série 125'- 125VI par divers éditeurs, qui, en recourant à ce procédé arbitraire, ont violé la méthode. Voici le texte; il se répartit entre trois scènes, dont la première est un monologue du parasite Ergasile :

Et hic quidem hercle, nisi qui colaplios perpeli Potis parasitus frangique aulas in caput,

Vel* extra portam Trigeminam ad saccum ilicet.

Quod raihi ne eueniat n une rnultum periculum est, ga Nam, postquam meus rex est potitus ilostium ,

Notes critiques — 89 mss. Pôles [-est .1) — 90 mss. Vel ire extra... saccum ( sacculum VEJ) licet — 91 mss. nonnullum, locution non plautinienne ; il y aura eu confusion de non avec non ; cf. 120 la var. nouidere p. non uidere