LONDON: PRINTED BY

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET

Of the Inner Temple; Late Scholar of Oriel College, Oxford.

WITH NOTES.

Quem si non tenuit magnis tamen excidit ansis.

LONDON:

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

1870.

291. f. 16.

PREFACE.

IT is a useful exercise for the modern student to attempt to reproduce in a modern language one of the masterpieces of antiquity, and the translator may perhaps be excused if, through the laborious hours necessary to justify such an attempt, he looks forward to seeing the result in print.

How far this translation is to be called a free, or how far a literal, translation will better appear from itself than from a profession of the principles on which it has been made. But great pains have been taken nowhere to misrepresent either the exact drift of the argument or the most minute statement of fact. Certainly this version is not sufficiently literal to act everywhere as a good aid to translating from the Greek into English, nor to suggest, on a perusal of the English, the exact form of the original Greek. For this reason it may be perhaps better suited for retranslation than a more literal translation would be.

Repeated attempts to remove all errors only go to prove more and more strongly that after all some must remain. It is hoped that they may be pointed out by the press, along with any defects of style which may be detected.

10 KING'S BENCH WALK, TEMPLE:

Sept. 15, 1870.