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Do you deny it?

Where is it, then?

Quer. To me? an untouched treasure? Why, what treasure? Mand. That which your father left.

Quer.

Here is the Arbiter, to make partition.

Mand. I say 'tis in your hands.

Quer.

Mand.

From yours?

From mine.

Quer. 'Twas in your hands, then?
Mand.

Yes, and might have stay'd there:
The whole: I only claim my honest share.
Quer. You stir not hence until you render it.
Mand. Why, I have rendered it.
Quer.

To whom? When? How?

Mand. To-day. Here. Through the window.
Quer.

Mand. From the sacrarium.
Quer.

Quer.

Whence, then, came it?

How went it thence?

Mand. Out through the door. You bore it out yourself.
You were to show it to me without fraud.
But this is idle talk. The thing appears not.
Where is this treasure?

Mand.

Quer.

Mand.

Quer.

Mand.

I have given it to thee.
I swear by all the gods. 'Twas in an urn.
I pitched it through the window.

Brave confession!

This, then, is he, oh worthy Arbiter !
Who hurled into my house that funeral urn.
Pantolabus, the fragments.-Can you read
What here is written?

I have read, and read it.

"HERE LIES TRIERINUS, SON OF TRICIPITINUS,
DEPOSITED AND BURIED.

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Not content

With failing in your duty to the living,

You have made sport and mockery of the dead;
Broken into the tomb; dug up the ashes;

Borne them abroad into the public way;

Stolen the treasure which was buried with them;
And hurled the fatal relics through the window,
To scatter on the floor, and thus pollute
The house thou first hadst plundered.

Fare thee well.

I seek no more. Fortune abandons me.

Querolus, however, will not let him go. They examine and cross-examine him; threaten to take him to the prætor; but give him the choice of the charge which they shall make against him, whether it shall be for robbery or sacrilege. He

VOL. III.

23

tries a defence on each charge severally, and gives up both points in despair, leaving it to them to charge him with whichever they please-either the theft, which he could not commit, or the sacrilege, which he would not have committed. But he throws himself on their mercy, and only entreats to be allowed to depart. The Arbiter now intercedes for him, as having been really, however unfaithfully, the means of Querolus's wealth. And Querolus, who had been previously disposed to be generous towards him, agrees to give him maintenance, and receive him into his household.

Sycophanta and Sardanapalus then present themselves. They solicit a small participation in Querolus's bounty. They are aware, that one house does not take three hungry idlers; but they implore a moderate donation, to speed them on another quest. Querolus replies:

Let the beaten parasite

Have compensation for his injuries.

And immediately follows a sort of epilogue, in the form of a senatus-consultum, fixing a tariff of compensation for torn clothes, bruises, broken bones, and all other forms of injury to which parasites are liable. This was most probably subjoined as an exposition of Querolus's last words.

In this view of the conclusion, we follow the old reading: Mercedem vulnerum victus recipiat Parusitus. In convivio si fuerit veste discissus, &c. Klinkhämer terminates the comedy thus:

vulnerum mercedem victus recipiat. Pauca desiderantur.

And after some preliminary, presents the final passage as a pannus assutus:

PARASITUS. In convivio si fuerit, &c.

Three of the editors of this comedy, and many other writers, have spoken of it in the highest terms of praise. Gruter and Pareus disparaged it. Cannegeiter thinks that "none can disparage it but those who do not understand it.” The ill-humour of Gruter and Pareus appears to have been excited chiefly from the MSS. bearing on the title, Plauti Querolus; but this was not the fault of the author, who speaks of himself as treading in Plautus's steps. The assign

ment of the authorship to Plautus must have been very ancient, for Servius, in his Commentary on Virgil (Æn. iii. 226), cites it as Plauti Querolus.

Danielis calls it "a comedy, not less remarkable as a sin gular relic of antiquity, than admirable from the novelty of its argument." Rittershusius says, this comedy "requires no eulogium from him, being sufficiently recommended by its wonderful variety of argument, the gravity of its sentences, and the elegance of its comic diction." Klinkhämer concurs in these estimates, and adds the commendation of exemplary propriety and modesty. He expresses his surprise, that a work so well worthy to be generally read should have been left to lurk in the libraries of the curious.

Barthius panegyrizes "the simple elegance and acute sense of the colloquies, and their excellent adaptation to the several characters of the speakers;" adding, that "the more it is read, the more its sense and eloquence will be perceived."

Klinkhämer's pains on this comedy have been worthily and successfully bestowed. We feel grateful to him, for the form in which he has presented it to us; and shall be highly gratified if our readers shall derive, from our necessarily limited exposition, any portion of the pleasure which we have received from the work itself.

I

HORE DRAMATICÆ.-No. 2.

M. S. O.

[Published in Fraser's Magazine for April, 1852.]

THE PHAETHON OF EURIPIDES.

T had long been known that there existed in the library at Paris a manuscript called the Codex Claromontanus, containing an inedited fragment, or fragments, of Euripides; and many reclamations on the subject had been uttered from Germany, but without any result, till Immanuel Bekker, passing through Paris, transcribed it, and communicated it to Hermann, who subsequently received from H. Hasius a copy representing the MS. according to the exact trace of the letters. Fortified with this indispensable basis of correction, Hermann revised and edited the contents of the MS. with his own emendations in 1821; and thus brought the world acquainted with two large fragments of

the Phaethon.* Immediately on their publication, he transmitted a copy to Goethe, who, being struck by their extraordinary beauty, arranged them, and the previously known fragments of the same tragedy, according to his own view of their proper order; translated them into verse, filling up a few of the lacunae with additions of his own; and connected the series by an analytical exposition of the probable progress of the drama.

Since that period there have been several editions of the fragments of Euripides, in which the remains of this tragedy have been arranged according to the views of the respective editors. The same task is performed in the valuable and elaborate work of Hartung, Euripides Restitutus. The latest edition of the fragments of Euripides is that of Wagner. We *Twelve years ago, we received the following note from a classical friend, who was not at the time aware of Hermann's publication:

What is the Merops of Euripides about? Of the Greek MSS. in the King's Library at Paris-which anybody may examine for asking-No. 107 contains St. Paul's Epistles, and two leaves at least, ff. 162-3, are obviously Palimpsest. The two leaves consist of four pages, and each page of two columns of the original writing, which is in large letters, and comprises a portion of the Merops of Euripides. At the rate of only twenty-five lines in a column, there are two hundred verses: what a noble fragment!

"The second writing is of the fifth century. If we allow the first writing to be only a little more than half as old again, it may be the autograph of the Tragedian himself. But you will know the poet's hand, when you see it!

"This information was given about a century ago by Montfaucon, who adds, that in the margin may plainly be seen several times, Merops, Chorus, and Sɛpárov-the names of the interlocutors. This he relates as a matter of mere curiosity, not having any idea how easily erased writing may be restored and read. So his examination was cursory (there was no motive then to make any other), and a careful search will probably discover many more than two rescribed leaves.

"The information of Montfaucon has not been noticed, I believe, by any person, except one Bruns, who, a learned German, cried out lustily about it some fifty years ago, from a remote corner of Germany, to Villoison. If V. had heard him, he would most likely have had a touch at the MS.

"The printed catalogue of the French King's MSS. does not remark that this is Palimpsest, nor is it usual; but it states that several leaves were stolen formerly, and sold to the owner of the Harleian Collection, and on learning of the theft, the Earl of Oxford liberally returned them. This anecdote is very remarkable, and if any portion of the lost Tragedy was abstracted, only not miraculous."

shall give our own view of the fragments of Phaethon, noticing incidentally any essential points of difference in the arrangement.

The prologue was most probably spoken by Oceanus, the father of Clymene. Phaethon, to whom Hartung assigns it, could not have spoken it, because he could not know all the previous circumstances of his history. This perfect knowledge of the past is indispensable to the speaker of the prologue; and in cases where no mortal can possess it, Euripides assigns the task to a spirit or a deity-as to the ghost of Polydorus to reveal the history of his murder, or to Venus to solve the mystery of Phaedra's affliction. Clymene, to whom Ravius and others assign it, might have spoken the prologue; but as the only fragment cited from it presents her in the accusative case, this supposition becomes at least doubtful, although the passage may admit the personal pronoun. "Euripides," says Strabo, "represents Clymene to have been given in marriage to Merops." Clymene might have spoken of herself as having been so given, though Strabo in introducing the passage would necessarily substitute "Clymene for "me." Goethe, who, on the basis of the few lines remaining, has constructed a long and mainly original prologue, assigns it to the warder, watching and announcing the dawn, and reciting circumstances publicly and generally known. This, however, is losing sight of the true character of the Euripidean prologue, in all cases where the subsequent action has its basis in the revelation of a fatal secret.

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The prologue, then, may have been spoken by Clymene: but most probably it was spoken by Oceanus, and recited the love of the Sun-god for Clymene; the promise which she exacted from him, that he would grant one request to one child of their union; the birth of their four children, three daughters, Lampetia, Aegle, and Phaethusa, and one son, Phaethon; that Clymene had been given in marriage to Merops sufficiently long before the birth of Phaethon to make him think the child his own; that Merops was then occupied in preparations for Phaethon's marriage with a young goddess, which was to take place that day; that Phaethon was determined not to marry above his rank, but to seek his fortune in other lands; that Clymene, terrified by this resolve of her son, would reveal to him the secret of his birth, out of

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