In p. 149, A., Socrates playfully asks Theætetus if he has never heard that he, Socrates, is the son of a midwife, by name, Phænaretè, μάλα γενναίας τε καὶ βλοσυρᾶς, 'a sour-faced old lady,' we should say. Mr. Jowett somewhat oddly renders this phrase, a 'midwife, brave and burly.' The epithets mean something very different. The first is an ironical allusion to the humble station of the professional midwife, the latter to the alarm which her presence might inspire in the timid.... For βλοσυρὸν is something that shocks and causes terror, as in Æschylus, Suppl. 813; Eumen. 161. To this real or supposed parentage of the philosopher, a joke is directed by Aristophanes in the _Nubes_, 137-- καὶ φροντίδ' ἐξήμβλωκας ἐξευρημένην. Perhaps also the Φαιναρέτη in Acharn. 49, may have reference to this person. In p. 151, B., προσφέρου πρὸς ἐμὲ is not 'come to me,' but 'behave towards me,' 'deal with me.' And in p. 156, A., ἀντίτυποι ἄνθρωποι are not 'repulsive' mortals (at least, according to our established use of the word), but 'refractory,' 'men on whom one can make no impression,' but from whom a blow rebounds as a hammer does from an anvil. Antisthenes and the cynical party seem to be meant. In p. 156, D., we come to a very obscure passage. Mr. Jowett's version is, 'And the slower elements have their motions in the same place and about things near them, and thus beget; but the things begotten are quicker, for their motions are from place to place.' This is not very intelligible. For ἡ κίνησις, it seems to us that we should read ἡ γένεσις. The figure of speech is taken from the notion of sexual contact, and by πρὸς τὰ πλησιάζοντα τὴν κίνησιν ἴσχει, Socrates seems to mean that certain impressions or objects meet certain senses, _e.g._, sounds the ear, scents the nose, objects the eye, but severally 'have their rate of motion according to the speed of those faculties with which they naturally unite;' but, he adds, the sensations of hearing, smelling, seeing are more instantaneously perceived, when once produced, because the γένεσις or production of such sensation takes place ἐν φορᾷ, while the αἴσθησις and the αἰσθητὸν are moving in space towards each other, and thus, as it were, the offspring partakes of the speed of the parents. In plain words, sight and sound and smell are produced at very different intervals of time, but are equally sudden sensations _when_ produced; and even those which are more slowly generated are as quickly felt. (Compare Aristot., Eth. x. ch. iii. s. 4. πάσῃ (κινήσει) γὰρ οἰκεῖον εἶναι δοκεῖ τάχος καὶ βραδυτής.) In p. 159, D., ἡ γλυκύτης πρὸς τοῦ οἴνου περὶ αὐτὸν φερομένη seems to us to mean, the sense of sweetness from the wine moving to and coming upon _the patient_,' τὸν πάσχοντα (unless, indeed, we should read περὶ αὐτὴν, _i.e._, γλῶσσαν, which would render the meaning rather clearer). Mr. Jowett's version is, 'the quality of sweetness which arises out of, and is moving about the