version) were, curiously enough, proselytes to Judaism. Perhaps it would be too far-fetched to suggest that Caecilius had a particular reason to remember the first chapter of Genesis. His original name, Archagathos, is not a bad translation of the Hebrew “very good” (_tob meod_) which occurs prominently in the story of the Creation. Unfortunately, none of the works of Caecilius is preserved. We know him only by a few fragments. Plutarch described him as “eminent in all things,” yet neither Schürer in his earlier editions, nor Graetz in any edition, placed him where he ought to be--to use Reinach’s phraseology--in the phalanx of the great Jewish Hellenists, with Aristobulus, Philo, and Josephus. Caecilius was the restorer of Atticism in literature, a piquant rôle for a Jew to play. Yet it is a part the Jew has often filled. An instructive essay could be written on the services rendered by Hebrews to the spread of Hellenism, not merely in the ancient world, but also in the medieval and modern civilizations. THE PHOENIX OF EZEKIELOS “The plumage,” writes Herodotus (ii. 73), “is partly red, partly golden, while the general form and size are almost exactly like the eagle.” The Greek historian was describing the phoenix, the fabled bird which lived for five hundred years. According to another version, she then consumed herself in fire, and from the ashes emerged again in youthful freshness. Herodotus likens the phoenix to the eagle, and the reader of some of the Jewish commentaries on the last verse of Isaiah 40 and the fifth verse of Psalm 103 will find references to similar ideas. In particular to be noted is Kimhi’s citation of Sa’adya’s reference to the belief that the eagle acquired new wings every twelve years, and lived a full century. Such fancies easily attached themselves to Isaiah’s phrase and to the psalmist’s words: “Thy youth is renewed like the eagle.” The biblical metaphors, in sober fact, merely allude to the fullness of life, high flight, and vigor of the eagle; there is nothing whatever that is mythical about them.