believe that there were two pictures, placed one above the other? Not I for one. The words “cujus supra caput tabula bigæ dependet” must be a corruption. “Tabula bigæ,” a picture of a two-horse chariot, does not sound much like Pliny, although Pliny does elsewhere use “biga” in the singular. What sort of a two-horse chariot? Such as were used in the races at the Nemæan games, so that this little picture should, from its subject, be related to the chief one? That cannot be; for not two but four horse chariots were usual in the Nemæan games. (Schmidius in Prol. ad Nemeonicas, p. 2.) At one time, I thought that Pliny might, instead of “bigæ,” have written a Greek word, πτυχίον, which the copyists did not understand. For we know, from a passage in Antigonus Carystius, quoted by Zenobius (conf. Gronovius, T. ix. Antiquit. Græc. Præf. p. 7), that the old artists did not always put their name on the work itself, but sometimes on a separate tablet, attached to the picture or statue, and this tablet was called πτυχίον. The word “tabula, tabella,” might have been written in the margin in explanation of the Greek word, and at last have crept into the text. πτυχίον was turned into “bigæ,” and so we get “tabula bigæ.” This πτυχίον agrees perfectly with what follows; for the next sentence contains what was written on it. The whole passage would then read thus: “cujus supra caput πτυχίον dependet, quo Nicias scripsit se inussisse.” My correction is rather a bold one, I acknowledge. Need a critic feel obliged to suggest the proper reading for every passage that he can prove to be corrupted? I will rest content with having done the latter, and leave the former to some more skilful hand. But to return to the subject under discussion. If Pliny be here speaking of but a single picture by Nicias, on which he had inscribed his name in definite past time, and if the second picture thus inscribed be the above-mentioned one of Lysippus, where is the third? That I cannot tell. If I might look for it elsewhere among the old writers, the question were easily answered. But it ought to be found in Pliny; and there, I repeat, I am entirely unable to discover it. NOTE 56, p. 186. Thus Statius says “obnixa pectora” (Thebaid. lib. vi. v. 863): ... rumpunt obnixa furentes Pectora. which the old commentator of Barths explains by “summa vi contra nitentia.” Thus Ovid says (Halievt. v. ii.), “obnixa fronte,” when describing the “scarus” trying to force its way through the fish-trap, not with his head, but with his tail. Non audet radiis obnixa occurrere fronte. NOTE 57, p. 192.