The titles of the five lost dialogues of the last book (the others of that book being all on literary subjects) are curious. Three are connected with music; and I should have the permission of those who have kindly helped me here to say that there is about Greek music a considerable region of dim penumbra. Another raises a question discussed in the _De Facie_ and answered there out of Aristotle and Posidonius, as to the eclipses of sun and moon. Another is on the problem ‘Whether the total number of the stars is more probably even than odd’. The speakers (for a fragment is preserved) are quite aware that a game of odd-and-even on such a scale might seem childish. It need not be so, if the treatment were like that of the _Arenarius_ of Archimedes (all the better if in his Doric); it would then have contained some long numbers and some stiff reasoning. Of one thing we may be sure, that if Lamprias, who is much to the fore in the Ninth Book, took a part, he was ready with a received view, framed on the spot. M. Bernardakis[12] (who quotes a letter from M. Wessely) tells us that in the Paris E there is a blank space here of 2-¼ leaves, but that in the old Vienna MS., no. 148 (which contains the _Symposiacs_ only), three whole pages have been cut out, leaving a gap between what remains of the sixth dialogue and the fragment of the twelfth. Former editions had printed continuously, and our gratitude is due to M. Bernardakis for his restitution of the fragment to its proper place. The inference appears to be that the Vienna MS. is here the parent, though why the fragment stops short where it does is not clear. Probably the scribe was daunted by the technical language, and either left a blank space to be filled up by some one of greater experience, or so spoilt his sheets by errors and erasures that it was better to cut them out. Some such cause has been conjectured for the many gaps left in E, occurring where the subject-matter is difficult. Some ninety different persons are mentioned by name as taking part in the _Symposiac Dialogues_, and if we allow for the lost pieces, there must have been at least a hundred. These may be arranged in groups: Plutarch and his family—his grandfather, father, brothers, sons, sons-in-law—the doctors (8), the grammarians (5), and so on. Many of these reappear in the dialogues now before us, and much may be gained in distinctness of personality by following out the references given.[13] Ammonius, Plutarch’s teacher in the Platonic philosophy, comes out as a masterful person, and a past-master in the art of tactful arrangement of a debate. Theon (‘Our Comrade’, an appellation given to some half-dozen others), to be distinguished from ‘Theon the Grammarian’, is a close and much trusted family friend. Very few Roman names appear, but Sossius Senecio, Mestrius Florus, and one or two others, must have been intimates.