number, lived together, as in one family, with their wives and children, in a public building called ouasóiov, the common auditory. The whole business of the society was conducted with the most perfect regularity. Every day was begun with a distinct deliberation upon the manner in which it should be spent, and concluded with a careful retrospect of the events which had occurred, and the business which had been transacted. They rose before the sun, that they might pay him homage; after which they repeated select verses from Homer and other poets, and made use of music, both vocal and instrumental, to enliven their spirits, and fit them for the duties of the day. They then employed several hours in the study of science. These were succeeded by an interval of leisure, which was commonly spent in a solitary walk for the purpose of contemplation. The next portion of the day was allotted to conversation. The hour immediately before dinner was filled up with various kinds of athletic exercises. Their dinner consisted chiefly of bread, honey, and water; for, after they were perfectly initiated, they wholly denied themselves the use of wine. The remainder of the day was devoted to civil and domestic affairs, conversation, bathing, and religious ceremonies. The Exoteric disciples of Pythagoras were taught after the Egyptian manner, by images and symbols, which must have been exceedingly obscure to those who were not initiated into the mysteries of the school. And they who were admitted to this privilege were trained, from their first admission, to observe inviolable silence with respect to the recondite doctrines of their master. That the wisdom of Pythagoras might not pass into the ears of the vulgar, they committed it chiefly to memory; and where they found it necessary to make use of writing, they were careful not to suffer their minutes to pass beyond the limits of the school. After the dissolution of their assembly by Cylon's faction, Lysis and Archippus thought it necessary, in order to preserve the Pythagorean doctrine from total oblivion, to reduce it to a systematic summary; at the same time, however, strongly enjoining their children to preserve these memoirs secret, and to transmit them in confidence to posterity. From this inclined to indulge, with what kind of company he chose to associate, how he passed his leisure moments, and what incidents appeared to excite in him the strongest emotions of joy and sorrow. From these and other circumstances, Pythagoras formed an accurate judgment of the qualifications of the candidate; and he admitted no one into his society till he was fully persuaded of his capacity of becoming a true philosopher. Upon the first probationary admission, the fortitude and self-command of the candidate was put to the trial by a long course of severe abstinence and rigorous exercise. The injunction of silence has already been alluded to. This silence, or exeuvoia, as it was termed, is not to be confounded with that sacred reserve with which all the disciples of Pythagoras were bound, upon oath, to receive the doctrines of their master, that they might, from no inducement whatsoever, suffer them to pass beyond the limits of their sect. Pythagoras, like all other philosophers, had his exoteric, or public, and his esoteric, or private, doctrines. The restraint which he put upon the words of his pupils, by enjoining silence for so long a time, was certainly, in one point of view, a very judicious expedient, as it restrained impertinent curiosity, and prevented every inconvenience of contradiction. Accordingly, we find that his disciples silenced all doubts, and refuted all objections, by appealing to his authority. Auròs pa, ipse dixit ("he himself," i. e., the master," said so"), decided every dispute. Nor was this preparatory discipline deemed sufficiently severe without adding, during the years of initiation, an entire prohibition of seeing their master, or hearing his lectures except from behind a curtain. And even this privilege was too great to be commonly allowed; for in this stage of tuition they were usually instructed by some inferior preceptor, who barely recited the doctrine of Pythagoras, without assigning the reasonings or demonstrations on which they were founded, and required the obedient pupil to receive them as unquestionable truths upon their master's word. Those who had sufficient perseverance to pass these several steps of probation were at last admitted among the Esoterics, and allowed to see and hear Pythagoras behind the curtain. But if it happened that any one, through im-time books began to multiply among the followers of patience of such rigid discipline, chose to withdraw Pythagoras, till at length, in the time of Plato, Philofrom the society before the expiration of the term of laus exposed the Pythagorean records to sale, and Artrial, he was dismissed with a share of the common chytas of Tarentum gave Plato a copy of his comstock, the double of that which he had advanced; a mentaries upon the aphorisms and precepts of his mastomb was erected for him as for a dead man; and he ter. It is sufficiently evident, from this account of the was to be, as such, forgotten by the brethren as if he manner in which Pythagoras taught his followers, that had been actually dead. It was the peculiar privi- the sources of information concerning his doctrine lege of the Esoterics to receive a full explanation must be very uncertain. Instructions designedly conof the whole doctrine of Pythagoras, which to others cealed under the veil of symbols, and chiefly transmitwas delivered in brief precepts and dogmas under ted by oral tradition, must always have been liable to the concealment of symbols. They were also per- misrepresentation. Of the imperfect records of the mitted to take minutes of their master's lectures in Pythagorean philosophy left by Lysis, Archytas, and writing, and to propose questions and offer remarks others, nothing has escaped the wreck of time, except, upon every subject of discourse. These disciples perhaps, sundry fragments collected by the diligence of were particularly distinguished by the appellation of Stobæus, concerning the authenticity of which there the Pythagoreans; they were also called the Math- are some grounds for suspicion; and which, if admitematicians, from the studies upon which they enter- ted as genuine, will only exhibit an imperfect view of ed immediately after their initiation. After they had the moral and political doctrine of Pythagoras under made a sufficient progress in geometrical science, the disguise of symbolical and enigmatical language. they were conducted to the study of nature, the in- The strict injunction of secrecy, which was given by vestigation of primary principles, and the knowledge oath to the initiated Pythagoreans, has effectually preof God. Those who pursued these sublime specula-vented any original records of their doctrine concerntions were called Theorists; and such as more particularly devoted themselves to theology were styled σebaorikol, religious. Others, according to their respective abilities and inclinations, were engaged in the study of morals, economics, and policy; and were afterward employed in managing the affairs of the fraternity, or sent into the cities of Greece to instruct them in the principles of government, or assist them in the institution of laws. The brethren of the Pythagorean college at Crotona, who were about 600 in ing nature and God from passing down to posterity. We are entirely to rely for information on this head, and, indeed, concerning the whole doctrine of Pythagoras, upon Plato and his followers. Plato himself, while he enriched his system with stores from the magazine of Pythagoras, accommodated the Pythagorean doctrines, as he did also those of his master Socrates, to his own system, and thus gave an imperfect, and, we may suppose, in many particulars, a false representation of the doctrines of the Samian philosopher. His It was farther corrupted by the followers of Plato, even | piece of heated iron upon an anvil, he remarked that m the Old Academy, and afterward in the Alexan- all the sounds produced by their strokes were harmodrean school. The latter, especially, made no scruple nious except one. The sounds which he observed to of obtruding their own dogmas upon the world, under be chords were the octave, the fifth, and the third; the sanction of Pythagoras or any other ancient sage, but that sound which he perceived to lie between the and were chiefly employed in attempting to reconcile, third and the fifth he found to be discordant. Going or, rather, confound the doctrines of the ancient phi- into the workshop, he observed that the diversity of losophers with later systems.—If the unconnected and sounds arose, not from the forms of the hammers, nor doubtful records which remain can enable us to form from the force with which they were struck, nor from any judgment upon this subject, the following may the position of the iron, but merely from the difference perhaps be considered as a faint delineation of the Py- of weight in the hammers. Taking, therefore, the exthagorean philosophy: The end of philosophy is to act weight of the several hammers, he went home, and free the mind from those encumbrances which hinder suspended four strings of the same substance, length, its progress towards perfection, and to raise it to the and thickness, and twisted in the same degree, and contemplation of iminutable truth, and the knowledge hung a weight at the lower end of each, respectively, of divine and spiritual objects. This effect must be equal to the weight of the hammers; upon striking produced by easy steps, lest the mind, hitherto con- the strings, he found that the musical chords of the versant only with sensible things, should revolt at the strings corresponded with those of the hammers. change. The first step towards wisdom is the study Hence it is said that he proceeded to form a musical of mathematics, a science which contemplates objects scale, and to construct stringed instruments. that lie in the middle way, being corporeal and incor- scale was, after his death, engraved on brass, and preporeal beings, and, as it were, on the confines of both, served in the temple of Juno at Samos. Pythagoras and which most advantageously inures the mind to conceived that the celestial spheres in which the plancontemplation. The most probable explanation of the ets move, striking upon the ether through which they Pythagorean doctrine of numbers is, that they are pass, must produce a sound, and that this sound must used as symbolical or emblematical representations of vary according to the diversity of their magnitude, vethe first principles and forms of nature, and partic-locity, and relative distance. Taking it for granted ularly of those eternal and immutable essences to that everything respecting the heavenly bodies is adwhich Plato afterward gave the appellation of Ideas.justed with perfect regularity, he farther imagined that Not being able, or not choosing, to explain in sim- all the circumstances necessary to render the sounds ple language the abstract notions of principles and forms, Pythagoras seems to have made use of numbers, as geometricians make use of diagrams, to assist the conceptions of scholars. More particularly, conceiving some analogy between numbers and the intelligent forms which subsist in the Divine Mind, he made the former a symbol of the latter. As numbers proceed from unity, or the Monad, as a simple root, whence they branch out into various combinations, and assume new properties in their progress, so he conceived the different forms of nature to recede, at different distances, from their common source, the pure and simple essence of Deity, and at every degree of distance to assume certain properties in some measure analogous to those of numbers; and hence he concluded that the origin of things, their emanation from the first being, and their subsequent progression through various orders, if not capable of a perfectly clear explanation, might, however, be illustrated by symbols and resemblances borrowed from numbers. According to some writers, the Pythagorean Monad denotes the active principle in nature, or God; the Duad, the passive principle, or matter; the Triad, the world formed by the union of the two former; and the Tetractys, the perfection of nature. The Tetractys, or quadrate, according to the Pythagoreans, was the root of the eternally flowing nature. (Carm., Aur., 47.—Iamblich., Vit. Pythag., 162.) What they understood by the grand Tetractys, whether the sum of the first four numbers, that is, ten; or the sum of the first four odd and the first four even, that is, thirty-six, is unimportant; for the essential is not the symbol, but what the symbol represented. (Plut., de Is. et Os., 76.Id., de Anim. Procr., 30.- Ritter, Hist. of Philos, vol. 1. p. 363.) Next to numbers, music had the chief place in the preparatory exercise of the Pythagorean school, by means of which the mind was to be raised above the dominion of passion, and inured to contemplation. Pythagoras considered music not only as an art to be judged of by the ear, but as a science to be reduced to mathematical principles and proportions. The musical chords are said to have been discovered by him in the following manner: As he was one day reflecting on this subject, happening to pass by a smith's forge where several men were successively striking with their hammers a produced by their motions harmonious, were fixed in such exact proportions, that the most perfect harmony was produced by their revolutions. This fanciful doctrine respecting the music of the spheres gave rise to the names which Pythagoras applied to musical tones. The last note in the musical octave he called Hypate (vnúтn), because he supposed the sphere of Saturn, the highest planet, to give the deepest tone; and the highest note he called Neate (veárn), from the sphere of the moon, which, being the lowest or nearest the earth, he imagined produced the shrillest sound. In like manner of the rest. It was said of Pythago ras by his followers, who hesitated at no assertion, however improbable, which might seem to exalt their master's fame, that he was the only mortal so far favoured by the gods as to have been permitted to hear the celestial music of the spheres. Besides arithmetic and music, Pythagoras cultivated geometry, which he had learned in Egypt; but he greatly improved it by investigating new theorems, and by digesting its principles, in an order more perfectly systematical than had before been done. Several Grecians, about the time of Pythagoras, applied themselves to mathematical learning, particularly Thales in Ionia. But Pythagoras seems to have done more than any other philosopher of this period towards reducing geometry to a regular science. His definition of a point is a monad or unity with position.. He taught that a geometrical point corresponds to unity in arithmetic, a line to two, a superficies to three, a solid to four. Of the geometrical theorems ascribed to him, the following are the principal: That the interior angles of every triangle are together equal to two right angles; that the only polygons which will fill up the whole space about a given point are the equilateral triangle, the square, and the hexagon; the first to be taken six times, the second four times, and the third three times; and that, in rectangular triangles, the square of the side which subtends the right angle is equal to the sum of the squares of the sides that contain the right angle. Upon the invention of this latter proposition (Euclid, 1,47), Plutarch says that Pythagoras offered an ox, others, an hecatomb to the gods. But this story is thought by Cicero inconsistent with the institutions of Pythagoras, which, as he supposes, did not admit of animal sacrifices.-Pythagoras inferred the stature of stain from beans.—The precept prohibiting the use of beans is one of those mysteries which the ancient Pyth agoreans never disclosed, and which modern ingenuity has in vain attempted to discover. Its meaning was probably rather dietetic than physical or moral. The prohibition from beans was an Egyptian custom, according to Herodotus (2, 37). Aristoxenus, on the other hand, says that Pythagoras recommended beans before all other food. (Aul. Gell., 4, 4.) The abstinence from fish is another resemblance to Egyptian customs; but the tradition on this point is not very extensive, and rests on fables. On abstinence from flesh there is a variety of traditions. (Eudox., ap. Porph., V. P., 7.—Iambl., V. P., 85, 108. - Diog. Laert., 8, 20.) It is safest to follow Aristotle, according to whom, the Pythagoreans only abstained from particular kinds of fish. (Aul. Gell., 1.c.-Diog. Laert., 8, 19.) The statement of Aristoxenus, that they only abstained from the ploughing ox and the wether, evidently on account of their usefulness, appears to be a later version. (Diog. Laert., 8, 20.– Compare Athenæus, 10, p. 418.) Pythagorean precepts of more value are these. Above all things, govern your tongue. Engrave not the image of God in a ring. Quit not your station without the command of your general. (Enfield's History of Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 365, seqq.—Ritter, Hist. Philos., vol. 1, p. 326, seqq.) He Hercules from the length of the Olympic course, which measured six hundred of his feet. Observing how much shorter a course six hundred times the length of an ordinary sized man was than the Olympic course, he inferred, by the law of proportion, the length of Hercules' foot; whence the usual proportion of the length of the foot to the height of a man enabled him to determine the problem.-On Astronomy, the doctrine of Pythagoras, or, at least, of the ancient Pythagoreans, was as follows: The term Heaven either denotes the sphere of the fixed stars, or the whole space between the fixed stars and the moon, or the whole world, including both the celestial sphere and the earth. There are ten celestial spheres, nine of which are visible to us; namely, that of the fixed stars, those of the seven planets, and those of the earth. The tenth is the Antichthon, or an invisible sphere opposite to the earth, which is necessary to complete the harmony of nature, as the Decad is the completion of the numerical harmony. Fire holds the middle place in the universe; or in the midst of the four elements is placed the fiery globe of unity; the earth is not without motion, nor situated in the centre of the spheres, but is one of those planets which make their revolutions about the sphere of fire. The distance of the several celestial spheres from the earth corresponds to the proportion of notes in a musical scale. The moon and other planetary globes are habitable. The earth is a globe, which admits of Antipodes. From PYTHEAS, a native of Massilia (Marseille). His era several of these particulars respecting the astronomical is uncertain; some writers place him under the reign doctrine of Pythagoras, it has been inferred that he of Ptolemy Philadelphus, but Bougainville (Mem. de was possessed of the true idea of the solar system, l'Acad. des Inscr., vol. 19, p. 148) has undertaken to which was revived by Copernicus, and fully established show that he was anterior to Aristotle. Pytheas is by Newton. With respect to God, Pythagoras ap-numbered among the Greek geographical writers. pears to have taught, that he is the universal mind, made many important discoveries in a voyage which diffused through all things, the source of all animal he undertook to the north of Europe, and was the first life, the proper and intrinsic cause of all motion, in geographer who could call astronomical knowledge to substance similar to light, in nature like truth, the first his aid. Leaving the harbour of Massilia, and sailing principle of the universe, incapable of pain, invisible, from cape to cape, he coasted along all the eastern incorruptible, and only to be comprehended by the shore of Spain, passed the Straits of Gibraltar, navigamind. Cicero also remarks, that Pythagoras conceived ted the coasts of Lusitania, Aquitania, and Armorica, God to be a soul pervading all nature, of which every entered the English Channel, followed the eastern human soul is a portion, which is nothing more than shore of Britain, and, on reaching its northern extremthe modern system of Pantheism. The doctrine of ity, advanced six days' sail farther to the north, until the Pythagoreans respecting the nature of brute ani- he reached a country which the inhabitants called mals, and μereuxwois, the Transmigration of Souls, Thule, and where the length of the Solstitial day was was the foundation of their abstinence from animal 24 hours, which corresponds to 66° 30′ N. L., or mod food, and of the exclusion of animal sacrifices from ern Iceland. D'Anville (Mem. de l'Acad., &c., vol their religious ceremonies. This doctrine Pythagoras 37, p. 436) maintains that Pytheas did not go farther probably learned in Egypt, where it was commonly than the Shetland Isles. Schoening, on the other taught. Nor is there any sufficient reason for under- hand, makes the Thule of this navigator to be a counstanding it, as some have done, symbolically.-We try of Norway, which still bears the name of Thile or will end this article with a few specimens of his Sym- Thilemark. In a second voyage, Pytheas passed bols, which, though they were at first made use of for through the English Channel into the German Ocean, the purpose of concealment, and though their meaning and thence into the Baltic, where he reached the has always been religiously kept secret by the Pytha- mouth of a river which he calls the Tanaïs, but which goreans themselves, have awakened much curiosity, is, perhaps, the Vistula or Rodaun. In this vicinity and given occasion to many ingenious conjectures, the amber of commerce was obtained. Pytheas wrote which, however, unless they were more satisfactory, in Greek two works, one entitled "A Description of it would answer no purpose to repeat. Among the the Ocean," of which Geminus Rhodius makes menSymbols of Pythagoras, recited by Iamblichus and tion (Elem. Astron., c. 5.-Uranolog. Petar., p. 22, others, are the following: Adore the sound of the ed. Paris, 1630), and the other a "Periplus" or " Pcwhispering wind. Stir not the fire with a sword. riodus of the Earth," mentioned by Marcianus, the Turn aside from an edged tool. Pass not over a bal- scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius. The little that we ance. Setting out on a journey, turn not back, for the know of these two productions is obtained from the Furies will return with you. Breed nothing that has pages of Strabo and Pliny, but it is so altered and discrooked talons. Receive not a swallow into your figured as to be almost unintelligible. Pytheas has house. Look not in a mirror by the light of a candle. been generally regarded as very mendacious in his At a sacrifice pare not your nails. Eat not the heart narratives. His memory, however, has been successor brain. Taste not that which has fallen from the fully vindicated by several modern writers. (Boutable. Break not bread. Sleep not at noon. When gainville, loc. cit.-Schaning, Abhandlung, in Allg. it thunders, touch the earth. Pluck not a crown. Weltgesch., Halle, vol. 31. — - Adelung, Aelteste GeRoast not that which has been boiled. Sail not on schichte der Deutschen, Leipz., 1806, 8vo.- -Manthe ground. Plant not a palm. Breed a cock, but nert, Geogr., vol. 1, p. 73, seqq.-Schöll, Hist. Lit. do not sacrifice it, for it is sacred to the sun and moon. Gr., vol. 2, p. 198.) Plant melons in thy garden, but eat them not. Ab PYTHIA, I. the priestess of Apollo at Delphi. (Vid Delphi, and Oraculum.)-II. Games celebrated in honour of Apollo at Delphi. They were first instituted, according to the fabulous opinion, by Apollo himself, in commemoration of the victory which he had obtained over the serpent Python, from which they received their name; but their origin seems, in fact, to have been a Panegyris (Havýyvpiç), or Festal Communion, in connexion with the Delphic oracle. With this the Delphians combined games for the purposes of amusement, which originally consisted of a contest between singers in praise of the Delphian god. This assembly was, in its more important capacity, denominated the Amphictyonic council, and was charged with the superintendence of the games. (Wachsmuth, Gr. Ant., vol. 1, p. 163, Eng. transl.)-The Pythian games were, at their first institution, only celebrated once in nine years, but afterward every fifth year. The crown was of bay. For an account of the exercises in the public games of the Greeks, consult the article Olympia. (Potter, Gr. Ant., 2, 23.) PYTHIUS, I. a Syracusan, who defrauded Canius, a Roman knight, to whom he had sold his gardens, &c. (Cic., de Off., 3, 14.)-II. A surname of Apollo, which he received for his having conquered the serpent Python, or because he was worshipped at Delphi; called also Pytho. (Vid. Pytho.) PYTHо, the ancient name of the town of Delphi, which it was said to have received dлò тоù пúbεσ0αι, because the serpent which Apollo killed rotted there. A better derivation, however, is from πvéolai, "to inquire," with reference to the oracle that was consulted here. The difference of quantity (ПvОú, πvéœÐat) does not appear to form a material objection, although Passow thinks otherwise. (Gr. D. Handwört., s. v. Πυθώ ) PYTHON, a celebrated serpent sprung from the mud and stagnated waters which remained on the surface of the earth after the deluge of Deucalion. This monster abode in the vicinity of Delphi, and destroyed the people and cattle of the surrounding country. Apollo, on coming to Delphi, slew the serpent with his arrows; and as it lay expiring, the exulting victor cried, "Now rot (ev) there on the man-feeding earth;" and hence, says the legend, the place and oracle received the appellation of Pytho. (Vid. Pytho.) The Pythian games were fabled to have been established in commemoration of this victory. (Vid. Pythia.)Dodwell supposes that the true explanation of the allegorical fiction relating to Apollo and Python is, that the serpent was the river Cephissus, which, after the deluge of Deucalion had overflowed the plains, surrounded Parnassus with its serpentine involutions, and was reduced by the rays of the sun within its due limits. (Dodwell's Tour, vol. 1, p. 180.) It is more probable, however, that the fable was one of Oriental origin, and was carried from that quarter of the world to Greece. (Vid. remarks under the article Apollo.) QUADRIFRONS or QUADRICEPS, a surname of Janus, because he was sometimes represented with four faces. (Vid. remarks under the article Janus.) QUINDECIMVIRI, an order of priests whom Tarquin the Proud appointed to take care of the Sibylline books. They were originally two, but afterward the number was increased to ten, to whom Sylla added five more, whence their name. (Vid. Decemviri and Duumviri.) QUINQUATRIA, a festival in honour of Minerva at Rome, at first for one day, but afterward for five (quinque), whence the name. The beginning of the celebration was the 19th of March. On the days of the celebration, scholars obtained holyday, and it was usual for them to offer prayers to Minerva for learning and wisdom; and on their return to school, to present their master with a gift, which received the name of Minerval. (Ovid, Fast., 3, 810.-Aul. Gell, 2, 21.) QUINTILIANUS, MARCUS FABIUS, an eminent Roman rhetorician, born at Calagurris, a city of Hispania Tarraconensis, A.D. 42.-The orthography of the name varies in different editions. Gibson was the first that gave the form Quinctilianus, in which he has been followed by several; but as this form is only found in a single inscription and on a single coin, the other mode of expressing the name has become well established. (Compare Spalding, Præf. ad. Quintil., p. xxiii., seqq.)-Quintilian was still young when his father, after the death of Nero, conveyed him to Rome, and this circumstance appears to be the cause why some editors have believed that he was born in this last-mentioned city. The father of Quintilian was a professor of rhetoric, and the son, devoting himself to the same pursuits, opened a school under Vespasian. He was the first rhetorician that received a regular salary from the imperial treasury, and his emoluments amounted to 100,000 sesterces. Flavia Domitilla, niece of Domitian, and Pliny the younger, were among the number of his pupils. He obtained the distinction of the laticlave, or senatorian dress, and under Domitian he was nominated consul. After having lost his wife and two sons, he united himself by a second marriage to a daughter of the rhetorician Tutilius, by whom he had a daughter who espoused Nonius Celer, governor of Spain. He had professed rhetoric for the space of twenty years, when he retired from active life, and composed, between 92 and 94 A.D., his Institutes of the Orator. The year of his death is unknown: it was subsequent, however, to 118 A.D. There exist, under the name of Quintilian, nineteen declamations of some length, and forty-five minor ones. They are incorrectly, however, ascribed to him, and are rather the productions of a much later age, and of several writers. Gerard Vossius (de Rhet. nat. et. const., p. 108) thinks that they were written by Postumus the younger, one of those ephemeral emperors called in Roman history the thirty tyrants. Some manuscripts give M. Florus as their author, a personage entirely unknown.-The work by which Quintilian has immortalized his name QUADI, a German nation on the southeastern bor- is entitled De Institutione Oratoria, or, rather, Instituders of the country, in what is now Moravia. They tiones Oratoria. It is in twelve books, and dedicated were connected with the Marcomanni, and, along with to Marcellus Victorius. This work is not merely a them, waged war against the Romans. The Emperor complete treatise on the rhetorical art; it embraces a Marcus Antoninus proceeded against them in person plan of study for the orator, from the first elements and repressed their inroads, but they soon after re- of grammar. Quintilian here states the results of newed hostilities with increased vigour. Their name long experience and deep reflection. He gives signal disappears from history about the fifth century. Their proofs in it of an excellent judgment, of a refined territory was bounded on the south by the Danube, on critical spirit, of a pure taste, and of extensive and the east by the river Gran and the Jazyges, on the north varied reading. This work is preferable to all tha by the Carpates and Sudetes, and on the west by the we have from Cicero respecting the theory of eloMarcomanni. (Tac, Germ., 42, seqq.-Id., Ann., 2, quence. Quintilian has profited by the precepts of 63. - Dio Cass, 71, 8, seqq. Amm. Marcell., 17, this great master, but he does not stop where the oth12.-Id., 29, 6. — Wilhelm, Germanien, &c.. p. 223, er stops: he adds to his labours the observations seqq.-Reichard, Germanien, p. 146, seqq.-Wersebe, which a long course of practical experience had sugüber die Völker des alten Teutschlands, p. 172, seqq.) | gested. He has formed his style upon that of Cicero, Q. ture. and he writes with an elegance which would entitle | QUINTUS CURTIUS RUFUS, a Latin historical writer, with regard to whose era great uncertainty prevails. No ancient writer makes mention of him; the first who speak of him are John of Salisbury and Pierre de Blois, who lived in the 12th century. Curtius himself furnishes no information respecting his own condition and origin, if we except one passage in which he speaks of an event which happened in his times (10, 9). He mentions this event, however, in such obscure terms, that the commentators are all at variance respecting the period when he flourished. Some, as, for example, Pithou and Bongars, place him in the Augustan age. Others, as Ausonius Popma and Perizonius, under Tiberius. Others, as Justus Lipsius and Brisson, under Claudius. Others, as Freinsheim, Rutgers, Vossius, and many other editors, under Vespasian. Some, following the example of Pontanus, make him to have flourished under Trajan. Count Bagnolo (Della gente Curzia e dell' eta di Q. Curzio, &c., Bologna, 1741, 8vo), and one of the latest editors of Curtius, Cunze, whose edition appeared at Helinstadt in 1795, 8vo, have adduced some specious arguments for fixing the period of this writer under Constantine the Great. Finally, Barth brings him down as low as the first Theodosius.-The history of Quintus Curtius is entitled De rebus gestis Alexandri Magni (" Of the exploits of Alexander the Great"). It was divided originally into ten books, but the first two, the end of the fifth, and the beginning of the sixth are lost. Freinsheim has written a supplement to the work, so as to complete what is thus defective, and has succeeded in bringing together a learned collection of facts from the different historians who have made mention of the operations of Alexander. The work of Quintus Curtius is rather to be termed a romance than an historical composition. It is the production of a rhetorician who sacrifices truth to the desire of brilliancy of expression, and to a love of the marvellous. The harangues which he puts into the mouths of his heroes are mere scholastic declamations, without any regard to the characters of those who are to utter them. As a critical historian Quintus is very far below mediocrity. He is only su perficially acquainted with the good historians of Alexander, and appears to have given the preference to those Greek writers who had distorted by fable the true history of the Macedonian monarch, such as Clitarchus and Hegesippus. His compilation is made without any judginent; he gives himself no trouble to reconcile the contradictions which exist among the authors whom he follows, nor does he at all concern himself about testing the truth of their narratives. It would seem, moreover, that his knowledge of Greek is very slight. So ignorant is he in the military art, that it is difficult to understand his accounts of battles and sieges; and oftentimes it is but too apparent that he does not understand himself what he copies mechanically from others. In geography and astronomy his ignorance is equally great. He confounds Mount Taurus with Caucasus, and makes the Caspian and Hyrcanian seas two different sheets of water. He observes no chronological order, and does not mention either the years or the seasons in which the events of which he treats took place. If, however, Quintus Curtius be refused the name of an historian, we cannot deny his claim to being considered an amusing and interesting writer. His diction is pure and elegant. Some of his harangues are master-pieces of their kind. He is rich in beautiful descriptions. His style is too ornamented, and sometimes declamatory; oftener, however, he happily imitates his model, Livy. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, an impostor, named Hugo Rugerius or Ruggieri, a native of Rhegio, published a pretended collection of the letters of Quintus Curtius, divided into five books, and supposed to contain not only letters written by the historian himself, but others also from various distinguished individuals. The fabrication, however, was so clumsily executed, that no one was imposed upon. The best editions of Quintus Curtius are, that of Snakenburg, Lugd. Bat., 1724, 4to; that of Schmieder, Götting., 1804, 2 vols. 8vo; and that of Lemaire, Paris, 1822-24, 3 vols. 8vo. (Schöll, Hist. Lit. Rom., vol. 2, p. 383, seqq. Bähr, Gesch. Röm. Lit., vol. 1, p. 441, seqq.)—II. (or Cointus) Calaber, a Greek poet, a native of Smyrna, but surnamed Calaber from the circumstance of the Cardinal Bessarion's having found a manuscript of his work in a convent of Calabria, in Lower Italy; and thus a distinguished scholar, a native of Greece, only became acquainted with one of the poets of his nation, because chance had conducted him to the convent of St. Nicholas, in the city of Otranto. Quintus (or Cointus) lived probably about the beginning of the sixth century. He is the author of a poem in fourteen cantos, entitled IIapaλɛiñóμeva 'Oμnpo ("Things omitted by Homer"). It is a continuation of the Iliad down to the destruction of Troy, or, rather, an historical composition in verse, interspersed with mythological fictions, and adorned with abundant imagery. Vicious in its arrangement, because no unity either of action or of interest prevails in it, this production is, at the same time, not without merit as regards its ornaments and diction. The imitation of Homer is everywhere apparent; but it shows itself only in details, and the author did not possess the art of varying his descriptions of combats, in which his model shows himself so superior. He offends, also, in too frequent an introduction of deities into the combats of the two contending parties, and their intervention is frequently as uncalled for as their departure is unexpected. Notwithstanding these defects, however, the poem of Quintus appears so far superior to the other productions of the age in which he is supposed to have lived, that many critics have regarded these Paralipomena as a kind of enlargement or amplification of the Little Iliad of Lesches, which is lost. Others have viewed it as a cento of various passages borrowed from the cyclic poets.-Another poem, ascribed to Quintus, is found in MS. in the library of St. Marc, and in that of |