could have little hesitation in equating Aiax with Aias, unless Aiax were already imperatively engaged for some other rôle. But Aiax (Alakóç) had no distinctive personality of his own, and was, therefore, at the disposal of a poet who wished to transform him into Alaç. Lindsay, The Latin Language, 179; Polluces: Pollux, "probably by analogy of lux, gen. lucis," ib. 182. In the J. B. BURY. Etruscan language, which always syncopated in such cases in loan-words, the name appears as Poltuce. THE THORICIAN STONE. SOPHOCLES, Edipus Coloneus, 1595:— ἀφ' οὗ μέσος στὰς τοῦ τε Θορικίου πέτρου καθέζετ'. Schneidewin was presumably right in identifying the stone of 1595 with the stone mentioned in an oracle quoted in a scholion on 57: Βοιωτοὶ δ ̓ ἵπποιο ποτιστείχουσι Κολωνόν ἔνθα λίθος τρικάρανος ἔχει καὶ χάλκεος οὐδός, but τρικορύφου, which he proposes as a correction for Oopiкíov, has no diplomatic probability. Yet he is on the right track. A word is wanted expressing the physical feature signified by тpikápavos, and capable of being corrupted into Oopukiov. I therefore propose τοῦ τε Θρινακίου πέτρου, "the Thrinacian Stone." There is nothing improbable in the supposition that the three marked projections of the λίθος τρικάρανος suggested a likeness to Θρινακίη, the threepronged island of the Odyssey, which was commonly identified with Sicily. The truth, probably, is that Opivakίy originally designated the Peloponnesus, and was afterwards, partly through an etymological confusion (ïda μèv Tpivaкpiav deyεolai, Schol. B ad Od. xi. 107), associated with Sicily, which has no resemblance to a Opiva. Many an Athenian, unversed in geography, may have fancied that the distant island of the west was really shaped like a trident. In any case, "Thrinacian" would have been a suitable name for the λίθος τρικάρανος. J. B. BURY. 1 For the anapaest in the 5th foot, cp. Ed. Col. 1, &c. (I.) A NEW THEORY OF THE EKKYKLEMA; THE AND (II.) TWO SHORT NOTES. I. THE EKKYKLEMA. HE ekkyklema was the mechanical contrivance by means of which, on the Attic stage, the spectators were enabled to see, or rather, were supposed to see, by a stage convention, the interior of one of the houses, or temples, whose fronts usually formed the scene at the back of the stage. Recent excavations have made it quite clear that it would have been impossible for the back-scene to have been drawn aside, in order to reveal what lay behind it, because the Greek theatres, at least in the Classical period, were so constructed that by far the greater number of the spectators were unable to see anything lying further back from the edge of the stage than the okny itself. The generally received theory of the nature of the ekkyklema is that it was a sort of low movable platform mounted on wheels, which was pushed out of one or other of the three doors opening on to the stage. Mr. Haigh, in his Attic Theatre, describes it as follows:- "It was a small wooden platform, rolling upon wheels, and was kept inside the stage building. When it was required to be used, one of the doors in the background was thrown open, and it was rolled forward on to the stage." The description in the Dictionary of Antiquities is much the same: "A movable chamber corresponding to the size of any of the three doors was devised, which was wheeled out, or pushed out." To the same effect, though in language not free from hesitation, Alb. Müller (Griechische Bühnenaltertümer, S. 143) remarks:-" (Es ist) anzunehmen, dass die fraglichen Leichen oder Gruppen auf einer kleinen Bühne aus der Thür des Hauses auf das Logeion gerollt wurden." Further on, however, on p. 147, he admits that :-" Die Construction des Ekkyklema, sowie der Mechanismus, durch welchen dasselbe in Bewegung gesetzt wurde, sind unbekannt.” M. Salomon Reinach also assumes that it was a platform issuing through one or other of the doors, but, like A. Müller, adds :—“La manière dont l'ékкúkλŋμa sortait d'une porte et évoluait, pour présenter au public les personnages qui y avaient pris place, est absolument une énigme pour nous." Thus it appears that all the standard authorities are agreed that the ekkyklema was a wheeled platform pushed out of one of the doors of the back-scene. I venture to doubt if that assumption is correct. It is generally admitted that serious difficulties are encountered when it is attempted to explain the action of certain existing Greek dramas by reference to such a machine. Perhaps the greatest of these difficulties occurs in the case of the Eumenides. At v. 64 we must suppose the whole of the chorus, together with Orestes-sixteen, or possibly only thirteen, persons in all; the chorus seated on chairs, Orestes holding a sword and an olive-branch, and embracing the Omphalos-to have made their entrance on a platform narrow enough to be pushed through one of the doorways, and with a maximum length, owing to the narrowness of the early Greek stage, of about eight feet. On that occasion the ekkyklema must have been, one would suppose, an exceptionally congested district. The platform, moreover, must, as A. Müller points out, have been wheeled so far forward as to allow Apollo and Hermes to enter behind it by the same door. The 1 MM. Daremberg and Saglio's Dictionnaire des Antiquités grecques et romaines, vol. iii., p. 528. difficulties are here so great that refuge from them has been sought in all sorts of suppositions, many of them impossible, all of them unwarranted by the ancient evidence. For example, K. O. Müller' declared, against the express statement of the scholiast that the ekkyklema was used, that, on this occasion, a curtain was raised, or drawn aside, displaying the interior of the temple; for no other reason, apparently, than that he found it impossible to reconcile his idea of the ekkyklema with the use to which it was there put by Aeschylus. Similar, though less aggravated, difficulties occur in the Herakles Mainomenos, the Aias, the Acharnians, and elsewhere. But not only is the received account of the ekkyklema unsatisfactory when applied to the elucidation of the action of certain Greek plays: it seems to be also plainly at variance with the language of such descriptions of it as have come down to us. Leaving aside for the present the longest of those descriptions (Pollux, iv. 128), I take the scholiast on Aristoph. Acharn. 408 (quoted by Mr. Haigh, Attic Theatre, p. 185, together with all the other descriptions of this machine) : ἐκκύκλημα δὲ λέγεται μηχάνημα ξύλινον τροχοὺς ἔχον, ὅπερ περιστρεφόμενον τὰ δοκοῦντα ἔνδον ὡς ἐν οἰκίᾳ πράττεσθαι καὶ τοῖς ἔξω ἐδείκνυς, λέγω δὴ τοῖς θεαταῖς. περιστρε In this passage what is the exact meaning of póμevov? It clearly describes the action which brought the machine on to the stage: is it a possible word to describe the pushing of a low platform on wheels or castors through a doorway? The proper meaning of πOrpipe, of course, is to turn round,' 'make to revolve,' and it implies motion about an axis or pivot. When in Il. xix. 131, Zeus is represented as throwing Ate down from Olympos, after first whirling her around his head, 1 Eumenides, p. 103 of Eng. trans. περι |