Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/254

 244 Journal of Philology. is used in this sense in that passage of Demosthenes where he describes the famous episode at Olynthus. Also in Athenaeus, xiv. 615. I see in the Dictionary of Biog. and Myth. (s. v. Me- naechmus) a reference made on this subject to Meineke's Hist. Crit. Comic, p. 27. It will enable my readers to verify the state- ments here made independently. I should add that the extracts in Athenaeus from this work by Mensechmus fully corroborate the meaning I have given to the title. The position here taken up with reference to the Menaechmi of Pliny and Pausanias is, I am quite aware, anything but im- pregnable. I cannot expect to carry conviction to others, for conviction I do not feel myself. The utmost I contend for is, that in the absence of positive proof, or even of greater pro- bability to the contrary, the identity of the two artists may fairly be assumed. This identity is the only question with which we are directly concerned. On the importance of the results collaterally arrived at during the discussion I am not the person, nor is this the place, to insist. With many, indeed most, of the names which await us, little more than enumeration will suffice. Of Pamphilus (b. c. 370), for example, the Leonardo da Vinci in erudition the Leonardo da Vinci of antiquity, and the preceptor of Apelles, I am bound to presume that the readers of a classical journal know as much as or more than I can tell them. Only, those who use Sillig's admirable Catalog. Artif will find no mention made of the pas- sage in Suidas, s. v., with which we are now more immediately concerned. It seems to be generally allowed, that the works there enumerated, and bearing the titles Eimfccr Kara crroixeiov, and Ilfpl ypaypaj/ eVSoa>j/, ought to be attributed to Pam- philus the artist, and not to the grammarian of the first cen- tury of our aera, of whom Suidas is there speaking. I do not, myself, feel altogether satisfied with this attribution. That Pam- philus the artist should have written the second of the works here named is not improbable : though Pliny does not quote Pamphilus among the lists of his authorities; albeit he there mentions several of his contemporaries and pupils. But as to the first work, the " Portraits in alphabetical order," that such a production should have come from the pen of Pamphilus at an age when portraiture was comparatively in its infancy, seems to be highly extraordinary. It is stated in Galen that a certain