The Presbyterian and Reformed Review (Volume 2) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1891. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... In some features, the new school-edition of the Anabasis surpasses all that have gone before. The text, as in the great majority of American editions of classical authors, rests almost exclusively upon the results of continental criticism. Where it departs from the texts of Cobet, the variation seems to be due rather to a conservative regard for the textus receptus than to an independent balancing of manuscript authority. If this conservatism does at times cling to a form of the text which was almost certainly not the original one, it avoids what is a more serious fault in a school text-book, a tendency to increase the annoying confusion that is so apt to arise in a class-room where texts of different editors are used. The Introduction is excellent. Its sketch of the Persian Empire from the Elder to the Younger Cyrus; its description of the Greek and the Persian art of war, aided by attractive and accurate colored illustrations; its portrayal of the life and literary activity of Xenophon: all are marked by a ready command of the resources supplied by recent investigations. The Notes are neither too many nor too few and are always to the point; the Table of Idioms and Phrases is a new and useful addition; and the Vocabulary is complete and precise in its definitions. Mr. Pennell's compendium of Greek history is marked here and there by carelessness. What is meant, for instance, by the remark (page 12) that at the great Dionysia a comedy and o tragedy were played 'i or by the statement (page 13) that the Delphic Amphictyony was composed of eighteen tribes, including the Athenians, Delphians and Eubceans? The brief limits of a school history may explain the failure to recognize the existence of a different opinion as to the historical character of Homer and Lycurgu...