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Literature The republication of Dindorf's Thendstii Orationes comes at an opportune moment. Themistius, like his contemporaries Libanius and Gregory of Nazianzus, has not attracted much attention from classical scholars in this country hitherto, but interest in the struggles and problems of the fourth century is surely growing. Not only did Themistius write extensively on many subjects, but he was a person of consequence, a friend of emperors and respected by the Christians despite his paganism. Later generations regarded him with suspicion: 'Fuit aulicus adulator et versipellis, vanus iactator philosophiae suae, specie magis quam re cultae, ineptus et ridiculus vexator et applicator Homeri et veteris historiae, tautologus et sophista: in omnibus orationibus paene eadem, et ubique argutiae longe petitae.' Today we are perhaps more charitable. In this Leipzig edition of 1832 Dindorf included all the orations, thirty-four in number; of these the twelfth {Ad Valentem de Religionibus) is composed in Latin, but accompanied by Petavius's Greek version {earn nos orationem Graece reddidimus, Themistii, quoad facere potuimus, stilum imitati). Dindorf had his own notes and apparatus criticus, in which he made full use of previous commentaries (Petavius, Harduin, Cardinal Mai inter alios). He incorporated Harduin's notes and Mai's Praefatio to xxxiv (TTpos ToOs cci-ncKTan̂ vovs friri Tcj) 5££aff6ou TT|V dpxrjv) which Mai had fortunately discovered in Milan some time before 1816. The English version of The Clouds? printed with the Greek text performed at Cambridge this year, is really funny and at the same time faithful to Aristophanes; the Easterlings have permitted themselves a little latitude here and there, but in general they resist any temptation to improve the original. A new translation of Horace has been published in the Everyman's Series. The formidable task was undertaken by Lord Dunsany and Michael Oakley, two scholars of wide experience. Their attempt (in English verse) is remarkably successful: lucid, delicately restrained (as Horace himself would have wished), and sensitive. A. E. Watts cannot have found his task any easier, but his heroic couplets have a certain charm, in their modern setting, which the English 'Augustans' fail to communicate to the twentieth-century reader. The trouble with this medium is that it stands, as it were, tirl pOTifjs \l\as: either you succeed, or you degenerate into the doggerel with which Mr. Cyril Fletcher (quite deservedly) earns his laughs. There are moments when Watts draws rather perilously near the border-line. Pliny's Natural History* is based on the Bohn translation of 1855. Loyd Haberley has made an anthology (in English) of Pliny's 'entries on the Roman customs and ideas and skills that most interest us today'. It gives a fair conspectus and should appeal to the young. The latest volume to appear in the Loeb Classical Library is also concerned with Pliny. Eichholz mentions some of the difficulties encountered by the translator of the Historia Naturalis: the variations in meaning of "Jpinguand -v'crass-; the puzzling nitor and fulgor; the misleading nomenclature {chrysoprasus, topazus, and sapphirus, for example,