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    each great division of the Grecian people , should hare its antiquities separately treated . The antiquities of Athens require a still further subdivision , and its constitution , its finance and commerce , its religion and its domestic life , all present such copious materials as to demand for their arrangement and investigation the undivided attention of an

    able scholar . Had our older works on these subjects been as perfect as the state of criticism when they were composed allowed their authors to make them , the discovery of so many new monuments of antiquity , and the improvements which the texts of the classics have undergone , would have rendered a revision of every department necessary

    for the present age- The term revision , indeed , hardly applies to that branch which Professor Boeckh has chosen , the Financial Antiquities of Athens ; it had been almost wholly neglected by preceding writers . It is , indeed , both one of the least inviting and one of the most difficult , requiring the union of profound

    philology with great dexterity in figures . Unfortunately , our great classical scholars have often been indifferently fur-Bished with the latter qualification , and might have said , like Reiske , after he had tried his hand in vain , iu his notes to one of his Greek orators , on some questions in addition and subtraction , * ' Fateor me ad calculanduni et artes omnino

    mathematicas crassa Minerva natum esse . " Professor Boeckh has the advantage over his predecessors , being at once a skilful arithmetician , and , of all the living scholars of Germany , the most conversant with Attic antiquities . His translator with reason wishes that he had been better acquainted with the principles of political economy , but his deficiency in this respect , not wonderful when it is considered how little this

    ficience has been cultivated in Germany , affects only his reasonings , and leaves the value of hie laborious researches unimpaired . We could have wished that the translator had done ¦ something more than give an English dress to his original . The arrangement is deficient in clearness , the author having apparently put his materials together much in the form in which he had collected them

    m his common * place books . Even a . little typographical contrivance would have relieved the reader from that perplexity which he always feels in using a work without summaries or visible distinction of books and chapters . The subjects treated of are the value

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    of money and commodities at Athens ; its revenues and public expenditure . A glance at the Antiquities of Potter ( and we know not that any other modem litera * tare possesses a better work ) will shew that these topics have scarcely been noticed before ; and yet no one can hare

    studied Thucydides or tne Greek orators without feeling how essential to a right understanding of them it is to have more definite ideas on Athenian finance , and on that part of jurisprudence which is more immediately connected with it . Pro * fessor Boeckh's work will be the manual

    of every one who wishes to read with precise notions , instead of those vague conceptions which are often attached to the words of ancient authors . The translator has given a smooth and perspicuous version of that which , in the original , aspires to no grace of style , and has iu general represented the meaning so well , that we are at a loss to explain some mistakes which he has made where

    the sense is by no means obscure . Thus Boeckh says , Vol . I . p . 208 , " To cheat the state was , at Athens , the order of the day ( an der Tagesordnung war ); even Aristides , the contemporary of Themistocles , complained of it . " This is

    rendered , ( Transl . 1 . 260 , ) " Fraud was used by public officers at Athens in so great a matter as the regulation of the days . Aristides accused his contemporary Themistocles of this deceit . " Again , fVol . I . p . 276 , ) it is said in the original , " Attica was not adapted for cavalry j it is only in large plains that the horse thrives , or that this species of force is

    effective : " strangely rendered , ( Transl . I . p . 344 , ) " This species of military is powerful among- undisciplined masses of infantry . " Demosthenes , in his 3 d Olynthiac , ch . xxxvi ., is contrasting the great works of past ages with the paltry undertakings of his own , which only pretended to adorn and repair what had been raised before : kou it av elir $ 7 v nc

    1 % oi \ T £ b { intdX ^ Btq , a $ KWicofABV , tcoii t < &s odovq aq evta-KivaXfiiA . lv kou K ^ vaq v-oci " kilpbv ?— " the battlements which we white-wash and the roads which we mend , and fountains aud—nonsense !" The translation ( Vol . I . p . 276 ) is not according to the German , ( chough that is not quite correct , ) and wholly uufaithful to the sense and fame of Demoa ^

    thenes . ?* What , indeed , can be said of youv wdrks ? What of the parapet * which- ' we * Mrow up and ( tlie roada whicli we- construct , and the fountains and the trifles at which we labotor ? " This work will pi'bbably be extensively used at the universities and should a second edition

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    Critical Notices . 483

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    2 m 2

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1828, page 483, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2562/page/51/