It is not surprising, therefore, to find that from the first the
Boeotian school is forced to season its matter with romantic episodes, and that later it tends more and more to revert (as in the "Shield of Heracles") to the Homeric tradition.
In my own case there followed my acquaintance with these authors certain
Boeotian years, when if I did not go backward I scarcely went forward in the paths I had set out upon.
And now, reader, as we are in haste to attend our heroine, we will leave to thy sagacity to apply all this to the
Boeotian writers, and to those authors who are their opposites.
It originally belonged, it appears, to a
Boeotian ram, who had taken on his back two children, when in danger of their lives, and fled with them over land and sea as far as Colchis.
Peneleos, Leitus, Arcesilaus, Prothoenor, and Clonius were captains of the Boeotians. These were they that dwelt in Hyria and rocky Aulis, and who held Schoenus, Scolus, and the highlands of Eteonus, with Thespeia, Graia, and the fair city of Mycalessus.
These were they that held Cyparissus, rocky Pytho, holy Crisa, Daulis, and Panopeus; they also that dwelt in Anemorea and Hyampolis, and about the waters of the river Cephissus, and Lilaea by the springs of the Cephissus; with their chieftains came forty ships, and they marshalled the forces of the Phoceans, which were stationed next to the Boeotians, on their left.
Among the pleasures of Spackman's criticism are remarks thrown out offhandedly, as if he kept a laundry hamper beside him full of apercus: "a professor of literature is not so much trained to look at what he is reading as to find things to say about it"; "such Arcadian simplicity has at least two
Boeotian inconveniences"; "it is hard to see how even a meatloaf sensibility like Quiller-Couch's found it bearable"; "literature is cultural tradition stated as emotion"; "the critical sensibility of someone at Byzantium left all but seven of Sophocles' plays...
Among the topics are the Greek dialects in the palatial and post-palatial Late Bronze Age, whether
Boeotian and its neighbors formed a central Helladic dialect continuum, the softening of obstruent consonants in the Macedonian dialect, aspect and modality in Thessalian official documents, and the dialect of Thasos and the transmission of Archilochus' fragments.
(10) Photis reveals--increasing Lucius' own curiositas (11) about magic--that Pamphile, fallen in love with a
Boeotian youth, had ordered her to steal a tuft of the youth's hair to perform a rite of attraction; however, having been caught and threatened by a barber, Photis took instead the blonde hair of some goatskin bags, which Pamphile's magic unnaturally brought to life.
In 1874, in an aside in a study of a
Boeotian inscription, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff noticed that a description of the career of Epaminondas in the
Boeotian section of the Description of Greece (9.