PREFACE

portrait she gives us in her Fragments is so precious
that its very frame is of surpassing interest. To
these ‘ Lives’ I have added the ancient accounts of
such early poet-musicians as Olympus and Thaletas,
partly to serve in some sort aS an introduction to the
subject, and partly in order to avoid creating the
impression that only the poets of whem: some work
is extant are of any importance to the student of
Greek poetry. Secondly, if these mere quotations
are to have more than linguistic interest, in nine
cases out of ten they want explanation, and in at
least five of those nine the explanation may be had
from the context in which they are found. Berek
appears to have regarded the contexts as a necessar v
evil, and has not only relegated them to the footnotes
but has made them less useful than they might have
been by cutting them as short as he possibly could.
I have ‘thought it better to give full contexts in the
body of the page, printing them, however, in small
type so that the reader may the more easily omit
them if he will.

A feature peculiar to this edition is the inclusion
of a considerable number of restorations made exempl
gratia of passages preserved only im paraphrase.
These restorations, as well as those of the new Frag-
ments, are mainly my own. The reader should
clearly understand that in m: uly cases where he finds
square brackets, and all where he finds " €.g., or “6.5.
and a vertical line, he is dealing with restorations
which, though they are far from being mere guesses,
are only approximations to the truth. Similar
warnings are sometimes conveyed by dots and pointed
brackets. A dot placed beneath a letter means that
that letter is a possible interpretation of the traces,

Vili