), there is
an autograph attestation by Mr. Rodd, that "there were no more than
twenty copies printed."
G.A.S.
_Mistake in Gibbon_ (No. 21. p. 341.).--The passage in Gibbon has an
error more interesting than the mere mistake of the author. That a
senator should make a motion to be repeated and chanted by the rest,
would be rather a strange thing; but the tumultuous acclamations
chanted by the senators as parodies of those in praise of Commodus,
which had been usual at the Theatres (Dio), were one thing; the vote
or decree itself, which follows, is another.
There are many errors, no doubt, to be found in Gibbon. I will mention
one which may be entertaining, though I dare say Mr. Milman has found
it out. In chap. 47. (and _see_ note 26.), Gibbon was too happy to
make the most of the murder of the female philosopher Hypatia, by a
Christian mob at Alexandria. But the account which he gives is more
shocking than the fact. He seems not to have been familiar enough with
Greek to recollect that [Greek: haneilon] means _killed_. Her throat
was cut with an oyster-shell, because, for a reason which he has very
acutely pointed out, oyster-shells were at hand; but she was clearly
not "cut in pieces," nor, "her flesh scraped off the bones," till
after she was dead. Indeed, there was no scraping from the bones at
all.
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