national epic of Finland and its heroic songs, with a view to solving the problem whether an epic could be composed by the interweaving of such national songs. He comes to a negative conclusion, and applies this reasoning to the Homeric problem. He treats this question again in a treatise on the so-called Peisistratean edition of Homer (La Commissione omerica di Pisistrato, 1881). His Researches concerning the Book of Sindibad were translated in the Proceedings of the Folk-Lore Society. His Vergil in the Middle Ages (translated into English by E. F. M. Benecke, 1895) traces the strange vicissitudes by which the great Augustan poet became successively grammatical fetich, Christian prophet and wizard. Together with Alessandro d'Ancona, Comparetti edited a collection of Italian national songs and stories (9 vols, Turin, 1870–1891), many of which had been collected and written down by himself for the first time. References 1835 births 1927 deaths Italian classical scholars Sapienza University of Rome alumni Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy