While the development of the Mycenaean goblet and kylix has been studied in some detail, comparatively little work has been done on their Cretan equivalents. We are still, in the main, dependent on the remarks of Evans in Palace of Minos, who was mainly concerned with the L.M. II examples; on brief comparisons made by Furumark, who was basically considering Mycenaean pottery; and on some general observations by Mackeprang. Though in part this is due to neglect of L.M. III pottery as a whole, a main reason is no doubt the scarcity of intact decorated kylikes in Crete. Leaving aside the L.M. III goblet, only thirteen have been illustrated in publications and a similar number of other unpublished decorated kylikes are on display in the various museums of Crete. A list of the published vases and of others is given at the end of this article. Even allowing for unpublished kylikes not on display, this small number is unlikely to be an accident of excavation; it is evident that the decorated kylix was rare in Crete in L.M. III, though plain examples are much more common, particularly in central Crete. In the east of the Island, however, both kinds appear on present evidence to be exceptional.

‘The vases of the Acheloos Painter and those in his manner might have been included in the long Leagros list, as they are central examples of the Leagran style: I have placed them in a list of their own, but would insist that they are no less Leagran than the others.’ Thus Beazley, in the introduction to the long Leagran chapter in ABV. The Leagros Group is a large and embarrassingly homogeneous group of late sixth-century Attic black-figure vases; so stylistically homogeneous is it, in fact, that even Beazley admitted a certain defeat when it came to attributing most of them to their painters. As a group they have a well-defined personality, and much of what is true of any one vase is also true of the others, whence the particular problems of attribution. It is an important group because it is contemporary with the red-figure Pioneers, Euphronios, Euthymides, Phintias, and their coterie, and stylistically like their work; Beazley claimed in the ABV introduction that the Leagran pots were painted in the same workshop.

In my study on the chronology of Middle-Byzantine churches after considering the contrary evidence I accepted the dated inscription in the west front of H. Theodoroi at Athens as a record of the erection of the present building. In an additional note reference was made to an article by Xyngopoulos, published after my own had gone to press. To support his dating of the church in the twelfth century he introduces new arguments which I suggested demanded a re-examination of the evidence. More recently Laurent has dealt conclusively with some of the points in connection with the inscriptions raised by the Greek scholar. But, while his verdict on their content may be accepted with confidence, for the archaeologist the question is not yet closed. Laurent's main theses are that in the first place the date on the smaller stone should be reckoned by the Byzantine era and interpreted as 1049, and, secondly, that the metrical inscription should be attributed to the eleventh century, if not earlier, in preference to the twelfth. However, of the relation of the two stones to one another and to the church into which they are built he speaks with less conviction. He favours the prima facie view that the present building was erected by Kalomalos in 1049, but, if the church is shewn on stylistic grounds to be of later date, he is prepared to dissociate both the dated and the metrical inscription from the foundation and to place the latter in the tenth century or even earlier (p. 82).

Approach.: The subject of this talk is in one sense a rather personal one. I am venturing to say something about my own approach to History. I had the good fortune to be born just not too late to come in for the old-fashioned ‘Early Modern Western’ education in the Greek and Latin languages and literatures; the first grown-up job that I did was to teach Greek and Roman history for the School of Literae Humaniores at Oxford; and, in afterwards exploring other provinces of history, I have always found my way into them through a Greek gate. Greek history has been, for me, the key to world history.

Recently there has been a revival of interest in both the historical and archaeological dimensions of the destruction of cities. The destruction of the principal settlement of a polis is one thing, the effective eradication of the political community quite another. What did it take to destroy a political community? The historical record is full of references to destructions of one polis by another in late Classical to Hellenistic times in Crete. And though not all of these destructions led to the end of the political community in question, some did, and between the Classical period (where we know of 49 poleis) and the Roman conquest of Metellus (where we know of only 24) the numbers of Cretan poleis were drastically reduced. The destruction of Praisos by Hierapytna between 145 and 140 BC (Strabo 10.4.12) was one such case. This seems to form part of a horizon of destructions (of Dreros, Apollonia and Phaistos) that took place between 200 and 140 BC. Florence Gaignerot-Driessen has demonstrated that there is a clear ritual dimension to this in the case of Dreros, a dimension indicated elsewhere by the use of the verb κατέσκαψαν. Excavations at Praisos have shed light on this question. This paper argues that, while there is no evidence for a widespread destruction by fire, there is clear evidence for the ending of Praisian sanctuaries and the forced abandonment of houses and (most intriguingly) the abandonment of large storage vessels. A particular archaeological ‘signature’ of these abandonments, evident at Dreros, Phaistos and Praisos, is the abandonment of the ‘household pithos’, which in many cases seem to be older than the houses in which they have been found. The paper also argues that these archaeological signatures of what had to be destroyed in order to eradicate a political community in turn shed light on what made this particular form of ‘citizen state’ so resilient.

The pottery described below was picked up by Mr. Cuttle and myself on mounds, many of which have been noted by Wace or Rey (locc. citt.). We have retained their numbering, so as to avoid confusion. Of the mounds mentioned by Rey, we visited his 2, 3, 4, 5, but not 1, 6, 7, 8. Of those noted and visited by Wace we re-examined A 3, B 8, B 9 and C 9. Of those noted but not visited by him, we visited B 12, B 13, B 15. We could not identify his B 14. On B 13 we found no sherds at all, and it may be a burial tumulus, like A 3. We also collected sherds from a site (not a mound) in the hills one hour north-east of Gerakiní, shewn us by Mr. Bliss of the Anglo-Hellenic Magnesite Company at Gerakiní, and from three mounds in the Ormylia valley, marked Ormylia 1,2 2, 3 on the map (Pl. VI, 1).

In Ö. Jh. XXXI Beibl. 21 ff., I published my attempts to put together a number of early Attic votive pedestals, bases, columns, and capitals. I now follow this up by a publication of some Attic archaic monuments which I have similarly connected with their pedestals. Mr. G. M. Young was kind enough to translate into English the first draft of this paper, which was originally written in German.

I have excluded from this article the monument to which the Nike, Acropolis no. 690, belonged, as this seemed to me to deserve separate treatment (AJA XLIV). I have also excluded a further series of pedestals, which I have assembled but have not been able to connect with any sculptural fragments. I published these elsewhere in the course of a more general treatise on the technique and form of early Attic statue bases (Bull. Bulg. XII). The references to the sculptural fragments are given here as published in the first and second sections of Schrader Die archaischen Marmorbildwerke der Akropolis; Langlotz Die Koren; and Schuchhardt Rundwerke ausser den Koren.

A Short account of the campaign of 1926 at Sparta has already appeared in the Annual Report of the British School for the Session 1925–26, and consequently need not be repeated here. Work started on April 7th and lasted until June 5th, the Director being in charge throughout, except for a brief visit to Athens to attend the opening ceremony of the Gennadios Library on April 23rd. He had as helpers Mrs. Woodward, Mr. P. De Jong and Mr. G. A. D. Tait, who were present for the whole campaign; and, for shorter periods, Mr. H. Box, who stayed from the start to April 18th, and returned for the last three weeks of the work, Mr. W. L. Cuttle, Miss K. Chrimes, of the British School at Rome, and Miss E. Tankard, who again came to draw our finds of small objects.

The Hellenic Government was ably represented by Dr. Th. Karachalios, Ephor of Laconia and Messenia, and the Archaeological Section of the Ministry of Religion and Education again kindly allowed us to employ as foreman Georgios Alexopoulos, Phylax at Mycenae, who performed his duties with his customary zeal and competence. Our total number of workmen averaged nearly fifty, though for a time we had as many as sixty, and we were fortunate in losing very little time through bad weather.

The excavated part of the building known as the Villa Dionysos consists of a peristyle court with rooms on three sides. The rooms have fine mosaic floors, found in a remarkable state of preservation. The excavator, Michael Gough, believed that the building was an isolated structure intended for the practice of Dionysiac cult, and he interpreted his finds in the light of this conviction. After his last season of work in 1971, his views were expressed in a short report (Catling 1972, 21–2). Gough died in 1973 having published no further details of his four seasons of work on the site and, except for some diaries and photographs, many of the records are lost. The pottery from his excavations was, however, fully published in 1983 by John Hayes, and the mosaics were published by Rebecca Sweetman in 2013. Further study of the site, together with the pottery evidence, indicates that the peristyle and its associated rooms were the public reception area of an elaborately decorated Roman domus of the second century AD, and that adjacent buildings to the south may have been the private quarters of this house. A large cistern, connected to the aqueduct, provided a copious water supply. The Dionysiac imagery of the mosaics, together with the extraordinary range of imported wine amphorae found on the premises, suggest that the owner may have prospered through the wine trade.

The ridge known as the Kephala is the middle part of the long ridge that extends from Zafer Papoura on the south to Isopata on the north. The numerous Late Minoan and Protogeometric tombs uncovered on the west slopes of this ridge suggest that there was here in all probability a Minoan Appian Way connecting Knossos both with the harbour town at the mouth of the Kairatos and with the naval station at Amnisos. Years ago Professor Marinatos pointed out to me what appears to be a clear section of the same Minoan way where the modern road from the aerodrome dips to cut through into the Karteros valley.

In December 1938 the Ephor Dr. Platon informed me of the possible existence of a Minoan tomb on this ridge, and permission was granted for me to excavate it on behalf of the British School at Athens. I was assisted by two students of the school, Mr. Vincent Desborough and Miss Vronwy Fisher (now Mrs. Hankey). Miss Fisher kept the catalogue of small finds and is responsible for the published account of them. Mr. Desborough was responsible for the planning and surveying of the tomb, and also for most of the photographs taken during the excavations. Mr. Gerald Young, then Director of the School, kindly came over and took some photographs of the tomb and the inscription (Plate 10b). The foreman was my old friend the late Emmanuel Akoumianos.

The sequence of styles in the evolution of Late Helladic pottery is now well recognized. A sequence dating of finds is thus archaeologically possible. Absolute dating of finds, however, is another and more difficult question. Nothing Late Helladic has any absolute date of its own. We can, however, arrive at approximate absolute dates from Late Helladic pottery found in datable contexts in Egypt or from Egyptian objects found in Late Helladic deposits in Greece. But we cannot always be sure that Egyptian objects found in Greece are contemporary with the Helladic objects with which they are associated. For instance, in Tomb 518 at Mycenae, which is of L.H. I–II date, was found part of an Egyptian porphyry bowl which dates from the First or Second Dynasty. No one would for a moment believe that this Egyptian bowl and the tomb could be contemporary. There are similar cases from Asine and Knossos. It is logical that an early object can be found in a late context, but no one could ever accept that a late object can be found in an early context, unless there has been much disturbance of the stratigraphy.

The three phases of Late Helladic III pottery A, B, and C can be distinguished among themselves with reasonable certainty, although there are always examples which stand on the borderlines. We know that the later Late Helladic IIIA pottery is contemporary with the Amarna Age, because it occurred in quantity in the ruins of Akhenaten's capital. Its latest absolute date is about 1375–1350 B.C., according to the dating placed by Egyptologists on the Amarna Age. There are even a few sherds from Amarna which, if found isolated, might possibly be called L.H. IIIB. Here again another possible difficulty can be glimpsed. A borderline sherd might be called by one archaeologist A and by another B.

A fragment of Mycenaean pictorial pottery, unprovenanced and now in Florence, is published. It depicts, partly preserved, a man standing between two (chariot ?) horses. This is the so-called horse-leader motif, illustrated on only one or two other Mycenaean vases but well-known from late Geometric Argive and Attic vase painting.

It is suggested that the reappearance of the motif in the 8th cent. B.C. may be explained not as inspired by surviving Mycenaean models but as an independent creation.

The σύνοδος of the μύσται and τεχνῖται of Dionysos Breiseus at Smyrna has long been known to students from several series of inscriptions. These, although defective in themselves, can be supplemented by the inscriptions of analogous associations, so that the details of the society's organisation are tolerably familiar, and for the present require no further discussion. But certain questions have not so far been decided. Such concern the origin of the god, the meaning of the epithet, and the situation of his temple at Smyrna. The present paper is an attempt to answer these questions, some new evidence having recently come to hand.

The earliest certain home of Dionysos Breiseus seems to have been Lesbos, where the name of Brisa has been known for many centuries. Homer's heroine will be recalled: Androtion knew a Lesbian promontory called Βρῆσα: the Lesbos of to-day has a hill and a village called respectively Βρίσιον and Βρίσια.

Part 1 describes the Mycenaean weapons from Klauss (Antheia) in Achaea: a socketed spear head and a sword of Type II.

Part 2 describes Mycenaean objects from old, clandestine excavations now in the collection of the Ayia Lavra monastery, a jug of LH IIIB-C1 date, a stirrup-jar, either end of LH IIIA or LH IIIB, and a pair of bronze depilatory tweezers.

The Lekythos of Myrrhine (NM 4485) is described and dated to the last decade of the fifth century. It is a specially commissioned memorial, commemorating her religious office; she is demonstrated to have been the first priestess of Athena Nike. The gravestone to Myrrhine found near Zographo is also discussed. It is suggested that the Lethykos is either a public monument, or an attempt by her family to draw public attention to her, while the Zographo stone marked her actual burial place.

The dead of Pharsalos sleep sound; but more than a century ago their battlefield began to walk; and since Leake a dozen scholars in succession have found it in as many different places, over an area of forty miles by ten.

I must apologise for introducing yet another claimant theory, but I have at least aimed also at reducing the total by the abolition of one or two of its wilder predecessors. I propose, then, to summarise the ancient evidence, to state and criticise the theories based on it, and to conclude with a new attempt at solution, checked by walking over the plains of Pharsalos.

Far the first, then, among our authorities stands of course Caesar himself (Bellum Civile, III. 81–98). After the occupation of Gomphoi and Metropolis, all the states of Thessaly, except Larissa, had declared for him. Accordingly, ‘having found a convenient position in the Thessalian plain,’ he sat down there to wait for Pompey and the final decision. A few days later Pompey marched south to Larissa and joined Scipio. When next heard of, their army is encamped opposite Caesar on a hill.

Exacavations and study at the ancient theatre of Sparta in the area of the stage building and the west parodos have revealed new evidence for the original stage arrangements of the theatre as built under G. Julius Eurykles, c. 30-20 BC. A new trench laid across the west parodos, and the reopening of trials made by H. Bulle in 1935, have confirmed beyond doubt the existence of a scenery store building (skanotheke), from which three trackways, at least two of which were certainly fitted with continuous grooved blocks, allowed a moveable stage structure to be rolled out roughly into the position later occupied by the existing second phase stage building. Within the west parodos three contiguous channelled blocks have been revealed for the north line, the middle line and two poros bedding blocks for the south line. These indicate a gauge between the outer lines of c. 6 m, within a skanotheke 9 m in width and 36 m long, the walls of which have been confirmed on the north, south and west. Bulle's 1937 hypothesis concerning a rolling stage for Sparta, which was challenged by Buckler in 1986, is therefore largely confirmed. Numerous fragments of a marble Doric columned order reused within the walls and foundations of the Flavian stage building suggest that a colonnaded façade may have fronted the moving stage area, and possibly also enclosed it at the rear.

The Toumba and Tables of Vardaróftsa lie at the south end of a ridge that separates Lake Amátovo and the Vardár river (Fig. 1), some 35 kilometres N.W. of Salonika (Fig. 2). To south and east the ridge falls gently to the lower levels; more abruptly on the west to the river's edge. Northward, the ridge extends to where the Toumba of Várdino crowns its other extremity, looking down on the flats round Karasouli.

Between the Toumba of Vardaróftsa and the river, where now stand the village church and a few houses, rises the fine spring which no doubt attracted the original settlers to the site and assured its continuous occupation. A further reason for the selection of the site was perhaps the fact that the river is easily fordable at this point, and travellers passing from the Struma valley into Western Macedonia would make the crossing here. In Homeric times, when the Vardár formed the frontier of Priam's kingdom, the place must have had strategic importance, and in later times, when the successive settlements had raised the artificial mass high above the surrounding level, it must have offered a valuable strong-point from which the whole country-side could be commanded.

The identity of the Ithaca of the Odyssey with the island which has borne that name since remote antiquity had never been disputed until recent times. When, therefore, the tradition of centuries was called in question by so eminent an authority as Dr. Dörpfeld it was inevitable that zealous defenders would come forward to contest his arguments. The exploration of the traditional Ithaca (or Thiáki as the name has become by the metathesis not unusual in medieval Greek) by a group of British archaeologists and scholars, together with the excavations carried out there over some four years under the direction of Mr. W. A. Heurtley, who was able to devote the summers to this work, have established important conclusions for the solution of a controversy which has divided Homeric students. Investigation on the spot has revealed how closely the narrative of the epic, rationally interpreted, conforms to geographical conditions. Its episodes take place in scenes readily recognisable to-day and evidently drawn from personal observation. Even calculations of distance to be traversed incidentally to the story by land or sea are correctly estimated. The excavations confirm the evidence derived from a text in which amplitude of local detail, so unusual in early literature, tends to confirm another tradition accepted in ancient times, namely, that the poet was personally familiar with Ithaca.