As a result of their alliances with Rome in the first two wars with Macedon, the Attalids made a number of small territorial gains in the western Aegean. Among these was the island of Aigina, which was captured by the Romans in 210 B.C., during the First Macedonian War, passed into the possession of the Aitolians in accordance with the terms of their treaty with Rome, and was finally purchased from them by Attalos I of Pergamon for the sum of thirty talents (Polyb. xxii. 8. 10): Αἰτωλοί, κύριοι γενόμενοι τῆς πόλεως κατὰ τὰς πρὸς Ῥωμαίους συνθήκας, Ἀττάλῳ παραδοῖεν, τριάκοντα τάλαντα παρ᾿ αὐτοῦ λαβόντες. This action requires some explanation, especially as the issue has been obscured by the widely held view that Attalos' fleet took part in the capture of the island; some clarification can be found in the literary accounts referring to Attalos' activity during the first years of his involvement in the war. Rome, as is well known, avoided total commitment in Greece even after Laevinus' treaty of 212/11.

I published three years ago in a Greek periodical a hitherto unpublished journal of the year 1813, from a manuscript of the British Museum, entitled Recollections of Smyrna. It was written by an Englishman, John Oliver Hanson. I found no trace of him in the bibliographies of travellers; and indeed, all my attempts to collect information about him led nowhere. I therefore expressed the hope that its publication might perhaps result in the discovery of information concerning his life and person. Up to the moment of writing, however, I have been no more fortunate in my researches than I was previously.

In the prologue of my publication I pointed out with pleasure that Hanson's manuscript contained the texts of two other journeys made by him, and that we thus had a more complete picture of the travel records of a hitherto unknown traveller from the West in the Greek East.

The origin of the sealstones in the British School of Archaeology at Athens is rather obscure. Although they have sometimes been referred to as the Finlay collection, this is apparently incorrect. That collection is now in the museum of the University of Manchester. Numbers 1–18 below (M30–M47 in the School's museum inventory) consist of three Minoan gems of the ‘talismanic’ type and fifteen ‘Melian’ Island gems. The combination of Island with a small admixture of Minoan gems, especially ‘talismanics’, seems to have been characteristic of material derived from Geometric tombs in the cemeteries of Trypiti, Trion Vasallon, and elsewhere on Melos during the latter part of the nineteenth and the first years of this century, in particular during the period in which the British School was excavating on the island at Phylakopi.

With the publication of Dr. Renfrew's most valuable study of the development and chronology of the Early Cycladic figurines it is now possible for us to study both the distribution and the influence of these figurines in the regions bordering the Aegean—in the Troad, Dodecanese, northern Greece, the Peloponnese, and Crete. This paper is concerned with Cycladic figurines in Crete, and with the influence which the Cycladic figures had upon the development of the indigenous Cretan types. It begins with a brief description of the Neolithic figurines of Crete, and proceeds to a discussion of Cycladic and indigenous types, and an examination of three types which appear to be hybrids, peculiar to the island. The concluding section discusses the significance of the Cycladic figurines and their derivatives in Crete as evidence for cultural contact in the Aegean Early Bronze Age.

In the store-rooms of the British Museum is kept a fragment belonging to a lead plaque which bears the traces of an inscription written boustrophedon in the Corinthian alphabet. This lead plaque was part of the collection of J. Woodhouse, which was made in Corfu, and following the death of the collector in 1866 was bequeathed to the British Museum.

In 1868 the plaque was catalogued and described in the Museum's Register. According to a sketch, also included, it is clear that at that time more of it was preserved and that besides the upper and lower edge possibly the right end was also retained. It was described as containing seven lines of a boustrophedon inscription, of which only the first, second, and seventh lines were transcribed. The inscription was incomprehensible, and that may have been the reason for its not being published hitherto.

The large pictorial jug published here (Plate 12 a-d) was discovered in 1966 in a plundered Mycenaean chamber tomb at the site Melathria, near the village of Skoura in Laconia. Skoura is close to Sparta, opposite to and east of the Vapheio tholos tomb, on the east side of the river Eurotas.

It is a most unusual Mycenaean vase, remarkable for its pictorial decoration at such an early date. In view of the shape of the vase and its linear decoration, it seems to be one of the earliest pictorial vases yet found on the mainland of Greece.

The jug, which is now exhibited in Sparta Museum (Inv. no. 5533), has been restored from fragments, and large pieces of the belly have been completed with plaster. It can be described as follows: Tall jug with cut-away neck (Plate 12a). Light brown clay, polished yellow-pink surface, lustrous red paint which in places has adhered badly and flaked away.

Mycenaean figurines have been known for as long as Mycenaean pottery itself, for they were found both by Biliotti on Rhodes and by Schliemann at Mycenae. It was, however, Schliemann's (1878, 10 ff.) imaginative interpretation of female and bovine figures alike as representations of ox-eyed Hera that ensured their conspicuous place in the history of Mycenaean culture and religion. Not only did he illustrate a considerable number in his works, but he also preserved with great care all fragments found. Indeed, even today there are some five hundred figurines from his excavations in the National Museum at Athens, and others have gone as gifts to the museums of Europe. These finds, with those of the Greek excavations at Nauplia, supplied a happy hunting ground for early scholars of prehistoric religion such as Mayer (1892) and Reichel (1897).

The following notes are an attempt to classify on the basis of shape some of the Attic red-figured choes of the later part of the fifth century B.C. and a few sundries of the early part of the fourth. The connection of these vases with the festival of the Anthesteria has given them a prominent place in the study of religion and of children's pastimes. Their scenes have been considered by several scholars, the foremost of whom are Frickenhaus, Deubner, van Hoorn, S. karouzou, and Metzger. Metzger, though taking a less extreme position than Rumpf who challenged the validity of much of the earlier work, has given a refreshingly sane view of several aspects of the iconography. Mrs. karouzou has confined herself in her published work to particular pieces and particular aspects of the festival.

In May 1970 an Albanian delegation attended the Second International Congress of Southeast European Studies at Athens, and one of the delegates, Professor Frano Prendi, with his characteristic kindness, sent me copies of three Communications which were delivered to the Congress. As the illustrations in these Communications were of poor quality, he sent me two photographs from which two of the illustrations had been made. I reproduce these photographs here as Plates 34 and 35.

The general thesis of the delegation was that the formation of the Illyrian ethnos in central and south Albania began at the end of the ‘Eneolithic’ period; that an autochthonous evolution followed which spanned the entire Bronze Age and continued into the Early Iron Age; and that during this long period the ‘Ur-Illyrians’, if I may style them so, had reciprocal exchanges with other people, but preserved their own ethnic character.

A Type of small pottery flask which has so far received little attention from students of the Early Christian period appears regularly on sites of sixth- to seventh-century date throughout the eastern Mediterranean. It is fusiform in shape, with a short tubular mouth marked off from the body by a slight ridge, and tapers at the bottom to a roughly truncated point (Fig. I). In view of its general similarity in shape to the common fusiform unguentarium of Hellenistic times I have suggested elsewhere the name Late Roman Unguentarium for the type. The height of complete speciments may be estimated at c. 18–21 cm.; occasionally one meets larger examples (with small flat bases). Such a flask was obviously not meant to be stood up on its base, but is of a convenient shape and size to be clasped in the hand. One may assume that it was provided with a stopper to keep in the contents (presumably of some perishable material, since no examples survive); the ridge below the mouth may have served to secure this.

The purpose of the present article, which forms one of a series of reports on the Knossos excavations of 1951–61, is to present a cross-section of pottery and other small finds of the early Roman period (first century B.C. to first century A.D.) from Knossos. Three good deposits of this period were found during the work in 1958–61; these, together with a fourth group of similar date found in 1951, are published here. Excluded from the present article is the stratified material of the period from the Royal Road site, which will be published shortly in a general report on the excavations there.

With one exception (no. 36) these terracottas all come from excavations in the neighbourhood of the Royal Road conducted between 1957 and 1961. They are a mixed lot, and the stratigraphy, although carefully observed, is seldom very helpful. They range from the Geometric to the Roman period. Apart from a few correspondences with pieces from the Demeter Sanctuary on Gypsades at Knossos, these figurines find few parallels in Crete or elsewhere, and serve to underline our essential ignorance of post-Minoan Cretan terracottas.

In this article I shall attempt to place in chronological order the bronze issues struck during the period when Knossos was an autonomous city; that is, up to the time of the Roman conquest in 67 B.C. I shall not deal here with the issues Zeus head/eagle (Svoronos, pl. vii, 18–23), since I have discussed these elsewhere.

The earliest bronze coins of Knossos seem to be the small pieces with a head on both obverse and reverse, some varieties of which are illustrated by Svoronos, Numismatique de la Crète Ancienne, pl. vi, 10–14.

Amongst the somewhat meagre array of inscriptions illustrating Athenian relations with Persia in the middle of the fourth century there is one substantial document which merits particular attention. This is the decree which records details of Athenian relations with a certain Orontes who is generally identified with the well-known Persian satrap of that name. This decree, published as IG ii2. 207, consists of four fragments. Three of these are extant and are housed in the Epigraphical Museum at Athens (fragments (b)+(c)+(d) = EM 7035, 7035 (α), 7036), the other piece has long been lost (fragment (a)).

In the Addendum to the editio minor Kirchner quotes with approval the opinion of Wilhelm that the two fragments published separately as IG ii2. 121 and IG ii2. 185 belong together. As far as I have been able to ascertain, this suggestion has never been withdrawn. There are, however, a number of reasons which make it clear that this proposed join must be rejected.

Both pieces are of white marble and are housed in the Epigraphical Museum at Athens. IG ii2. 121 (= EM 6958) constitutes the top right part of a stele and has a right edge preserved. The dimensions are: maximum height 0·366 m., maximum width 0·222 m., maximum thickness 0·151 m. The surface is rather badly worn. Part of the bottom of a heading in large letters (of 22 mm. height) is preserved at the very top. Below this there is an uninscribed space of 0·113 m., followed by the remains of some six lines of text which comprise part of the prescript of the decree.

We have attempted below to define three main phases in the development of the Late Helladic IIIC pottery of Lefkandi. The first two phases we have further subdivided into an early and late stage. We recognize the dangers of over-classification, principally in that it may obscure the main differences between each phase. In this case, however, the danger seemed worth the risk in that Lefkandi has produced unusually deep and well-stratified deposits of IIIC pottery, such as are unlikely to have accumulated or to have survived on most sites of this period. This is not, of course, to say that the stages which we believe to be recognizable at our site are necessarily valid elsewhere. But the extent to which they are generally applicable will appear only after they have first been defined and then tested against the finds from other excavations with stratified deposits of this period.

In this article I wish to present in detail a number of vases which have received only a brief mention in publication until now, or are otherwise unpublished. Most are chance finds from inhumation burials discovered during cultivation or road building. Some of the graves were slab-cists, but the majority were simple pit-graves. In some cases they were grouped together. No traces of tumuli survive, but this possibility should be considered. By comparison with material from neighbouring areas and from associated finds, this pottery can be dated to the Early Iron Age, c. 1000–700 B.C.

This particular vase shape has a purely Minoan origin. The first examples appear in the M.M. II/IIIA period, but their manufacture is quite different and it has not yet taken the typical form of the later examples.

The small number of vases of this type which survive in Crete and generally in the Aegean area obliges one to consider the special reasons for the rarity of the type. One of the main reasons, and perhaps the most relevant, is the difficulty involved in the manufacture of the vase. The two globular parts of the body are made separately and afterwards joined. We can easily confirm this by looking at the lines caused by the potter's wheel, and the marks where the vase has been joined in the interior. The neck, the handles, and the base are also manufactured separately. The immediate consequence of this manufacture is a lack of firmness and stability. The vase, therefore, breaks more easily and is quickly put out of use.

There are several buildings at Thessaloniki that can be dated to the middle or second half of the fifth century A.D. and which have one feature in common, namely, the characteristic brick stamps illustrated in Figs, 1a and b. Bricks bearing these stamps occur in the following buildings: Acheiropoietos, the first phase of St. Demetrius, the city walls, and the second phase of the Rotunda. The conventional date for the Acheiropoietos basilica is c. 470 and for the first phase of St. Demetrius some time between 450 and 500. The dates usually given to the walls and the Rotunda are c. 380/390, but I have recently shown that the walls ought to be dated to around the middle of the fifth century and that phase two of the Rotunda belongs with the fifth-century churches. I hope to demonstrate that the Byzantine palace was also built at about the same period.

The marble statue of a youthful Athena, which was once in the Mattei collection and is now in the Louvre in Paris, has long been regarded as a work of considerable beauty and charm (Plate 66a–c). It seems to be a copy of an original of the fourth century B.C., but because no other versions of the type are known there has been some hesitation in attributing it to a particular sculptural workshop.

Within the last few years the Athena Mattei has emerged as one of the most important ancient copies in existence. For in 1959 a number of bronze statues were found by chance in Piraeus, and amongst them was a magnificent bronze Athena which appears to be the original from which the statue in the Louvre was copied (Plates 67, 68a). It is the purpose of this article to investigate the relationship between the two statues and to consider the implications regarding the date and authorship both of the marble copy and of the bronze original.