Field events are notoriously the Cinderellas of the athletic world, and this was as true in antiquity as in our own day. The Greeks practised three, long jump, discus, and javelin, and in their festivals did not accord them the status of separate events but grouped them, together with a foot race and wrestling, which were also solo events in their own right, in the pentathlon. This was first included in the Olympic programme in 708 b.c.; other festivals imitated Olympia, and, with the astonishing conservatism of the Greek athletic world, the pentathlon remained unchanged until the disappearance of the festivals a thousand years later.

‘Omnes vero se Britanni vitro inficiunt, quod caeruleum efficit colorem, atque hoc horribiliores sunt in pugna aspectu.’ Every schoolboy is familiar with the passage, and the general accuracy of the statement is everywhere accepted; although the hypercritical might question the omnes. For Caesar cannot be speaking from his own knowledge, since his acquaintance with the British was limited; and the use of woad being a peculiarly British institution—I know of no evidence of its use on the Continent—it would not be surprising if some at least of the tribes in the south of Britain, who had been established there for not more than two or three generations, were slow to adopt what must have seemed to them a very barbarous habit.

Exploration in ancient Egypt was fostered originally by the militaristic designs of the Pharaohs. Between the end of the Third Dynasty (c. 2600) and the Eighteenth (1570–1304), the Egyptian kings were continually extending their southern frontier, and bringing under their control the Ethiopians or Kushites of Nubia. The Sahara blocked any expansion westward, although it was certainly less extensive in those times and contained more abundance of water. The camel, however, had probably not been introduced into Egypt, and there was little incentive for traders to make long marches across the desert. Nigerian gold, ivory, and slaves were brought in by sea. Travel by boat up the Nile therefore remained the sole means of opening up new areas. Along with the military expeditions went scholars and explorers who brought back tales of the Upper Nile, which gradually came to the ears of Greek visitors to the Delta region in Mycenaean times. From the Homeric poems we may see in what form they were assimilated by the Greeks. At the edge of the river Ocean were said to dwell the Aithiopes, ‘burnt-faced men’, probably Somalis, while the story of the Pygmies who fought with cranes shows knowledge of the tribes of the interior. It is significant, too, that the name given to the Nile in Homer is Aigyptos, the river being equated with the country. There is however hardly any mention of Egypt in Greek literature between Homer and Hekataios. Not until 664 were Greeks encouraged to visit the country, and then Psammetik I brought in Lydian and Carian mercenaries perhaps by arrangement with the Lydian tyrant Gyges. By means of these troops he was able to break the power of the Kushites, who had established themselves as rulers over Egypt.

On two sides productive work for the understanding of Aeschylean tragedy has lately been done. Cambridge scholars have made useful progress in the elucidation of Aeschylus, and recent new interpretations of the symbolic and prophetic meaning of later poetry, including the New Testament, have produced results which can be applied with caution to tragic poetry in general. A combination of the methods of these investigators, which yet does not abandon all the estimates of older criticism, may, by a slight change of perspective, enable further progress in the interpretation of Aeschylus to be made.

Many without direct access to detailed information are by now quite firmly convinced that the numbers of students studying Classics at British Universities have been declining and are continuing to decline. To some this is a matter of regret, to others it is a matter of indifference, and to others again it is something positively to be welcomed. From time to time those with a committed belief in the value of classical studies tend to see hopeful signs of a recovery, while the enemies of Classics can hardly wait for the final demise of an outmoded and irrelevant discipline. But whatever the attitude adopted towards the decline, the fact that there is such a decline is normally not regarded as a matter that can be disputed. Indeed anyone who demurs about the facts tends to be ignored or dismissed, as if he were not only an interested party but a dishonest one as well. The present article is an attempt to consider the actual position in greater detail and it is hoped with greater objectivity than is to be found in many of the statements frequently put forward in the course of discussion.

The systematic excavation of the Outer Ceramicus, carried on in a series of campaigns under the direction of Dr. Alfred Brueckner, has thrown valuable light upon one of the most interesting portions of ancient Athens. There, lining the road which led from the Dipylon Gate to the Academy, lay the tombs of those who had given their lives in battle for Athens or had rendered to her some other signal service. Pausanias the traveller passed along that road, and he has left us a brief catalogue, interspersed with historical comments, of some of the monuments which flanked it (i. 29.3–16). Here were buried not only statesmen such as Cleisthenes, Ephialtes, and Pericles, public financiers such as Eubulus and Lycurgus, generals and admirals such as Phormio, Thrasybulus, Conon, Timotheus, and Chabrias, but also outstanding figures in the realm of thought and of art—Zeno, the founder, Chrysippus, the reorganizer, of the Stoic School, and Nicias, the foremost figure-painter of his day. Of the more striking achievements of the Hellenic world only literature and sculpture are unrepresented in Pausanias’ list.

Aristotle's Poetics has centuries of tradition behind it as a substitute for first-hand appreciation in dramatic criticism, and this work has lent colour to the old view that the characters of Greek tragedy were all ‘idealized types’ in a performance in which the plot was the thing. This is because Aristotle explicitly puts plot above character in his list of the essentials of a tragedy, and when he comes to treat of character has little to say which appeals to us. But the pure tragic drama of human feeling depends entirely on its success in eliciting sympathy with its characters. Of this art Sophocles, like Shakespeare, is the acknowledged champion. Aeschylus is inspired to ‘justify the ways of God to man’, Euripides is concerned to question the ways of man to his neighbour. When Aeschylus added characterization to his loftier qualities, he produced in the Agamemnon the greatest play ever written, but we do not suspect his ‘Prometheus’ of character drawing any more than Shelley's. And in Euripides, as sometimes in Shaw, the characters are so under the thumb of the theories that we forget to take much personal interest in them. But in Sophocles we are not distracted by the prophet or the propagandist, and we can let his pathetic, human people stir in us their own hopes and sorrows.

‘When we come to Euripides’, writes Pearson, in his introduction to the Phoenissae, ‘we are let down to earth…. If our notions of ancient art are shaped on the ideal pattern, we experience a feeling as of a sudden jar or shock when brought face to face with the realistic aspect of a Euripidean play; there is what seems at first sight a blending of the ancient point of view with the modern, an acquiescence in the ugliness of certain features of suffering which we are apt to think more appropriate to the twentieth century…. With every fresh disaster we are forced to utter the question—why should such things be? And at the same time we are driven to admit that, though we cannot explain them, they are none the less true.’ This is pre-eminently true of the Hercules Furens.

The Hercules Furens rivals the Bacchae in the strangeness of its theme, and if it can be demonstrated that these two plays were built out of the stuff of real life, an important point has been made in support of the contention that Euripides’ prime interest was the character of men and women, and that his dramatic presentation of humanity is marked by psychological insight of the highest order, and based upon a notable acuteness of observation. What, we may ask, led Euripides to choose as a subject of tragedy the strange tale of the madness of Heracles? The Attic associations of the myth, which were his main concern in the Heracleidae, cannot have been his chief motive in this case.

These notes were compiled for a lecture to the grocersapos; assistants and apprentices of Liverpool, early in 1910, but have been revised and somewhat elaborated.

Let us begin by defining our subject. What are Groceries? The con-tents of a grocerapos;s shop are various, and some are common to grocersapos; shops and more special establishments. Some of these (1) are perhaps not strictly ‘groceries’ at all, (2) are absent from early lists of groceries; e.g. tea and coffee, which formerly had their own ‘warehousemen’, and this process of encroachment and regrouping still goes on. What then are the sources and the purposes of all these? Every business of supply is a matter of adapting means to ends. The ends are not set by the business man, but by the public, the customers. The means also are not created by the business man; they exist, or are made, elsewhere and among other peoples. The business man is the middleman who organizes the supply to meet the demand for something which the consumer either cannot supply for himself or only at a disproportionate and therefore unbusiness-like effort.

In looking, therefore, at the early history of what was to become a ‘grocery’ business, we are asking three questions: as to the purposes which groceries serve, the sources which fulfil them, and the methods by which the ‘grocer’ adjusts supply to demand. In a modern grocer's shop, then, we may classify its contents in respect of the purposes which they serve, and the means which fulfil these ends.

Bycommunis is meant a syllable, not the last syllable of a word nor a prepositional prefix, which may in one context be short, in another long, because it contains a short vowel, this vowel being followed by a mute (which may be represented by more than one character) followed by a liquid. The first two syllables of quadruplicis are communes. In Cicero, Arati Phaenomena 334, this word is scanned with the first syllable long and the second short, and we may say that it contains a long communis followed by a short communis; but in another context the first syllable of this word might be short and the second long, or both might be long. For brevity we may use CR (CCR) to mean long communis (-es) in the rise of a foot (arsis, strong position), CF (CCF) to mean long communis (-es) in the fall of a foot (thesis, weak position).

Anaxagoras was a man of one book; and that book, save for a few quotations in other authors and several summaries, is lost. A very potent and tantalizing book it must have been, to judge from all that we hear of it; the opinion of antiquity, preserved in Diogenes Laertius, was that its doctrines were expounded ‘in a pleasant and lofty style’, and the fragments which remain confirm this judgement. It was not merely a philosophical or scientific treatise; it was a work of art, in which the style rose and fell with the subject-matter.

Arma virumque cano Virgil sang, or professed to sing, at the start of his epic, and one may reformulate the import of his programmatic words to fit a new context. Obtaining weapons he can call his own is very often a key moment near the start of the career of a folk-tale hero. And very often it is the hero's mother who equips him with them. Paradoxically, this truth may be confirmed, e contrario, by reference to the Welsh story of Lleu Llaw Gyffes from the Mabinogion, for, in that narrative, the hero's mother Aranhry seeks to thwart at its inception the career of her son – whom she had exposed, since his very existence causes her so much embarrassment – by placing a Destiny or interdiction upon him: he will never bear arms unless and until she herself bestows them. The ban is circumvented by a cunning ruse: the magician Gwydion disguises her son and himself as peripatetic bards, in which capacity they are entertained in Aranhry's castle. When Gwydion conjures up a phantom army and fleet to besiege the citadel, the alarmed Aranhry is all too ready to bestow weapon and armour on the younger of her two guests – only to find the army vanished and her own son in possession of the arms she had sworn he would not bear.