That cremation is unknown in the Mycenaean world, even in its latest phases, and inhumation equally foreign to the Homeric poems is a curious, if familiar, fact, and at once raises the question of the length of the interval which separates the fall of Mycenae from the appearance of cremation in the Aegean area. To fix an absolute date for either event is impossible; but the increasing number of carefully excavated sub-Mycenaean and proto-Geometric tombs makes it possible to note certain features in the rise, spread and, in certain regions, the dominance of the practice, and slightly to narrow the chronological limits.

At Mycenae cremation does not appear at all, not even among those depositions in chamber tombs which were accompanied by pottery of the ‘Granary’ class and therefore belong to the latest period of the city or may even be slightly later than its fall. Similarly, two of its ordinary concomitants are lacking, the arched fibula and iron as a useful metal.

Sir Charles Fellows writes on p. 503 of Travels and Researches:— ‘On the plain at the foot of the elevation upon which the city Xanthos was placed, we disinterred the remains of a mausoleum. In this room, which had vaults beneath, stood four sarcophagi, raised upon pedestals. … I have collected the fragments of each sarcophagus.’ The four sarcophagi are in the British Museum and are described in Vol. II of the Catalogue of Sculpture, nos. 957–960. As far as I am aware, there is no other reference to any of them in archaeological literature. Their obscurity in the Museum (no. 957 in the Mausoleum Room Annexe, the other three in the Sepulchral Basement), and also their association in the Catalogue with older, Greek sculptures have combined to withdraw attention from them. It can be readily understood that amid masterpieces of the archaic and classical periods these sadly fragmentary remains of late art failed to attract the eye. To-day, when sarcophagi are recognised as material of fundamental importance for the artistic and cultural history of the provinces of the Roman Empire, it seems appropriate to reconsider these fragments; for their provenience is certain and identical, and they present some new features to our study.

In the following pages I offer a brief survey of books and articles published in 1931 and 1932 which relate solely, or mainly, to Greek inscriptions. Their importance and their number have rendered the undertaking peculiarly difficult and have necessitated, if not the exclusion, at least the most rigorous compression of the paragraphs dealing with the Minoan and other pre-Hellenic scripts. To those scholars who have facilitated my task by sending me off-prints of their works I tender my heartiest thanks.

Death has in these years robbed epigraphical studies of a number of their most eminent representatives, among them H. Dessau, F. Durrbach, a leading authority on Delian inscriptions, C. Fredrich, editor of IG. xii. 8, M. Holleaux, outstanding in the Hellenistic field, O. Marucchi, an expert in Christian epigraphy, J. H. Mordtmann, Salomon and Théodore Reinach, and U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, for many years the director of the colossal enterprise of the Inscriptiones Graecae.

The American excavations in the Athenian Agora were resumed in February 1933, and continued till the middle of July. An account of the work up to May 1 has been published in AJA. 1933, 305 ff. The work is being carried on in four sectors (see AJA. pl. 35)

The wells and cisterns cleared during the latter part of the summer of 1932 are described by Homer Thompson in AJA. 1933, 289 ff. These provide clear evidence of the existence of houses where all traces of walls and foundations have disappeared, notably along the north foot of the Areopagus and north-east of the Theseum, and their contents shew that the inhabitation of this area goes back at least to the early sixth century B.C. In some cases (wells closed in the late sixth and early fifth centuries) the pottery found in the wells seems to indicate the proximity of potters' workshops or warehouses, and pots have been found which had contained miltos. This is further proved for the fourth century by the presence of misfired vase-fragments and lamps. Several pieces of archaic pottery found in these wells are illustrated in the article mentioned above— notably a large one-piece amphora of the earliest class, decorated with a massive sphinx (loc. cit. fig. 3), and from the same shaft an exquisite plastic vase (loc. cit. fig. 5, here Pl XVI)—Ionian, or Ionising, work of about 540 B.C., and without question one of the finest of all existing plastic vases.

A small glazed earthenware portrait-head of a man, found accidentally on the site of the Middlesex Hospital, has been acquired by the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, as a gift from Mr. C. E. Grunspan. It is 32 millimetres (1 3/16 inches) in height; and is made of buff clay, covered all over with a vitreous glaze which varies in colour from brownish-green to bright blue. The neck is broken off from the nape to the base of the chin. The back of the head is cut off obliquely, but evenly, as though for attachment to a flat background; the oblique cut gives the face a quarter turn to the left. The head is hollowed out behind, and even this cavity is blue-glazed.

The man represented has a fleshy jowl, rather projecting lips, prominent eyes, and a somewhat retreating forehead, over which the straight hair is combed forward in a roll, held in position by a plain rounded diadem.

In his notice of my edition of this play, your reviewer questions the emendation, which Headlam proposed and I adopted, of v. 370 (Τυφῶνα θοῦρον, θεὸς ὅς ἀντέστη θεοῖς for MSS.Τυφῶνα θοῦρον, πᾶσιν ὅς ἀντέστη θεοῖς), and says: ‘Even if we suppose that Typhon could be called a god, yet the word comes awkwardly after the accusative θοῦρον.’

The first point was fully dealt with by Headlam himself in C.R. 1900, pp. 106–7, where he notes that Typhon is called a god by Hesiod (Th.824, κρατεροῦ θεοῦ, 871ἐκ θεόφιν γεϝεήand by Hesychius (Τυφωεύς θεός τις γηγενής) and that his divinity is implied by Aeschylus in Theb. 497–501. In the same article he refers to copious examples of the insertion of πᾶσιcontra metrum.