Being desirous, after the revelation of intimacy between prehistoric Crete and Egypt which the Cnossian excavations had made, to know if there were indeed no ‘Aegean’ remains in the Lower Delta, I searched the authorities for an account of the extant antiquities of its north central region—north, that is, of the ‘Berari’ railway, which links Dessuk on the Rosetta Nile with Sherbin on the Damietta arm. But in vain. Nor, for that matter, could I find any description of the scenery of the region itself, more detailed and recent than the romantic sketch of the marshes with which Heliodorus opened his Aethiopica. I had myself visited the extreme south-west corner of it in 1896, following in the steps of Messrs. Petrie and Griffith to Tell al-Farain; and the last named scholar had gone on thence a few miles north to the district of Tida. North and east of that point stretched unknown land. So I was forced to undertake an exploration of the region for myself. The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies generously gave a grant in aid; and almost every kind of assistance was furnished on the spot by the Société Anonyme du Behéra, through the great goodwill of its Managing Director Mr. E. W. P. Foster, C.M.G.

1. At Robert College, Bebek, Constantinople, small stele 0·36 × 0·69 (letters 0·15) with relief of sacrifice to Apollo Citharoedus by a number of worshippers arranged in rows above each other: the inscription is much worn:

The epithet may be connected with the river name Macestus, Mecistus, with which again we may compare the Lesbian mountain Macistum, and the name Macestis in Le Bas 1127. The Macestus valley is possibly the provenance of both the Bebek stelai. A long series of votives dedicated to Apollo Crateanus (Arch. Zeit. 1875, 162), is said to come from a spot three hours from Manyas and nine from Balukiser. I was told also by Mr. Bunning of Susurlu that many of the Van Branteghem antiquities were found at a spot near Omarkeui.

Among the many genuine works of Greek Sculptors in the Museums of Athens there are three colossal heads and a piece of richly sculptured drapery, more striking perhaps in their originality than any others to be found there. Shortly after their discovery they were published with photographs by the Director of Antiquities, M. Cavvadias, under the title Fouilles de Lycosura, Athènes, 1893, and carefully described and appreciated. My excuse in venturing to bring them again to notice is the undeserved neglect with which works of such fine and unexpected quality have been treated.

The town of Prusa, of which Dio was a native, stood in a fertile valley in Western Bithynia near Mt. Olympus. To this day the country round Brusa is remarkably rich and beautiful and here were situated the vineyards and farms which belonged to Dio's family. His grandfather was a distinguished sophist, τὴν γὰρ οὐσίαν ἣν εἴχε πατρῴαν καὶ παππῴαν ἅπασαν εἰς φιλοτιμίαν ἀναλώσας, ὥστε μηδὲν ἔχειν λοιπόν, ἑτέραν ἐκτήσατο ἀπò παιδείας καì παρὰ τῶν αὐτοκρατόρων: and the sophistical or rhetorical bias of Dio's education is clearly reflected in his earlier speeches. It mattered little that the study of the classics formed part of the average education: his reading everywhere would be directed by teachers who held the ordinary sophistical view that exact thinking and deep study unfit a man for practical life and that success is achieved by those who have acquired the art of making a skilful and impressive use of ideas which do not differ materially from those of the ordinary citizen. In the view of this school philosophical epideixis was only a small part of sophistic, and Stoics, Cynics, Epicureans, Platonists, and Peripatetics were only dry-as-dust schoolmasters and pedants who, differing in everything else, united in disparaging the universal culture of the Sophists.

The marvellous jump recorded in this epigram has naturally given rise to much controversy. Intimately connected with it is the equally disputed question of the meaning of the terms σκάμμα, τὰ ἐσκαμμένα, and Βατήρ as applied to the long jump.

Most of the discussion on this point might have been avoided if scholars had considered the whole of the evidence and not confined their attention to one or two passages. The discussion has mostly turned upon the words of Pindar (Nem. v. 19, 20) μακρά μοι δὴ αὐτόθεεν ἅλμαθ´ ὑποσκάπτοι τις, and upon the scholiast's note on this passage. In J.H.S. vol. i. 213 Prof. Percy Gardner gave the following explanation: ‘After every leap a fork was drawn across to mark the length, so that he who leaps beyond all marks distances his rivals.’ In J.H.S. vol. ii. p. 218 Mr. Myres suggested that ‘the σκάμμα might be a line drawn for the jumper to jump at like the handkerchief or piece of paper sometimes used in the present day.’ He further suggested that the three lines seen on the B.M. vase B 48 represented the ἐσκαμμένα. Both these gentlemen have I believe since altered their views, but as statements bearing the authority of their names are always liable to be repeated without further investigation, the errors still persist.

Since the Capitoline ‘Aeschylus’ was discredited as a portrait of the tragedian there has been a curious blank in our knowledge of Greek iconography; yet his portraits in antiquity were famous and it seems certain that they must, like those of Sophocles and Euripides, have been widely reproduced. Those known to us from literary evidence are that in the Στοὰ Ποικίλη, where he appeared as one of the warriors of Marathon, that erected by Lycurgos in 340, and (probably) another of earlier date, inferred from the words of Diogenes Laertius that the Athenians Ἀστυδάμαντα πρότερον τῶν περὶ Αἰσχύλον ἐγίμησαν εἰκόνι χαλκῇ; now Astydamas, nephew of Aeschylus, won the prize in Ol. 95. 2, and Bernoulli suggests that if a statue were erected at that date to one of his followers, one of the great tragedian was probably in existence, i.e., one erected before the end of the fifth century. That set up by Lycurgos was, however, by far the most famous, and of its style we get clear evidence from the Sophocles of the Lateran.

The romantic tale of the beautiful princess Andromeda, and how Perseus freed her from the dragon, has been treated by two of the great tragedians, Sophocles and Euripides. Here, if anywhere, Sophocles is thrown into the shade by his rival, so much so that the most important elements of Sophocles' version have been given to the drama of Euripides. Therefore if we wish to restore to Sophocles what justly belongs to him, we must first define as clearly as possible what belongs to Euripides. For although a great deal has been written about this brilliant achievement of Euripides, yet conclusions that seemed settled are constantly being called in question or denied, while questionable or erroneous views are once more put forward as correct. Only after the genuine remains of Euripides' play have been separated out can we hope to form any conception of the Andromeda of Sophocles, or to give any reasoned answer to the question which is the earlier, Euripides' play, which was performed with the Helena in 412 B.C., or Sophocles' play, the date of the first performance of which has not come down to us. The poetry of Euripides was Latinised by Ennius, but the fragments of the Latin tragedy do not give substantial help towards the reconstruction of the Greek one.

We were at Khatyn Serai for four days, arriving on the fourth day of July, 1901, and leaving on the seventh. Our road from Konia lay through Baiyat, where we copied the following inscription.

The length of our stay at Khatyn Serai enabled us to become acquainted with a good number of inscriptions. Besides verifying almost all the inscriptions already published from Professor Sterrett's copies, or from Professor Ramsay's earlier ones (cf. W.E. pp. 242 ff.; C.I.L. vol. iii. pp. 1239 and 2061), we heard of and copied twenty-four new inscriptions, ten of which are in Latin and one bilingual. We were also able to make some examination of Zoldera, the site of the ancient city, which lies rather more than a mile N.W. of the village.

The inscriptions are most conveniently considered according to the language in which they are written; for if they were found on the site of the modern village, they were in all probability carried thither from Zoldera.

In view of the importance of ascertaining the limits of the influence of the early civilization of the Aegean, the existence of four Mycenaean vases in the little museum at Torcello has a certain interest.

This museum contains a miscellaneous collection of antiquities, some dug up in the island itself or coming from the ecclesiastical buildings close by, some from the adjacent islands in the lagoon. Amongst a number of vases of later date are the four in question.

The first of these (No. 727) is a small pseudamphora of somewhat flattened form. The buff slip is decorated all over the body of the vase with bands of red glaze-paint. The spaces on the shoulder of the vase not occupied by the spout and handles are filled with parallel strokes gradually decreasing in length, which thus form the triangles of bars common on late Mycenaean ware.

The article of Mr. Frost in the preceding number of this Journal (pp. 217, seq.) gives me an opportunity to protest against what I consider a dangerous development of archaeological study in our days. I must thank the Editors for having, in spite of the great pressure upon their space, granted me a few pages in the present number to record this protest; while I must defer to a later issue of this Journal the fuller exposition of my views on the Cerigotto Bronze, the statue of Agias from Delphi, on Scopas and Lysippus.

The protest—or, perhaps better, the warning—which I wish to publish concerns the course given in the present day to the study of style in Classical Art. To this study, as practised by the late Heinrich v. Brunn, Archaeology owes its greatest advance; and the serious students of Mediaeval and Renaissance art have borrowed these methods from classical archaeology, thus opening out a vast field of accurate information. I have myself devoted my energies to its cultivation and endeavoured to lay down the principles of its proper application in the first chapter of my Essays on the Art of Pheidias published in 1885. I believe, moreover, that we are only at the beginning of this line of work which promises such great results ia the future. Nor need we remain content with the establishment and amplification of our knowledge of Greek art in the great classical period, as little as in Greek literature study, and especially research, are to be confined to the great classical writers.

The site map of Cyzicus reproduced in this number (Pl. VI) represents the results of Mr. A. E. Henderson's survey in the summers of 1902—3. The first season's work, of which alone I can speak at first hand, accounted for the coast line, prominent remains (including the city walls), and main roads: the limits of the marsh land on the isthmus were also ascertained with considerable exactness with a view to the recent discussion of the original nature of the Cyzicene Peninsula: these limits, however, are subject to a certain amount of variation with the season, and cultivation is yearly encroaching upon them. The maze of walls within the enceinte—some of them modern vineyard boundaries, others doubtless resting on ancient foundations—was added by Mr. Henderson and Mr. Peet in 1903: contouring was found impossible in the time at their disposal, and indeed the general levels of the site are fairly adequately shown on the excellent Admiralty Chart of Artaki Bay (of which a section is here reproduced in miniature in Fig. 1) and on the sketch maps of Perrot and De Rustafjaell.

Mardonius reoccupied Athens, Herodotus tells us (ix. 3), in the tenth month after Xerxes had taken it, that is to say not earlier than June of the next year. The pause in the war lasted therefore far beyond the winter. Both parties were no doubt anxious to gather the new harvest, but there were also other reasons for their delay.

Mardonius had been left in a difficult situation. The forces at his disposal were, it is true, still formidable. First, he had his own division, which we have seen reason to suppose was one of the six Persian corps ď armée, 60,000 strong. In confirmation of that estimate it may be noted that Herodotus assigns to him one sixth of Xerxes' army, which he conceives to have been the levy of the whole empire; and that if we compare the details of Mardonius' division (viii. 113, ix. 31.) with the catalogue of Xerxes' host (vii. 61–5), and reckon a myriad for each contingent of infantry (Immortals: θωρηκοφόροι: Medes: Sacae and Bactrians: Indians), we get 50,000 infantry, which with 10,000 cavalry gives the exact composition conjectured for a Persian army corps. The small drafts incorporated according to Herodotus from other contingents may be assumed, to have filled up the gaps made in the ranks by the first campaign. Second, Mardonius had his Greek auxiliaries, say 20,000 men, including the valuable Thessalian and Boeotian cavalry. Herodotus (ix. 32) estimates the Greek contingents at 50,000 men, but he expressly says that he has no authority for their numbers, and both probability and analogy (e.g. vii. 185, viii. 66) are against so high a computation.