To any student of early Greek bronze ornament the works of Dr. Furtwaengler on the Olympian bronzes must be well known, and as he has dealt at length with the development of patterns on bronzes, and as every day fresh evidence seems to be coming up which serves to confirm his views, there is no necessity for me here to do anything more than recount shortly the general characteristics and nature of this class of bronzes from the Acropolis. These, like those of Olympia, may be divided into two main classes according as they belong to the geometric or the oriental style; while a cross distinction may also be drawn between engraved or stamped ornament and relief. Originally however these two distinctions seem to have been one and the same, the geometric corresponding to the engraved or stamped technique, and the oriental generally to the relief; but later we find each of these forms of ornament translated into the other technique. The original distinction however is due to two main causes, the quality of the bronze used in the two factories and the nature of the objects principally produced in them. The bronze of geometric ornament is much harder and more brittle than that of oriental, which is soft but very tough: to work geometric bronze into repoussé relief would be almost impossible, while the finer quality of the oriental is peculiarly suitable to such a technique. Thus it is often possible simply from the feel of a bronze fragment to decide which factory it came from.

In my review of R. D. Dawe's Studies in the text of Sophocles (JHS xcvi [1976] 171 ff.), I reached the conclusion that scholars now possess all the information about manuscripts that is needed in order to constitute the text of the Ajax, Electra and Oedipus Tyrannus, subject to two provisos.

The first of these concerns the Jena manuscript (Bos. q. 7), a copy written late in the fifteenth century and containing only the first two plays. Reports of interesting readings found in it were given by Purgold in 1802, and since collations were not always undertaken very carefully at that date it seemed worth while to examine the book again to see whether the reports were correct. Thanks to the good offices of the University Library in Jena I was able to collate a microfilm, and am now in a position to state that Purgold did his work well. The interesting readings cited by subsequent editors are correctly reported, and so far as I can see there are no others of striking merit.

The other manuscript which seemed to deserve further investigation is in Milan (Ambrosianus E 103 sup.). It is usually assigned to the fourteenth century, and if this date were certain it would not deserve any special attention. In my opinion the script is of a type that must almost certainly be placed before the year 1300, probably c 1275, and in that case the book might be of some interest, since it could be early enough to escape the reproach of offering a text affected by Palaeologan scholars. I have now collated the text from a microfilm kindly supplied by the Ambrosian Library. A very small number of valuable readings came to light.

On Pll. II–III and figs. 1–4, p. 8, I reproduce photographs of three Attic vases in the Museum of Valletta already published by Albert Mayr in Sitzgsb. d. philos.-philol. u. d. hist. Kl. der Kgl. Bayer. Akademie der Wissenschaften 1905, Heft III, pl. II, 1, 4 and 5.

The first vase (Pl. II) is a late black-figured skyphos, height 165 mm.; diameter 222 mm. The obverse represents a chariot with two Amazons; the subject on the reverse is similar, but the second Amazon is here omitted. On both sides the scene is flanked by two sphinxes looking towards the handles. The vase belongs to the group of the CHC skyphoi, on which see Ure, Sixth and Fifth, p. 61, 26. 98–100 and Beazley, Some Attic Vases In the Cyprus Museum, pp. 22–3. For a list of vases of this group see Ure, CVI, Reading, p. 18.

Unanimous recognition has justly been accorded to the rare energy and devotion by which Dr. Schliemann has achieved his enterprise of excavating the mound of Hissarlik, once the acropolis of the historic Greek Ilium. Whatever views may be held as to the origin of the older remains, or their significance in relation to the epic of Troy, there is only one opinion as to the interesting and valuable nature of the service which the sustained enthusiasm of the explorer has rendered to the study of antiquity.

The problem of Hissarlik involves two separate issues. It is the omission to distinguish these which, more than anything else, has impeded a clear view. The first issue is:—What are the ruins that have been found at Hissarlik?

The marble statue of a youthful male figure holding in his left hand a snake-encircled staff, which is reproduced in the accompanying plate, was found by Smith and Porcher at Cyrene, and is now in the collection of the British Museum. By its original discoverers this figure was named Aristaeus: an attribution which has been adopted, though with some hesitation, in the Museum Guide to the Graeco-Roman Sculptures. As, however, this attribution seems more than doubtful, it may be well to lay before the readers of the Hellenic Journal some additional remarks upon the subject, and to direct special attention to a statue which is not among those photographed in the History of Discoveries at Cyrene, and which has not, hitherto, been figured elsewhere.

The statue now to be described is four feet five and a half inches in height, and represents a young and beardless male figure standing facing. His right hand rests upon his hip, and under his left arm is a staff round which is coiled a serpent. The lower half of the body is wrapt in a himation, the end of which falls over the left shoulder, leaving the chest and the right arm uncovered. The hair is wavy and carefully composed, but does not fall lower than the neck: around the head is a plain band, above which has been some kind of crown or upright headdress: the top of the head has been worked flat. On the feet are sandals, and at the side of the left foot is a conical object which has been called a rude representation of the omphalos, but which is, in all probability, a mere support.

There is among the fourth century works in the Central Museum at Athens a head found at Laurium. It is made of Parian marble but it has been completely discoloured by slag or refuse from the lead mines, and is now quite black. In its present condition it is quite impossible to obtain a satisfactory photograph of it, and the reproduction given of it in the figure is from a cast.

It has been published, as far as I am aware, only in M. Kavvadias' catalogue. There it is described as a head of the Lykeian Apollo. This identification rests solely on a passage of Lucian, who mentions a statue of the Lykeian Apollo in the gymnasium at Athens.

He says of it ( 7)—

It will be seen from a glance at the photograph that the grounds for this identification are very slender. The left hand with the bow does not exist, and the only reason for supposing therefore that this is a head of the Lykeian Apollo consists in the fact that the right hand of the statue rests on the head. This in itself seems insufficient and, among other reasons, it is I think rendered impossible by the phrase For the hand is not idly resting, it is not a tired hand; the posture of the fingers is firm and energetic.

Miss Sylvia Benton, in a recent note, identifies the bird which appears on some of the coins of Stymphalos ‘rising above the leaves of a Water Plantain … with a Fritillary on either side… The bird wears ear-flaps, and for me a marsh bird with earflaps must be meant for the Great Crested Grebe’.

This identification seems to me convincing, though the bill as represented on the coins is perhaps rather short and thick. On April 29th and May 23rd 1974 I visited Stymphalos, in company with my family, in the hope of confirming that the Lake is still within the Grebe's range. This we were unable to do, and I am delighted to learn from Mr Buxton's note that ‘the bird breeds now on the Stymphalian lake’.

The Lake certainly offers in its extensive reed-beds a most suitable breeding-ground for Grebes, which build partly floating platforms of marsh vegetation to serve as nests. Adult birds sleep on the water and are fish-eaters. Grebes cannot therefore have suggested the different literary variants of this Labour of Herakles.

The treasures of modern art preserved in Chatsworth House are well known to writers on the history of art. But of the small and choice collection of works of ancient sculpture contained in this fine mansion, the property of the Duke of Devonshire, information has up to now been almost entirely lacking to archaeologists. I myself have to thank the Duke's librarian, Professor Arthur Strong, for calling my attention to it, and for the opportunity of inspecting the collection in the autumn of 1895.

A description of the most important work, the bronze head of Apollo, an original of about B.C. 460, appeared in my book, Intermezzi, kunstgeschichtliche Studien (Leipzig, 1896), Plates 1–4, pp. 3 f. An interesting Roman relief has been published by E. Petersen in the Römische Mittheilungen (1899), Plate 8, pp. 222 f. I have also written a short notice of the whole collection in the treatise Ueber Statuenkopieen im Alterthum, I. (1896), p. 26. That I am now in a position in this paper to enter into more minute details with the help of photographs I owe to the kindness of Prof. Arthur Strong, (who was good enough to supervise the taking of the photographs), as well as of the editors of this Journal, to all of whom I must express my warmest thanks.

In his Vita Plotini, Porphyry recounts a colourful episode which, for a brief moment, brings to life the dynamics within the lecture room of Plotinus in Rome. The author explains how he was in the habit of posing questions to Plotinus frequently and persistently while his teacher was conducting his philosophical discourse before a mixed body of listeners. On one occasion, such an exchange between the two over the issue of the connexion between the soul and the body continued intermittently over a period of some three days, with the following outcome (Porph. V. Plot. xiii 12-15):