In the Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxxv. 1 (1915), Mr. Ellis Minns has given an interesting account of three documents found at Avroman, west of Hamadan, and has deciphered two of them which are in Greek. The third is written in an Aramaic alphabet which has hitherto remained undeciphered. Mr. Minns was good enough to send me a photograph of it, but I postponed an examination of this until I could have an opportunity of seeing a second text, also in Aramaic letters, but attached to one of the Greek documents and therefore presumably relating to the same transaction. When a photograph of this second text arrived, however, it was not distinct enough to be of any use; the ink of the original had been too much rubbed to allow the forms of the letters to be fixed with certainty.

In the discussion of Greek dramatic origins, a curious passage of Apuleius has never, so far as I know, been mentioned.

In the second book of the Metamorphoses the hero Lucius describes a feast given at Hypata in Thessaly by his rich relative Byrrhena. After the feast Byrrhena informs him that an annual festival, coeval with the city, will be celebrated next day—a joyous ceremony, unique in the world, in honour of the god Laughter. She wishes that he could invent some humorous freak for the occasion. Lucius promises to do his best. Being very drunk, he then bids Byrrhena good-night, and departs with his slave for the house of Milo, his miserly old host. A gust blows out their torch, and they get home with difficulty, arm in arm. There they find three large and lusty persone violently battering the door. Lucius has been warned by his mistress, Milo's slave Fotis, against certain young Mohawks of the town—‘uesana factio nobilissimorum iuuenum’—who think nothing of murdering rich strangers. He at once draws his sword, and one by one stabs all three. Fotis, roused by the noise, lets him in and he quickly falls asleep.

The recent Exhibition of works of Greek art held at the Burlington Fine Arts Club—although necessarily limited to comparatively small objects—has been sufficient to prove that the traditional wealth of our English collections of classical antiquities still remains a fact. The Exhibition, moreover, has had its use in eliciting information as to works of art on a larger scale, hitherto unknown and unrecorded, that had escaped the vigilance of Waagen and of Conze, of Michaelis and of Furtwängler, and even of our English archaeologists. Thus it was that when the Exhibition was little more than planned I learnt from the well known sculptor, Countess Feodora Gleichen, that there existed at Lyme Park, Lord Newton's Cheshire seat, three fine sculptured Stelai from the best period of Attic art. I am grateful to the owner for granting me permission to publish these inedited works in this Journal, which ought indeed to be the official gazette of the English collections. I have unfortunately been unable to avail myself as yet of Lord Newton's further permission to study the originals. But as photographs of the Stelai are now extant, I have thought it wiser not to postpone the publication for fear that it might be anticipated elsewhere. The information kindly given me by Lord Newton himself has facilitated the discussion and interpretation of the Stelai which, for the rest, are perfectly straightforward examples of their class.

The object of the following pages, the substance of which was read before the Cambridge Branch of the Hellenic Society in 1883, is to examine into the true nature of the land-system of the Greeks of the Homeric age by means of the evidence contained in the poems themselves.

On à priori grounds we might have expected, or at least should not be surprised, to find in the Iliad and Odyssey some traces of that primitive system known as the ‘Open-Field’ or ‘Common-Field’ system of agriculture, which the researches of recent years have proved to have once prevailed over a great part of the earth, and of which many survivals still exist.

In my contribution on the ‘Sematography of Greek Papyri’ (J.H.S. xxii, 1902) I included the Ptolemaic symbol Τ or = 900 among those of whose origin no satisfactory explanation could be offered (p. 138); although on p. 145 I identified the symbol with the later minuscule symbol ‘sampi’ or = 900, and pointed out the improbability of any association of the latter with either Pi or San-Sigma, whether in forms or arithmetical values. For the rest, as I said, ‘we must wait until we are in possession of ante-Ptolemaic documents, or of some facts yet to be supplied by epigraphy.’

This paper is the report of a more thorough survey of the field of Greek and general archaeology on all the questions and problems involved in the explanation of the sign. These are in the best sense trivial, lying at the crossing of the ways of nob a few important theories, to which the foremost scholars have recently devoted much investigation—the composition and history of the Greek alphabet, particularly as regards its application for numeration, the enigmatical Tsade, the mutual relations of the ancient alphabets, the antiquity of S. Semitic (Arabian), Minaean, and Sabaean inscriptions, and the place of the Phoenician alphabet in the history of primitive Hellas.

If the Hymns of Homer are, as probably they are, comparatively little regarded as a rule even by those who take a general interest in Greek literature and its history, this is certainly not for want of artistic merit, and still less for want of historic importance. However widely students have differed, or may differ, in their conclusions about this enigmatic collection, it is an undoubted fact, and worth insisting upon when every day a wider and more popular audience is invited to form a judgment on matters of criticism, that any theory of ‘Homer’, to be entertainable, must make its account with the Hymns not less than with the more celebrated epics. For the sake of this larger bearing, if not for the sake of the poem itself, the reader may be disposed to consider and weigh the following reflexions upon Homer's Hymn to Apollo.

A singularly small contribution has been made by Aetolia to the vast and steadily growing mass of our epigraphical treasures. This seems to be due to two reasons,—a real dearth of inscriptions traceable in part to the character of the Aetolians themselves, and, secondly, the comparative neglect that Aetolia has suffered at the hands of travellers and archaeologists. The inscriptions given here are the results of a detailed exploration extending over part of each of the two years 1892 and 1893.

A large proportion, and those the most interesting of the inscriptions found, come from Naupaktos, or its immediate neighbourhood. This valuable maritime station was, as is well known, put by Athens into the possession of the exiled Messenians and with the downfall of her Empire it passed into the hands of the Achaean allies of Sparta: they seem to have kept it in spite of all the efforts of the Aetolians and it was not until 338 B.C. that its natural owners finally regained it by the gift of Philip of Macedon. From that time onwards Naupaktos played an important part in the history of the League. Pausanias visited the town and among its antiquities he mentions the ruins of a temple of Asklepios of some reputation. The site of this temple has been identified from the inscriptions cut in the face of a rock forming the back of a terrace near the springs called Kephalóvrysis, a few minutes' walk to the east of the town. The few fragments which are all that can now be deciphered of the numerous inscriptions which once covered the rock are given by R. Weil in his paper ‘Das Asklepieion von Naupaktos,’ Mitth. des deutsch. Inst. vol. iv. p. 22.

It is well known that a large proportion of the Greek epitaphs of Lycia contain a clause by which any person making any burial unauthorised by the founder of the tomb becomes liable to pay a named sum to some corporation, whether public (as the δῆμος, the πόλις, or the imperial treasury) or religious (as the temple of some god), or a powerful association (as the γερουσία).

This liability was not (as might be supposed) a fine imposed by the state in punishment of a criminal offence. Illegal burial was indeed (at least under the Roman government) a crime at law, and was punishable by a fine; but this fine is expressly distinguished from the sum due to the πόλις and the δῆμος. The penalty in question does not, in fact, represent a fine at all, but damages to be recovered by a civil action. This explains the wide variation in the sums specified, and the otherwise unaccountable fact that the amount is fixed by the builder of the tomb. It stands for the value which he placed on the possession of the tomb, modified, probably, by his estimate of the damages which the court was likely to grant.