Modern studies have emphasized the contradictory nature of the ancient traditions concerning the aftermath of the Battle of Sepeia (494 BC), in which the Argive army was destroyed by the Spartans. This article tackles the most significant point of agreement in these traditions: the theme of Argive ‘oligandry’, the demographic crisis caused by the battle. An analysis conducted on the basis of Ansley J. Coale and Paul Demeny’s Model Life Tables shows that the real impact of the demographic crisis was felt in the age structure of Argos’ population rather than in the sheer size of its citizen body. Consequently, this article argues that the political ramifications of the battle originated not from the demographic crisis alleged by the tradition, but from the state of powerlessness and regional isolation into which Argos was plunged by the defeat of 494. This argument, which supports a reappraisal of Plutarch’s (De mul. vir. 4) version of Argos’ response to Sepeia, also helps explain why Argos embraced a markedly aggressive foreign policy towards the towns of the plain in the following decades.

All Greek religion is haunted by an anxiety, or a hope, which is generally summed up, since the great work of Mannhardt and Frazer, as the yearly worship of vegetation gods. The name is, admittedly, a little too narrow. No doubt in a simple agricultural community the chief anxiety is about next year's harvest. I am told that in Jerusalem the High Priest went out to see how the barley was getting on, and lengthened or shortened the official year accordingly. Of course there is also anxiety about the young of the flocks and herds, about the weather for sailing and the like; but I think we shall find that it extended much further. The phrase ‘Year Spirit’ is perhaps better than ‘Vegetation God’. Jane Harrison was much criticised for preferring the phrase Ἐνιαυτὸς δαίμων; but I think she was right, and perhaps more profoundly right than any of us saw at the time.

Ἐνιαυός is a curious word. The new Liddell and Scott gives its root meaning as ‘anniversary’. It seems to be formed like ἓνιοι, ἐνί-οτε, ‘there are who …’ ‘there are times when …’, and to mean ‘There is (or ‘there is present,’ the same’, ἔνι-αὐτός; or, more analytically still, ‘there is present-again-this’, ἔνι-αὖ-τός. From meaning ‘anniversary’ it comes to mean a recurrent vital day, or the period, however long, between the recurrent vital days. All kinds of events were due to occur περιπλομένων ἐνιαυτῶν, as in Od. A 16, which seems to mean ‘as the anniversaries recur’, but easily becomes ‘with the passing years’. Children are born (Theog. 493, Asp. 87) meaning, I think, ‘when the regular vital time comes on’, not ‘as the months pass’.

The enemies of classics sometimes say that it is a dead subject. They depict the classical scholar as spending his time in re-reading, re-editing, or re-annotating texts which have been read, edited, and annotated for generations or centuries; and they contrast him with the student of science, before whom the inexhaustible riches of nature are displayed as his quarry. It were strange, if this were true, that classical study should possess—as by the common experience of public schools it does possess—a capacity unsurpassed by any other subject for turning out men of practical ability and aptitude for the affairs of the world. But it is not true. The enemies of classics, in this as in other instances, have erected a dummy in order to knock it over. They may be reproducing traditions of their fathers, or of their own boyhood; but they are showing that they have not kept abreast of their own times, and that they are not competent to criticise a study of which they know so little. Even natural science, with all its wonderful discoveries, has not been a more living subject during the last half century than the study of classical antiquity. Literature and archaeology—which mean the record of the thoughts of man as expressed in words and in art, during a period when that expression was at its highest pitch of perfection—have gone from discovery to discovery, from development to development, at a rate unequalled even at the Renaissance. These years have given fresh life to the study of the heroic age of human intellectual progress; they have shown that the treasures of antiquity are not only to be enjoyed but are to be increased.

In Volume LVI of this Journal I published a series of. Attic stemless kylikes with red-figure painting outside and stamped or incised patterns inside. These run from about the middle to the end of the fifth century. Characteristic of the early part of the fourth century, though the earliest examples are to be dated before the end of the fifth, is a series of cup-kotylai with similar decoration which forms the subject of this paper.

The cups range in size from a height of 0·09 m. with a diameter of 0·165 m. to a height of 0·06 m. with a diameter of 0·12 m. Their deep and comparatively narrow bowls presented more difficulties to the stamper than the shallow kylikes and restricted his designs to smaller and simpler patterns.

The earliest group consists of a pair of cups from the same hand. The stamped pattern shows five or six separate palmettes set closely round a small incised central circle and surrounded by a pair of incised circles.

There are few places in Greece which possess the combined charms of natural beauty and of historic association to the same extent as Monemvasia, The great rock which rises out of the sea near the ancient Epidauros Limera is not only one of the most picturesque sites of the Peloponnese, but has a splendid record of heroic independence, which entitles it to a high place in the list of the world's fortresses (Figs. 1, 2). Monemvasia's importance is, however, wholly mediaeval; and its history has hitherto never been written; for the painstaking brochure of the patriotic Monemvasiote deputy and ex-Minister K. Papamichalópoulos, was composed before modern research rendered it possible to draw upon the original authorities at Venice and elsewhere. In the present paper I have endeavoured to state briefly what, in the present state of Greek mediaeval studies, is known about this interesting city during the Frankish period.

In the collection of the terra-cottas at the Polytechnic in Athens many of the figures have points of interest bearing on the development of art, or on the science of comparative mythology or religion. One small figure (No. 943) is, on the other hand, of especial interest to the medical mind, affording as it does a good specimen of the typical leper physiognomy. It is a pitiful glimpse into the olden time which this figure gives, and, no less than a living imported leper I saw last spring at the Evangelismus Hospital, does it strike a discord with the beauty of Athens and its surroundings.

This little figure is in the midst of a number of small, thick-set figures in rough terra-cotta, of uncertain origin. They were bought at a sale, and their history cannot now be traced ; but from their general character they are classed with others of about the third century B.C. They were evidently intended to be caricatures of contemporary life. Jolly, rollicking men suggest noisy Bacchic carousings; a portly, elderly woman bends with somewhat comical, grandmotherly solicitude over her nursling; and other well-executed, but more or less coarsely imagined, figures are so obviously designed to provoke laughter, that one pulls up with a start, and almost with a shudder, before the poor leper No. 943.

The vases published here are part of the collection belonging to Lt.-Col. W. H. Bromley-Davenport, of Capesthorne Hall, Macclesfield, Cheshire. As far as is known, they all come from Lucien Bonaparte's estates at Canino near Vulci, and were brought to Capesthorne by Edward Davies Davenport (1778–1847), the great-grandfather, and Walter Davenport Bromley (1787–1862), the great-uncle of the present owner.

A black-figure neck-amphora (Plate VII (a), (b)) is by the Antimenes Painter. It is complete with lid, has no restoration and measures 38½ cm. to the mouth; the handles are triple. On one side Herakles is about to slay the Nemean lion; on the other Dionysos stands between two capering satyrs. The added red and white is clear from the photographs. The attribution is of course certain; note the vertical lines on the outside of the legs, the arc describing the calf on the inside of the legs, the knees and elbows, the lines on arms, and the long mouths. But dating is less certain. The drawing is careful and appears at first sight to be rather late. The large strong figures and the feeling for space, the folds of Dionysos' chiton compared with the lack of chiton folds on a neck amphora in London and on one of similar period in Munich, and the elaboration of Herakles' foldless chiton compared with that on the Villa Giulia, Northwick Park, and Naples neck-amphorae, all suggest a late date. But there is no trace of double curve on terminal fold or knee, nor of wavy lines on drapery, as on the late neck-amphora in London.

In recent years there have been several attempts to find support for a sexual interpretation of ληκύθιον ἀπώλεσεν at Aristophanes Frogs 1198–1248. It would add real point to the discomfiture of Euripides and his predictable prologues if his heroes were to lose their virility every time they lost their lekythia. But the matter has been hotly contested, and the linking of this problem with the mysterious αὐτολήκυθοι of Demosthenes liv 14–17 has compounded confusion in both passages. I shall discuss them separately in the first instance.

I

Two main objections are advanced by Jeffrey Henderson2 to a phallic lekythion in the Frogs: apart from the absence of unequivocal literary parallels, the context does not call for it, and the standard shapes of lekythia do not resemble male genitals anyway.

It is unfortunate that Dr. Buchholz's great book on the Homeric Realien should have had no more adequate guides in the difficult and interesting questions relating to archaic Greek armour than the now rather unsatisfactory work of Rüstow and Köchly, Die Geschichte des Griechischen Kriegswesens (Aarau, 1852). That treatise was written some thirty years ago, when archaeology was comparatively young. In discussing heroic arms the authors make no distinction of archaic and late monuments, while of course they were ignorant of the revolution in our ideas of primitive Greece brought about by recent discoveries, of which those of Dr. Schliemann at Mykenai occupy the chief place. Some valuable hints have been given by Dr. Autenrieth in his Homeric Dictionary, and will also be found scattered through the notes of Ameis and Hentze in their edition of the Iliad; but no important monograph on the question has appeared, so far as I am aware, and we must not perhaps complain if Dr. Buchholz has had to take an antiquated treatise for his text, relegating to notes the scattered suggestions which he has found elsewhere. Dr. W. Helbig's promised work, Das Homerische Epos aus den Denkmälern erläutert, will doubtless leave little to be desired when it appears; meanwhile the following somewhat disconnected suggestions may possibly be of help in clearing up various disputed points.