In his generally admirable account of the poets of early Byzantine Egypt, Alan Cameron reconstructs some of their (in his words) journalistic warfare on the basis of a supposed distinction between the use of εἰς and πρός in the titles of books and poems: εἰς denotes a work written in someone's honour, πρός something by way of discredit or refutation.

Apparently there had been sculptured on the missing half of the marble stelè lately acquired by the British Museum from Athens a seated figure with hand upraised (Pl. 1.). There is a trace of the raised arm and also of a footstool. The subject had therefore been one of those scenes of parting or meeting so common on Athenian stelae. But the young man leaning on his staff is not of the usual Athenian type. In several respects he resembles a youthful Heracles on a relief from Mt. Ithome now in Athens, which figure it has been the custom to regard as Polycleitan (Fig. 1). So far as the pose of the head and the Diadumenos-like modelling of the body are concerned that opinion may be right. Only we must remember that the somewhat formal modelling of the thorax both in the Ithome relief and the new stelè is not unfrequent in Greek art, at least from the time of Lysippos onwards. A familiar instance is the Hermes on the sculptured drum of a column from Ephesus in the British Museum. It is a modification of the type of Polycleitos and may have set in much earlier than Lysippos. It may even have extended to Athens.

I have already published in the pages of this Journal some of the vases acquired by the Ashmolean Museum since the catalogue of Ashmolean vases appeared in 1893.

In vol. xviii, p. 136 is published a late Attic vase with a representation of the carrying off of Oreithyia by Boreas. In vol. xxi, p. 1 is published a red-figured vase representing Pandora rising out of the ground. In vol. xv, p. 325 two sepulchral lekythi are published. Two other papers (xiii. 70 and 137) comment upon vases already included in the Ashmolean catalogue, Nos. 211, 275, one concerned with the myth of Cacus, one with that of Tithonus and Eos.

Representations of Helios in his chariot rising above the sea begin toward the end of the sixth century B.C., with a small series of black-figure vases, mostly lekythoi. Five of them have been interpreted as illustrations of the myth of Herakles and the Golden Bowl of the Sun. In Pherekydes' version of the story, Herakles, vexed by the burning rays, threatened Helios with his arrows, and obtained the god's golden vessel to sail the Ocean to the land of Geryon. Although the correspondence of the picture to the story is not literal, in fact largely limited to the cast of characters, such an interpretation is plausible for four vases.

On the lekythos in Athens by the Daybreak Painter, Herakles is crouching on a spur of ground which seems to emerge from the waves; he looks at the Sun in apparent awe. The scenes on the skyphos by the Theseus Painter in Taranto are akin to the Athenian piece: on one side Herakles rushes up the steep ground, on the other he sits on the rocky outline, his right hand gesturing toward the Sun. On a third vase, a lekythos in Cambridge, and on a fourth in Oxford, both Herakles and Athena are depicted on either side of Helios; on the Cambridge lekythos Herakles is actually striding toward the Sun, lifting the bow in his right hand. Only in this case can Herakles' attitude be taken as a threat; on all four vessels, however, the hero and the Sun look at each other, as if an exchange were to take place soon, and so are shown as the actors of the scene.

At the sale of the Forman collection, a hydria with figures of Troilos and Polyxena was purchased for the British Museum. Cecil Smith, in the sale catalogue, described it as in the style of ‘Euthymides?’; but I cannot agree with him. Eight other vases by the same hand are known to me; and I beg leave to call this anonymous painter ‘the master of the Troiloshydria in the British Museum.’ He is no genius; but one of his vases, the krater in Copenhagen, is a respectable performance; and others are not without animation.

The Βοσπορανοί said to be located in S.W. Caria in the Rhodian Peraea have given rise to some discussion in connection with the location of the demcs of the Rhodian Peraea. The evidence for them rests on one inscription of the Imperial period (wrongly stated by Fraser and Bean, Rh.Per. 61, to rest on two inscriptions: the same inscription was first referred to in one place, and then published in another), namely that mentioned by the brothers Michael and Niketas Chaviaras in Arch.Eph. 1907, col. 217, and subsequently published by them in Arch.Eph. 1911, 64 no. 58.

In a recent issue of this Journal (XCV, 1975, pp. 231–2), R. F. Willetts reviews the excellent publication of J. N. Coldstream, Knossos, the Sanctuary of Demeter (BSA, Suppl. Pap. 8, 1973). He draws attention to a boustrophedon inscription on a silver ring bezel, which he transcribes, after Coldstream:

The reading seems to support Willetts' own views on the cult of Demeter as a Mother-Goddess in Crete.

May I express some doubts about the actual reading of the dedication? I recently had the opportunity of examining the Knossos ring in the Heraklion Museum, by courtesy of the Director, Dr Alexiou, and of his Assistant, A. Lebesi. Magnifying techniques and contrasted lighting were available in the now well-equipped laboratory of the Museum. It appears that the lettering of the inscription is not exactly what Coldstream believed, although his photograph and facsimile are fairly accurate. First, the supposed digamma is a true alpha, with parallel strokes, as often occurs on archaic stones: the figure is quite similar to the other alphas of the text if you read it in the proper sense, i.e. as the first letter of the second direct line. Secondly, the last sigma of the retrograde line, with its two short angular strokes at sharp angles at each end of the hasta, seems most unlikely. There is actually a kind of cross-hatching on the surface, which is rather deceiving, but upon it you can distinguish the three bars of a delta, a very clear, although small and slightly debased one. The hasta forms one of these bars, and one other is the upper stroke of the so-called sigma.

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.