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.

It was my intention to publish in the Journal of Hellenic Studies a cylix by Phintias in the Central Museum at Athens, together with the substance of a paper read at a meeting of the British Archaeological School in March of this year. Learning, however, that Dr. P. Hartwig was anxious to publish the cylix in his forthcoming Meisterschalen, I entered into correspondence with him, and by his kindness am enabled to publish in its place the well-known hydria in the British Museum (Klein, Meistersignaturen 3) and fragments of a stamnos in the possession of Dr. Friedrich Hauser, now at Stuttgart, whose kindness in furnishing me with drawings by his own hand I would gratefully acknowledge.

A.—The first vase to be discussed is the hydria in the British Museum (E 264) found at Vulci. The form is the older one with sharp divisions between neck, shoulder, and body, which is characteristic of b.f. hydriae, and disappears after the ‘severe’ period of r.f. vase-painting, shoulder and body passing into one and leaving only one field for decoration. On the inside of the lip, in front of the junction with the handle, are three round knobs suggesting pegs or nails. These are in this case painted purple, whereas usually when they appear they are varnished—cp. Petersburg 1, 337 and Berlin 1897 = Gerhard, A. V. 249, 250. The handles are left unvarnished, which is also comparatively uncommon. The main field of the vase is occupied by a scene, which if not of surpassing originality or interest, is at least unusual. Three naked ἔφηβοι, are represented in the act of carrying water from a fountain in hydriae which are of the same form as the vase itself, except that that which is carried by the second youth from the right on his shoulder is apparently of a more developed form, in which the sharp division between shoulder and body is given up. On the extreme right a stream of water issues from a lion's head of admirable execution, worthy to stand beside analogous portions of the work of Sosias and Peithinous, and a youth fills his hydria.

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.

There are in the Hope Collection two vases, which may help towards an explanation of the well-known myth of Theseus and Sinis. They are both known from publications of about a hundred years back, but have for a long period been lost sight of. By the kindness of the owners I am able to bring them once more to light.

The scene from the side of one of them was published by Millin in his Peintures de Vases Antiques. It shows in the middle a tree growing from a small rise of ground. To the left of it stands Sinis, naked and bearded. He has pulled down a branch. To the right is Theseus, a young man in travelling costume, wearing a sword and carrying two spears. He has pulled down a larger branch. On the extreme left is a draped bearded man holding a sceptre. Millin writes, ‘le vase est aujourd'hui en Angleterre: il appartient à M. Edouard.’ By ‘M. Edouard’ he must mean J. Edwards, whose collection was dispersed in 1815, when the vase probably came directly into the hands of Thomas Hope. Millin's drawing is so incorrect and his description so scanty (he does not even indicate the shape) that a republication is necessary.

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.

The number of Melian reliefs has slightly increased in the last few years.

On 5–6th July, 1938, Messrs. Sotheby sold a piece—it is No. 184 in the Sale Catalogue—of which little is known. J. D. Beazley, who drew my attention to it, tells me that most of it was modern plaster: only a small part was antique, it showed something of a draped female figure on an animal's back, Helle or a Nereid.

A fragment of a winged Artemis, figured in Melische Reliefs, p. 26, fig. 3, after a good drawing by Schoene, was rediscovered in one of the drawers of the Athenian National Museum by Mrs. Papaspyridi-Karousou, and is figured in BCH 61, 1937, p. 354, fig. 1.

The dancer (no. 42), the whereabouts of which were unknown to me in 1931, is now, as Mr. Chr. Karousos kindly informs me, in the Nomikos collection in Thera.

Of Melian reliefs—in a wider sense (see Melische Reliefs, p. 89 sq.)—I mention a cock, a Sphinx and a Gorgo, published by Mrs. Papaspyridi-Karousou in Arch. Deltion 1934/35, p. 30, fig. 15; they were found together in an Argive tomb which is dated by its other contents to the second quarter of the fifth century roughly—a welcome date for these conservative works.

In the present article I attempt briefly to survey the books and articles relating wholly or largely to Greek inscriptions which appeared in 1933 and 1934. I do not refer to all reviews, but only to those (including some published in 1935) which are of special value to the student, either as offering a useful conspectus of the works concerned or as making original contributions to the subjects under discussion. I mark with an asterisk those works which I have been unable to consult directly. Once again I tender my heartfelt thanks to all scholars who, by sending me copies of their contributions to epigraphical studies, have helped me in my pleasant but onerous task.

Death has not taken from us during these years any whose main interests and achievements lay in the field of Greek epigraphy, though E. Cuq, E. Pottier and F. Vulič had done work of real value in it.

Professor Thomas A. Brady, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, U.S.A., has recently published privately a repertory of statuary and figured monuments relating to the cult of the Egyptian Gods. He desires to make his collection as complete as possible before eventual publication of the photographs. Copies of the repertory are available free of charge. Those interested in the subject are requested to send any information bearing upon the materials, as well as photographs of pieces. Prompt payment will be made for photographs and for any other expense involved.