Herodotus has several references to the orders or companies of gods in Greece and Egypt, and they involve a comparison and a contrast.

They may be arranged, in translation, as follows:

(1) II, 4, 2. ‘They say that the Egyptians first used the names of the twelve gods, and that the Greeks adopted them from them.’

(2) II, 7, 2 mentions ‘the altar of the twelve gods at Athens’.

(3) II, 43, 2. ‘Concerning Heracles I heard this account, that he was one of the twelve gods.’

(4) II, 43, 4. ‘But to the Egyptians Heracles is an ancient god; and as they say themselves, there were seventeen thousand years to the reign of Amasis since the eight gods produced the twelve, of whom they consider Heracles to be one.’

(5) II, 46, 2. ‘The Mendesians hold Pan to be one of the eight gods, and they say that these eight gods came into existence before the twelve.’

(6) II, 145, 1. ‘Among the Greeks Heracles and Dionysus and Pan are considered to be the youngest of the gods, but among the Egyptians Pan is considered very ancient and one of the eight gods said to be the earliest, while Heracles is one of the second group, and Dionysus one of the third group, who were produced by the twelve.’

The interesting thing about the word for ‘palace’ in Homer is that there is no such word. All the words that mean ‘house’ (δόμος, δῶ, δῶμα, μέγαρον, οἶκος, οἰκία) may be applied to a royal palace, but all of them (and their plurals) may equally well be used of the house of an ordinary citizen, μέγαρον is often translated ‘palace’, or some other word with connotations of kingly majesty. But it too, when it is not more narrowly localised to the living-room, means just a house in general.

Just as there is no separate word to designate a palace in Homer (τὰ βασίλεια occurs first in Herodotus), so a qualifying adjective is never used to indicate that a particular house is ‘royal’ (the first occurrence of such a periphrasis is βασίλειοι οἶκοι Aeschylus, Ag. 157). In fact, to Homer there is no sharp distinction between a palace and a house, except that a king is likely to have a bigger and better home, more sumptuously furnished.

The Iliad and the Odyssey are much concerned with kings. So it is odd that no word serves to designate the king's palace and no other dwelling, especially when the poet so delights in describing the splendour of royal homes (for example, the description of Alcinous' palace and its grounds in Od. vii 81 ff.). The major archaeological sites of the Mycenaean period, in which the main stories of the poems are set, all contain a palace which is easily recognised, even in its ruinous state. Can one imagine a new arrival at a great Mycenaean site needing to be shown which was the palace, as Odysseus was shown at Phaeacia? It seems highly unlikely that the Mycenaeans should have had no special word for a palace, though there is so far no firm evidence for (or against) the existence of such a word in Linear B. If a ‘palace’ word existed, its special significance, if not the word itself, must have been forgotten by Homer's time, when a great many houses might be found within the city wall, as at Smyrna. There may, however, be traces of the ‘palace’ meaning still detectable.

In Table 1, which has been compiled from the concordances of Prendergast and Dunbar, I have tabulated the frequency with which each of the regular words for ‘house’ is used to denote a dwelling occupied by gods, lesser divinities, mortals or animals. Various interesting points arise from this table.

It is apparent that there is a far higher proportion of gods' houses mentioned in the Iliad than in the Odyssey. The figures for δόμος and δῶμα show this particularly clearly. But the difference is probably due entirely to the subject-matter: far more of the action is taken up with scenes among the gods in the Iliad than in the Odyssey.

The sculpture of the East pediment of the Temple of Aphaia on Aegina is usually dated between 490 and 480 B.C. This seems to me too late, to judge by the torsion of the fallen soldier of the left corner and of the stooping youth from the middle of the right side (Plate XVIb-c). In the youth there is a small turning at the waist and this is managed competently by an organic twist. In the fallen soldier, where the torsion is much greater, the change of direction is made not by a twist but by an abrupt swivel; and though the waist was partly masked by the right arm, generally the sculptors who carved this pediment did not neglect those parts of their figures which could not be seen. From this it should follow that at that time they were acquainted only partially with the revolutionary innovation of organically twisting anatomy.

In vase painting the organic twisting of the torso was mastered during the last ten or fifteen years of the sixth century. So too in relief sculpture, notably in the Ball-players relief. In free-standing sculpture symmetrically frontal poses still remained normal, but that does not mean that it was simply retarded; and pedimental figures, though in the round, generally followed the rules for reliefs, anyhow before the Parthenon.

Every visitor of the Vatican Museum knows the fine statue of Aphrodite placed near the large staircase in the Sala a croce greca on account of its beauty as well as by reason of the fact that its lower half is covered with a drapery of tin. The greater will be the surprise of many of our readers, looking at our Plate LXXX., to see unveiled the secret charms of that figure, and they will ask how the goddess could be allowed to lay aside for some moments the garment forced upon her a century ago by a misplaced sense of pretended decency. We owe it to the persevering zeal of Mr. Walter Copland Perry to have found a means of obtaining such a cast for the Collection of Casts from the Antique in the South Kensington Museum, by the formation of which Mr. Perry has begun so happily to fill up a sensible blank in the artistic collections of the British capital. The British Museum is so astonishingly rich in first-rate Greek originals that we can easily understand how the importance of a museum of casts could be rather undervalued, and how to the University of Cambridge was left the merit of forming the first English collection of casts from the antique on a greater scale.

There are probably no twelve consecutive lines in the Homeric poems which have been obscured by so many explanations as Iliad xviii. 497—508. The interpretation which I propose to give has possibly been anticipated piece-meal, but I have not come across any case in which it has been presented as a whole. Still it is a matter of common courtesy only that one should begin by offering apologies to the unknown previous expositor, if he should after all prove to exist.

For convenience of reference it will be best to begin by setting out the passage at length.

‘The people were gathered in the place of assembly, and there had sprung up a strife; two men were striving about the price of a man slain. The one averred that he had paid in full, and made declaration thereof to the people, but the other refused to accept aught; and both were desirous to take an issue at the hand of a daysman; and the people were shouting for both, taking part for either side. And the heralds were restraining the people, and the elders sate on polished stones in the holy circle, and in their hands they held the clear-voiced heralds' staves. With these they rose up and gave sentence in turn; and in their midst lay two talents of gold to give to him among them that spake the justest doom.’

Pentelic marble. Total height, 113 cm. Height of body, 96 cm. Of figured space, 47 cm. Circumference round the bottom of figured space, 116·5 cm.

The upper part of the neck and the whole of the handle are missing.

This beautiful marble grave lekythos, which I have received kind permission to publish from Dr. Kastriotis and M. Stais, is now in the National Museum of Athens (No. 2584). It was discovered in the year 1904 in the house of Spiliotis near the σφαγεῖα on the left bank of the Ilisos.

The vase itself is considerably broken, and the surface of the marble is unfortunately a good deal damaged, but in spite of this, at the first glance, one is struck by the beauty of the whole composition of the relief which covers more than half of the body of the lekythos. This relief is interesting also for its subject matter, which, as far as I am aware, has no exact parallel; a somewhat unusual fact, for on the whole there is not very much variation in the scenes and motives represented on the Greek grave reliefs.

In his valuable Contributions to the History of Southern Aeolis, Mr. Ramsay remarks (Journ. Hell. Stud. II. 2, p. 278): ‘In the plain of the Kodja we might expect more than one Aeolic settlement, if it be fully explored.’ This prediction was verified a few months only after it was written by discoveries made in this district in the spring of 1881, by Mr. George Dennis, M. Salomon Reinach, M. Baltazzi, and myself. I published a brief account of them in the Academy of April 9th, 1881, and M. Reinach has alluded to them, in the history of his excavations on the site of Myrina, in the Bulletin de Correspondence hellénique April 1882; but do details in regard to them have yet appeared. These details I now propose to give, throwing the account of them, for the sake of convenience, into narrative form.

Mr. Ramsay has already explained the topography of the coast from Myrina to Kymê. Midway between the two, about two and a half miles from Kyniê and three from Myrina, stands the little Greek village of Ali Aghá, while the Koja Chai, or ‘Big River,’ flows into the sea just below the ancient acropolis of Myrina, now known as Kalabassary. The Koja runs in an easterly direction, turning slightly to the north about eight miles from its mouth, towards the ruins of Namrût Kalessi, already described by both Mr. Ramsay and M. Reinach. Before entering the sea it is joined by a stream which runs past the village of Güzel Hissár.

The Iberian archaeological record is particularly rich in asynchronous (i.e. chronologically mixed) assemblages including Athenian pots that predate the other items by a couple of decades or even a few centuries. Recent scholarship on keimëlia, or ‘curated objects’ in modern parlance, has shown the potential of such objects to investigate questions of identity, agency and history-making among the receiving communities, but also to shed light on the role of Athenian pottery among them. This article analyses this phenomenon within the Iberian peninsula, focusing on drinking cups, both black-gloss with inset lip (Cástulo cups) and red-figure type B cups. Using case studies from necropoleis and settlements of the southeast and east of the peninsula, the article explores the reasons and meaning of this consumption practice. It is argued that the occurrence of ‘heirloom’ vases in Iberian tombs and their extraordinary survival in some settlements is the result of a conscious and deliberate choice indicating the existence of mechanisms of social distinction based on a diacritical use of material culture. It is further argued that different motivations might lie behind their delayed deposition: when the chronological gap between production and disposal dates is small, one or two human generations, curated Athenian vases worked similarly to non-curated ones, being emblematic of economic success, social affiliations and political rank. But when the interval is longer, Athenian pots became symbols of ancestry and elite status, possibly acquiring the same legitimizing role earlier bestowed upon Orientalizing artefacts. Supplementary material is available online (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0075426921000094) and comprises a catalogue of case-study objects.

This paper publishes a gold ring until recently in private hands in the United States. The former owners, private persons with no scholarly background, brought the ring to the present writer's attention upon learning that he had some knowledge of Greek inscriptions. The one deplorable fact is that this ring was removed from its context, so that much of its scientific value is forever lost to us. Nonetheless, the damage was done by others years ago, and its owners deserve praise for making the ring available for study. The dedicatory inscription on it is an invaluable example of early Argive script. The details of acquisition are unclear. I have been able to ascertain only that the ring was acquired in ancient Mycenae from some Greeks who claimed to have dug it up in the area. As will be seen, in all probability it comes from the Argive Heraion.

But the attributes named seem to belong even to the majority of men, poor creatures though they may be. Are we to say then that in so far as they are satisfied with themselves and think they are good, they share in these attributes? Certainly no one who is thoroughly bad and impious has these attributes, or even seems to do so. They hardly belong even to inferior people; for they are at variance with themselves, and have appetites for some things and rational desires for others.

In the Hellenic Journal for 1903, while publishing some heads of Apollo, I took occasion to express my doubts as to the expediency of hereafter taking the Apoxyomenos as the norm of the works of Lysippus. These views, however, were not expressed in any detail, and occurring at the end of a paper devoted to other matters, have not attracted much attention from archaeologists. The subject is of great importance, since if my contention be justified, much of the history of Greek sculpture in the fourth century will have to be reconsidered. Being still convinced of the justice of the view which I took two years ago, I feel bound to bring it forward in more detail and with a fuller statement of reasons.

Our knowledge of many of the sculptors of the fourth century, Praxiteles, Scopas, Bryaxis, Timotheus, and others, has been enormously enlarged during the last thirty years through our discovery of works proved by documentary evidence to have been either actually executed by them, or at least made under their direction. But in the case of Lysippus no such discovery was made until the very important identification of the Agias at Delphi as a copy of a statue by this master.