The Ashmolean Museum has recently acquired a fragmentary, but none the less attractive Attic cup. The interior is decorated in the white-ground technique, but the artist has used red-figure on the exterior. The internal and external decoration do not differ merely in technique, however, but also in mood: the central tondo bears a cool, restrained scene of a girl pouring a libation, whereas outside we have a mildly drunken rout—a komos.

The interior (Plate XVIIa) is mostly white. There is a broad black band around the edge, at some distance in from which is a dilute brown line which circumscribes the tondo itself. This is decorated with a scene of a girl standing between two altars, over one of which she pours a libation. She faces towards the left and much of her body is seen in three-quarter view. Unfortunately her face is damaged, but enough remains to show that it was once pretty and appealing. On her head she wears a broad cloth band through which her back-hair emerges in a kind of chignon. She wears earrings. A himation edged in red is thrown loosely over her left shoulder and hangs down to well below her knees. Beneath, she wears a flimsy chiton which is pulled revealingly tight over her right breast and is buttoned at the elbow. Bracelets in the form of snakes adorn her wrists, and in her right hand she holds an oinochoe. This last, in common with the bracelets, buttons and earrings, is rendered plastically (i.e. is in relief), and was perhaps originally gilded. To her left, a rod or sceptre leans independently, while on either side can be seen parts of two altars, which, if identical, consisted of two plain, swelling mouldings, somewhat archaic in character, above a row of ovolos, and beneath on the sides, a metope between two dark strips. Some preliminary sketch is visible. Much of the detailed drawing is done in relief line, reinforced around the edges of the garment and on the altar with applied red. Dilute paint is used for the hair, the hem of the chiton and the decoration immediately above it, and for the triglyphs (if that is what they are) of the altars.

Mr. Fotheringham's paper, if I understand it rightly, divides itself into three parts. He corrects certain errors in my tabular statement of the evidence, and in my commentary on it; he criticizes my suggestion that the ‘List of Thalassocracies’ may represent a fifth-century document; and he reconstructs from materials comprised wholly in the existing texts of Eusebius' work an outline of the Eusebian view of the ‘List,’ as he understands it; the gist of which is that he thinks that Eusebius not merely incorporated in his Canones the names of all the states contained in the ‘List,’ but also intended to space the thalassocracies according to the numerals contained in the Excerpt. From this he infers that, where the numerals in the Excerpt are lost, they may safely be restored from the intervals indicated in the Canones; and from this, finally, (1) that the Excerpt was not mutilated when Eusebius incorporated it in his Chronographia, and (2) that it represented, in its missing section at all events, the same chronological scheme as underlies the rest of Eusebius' work, and not, as I had been led to suggest, a different, earlier, and more accurate system.

That Rome's victory at the Aegates insulae in 241 B.C. put a definite end to the sea power of Carthage has long since been recognized, for subsequently the Italian fleets sailed unmolested wherever they pleased in the Western Mediterranean. It has not, I think, been realized with equal clearness that thereafter Rome was the only first-rate naval state in the entire world of ancient politics, for the more complex relation of the eastern powers has obscured the fact that after 241 B.C. Egypt, hitherto the Carthage of the Orient, followed the example of her African neighbour and rival in the West, neglected her fleet, and left it to her garrisons and money to maintain the empire and protect the commercial interests which the navy and diplomacy of the first two Ptolemies had won. The fall of Egypt, moreover, as I shall try to show, was the result of a coalition of Rhodes and Macedon, which left the control of the eastern Mediterranean in the possession of a group of second-rate naval states. This condition Philip V. sought to end in the year 201 B.C., but Rome at once interfered and prevented him from carrying out his plans; nor did she allow Antiochus III. and Hannibal time to reopen the question of maritime supremacy. The sea-fights won at Side and Myonnesus in 190 B.C. with the aid of Rhodes and Pergamum over the extemporized and disunited fleets of Asia settled it once and for all that no new first-class naval power was to arise in the East. The events of 241 B.C. were thus decisive for the unification of the ancient world into a single state. I shall try in this paper to establish with some precision what they and what their antecedents were.

The five stones here described and illustrated I found, along with a few other carved pieces, at Bignor Park, Sussex, in November, 1926, built into the walls of a garden house by the late owner, Mr. Johnstone. They were almost certainly brought over to England by Mr. John Hawkins, who travelled extensively in the East, Greece, and Italy, and afterwards, settling down at Bignor Park in 1806, lived there till his death in 1841. Incidentally, he had an important share with Samuel Lysons in excavating the Roman villa at Bignor between 1811 and 1819. I have failed to find any printed record of these stones, except of No. 3, and think that their belated publication may be of interest. The present owner, Lt.-Col. the Hon. Clive Bigham, has given me every facility for photographing, and making squeezes, casts, and rubbings of the inscriptions. In order to preserve the stones, he has had a wall specially built overlooking a garden, with a seat below; and in this wall they are effectively arranged.

The well-known ‘Berber Head’ in the British Museum, found at Kyrene in 1861, has long defied exact stylistic analysis. Its findspot provides no precise date, and ever since the excavators suggested that it was a piece from the fourth century BC, this dating has been sustained, generally through inertia. Yet recent scholars have become increasingly aware of the weakness of this date without offering specific alternatives other than a gradual down-dating. Its North African features indicate that it is a portrait of an indigenous ruler, and thus attribution must be based on the likelihood of such a person being honoured in Kyrene. It is herein suggested that it is a portrait of the Numidian prince Mastanabal, son of Massinissa, and that it dates to the time that Massinissa was a close associate of the king of Kyrene, the future Ptolemaios VIII of Egypt, or 163–148 BC. Mastanabal was a noted athlete and thus the piece may be a commemoration of one of his victories. Its commissioning would fit into his father's vigorous hellenization policy. Although the style remains difficult of analysis, certain features, especially the beard under the chin, support a second-century BC date.

The literature dealing with the so-called ‘Cyrenaic’ vases is comparatively so huge that some excuse is needed for a fresh approach to the subject. That excuse is to be found in the new light shed on these vases through the recent excavations at Sparta by the British School at Athens, of which one result has been the discovery that Laconia was the home of the school which produced them.

At Sparta this distinctive Laconian style is presented in good chronological sequence, and its course can be traced from its rise in the early seventh century, through its development and decline in the sixth and fifth centuries, to its end in the latter part of the fourth.

It is true that the finds of pottery at the shrine of Artemis Orthia at Sparta consist of fragments of dedicated vases, the refuse, in fact, thrown out from time to time from the temple, so that what is presented by the stratification of the site is the chronological sequence not of the manufacture of the vases but of their destruction. Yet the development of the style as a whole, even when judged by the stratification, is so regular that it may be assumed that in most cases the order of destruction corresponded with that of manufacture. In any case the destruction of the older temple at the close of the seventh century gives at least one point where such correspondence is certain. Vases thrown out from the new temple must have been dedicated after the destruction of the older building. To divide the style with much certainty into six chronological periods called, and approximately dated

Reviewing the recent archaeological discoveries in the areas where the ancient Greek colonies of Italy flourished, I shall divide them, so as to facilitate the finding of the places on the modern map, according to the present Italian regions. These correspond more or less to the old Roman divisions, excepting Lucania, the western part of which (Paestum, Velia) now belongs to Campania.

Sicily

Sicily suffered a great loss last year in the death of Paolo Orsi, to whom we owe the revelation of Siculan civilisation and an incalculable number of discoveries in the Greek centres of the island and of Magna Graecia. After his death lack of funds interrupted the work he had so happily initiated of liberating the temple of Apollo in Ortygia. Of this old Sicilian temple (seventh century B.C.) there was brought to light during 1933–34, by the demolition of the sixteenth-century Spanish barracks, the southern wall of the cella, still 6 and 7 m. high, and built with orthostates.