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.

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.

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 Fifteenth Idyll of Theocritus has probably been more admired, and has certainly received more attention from scholars, than any other Alexandrian poem; and for obvious reasons. ‘It is a page,’ said Matthew Arnold, ‘torn fresh out of the book of human life. What freedom! what animation! what gaiety! what naturalness!’ The picture of contemporary manners which it presents has a charm far beyond the compass of T.'s nearest rival in this genre, Herodas, and, if some reservations be made on the score of language, it is convincingly lifelike. Nevertheless, in spite of the attention it has received, it has not, I think, been viewed as clearly as it may be either in details or as a whole. Of the five sections of which this paper is composed, the first four are an attempt to bring the picture into rather sharper focus; the fifth is a briefer note upon a point of detail.

At the invitation of Sir William Ramsay, I make public a formal statement of the information acquired by me in 1912 and 1913 (and communicated informally to him and to others at the time) bearing on the statuette published by him in Athenaeum, 1909, p.736, and in The Revolution in Constantinople and Turkey(1909), pp. 214 ff.,

On the afternoon of June 27th, 1913, after Sir William had left for England, I sat with our common servant, Prodromos the Djinnji, in the garden of the Baghdad Hotel at Konia, making arrangements for a journey which was to begin on the following day. The conversation came round to the ‘Mithraic’ statuette (which Prodromos then declared he had never seen, and which he had always maintained to be genuine), and Prodromos told me that he had seen in the bazaar a statuette similar to my description of it.

FRAGMENTARY Mycenaean terracottas are unquestionably difficult to interpret, particularly when seen only in photographs. In an attempt to question the identity of the Ugarit figurine now in the Aleppo Museum as a centaur it is claimed that an added strip of clay was attached to the preserved upright portion of the figurine and that the curving sides of the upper section were painted a solid colour. Both observations are incorrect. Since the new identification of this figurine is based on these incorrect observations, the new identification itself remains questionable.

The past year has not been productive of any momentous discovery, excepting only the bronze statue at Delphi, which will be described more fully in its own place; but a great amount of useful work has been done in various directions, and, indeed, the great variety of what has been achieved may be regarded as the characteristic feature of the year.

In Athens, the excavations in the neighbourhood of the Pnyx and the Areopagus have reached their third season. In the later months of 1894 the entire shrine which Dörpfeld identifies as that of Dionysos was laid bare, with its temple, altar, and wine-press. The archaic structure seems to have been in existence down to late Greek times, when its site was covered by a building which is identified by an inscription as the assembly house of the Iobacchi. From the different methods of construction which can be traced in the walls, it would seem that this building must have stood for a long period; the base of the altar, belonging to the earlier stage, is fairly well preserved; it consisted of a table supported on four slender columns, replaced later by four larger supports; at one side on the step are sinkings for two stelæ; Dörpfeld points out that according to Demosthenes (?) (Neaera, 76) the oath which the Gerairai had to swear at the sacred marriage of the Basilinna in the Anthesteria was inscribed on a stelè set up an expression which suits the proposed identification.

Well known though the grylli are, we have still very little to say about their meaning and about their origin.Our knowledge of them, which has hardly increased since the days of Furtwangler, amounts to the following facts. Grylli were one of the most popular motives for the decoration of gems in Roman times; they remained in favour during more than three centuries. Several indications lead us to believe that some pro-phylactic value was ascribed to them; this may also account for their long popularity. In appearance they can as a rule be divided into two classes. Either they are a composition of various human and animal heads, sometimes with birds added to them, or else they consist of the body of a bird, generally a cock, to which heads and masks are attached in different ways. As the cock often is provided with a horse's head, we are reminded of the Attic hippalectryon; it is, however, impossible to trace their descent from Greek art, for we do not know of any more complicated Greek design that may have inspired Roman gem-cutters; the hippalectryon itself even does not seem to have lived down to the Hellenistic period. On the other hand, it is equally impossible to regard them as an original Roman fantasy. In the first place, their connexion with the hippalectryon, though distant, is unmistakable; secondly and chiefly, we know there were grylli before the days of Roman glyptic art. In the necropolis of Tharros in Sardinia have been found several scarabs decorated with motives closely resembling the Roman grylli. Now the necropolis seems to have been in use for a very long time, but Furtwangler believed, no doubt rightly, that the bulk of the objects found in it, and especially the grylli, must be dated rather early as they still show some of the traditions of archaic art. Our Fig. 3a is a good example.

There is probably no sculptor as to whose work our notions have been more completely revolutionised in recent times than Myron. This change is due partly to new discoveries, but more to the identification of statues already known and exhibited. It is above all Myron's treatment of the head that has been hitherto inadequately realised, and for this the Massimi head, widely known through casts and photographs, is to a great degree responsible. The somewhat dull and heavy expression of this head does indeed remind us of Pliny's words, ‘ipse tarnen corporum tamen studiosus animi sensus non expressisse (videtur).” And the copyist who made this statue may very probably have been influenced by some such commonplace of artistic criticism. But the recent identification of two more extant works of Myron, the Perseus of the Antiquarium at Rome (Plate V) and the Athena in Frankfort, together with the replicas of the head of this last statue in Dresden and in the Vatican cellars, have completely changed our impressions as to his style, and are likely to have far-reaching results. Another statue that has recently come to be attributed generally to Myron is the well-known Cassel Apollo and its numerous replicas in various museums—notably a head in Vienna (Fig. 1) and another in the National Museum at Athens. All of these show the simplicity and severity of the art of the earlier part of the fifth century, together with a certain dignity and richness of effect which lead up to the work of Phidias. Above all, there is a fullness of intellectual and even spiritual life about them which contrasts strangely with the Massimi head. Correct inferences as to the style of Myron had already been drawn by Furtwängler and others. And it is particularly interesting to note in this connexion how Furtwängler traced the influence of Myron upon Cresilas. The expression which that sculptor gave to statues like the Diomed and the Amazon was especially admired by ancient critics in his wounded figures.

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.’