As some of the following notes bring to the illustration of Aeschylus material gathered from Persian sources, they may seem to require a word or two of preface.

When the Persae was produced, in 472 B.C., a large section of the Greek people was still in process of delivery from Persian rule, to which it had been subject for more than half a century. Persians may not have been very numerous on the Ionian seaboard and the islands, but they were the ruling class, and any eastern Greek would know quite well how they lived and how they behaved; some too had been privileged to study them at close quarters, for the Ionian ships in Xerxes' fleet carried as ἐπιβάται, Persians or Medes or Sacae (Her. 7. 184). In Athens itself, for many years before Plataea, Persia had been a subject of the most painful and pressing interest: every Athenian must have desired to know all about these Persians; and if he had no Ionian friends to ask, there were many of his countrymen who had visited Asia or even helped to sack Sardis, and the spoils of Marathon were before his eyes. After Plataea, if the desire to know was less pressing, the opportunity of knowledge was even greater, for Athenian fleets were busy in the work of liberation. And the very production of this play proves that the interest was alive.

In the following paper, certain reliefs are described and illustrated, which have been added in comparatively recent years to the collection of the British Museum.

(1) Votive relief of Zeus Stratios. This relief, which was acquired in the summer of 1914 from a private owner, is of exceptional interest as an addition to the Museum which contains the remains of the Mausoleum.

The relief is of white marble, and consists of a sculptured panel 35·5 cm. wide, and so far as extant, 21 cm. high. It is surmounted by a pediment, with acroterial ornaments. The whole subject measures 49 × 45 cm.

‘In 1868 it was in the court yard of a house at Piali (Tegea) in the neighbourhood of the temple of Athena Alea. It had been found on the spot with some other antiquities.’ So M. Foucart, who has recently discussed the relief at length in the Monuments Piot.

How Cleon issued his fatal order to retreat from before Amphipolis does not seem to have been discussed by the commentators. But it would appear that he violated correct military procedure, and that this violation was in itself the cause of much of the subsequent confusion in the Athenian ranks. Thucydides says that both a signal and a verbal command were given—the signal conveying the definite meaning ‘Retire’, while the verbal command explained how it was to be done; and signal and command were issued together.

Signals are divided by Arrian into three groups. Verbal orders, being most readily intelligible, are preferable when they can be heard above the din of battle. Visual signals may be obscured in the dust and confusion. Finally, the trumpet is useful in overcoming ‘atmospheric disturbances’ (τὰ ἐκ τοῦ ἀέρος ἐμπόδια).

Visual signals are found in Greek warfare from at least the fifth century B.C. onwards, but they are generally prearranged, either to convey the news that some foreseeable event has actually occurred or to coordinate the operations of two bodies of troops who are widely separated but in sight of each other. Everybody concerned must be instructed in advance that after certain developments a certain signal will be displayed, upon which certain movements will be carried out. In this way Croesus in the Cyropaedia directs the evolutions of his vast army, Antigonus plans to coordinate the separate attacks at Sellasia, and Gorgidas ends the feigned retreat of the Sacred Band. But the signals used—the display of a red cloak or a white; the raising of a helmet on a spear—are all obviously arranged for the occasion. There does not seem to have been any code by which the commander of a Greek army, at any rate in the classical period, could convey orders to his men on the spur of the moment by visual signals. In the army described by Arrian each battalion (σύνταξις) had its own standard bearer, and the rank and file could at least have conformed to the movements of the standard.

In JHS lxxxi (1961) 67 f. Professor J. M. Cook put forward the engaging theory that the ΕΥΝ coins represent a pro-Spartan alliance formed in 391 and 390 during the resurgence of Spartan power in the Aegean. Without seeking to retrace the argument of my article in the Numismatic Chronicle xvi (1956), I wish to comment on certain points of this new theory.

First, the Theban coins—a difficulty which Cook formulates as follows. ‘The device on the obverse of the ΕΥΝ coins is of course a well-known Theban one; and though the Spartans, having no coinage of their own, could not contribute a Spartan coin-type, it may be objected that they would hardly have used a well-known Boeotian emblem if they were at war with Thebes at the time.’ Cook's solution is to propose that ‘it is quite possible that in 391 (assuming that to be the year of Thibron's departure for Asia) the Spartans may have considered that a treaty of alliance existed between themselves and the Thebans’.

IF we are to believe all that Polybios tells us, then the world of Hellenistic Crete was a wretched place:

The Cretans are irresistible, both by land and by sea, when it comes to ambushes and piracy and the tricks of war, night attacks and all engagements undertaken with fraud; but when it comes to the face-to-face assault of phalanxes fighting on equal terms, they are base and craven-hearted….Money is honoured among them to such an extreme degree that the acquisition of it is thought to be not only necessary, but also most honourable. Generally speaking, the practice of disgraceful greed and acquisitiveness is so much the fashion there, that among the Cretans alone of all humankind no profit is considered shameful….Because of their congenital greed, they are engaged in constant upheavals, private and public, and murders and civil wars….Indeed, one would not find private customs more treacherous nor public enterprises more unjust (except in a few cases) than those of the Cretans….[In the year 181 BC] great troubles began in Crete, if indeed one can speak of a ‘beginning’ of troubles in Crete. For because of the unceasing nature of their civil wars and the excessive savagery of their treatment of one another, ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ are the same thing in Crete, and what seems to be a paradoxical saying of some individuals is there a consistently observable fact.

The nature of the bond connecting the work of Ammianus Marcellinus with the now fragmentary history of Eunapius of Sardis or with Zosimus' Νέα Ἱστορία is an old and intriguing problem rather more notable for the multiplicity than for the finality of its hypothetical solutions. The question arises out of the perception that Ammianus and Zosimus provide coincidental material in their accounts of Julian's Persian expedition. Eunapius figures in the equation because, as we generally assume, it was he whom Zosimus followed. Since all scholars but Dillemann are satisfied that these correspondences indubitably require some hypothesis of literary affiliation, all of the formal possibilities have one by one been tried. Sudhaus, whose investigation of the similarities proved influential, denied that Ammianus could have been used either by Zosimus or by his source (Eunapius); he affirmed instead that Ammianus and Eunapius must have been linked by their own use of a common source, namely, Oribasius, the physician of Julian and his companion on the Persian expedition.

Homer is universally praised for the clarity of his style. Yet even to sympathetic or perceptive readers, if their critical remarks really express their judgments, his poetical intention has been singularly opaque: invited to leave town by Plato, as if he were a bad ethical philosopher; lauded by Aristotle for his dramatic unity, as if he were a pupil of Sophocles; criticised by Longinus for composing an Odyssey without Iliadic sublimity; abused in more recent times by Scaliger as indecorous, irrational, improper and undisciplined, as if he were seeking (like Virgil) to portray the perfect exemplar of a renaissance prince; defended by Dacier as a sublime primitive, innocent of taste and art, who achieved perfection ‘par la seule force de son genie’. Some of these judgments are no more than the stock responses of their age to epic poetry. The critic regards the poems from his own point of view; he discovers what he expects to find; and he passes a judgment that illuminates the workings of his own mind but sheds nothing but darkness upon Homer's. The announcement, therefore, of a new criticism by Notopoulos and Lord, a criticism based on the results of comparative study and free from the old prejudices of Analysts and Unitarians, is an event of importance. It may even be the case that the despised anachronistic ‘singer’, that unwashed, mendicant figure lurking in the coffee houses of the Balkans, has something to say. But whatever he says, it will be applicable to Homer only by analogy, and will require verification.

Unlike much else in the Pentecontaetia, the chronology of the Samian War, its antecedents included, has apparently evoked such little critical interest that an almost casual treatment of the subject is observable in modern works. Nesselhauf, for example, annotated his brief discussion of the Samian War with a reference to Busolt and Beloch ‘for the details’. Each scholar provides a radically different chronology from the other. Indeed, the range of dates postulated by modern writers is remarkable considering the relatively small span of time, two years, in which the events appear to have unfolded. Beloch and the authors of ATL date the war between Samos and Miletus, which ultimately caused the revolt, in summer 441 B.C.; Busolt set the war in March-April 440 B.C., E. Meyer a shade earlier. Some scholars fail to specify the date (Nesselhauf, Meiggs). The beginning of the revolt itself has been placed in spring 440 B.C. by Sealey, among others; Gomme and Meiggs date it in early summer, Busolt, strangely, in early July. The direct cause of the revolt, the installation of the democracy at Samos (Thuc. i 115.3), is little discussed, much less fixed in date. The democracy was not established in a day: it therefore requires consideration in any chronological reconstruction. Finally, the end of the war has been variously set in late winter, early spring and early summer 439 B.C.

Such uncertainty is surprising since our evidence is abundant and also specific enough to allow us to make reasonably firm chronological estimates. Indeed, our fortunate possession of mutually independent data—the historical tradition and the monumental evidence—provides us with the opportunity to attempt precision in a degree usually beyond our expectations. However we may separately interpret Thucydides' relative chronology or the random evidence of the stones, these data, when taken in combination, yield knowledge greater than the sum of its parts.

Already by Pindar's day the term ‘Boeotian pig’ was an old reproach, and indeed Boeotia was ‘a slow canton, as the nimble Attics would say, a glorious climate for eels, but a bad air for brains.’ My choice of title does not, however, stop there. Anyone brought up in Scotland or in the north of England will know the word ‘pig’ in another meaning than the usual, will know it as a pot, a jar, a crock, and the use of this meaning in the phrase ‘Pig and Whistle’ is perhaps more widely known. Porcelain also establishes a connexion between pigs and pottery.

Boeotian pottery is the Cinderella of the local schools, offering few of the usual attractive groups and classes of work which distinguish most other centres, and much of the potting and painting done in Boeotia is indeed poor or mediocre. It has, however, an interest of its own which makes it worth looking at—the interest one can take in seeing first-rate work copied and adapted for local use and in noting the influence of more brilliant craftsmen on their less well-endowed neighbours. Part of the trouble with looking at Boeotia is that we see Greek pottery through the eyes of Athens; we have come to judge Greek work by the standard of Athens and to consider that a different approach means necessarily an incompetent attempt at mimicking Athenian work. In many cases this is so, for the influence of Attic work on the less original centres was widespread and rarely good. Occasionally a Boeotian artist produced work which rivals Attic, but this is uncommon, and it is more likely that such an artist was an immigrant Athenian. We may also run into the danger of regarding ‘Boeotian’ as having the same range in meaning as ‘Athenian’, whereas we are really dealing with different local centres, e.g. Thebes, Tanagra, Coroneia, Thespiai. Thus we must not expect a continuous tradition of development along a single line, and this makes dating hazardous. Boeotian artists did produce local work which is distinctive, and they used the basic techniques of black-figure and red-figure in ways and combinations different from their neighbours; they also had their own variations with added white and purple. For shapes too they preferred a slightly different range and their own local variations.

The following inscriptions are some of the epigraphical results of three journeys in Eastern Asia Minor. The first two of these, in which Prof. W. M. Ramsay, Mr. D. G. Hogarth, the Rev. A. C. Headlam, and Mr. J. A. R. Munro took part, were made in the summers of 1890 and 1891, the third, which was organised by Mr. Hogarth and in which I took part myself, was made in the summer of 1894. The geographical results of these expeditions have been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society in the form of a paper by Messrs. Hogarth and Munro, entitled ‘Modern and Ancient Roads in Eastern Asia Minor’ (R.G.S. Suppl. Papers, iii. pp. 643–739) and a paper by myself ‘A Journey in the valley of the Upper Euphrates’ (Geographical Journal, viii. pp. 318–335 and 453–474).

All modern commentators are agreed that the account of the campaign of Marathon left us by Herodotus is often inconsistent, and that as often it is difficult to reconcile it with probabilities. In seeking to disentangle fact from fable in the story of Marathon we have a harder task than in the case of the story of Xerxes' invasion of Greece, for we have much less material at our disposal, and the dilemma of deciding what to accept and what to reject of Herodotus' story is very real. There are, however, some guides through this dilemma. Herodotus wrote with the greater event of Xerxes' invasion between him and the campaign of Marathon. Persia had ceased to be the terror to Greece which she had been in the year 491 B.C., and the memory of Athenian fears and hesitations had been obliterated by pride of achievement. It is some guide in the process of selection from Herodotus' story to imagine the kind of tales of Marathon he would be likely to have heard, when making his inquiries, and the kind of event which would be forgotten or concealed.

This paper seeks to establish an intellectual context for the periplous of Pseudo-Skylax (probably written in or near Athens in 338 to ca. 337 BC). The unknown author is aware of the work of contemporary natural philosophers, including those in the post-Platonic Academy and those who were to form the Peripatos, especially Aristotle, Theophrastos and Dikaiarchos. Among known writers, Dikaiarchos is most likely to have written the periplous; but the case remains unproven. Doubts are also raised as to the validity of the so-called periplographic genre.

One of the Dura parchments (Dura Perg. 23)—a sale of a slave in 180 A.D.—recently transcribed and translated by C. Bradford Welles in his preliminary report on the Dura documents of private character shews a very elaborate and unusual date. First comes the consular date and the name of the emperor, then the date according to the Seleucid era and the month, and finally the place and the municipal date: l. 4 ff. ἐν Εὐρώπῳ τῇ πρὸς ᾿Αραβίᾳ ἐπὶ ἱερέωυ Διὸς μὲν Λυσανίου τοῦ Ζηνοδότου τοῦ ῾Ηλιοδώρου ᾿Απόλλωνος δὲ Θεοδώρου τοῦ ᾿Αθηνοδότου τοῦ ᾿Αρτεμιδώρου, τῶν δὲ προγόνων ῾Ηλιοδώρου τοῦ Διοκλέους τοῦ ῾Ηλιοδώρου, βασιλέως δὲ Σελεύκου Νικ[ά] τορος Δανύμου τοῦ Σελεύκου τοῦ Δανύμου.

Dating a document, not only by consuls, the imperial year and the year according to a provincial or municipal era, but also by eponymous priests of the municipal gods was not the common practice at Dura in Roman times. We have now a rather large and representative group of various private documents found at Dura, some of them with the date completely preserved. In no one of them is mention of the eponymous priests found. The date consists of the name of the consuls, the name of the emperor or emperors, and the number of the year according to the Seleucid era. Sometimes when the emperors are themselves consuls the second step is omitted. Nor is such a dating by the priests very common in other parts of the Roman Empire. In contracts or similar documents found in Egypt in most cases the imperial date only is used.

These notes supplement and correct my article ‘Greek Mosaics’ in JHS lxxxv (1965) 72–89 (hereafter GM).

I. Additions:

Miss Elizabeth Ramsden, who is making a corpus of Roman mosaics in Greece, has drawn my attention to three important pebble-mosaics omitted from my survey. I am most grateful to her for this, and for permission to use her descriptions and photographs, reproduced in plates XXIII and XXIV. I am also very grateful to Professor Orlandos for permission to publish the photographs of the mosaic in Sicyon, no. 1; and to the late Dr. N. Verdelis for permission to publish those of the fragment in Athens, no 3. I know these two floors only from photographs and descriptions; nos. 2 and 4 only from the publications.

1. Sicyon Museum, from Sicyon (Kiaton). Found by Professor Orlandos in 1940 and published by him in Praktika 1941, fig. 6 (see also BCH 1940/1 241, fig. 7). Here, plate XXIV. 2.80 × 2.80 m (without entry-panel); blue-black and white pebbles, with a few red.

On the coins of Alexandria Troas of Roman date we find certain types, which are evidently related to the story of the foundation of the Smintheion; as well as another which may refer to the foundation of the city itself. They have been discussed at length by Wroth. The most remarkable (Fig. 1, a) shows on the left a grotto, surmounted by a cultus-statue of Apollo Smintheus; within the grotto is another statue, precisely similar, but lying on the ground. Before the grotto stands a herdsman, holding a pedum in his left hand, and raising his right in a gesture which, as Wroth says, may be interpreted as expressing either adoration or surprise. ‘On the right, a bull is seen running away, as if terror-stricken, with its head turned back towards the cavern. It would seem that some local legend connected with the discovery of the statue of the god is here portrayed. The engraver appears to have naively blended two incidents of the legend—first, the chance finding in a cavern of the statue of Apollo Smintheus by a herdsman—next, the setting up of a statue for worship in a place of honour over the cavern. On other coins of Alexandria Troas a herdsman—who is evidently the same herdsman—is represented in the presence of a divinity who appears to be Apollo … and he often appears standing beside the feeding horse that occurs frequently as a coin-type of Alexandria Troas’ (Fig. 1, d).

W. S. Gilbert's very model of a modern majorgeneral knew among other things the croaking chorus of the Frogs of Aristophanes, and their refrain is perhaps the most widely-quoted line in Greek literature. But the interpretation of the Frogs’ scene gives rise to debate, and there is no agreement on even basic questions: for example, were the Frogs visible in the theatre or did they croak unseen behind the skene? What is the nature of the competition between the Frogs and Dionysus? Is the scene simply a self-contained piece of entertainment or has it an element of literary parody which would make it relevant to the main theme of the play? Here I attempt to answer the last of these questions.

If you should ever attempt to motor from Assiût southwards to Baliana and Luxor—an enterprise I do not recommend, for the roads are vile—and, after some twenty-five miles of bumping and shaking, should decide, as my companion decided, to try your luck on the opposite side of the Nile Valley, you will come, after a few miles of a straight but evil road leading west, to another which runs southward again beside a canal separated by about a hundred yards of sandy plain from the great cliffs which form the escarpment of the Libyan Desert. The road which you have reached is no better than the one you have left, the dogs of the district are of a ferocity I found nowhere else in Egypt, and the human inhabitants are surly and hostile; but the natural amenities are considerable. The ordinary Egyptian canal, and so, by consequence, the road which normally runs along it, stretches without a bend for miles, but this particular canal at this point, conforming to the line of the cliffs, which here swing out eastwards, curves round in a great arc, and the road follows. The bank is shaded by a long line of palm-trees, and the view westwards, the reddish-brown trunks and feathery green fronds of the palms seen against a background of yellow sand and red cliffs, is delightful. Turning to the east one sees, stretched out in long perspective, the utter flatness of the Nile valley, clothed in the exquisite green of the young crops, out of which villages rise here and there like islands in a great lake. One such village, seen not far from the road shortly after we have turned to the south, makes a particularly charming effect.

The popularity of wrestling among the Greeks is proved by the constant use of metaphors from this sport and by the frequency with which scenes from the wrestling ring appear, not only in athletic literature and art but also in mythological subjects. Despite the changes in the spirit of Greek athletics caused by the growth of professionalism, which affected wrestling and boxing more perhaps than any other sport, the popularity of wrestling whether as a pastime or as a spectacle remained unabated. On early black-figured vases Heracles is constantly represented employing the regular holds and tricks of the palaestra not only against the giant Antaeus, but against monsters such as Achelous or the Triton, or even against the Nemean lion, and centuries later we find Ovid and Lucan describing these scenes in language borrowed in every detail from the same source.

In or around 594 BC Solon was given extraordinary powers as διαλλακτὴς καὶ νομοθέτης, mediator and lawgiver, to try to solve a crisis in archaic Athenian society. His solution was termed the σεισάχθεια, disburdenment; it was a liberation of the land and the people.

The primary literary evidence on this most important episode in Athenian history is Solon's own testimony. For more information recourse must be had to authors who were writing not less than one hundred and fifty years—or five (30-year) generations—after Solon's reforms were enacted. The most important of these later sources is the author of the Athenaion Politeia, henceforth AP, who was writing about two hundred years after the event.

Some six months ago Mr. A. D. van Assendelft de Coningh presented the Leiden library with a set of seven waxen tablets, forming a small book. They were acquired at Palmyra in 1881 by his brother, Mr. H. van Assendelft de Coningh, officer in the Royal Dutch Navy. Mr. H. van Assendelft de Coningh died soon after his return to his country; we know, however, that the tablets were found at Palmyra from a fragment of a letter which he wrote some days before his death. It runs as follows: ‘During my brief visit to Palmyra I acquired these wooden tablets.’ The tablets came into the possession of Mr. A. D. van Assendelft de Coningb and were put aside with other souvenirs of his brother's travels. They happened to be shown to me and I easily saw that they contained Greek writing. The tablets were then presented to the Leiden library, the principal librarian of which, Dr. W. N. du Rieu, gave them the name of Tabulae ceratae graecae Assendelftianae, in honour of the generous giver and his deceased brother.

The seven tablets are covered with writing on both sides, except the first one, of which the recto-side is plain wood. Of the others the wooden surface is sunk to a slight depth, leaving a raised frame at the edges; they are of beech-wood, like most waxen tablets preserved in the British Museum. The wood is coated with wax of a very dark colour, probably due to pitch being added to the wax in order to prevent melting and to make the writing clearly visible. They measure 14·5 by 12 cm. (5·7 by 4·7 inches).