That cremation is unknown in the Mycenaean world, even in its latest phases, and inhumation equally foreign to the Homeric poems is a curious, if familiar, fact, and at once raises the question of the length of the interval which separates the fall of Mycenae from the appearance of cremation in the Aegean area. To fix an absolute date for either event is impossible; but the increasing number of carefully excavated sub-Mycenaean and proto-Geometric tombs makes it possible to note certain features in the rise, spread and, in certain regions, the dominance of the practice, and slightly to narrow the chronological limits.

At Mycenae cremation does not appear at all, not even among those depositions in chamber tombs which were accompanied by pottery of the ‘Granary’ class and therefore belong to the latest period of the city or may even be slightly later than its fall. Similarly, two of its ordinary concomitants are lacking, the arched fibula and iron as a useful metal.

In describing the sacred grove () of Asklepios in the territory of Epidaurus, Pausanias (ii 27.1) mentions two of the rules that were in force there: (he has just mentioned that the ἄλσος is surrounded on all sides by boundary stones), and, secondly,

Those about to give birth or to die were eventually accommodated immediately outside the peribolos in a building constructed for them in Pausanias' own time by ‘Antoninus, a Senator’. The eating accommodation was provided earlier, most obviously in the building generally described as the καταγώγιον. Since this lies between the temple of Asklepios and the theatre, which is itself, according to Pausanias we can assume that sacrificial meat consumed in it had not been taken outside the boundaries.

Aëtius ii 20.1 (DK 12A21) Aëtius ii 25.1 (DK 12A22), on the moon, is similar, ending

It is generally supposed that is the nozzle of a bellows; but G. E. R. Lloyd, Polarity and analogy 313 ff. is doubtful of this interpretation, pointing out that only one, doubtful, parallel can be cited for this meaning of πρηστήρ, and that the nozzle of a bellows does not emit fire. He concludes, however, that if πρηστήρ has its normal, meteorological, sense, ‘it seems impossible to interpret … αὐλός … for this must surely refer to some sort of pipe or tube and this seems quite inappropriate to such phenomena as lightning or whirlwinds … “Bellows” … appears to give the best sense for this difficult phrase’.

My purpose here is to show that has a good meteorological sense. According to Aristotle Mete. 371a15 ff., the πρηστήρ is a variant of the τυφῶν, which is a whirlwind (370b22) which forms within a cloud (ib. 28), and, being unable to separate itself from the cloud, descends to the earth, bringing the cloud with it (371a9, ff., and especially 11 ff. ). This seems to be the ‘tornado’ or the ‘waterspout’ of modern meteorology. A tornado is ‘a very intense, progressive whirl, of small diameter … From the violently-agitated main cloud-mass above there usually hangs a writhing funnel-shaped cloud …’ The ‘funnel-shaped cloud’ is presumably the cloud which Aristotle's whirlwind ‘draws down with it’.

It was suggested to me by Mr. T. J. Dunbabin that the question of Attic B.F. export might be treated by grouping chronologically—as far as possible, for the sake of convenience, in twenty-year periods—the Attic B.F. ware hitherto found at various sites. This method of grouping differs slightly, of course, from that of Payne, and I have not found it possible to adhere strictly to it throughout (e.g., for the middle of the sixth century), but it perhaps serves as well as any other for the purposes of what aims at being an economic rather than a purely archaeological survey.

Throughout the paper only the earliest finds from any one site are listed. Although this method may well seem to give an undue importance to certain sites which were apparently but scant importers of the ware, it would be impossible—within the scope of such a paper—to give exhaustive lists of the finds of every date.

I do not know of any book or published paper devoted to Cleostratus. In the indexes to most histories of astronomy you will seek his name in vain, and, where you do find it, you are referred to a few jejune paragraphs or more often to a single sentence. Boll in his Sphaera (1903) honours him with three pages (191–194), based on a passage in Pliny and a scholium on Euripides, but he misinterprets both passages and holds one of them to be based on a misunderstanding of some older writer. Nearly all the passages bearing on him are to be found with notes of varying value in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ii. (1912), pp. 197, 198, where they occupy rather more than a page. Some valuable comments and one reference which is not in Diels will be found in Breithaupt's treatise De Parmenisco Grammatico (1915). And yet, for all this neglect, there are attributed to Cleostratus two capital contributions to Greek astronomy, viz. the introduction of the signs of the zodiac and the authorship of the eight years' cycle of intercalations.

• (i) By an oversight which I can neither explain nor excuse, I entirely failed to take account of the relevant Panathenaic amphorae attributed by Sir John Beazley to the Eucharides Painter (ABV 396):

1. 9. Athens, Acropolis 947, fr. … B, man holding auloi (Graef, Heft 2, pl. 61).

2. 10. Leningrad from Kerch. A, Athena; B, aulete on platform between two men on ground level, both leaning on rhabdoi. Arch. Anz. 1912, 339–40, figs. 23(A), 24(B).

3. 12. Athens, Acropolis 1060, fr. … B, two men on platform (= aulode and accompanist?) facing standing man with rhabdos (Graef, Heft 2, pl. 62).

• (ii) Since my article appeared, Dr Dorothy Kent Hill of the Walters Art Gallery (to whom I am indebted for most of the references on which these addenda are based) has published in AJA lxiii (1959), pl. 47 (fig. 3—A, fig. 4—B) a further Panathenaic amphora which she attributes to the Eucharides Painter:

• Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery 48.2107 (acquired 1958). A, Athena; B, man on platform playing kithara between two men leaning on rhabdoi.

In my publication of the al Mina excavations (JHS LVIII, 7-9) I argued that although al Mina itself, owing to the disappearance of the greater part of the ancient site, produced no remains earlier than the eighth century B.C. yet that it existed in a much earlier period could be deduced from the evidence afforded by the ‘residential’ town at Sabouni where Attic black-figured and Mycenaean pottery were found. Further evidence is now available. In 1947 we found in a pocket in the steep side of the acropolis one of the well-known ’dolly’ Mycenaean figurines; this was important because the few Mycenaean sherds previously discovered might just as well have been of the Xllth century, i.e. posterior to the invasion of the Peoples of the Sea which marked the beginning of a new era in North Syrian history, whereas the figurine is definitely earlier than that catastrophe. This year (1948) two of the peasants who cultivate the hill site brought me three seals found by them when ploughing; all are earlier than 1200 B.C. and one cylinder belongs to the first half of the second millennium. The connection between Sabouni and the port of al Mina is perfectly clear for all the periods represented on the latter site and should hold good for the earlier periods also. If Sabouni, and ex hypothesi al Mina, were flourishing at the time when Alalakh was a royal city we can be sure that al Mina was the port of Alalakh through which the Syrian town had its contacts—amply illustrated by our discoveries—with Cyprus and Crete. I originally chose the two sites for excavation on the theory that such was the case; now for the first time we have direct evidence for their being contemporary.

The purpose of this article is somewhat ambitious. It is proposed to adduce evidence in support of the thesis, which the writer has already briefly maintained elsewhere, that the majority of the dates, earlier than the period of the Persian Wars, which pass current in our Greek history text-books, are wrong, and should be ‘scaled down’ by a certain proportion of their distance from 500 B.C. The virtue of 500 B.C. as a base-line lies simply in the fact that it falls in the middle of the generation that saw the beginnings of Greek historical prose writing in the hands of Hekataios of Miletos and others.

The genius of Herodotos, the considerable amount of contemporary information gleaned by later Greek scholars from the early elegiac, lyric and iambic poets, the vivid personalities of these poets themselves, and the systematising labours of generations of logographers and historians, ultimately reduced to order by Eratosthenes and transmitted to us by Eusebios—all these conspire to obscure from us the fact that the whole Archaic period in Greece is not an historic but a proto-historic age; an age known to us, not from contemporary historical writings, but through a synthesis of archaeology, references to historic events in a literature still exclusively poetic, references to our area in historical documents from a more mature adjacent region (such as Assyria), and genealogies and oral traditions that survived long enough to be written down later.

Homeric archaeology long dominated the study of early Greece, but new approaches have recently revolutionized the field. Drawing from these approaches, I offer a regional and diachronic analysis of Homeric stories about Crete, an assessment of the reception of these stories by the island's inhabitants throughout antiquity and an account of their impact on medieval to modern literature and art. I find that Cretan interest in Homer peaks in the Hellenistic period, but also argue for the much earlier familiarity of some Cretans with stories that underlie the Homeric epics. This argument relies on an analysis of the archaeological assemblage of a Knossian tomb of the 11th century BC, which includes a range of arms that is exceptional for both Aegean archaeology and the Homeric epics. In the epics, this equipment is carried by the Knossian hero Meriones, whose poetic persona can be traced back to the Late Bronze Age on philological and linguistic grounds. Based on this, and on current understandings of performance at death, I argue that the Knossian burial assemblage was staged to reference the persona of Meriones, therefore suggesting the familiarity of some Cretans with early stories that eventually filtered into the Homeric epics.

This article reviews several books published since the turn of the millennium that explore the role and representation of animals in different areas of ancient Greek and Roman culture. Despite differences in focus and outlook, these books herald the arrival within classical studies of the questions, concepts and methods of human/animal studies as an emerging field of enquiry. This article takes their publication as an opportunity to take stock and to outline the relationship between these disciplines. I explore how current research on ancient animals resonates both in existing debates in classical scholarship and within the context of the larger interdisciplinary debate. I also suggest how this debate can point to productive avenues for further enquiry in classical studies. More specifically, I argue that the interdisciplinary debate sets an important agenda, which should be embraced more fully by classical studies. Classical scholarship on the role, function and perception of animals in different areas of ancient Greek and Roman life can provide important insights into one aspect of the heritage – Western conceptions of humanity and the place of the animal within it – which has not yet received the attention it deserves. I conclude that classical scholarship can make a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary debate, helping it deliver on its stated goal of examining and challenging Western concepts of self, as well as the ideologies of ‘the other’ underpinning them.

In the course of examining Roman imperial medallions and coins in connexion with a study of Roman cult images, representations of Herakles Crowning Himself, a figure which appears on the reverses of medallions of Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus (Plate I, 2), and Commodus (Plate I, 3), merit further comment. These reverses, whether with or without legend, exhibit identical compositions. In the centre a young, beardless Herakles stands facing, his right hand raised in the act of placing a crown on his head; his left hand, close to his left hip, holds the club upwards in the crook of the elbow. Between club and elbow, the lion's skin hangs down over the forearm to a point midway along the left leg. The head, both forepaws, and tail are clearly visible dangling below. On all the medallions the die designer has made very clear the, important point that Herakles rests his weight on the left foot, with left hip thrown out and the right foot slightly back and out, giving a pronounced bow curve to the right side of the body from foot to shoulder. To Herakles' right and slightly behind him appears an apple tree on one branch of which hang the hero's quiver and bow; to his left rear is seen a square altar, festooned with garlands and with an offering burning on the top, and in her comprehensive monograph on Roman medallions J. M. C. Toynbee suggests that ‘the picture as a whole had been inspired by some bas-relief or painting now lost to us’. The question of relating the central figure to the whole composition will be taken up in Part II, in reappraising the general problem of famous statue types in medallion compositions. For the moment we may see what further progress may be made in identifying the statue type of the young Herakles Crowning Himself.

We would gladly give the mediocre textiles preserved in South Russian graves, if Fate had spared a masterpiece of Greek tapestry which we know only from description. It leads a shadowy existence in handbooks, and one can hardly say that recent papers mark any advance towards its precise interpretation.

(i) Aristotle, de miris auscult. 96, 838a.

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Sillyon. Note on an inscription already published

CIG iii. 4324c = SGDI 1268. This inscription is carved in a panel on a rock to the west of the city, near the modern village. Height ·16 m., breadth ·175, letter and space down ·026, letter and space across ·019

Perhaps [Όλυμ]πιακοῦ, since ἱαρός can be used in connexion with the Games, as in Lanckoroński, Städte Pämphyliens und Pisidiens, i, p. 66; but the meaning is uncertain; ἱερά generally means ‘a dead-heat’ (LSJ ἱερός iv. 7).

Sillyon. New inscriptions

(1) A statue-base, near the Byzantine wall. Grey stone, the top and the lower part of the left side are preserved. The bottom is buried and the back is very rough, but may be original. Height over ·7, breadth c. ·65, thickness ·33+, letter height c. ·058, letter and space across ·056. Roman date.

The era of the city begins in the autumn of 47 B.C. Hence this coin, which is struck in high relief, dates from the second year of the reign of Trajan (autumn 98–99 A.D.). The head is not a likeness. The inscription on the reverse identifies the goddess represented with the Ἐκκλησία of the Aigeaians, a personification which has not hitherto, as far as I know, occurred on coins.

2. 26. Bust of the Caesar, laureate, to right, wearing cuirass and draped.

Rev. 1. in the field. Tyche seated to left, wearing a turreted crown and veil. In her right, a small temple represented in profile, with a statue under the arch of the façade and an eagle on the pediment. At the feet of the goddess a goat lying to left, its head reverted.

In the summer of 1950 it proved possible to continue the British excavations at Mycenae which had been suspended in 1939 owing to the war. The Greek Government courteously granted the necessary permission and Dr. Papademetriou, Ephor of Antiquities for Argolis, and Mr. Petsas cooperated most cordially throughout. The work was carried out under the aegis of the British School at Athens which made a generous grant towards the funds and Mr. J. M. Cook, the Director, and Mr. Sinclair Hood, the Assistant-Director, who both took part in the excavations, afforded all possible assistance.

The excavations were especially concerned with the following points: the further exploration, within and without the Cyclopean walls, of the Prehistoric Cemetery to which belonged the royal Shaft Graves found by Schliemann; an attempt to trace the line of the Middle Bronze Age wall of the earliest citadel which preceded the Cyclopean fortress; the re-examination of Tsountas' House, an important building within the walls first excavated in 1886; the clearing of the Epano Phournos tholos tomb; the further exploration of the Cyclopean Terrace Building discovered in 1923; and the investigation of a newly discovered building, now known as the House of Stirrup Jars, near the so-called Tomb of Clytemnestra. The architect of the expedition, Mr. Charles Hobbis, R.I.B.A., also assisted the Greek authorities at their request in the conservation and repairs in progress at the Tomb of Clytemnestra and the Lion Gate.

By the last quarter of the fifth century it was generally agreed that there were three basic forms of government: monarchy, democracy and oligarchy, and this basic division continued to the end of the classical period. For the Athenians, this choice was for practical purposes reduced to one between democracy and oligarchy: kings might appear on the tragic stage, but in contemporary Athens sole rule was synonymous with tyranny, a form of government which had been beyond the pale since the expulsion of the Peisistratids. Indeed, in the late fifth century it was the object of a public hysteria which affords Aristophanes much scope for satire, particularly in Bdelycleon's speech in Vesp. 488 f.

To put forward ideas on the name and nature of Helen may seem hazardous. As to her name, Chantraine's ‘il est vain de chercher une étymologic’ is fair warning, and as to her nature, the views of Wilamowitz and Martin Nilsson, diametrically opposed as they are, reveal the uncertainty of the evidence. Nevertheless an attempt to outline the problems shall be made, and if any solutions are proposed, it must be understood that they are meant to be tentative.

Lines 380–7 have been much discussed, sometimes in isolation, without due regard for context in speech, scene, and play; and sometimes with regard primarily to the history of ideas, or of Greek moral values. Phaidra states that virtue may be subverted, despite knowledge, by pleasure, of which αὶδώς—dual, harmless and harmful—is an instance. A notorious problem of interpretation centres on the related questions of how αὶδώς, shame can be listed among ήδοναί, pleasures; and of what is meant by dual αὶδώς. The interpretation here advanced is bold, but in essence simple: in this context, αὶδώς is a euphemistic metonymy for ἔρως, which is harmless and pleasurable in its proper place (allied with sexual σωφροσύνη), but potentially troublesome or painful (bringing sexual αὶσχύνη).

The debate over the chronology of the history of Athens in the fifth century BC has entered a new phase recently with the publication by Mortimer Chambers and his colleagues of physical evidence that seems to confirm Harold Mattingly's view that a crucial inscription bearing three-bar sigmas and tailed rhos (IG i 11) was cut during the archonship of Antiphon in 418/7, and not during that of Habron in 458/7 as was generally thought.

I have long suspected the 500 elephants of Ipsus, as the number is too remote from anything else known. Omitting these, the largest force of elephants which Greeks ever saw in action was the 200 of Porus; the largest force which any Greek ever commanded was the 120 or there-abouts which Eudamus brought to Eumenes; the largest force which any king is recorded on good authority to have possessed is the 150 of Antiochus III. The number which Alexander (who never used them in battle) collected in India cannot be ascertained; but the uniformly modest numbers which, Eudamus' force apart, figure in the history of the Successors before Ipsus show that he cannot have brought away from India anything approaching 200. The vast figures attributed by various writers to Indian kings and peoples may be neglected, though doubtless Chandragupta, reckoning in the forces of his vassal kings, did control a large number. I have now by accident stumbled on something which certainly will explain the number 500 attributed to Seleucus; it remains to be seen whether the explanation be the correct one. I am not claiming to give an exact proof that it is, but there is a very high degree of probability. I had better indicate the proposed explanation first before coming to the Greek evidence about Seleucus.