Among the various references which Athenaeus makes in his Δειπνοσοφισταί to the encounter of Herakles with Helios, when he was going to the island of Erytheia, we find the following (Book xi. 39 ff):—

Φερεκύδης δ᾿ἐν τῇ τρίτῃ τῶν ίστοριῶν προειπὼν περὶ τοῦ ᾿ Ωκεανοῦἐπιφέρει ὁ δ᾿Ηρακλῆς ἔλκεται ἐπ᾿αὐτὸν τὸ τόξον ὡς βαλῶν καὶ ὁ Ηλιοςπαύσασθαι κελεύει ὄ δὲ δείσας παύεται. ῾´ Ηλιος δὶ ἀντὶ τούτου διδωσιναὐτῷ τὸ δέπας τὸ χρύσεον ὄ αὐτὸν ἐφόρει σὺν ταῖς ἴπποις ἐπὴν δύῃ διὰ τοῦΩκεαυοῦ τὴν νύκτα πρὸς ἐῴην ἴν᾿ἀνίσχει ὁ ᾿´ Ηλιος ἔπειτα πορεύεται ὁ῾ Ηρακλῆς ἐν τῷ δέπαϊ τούτῳ τούτῳ ἐς τὴν ῾ Ερύθειαν κ.τ.λ.

Hellenists still debate whether the ‘wild she-mules’ (ἡμιόνων γένος ἀγροτεράων) of the Iliad (ii 852) are domestic mules or wild equidae.

The problem is further complicated by the fact that the ancients did not seem to differentiate adequately between the true wild ass and the wild hemione, although, according to Hančar's authoritative book—which incorporates the findings of modern zoology—the two are definitely distinct. There is, furthermore, a great deal of plausibility in Keller's statement that the ancients did not always differentiate properly even between wild horses and wild hemiones. In fact, the only author who seems to have had more than an inkling that there is a difference between wild asses and hemiones is Aristotle (Historia Animalium vi 36=580b). Even the distinction between wild species and the domestic mule is sometimes so blurred that only the report that a ‘mule’ had a foal enables one to decide that the animal is a domesticated hemione or wild ass. Under these conditions little help can be derived from nomenclature, though, for the sake of completeness, we will indicate whether the animal is called hemionos, onos agrios, onagros, asinus ferus, or mula.

When a new field of view was opened to us some years ago by Schliemann's unearthing of Mykenae, there were no sufficient data already known to enable us to judge of the age of the civilization there presented to us. Since then the discovery of many other pre-Hellenic tombs in Greece, and the unexpected links which I have found in Egypt, afford some basis for an approximate chronology. We will therefore consider here (l) the comparisons between the objects found in the six tombs in the circle at Mykenae, and others found in Egypt, (2) the relation of these to other pre-Hellenic tombs, (3) the artistic and climatic data bearing on the Mykenaean civilization. I cannot profess these notes to be exhaustive; they are merely what occurs to a bystander who is more familiar with Egyptian archaeology; and many of the facts I am indebted to Mr. Ernest Gardner and Mr. Walter Leaf for pointing out to me, while examining the collections at Athens.

Taking the graves in the order of their numbers (as adopted in the Museum and by Furtwaengler), we find in grave I. a group of glass beads which have been greatly changed by moisture: the original colour is seen where the outer scale is broken away, it was a clear prussian blue, decomposing to white on the surface.

At p. 319 n. 203 of my recent book, I discuss

the appearance of the letters ΑΙΔΟΣ … designating the figure of Artemis on an Attic red-figure amphora (depicting the rape of Leto by Tityos) by Phintias (Louvre G42; ARV2 23,1 [Paralipomena 323, Addenda 154; see now also LIMC ii pl. 275, Apollon 1069, vi, Leto 34; PLATE I] …). That this constitutes an association between the goddess and aidôs is the position of Kretschmer [Die griechischen Vaseninschriften (Gütersloh 1894) 197], Norwood [Essays on Euripidean drama (Berkeley 1954) 76 n. 2], and Schefold [Götterund Heldensagen der Griechen in der spätarchaischen Kunst (Munich 1978) 68].

The primary purpose of this article is to publish two terracotta representations of lute-players in the British Museum. The subject is rare, but not quite so rare as might be supposed from the scarcity of literature about it. It has, therefore, seemed worth while to add a Ust of the examples known to us—a list which does not claim to be exhaustive—and to discuss briefly some of the problems which they raise. We do this in the hope that it may stimulate further investigation of a neglected theme.

Between lutes and lyres there is a difference of principle which could hardly be more fundamental. The strings of the lyre are relatively numerous, but, in default of a fingerboard, fret-board, or neck, against which they could be firmly pressed (or ‘stopped’), the possibilities of obtaining more than one note from each string, in so far as they existed, must have been limited as to the number and quality of notes obtainable. The lute has few strings, but they are stretched over a solid neck, or a prolongation of the sound-box, against which they can be pressed so as to shorten the string-length and produce notes of higher pitch than those of the open strings; each string can thus provide a number of notes of approximately equal quality. Lutes and lyres were both common in Asia and in Egypt. In Greek lands the lyre predominated, and no examples of the lute are found in art before the fourth century B.C. The examples known to us are mostly terracottas.

An Attic black-figure neck amphora in the British Museum (Plate VI d) depicts a winged warrior rushing to the right to overtake a ship that is sailing in the same direction. To the left a bird perches on a craggy rock. The winged warrior in this enigmatic scene should, I believe, be identified as the ghost of Palamedes, whose urgency in outracing the ship is dictated by his thirst for revenge.

The name of Palamedes never appears in the Homeric epics. Most people, like Strabo, assume that this is because the story of Palamedes (and of his father Nauplios) was a creation of the poets of the later epic cycle and so was invented only after the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey had been completed. Philostratos, however, suggested that Homer did know about Palamedes, but suppressed any mention of him because he wished to glorify Odysseus. For the story of Palamedes shed such discreditable light on Odysseus' character that the stain it left on the wily hero's reputation could never be effaced.

The account given by Thucydides (I. 107. 2–108. 2) of the Spartan expedition to Central Greece that culminated in the battle of Tanagra is not entirely satisfactory. The main problem that arises out of it may be put in the form of a question: why did the Spartans need such a large force, namely 1,500 hoplites ‘ἑαυτῶν’ with 10,000 more ‘ τῶν συμμάχων ’, merely for the purpose of coercing the Phocians? It is not, I think, an unreasonable criticism to say that the aim and strength of the expedition, as given by Thucydides, seem quite out of proportion, and most modern historians have found it difficult to accept his account in full. The problem has usually been solved by assuming that the Spartans had an ulterior motive, namely the re-establishment of a strong Thebes as a check to Athens. But a careful reading of Thucydides should make it quite clear that he at any rate knew nothing of any ulterior motive. For at the beginning of his account he gives the Spartans' desire to protect the people of Doris as the sole motive for the expedition. Then, he goes on, after dealing with the Phocians the Spartans started out on the homeward journey (‘ άττεχώρουν πάλιν ’). But finding that they were cut off by the arrival of an Athenian squadron in the gulf of Corinth, while the land route was already blocked because of the Athenians' control of the Megarid, ‘ they decided to remain in Boeotia and consider what was the safest way for them to get home ’. The Athenians thereupon marched into Boeotian territory to oppose them, and the result was the battle at Tanagra. This account, I think, makes it sufficiently plain that in Thucydides' opinion the battle of Tanagra was entirely the result of an Athenian attempt to trap the Spartan expeditionary force, and that if left to themselves the Spartans would have gone straight home after dealing with the Phocians. Thus the usual answer to the problem involves a serious departure from Thucydides' account of the affair. But in addition this theory of an ulterior move directed by Sparta against Athens does not fit in at all well with what is known of Spartan policy during this period. For it is remarkable that throughout the fifteen years of the First Peloponnesian War Spartan activity against Athens was almost nil, in spite of many attacks on members of her confederacy, the complete subjugation of at least one of them, Aegina, and several raids oh her own territory: apart from the Tanagra campaign, the only positive action taken by the Spartans themselves was the rather half-hearted invasion of Attica led by Pleistoanax in 446. It is beyond the scope of this note to consider the reasons for this inactivity on the part of Sparta, but the fact that they were so little active at this time gives very good grounds for believing Thucydides' account of the original cause of the campaign under consideration.

Professor Haspels in her Attic Black-figured Lekythoi has described the work of the Theseus painter and analysed his style. In this account of him she naturally gives more consideration to his lekythoi than to the other shapes that he decorated, but his numerous skyphoi, painted in the ‘White Heron’ workshop, are listed in full and briefly discussed. Miss Haspels describes the Theseus painter as the moving spirit in this busy undertaking, until at last, she suggests, he may have ‘got weary of inspiring the hacks in the “Heron workshop” and of witnessing their decay’ and so left and went elsewhere. Later she adds that ‘that workshop apparently turned out skyphoi before he joined’, but the theme has never been developed, and there is now a general tendency to attribute all skyphoi from this shop that are not by his hand to followers or imitators of the Theseus painter without further qualification. This may be somewhat misleading, since followers and imitators are necessarily later than what they follow and imitate. I hope to show that the shop in which the Theseus painter painted his skyphoi was a flourishing concern, making both skyphoi and kylikes, before he entered it, and that some of his companions, so far from being imitators, were his seniors and to some extent his teachers.

At Lysistrate 614-705, after the actors have left the acting area, the two half-choruses, instead of addressing the audience directly in a parabasis as we expect, engage in a debate which displays some of the features of a regular parabasis. The male half-chorus after removing their outer garments (615) perform a lyric stanza followed by an epirrhema, whereupon the women likewise prepare to sing by disencumbering themselves (637): ἀλλὰ θώμεσθ᾿ ὧ φίλαι γρᾶες ταδὶ πρῶτον χαμαί’ ‘but, old dears, let's first put these things on the ground’. The two most recent commentators both suppose, as scholars have long assumed, that the women at this stage remove their outer garments. I wish to suggest an alternative possibility, that the female half-chorus remove only one garment, at 686, and that at 637 they merely put down their pitchers in preparation for their first lyric stanza. This is not a new suggestion, but it has never been adequately discussed.

At a time when the history of Greek vase-painting is only gradually being reconstructed as one discovery after another supplies the necessary clues, it is difficult to assign to the various classes of pottery names which will be permanently satisfactory. This difficulty is the excuse for the many misleading terms which have crept into our study of Greek vases. Names assigned purely provisionally soon became generally accepted, and when once part of the common nomenclature, it becomes a matter of convenience that they should be retained. In many cases this retention is necessary; otherwise, in the present uncertainty of the origin of so many of the early styles, we should continually be changing names according as one theory or another appeared more plausible. In other cases, however, where our knowledge rests on firmer foundations, and where a term has become a confusing anomaly, it is time that we should revise our loose use of language. Such a case is that of the ‘Proto-Attic’ vases. These vases, connecting as they do the Attic Dipylon with the Attic black-figured style, show the continuity of Athenian ceramic art. To call a vase ‘Proto-Attic’ when it is posterior to another Attic fabric is therefore a contradiction in terms.

In the first book of Hero's Pneumatics, chaps. 4–6, there is a description of a way in which it is possible to make water flow at a constant and adjustable rate. This is the old problem of the water-clock, in which the flow of water has to be constant during the day, but must be adjusted from day to day to suit the unequal length of the hours, which were reckoned from sunrise to sunset, and so were long in summer but short in winter. Hero solves the problem in the following way :—

In the container he places a siphon, through which the water flows ; this siphon he places on 2 float, which sinks down slowly as the water drains out. The rate of the flow depends upon the depth of the outer end of the siphon below the surface of the water of the container; as the float follows the surface, the depth is constant, and so is the rate of the flow.

A Hellenistic terracotta from Myrina now in the Louvre is interpreted as showing a young woman tending the ‘gardens of Adonis’ in connection with the rites of the Adonia. Further associations are made between the perfume apparently being poured into a planter from an alabastron that the young woman holds, Adonis’ mother Myrrha, the provenience of the terracotta (Myrina) and grave rituals.

In a footnote in J.H.S. 1918, p. 144, I stated the view that the battle (319 B.C.) in which Antigonus defeated Alketas and the associated generals took place in the αὐλὼν which leads from the N.E. corner of the Limnai towards Pisidian Antioch, carrying the southern or Pisidian road across Asia Minor eastward. This important route, regarded as a highway from the west coast to the Cilician Gates, is a recent discovery, though parts of it have been often described and traversed. In J.H.S. 1920, p. 89 f., I have argued that it was the road by which Xerxes' great army marched from Kritalla to Kelainai.

There are two authorities on whom we depend for details of the battle of 319 B.C., Polyaenus Strat. 4, 6, 7 and Diodorus 18, 44; but both of these gather all their information from that excellent military writer Hieronymus of Cardia, the friend and historian of Eumenes. Polyaenus tells the story with soldierly brevity, relating only the chief military features: Diodorus diffusely and at great length; but so that we can recognise Hieronymus behind and beneath, and restore the full account as given by that writer.

In August 1968 the Athens Centre of Ekistics (ACE) launched a large-scale study of settlements within the territories of city-states in ancient Greece. The aim of the project is ‘to come to a better understanding of the problems of human settlements by the study of their past’, their evolution through time and their relationships with total space (physical, economic, cultural), so that solutions may be offered ‘to many of the problems related to human settlements, from which humanity is at present suffering’. A method is being employed which synthesises the researches of archaeologists and historians with the work of architect-planners and topographers in an attempt to test by sample studies the validity of eight hypotheses about ancient settlements which have been advanced by C. A. Doxiadis on the basis of ‘general ekistic experience’. Doxiadis, an architect and planner of wide experience and considerable insight, has formulated the inter-disciplinary scientific study of human settlements and called it Ekistics. His hypotheses about ancient settlements are given at length in the first annual report on the Ancient Greek Settlements Project, but they may be summarised as follows.

Aristotle and Theophrastus are the two major sources for our knowledge of the atomist theory of weight.

In the De generatione et corruptione Aristotle argues that one atom may be hotter than another and that therefore the atoms cannot be impassible, since an atom which is only slightly hot could not fail to be acted upon by an atom that was very much hotter (i 8 325b36–26a14, esp. 326a6–12 = in part DK 68A60). The premiss to the argument Aristotle derives in part from a comparison with weight. It would be ridiculous, he claims, to suppose that hotness and coldness belong to the atoms, but that heaviness and lightness, hardness and softness do not belong to them (326a6–8). And in fact, he continues, Democritus does claim (καίτοι…γε… φησίν) that each of the ‘indivisibles’ is βαρύτερον…κατὰ τὴν ὑπεροχήν (a9–10). Aristotle has already supposed that one kind of atom, a round atom, may be accounted as hot (a3–5). The use of the comparative for weight (βαρύτερον) Aristotle now takes to justify the use of the comparative for heat (θερμότερον a10–11): from this there follows the argument that the atoms cannot be impassible.

In JHS cx (1990) 174-7 Dr John Chadwick expresses scepticism about certain lines of argument followed in my article ‘The Rise of the Greek Epic’ (JHS cviii [1988\ 151-72). He will not expect me to be heartened by his remarks. But I am. If this (I reflect) is the worst that the linguistic establishment can throw at me, there cannot be too much wrong with my approach.

His paper consists largely of a rehearsal of elementary facts and principles familiar to me and to everyone in the field. We differ, evidently, in our assessments of the bearing of these facts and principles on my reconstruction of the main phases of the epic tradition. I will try to explain succinctly why his representations leave me so unabashed.

If any confirmation were required of the evidence supplied by tbe first inscription published in the J.H.S. 1904, as to the ancient name of Dorla, it would be found in the Roman accounts of the siege of Isaura by Servilius Isauricus. Frontinus, iii. 7, 1, says that Servilius compelled the city to surrender from thirst, flumine ex quo hostes aquabantur averso. Now there are very few cases in which such an operation is possible. Three conditions must be fulfilled: (1) the city must be dependent for its water almost entirely on a river flowing through it or close to the wall; (2) there must be open ground on the opposite side of the river towards which the water can be diverted; (3) the operation must not be on so great a scale as to be beyond the power of an army such as Servilius had with him, a comparatively small and rather lightly equipped force, able to cross the Taurus from Cilicia, and operate on the northern flanks of the mountains.

In Evolution, I tried to date tripod-cauldrons by the development of their shape and decoration, and by the style of human and animal figurines upon them, particularly by the style of horses on tripod-handles. I now want to compare tripod-horses with horses on stands, but first I must examine the foundations, and cast a glance at dating evidence afforded by fibulae.

In my former study I ventured to tamper with the order laid down by Furtwängler. Not unnaturally, some of his successors at Olympia resisted. They have not met my contention that tripods with solid legs and handles show a consistent development in section from solid to flat, in decoration from simple to elaborate, but they still find it necessary to insert elaborate plated tripods, decorated with advanced horses, into the sequence, so that late solid tripods can imitate their patterns. Plated tripods cannot go in the middle of the series, as Furtwängler said, because too many solid tripods are hybrids between his classes I and III. Hampe puts plated tripods before the decorative period of solid tripods and equates the horses of the last-named with Boeotian rabbits of the seventh century. A horse is a horse and rabbits are different. Early seventh century horses are not at all like rabbits. Let him look again at his own Boeotian brooches.

With but two exceptions, no trace now remains of the shrines with which this paper deals, or at least no trace has been revealed by excavation. Practically the sole record of these buildings is to be found on the coins struck in the district during the period of the Roman Empire, and more especially during the third century of our era. The earlier coins, from the beginning of the coinage towards the end of the fifth century B.C., tell us something about the cults, but little of their furniture. But in the Roman age, especially during the time of the family of Severus and Elagabalus, there was a considerable outburst of coinage, which, in its types, reveals certain details interesting to the student of the fringe of Greek and Roman culture.

The evidence thus provided is necessarily disjointed, and concerns only the external, official aspects of the Phoenician religion. The inner truth of these things, it is safe to say, is hidden for ever: even the development from the primitive religion to the weird syncretistic systems of the Roman age is hopelessly obscure. One can only see dimly what was the state of things during the period illustrated by the monuments.

In view of the importance of ascertaining the limits of the influence of the early civilization of the Aegean, the existence of four Mycenaean vases in the little museum at Torcello has a certain interest.

This museum contains a miscellaneous collection of antiquities, some dug up in the island itself or coming from the ecclesiastical buildings close by, some from the adjacent islands in the lagoon. Amongst a number of vases of later date are the four in question.

The first of these (No. 727) is a small pseudamphora of somewhat flattened form. The buff slip is decorated all over the body of the vase with bands of red glaze-paint. The spaces on the shoulder of the vase not occupied by the spout and handles are filled with parallel strokes gradually decreasing in length, which thus form the triangles of bars common on late Mycenaean ware.