D. E. L. Haynes' 1964 booklet The Portland Vase and Bernard Ashmole's article of 1967 ushered in a spate of renewed speculations concerning the scenes depicted on the Portland Vase (FIG 1). Despite the considerable literature since then, I venture to propose a new interpretation of part of the vase. First of all, it should be said that I accept the view of Ashmole (and others) against Haynes (and others) that the vase depicts two separate scenes and not one continuous one. I also accept (with many others) Ashmole's interpretation of the first scene as the love or marriage of Peleus and Thetis; the two lovers are figures A and C, Thetis being marked out as a sea-goddess by the sea snake in her lap, with Eros (B) and Zeus or Poseidon (D) looking on.

In 1930 Judeich gave his opinion strongly in favour of the identification of the ‘Theseion’ as the temple of Hephaistos, and the identification has been widely accepted. The excavators of the agora have adopted it and regard the archaeological discoveries as settling the matter. Dinsmoor wrote in 1941, ‘Now that the American excavations have brought to light the foundries, casting-pits and slag-furnaces of the metal-workers' quarter … there can no longer be any doubt as to this attribution’. Apparently there still is some doubt. H. Koch in his recent book on the building has continued to deny the identification strongly and renewed former attempts to reinstate Theseus in some way. He had already objected to the ‘Garden of Hephaistos’ discovered in the precincts of the temple and maintained that all this planting of trees and shrubs was more appropriate to Theseus, with whom were associated Phytalos and the Phytalidai (in fact the garden is appropriate to the site, an attractive setting for the temple, whoever is the occupant). Reviewers have treated his ideas with considerable respect and even favour. H. Plommer in Gnomon xxix (1957) 33 shares the doubts about Hephaistos, but sees difficulties in Theseus too, and leaves the matter open. J. F. Healy in JHS lxxvi (1956) 135 seems inclined to agree with Koch. The name ‘Theseion’ is tending to shed its well-deserved inverted commas. The impression may be given that the whole subject is in the melting-pot again; this note is an attempt to pull it out, in particular by considering the vital evidence of Pausanias.

Pausanias (viii. 29), on the way between Gortys and Megalopolis, after mentioning the ruins of Brenthe, from which the stream Brentheatis ran into the Alpheius, goes on to say: ‘After crossing the Alpheius the country is that called Trapezuntian and there are ruins of the city of Trapezus. Then, turning down on the left to the Alpheius from Trapezus, close to the river is a place called Bathos, where they perform a rite to the Great Goddesses every third year. And there is a spring there called Olympias, which does not flow every other year, and near the spring fire comes up. Now the Arcadians say that the reputed battle of the Giants and Gods took place here and not in Thracian Pallene. … And from the place called Bathos the city called Basilis is distant about ten stades; its founder was Kypselos, who gave his daughter in marriage to Kresphontes, the son of Aristomachos. But in my time Basilis was in ruins, and among them were remains of a shrine of Eleusinian Demeter. Going on from there you will again cross the Alpheius….' Two other mentions are made of Basilis by ancient authors. Stephanus of Byzantium (s. v.) refers to this account of Pausanias, and Nikander (ap. Athen. xii. 8), without giving any name, tells us that in a town founded by Kypselos on the Alpheius certain Parrhasii set up a shrine and altar to Demeter Eleusinia, and that there was a competition of beauty for women there, first won by Erodice, the wife of Kypselos, in which the competitors were called chrysophoroi.

The archaic inscription from Samos recording a dedication to Hera by two Perinthians (SEG xii 391) is a most interesting document from many points of view. But in this paper I shall confine myself to a single topic, the crux of 11. 3–4.

Klaffenbach, the first editor, frankly admitted that he could not master the problems presented by the letters on the stone (3 f.) Ο.ΙΚΗΙΟΙ. He was naturally reluctant to postulate dittography. The text is short and well inscribed, but that is not all. For when one has assumed the engraver's error one is still left with a phrase qualifying the names of the two dedicators, οἰκήιοι Περίνθιοι, for which Klaffenbach could see no satisfactory explanation. He therefore inclined to the possibility that there is a word for some form of craftsman concealed in these letters, and the dedication is comparable to the tithe dedications by potters from the Athenian acropolis. The lack of any word for a craft at all similar to the letters on the stone gives this suggestion the appearance of a last resort.

Robert thought that dittography should be assumed and οἰκήιοι explained as referring to the relationship as kinsmen which existed between the two dedicators but which was not evident from their names and patronymics. This explanation did not convince Klaffenbach, nor is it supported by other examples. And, as Guarducci rightly objected, clearer ways of expressing their relationship, if this is what the dedicators intended, could surely have been found.

At Cyrene, during the summer of 1947, the Antiquities Department of the British Military Administration of Cyrenaica cleared fallen debris from some of the Hellenistic tombs to the northeast of the city, and near the line of the modern road to Apollonia. In the course of these operations some intact burials came to light.

The passage in the Chronicle of the Successors dealing with the year Phil.07 (=317/316 BC; ABC 10 Obv. 14–18 = BCHP 3 Obv. 33–37) is often used as a marker to favour the low-chronology hypothesis for the early Hellenistic period and Second Diadoch War. This in-depth study of this passage deals with the nature of the troops mentioned there (lúeren2.meš lugal, ‘royal troops’, and lúḪa-ni-i šà lugal, ‘royal Ḫanû troops”) and the possible implications for the chronological debate. The result is that the passage is not pivotal for the low chronology because it is not only in a low-chronology scenario that it is possible. The use of ‘royal (Ḫanû) troops' in the Chronicle does not exclude the high chronology for the Second Diadoch War.

This paper discusses the interpretation of an important historical document: IG XII, 5, 608, a victory list from Iulis on ancient Keos. Since its discovery in 1883 it has always been described as a chronologically ordered official victory list of Kean athletes who have won at each of the major games. The surviving portion contains one complete list prefixed by the words ‘these won at Nemea’, and preceded by fourteen other names, which must, following the usual order, belong to Isthmian victors. Since the two lists together name two athletes for whom Bakchylides wrote victory songs, Argeios (odes 1 and 2) and Lachon (odes 6 and 7), it has long been used as a means of dating the first pair of poems, as well as the victories mentioned on the inscription not celebrated by Bakchylides. More recently, it has been used to fix the death of that poet to just after 452, in spite of a clear reference to him in Eusebios' Chronicle under the year 431. It is the contention of this paper that this unique victory list has been misclassified and misinterpreted. It is not a chronologically ordered official victory list; it is rather an honorific victory list in which the entries are arranged by decreasing order of importance. This interpretation, and its various repercussions, destroys many of the currently accepted views about the dating of Bakchylides.

The masterpiece of Oriental craftsmanship reproduced in Plates I—III is said by General L. P. di Cesnola to have been found in April 1875, in a rich but partially despoiled chamber-tomb at Amathus in Cyprus. Cesnola's account of the discovery exaggerates the depth at which chamber-tombs are found in Cyprus, but his plan corresponds fairly well with that of a large tomb (still accessible in 1894, and probably to-day) in the low ground north of the acropolis of Amathus. The silver bowl, already broken, and other objects, are said to have been found in a ‘copper cauldron,’ as if discarded by an earlier tomb-robber.

The ‘Amathus Bowl’ and a bronze shield-boss (rondache) said to have been found with it were published by G. Colonna-Ceccaldi in 1876 and republished in 1882 in his collected papers. The copper-plate illustration is signed S. Dardel, and was printed by Ch. Chardon ainé in Paris. If the ‘patère et rondache’ were brought separately to Paris, this may account for their alienation from the main Cesnola Collection. Dardel's engraving does not include the long ends of the rim, and is inaccurate in several details, as appears from the reproduction in fig. 1. It was reproduced on a smaller scale in Helbig, Homerisches Epos, 1884, Plate I, and repeatedly elsewhere.

In 1908 there was excavated at Rhitsona a particularly richly furnished single-interment grave that included among the 400 odd items of its furniture two comparatively insignificant black-figure vases, a little spout vase and a lekythos, the interest of which was not immediately recognised. Recent work on the black-figure pottery of Boeotia shows that these two vases belong to the same fabric as the famous lekane in the British Museum, B 80, which has been the subject of much controversy in the matter of its origin and date as well as of the interpretation of the scenes upon it.

This review of recent books about Alexander the Great and related topics focuses in particular on how much attention scholars have paid to the eastern aspects of the history and historiography of the period. It traces the identification of Alexander as an essentially ‘western’ figure back to the period of the Enlightenment, and shows how the work of scholars in the 18th century set the terms of the subsequent debate. It goes on to show how work on the Alexander Romance displays a far broader and inclusive range of intellectual approaches than traditional Alexander historiography, and suggests that the study of the historical Alexander would benefit from seeing Alexander as belonging in a Near Eastern context as well as a Greek or Macedonian one.

An earlier article of mine, Kovacs (2009a), discussed OT 1424–1530, whose genuineness was impugned most recently by Dawe (2001; 2006). I argued that 1424–67 (which I call A) are genuine, but that 1468–1530 (which I call B) are spurious. Sommerstein (2011), accepting my defence of A, undertook the defence of all but a few lines of B as well, dismantling much of my case against it and adding the argument that the transmitted ending mirrors the play's beginning and is therefore presumptively Sophoclean. The present article, in part a reply to Sommerstein's reply, restates some of my earlier arguments and also presents new evidence for the spuriousness of B.

One of the most interesting of the myths concerning the migration to the West of those Trojan heroes who survived the destruction of their city is that of Antenor and his sons. That Antenor and his family received the embassy of the Greeks, saved them from attack by a group of Trojans and consistently urged peace and the return of Helen is already established in Homer. The consequent decision of the Greeks to spare the Antenorids at the sack of Troy is almost certainly present in the epic cycle. Somewhat later, two further traditions emerge: first the claim that Troy was betrayed by the Antenorids; second, that Antenor and various of his sons travelled overseas and settled in distant lands, notably Cyrene in Libya and Patavium in the Veneto. For anyone concerned with the development of the myth, it is therefore deeply frustrating that so little should remain of what must have been a crucial text: the Antenoridae of Sophocles. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that there is far more to be known about this play than has hitherto been perceived.

It may be desirable to draw attention to an item of some interest for the history of literary genres which has just appeared in a Greek periodical which is not, as yet, widely accessible.

Angelos Matthaiou (ΗΟΡΟΣ iv [1986] 31–4) publishes two grave stelai from Nikaia, between Athens and Piraeus. The script is unusual, in that the texts are written retrograde and from the bottom to the top of the stele. The obvious parallel for this is a funerary text discussed by Missjeffery in BSA lvii (1962) 136 no. 42 and dated by her around 540; one of her last scholarly observations was to confirm that the new texts appeared to be in the same hand.

The Library of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum possesses a manuscript volume containing a large collection of notes on the antiquities of Lycia made at different times by Samuel Birch. A considerable part of the volume appears to be a transcript from the papers of E. T. Daniell, the scholar who accompanied Spratt and Forbes on their travels in Lycia in 1842. Daniell copied a large number of inscriptions in Lycia, the Cibyratis, Pisidia and Pamphylia, some of which were published by his fellow-travellers in the second volume of their journal. It is particularly unfortunate that Daniell did not live to publish the results of his labours, as they have clearly suffered very seriously at the hands of others. What became of his original MS. is not known, only one page apparently in his hand remaining incorporated in Birch's volume. Birch's copies must be received with a considerable amount of caution, particularly as regards the forms of the letters. At the same time there is much that is worth publishing, and I have to thank the Keeper of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities for his permission to publish what follows.

In his carefully balanced and analytical investigation of the ὅρκιον τῶν οἰκιστήρων of Cyrene (JHS lxxx 94–111), A. J. Graham seems to me to have been somewhat misled in his treatment of the verb αὐτοματίζω by the not very exact entry in LSJ Add. et Corr. 2055. Under the original entry in LSJ the meanings are correctly enough given. The fourth-century B.C. authors quoted used it either of persons—‘to act of oneself, act off-hand or unadvisedly’ (X. Cyr. 4.5.21) or of things—‘to act spontaneously’ (Arist. GA 715–27). But when after the publication of the Cyrene inscription the entry was amended and amplified to cover the activity of the Pythia, the editors rather unfortunately chose simply to translate it to ‘deliver an oracle’. Hence Graham following them writes that ‘contemporary (i.e., fourth-century) uses of the word which have been recorded are quite different in meaning’, and concludes that ‘it is an unusual word and χράω would be expected in its place’.

A few years ago R. M. Ogilvie argued against the widely-held view that Theocritus in Idyll i represents the cowherd Daphnis as another Hippolytus, martyred in the cause of Chastity. Nevertheless the view he attacked has been revived in a recent study of Theocritus' pastorals:

‘The chaste Daphnis … died rather than submit to Aphrodite … Both Hippolytus and Daphnis are chaste and wish to preserve their purity at all costs, even that of death … Both heroes are deeply committed to chastity … Daphnis … a true tragic hero, resists all temptation and so pines away to his death.