The ‘Great Bronze Athena’, or the Athena Promachos by Pheidias, was a famous statue on the Akropolis of Athens, according to the literary sources. Numerous attempts have been made in the 19th and 20th centuries to reconstruct the image of the statue based on various sources: coins, gems, lamps, Byzantine miniatures, and sculpture. However, some of these attempts have revealed a number of inconsistencies in treatment and interpretation of the various sources. This article, therefore, endeavours to separate the valid from the invalid through a careful assessment of all the available evidence relating to the Athena Promachos as the Pheidian statue rather than the iconographic type.

The four centuries with which this study of Greek tondos is concerned cover a period which begins in the reign of Gyges of Lydia and ends shortly before the accession of Alexander the Great. Most of the tondos which have survived are of small size. The Strangford shield is an exception. No doubt other statues had decorated shields, but we know nothing about them, nor have we any evidence that the round form was used for large pictures. We are concerned with circles seldom more than a foot, and sometimes as little as a quarter of an inch, in diameter, with cups and plates, mirrors and coins. Nevertheless, in spite of their small size, and the consequent restriction of the composition to a small number of figures, these works are often of the first quality, and always reflect the style and ideas of their period.

The geometric style gave Greek artists certain principles which they never entirely forgot, although they adhered to them more strictly at some times than at others. These principles are definition and symmetry. On Geometric vases, scene is marked off from scene and part from part; transitions are never slurred, and the defining lines are clearly drawn. The great structures and the minor parts within them are held together by the echoing of motives and figures, symmetrically balanced. Other features of the geometric style are less long-lived, the filling ornament, the angularity of the figures and the refusal to represent depth; yet they are not finally and completely abandoned until the sixth century or even later.

The following article is a direct continuation of that which has just appeared in the Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. xiv. pp. 226 to 318, and must be read in the light of the general introduction to the whole excavations there given. It is enough to say here that part of the Necropolis of Rhitsóna, five miles on the Boeotian side of Chalcis, the conjectured site of the ancient Mycalessos, was excavated by the writers in the autumn of 1907 and the spring of 1908; and that the vase finds were so considerable that they have had to be divided up between several articles. In the B.S.A. referred to there were published general sections on Topography, History, and Method of Burial, the Catalogue of eight Graves, and a discussion of their Dating and of what we have decided to call the Boeotian Kylix Style. The present article will contain the Catalogue of four more graves, a description of two individual vases from the B.S.A. graves now reproduced in colours, and general sections on the meaning of our incised Inscriptions, and the provenance of some of our vase types.

The paper focuses on the representation of pedagogical and political communication between (and around) Plato, Dion and Dionysius II in Plutarch's Life of Dion. Plutarch's narrative invokes both the Platonic critique of writing as an inadequate medium for teaching philosophy, and the polarity between free oral speech and writing as a symptom of tyranny. It is argued that the Life espouses but also complicates and implicitly interrogates the opposition between writtenness and orality across the philosophical and the political domain, thus constituting a rich intertextual response, from an Imperial Platonist author, to the Platonic concerns about the written word.

In a brief digression near the end of the Euthydemus (305 b ff.), Socrates describes one of his anonymous critics, who rejects philosophy in general but imagines himself to be both an accomplished thinker and a successful politikos. Clearly, the portrait is that of Isocrates. The similarity between Isocrates' real character and Plato's stylization is so pronounced that we are tempted to describe 305 b ff. as one of Plato's intentional anachronisms (the dramatic date of the dialogue is earlier than the death of Alcibiades, 275 b). The portrait includes several noteworthy points. First, 305 b-c refers to Socrates' opponent as a writer of forensic speeches. To judge from the tone of the entire passage, which is not markedly hostile to the anonymous person (cf. 306 c 6 ff.), that would be an unfair description of Isocrates if written after the publication of the Panegyricus c. 380 BC. Second, Plato defines the unnamed person as both a speechwriter and a practical politician (306 b: ή πολιτικὴ πρᾶξις ‘the statesman's business’). The latter part of the definition does not square with Isocrates' career as schoolmaster and political adviser or, later on, as the author of political pamphlets. Unless it is assumed that 305 b ff. aims at Isocrates' dealing with Realpolitik, he would not have deserved Socrates' criticism that he ‘partakes’ of two different things. In that case, the same reproof for being ‘the border-ground between philosopher and politician’ might have been addressed to Plato himself as a dialectician and, concerning his other activities, as the head of the Academy and the author of such political dialogues as the Gorgias.

At the heart of the Thesmophoria festival lies the story of Persephone and the promise of agricultural fertility, but scholars point out that more seems to be at stake, suggesting that the scene of women ‘camping out’ in the sanctuary under the control of the female archons recalls a primitive time when women, perhaps, ruled the city or that the festival creates a place where women are at least beyond the control of men. There are hints, moreover, that during the Thesmophoria women were also actively involved in some kind of juridical activity, especially on the second day of the festival, when they fasted in imitation of Demeter's grief over the abduction of Persephone and the injustice perpetrated against her. Indeed, the epithet Thesmophoros was understood already in ancient times to have some connection with human law. This paper argues that on the second day of the festival women engaged in some kind of impromptu juridical procedure aimed at solving crimes and punishing anonymous wrongdoers and it uses as evidence Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae and a series of curse inscriptions deposited in late Hellenistic times at the Sanctuary of Demeter at Cnidus, as well as a few single examples from Locri, Amorgos and elsewhere.

This article explores one of the remarkable legacies of the Hellenistic Greek world: the subsequent activity in the Indian Ocean of Greek-speaking Egyptians and certain people of India who called themselves Yavanas. But while doing so, it addresses certain vexing issues. One is whether merchants from Roman Egypt established stable residential communities in the ports of India during the first and second centuries AD. Another is how Yavanas living near the Gulf of Barygaza and the western Ghats in western India came to call themselves by a term borne centuries earlier by Greeks living in regions of northern India. By probing these issues, the article sheds light on how travellers and expatriates from Roman Egypt, and the Greek language and culture that they often carried with them, fit into the multilingual and multicultural web of a connected Indian Ocean. But it also formulates how a commercial network of Egyptians established residential settlements in the ports of India that generated and transmitted local knowledge to other members of the network. The author of the notable Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (Periplus Maris Erythraei) was arguably both a participant in the network and a recipient of its knowledge.

A vase fragment from Olbia has been recognized in recent years as a key piece of evidence for the tragic chorus in fifth-century Athenian drama, especially because it shows the use of masks by dancers in such a chorus. This article provides the first clear illustration of the fragment, revealing much detail about the dress of the dancers, with a range of further information about the object (its size, discovery etc.). The illustration shows for the first time that the scene on the fragment includes inscriptions which declare the central aulete and percussionist to be KALOS and each of the two dancers to be KALE. A survey of KALE tags and similar inscriptions shows that there is no direct parallel for these KALE inscriptions. Moreover, these KALE tags are all the more remarkable in that they are attached to dancers who are appearing in female dress and female roles, but who are also male in biological sex. That usage raises the larger issue of gender in the theatre, which is set beside other indications that actors might be treated as in some sense female.

To ask a question about ‘patronage’ is to view the issue from a top-down, broadly-conceived theoretical perspective. To understand Athenian political thought, we need to take an emic approach, to consider the perspective of the Athenian citizenry, which was concerned with present realities rather than complex, abstract models. The Athenian system's protection of individual citizens incidentally put broad restrictions on elite patronage, but, despite these limitations, relationships of patronage persisted throughout the Classical period albeit in non-threatening forms. Measures that ensured financial independence for the poor came only ad hoc and gradually. This article pursues three theses: (1) Athenians cared more about securing the freedoms of individual citizens than abolishing patronage, (2) patronage (as we would call it) existed in Athens but only in forms not threatening to civic freedoms and (3) in Athenian thinking political freedom was prior to financial independence. This article also explores the possibility of patronage systems existing in Greek poleis outside Athens, arguing that patronage-limiting practices were typical of democratic regimes but unusual for oligarchies.

The six graves catalogued below were excavated in 1907 and 1908, at the same time as those already published by Professor Burrows and myself in B.S.A. xiv. and J.H.S. xxix. Their position in the cemetery is indicated on the Plan, B.S.A. xiv. p. 230, Fig. 1. Their contents consist almost entirely of Proto-Corinthian and Corinthian vases. None contained any vases of what we have called Boeotian Kylix ware, and only Graves 4 and 14, the latest of the six, show any direct connexion with graves that did contain it.

This connexion is worth noting in detail for its bearings on the view, put forward B.S.A. xiv., that the Boeotian Kylix style was, in part at least, the result of Corinthian influence. Indeed the chief importance of the graves here published lies perhaps in the confirmation they afford this view.

The scene in Iliad 11 where Nestor's slave Hekamede prepares a restorative κυκεών for his guests in his great cup, which only he can lift when it is full, has often been cited in connection with the skyphos from Ischia, dated to c.735–720 BC, with its verse inscription that alludes to Nestor's εὔποτον ποτήριον. Now that scholarly opinion is increasingly swinging towards a seventh-century dating for the Iliad, it seems more prudent than ever to see the Ischia inscription as a reflex not of our Iliad but of a similar Nestorian drinking episode in earlier epic tradition. His cup, as described, has features of a Bronze Age vessel; and the motif of the mighty goblet is paralleled in the Ugaritic Baal epic, current not later than the fourteenth century.

Here I want to consider another element in the scene, namely the grated cheese which Hekamede adds to her posset. I hope to show, by a combination of metrics and archaeology, that this too, even though it cannot be traced back to the Bronze Age, belongs to a traditional account that is many generations older than our Iliad.

THE office of Federal Archon was apparently created in the League which was revived and reconstituted by Thebes after her liberation from Sparta in 379. Like the archons of the individual cities, the federal archons seem to have had little power; as Swoboda points out, the fact that their seat was not in Thebes but in Onchestus 4 shows that their functions were chiefly ceremonial. This explains why the Boeotarchs but not the archons of Boeotia are frequently mentioned in literature. The archons are, however, important as being the eponymous magistrates of the Boeotian League. From the revival of the League soon after 379 on into Roman times federal documents are generally, and documents of individual cities often, headed with the names of archons of the League.

No apology should be needed for treating afresh these much-discussed battles, if only because the last two years have produced new and important evidence from Delos; though in fact the literary allusions, scanty as they are, have hardly even yet been sufficiently elucidated. I hope in this paper to fix the dates of Andros and Cos by the Delian archon-list, and to consider what that means in terms of B.C. In a subsequent paper, to be published in the next number of this Journal, I hope, by working out the history of the ship which Antigonus Gonatas dedicated to Apollo, to confirm the date assigned to Cos in this paper. If these two dates could really be fixed, they would be invaluable for our understanding of Aegean history in the middle of the third century.

Among the many thousands of terracottas recently recovered from the soil at Tarentum, there is one large group which has not yet received much mention in print. I refer to a series of some hundreds of female statuettes which have been identified by Duemmler and Winter as Artemis figures. The majority of these figures are at present in the Museo Nazionale at Taranto, though some few have found their way into museums elsewhere.

In the main type of the figures there is little variation. They usually range from eight to twelve inches in height, and are standing, female, draped figures each with one or more attributes. They all wear either a lion-skin head-dress, or a lion-skin apron; some, indeed, show both the head-dress and the apron. Most of the examples are single-moulded statuettes with unmodelled back, but there are a few which are almost reliefs. The figurines are for the most part rough and not retouched after moulding, though there are some finely modelled exceptions to this rule.

It is generally admitted that Bekker's Kb—Laur. 81, 11—is the best, as it is the oldest, authority for the text both of the Nicomachean Ethics and of the Great Morals. It is desirable therefore that the testimony of that manuscript should be presented to the learned public as accurately as possible. So far as concerns the Nicomachean Ethics, the reports of that testimony which are now available are chiefly the following: (a) Bekker's, as given in his academical edition of 1831, (b) Schöll's, as given first in Rassow's Forschungen über die Nikomachische Ethik, Weimar, 1874, at p. 10, sqq., and subsequently in Susemihl's editions, of which the third and last was edited by Otto Apelt and published in the Teubner series in 1912, and (c) Bywater's, as given in his Oxford text. Bywater's apparatus criticus is unfortunately what is called a select apparatus criticus.

It must sometimes have occurred to readers of Byzantine literature, after they have perused a number of the occasionally valuable, but almost always dreary, works of which it is composed —lifeless chronicles, polemical and other theology, inflated panegyrics, and grammatical treatises—to ask the question, whether this was really all; whether a quick-witted and intelligent people, such as we know the inhabitants of Constantinople at certain periods to have been, were contented to subsist entirely on such dry mental food. No doubt, religious controversy often ran high, and this, when it fills men's thoughts, is apt to supply the place of intellectual interests; but such discussions did not last for ever, and could not have occupied the minds of the whole of the educated population. A certain source of relief was provided in the numerous poems, songs, and romances in the popular language—some of native growth and dealing with subjects of local or traditional interest, some imitated from the romances of Western Europe—which have been brought to light by the industry of such men as MM. Sathas and Legrand at Paris, Prof. Lambros of Athens, and the late Dr. W. Wagner of Hamburg. But even these do not furnish that element of liveliness, which we should expect to manifest itself in some shape or other in a great centre of activity.

Among the many intrigues described by Thucydides in Book viii one of the strangest and most obscure is the episode in which Phrynichos, while serving as one of the commanders of the Athenian fleet at Samos, twice sent messages to Astyochos, the Spartan ναύαρχος. Because the intrigue was conducted with the utmost secrecy, detailed information about it cannot have been easily obtainable, and the motives of all the persons involved, who included Alkibiades and Tissaphernes, were perhaps fully known to nobody. The account given by Thucydides (50–1) leaves much unexplained: it gives the impression that he has recorded what he has ascertained from a single informant without adding much comment or interpretation of his own. Had he lived to revise Book viii, he would scarcely have left these chapters as they stand. The object of this paper is to examine these chapters and to suggest that the intrigues of Phrynichos described in them were less exclusively personal in aim, and had somewhat more important consequences, than is generally believed.

The picture of Phrynichos drawn by Thucydides presents him from the outset as a man of exceptional shrewdness who held strong views and did not hesitate to press vigorously for their acceptance even where they were not shared by others. The arguments whereby he dissuaded his colleagues, immediately after their victorious land operations at Miletos, from risking a sea-battle against the newly reinforced Peloponnesian fleet are recorded in some detail (27. 1–4) and with explicit approval (27. 5). Shortly before the episode of his communications with Astyochos he opposed in outspoken terms the plan of the Athenian trierarchs and others who were negotiating with Alkibiades with the intention of overthrowing the democracy and obtaining Persian support. Thucydides devotes a long passage of oratio obliqua to the objections of Phrynichos (48. 4–7). He maintained that Alkibiades was indifferent to the proposed change of constitution and was interested only in securing his own recall; that to Persia the existing alliance with the Peloponnesians was more advantageous than an alliance with Athens could be; that the establishment of an oligarchy would not improve, and might well damage, Athenian relations with the allies. Thucydides expressly concurs with the first of these arguments (48. 4, ὅπερ καὶ ἦν), and his approval of the other two may perhaps be inferred from his subsequent narrative, which confirms their validity.

The main object of the third season's work of the Cyprus Exploration Fund was the excavation at Salamis, of which the results were published in the last number of this Journal. But, as was there mentioned, a small additional sum of money was procured to continue the previous season's work at Polis tes Chrysochou. It was especially important that the field known to us as Site T should be excavated, both because it promised to yield objects of rare beauty and interest, and because the results of the previous operations were, as was pointed out in last year's report, of little scientific value owing to the character of the evidence on which they were based, and required to be tested by further excavation on more trustworthy sites. Before leaving England, therefore, I had written to Mr. J. W. Williamson asking him to negotiate a contract, which (our departure having produced a good effect on the owner's mind) he was fortunately able to secure. To him and to Mr. Cecil Smith, who was most active in procuring the funds, the execution of the project is largely due.

It was near the end of June before work was started at Poli. H. A. Tubbs had been called home by other engagements, so that I was deprived of his cooperation for the remainder of the season. Poli is not to be commended as a summer residence. The heat in the valley is intense, fevers are more easily caught than avoided, and every drop of water fit to drink has to be brought an hour's journey on a donkey. The excavation was uneventful. The only incident which interrupted its course was an attempt by the joint-owner of one of the sites to conclude a contract on his own behalf and defraud his partners of their share of the price, a malpractice which was at once detected by the ever watchful Commissioner, and cost us a couple of days.