The unusual proportions of the architrave and frieze of the pronaos and opisthodomos of the second temple of Hera (‘Poseidon’) at Paestum have long been known, and the design has been variously used as evidence for the original form of the Doric frieze and for the unsophisticated design methods of Greek architects. Full measurements of this entablature, on which to base explanations of its design, have not, however, been available. By the kindness of Prof. M. Napoli, Superintendent of Antiquities for the province of Salerno, I was enabled to take some of the necessary measurements in August 1973, and the first aim of this paper is to make them public. Standing on the abaci of the two antae and the two columns of the opisthodomos, I was able to measure the architrave and frieze which they carried, but the next course, the epikranitis, was unfortunately just beyond my reach; my rough measurement made its height 0·30 m, agreeing with that given by KP 29, fig. 28 for the corresponding moulded course behind the pteron frieze, which carried the other end of the ceiling beams. The dimensions of the various elements of the frieze and architrave of the opisthodomos are given in Fig. 1.

In 1962 B. B. Shefton shed much light on the iconography of the centauromachy at the feast, and in 1972 J. P. Barron shone more light on the relationship of this iconography to the lost painting of this subject in the Theseion. Barron convincingly argued, from the evidence of early classical vase paintings and the west pediment at Olympia, that the mural painting in the Theseion was the source of this new theme, the misbehaviour of the centaurs at the wedding feast of Peirithoos, and that it was painted between 478 and 470 B.C. He further suggested that the composition was on more than one level, that it showed both the brawl at the banquet and the pitched battle outside, that the centrepiece of the scene was a pair of figures fighting back to back, and that an axe-swinger was present, among other things.

Most of these inferences seem sound, and yet it is as difficult to visualise what the painting looked like as when Robert in 1895 suggested that the fragments of a krater in Berlin reflected the centre of the composition. These fragments seem to fit Barron's criteria as well as anything else, for the composition is on several levels, two heroes fight back to back, the one on the left swings an axe, and at his feet lies the tail of a centaur, which Robert (with more optimism than proof, I think) considered to be a centaur already killed; there is even a hint of the outdoor conflict. Barron does not, however, revive Robert's suggestion—wisely, I believe—nor does he offer another. Nevertheless I think it might be worthwhile to return to the problem of what the centre of this lost mural painting may have looked like and consider why it remains so persistently elusive.

It might seem waste of labour to examine minutely an account of the battle of Marathon and the Parian expedition so late as that contained in the brief life of Miltiades ascribed to Cornelius Nepos, more especially as I must confess that the results of my enquiry are in the main negative, and that such positive conclusions as I reach have not the charm of novelty, but serve merely to strengthen theories already well known, and in England at least widely accepted. But this late epitome is almost the only consecutive narrative of these events outside the pages of Herodotus. Marathon was sung by poets, and bespattered with rhetoric by patriotic orators, but such historical accounts as there once were of the battle have perished, save for the still later epitome of Trogus Pompeius made by Justin. Again there is good reason to think that Cornelius Nepos is here following the fourth-century historian Ephorus. This is manifestly the case in his account of the Parian expedition, the kernel of which is little more than a translation of the fragment of Ephorus preserved in Stephanus of Byzantium s.v. Paros. That Nepos drew his story of Marathon from the same source is the general, and as I shall hope to show, the right opinion, though it has been denied by Dr. E. Meyer. Further, the view of the campaign and the conception of the battle to be found in Nepos have been accepted as historical by many of the highest authorities in Germany, e.g., by Drs. H. Delbrück, G. Busolt, and in the main by Dr. E. Meyer.

It seems clear from an article by C. H. Kahn in JHS xc (1970) 99–116 that there are still prevalent numerous misconceptions concerning early Greek astronomy. To attempt to correct all these in detail would require a lengthy exposition of elementary points which would be extremely tedious for the discerning reader. There are, however, two matters a lack of understanding of which leads to such erroneous conclusions that one may perhaps be forgiven for a final attempt to clarify the issues.

The critics and commentators who read these notes will probably object that I have not paid sufficient attention to the earlier literature on the subject. I must admit that I have not read Gerlach's paper, which is not accessible in Alexandria, but I have read at one time or another most of the recent papers on the Homeric house from Myres' paper in the Journal of Hellenic Studies to that of Palmer lately published in the Transactions of the Philological Society.* I think that practically all of what was written on the Homeric house before the excavations of Schliemann at Tiryns should now be disregarded. Further since most of that written since the excavation of Tiryns follows the erroneous or ‘traditional’ interpretation of the two megara at Tiryns as a men's and as a women's megaron, it also need not now be taken into account. Palmer's paper makes a great advance, but he did not have the opportunity of knowing the House of Columns at Mycenae. I have therefore as regards earlier literature confined myself to Homer himself and standard editions like those of Monro, Leaf, Merry, and Stanford, and have read the newer translations of the Odyssey, the Loeb version and those of T. E. Shaw and E. V. Rieu. If I have missed anything of importance I can only plead that Alexandria of to-day does not possess the same library facilities as Ptolemaic Alexandria.

The circumstances attending the death of the Caliph Mamoun (A.D. 833) are thus related by Masoudi (+ c. 956), who wrote about a century after the event. On his return from a victorious raid against the Greeks the Caliph encamped in the beautiful valley of Bedidoun. Like all Orientals, he was susceptible to the charm of clear, running water, and at his orders a rustic pavilion was constructed over the spring called Kochaïrah, from which the river Bedidoun flowed. In this the Caliph sat. A silver coin was thrown into the spring, and so clear was the water that the legend of the coin beneath its surface could be read. Mamoun then noticed in the spring a fish ‘a cubit long and shining like an ingot of silver,’ which he desired should be caught for him. This was done, but the fish, when brought to the Caliph, escaped by a sudden movement into the spring, sprinkling the Caliph's breast, neck and shoulders with cold water as it did so. It was again caught, and the Caliph gave orders that it should be cooked. As he did so he was seized by a shivering fit, and when the fish was cooked he was in a high fever and unable to eat it. This was the beginning of the illness which caused his death. Before this took place he had the guides and prisoners called and asked them the significance of the name of the spring Kochaïrah. He was told that it meant ‘stretch out thy feet,’ which he took for an omen of his death. He then asked the Arab name of the country he was in: the reply was ‘Rakkah.’ As it had been foretold him that he should die at a place thus named, he knew that his hour was come. And he died then and was carried to Tarsus and buried on the left side of the mosque.

In the first stasimon of Aeschylus' Agamemnon, the estranged Helen and Menelaus share the second strophe. Beginning with an account of Helen's departure from Argos and her arrival in Troy, the chorus shifts its focus, moving back to the city deserted by the Queen, and to Menelaus grieving in the palace. With Helen no longer there, and Menelaus prey to the pathos that her absence inspires, ‘a phasma shall seem to rule the house. And the charm of beautiful kolossoi is hateful to the husband, and in the absence of eyes, gone is all Aphrodite’ (415–19). The difficulties of the stanza are legion.

Ogni strada, we are told, ogni strada men' a Roma. The roads which lead to Homer, an older goal than the Shrine of the Apostles, are nearly as many. One of them, not the most followed, runs through the literature of the historical centuries. When I say historical, I must observe that I use a term and make a distinction unknown to antiquity. To the ancients Homer was as historical as Pindar, the people of whom he sang were as historical as Pindar's patrons, often their descendants. The μυθῶδες or untrue element which the Greeks noticed in their poetry did not touch the individuals or the events; it was detected in violations of ascertained natural laws, such as the divine interference in ordinary life and the three daily tides of Charybdis. It is the modern world which has set a gulf the other side of Archilochus or Terpander beyond which persons are not found and all we descry is Gods in the making, bloody rites, and commercial movements which have come down to us under a false anthropomorphic and individualistic guise. It is difficult to shake off these modern prepossessions, to realise that the Greek world before 700 was not lit by corpse-candles, a dim field of legal fictions, eponymous and heraldic ancestors, but as human and positive as Phidon with his weights and measures and Solon with his code—as human and positive as the buildings, jewels and vessels which that world has left us. We are reluctant to admit that our ignorance of Lycurgus differs only in degree from our knowledge of Pisistratus, increasing in proportion to lapse of time and such accidental circumstances as the absence of written records.

Mr. A. M. Daniel's article on the above subject (pp. 41 seq.) is so thorough and convincing that it hardly requires further support. But in view of the widespread acceptance of the attribution of the Lycosura statues to a late Roman date, I think a few words in further confirmation of his contention are not out of place.

In spite of the almost unanimous volte-face in the opinion of archaeologists since Dr. Doerpfeld expressed his doubts as to the Greek character of the buildings at Lycosura, my own view (expressed in the Athenaeum, March 22nd, 1890, and at a public meeting of the American School at Athens, January 6th, 1891) that Damophon's work belongs to the first half of the fourth century B.C. has not been shaken. Of course we must all remember that we have here to deal with the question of probability and not of certainty. Yet within these limits it appears to me that the balance of evidence strongly inclines towards the fourth century B.C.

Lunar mansions are twenty-eight constellations or single stars on the route of the Moon during the twenty-eight nights of its visibility. As a mere astronomical curiosity they could neither attract nor reward much attention. Accordingly learned discussions have been limited to descriptions, to controversies where and when they were first established, in Babylonia, India, or China, or to catalogues of the medieval evidence. But if it is realised that they were not observed for their own sake but because the revolution of the Moon was the basis of early time-reckoning which led to the creation of the first calendar, conclusions of more than limited interest can be produced by relating astronomical to religious problems. And this interest will be further increased by the realisation that our zodiac is nothing but the successor of the mansions as it served first the lunisolar, and then the solar, year, of which the former was a device to bring the monthly revolutions of the Moon into harmony with the annual revolution of the Sun, and the latter was based on the revolution of the Sun alone.

But how can we find material to reconstruct a system which was superseded in the remote past, seeing that even the victorious system remains in important respects mysterious, e.g. the reasons for the strange selection of the signs and the presence among them of animal and human figures? We are helped by two circumstances. One is the natural conservatism of our calendars, astrological prognostics, and magical texts: these often preserve traces of earlier stages of human thought. The second circumstance is less natural.

Many eminent foreign scholars have investigated the principles on which Athens conducted her Public Finance during the ascendancy of Pericles, but the subject has been strangely neglected in England, and no apology is perhaps required for drawing attention to its importance and for suggesting certain considerations which appear to the writer fatal to some views which have been widely accepted. Competent writers have come to such different conclusions that certainty is probably unattainable, but it is hoped that the theory propounded in this paper may be regarded as consistent with the admittedly scanty evidence. Finance did not interest Thucydides, who omits such important facts as the transference to Athens of the treasury of the League and the increase of the φόρος during the Archidamian War. The inscriptions, though invaluable, are frequently so badly mutilated that they lend themselves to very different interpretations. Under these conditions dogmatism is obviously inadmissible.

From an old Italian collection there has come to Holland the bronze statuette here published, representing Poseidon as he is known to us from several marbles and bronzes and numerous Hellenistic and Roman coins. The god is shown leaning forward on his raised and bent right leg, his right forearm resting on his thigh, his left hand raised high. The statuette, which measures 17½ cm. in height, is in an excellent state of preservation; only the tops of the thumb and of three fingers of the right hand are missing; too vigorous cleaning has removed much of the patina; on the right side of the neck is a hole, probably a vent. The statuette is of very fine quality and excellent workmanship. In spite of its small size it is impressive and monumental, and strongly recalls a life-sized original; evidently this was a modelled, not a sculptured one; we have to think of a bronze statue. Coins of Demetrios Poliorketes, the figure on which shows exactly the same posture as our bronze, tell us that the right leg rested on a rock and the left hand held a trident.

The most famous of this well-known type is the Lateran statue, which has been much discussed as to the authorship of its original. Unfortunately this is rather a bad example of a Roman copy, made in a very classicist taste, probably in the first half of the second century A.D.; moreover, it has been much restored. Helbig tells us that nose, left arm, both legs up to the knee, ship, dolphin and plinth are restored, while parts of the hair and beard are new.

This contribution reconsiders the question of indications of speakers in ancient Greek dialogue literature and their ‘invention’ by Theodoret of Cyrus by offering a systematic examination of the available (mostly papyrological) evidence. It discusses ancient conventions for marking changes of interlocutors in Greek literary dialogues and compares them with those present in dramatic works and in documentary and paraliterary texts such as reports of court proceedings, the Acta Alexandrinorum and Acta Martyrum, and reports of Church councils. It is hypothesized that the development of indications of speakers in Greek dialogue was influenced by documentary practices of the Imperial period and by paraliterary genres which imitated them.

Aristophanes of Byzantium is credited with inventing the signs for Greek accents, breathings and vowel lengths, according to a single source: a short text found in two 16th-century Paris manuscripts. The passage has a doubtful history, but the story it tells is of considerable interest. We first provide a new edition of this text, based on a new examination of both manuscripts, and a complete translation. Secondly we argue that the author consulted a source that was in Latin and that dealt at least in part with the Latin accent. We conclude by considering the implications of our proposal for the text’s date and circumstances of composition.

After a brief discussion of earlier etymological theories, this article proposes a new analysis of the Greek noun Vóσoζ ‘disease’ as a possessive compound *n-osw-os ‘not having *(h1)osu’, the second constituent of which is cognate with Hitt. ässu ‘well-being’; just like the latter, Greek Vóσoι are characteristically sent or removed by divinities. Moreover, the reconstruction of an abstract noun *(h1)osu ‘well-being (resulting from divine favour)’ can serve as the etymological basis for the somewhat obscure Greek notion of óσιη, which refers to the state of something that is endowed with such *(h1)osu; in fact, phraseological parallelisms between texts from various parts of the Greek world as well as ancient Anatolia point to a common conceptual framework behind all these words.