Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe is a Greek novel that is extremely rich in historical and historiographical allusions. Virtually all of those so far detected derive from Greek texts and events in Greek history. In this article I shift the focus to Roman history, and suggest that Rome is not as absent as it is usually supposed to be in the Greek novels. In support of this claim, I propose that Chariton's choice of Sicily as a topographical setting can be related to three episodes from the Republican period that all involve Roman interventions in Sicily. Section I: the removal of Callirhoe (described at the beginning of the novel as an ἄγαλμα) from Syracuse recalls Verres’ provincial mismanagement of Sicily (73–71 BC), specifically his removal from Syracuse of Sappho's statue. Section II: the character of the pirate Theron is freighted with markers that point to the ‘pirate’ Sextus Pompey and his conflict with Octavian from 42–36 BC. Section III: Chaereas’ triumphant return to Syracuse at the end of the novel, loaded with spoils from the Persian king, symbolically reverses and redresses Marcellus’ sack of Syracuse in 211 BC. These all have significant ramifications for how readers (ancient and modern) approach the Greek novels.

There are several inscriptions in the Greek Corpus in which occurs the word ἴκρια or its derivatives ἰκριῶσαιἰκριώματα etc., and in the majority of them it is sufficiently evident from the context that ἴκρια means ‘scaffolding,’ i.e. wooden erections used by workmen for operations carried on at a height from the ground, especially in connexion with the building or repair of temples. This is the recognised meaning of the word in such places. But there are certain exceptions—inscriptions in which, though the same word occurs, it has been given a different rendering— not ‘scaffolding,’ but ‘fence’ or ‘balustrade’ (Latin cancelli). The very full article on ἴκριον by Frickenhaus in Pauly-Wissowa will be found to include the occurrences of the word in inscriptions, and it sets out (ii. 2) the cases where this exceptional rendering ‘fence’ or ‘balustrade’ has been generally accepted. These are I.G. iv. 39; i2. 94; i2. 371, 22. It is with these three inscriptions that I propose to deal in this note.

Although we are fairly well informed about the general organization and important events of the dramatic competitions in Athens, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge on many points of detail. In no place is this more true than with regard to the epinikian celebration honouring members of the victorious performance, about which scarcely any unambiguous testimony has come down to us. This study aims to provide new insights into the problem by demonstrating a connection between the iconography preserved in several sculpted reliefs of the Roman period commonly referred to as Dionysos' visit to Ikarios and the representation of a celebration for poetic victory in Plato's Symposium. Central to the combined testimony of these sources is the ideal of Dionysos’ epiphany to the poet in order to acknowledge and honour his victory in person. So identified as an element of victory celebration, related articulations of this imagined moment can then be detected in several additional representations on vases and in Aristophanic comedy, in both of which other independent elements likewise suggest the activation of an epinikian syntax. Practical matters about the celebration still elude us; what we gain, however, is a clearer sense of the religious ideals that were conveyed through these celebrations in connection with the worship of Dionysos, which formed a nucleus for the dramatic festivals.

From Mrs. A. D. Ure's exhaustive review of my Attic Black-figured Lekythoi in the last volume of JHS (57, pp. 263–5), I realise that for the sake of brevity I must often have been less clear than I ought to have been, so that certain passages in my book call for explanation.

‘ The dearth of material for the years following 530 ’ (‘JHS’ 57, P. 264) is only apparent. There is the Phanyllis class (ABL 63–8), which belongs roughly to the period 520–500, although examples occur both before and after; it was placed at the end of its chapter for the sole reason that the stuff is second-rate, and therefore less important, and not because it is later than Other items in this chapter and the foregoing one. On the contrary, it covers a long space of time.

We should turn to ABL 16–8 and 35–7 to see the points from which these groups start. Their terminus ante quem is given on pp. 63–8: in these pages I discuss the groups at the last possible moment—I admit—but they do not deserve a better treatment. The larger, chief types tack on to such lekythoi as Athens 371 and London B 571 (see ABL 63 and 36) in style and decoration, as well as in date. The lesser ones are followers of such small lekythoi as the ‘ fat runner ’ group (offshoot of the Dolphin class): for some examples see ABL 17, below; the groups themselves are discussed on pp. 66–8.

In a paper on Ancient Oil Mills and Presses I touched upon Heron's screw-cutter, an instrument for cutting an inside screw thread in wood, described by him in his Mechanics (iii. 21). In relation to the oil-presses, it was a mere side-issue; but since the editor of the text, L. Nix, did not seem to have understood the instrument fully, I gave my own interpretation of the text, and a reconstruction, on paper, of the instrument.

This interpretation, or rather, the reconstruction, has been called in question by Mr. E. J. Andre Kenny, who in Antiquity, 1933, 7. 249, declares, that it is ‘ technically impossible.’ If that is the case, either the text, or my interpretation of it (or both), would seem to be at fault. Quite apart from the general inadvisability of starting an argument against a review it seems clear that such a question could only be satisfactorily answered in one way: by a practical experiment.

With the publication recently of two valuable studies on Attic demes, we are now more fully aware of what we know, and do not know, of the deme. With Osborne's work, we now have some idea of the tendency of Athenians to own and maintain property in the deme of origin, but the role of marriage in consolidating property in that deme is more difficult to assess. In contrast to Osborne's focus on the ancestral deme, this brief study will concentrate on the deme into which the woman married; such a deme will be termed the deme of marriage or the marital deme. The study will focus particularly on the families who contracted more than one alliance for their kinswomen into the same outside deme and will emphasize the importance of siblings in securing and maintaining these alliances in the marital deme.

It will probably be a surprise, even to readers of the Journal of Hellenic Studies, to learn that there are at the present day twenty thousand persons in the south of Italy who speak Greek as their native tongue. These people form two separate groups, composed of a number of villages or townships, one of which is found in the heel of Italy or Terra d'Otranto, the other in the toe of that country, towards the extremity of the modern Calabria, in the neighbourhood of Cape Spartivento, and about twenty miles to the south-east of Reggio. The language which they speak, as might well be supposed, is not ancient Greek; nor is it in any sense a lineal descendant of that which was spoken in the colonies of Magna Graecia; but, though it is essentially modern Greek, it differs considerably from the Romaic of Greece, and these differences are of such a nature, that it must have required the lapse of many centuries to produce them. There can be no doubt that at one time it was spoken over a much wider area than at present; indeed, within the memory of man it has died out, and has been superseded by Italian, in places where it had previously been in use. Any traditions which may have existed with regard to the origin of this people and the fortunes of their ancestors they have now entirely lost; and their history, as far as it can be discovered at all, must be reconstructed from casual notices in historical documents and from intimations contained in the language.

My objective in this paper is to consider the question of the mysteriousness or numinosity of the gods in the Iliad by examining first how heroes talk about and react to the gods, and second how Homer handles fate. My aim is to integrate the findings into a wider thesis about the Iliad's narrative strategy.

Griffin (1980) 152 discusses the mysteriousness and numinosity of Homeric gods, and cites Il. i 43–52, Od. iii 371–82, xix 33–42, saying ‘It is perhaps worth emphasising that in each of these … episodes, we see not only the god behaving like a real god, mysteriously, but also the characters who are present at the moment of revelation responding to it in what can only be called a religious way: adoration or reverent silence’.

The two cultus monuments whose existence is bound up with the solid rock on which the Erechtheion stands have always been eagerly sought for in the hope that they might be used as fixed points from which to determine the complicated plan of the temple.

Perhaps the ‘salt spring’ has attracted less attention than the ‘trident-mark.’ Boetticher supposed it to lie at the lowest part of the middle chamber, where a hollow in the rock, communicating with a still deeper cleft, even now collects water after a shower. As Pausanias states that the ‘spring,’ was ἔνδον this is perhaps the most likely spot, unless we prefer to locate it in the West Hall, and to suppose that it was destroyed when the cistern was built. It is true that J. Fergusson placed the ‘spring’ in the north-west angle of the West Cella, but this is quite an arbitrary hypothesis, and appears untenable, because the rock has here a fall towards the outside through the opening which pierces the north wall and leads into the crypt under the north porch.

The date of Phrynichos' Satyroi is not known, but it seems fair to assume that in the late 420s a certain Philoxenos ‘enjoyed’ a vogue in comedy as an alleged effeminate and catamite (note the descriptions of him as θήλεια, καταπύγων, πόρνος, οὐκ ἄρρην. Both Dover and Henderson comment that καταπύγων in can mean just ‘worthless’, but here the more precise and homosexual meaning of the term is meant. Dover is very probably right that in Cl. 686 the poet has selected as male names those of ‘three men whose masculinity could be called in question’.

The three of the excavators of the Orthia Sanctuary most concerned confess to a feeling of discouragement on finding that in the case of one reader at least all their endeavours to tell a plain tale plainly have failed, and that their power of expression has not been equal to the task laid upon it. The reader in question is the writer of the very careful and painstaking review of ‘Artemis Orthia’ which has appeared in the J.H.S. for this year over the initials V. W.-G. It is plain that to the reviewer the grounds on which the latter periods of Laconian pottery, the periods of its decay, upon which so much depends, have been classified are neither clear nor convincing. And since, in fact, the evidence on which that classification was made was both clear and convincing, the failure must lie in the exposition. In the excavators' hands the spade has been mightier than the pen. Or does the fault lie in an historical training which has not been adequate to the appreciation of the minutiae of archaeological evidence? ‘The historian,’ we are told, ‘may differ from the excavator in his estimate of what is proved.’

By the kind permission of Professor Sieveking and of Mr. A. M. Woodward, who has informed me of the existence of these objects and has sent me the photographs here reproduced and the necessary notes, I am able to publish a few small objects in ivory, bone, and bronze which were acquired in 1911 by the Museum der Kleinkunst in Munich. A summary account of them by Professor Sieveking has already appeared in the Münchner Jahrb. der bildender Kunst, 1912, p. 73. The channel by which they reached Munich is naturally obscure, but there can be no doubt that they were found at the Orthia sanctuary at Sparta, the excavation of which was finished in 1910, the year before the objects were acquired at Munich. Even before this information reached me, I had learned by a curious accident that there had, in fact, been some small pilfering from the Orthia excavation by one of our workmen.

The best start in the attempt to understand Aeschylus is Professor F. M. Cornford's clearsighted explanation of his method. On the stage of Aeschylus, great forces are broadly symbolised, working, according to the Pythagorean scheme, through antagonism to a new harmony. It is also important to see the life-work of any great poet as a single process; Aeschylus solves problems in early plays, and afterwards surpasses them in more complex problems, which find their solutions in their turn. His material is a great range of political, moral, intellectual, and religious conflicts, all active in his own world. By symbolising them on the stage, he found a way from small things such as party quarrels to a sublime comprehension of the work of God and man, interacting together, within the framework of time. This is not so strange as it appears. The grandest and truest achievements of humanity often look like by-products.

I suggest that a poet may, and perhaps always does, first assimilate his world in time, and next create from that world a universe not limited to time and known actuality. A great poet's world is like ours, full of everyday things, but he likes them more, fascinated alike by the good and the evil. What he makes is not an everyday affair, but something more eternal. The transition from the poet's world to the poet's universe is like a transition from politics to religion and mysticism.

1. At Panderma: small base, broken, ̇08 m. across, letters ̇01.

2. Small fragment of cippus, diam. ̇11, letters ̇02.

3. Pediment (0·24 broad) with radiated bust of long-haired god: below (letters ̇015):

The two dates which I wish briefly to discuss are those of the Argive Expedition and of the Atheno-Plataean alliance: they are of cardinal importance for the history of Greek politics in an important but very obscure period. The two questions may be considered as independent, and it is possible to adopt the earlier date for one event, and not for the other (as E. Meyer does), but in my judgment the two events are connected, and the date assigned to the one carries with it the date of the other.

First then as to the date of the attack on Argos and the battle of Sepeia. Before the time of Grote this was always placed circ. 520 B.C. on the strength of the passage of Pausanias (iii. 4), ‘when Cleomenes came to the throne, he at once invaded the Argolid’; his accession is usually placed about 520, and as this date is generally accepted, it is needless to give the reasons for it here. The date of Pausanias is in itself worth very little. It is true that he has information as to the Argive campaign which is not in Herodotus, and which may be derived from some local chronicler; but this information is given in an earlier book (ii. 20), while in iii. 4 he is mainly following Herodotus. It may be noticed, however, that he certainly is supplementing Herodotus from some other source (e.g. the name of the grove of Eleusis, ‘Orgas’), and it is not unnatural to suppose that he had reason for giving a date for the expedition of Cleomenes, which differs from that which at first sight seems to be given by Herodotus; Wernicke writes ‘perverse eum (Cleomenem) initio regni sui id fecisse (Pausanias) dicit,’ but it may well have come from some chronological table (such as the Parian Chronicle).