The fabric of the group of sherds examined by me was certainly indigenous and, in spite of the strong Minoan influence visible in some cases, no imported Cretan ware was traceable.

The evidences of Cretan influence, however, are unmistakable.

The large cups or bowls, of somewhat thin make, showing white rosettes on a dark ground, which are here exceptionally forthcoming, may certainly be regarded as derivatives of the egg-shell cups, with dark, metallic lustre ground and similar white rosettes, that characterise the finest M.M. IIa technique. That exquisite bowls of this class presenting decorative details that point to the Knossian Palace fabric were actually reaching the Syrian Coast by the approximate date of 1900 B.C. is now demonstrated by the fragment—the first-fruits of a still unexplored Ras Shamra tomb—kindly lent by Monsieur Claude Schaeffer and the authorities of the Louvre Museum to the Minoan Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. In the case of the Tal Atchana specimens, where the parallels belong to only one comparatively simple class of decoration and the whole fabric is of an inferior and imitative kind it is obvious that we may have to deal with a distinctly later dating. The white on dark rosettes themselves were still a common decorative motive in the later phase (b) of M.M. II which carries us down to about 1700 B.C. But the survival of this in a local style may clearly have gone down still later.

Thucydides' and Herodotus' comments on a portentous (and unique) Delian earthquake contain the same phrase, but date the event almost 60 years apart and mutually rule out each other's datings. Two additional problems in these passages – geology demonstrates that Delos has never in fact had an earthquake of any significance and κινεῖν is not the word for an earthquake – point to an explanation for the historians' treatment. They are based on the Delphic oracle quoted by Herodotus which promised to ‘move unmoved Delos’, a paradox based on the island's mythical transition from floating to fixed (Pindar), but liable to confusion with its equally well-known aseismicity. Normally κινεῖν τὰ ἀκίνητα is used of interfering with religious sites; but the oracle's prediction was interpreted as an earthquake, that was assumed to have occurred in due course (although it had not). Both historians accepted the interpretation, but followed different datings since they invested it with different symbolism, Herodotus of the evils of the Persian and subsequent Greek wars, Thucydides of excited anticipation on the eve of the Peloponnesian War, since for him κίνησις meant ‘mobilization’ (1.1).

Work on Thucydides published in the last thirty years has mostly shown two tendencies, the one, to regard Thucydides as having two successive attitudes towards history; the other to revert to Eduard Meyer's view that the work as we have it, in all important points of interpretation at least, was written at one time and that time after the Fall of Athens. I should say at once that I am sceptical about both these views and also—to go rather farther back in the discussion—I would agree with Pohlenz in doubting the far-reaching activity of an ‘editor’ who left the end of the eighth book as we have it. Such unity of outlook as the whole work presents—such unity as Prof. Finley has stressed in his Thucydides—seems to me due, not to the work being written or finally shaped all at one time, but to its being written all by one man who from the first had strong and definite ideas and a clear notion of what he was trying to do. The tendencies which I have mentioned naturally lead to the conclusion that the first book has been, if not written, yet reshaped or largely added to at a later stage in Thucydides' career and may reflect a change of view about the causes or antecedents of the war. It seems worth while to examine those parts of the book in which these effects would show themselves if they exist, i.e. chiefly in the speeches and the excursus on the Pentekontaetia and its setting.

The archaeologia proper, chapters 1–19, gives reasons for Thucydides' expectation that the war would be a great one and more notable than any of its predecessors, judging this from the fact that both sides entered it at the height of their preparedness and that the whole Greek world was on one side or the other or contemplating joining one side or the other (1, 1). The Western Greeks got no further than this contemplation when the war began and it would be natural to suppose that Thucydides wrote these words when he did not yet know that they would go no further. The main argument of the archaeologia seems to show how this height of preparedness and tendency to fall into two camps was reached, and the last sentence of 19 underlines the conclusion.

In the course of discussing Kleisthenes' reforms, the author of the Athenaion Politeia makes the following statement:

And he made those who were currently living in each of the demes demesmen of one another, so that they would not examine the new citizens by calling out their patronymic, rather they would announce them by demes; and from this practice, the Athenians call themselves after their demes.

Technicians at the J. Paul Getty Museum have kindly informed me that the ring turns out not to be of solid gold but rather a substantial gold-plate. Analysis has not yet been done, but the metal underneath is most probably bronze.

In the collection of Sir Frederick Cook at Doughty House, Richmond, are nine fragments of a large sarcophagus of surpassing interest for the modern scientific history of art. They were identified some two years ago by Mrs. Arthur Strong, who is engaged upon a new illustrated catalogue of the Richmond antiques which is shortly to appear in this Journal. Mrs. Strong at once communicated to me the existence of a sarcophagus of so much importance for the studies I had initiated in my book Orient oder Rom, and, by the courtesy of the owner, I at the same time received a set of photographs of the nine fragments.

In a recent article J. J. Hall has argued that the mysterious πρηστῆρος αὐλός which figures in Anaximander's theory of the universe is the funnel-shaped body of a tornado or waterspout. In reviewing meteorological evidence he notes that lightning often accompanies such storms. Anaximander himself could have concluded that the funnel is actually full of fire and then could have drawn an analogy between fiery heavenly bodies seen through a hole in surrounding mist and internal fire seen through the open bottom of a cloud.

M. L. West has expressed doubt about this suggestion on the grounds that ‘a person in the uncomfortable situation of looking up such a funnel would not see fire.’ There are undoubtedly some difficulties in Hall's proposal, as he himself admits. But West's objection is oddly off the mark. What is initially at issue is what Anaximander believed to be true, not what is true.

In my recent article on the Ionian Confederacy I omitted to mention an important piece of evidence relating to the League in its most critical days. It has been shown by Prof. P. Gardner that during the Ionian Revolt a monetary convention was established among a group of insurgent cities. Several Ionian towns, whose number cannot at present be shown to have exceeded nine or ten, but may be extended by further research, issued a set of electrum coins with an identical reverse pattern on the same standard of weight. The common type would appear to have been derived from Chios; the standard of weight is that of Miletus.

At Iliad xxiii 192—211, Iris carries Achilles' prayer to the banqueting winds, in a passage whose humour offers relief after the funeral of Patroclus. At the same time, both in its immediate context and in its relation to Iris' two missions in Book xxiv, the scene contributes to Homer's presentation of the relation between gods and men.

The passage describes divine aid testifying to that concern of the gods for men which is to be so important in Book xxiv; and it immediately follows the account of another manifestation of divine concern, one which looks forward more directly to the next book—the description, at 184—91, of the protection of Hector's body by Aphrodite and Apollo. The fact that Homer anticipated here the description at xxiv 18—21 of Apollo's protection of the body points to the importance of the concern thus emphasised. In its position preceding the episode of the winds—rather than, for instance, following Achilles' earlier threats of maltreatment at xxiii 21–5—the description seems designed also to underline the fact that the parallel between Hector and Patroclus, most obvious in their deaths, is maintained here: both are the objects of divine aid, which in both cases takes the same form, the warding off of a threat to the hero's corpse, whether it is that of maltreatment by Achilles or the lesser threat of the pyre's failure to burn.

In the fourth book of Achilles Tatius' romance the young and beautiful heroine Leucippe collapses suddenly. When she is approached by the hero Clitophon she leaps to her feet, strikes his face, kicks his friend, and has to be overpowered and tied up. Several chapters later we learn that this behaviour had in fact been caused by an overdose of an unnamed aphrodisiac. In the meantime, however, bystanders, consisting of members of an Egyptian military force, have decided that μανία τις is the trouble, and proceed to diagnose with all the confidence of laymen the cause of her madness.

Their diagnosis takes the form of an ostensibly straightforward physiological explanation in carefully ordered (if rhetorical) phrases and employing technical terms.