Many people have failed to understand the Alcestis, and for the reasons Goethe suggests. Romanticists are grieved because Admetus, Pheres, and Heracles are human beings. As M. Masqueray observes, ‘Notre hypocrisie s'accommode mal d'une telle franchise.’ Verrall is delighted that the characters should be human beings, but refuses to permit them to ‘talk Greek.’ His ‘rational’ theory that the object of Euripides was to ‘expose’ the miraculous legend, by suggesting that Alcestis never died at all, rests on an assumption that, to an Athenian, the resurrection of the heroine, ‘as a piece of history, asserted or denied,’ was a matter of religious moment. But, for a Greek, the truth of the alleged resurrection involved no vital issues. The first lesson of religion was not ‘Believe that Apollo, through Heracles, could raise Alcestis from the dead, and, believing, have faith and hope,’ but something very different: ‘Know that thou art mortal, and, being mortal, practise moderation.’ It was the unorthodox, the ‘progressive,’ who, in ancient Athens, ventured to believe that mortal men should ‘practise immortality.’ Euripides contributed to new ideas by criticising the old. But his task was as far removed from that of Verrall's ‘Professor T. H …’ as was the mind of Nikias from that of Mr. Gladstone. For an ordinary Athenian the point was not that Alcestis rose from the dead, but that she died to save her husband's life. To argue the possibility or impossibility of her resurrection would, I submit, have appeared to the Athenian as trivial as it is depressing. If we want to understand Greek plays, we must remember that they were written by Athenians for an audience which was pagan, not Christian, Greek, not English. The characters talk Greek. It is our business, before we begin to criticise, to ascertain exactly what they say.

The so-called ‘Chalcidian’ class of vases, in spite of their great technical and historical interest, have as yet received less of the close attention which has been applied to other better known classes, chiefly on account of the lack of definite material and definite information regarding them. No one has as yet treated of them comprehensively as a class, if we except the cursory survey of Klein, although a fair number have been separately published: pending therefore the maturing of the more complete study which seems desirable, the introduction of four new specimens of vase painting which we may call Chalcidian will not be without interest to archaeology; especially as the two at least which are figured on Plates XL.—XLIII. have each a further intrinsic value as contributions to the study of mythography.

The bronze statuettes which are reproduced on PL XVIII. form part of the small collection of Greek and Roman antiquities in the Egyptian department of the British Museum, They are practically entire, though the surface of the bronze has suffered considerably from oxydization. I am much indebted to the authorities of the Museum for allowing me to publish two such interesting pieces.

The provenance of the two bronzes is indicated by their place in the Museum: they come from Egypt. It is evident too that they have been made as a pair. At first sight they might be taken for Olympian deities, but looking more closely one sees that the heads are intended for portraits. They must therefore represent a deified king and queen, and there can be little doubt as to what royal couple they do represent.

In my first article on Pylos and Sphacteria I made the rash promise that in an early number of this Journal I would support my theories by documentary evidence. It is with shame that I realise that this is now two years ago. Various circumstances have delayed me. I have been unable to visit Greece again myself, and the friends who were kind enough to do the work for me were constantly baulked by the storminess of the place. Not only was it often impossible to set up a camera ὁπότε πνεῦμα ἐκ πόντου εἴη but even to reach Sphacteria at all. Of the Pylian boatmen, as I know from my own experience, it cannot be said that ἀφειδὴς ὁ κατάπλους καθέστηκε It is only as a patchwork of the results of three different expeditions that I am now in a position to publish a plan of the παλαιὸν ἔρυμα and a fairly complete collection of photographs. In the present article my business will be to act as showman to this series; I have little new to add, and, happily, no fresh opponent to meet. My collaborators have, I think, on practically every point on which they have expressed an opinion, given their support to my views.

It has sometimes occurred that a specious explanation of a fact, or a specious amendment of an error, has established itself so firmly in the court of history, that no one dreamed of disputing its claim to be unquestionably correct. At last, by accident, a doubt arises in some one's mind; and, after enjoying a long protracted success, the universally received solution, when its antecedents are investigated and its implications realized, turns out to be wholly ‘impossible.’ It may be easily shown, I think, that such is the case with the traditional explanation of the extension of the names Hellas and Hellen to the wide signification which they bore since the seventh century B.C. This explanation has had the inestimable advantage of resting on the authority of Thucydides; and it belongs to that class of explanations which merely require to be stated in order to recommend themselves, and which the human mind is accordingly inclined to accept unreflectingly. It has come to be regarded as a commonplace historical fact; yet it is noteworthy that in some recent histories of Greece it is simply stated that the Greeks adopted Hellenes as a common name, without any suggestion of an answer to the obvious question why that name was chosen rather than another. The authors apparently felt some difficulty in accepting the exposition of Thucydides. E. Meyer seems to have realized the difficulty more fully, and some remarks which he offers on the point will call for notice. In this paper I propose to exhibit the difficulties which render the received view untenable, and to put forward another explanation in its stead.

When I published my book on the Ancient Marbles in Great Britain (Cambridge, University Press, 1882), I was fully convinced that the catalogue there given would be susceptible of many corrections and supplements. But the hope I expressed in the preface, that I should be informed of marbles existing in private collections which might have escaped my notice by their owners or other competent persons, has completely failed; nor have I become aware of publications concerning this matter. Nevertheless, I cannot help thinking that there must be in Great Britain a good deal of hidden treasure of the kind, which would perhaps easier come to light if there were a place expressly destined to receive such communications. Now, there can be no doubt that no place would be more appropriate to the purpose than the Journal of Hellenic Studies. I have therefore ventured to propose to the Editors to open in this Journal a corner for storing up such supplements and corrections. As a first instalment, I here offer some notes which may begin the series, and which can be continued. May other lovers and students of classic art, especially in Great Britain, follow my example.

‘Theocritus'’ Idyll xxvii describes how a neatherd progressively undresses a girl and then makes love to her. The progress of the neatherd's hand is accurately and humorously depicted. First the maiden says (19)

μὴ ᾽πιβάλῃς τὴν χεῑρα καὶ εἰσέτι; χεῑλος ἀμύξω.

The chief object of this paper is to record and classify the various monuments which on the ground of subject-matter or style may claim to be connected with Pergamene work. It may be well also to notice by way of introduction what we can gather from ancient testimony.

Of most of the existing works that I shall mention I have had personal knowledge, and where I have had to rely merely on published representations of them, I can only bring them forward for the purpose of suggesting to those who have direct acquaintance with them to consider them from this point of view. The theory which I wish to work out—a theory already suggested by others—is that certain fields of Greco-Roman and late Roman art have received a deep and abiding impress from Pergamon. That this should be a priori probable does not need elaborate proof; Rome was the heir of the Pergamene kingdom, and had always friendly intimacy with it, and we hear of many Pergamene works being transferred to Rome by Nero (Dio Chrys. 644 R.): between certain Roman and certain Pergamene myths there was a close analogy, which coloured the artistic representation of them: the struggle of the Pergamene kingdom with the Gauls, or—to speak perhaps more correctly—with Antiochus Hierax supported by Gallic mercenaries, was the most recent counterpart to the struggle of Rome with the barbarians: it was the Pergamene school—as Professor Brunn was the first to demonstrate—who idealized and fixed for artistic representation the type of the northern barbarian and really created historic sculpture, and I think that it can be shown that their rendering of this type became conventionalized and remained traditional throughout many centuries.

Among the many genuine works of Greek Sculptors in the Museums of Athens there are three colossal heads and a piece of richly sculptured drapery, more striking perhaps in their originality than any others to be found there. Shortly after their discovery they were published with photographs by the Director of Antiquities, M. Cavvadias, under the title Fouilles de Lycosura, Athènes, 1893, and carefully described and appreciated. My excuse in venturing to bring them again to notice is the undeserved neglect with which works of such fine and unexpected quality have been treated.

On the basis of Labarbe's new arguments in favour of July 21st rather than August 19th as the date of the full moon occurring about the time of the Thermopylae campaign, which involves our acceptance of a gap of something like five weeks between the Persian arrival in Attica and the battle of Salamis, R. Sealey has recently revived (Hermes xci (1963) 376–7) Munro's view that the Greeks had placed a regular garrison on the Acropolis in 480, so enabling it to hold out against the Persian assault for a considerable period and delaying any further military or naval operations. The validity of Labarbe's arguments has now been challenged by C. Hignett, Xerxes' Invasion of Greece, 449–51 (cf. A. R. Burn, Persia and the Greeks, 403–5), who also meets, 212 f., most of the arguments originally put forward in support of the same thesis by Bury (CR × 1896). Hignett himself explains the delay before Salamis, on his view a delay of some three weeks, in terms of the unwillingness of the Persians to enter the Salamis strait, coupled with their recognition that it was impossible to by-pass it. The Acropolis is held to have resisted, rightly I believe, for only a few days, a resistance to be explained by its natural strength rather than because of any garrison placed upon it. The dismay attributed to the Greeks by Herodotus (viii 56) upon the news of the fall of the Acropolis, however, still appears to Hignett a difficulty needing explanation and he suggests that Herodotus' emphasis upon it may be no more than a transitional device leading up to the next act of the drama (203).

The Lydian-Aramaic bilingual comprises a type of text, of which, as it fortunately happens, several purely Lydían examples were found. It seems clear from a comparison of the Aramaic and the Lydian that there is a sufficiently close agreement between the two to allow the conclusion that several of the other Lydian inscriptions are not merely funerary, but also are in certain respects of the same general trend as the bilingual. If so, the bilingual is of the first importance for the preliminary information it furnishes touching the general character and contents of these inscriptions; and, in fact, it is easy to observe the recurrence of certain Lydian words and phrases which distinguish the inscriptions published in the present fascicule, and to contrast other inscriptions not included in it, where we often miss these features. But it is necessary at the outset to feel tolerably sure of the translation of the Aramaic text and of the preliminary conclusions which can be based upon a comparison of the two portions of the bilingual; and since here and there the Aramaic is extremely obscure, and there is room for more uncertainty than Littmann allows, the attempt may now be made to reconsider the Lydian in the light of the Aramaic, and at the same time, to take account of criticisms and suggestions which have reached me since the appearance of the first part of this article.

It is satisfactory to be able to begin this report by announcing important additions to the equipment of three of the Athenian Schools. The German Institute was able to inaugurate its spacious new library at a special meeting held on March 12 to celebrate the completion of its twenty-fifth year. The British School has received from Mr. W. H. Cooke, nephew and joint-heir of the late George Finlay, the library of some 5,000 volumes, together with the bookshelves and antiquities, which had remained untouched in the historian's house in the ῾Οδὸς ῾Αδριανοῦ since his death in 1875. And M. Homolle is drawing up the plans for an annexe which will enable the French School to extend its hospitality to students from Belgium, Russia and other countries which have no archaeological headquarters in Athens.

The excavations on the north side of the Acropolis have been suspended. The Archaeological Society is spending large sums each year upon the repairs to the Parthenon, and is also buying up houses, when opportunities occur, with a view to continuing the excavations on the site of the ancient Agora. One great undertaking, upon which the Society has been engaged at intervals for upwards of forty years, has been brought to a successful conclusion. The Stoa of Attalos is now completely cleared and from being one of the most bewildering it has become one of the most intelligible of Athenian monuments. Great credit is due to Mr. Mylonas, who has been in charge of the work for the last two years. The Archaeological Society has recently published a first instalment of the late Dr. Lolling's Catalogue of Inscriptions, and a volume on Epidaurus by Dr. Kavvadias. These are to be followed at intervals by other archaeological books. The third, which is in the press, is a history of the doings of the Society from its foundation to the year 1900. Its income and practical usefulness have increased immensely during the past five years. The Society has recently lost one of its best-known members in Stephanos Kumauudes, who was for thirty-six years its secretary and for many years keeper of its antiquities, now merged in the national museum. He was an honorary member of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, and author of a well-known volume of sepulchral inscriptions.