I am happy to offer this paper in tribute to the deep range of a dedicated Hellenist's life-work, not least for personal reasons. Professor Dodds first introduced me to the Ion towards the end of those happy twelve years of his career spent in the University of Birmingham. With his respect for Forsterian buckets let down into the subconscious, he may not be surprised that the introduction has had enduring effects. An early consequence was my verse translation of the play, eventually published in 1958 and, more recently (1968), produced on the stage by our Department of Drama and Theatre Arts. Translations of Greek and Latin authors play an increasingly important part in our contemporary cultural life, especially translations of Greek plays for the stage and for broadcasting. This is an area of activity which scholars should not ignore. What Gilbert Murray so successfully practised in his time, Milman Parry emphasized in another context: ‘…scholars must see that they must impose their truths before others impose their fictions’. Over the years I have followed the discussions in books and journals which have added to our understanding of the power and complex meaning of the play. Only some of these can be mentioned in what follows, to enable me to express agreement or a difference of opinion or emphasis.

The simply rationalistic interpretation of the Ion associated with the translation, preface, etc., by H.B.L. in 1889 and with the work of A. W. Verrall in 1890 and subsequently, was temporarily fashionable in certain quarters at the time. This interpretation no doubt stimulated further study of the play in this country, but there has been continuous corrective criticism of its aberrations.

Iron is mentioned in the following passages of Homer (ὅστις ποτ᾿ ἐστίν, εἰ τόδ᾿ αὐτῷ φίλον κεκλημένῳ, τοῦτό νιν προσεννέπω), and in these passages only:—

Δ 123, 485, 510; Ε 723; Ζ 48; Η 141, 144, 473; Θ 15; Ι 366; Κ 379; Λ 133; Ρ 424; Σ 34; Υ 372; Χ 357; Ψ 30, 177, 261, 834, 851; Ω 205, 521; a 184, 204; δ 293; ε 191; ι 393; μ 280; ξ 324; ο 329; π 294; ρ 565; τ 13, 211, 494, 587; φ 3, 10, 61, 81, 97, 114, 127, 328; ψ 172; ω 168, 177.

These passages form a basis for discussing two interesting and important points in the Homeric question: (1) whether Homer's acquaintance with iron differs so much in different books that we must believe those books to belong to different ages; and (2) whether iron plays such different parts in Homer and in Mycenae that we cannot believe the Homeric age to be coincident with the Mycenaean period.

In the course of a visit to Cyzicus, made last December at the invitation of Mr. de Rustafjaell, Mr. Bosanquet and I had the opportunity of copying and taking impressions of two inscriptions from a marble pedestal (Fig. 1), known to the peasants as ‘Balik Tash’ or ‘Fish Stone’ from the reliefs carved upon it.

The stone lies in a vineyard on the low ground of the isthmus in the central harbour of Panormus. Originally discovered by Mr. Tito Carabella of Constantinople, it was seen in January 1880 by Lolling, who published such copies of the inscription as it was possible to obtain without cleaning away the lichen and carbonate of lime which covered many of the letters. These imperfect copies were recently discussed by Dr. Wilhelm who had enquired for the stone at Constantinople and failed to discover its whereabouts. Last summer it was re-excavated by Mr. de Rustafjaell: we succeeded in removing the incrustation and obtained more complete readings.

In the following pages I summarise briefly the work published in the past two years relative to Greek inscriptions, following the same system as hitherto; I mark with an asterisk all books or articles which I have not personally consulted. Once again I tender my warmest thanks to those scholars who have lightened my task by sending me copies of their works.

Death has claimed in the period under review a number of men who have rendered notable service to epigraphical studies, among them A. Brueckner, R. Cagnat, J. Chamonard, P. Dareste, C. C. Edgar, P. Graindor, E. Loewy, P. Perdrizet and S. Ronzevalle; but some of the veterans continue in full vigour, such as F. Cumont, who attained his doctoral jubilee in 1937, and J. Zingerle, who celebrated his seventieth birthday in 1938. Mention must also be made of the successful International Epigraphical Congress, held at Amsterdam in August and September, 1938, with W. Vollgraff as President and J. J. E. Hondius as Secretary.

This article attempts to summarise the results (1) of those excavations carried out in Greek lands in 1924 of which no report was available in time for my account printed in the last volume of the Journal, and (2) of the excavations of 1925 of which reports had come to hand before the end of September. This system will be followed in the accounts which I hope to contribute annually henceforward.

American School

The varied activities of the American School included excavations at the sites of Corinth, the Argive Heraeum, and Eutresis in Boeotia. At Nemea and Phlius, the opening campaigns at which sites were described in my report of a year ago, no further work was done in the summer of 1925. At Corinth, thanks to a generous subsidy by, and the personal enterprise of, Professor T. L. Shear, substantial progress was made with the Herculean task of clearing the theatre, where, on the south side of the orchestra, the depth of the deposit of earth proved to be 12 metres; before the season closed, over 5000 tons of debris had been removed to a dump a quarter of a mile away. In the west of the cavea the seats proved to be all destroyed, but a remarkable discovery was made, in the form of a wall, originally ca. 2·80 metres high, surrounding the orchestra. This where cleared was preserved to a height of 1·70 m., and was painted in fresco with scenes of life-sized figures engaged in combat with lions. One combatant, in action with a lion which charges him from the left, is clad in a long purple under-garment, with a white over-garment fastened at the knee; another wears a short garment which hangs down in front, leaving the legs bare to the hips, and white sandals; other figures, variously clad, and also fighting lions, appear in other scenes.

This Index owes its origin to the deciphering of a folio printed in Greek in Paris in 1628. As other books came under my eye, I found that in addition to the ligatures which I had analysed there were still many others, and I was so beguiled by their manifold and often obscure forms that I went far afield in my researches. It was surprising, no less than disconcerting, that with the exception of Proctor, to whom reference will presently be made, no one in modern days had occupied himself with a phase of Greek typography which, owing to its crabbedness and elusive contractions, based no doubt upon the Tironian practices of the scribes, had estranged students from the study of later Greek literature.

Beginning with the Baskerville fount of 1763, I worked backwards, overtaking the Paris fount, till, with a Froben as a complication, I was entangled in an Aldine. This led me to Proctor's erudite monograph on The Printing of Greek in the Fifteenth Century, which was of great value, for by its means I was able to verify my own decipherings and at the same time to add to my list fresh examples from the texts and founts which he had analysed.

Apart from Proctor's work only three lists were accessible. The first was that of Aldus Manutius (1494–5), who gave clues to the more complicated sorts in one of his founts, adding that he passed over many ‘connexiones’ as they could be identified very easily. The next list was that printed at the end of the Greek Grammar of Ramus (Hanover, 1605), in which the Aldine ‘connexiones’ were included and others as well, a thoughtful proceeding if the Grammar was to be of any use, for it was printed almost entirely in ligatures.

In 1903 the Russian Archaeological Commission purchased a hydria from a dealer at Olbia which is now in the collection of ancient vases in the Hermitage (Fig. 1). Being considered by some authorities a forgery, the vase was not published in the Report of the Commission. I can assert that there is no doubt as to the authenticity of the vase. Apart from small injuries there are no important parts broken off or restored. The shape, but for some slight variations, is that of a typical late archaic hydria; sharp divisions are avoided, the shoulder being connected with the body by a soft curve and the same profile used for the foot. The ring above the foot is quite flat and not separated from the foot. On the lip of the vase there are two sharp projecting tongues instead of the “rotelle” of the archaic type (Fig. 2).

The handles are round and curved slightly upwards. The varnish is very bad and dull, being laid on very thin, so that the surface of the clay shows through. There are spots where the fire has turned the black varnish red. The clay is of a dull yellow colour, badly cleansed, with holes in the polished surface, evidently in consequence of small stones and pieces of glimmer which have broken away. The surface of the clay, in the panel reserved for the design, is of a reddish colour. The greater part of the foot, the stripes under the horizontal handles, the inner parts of all three handles and the outer part of the lip are left unvarnished. Judging from the quality of the clay and the special character of the varnish, the vase appears to be Etruscan work.

In a book I published a few years ago, entitled Towards a Poetics of Modern Greek Folksong, I examined certain aspects of the poetics of modern folksongs in the light of the ‘oral composition theory’ of Homeric poetry, originally expounded by Milman Parry in the late twenties and early thirties and subsequently elaborated by Albert B. Lord. In this paper I propose to follow the opposite course, and inquire whether some of my findings regarding the verse-making techniques of the modern folksongs could be applied to the Homeric epics, and whether they could be made to cast some additional light on the making of ancient epic poetry. More specifically, in my study of formular and otherwise similar verses in the folksongs, I was able to distinguish five degrees of kinship, as it were, or of decreasing similarity, from identical formulas to sense units of similar type. Can a comparable scale of similarities be found in Homer, and, if it can, could it be used in modern discussions of ancient epic versification and composition, without further encumbering a terminology that is not always clear or generally agreed upon? The purpose of this exercise is not merely taxonomic; by using some basic concepts of structural linguistics as tools, I think we may perhaps come a little closer to understanding the verse-making process, which is a prerequisite for understanding Homer's manner of composition and, in the last analysis, his ‘creativity’ or even ‘originality’ vis à vis the tradition to which he belonged.

In his notice of the above paper in the last number of the JHS, p. 287, the reviewer makes one remark which is likely to pepetuate an old error. ‘ In 1909,’ he writes, ‘ Butler found the base of a composite pier ’ etc. What I wrote was that ’ there was no trace of any [such] pier and it is evident that he [Butler] made some mistake when he was working up his notes in America ’ (op. cit., p. 8). The point is crucial, and in a previous account of the church I published photographs to show that the pier never can have existed : see the Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement for January 1936, Plate II.

The American excavations in the Athenian Agora were resumed in February 1933, and continued till the middle of July. An account of the work up to May 1 has been published in AJA. 1933, 305 ff. The work is being carried on in four sectors (see AJA. pl. 35)

The wells and cisterns cleared during the latter part of the summer of 1932 are described by Homer Thompson in AJA. 1933, 289 ff. These provide clear evidence of the existence of houses where all traces of walls and foundations have disappeared, notably along the north foot of the Areopagus and north-east of the Theseum, and their contents shew that the inhabitation of this area goes back at least to the early sixth century B.C. In some cases (wells closed in the late sixth and early fifth centuries) the pottery found in the wells seems to indicate the proximity of potters' workshops or warehouses, and pots have been found which had contained miltos. This is further proved for the fourth century by the presence of misfired vase-fragments and lamps. Several pieces of archaic pottery found in these wells are illustrated in the article mentioned above— notably a large one-piece amphora of the earliest class, decorated with a massive sphinx (loc. cit. fig. 3), and from the same shaft an exquisite plastic vase (loc. cit. fig. 5, here Pl XVI)—Ionian, or Ionising, work of about 540 B.C., and without question one of the finest of all existing plastic vases.