There is a type of resurrection myth, originating in Thrace and in North Greece, the connexion of which with the sun and moon worship is at present unduly set aside in favour of the Demeter-Persephone derivation. This type is seen in the stories, so popular in the art and drama of fifth century Athens, of the wife or husband who prevails against death, for a time at least, by recovering the beloved one. The most famous examples form a triad which is frequently mentioned, the tales of Laodamia, Alcestis, and Orpheus.

The ten Minoan and two Island seals, which are here published for the first time (plate X), form part of the Bosanquet Collection of the City of Liverpool Museum. Although there exists a card-index for the collection, the entries for these twelve seals give no indication of their provenience: apart from No. 9 below which is described as having been ‘bought in Athens’ there is no record of whether they were found in the course of excavation or were purchased by Professor R. C. Bosanquet. Bosanquet was himself, with R. M. Dawkins, one of the original excavators of the site of Palaikastro, but there is no evidence to show that the Minoan seals were discovered on or near the site; and in the absence of any indication, their origin must remain unknown.

The seals themselves are in varying states of preservation. No. 7 is perhaps the least satisfactory, showing signs of extreme wear, although several of the others are by no means negligible additions to the Corpus. Nos. 1, 3 and 5 in particular are excellent representatives of their type. Indeed these ten Minoan stones offer a surprisingly wide sample of the total range of Minoan Glyptic, from the three-sided prism seal of MM IA (No. 1) to two LM III lentoids (Nos. 9–10), and including on the way examples of hieroglyphic, architectural and talismanic designs. Of the remaining two, No. 11 is a good and characteristic example of the Melian winged creature type, while No. 12 is a curious and enigmatic seal, probably also to be regarded as an Island gem.

The appended inscriptions are the outcome of a short visit to Salonica in April of this year: the object that I had in view in going there was rather to hear and see on the spot the situation of ancient remains, the possibility and prospects of research, the attitude of the authorities and the general ‘lie’ and state of the country, than to investigate the actual antiquities of Salonica itself: however I copied or impressed as many Greek inscriptions as came to my notice in my short stay, the great majority being sepulchral of a commonplace order found in the foundations of houses in the Jewish quarter, and too frequently relegated to the stonemasons' yards to be cut up for modern gravestones. I have ranged first the three non-sepulchral inscriptions, the first being a mere fragment containing apparently part of an Imperial letter to the Thessalonians; the second a dedication by the city to the Emperor Claudius, and containing the titles and names of the chief magistrates; and the third, again a fragment, being a public document of the time of Antoninus Pius relative to certain κυνηγία, apparently left by will to the city or some religious foundation therein. If any of these have been previously published, I must apologise for my ignorance: but I cannot discover among the various records accessible here in Athens any trace of them; and indeed Salonica has been spared the archaeologist to a surprising degree. Where the stelae were sculptured I have briefly indicated the nature of the reliefs: there are a few others without inscriptions, but, as none of the sculptures are early or of merit, I have not thought it necessary to detail them.

A feature of the new Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World by M. Rostovtzeff should not escape attention for its implications in a matter of historical method. This work—a κτῆμα ἐς αἰεί —contains, in fact, not one story, but two stories. What is called Summary and Epilogue (pp. 1026-1312) is in method and problems something completely different from the bulk of the study (ch. III-VII). Rostovtzeff, who is a historian of splendid intuition rather than of close reasoning, has obviously not perceived this fact. He has not clearly delimited the two subjects, thereby adding a difficulty to his critic, who runs the risk of being Over-schematic.

In my commentary upon an inscription discovered near the village of Remoustapha in south-western Messenia, and published in the J.H.S. xxv. (1905), pp. 49 foll., I discussed the occurrences of the title θοιναρμόστρια, of which I gave what I then believed to be a complete list. Subsequently, however, a new inscription containing the term has been discovered and published, while a second still awaits publication, and I have recently noticed that I had overlooked an important text of Messene in which the word is twice found (G.D.I. 4650). I therefore take this opportunity of correcting my error and of supplementing my note, especially as the articles on the θοιναρμόστρια in the Real-Encyclopädie of Pauly-Kroll and in Roscher's Lexikon have not yet appeared. Thanks to the kindness of Professor W. Kolbe of Rostock, the editor of the Laconian and Messenian section of the Inscriptiones Graecae, I am enabled to give references to the numbers which the inscriptions will bear in the Corpus, this volume of which is now in the press and will, it is hoped, be published before the close of the current year. For the aid thus received and for the permission to refer to the still unpublished text I.G. v. 1. 592 I here tender to Dr. Kolbe my sincere thanks.

When Pandaros treacherously shoots at Menelaos (Δ 132 sq.), the arrow lights—

ὅθι ζωστῆρος ὀχῆες
χρύσειοι σύνεχον καὶ διπλόος ἤντετο θώρνξ·
ἐν δ᾿ ἔπεσε ζωστῆρι ἀρηρότι πικρὸς ὀιστός·
διὰ μὲν ἂρ ζωστῆρος ἐλήλατο δαιδαλέοιο,
καὶ διὰ θώρηκος πολυδαιδάλου ἠρήρειστο
μίτρης θ᾿ ἣν ἐφόρει ἔρυμα χροός, ἕρκος ἀκόντων,
ἥ οἱ πλεῖστον ἕρυτο· διαπρὸ δὲ εἴσατο καὶ τῆς.

A little later, Menelaos says of the same wound (Δ 185-187):

οὐκ ἐν καιρίῳ ὀξὺ πάγη βέλος, ἀλλὰ πάροιθεν
εἰρύσατο ζωστήρ τε παναίολος, ἠδ᾿ ὑπένερθεν
ζῶμά τε καὶ μίτρη τὴν χαλκῆες κάμον ἄνδρες

And Machaon, after drawing the arrow out (Δ 215-6),

λῦσε δέ οἱ ζωστῆρα παναίολον, ἠδ᾿ ὑπένερθεν
ζῶμά τε καὶ μίτρην τὴν χαλκῆες κάμον ἄνδρες.

The word ζῶμα occurs again only in ξ 482, a passage which we will postpone for the moment, and in Ψ 683 of the boxer's girdle, which does not require further consideration.

Comparing the second and third of the passages quoted with the first, it seems perfectly clear that the ζῶμα was a part of the θώρηξ, and not an appendage to it. The word, in fact, stands as a passive to the active correlative ζωστήρ, and means the part of the θώρηξ which was fastened down by the girdle. It is quite clear from the oldest vase paintings that the lower part of the θώρηξ was bent outwards into a sort of ridge all round, in order to make a hollow which should be capable of holding the ζωστηρ in its place. This is very well shown in the woodcut, which is taken from Conze's Melische Thongefässe, Leipzig, 1877. The is expressed by the parallel lines at the bottom of the thorax; this is clear from the Kameiros pinax, where the lines are diagonal, and therefore do not indicate anything in the nature of such a πτερύγιον as we shall presently have to discuss.

1. On a slab of marble, ht. 10½ in. × 10 in., found within the walls during the tentative excavation. It is broken on the lower edge, but the other edges are fairly complete. The greater part is occupied with a relief representing Hermes and a goddess who is presumably Andeiris (Fig. 1). Both figures face the spectator: on the left Hermes (apparently beardless), wearing short girt chiton, chlamys, and petasos, stands at rest with caduceus along left arm, and right hand resting on hip: on right is Andeiris, a draped woman. Unfortunately this figure is broken away diagonally from the left shoulder to the right breast, and the surface is injured throughout. It is consequently impossible accurately to distinguish the details.

During my last visit to England, which was chiefly devoted to preparatory work for the forthcoming volume of my Corpus of Sarcophagi, Mr. Cecil Smith was kind enough to draw my attention to a small series of Roman sarcophagi which Mr. Astor has at Clieveden, and which, after the manner of Roman amateurs of the Renaissance, he has arranged in the garden of the property. As this important communication only reached me on the last day of my stay in London, and as it was impossible for me to delay my return to Germany, I was unfortunately obliged to abandon any idea of visiting Clieveden; but through the friendly intervention of Mr. Cecil Smith, and by the kindness of the owner, I was enabled to obtain excellent photographs which enable one with sufficient accuracy to form an opinion as to the style and condition of the originals. Mr. Cecil Smith further suggested that the Editors of this Journal would welcome a short notice of these interesting monuments in its pages: an honour for which I wish to express my warmest thanks. For the rest, I would ask that the following remarks be taken as an appendix to Michaelis' Ancient Marbles in Great Britain: in the case of the Theseus sarcophagus alone, which is in many respects peculiar, I have been obliged to go more into detail.

In this section of the Report it will be my object to present as complete a statement as I can of what is known and what has been written on the subject of Paphos; and this should include a short specification of the chief points on which the late excavations either have thrown, or may be expected to throw, more light. On large and general questions, such as the origin and history of the Aphrodite worship in general, or even its history in the whole of Cyprus, I cannot enter here.

It is inevitable that the chapter must consist largely of quotations. The source of these is not far to seek. Meursius' ‘Cyprus’ in Creta, Cyprus, et Rhodos (Amsterdam, 1675, in 4to) contains a wonderfully comprehensive survey of the ancient literature of the subject. An essay by Frederick Münter, Bishop of Seeland, carries this survey a stage further, and makes some further additions to it. This essay is entitled, Der Tempel der Himmlischen Göttin zu Paphos (Copenhagen, 1824, 4to). It forms a supplement to his former tract, Religion der Karthager. It is illustrated with four plates, and supplemented by an architectural essay on the plan of the temple, from the pen of Gustav Friedrich Hetsch. These two books have assisted me to most of my quotations. I have added a few others from later books, and from my own reading.

Asia Minor, interposed like a bridge between Europe and Asia, has been from time immemorial a battlefield between the Eastern and Western races. Across this bridge the arts, civilisation, and religion of the East had passed into Greece; and back over the same bridge they strove to pass beautified and elevated from Greece into Asia. The progress of the world has had its centre and motive power in the never-ceasing collision of Eastern and Western thought, which was thus produced in Asia Minor. One episode in the long conflict has been chosen by Herodotus as the subject of his prose epic: but the struggle did not stop at the point he thought. It has not yet ended, though it has long ceased to be of central importance in the world's history. For centuries after he wrote Greek influence continued to spread, unhindered, further and further into Asia: but as the Roman empire decayed, the East again became the stronger, and Asia Minor has continued under its undisputed influence almost up to the present day. Now the tide has again turned, and one can trace along the western coast the gradual extinction of the Oriental element. It does not retreat, it is not driven back by war: it simply dies out by a slow yet sure decay. It is the aim of this set of papers to throw some light on one stage in this contest, a stage probably the least known of all, the first attempts of the Greek element to establish itself in the country round the Hermus. Tradition has preserved to us little information about the first Greek settlements. The customary division into Aeolic, Ionic, and Doric colonists is not a sufficient one. Strabo clearly implies that there was a double Aeolic immigration when he says (p. 622) that Cyme founded thirty cities, and that it was not the first Aeolic settlement; in another passage (p. 582) he makes the northern colonists proceed by land through Thrace, the southern direct by sea to Cyme. I hope by an examination of the country and the situations, never as yet determined, of the minor towns, to add a little to the history of this Southern Aeolic immigration, in its first burst of prosperity, through the time when it was almost overwhelmed in the Lydian and Persian empires and was barely maintained by the strength of the Athenian confederacy, till it was finally merged in the stronger tide of Greek influence that set in with the victory of Alexander. More is known of Myrina, and still more of Cyme, than of any of the other towns: but both are omitted here, because it may be expected that considerable light will be thrown on the history of both by the excavations conducted on their sites by the French School of Athens. Till their results are published, it would be a waste of time to write of either city.

My difference with Professor Morrison can, I think, be best expressed as follows. (1) In Herodotos' debate there is no compromise between democracy and monarchy (any more than between either of these and oligarchy), no comfortable Polybian mixture of good elements. Otanes especially is quite uncompromising: ἐμοὶ δοκέει ἔνα μὲν ήμέων μούναρχον μηκέτι γενέσθαι οὔτε γάρ ἡδύ οὔτε ἀγαθόν . . . πλῆθος δὲ ἄρχον . . . τούτων τῶν ὁ μούναρχος ποιέει ούδέν, and so throughout. The μούναρχος is autocrat or nothing. And the remarks of Megabyxos and Dareios on democracy remind one of the Old Oligarch, no friend to Perikles. (2) Although I agree of course that it is Greek thought and not Persian that informs the debate, it is not for nothing that it is Dareios, the best of μούναρχοι, who defends μουναρχίη; that is, at this stage Herodotos has the Persian monarchy in mind. And (3), in as much as it is Greek experience, not Persian, that is behind Dareios' description of the failures of oligarchy and democracy that lead inevitably to μουναρχίη, it is Greek experience of the rise of tyranny—ἐ ςἔχθε αμεγάλ αἀλλήλοισ ιἀπικνέοται, ἐξ ὧν στάσιες ἐγγίγνονται, ἐκ δὲ τῶν στασίων φόνος, ἐκ δὲ τοῦ φόνου ἀπέβη ἐς μουναρχίην; and from democracy, τοῦτο ςὲ τοιοῦτο γίνεται ἐς ὃ ἂν προστάς τις τοῦ δήμου τοὺς τοιούτους παύσῃ ἐκ δὲ αὐτῶν θωμάзεται οὗτος δὴ ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου, θωμαзόμεος δὲ ἀν' ὧν ἐφάνη μούναρχος ἐών. The enemies of Perikles likened him to Peisistratos and his power, to a tyranny; but was Herodotos among these enemies ? (Alkibiades might have read the last sentence quoted above as his justification for ‘aiming at a tyranny’). And not Peisistratos, but other Herodotean tyrants are in some measure like the oriental μούναρχος, Kleisthenes of Sikyon (compare him with Croesus) and Polykrates: does Herodotos wish to suggest that Perikles was like either of these? More particularly since he was a wise man and knew that Xerxes-was as much a μούναρχος-type as Dareios.

Last year was not remarkable for any sensational archaeological discovery in Greece, but much good work was done, and the amount that was accomplished by the Greek authorities in spite of the interruption of the Balkan War is very creditable to their zeal and enthusiasm. It is perhaps fitting to offer them the congratulations of all interested in Greek archaeology on the amount of new ground that is now available for scientific study.

In the minds of those who have known Athens in past years this season will perhaps be best remembered as the first after the definite retirement of Dr. Dörpfeld from his position as First Secretary of the Imperial German Institute in Athens. It is hard to estimate what his loss means not archaeologically only but also socially to Athens and to the students who go there, but happily through his work in Corfu his connexion with Greece is not yet severed.

M. L. West has recently presented a magisterial account of the history of Greek epic in which Aeolic phases and other entities are assumed. His account is the more impressive because it combines linguistic features skilfully handled with an account of the thematic development of epic, and also specifies at what stages the various linguistic features entered the tradition. West assumes an Aeolic phase, or phases, of heroic epic composition, and accounts for the presence of Aeolic forms (162): ‘It has usually been inferred that they are just a residue left after Ionian poets had adapted an Aeolic poetic language into their own dialect as far as it would go. This is, I have no doubt, the correct interpretation.’ I think it is not.