The copious discussion which has been raised in recent years on the subject of the Four Hundred at Athens has brought out at any rate one certain conclusion. Of our two main authorities for the revolution of 411 B.C. neither Thucydides nor Aristotle can be pronounced entirely right or wrong, and it is no longer admissible to settle the differences between them by canonising the one and ruling the other out of order. Both our authorities can be convicted of some palpable mistakes, but again both can be proved right by collateral evidence on many points of detail. In reconstructing the history of the movement our choice between these two sources must therefore not be made on the ground of any a priori preference accorded to the one or the other. The only safe procedure is to adjudicate each question outstanding between them on the special merits of the case. It is not to be expected that even by this method finality can be attained. But a review of recent controversy will show that only by a pragmatic method of treatment is there much chance of collecting a nucleus of agreed truth.

In my quest for Aurai in Greek art, I have been surprised by the haste of commentators to label each and every running woman as a Nereid. Surely it should depend on the evidence. I begin with two Attic pyxides in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The first GR 1. 1933 was given and published by Miss Lamb in CVA Cambridge ii pl. 26. In Beazley, ARV 297, this vase was said to be in the Manner of Douris. In ARV 451 this vase has lost its own reference and acquired that of GR 10. 1934 (Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Reports xxvi [1934] 3, fig. 4; see the correction in Paralipomena p. 521 [Addenda II, to p. 376]).‘Nereids’ is an inadequate description of either vase; for both include different sexes.

The pyxis 1. 1933 is not in good condition. The central figure is surely not the male, as Miss Lamb says, but a running woman taking up twice as much room as anyone else. She holds one dolphin and has lost another, so she must be the heroine Thetis. On one side of her stands a man with a dark beard, but he holds an old man's crooked stick, so he must be Nereus in spite of his dark beard: and a frightened Nereid rushes by him to the left: on a third side a stationary woman has just frightened a woman with a sceptre off her chair; the sceptre holder must be Doris. Here then we have a Peleus and Thetis scene, but there is no room for Peleus.

Some of the most magnificent representations of chariots in mid career are seen on the coins of Sicily and Southern Italy toward the close of the fifth century B.C. There are two major theories concerning the appearance of these striking compositions in Sicilian numismatic art. One theory is that dies for these coins are the independent products of local, native artists of highest competence. The other is that the dies for these pieces are the work of Attic artists who migrated to the prosperous cities of Sicily to take up new careers as workers in the minor metallic arts, as gem cutters, and as die sinkers for the various local rulers. We lack positive evidence. We cannot identify any artist who left Attica to pursue work of this type in Southern Italy or Sicily. Scholars have produced a mass of conjecture and speculation on this subject.

The treatment of space and depth in the chariot compositions seems to the writer to provide a new possibility for grouping and relating the representations of chariots in the late fifth century—both those on the major monuments in sculptured relief and those on the Tetradrachms and Dekadrachms of Syracuse and Akragas. From a restudy of the methods of relief representation and from a survey of information derived from such connecting links between major sculpture and coinage as silverware, gems, and vases further light may be thrown on the problems of the artistic derivation of the renowned die compositions of later fifth-century Sicily.

The six bronzes which it is convenient to take as our starting point have already attracted a certain amount of attention, partly because of their enigmatic subject and partly because they provide a good illustration of an early type of plough. All six bronzes are substantially identical (Plate I). Each represents a naked ploughman standing with feet apart, his left hand on the plough handle, his right behind his back. All are bearded and give the appearance of being bald, though this may not be intended. The ploughs consist of stock, tail with handle, beam, pole, and double yoke. No joints are shown between stock, tail, and beam, which are perhaps all three to be thought of as formed from a single piece of wood. The joint between beam and pole is carefully indicated by a slanting incision or by making them overlap each other. On all but one plough the yoke joins the pole without any suggestion of how it would be attached in real life. On the exception (no. 2) it is fastened by a rivet which allows a small turning movement checked by a lug on the pole. Like the ploughmen the two oxen of each team are standing still. They are yoked by their horns, one (sometimes the right, sometimes the left) facing forwards, the other reversed to face the ploughman. No satisfactory explanation of the reversed ox has been suggested. As Drachmann points out, it can hardly represent the turning of the plough at the end of the furrow; this is usually done by lifting the plough up by the tail and carrying it round. Possibly the reversed ox symbolises in a more general way the boustrophedon process of ploughing. But ploughing is so often part of fertility cult that an explanation is perhaps more likely to be found in ritual or magic.