If the famous sites on the mainland of Greece have been largely exhausted—and the only great classical cities now being excavated are Sparta and Corinth—the outlying parts of the Greek world continue to yield a harvest of discoveries, increasingly interesting as they are added to a constantly increasing body of archaeological knowledge. Thus Crete, Delos, Rhodes, and the great cities of Asia such as Miletus and Pergamon continue to give up fresh treasures, and the neolithic and bronze age remains of north Greece and the island of Leukas are adding a new chapter to the book of Greek prehistoric archaeology.

The one great mainland site not yet fully excavated is the most interesting of all, but owing to material difficulties Athens for the present reserves her secrets. The excavation of the Agora, the great task before the Greek Archaeological Society, has now indeed been begun by the clearing of an area east of the Theseum, and ancient walls have been found, but they cannot be identified with any known buildings, nor do the inscriptions discovered give any topographical indications. This is, however, only a beginning, and the area ultimately to be excavated is very much larger.

In this article it is proposed to examine the available numismatic evidence relating to the settlement of Samians at Zancle, and the change of the name of the city to Messana, and to suggest possible lines along which a reconstruction of the events might proceed.

It will be well first to review such literary evidence as we possess. The earliest such evidence is found in Herodotus. He gives at length the story of the Samian settlement. After the battle of Lade, which ruined the cause of the revolted Ionians, the Samian oligarchs (οἵ τι ἔχοντες) decided to abandon their city and sail away to found a colony elsewhere, rather than stay and endure the oppression of Aeaces, their old tyrant, restored under Persian influence (ἐς ἀποικίην ἐκπλέειν μηδὲ μένοντας Μήδοισί τε καὶ Αἰάκεῖδουλεύειν). Now the men of Zancle in Sicily had sent a general invitation to the Ionians to come to the West and settle at the Fair Shore (Καλὴν ᾿ Ακτὴν ἐᾶν χαίρειν), a Sicel possession on the north coast of Sicily. The Samians accordingly decided to accept the invitation.

It is, perhaps, somewhat venturesome to attempt to say anything upon a subject which demands full treatment from anyone who would write a History of Greece, and which has, therefore, been discussed at considerable length by many great historians. Still the research of the last twenty years has led to such material modifications of the views which formerly prevailed as to the exact significance of various important factors in the history of the Greek race, that the learned world has become emancipated from the tyranny of stereotyped tradition, and has ceased to regard deviation from the accustomed views as necessarily fanciful and untrue.

May I be allowed to correct and hereby to do penance for a blunder which defaces three or four passages in the recent British Museum publication on Ephesus ? A mental confusion between Lygdamis, the leader of the Cimmerians or Treres, who probably burned one of the earlier Artemisia, and Pythagoras, a pre-Persian tyrant, who is said to have had to build a temple at Ephesus in expiation for desecrating ‘the Hieron,’ took possession of me during the lapse of a year between writing Chapters I. and XIV., and led me to make the absurd suggestion on p. 245 that Temple B was completed ‘perhaps at the cost of Lygdamis by the middle of the seventh century,’ and to call the latter a ‘tyrant’ and a ‘traitor.’ The last epithet is particularly uncalled for, since the little we know of Lygdamis shows him as a bold tribal leader who died at the head of his horde. If he burned Temple A, neither he nor Pythagoras was the builder of Temple B; and if the latter built any Artemision it can only have been either Temple A (after desecrating a pre-existent hieron) or Temple C. But, as I have stated on p. 7, it is so doubtful whether there is any reference to the Artemision at all in the solitary extant passage regarding Pythagoras, that the suggestion of his responsibility for any of the primitive shrines on the site is hardly worth making. This mental confusion passed away from me in Syria while reflecting on the westward expeditions of Assurbanipal, in attacking whose Cilician vassal Lygdamis came by his death; but it was then too late to make amends even in a list of errata, as I had left the book passed for press on quitting England.

In vol. iii. (1902) of the Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Egypte Mr. J. E. Quibell gave an account of a large discovery of papyrus at Kom Ishgau, a village situated 7 kil. to the S.W. of Tema in Upper Egypt. The discovery was made in 1901 by some of the villagers who were digging a well, and the papyri found were divided among the inhabitants. News of the discovery coming to the authorities, a police-guard was despatched, only to find that the papyri had disappeared; some seem to have been burnt, the rest were hidden for the time being and afterwards no doubt disposed of to various dealers, through whom, like the famous and much larger ‘Faijum-fund,’ they became dispersed through Europe.

In the winter of 1905–6 Mr. C. T. Currelly and I acquired a large number of ostraka from the dealers of Luxor and Karnak, amongst which were several examples of school exercises. A few ostraka of this class, and tablets of a similar kind, have already been published; and, by comparison of these with our collection, it is possible to gather some facts in connexion with the methods of instruction pursued in the Greek schools of Egypt.

The ostraka purchased were said by the dealers to have come mainly from the neighbourhood of Karnak, and to have been found at different times during the preceding five years. The majority of those here published—all those from our collection except numbers II, IV, VI, IX, X, XVI, and XVII —appear, however, to belong to one group: they are written on pottery which is discoloured in a rather unusual way, and are very distinct in this respect from any other of those bought with them; while from the general character of the writing the texts upon them may with reasonable probability be regarded as contemporary. It seems in accordance with the facts to suppose that the finder of these ostraka had chanced on a spot where a schoolmaster of Thebes had taught his classes in the open air near a rubbish heap, on which material for writing exercises might be obtained in plenty, to be thrown away again as soon as used: or possibly, if it is more in accordance with educational dignity to imagine the school as held among more savoury surroundings, we may have here the contents of the waste-ostrakon-basket which were deposited on the dust-tip after a day's work.

In ancient Cyprus no one could have hesitated to point out the spot in question. But in the present day we have nothing to guide us except a hint of the famous Καινὴ ἰστορία of Ptolemy Hephaestion, as recorded by Photius in chap. cxc of the Myriobiblos.

The mythographer deals in the seventh book with the Λευκὰς πέτρα which had the miraculous power of curing those who, when afflicted with love, dared to jump from it. It was this extreme remedy that Apollo counselled to Aphrodite, disconsolate at the death of Adonis: Μετὰ τὸνΑδώνιδός φασι θάνατον περιερχομένη καὶ ζητοῦσα ἡ Αφροδίτη εὖρεν αὐτὸνἐν Αργει πόλει τῆς Κύπρον ἐν τῷ τοῦ ἐριθίου Απόλλωνος ἰερῷ καὶ ἀνείλεναὐτόν

Whereabouts in Cyprus was this πόλις Αργος? None of the ancient geographers tells us, and, so far as I know, no modern scholar has elucidated this point. All of them mention ᾿´Αργος among the towns in Cyprus not yet identified.

A short while ago I expressed the opinion (in ᾿Αθηνᾶ vol. xviii, p. 343) that this ᾿´Αργος was ᾿´Αρσος and I now explain the reasons which appear to me sufficient to justify my conjecture.

The reliefs upon the tombstones of the Attic cemetery of the Ceramicus have long been among the most familiar of the products of Greek art, and have enjoyed a popularity, even beyond their artistic merit, because of their direct appeal to a common basis of human sentiment—mentem mortalia tangunt. The sculptors who made these reliefs did not probably, for the most part, enjoy any very exalted position in their profession. The artistic quality of the work varies greatly; while some of it preserves the best traditions of the school that made the Parthenon frieze, some is comparatively commonplace and mechanical. There is little reason to suppose that any of the extant reliefs are from the hands of a distinguished sculptor. We know, however, that well known sculptors were sometimes employed on works to be set up over tombs. Pliny expressly says of Praxiteles ‘opera sunt eius in Ceramico’, and Pausanias mentions a statue by Praxiteles of a soldier standing beside his horse, set up just outside the Dipylon Gate. There is therefore good reason for looking for statues of the highest artistic value among those set up as monuments over tombs. The reason why they have not hitherto attracted the same general interest as the reliefs that served the same purpose is partly their much more limited number, partly the difficulty of recognising them with certainty.

Grateful as we must all be to Mr. Compton and Mr. Awdry for their adventurous climb, which to my mind has finally settled the path that the Messenians took to reach the foot of the gorge or gully, we have probably been puzzled by some of their incidental remarks. I feel the less reluctance in commenting on them that most of my criticisms would, by their kindness, have been embodied in the article itself, had I not been absent in Greece at the time it was being written.

In the first place what they call the ‘notch’ is what Dr. Grundy and I both call the ‘hollow.’ The word hollow was kept by Messrs. Lindsay, Bosanquet, and Crowfoot, and there is no reason, I understand, for the change except inadvertence. It is more serious, however, that the part played by this hollow in the last struggle of the Spartans is misconceived.

In the Anzeiger of the Arch. Jahrbuch 1904, pp. 224 ff., the discovery and reconstruction of a life-size marble group, now in the Ny-Carlsberg Museum, is briefly reported: it is described as an original marble work, approximately contemporary with the Niobids, and representing Artemis substituting the hind for Iphigeneia.

The complete investigation and publication of this fine work have been up till now retarded by the disappearance of two important fragments, originally found with the rest at Rome in 1886, in the Gardens of Sallust, on the Spithöver Estate. Towards the end of the last century these fell into the hands of Roman dealers, and in spite of much searching have not so far been rediscovered. They were, however, known from brief written memoranda (supplemented by oral statements), and in particular from a photograph taken by Herr Joseph Haass at the time of their discovery. This photograph is here reproduced. The circular altar with the figures of seasons which is so conspicuous thereon does not belong to the group, but was at one time in the hands of a dealer at Florence.

In my article on Archaeology in Greece (1906–1907), published in vol. xxvii. of this Journal, I inadvertently misrepresented Dr. Doerpfeld's views on the relation of Geometric to Mycenean objects in Greece, and as he has pointed this out to me, I am anxious to rectify the error as soon as possible. At the bottom of p. 295 I wrote that ‘few will follow him [Dr. Doerpfeld] in his revolutionary view that the “Geometric” finds at Olympia are pre- and not post-mycenean.’ This is not Dr. Doerpfeld's view. He has kindly told me that he holds that the ‘Geometric’ objects belong to a different sphere from the Mycenean, and thus may be some older than, some contemporary with, and some later than, the Mycenean period. If I had written that his view is that some of the ‘Geometric’ finds at Olympia go back into the Mycenean and even into the pre-mycenean period, or had even written ‘some of the “Geometric” finds’ instead of ‘the “Geometric’ finds’ in the sentence in question, I should have presented his theory correctly. I have to thank Dr. Doerpfeld for the kind way in which he privately pointed out this mistake, and am glad to have this opportunity to put the matter right.