The remarkable bronze figure published on Pl. II. was exhibited, by permission of the owner, at a meeting of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies on Tuesday, May 8. It has not, so far as I am aware, been discussed in print, and has all the interest which attaches to an unsolved problem.

The figure was said to have been found by Egyptian natives, in 1912, in ruins to the east of the Suez Canal, but other reports ascribed it to Alexandria; and it is clear that, unless better information comes to hand, no stress can be laid on the alleged place of origin.

The recent publication of fragments of ivory statues in the J.H.S. has turned my thoughts to the Parthenos. It would be desirable to build up as complete a description as possible of this masterpiece of the world's art—a sort of verbal restoration, and I venture to offer the following notes as a basis for correction. To do the work thoroughly would be an elaborate piece of indexing evidences from a great number of authorities, a task for which I am in no way qualified.

The fragments just mentioned make the ivory part of the great work much more real to us, they show the polished surface, the accurate working of the joints in planes which must have been joined by glue, the colouring of lips and nostrils and the insertion of eyes in different materials. The colossal image must, as Furtwängler remarked, have been completed without the gold and ivory.

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 object of the present article is to bring the evidence of coins to bear upon a type of Greek state which has received comparatively slight attention at the hands of historians, the federal union of cities or tribes.

A preliminary survey of Greek federal money was made some fifty years ago by the Hon. J. B. L. Warren. More recently important additions to our knowledge of the coin-systems of individual leagues have been made by several expert writers on numismatics. But certain aspects of federal coinage have hardly yet been considered.

In particular, no systematic attempt has yet been made to use their evidence to illustrate one crucial problem of federal politics, the relation of the federal government to the confederate states. In the following pages an endeavour will be made to throw light upon this problem by means of a survey of the various federal coinage systems.

The Italian occupation of Valona has drawn attention to what has been called one of the two keys of the Adriatic. It may, therefore, be of interest to trace the history of this important strategic position, which has been held by no less than twelve different masters.

The name αὐλών ‘a hollow between hills,’ was applied to various places in antiquity, and from the accusative of this word comes the Italian form ‘Valona,’ or, as the Venetians often wrote it, ‘Avalona.’

The immediate occasion of these notes on the Alcestis of Euripides was a recent performance of the play at the Little Theatre in London. In this performance, though the programme professed that the interpretation which had been adopted was essentially that proposed by Dr. Verrall in 1895, an innovation seemed to be contemplated which even at first sight, and still more when one went behind the English version to the original, appeared to stray beyond reasonable conjecture, and indeed ran counter in some points to the express indications of Euripides. In particular, the genuine reluctance of Admetus to give the assurance which Alcestis asks, that he will not marry again, was so greatly emphasized, and so markedly enhanced by his behaviour in the last scene, till the identity of the veiled woman was disclosed, as to lead up to a catastrophe which was tragical in every sense, and ‘satyric’ in none; while the behaviour of the restored Alcestis showed only too clearly that in her interval for cool reflection at the tomb she had taken the measure of Admetus; that it was only with reluctance that she had returned to this life at all; and that it was the crowning point of her misery to find that the reason why she was restored was that she might resume her place as his wife. This, at all events, was the manner of her retreat into the palace, and the convulsive writhings of Admetus both before and after it hardly admitted any other interpretation. The one cheerful spot in the gloom was the hilarity of Herakles, who, tactless as ever, bade them fare well and ‘live happy ever afterwards.’

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.