In JHS lxviii (1948), p. 148, Mr. R. M. Cook drew attention to a problem concerning the name of the potter or painter Amasis and the chronology of Attic black-figure vase painting. So far as I know it has remained unanswered and discreetly ignored. Mme. Karouzou's fine study of the Amasis Painter prompts a further discussion of the problem which seems a very real one. It may be briefly restated as follows. Amasis, potter or painter, was named after the philhellene Egyptian king Amasis (A-ahmes) whose reign began in 569–568 B.C. As a citizen of Athens he would have received his name at his birth, which cannot therefore be earlier than 569–568. Cook thought it could hardly be before 565, and certainly the nationalist A-ahmes would not have made much of a mark as a philhellene early in his reign, as he had to seize the throne from Apries who was supported by Greek mercenaries. Yet by the current chronology of Attic black-figure the Amasis Painter had begun to work by about 555. If the signature Αμασιςμεποιεσεν means that Amasis was the potter, not the painter, we have to face the fact that his work too may go back at least as early because he made vases for the painter Lydos. If it means that he was the pottery-owner, the terminus is given by the earliest vase bearing his signature, and this is still around 550. The last explanation is the least satisfactory both for the interpretation of the signature and for the fact that it is easier to believe in a child artist than in a child industrialist. Unless Amasis was a prodigy, something is wrong somewhere in the argument. The fault must lie either in the accepted chronology for Attic black-figure or in the arguments about the name Amasis.

Apart from the important Greek trading-town at Naukratis and the shorter-lived settlement at Tell Defenneh (Daphnai) there is little to show in Egypt for the early years of renewed relations between Greece and the kingdom of the Nile valley. Yet already in the eighth century B.C. a few Egyptian objects were reaching Greek lands; in the seventh Egyptians were employing Ionian Greek mercenaries and apparently themselves influencing Greece's first steps in monumental sculpture. Only slight finds of Greek pottery earlier than 500 B.C. have been made on Egyptian sites other than the two named above, notably at Memphis and at Egyptian Thebes, comprising the sanctuaries of Luxor and Karnak as well as the Theban Necropolis. The last-named complex was well known to the Greeks as Thebes of the Hundred Gates, mentioned in the Iliad (ix. 381–4). It is thence that the vase which forms the subject of this paper is said to come. The few fragments which are all that is preserved from it are in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (1924. 264: Plate I), the gift of Professor Sayce, having been bought by him in Luxor and said to have been found in Karnak. They have already been published by Miss E. R. Price in CVA Oxford ii. IId pl. 10 (401), 24, and associated with the Clazomenian class of Ionian black-figured vases. They seem to merit further attention because the scene figured on one side of the vase has not hitherto been identified, and because its identification may in turn throw a little light on the Greeks who lived in the heart of the Egyptian kingdom. Stylistically the vase can be dated to the decade 550–540 B.C.

Many years ago, on my first visit to Greece, I scrambled down from the Temple at Sunium to bathe off the cape. Half-way down, I came across a fragment of worked marble c. 7 in. long, heavily discoloured on the fractured side; the break was ancient (Plate 111(a)). It was lying on a 20° slope, and just why its seaward journey had been interrupted at that point was not evident. I put it in my pocket and took it home, explaining it to myself and other people to whom I have shown it as a piece of an architectural moulding. Actually, its worked side, from end to end, is slightly concave, but I explained this as the result of wear.

It was not until after many (far too many) years that, having still never seen an architectural moulding at all resembling my fragment, I began to wonder if it belonged to a piece of sculpture; and it was reserved for a student, Mr. James Picken, of Glasgow, to ask, ‘Could it be a piece of hair?’ Now at last I took the step of looking up Gerke's illustrations of a statue found at Sunium: the famous kouros. Its hair, I saw, was rendered in the manner of my fragment, with concave ‘waves’ meeting in salient ridges (Plate III(b)). Ifit had been rendered in the commoner manner, with convex waves, I might have been less slow to recognise it. Also, the kouros had a piece missing above the left shoulder, which, it seemed, might well be my fragment (Plate 111(c)). It only remained to take it to the National Museum at Athens, to have the great pleasure of finding that it was indeed the missing piece, and to leave it for re-attachment where it belongs.

‘Your coward’, says Theophrastus, ‘is the sort who, when aboard ship, thinks that every headland is a hemiolia.’ The outline of a promontory, in other words, looks to his timid eyes like the low sinister shape of a pirate craft. And the hemiolia was so characteristically the vessel of pirates that Theophrastus could use the term off-handedly, without any qualification; it conjured up in his readers' minds what ‘Jolly Roger’ does in ours.

A hemiolia, then, must have been a ship designed particularly for lightness, speed and manœuvrability. But so were the twenty-oared vessels that Homer's heroes used or the penteconters that appear in subsequent centuries. What were the distinguishing characteristics of the craft that recommended it to pirates in particular?

The name itself is so curious that one instinctively feels it contains a clue. The adjective hemiolios means ‘one and a half’ by analogy with words like trireme, quadrireme and so on, a hemiolia (sc. naus) should hlave a ‘1½-fold’ arrangement of the oars. An ancient lexicographer, Hesychius, describes it as dikrotos, i.e. with rowers in two levels, and with this in mind Lazare de Baif had suggested as long ago as 1537 that perhaps it had one bank of rowers from the prow to the mast amidships and two from that point to the stern. This solution, accepted for some time, has been put aside by modern writers. ‘As no ancient representation [of a hemiolia] has survived,’ observes Ormerod, ‘we are uncertain as to its exact design and rig.’ As a matter of fact, there is an ancient representation of a hemiolia extant. It has been under our noses for years waiting to be recognised.

The vases published here are part of the collection belonging to Lt.-Col. W. H. Bromley-Davenport, of Capesthorne Hall, Macclesfield, Cheshire. As far as is known, they all come from Lucien Bonaparte's estates at Canino near Vulci, and were brought to Capesthorne by Edward Davies Davenport (1778–1847), the great-grandfather, and Walter Davenport Bromley (1787–1862), the great-uncle of the present owner.

A black-figure neck-amphora (Plate VII (a), (b)) is by the Antimenes Painter. It is complete with lid, has no restoration and measures 38½ cm. to the mouth; the handles are triple. On one side Herakles is about to slay the Nemean lion; on the other Dionysos stands between two capering satyrs. The added red and white is clear from the photographs. The attribution is of course certain; note the vertical lines on the outside of the legs, the arc describing the calf on the inside of the legs, the knees and elbows, the lines on arms, and the long mouths. But dating is less certain. The drawing is careful and appears at first sight to be rather late. The large strong figures and the feeling for space, the folds of Dionysos' chiton compared with the lack of chiton folds on a neck amphora in London and on one of similar period in Munich, and the elaboration of Herakles' foldless chiton compared with that on the Villa Giulia, Northwick Park, and Naples neck-amphorae, all suggest a late date. But there is no trace of double curve on terminal fold or knee, nor of wavy lines on drapery, as on the late neck-amphora in London.

According to this account, the original name of the festival was Ἀθηναῖα, but this name had already been replaced by Παναθήναια in what we can regard only as having been still mythical times. Since Harpocration does not attempt to explain the nature or the purpose of the reforms which he ascribes to Erichthonius, the questions who really founded the Panathenaea and why do not arise on his account. All that need be said here is that the name Παναθήναια may mean one of two things: (a) a festival celebrated by ‘all-Athenians’ (cf. Πανιώνια) or (b) a festival in honour of Panathena (cf. Πάνδια). The most important point in Harpocration's statement, however, is the care with which he distinguishes between the two types of Panathenaic festival, that καθ' ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτόν and that διὰ πενταετηρίδος, ‘which they also called μεγάλα.’ The accuracy of his information on this point is demonstrated by official inscriptions, which speak of Παναθήναια τὰ μεγάλα (first in the Erythrae decree of 453–2—ATL ii. D10.3) and of Παναθήναια τὰ κατ' ἐνιαυτόν (IG ii–iii2. 334.31); the epithet μικρά describing the annual festival is found only in literature (Lysias 21.2, 4, referring to the celebrations of 409 and 403; Menander fr. 428 Körte). Even in official documents Παναθήναια can be used alone; but this usage is not so ambiguous as it appears, since, with the possible exception of IG i2. 302.58 (= Tod 75.61) of 415, which will have to be discussed later in this paper, I have not found a single case in which Παναθήναια alone necessarily, or even probably, refers to anything but the great Panathenaea.

Personal names in ordinary use between the fall of Knossos and the fall of Mycenae could have got into the tradition of heroic poetry in three ways. They could have persisted in common use (as some certainly did); or they could have existed as a stock of ‘names suitable for heroes’ on which the poets drew at will; or they could have come down attached to stories or incidents or professions, with the probability that some of them are historical. An analysis of all the personal names in the tablets is a task for someone better qualified to judge the probabilities of identification, but there may be some value in a preliminary study of the fifty-eight names listed by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick as ‘Names which can be exactly paralleled in Homer’. For the cautious restraint shown throughout their great book is as good a guarantee of accurate interpretation as could be found. The names are fairly evenly divided between Iliadand Odyssey—17 in both, 29 in the Iliad only and 12 in the Odyssey only—and of these Ilos or Iros must be omitted. The number seems too small to show significant tendencies, and it is the more surprising that they are found to cluster round certain localities or heroes. Names found in the tablets are printed in italics.

In one of the most stimulating chapters of his recent contribution to Homeric studies, Professor D. L. Page adduces considerable evidence to suggest that the traditions of the Iliad and the Odyssey diverged at a fairly early date and, like isolated dialects, came to differ appreciably in their diction. Attractive and probable as this suggestion is as a whole, it will always be possible to wonder about the details of the evidence. In this paper it is intended to wonder whether the absence of φλόξ and its cognates from that part of the Odyssey that is certainly ‘Homer's’ is rightly adduced as evidence for this divergence of the traditions.

Page's argument runs as follows. The absence of φλόξ must be due either to ignorance or to chance. But it cannot be due to chance, since there are more than fifty opportunities for its use. Therefore the root, so common in the Iliad, must have been ‘wholly unknown to the Odyssean poet’.

It appears that in order to show that φλόξ was not part of the Odyssey's traditional vocabulary, since it is this that diverges from the Iliad, Page must claim that the root was not part of the poet's vocabulary at all. Can this be regarded as a probable claim? Our available evidence is scarcely sufficient to differentiate the sub-dialects of Ionic (it is admitted that both poets are Ionians), so that it is impossible to confirm that differences of nontechnical vocabulary were a feature of the differentiation. Our view of the matter has therefore to depend on a subjective estimate of the probabilities. Two points are not unworthy of notice: first, the banishing of φλόξ from the Odyssey is only achieved by the attribution to a rhapsodic hack of the ‘Continuation’, where in ω 71, φλόξ appears in just the circumstances where, as I hope to show, it is to be expected; and second, derivatives of the root are used by prose and verse writers both Ionian and Attic, and also in the κοινή, in circumstances that make it impossible to suppose that every instance is a reminiscence of a long defunct epic word.

Sillyon. Note on an inscription already published

CIG iii. 4324c = SGDI 1268. This inscription is carved in a panel on a rock to the west of the city, near the modern village. Height ·16 m., breadth ·175, letter and space down ·026, letter and space across ·019

Perhaps [Όλυμ]πιακοῦ, since ἱαρός can be used in connexion with the Games, as in Lanckoroński, Städte Pämphyliens und Pisidiens, i, p. 66; but the meaning is uncertain; ἱερά generally means ‘a dead-heat’ (LSJ ἱερός iv. 7).

Sillyon. New inscriptions

(1) A statue-base, near the Byzantine wall. Grey stone, the top and the lower part of the left side are preserved. The bottom is buried and the back is very rough, but may be original. Height over ·7, breadth c. ·65, thickness ·33+, letter height c. ·058, letter and space across ·056. Roman date.

In his article on The Sickness at Athens Mr. Watson Williams gives strong reasons for identifying the sickness with bubonic plague, and then goes on to say regretfully, ‘Thucydides, it is true, does not mention buboes’. But are we so sure that he does not? What are the ἕλκη which he mentions along with φλύκταιναι (ii. 49.5) as the outward manifestations of the disease? We have had no adequate explanation of these. Liddell and Scott render them as ‘plague-ulcers’, but this is obviously a conventional translation not based on any serious study of the symptoms of the sickness. Professor Page has given us a detailed discussion of Thucydides' medical vocabulary, but has shed no light on the word ἕλκος. He begins by telling us that ‘ἕλκος is a term of general reference, most commonly signifying a lesion of the soft parts of the body (the context must decide whether “sore”, “ulcer”, “wound”, or what else is intended)’; then, without any discussion of its context, we find him translating the word as ‘sores’ and finally he seeks to persuade us that the phrase ϕλυκταίναις μικραῖς καὶ ἕλκεσιν ἐξηνθηκός is equivalent to ‘crimson or dusky red spots covering the greater part of the body’. Sir William MacArthur, arguing persuasively for typhus, and Professor Shrewsbury, pressing the claims of measles, approach the problems from the medical standpoint, without any serious discussion of vocabulary, and neither offers any comment on the meaning of ‘ἕλκος. Other theorists appear to ignore it completely and concentrate on those symptoms which may be made to fit any infectious fever and particularly on those which are sufficiently vaguely described to allow of a little discreet distortion of the evidence. But surely we cannot hope to identify the sickness until we have decided what the ‘ἕλκος are, for, in the absence of laboratory tests, it is after all mainly by the skin eruptions and other external manifestations that we distinguish one infectious fever from another.

Professor Gomme's approach to the study of Sappho and Alcaeus (JHS lvii (1957), 255 sqq.) is so different from mine that a detailed reply to his article would probably not be very profitable, except perhaps at one point which may be of some general interest. He seems to wonder why the lines were excluded from Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta: these are lines which ‘can charm most men's ears’; but ‘Lobel and Page’, being insensitive to poetry, ‘have such a hate’ of it that ‘they have banished it not only from Sappho, but from Lesbian, and leave it lying about, not telling us what, if it is not Lesbian, it is’. Of course I reply for myself only, not for Mr. Lobel: and I say (i) that you ought not to speak of ‘banishing’ a poem from Sappho or from Lesbian if it was not assigned thereto by any ancient authority; (ii) that if I do not tell anybody ‘what, if it is not Lesbian, it is’, the reason is not perversity but ignorance: I do not know, nor does anybody else, who wrote these lines or when. They belong to a large category, the adespota, which we must ‘leave lying about’ simply because we do not know where to put them.

It is here suggested that the carved effect of many Greek bronzes, or of parts of them, is due rather to their having been cast from carved originals than to extensive tooling of the metal cast as is frequently assumed.

Many of the early small Greek bronzes (Geometric and Archaic: especially at Olympia) present this appearance, looking as if they had been carved rather than modelled. This could be explained in one of two ways: (1) by assuming very extensive tooling of the bronze after casting from a modelled original; or (2) by assuming that this original was carved and not modelled.

The first seems to be tacitly accepted by many writers, and is explicitly stated by some. It is of course entirely possible; but after all the Greek craftsmen were practical men, and extensive tooling is not only laborious and therefore expensive, but is also dangerous in that any slip of the tool may ruin not only the cast but the whole work of the artist if this was originally in wax, lost by cire perdue casting. If it were possible to do the carving on the original, of some material softer than bronze, and above all if it were possible to replace and re-carve a mis-carved portion of that original, any sculptor would be inclined to prefer such a process to cold work on the bronze.

The second assumes that the original was carved. Seltman definitely adopts it: ‘from about 800 B.C. for more than three centuries the Greeks generally made their small bronzes from carved wooden models’, by means of ‘wet clay moulds, which, after being sun-dried, would be taken from the wooden figures and fired’. Against this is the fact that it would not be possible to remove those ‘clay moulds’ except in many separate parts, owing to the under-cutting of many of the examples he figures; and this for originals only a few inches high, so that these parts would be so minute as almost to demand tweezers and a watchmaker's glass to handle them.

Eunoia, in Greek, is something more than good will: it means approval, sympathy and readiness to help. Having such meanings, it soon came to be applied to politics in a number of ways, as describing one's feeling towards a person, or a party, or the city—or even another city. And this last instance which is connected with foreign politics, is what we shall here be dealing with. It is what Isocrates himself is most interested in, for out of sixty examples of the word about twenty-five refer specifically to the relations between one city and another city. And it is the meaning that deserves to be studied, particularly among people who like Thucydides. Whether it is φόβος or δέος, fear, in Thucydides, seems to dominate all relations between the cities of Hellas—and, to begin with, between Athens and other cities: well, eunoia, or good will, is the contrary of fear. That is to say, when Isocrates wants eunoia to rule political life, he wants things to be just the opposite of what they were in the world that Thucydides had described. Indeed, the position he adopts when discussing good will is part of an important controversy that was then being conducted about force and justice, might and right. And so, even if he is not himself a very thrilling writer nor a very intelligent man, it seemed worth while trying to find out how the idea arose both from recent experiments in Greece and from personal tendencies of Isocrates, and how he hoped the notion of eunoia could work in contemporary politics.

The march of Alexander from the Granicus to Issus is given by Arrian in less than a dozen pages scattered among various sieges that are more fully described; Plutarch, Diodorus and Quintus Curtius do less, and no more than a page or two apiece has come down to us on the whole of these movements.

Although his first meeting with Asia was probably the most important experience in Alexander's adult life, and though the Anatolian campaigns lasted a year and a half, or even a little more, out of the short total of eleven years that were left him, the poverty of the sources has imposed its brevity on modern historians also. Professor Tarn—who is as much a bedside book to modern devotees as the Iliad was to their hero—describes the marches and countermarches of Asia Minor in little more than three pages; and there is a great gap left us from classical times between Xanthus and Phaselis in Lycia. It would be absurd to think of filling it. But after sailing down the coast, I believed that some evidence might be gathered by comparing the written scraps left us with the nature of the places recorded, provided this were done before the road-building policy of modern Turkey succeeds in changing the pace of living in these mountains. Hitherto their ruins have scarcely been altered except by a natural decay; and the methods of travel being as slow as ever they were before, except along a very few roads, the flavour of their past is preserved.

In this essay the geography is attempted, with the problems and such answers to them as my rather intermittent journeys seemed able to provide. Someone better equipped than I am may find the outline useful and venture more profitably, before too much time goes by; for the interest is not one of geography merely. By visualising the routes which were chosen, the motives and processes by which that choice was made become clearer; and behind these motives and processes is the most dynamic being that the world has perhaps ever known.

As the point of departure I take that controversial passage in Thucydides i. 13.2—

Now the controversy turns on the type of ship that Ameinocles built. Thucydides uses the general word ναῦς, which in Herodotus certainly and, according to Liddell and Scott, in Greek literature generally does seem to be a synonym for τριέρεις, and after Thucydides' use of the word τριήρεις in the previous sentence it would be natural to take ναῦς in the same sense. The Corinthians built the first triremes in Greece and Ameinocles built four of them for the Samians at the end of the eighth century, and there would be at least a reliable terminus ante quem for the introduction of the trireme into Greece. Here the matter would have rested, had not this date conflicted not only with the other literary records, including Thucydides himself, but also with the archaeological evidence, such as it is, which both seem to preclude such an early date.

The marshalling of the literary evidence against the supposition that triremes were built in Greece at the end of the eighth century has been admirably done by Professor Davison in the Classical Quarterly of 1947. He rightly comes to the conclusion that triremes could not have been introduced into Greece before the third quarter of the sixth century, and that in the disputed passage Thucydides was using ναῦς of ships generally and refraining from specifying the class; but in this case how flat the second part of the sentence sounds—the Corinthians were the first in Greece to use triremes, and Ameinocles the Corinthian built four ships of some sort or other for the Samians—nor does it seem to warrant the luxury of a precise date; and why four ships?