I. The bronze Hermes recovered from the wreck off Cerigotto is one of those works which must be judged from internal evidence alone: no reference to it has as yet been found in the ancient authors, we have no hint as to the city from which it originally came, no inscription to give us a clue to the name of the artist.

It is at once apparent that the style shows no trace of severity, much less of archaism. It is therefore by some considered to be a work of the 4th century. The figure is rather above life size; it represents a young man, nude, resting the main weight of the body on the left leg while his right is slightly bent: there is however no forward motion suggested, the Hermes is standing with a somewhat languid grace. The right arm is raised and is extended half outwards, half sideways, while the head is also turned a little towards the right, thus displaying the muscles of the neck (see J.H.S. vol. XXIII. Pl. IX.) The left hand may have held a caduceus, which would dispel any doubt as to identification, but apart from such an attribute the whole character and treatment of the face seem to suggest a God and not a human athlete. The indications of a violent and passionate nature which Scopas used with such effect are smoothed over or fined away, while in the features and expression the intellectual rather than the animal side of human nature is emphasised.

In the winter of 1900 a number of Greek papyrus fragments came into my hands in Cairo, through one of the most trustworthy of the local dealers. They had to be sorted out from a mass of miscellaneous fragments, with which they had probably been found. The shop was rather dark, and the pieces had not been cleaned; but the hand was clearly literary, and the few words I made out in sorting them over, led me to think that they were, like most literary papyri, Homeric. It was not until some months later, in Oxford, that a more leisurely inspection of them revealed their unusual character, and convinced me of their true importance, as the fragments, unfortunately meagre, of some Alexandrian hexameter poem, no longer extant. A further examination disclosed some curious features, chief among them a system of spelling that seems to mark these pieces as unique among published Greek papyri.

In the excavations made by Mr. Hogarth in 1902 at Zakro on the east coast of Crete a very large quantity of pottery was found. The article in B.S.A. vol. vii., describing the excavation in general, contains a first report on this pottery, and more recently three vases have been published by Mr. Hogarth in J.H.S. xxii. p. 333. The task of making a fuller report was undertaken by Mr. J. H. Marshall, but he was unable to complete it. The preliminary sorting which he had done I found was of the greatest use to me when I began work on the pottery. I have also had the advantage of Mr. Hogarth's advice and correction in preparing this paper, for which I wish to express my thanks.

A reference to Mr. Hogarth's original report in B.S.A. vii. p. 121, will shew that the pottery came from several distinct sources.

The recent discoveries at Olympia, Epidaurus, and Delphi have forced us to modify the old idea of the Greek race course based on the stadium of Athens and the Roman circus. It may perhaps be useful shortly to state the evidence which we now possess.

Running is the most universal, the oldest of all forms of sport, and the primitive form of a race is that which the competitors run from one point to another—the germ of the stadium or straight race—or where they race round some distant object and back to the starting place—the germ of the diaulos and other turning races, as the Greeks call them (κάμπειοι) This simple type of race, which we may see to-day at school treats and rustic meetings, requires no apparatus but two posts, stones, or other objects to mark the starting point, and the finish, or turning point; and it is this primitive type that we find in Homer.

Virgil in the first Georgie, at an early stage of his enquiry into the service of Ceres, enumerates first various heavy agricultural implements, the ‘ponderous strength of the plough-share,’ the ‘slow-rolling waggons of the Eleusinian Mother,’ ‘hurdles’ and ‘harrows,’ and the ‘grievous weight of the mattock.’ Next he passes on to tell of the husbandman's lighter gear.

Virgea praeterea Celei vilisque supellex, Arbuteae crates, et mystica vannus lacchi.

The object of the following paper is to discuss three questions that arise out of Virgil's statement.

Some scholars, in the face of the great difficulties presented by all attempts to reconcile the indications given in Homer with any reconstruction of a house that may correspond to them, have despaired of success to such an extent, that they fall back on the arguments of confusion in the text, or ignorance of what he is trying to describe, on the part of the writer or compiler of the Odyssey as we have it. If any apology is needed for a further contribution to the already copious literature on this subject, it must rest on the ground that, before we give up the question in despair, no theory ought to be left untried. The present paper is mainly an attempt to deal with the difficulties presented by Od. xxii. 126–177, of which the first twenty-one lines contain nearly all that is important.

This paper does not profess to give anything more than a brief account of the important results obtained by the German and Austrian excavators up to the time of my visit to these sites in June. I should like in particular to direct the attention of English archaeologists to Western Asia Minor as a field of research that is practically untouched, especially as regards remains of the Hellenistic period. Brilliant results await the scientific explorer of important sites such as Sardis, Tralies, Laodicea, and Apamea, and all these are extremely easy of access. The English traveller cannot help feeling ashamed of English archaeology when he sees the unintelligible mass of ruins and brushwood that covers the site of the Artemisium at Ephesus.

The recent Exhibition of works of Greek art held at the Burlington Fine Arts Club—although necessarily limited to comparatively small objects—has been sufficient to prove that the traditional wealth of our English collections of classical antiquities still remains a fact. The Exhibition, moreover, has had its use in eliciting information as to works of art on a larger scale, hitherto unknown and unrecorded, that had escaped the vigilance of Waagen and of Conze, of Michaelis and of Furtwängler, and even of our English archaeologists. Thus it was that when the Exhibition was little more than planned I learnt from the well known sculptor, Countess Feodora Gleichen, that there existed at Lyme Park, Lord Newton's Cheshire seat, three fine sculptured Stelai from the best period of Attic art. I am grateful to the owner for granting me permission to publish these inedited works in this Journal, which ought indeed to be the official gazette of the English collections. I have unfortunately been unable to avail myself as yet of Lord Newton's further permission to study the originals. But as photographs of the Stelai are now extant, I have thought it wiser not to postpone the publication for fear that it might be anticipated elsewhere. The information kindly given me by Lord Newton himself has facilitated the discussion and interpretation of the Stelai which, for the rest, are perfectly straightforward examples of their class.