The North Range of Cyprus is a long, narrow, rugged ridge of hard steeply-inclined limestones, flanked southwards by coarse grits and sandstones, also steeply-inclined. On both sides of the range the lower slopes consist of later and softer limestones and marls, which overlie the rocks of the range unconformably, and have not been much disturbed since they were formed. The contrast is very marked between (1) the rugged peaks and spurs of the mountains, which run up, barren or sparsely forested, to more than 3000 feet, with passes as low as 1000 feet; (2) the dry brown barren ‘hummocks’ of the grits and sands, and (3) the light soil and great local fertility of the recent lowlands. This fertility depends, however, directly on the water supply; and as the greater part of the rainfall of Cyprus seems to come up from the south-west, and is liable to be intercepted by the hills, the north coast depends mainly on the discharge of the hill rainfall in springs, which break out at intervals along the upper margin of the later limestones, particularly if they are marly, and cut steep-sided torrent beds which widen seawards, and have formed alluvial coast deposits here and there.

Of over 1000 images of birds found in sanctuaries, approximately 300 may be interpreted as water birds: they are found in sanctuaries of female rather than male deities. The cult and ritual reasons for bird offerings and representation are discussed.

The Object of these notes is to draw attention to some ancient sites mostly within easy reach of Salonika which seem to have hitherto escaped the notice of travellers. It has been possible to make a few additions to the list of mounds published by Mr. Wace in 1915, and supplementary notes are added in a few cases-where further exploration has confirmed or modified his conclusions. A few of the mounds given in his list have been excavated with varying degrees of thoroughness, but it is to be feared that the results will not be published as a whole, and in many instances not at all.

Excavations at Akrotiri on Thera, where some house roofs remain intact, have shown that U-shaped terracotta drains, set projecting out beyond the outside walls, drained roof terraces. These terraces were often surrounded by built parapets.

What then of contemporary Neopalatial buildings on Crete, where construction and style are similar but much less is preserved? Evidence for the appearance and use of roofs and parapets there consists of drains that seem to have fallen, as now reported at various recently excavated sites (Kommos, Mochlos, Palaikastro); also staircases that probably led to the roof; and architectural depictions (a model, plaques).

The type and decoration of the Ephyraean goblet and the length of its duration is discussed in the light of recent excavations. Its chronological range is defined as LH IIA–IIB/LM IB to before the end of LH IIB.

The main epigraphic evidence for the water-supply of Aphrodisias in Roman times is to be found in the fragmentary inscriptions published by Doublet and Deschamps in BCH XIV (1890), 611–13, nos. 7–10, and CIG 2782, ll. 40–2. From the former group of texts it has been assumed that two water-systems were installed, one in the time of Vespasian and the other in the time of Domitian; I hope to show that these texts refer to one water-system only, that built in the time of Domitian. From the latter passage it has sometimes been thought that M. Ulpius Carminius Claudianus paid for the laying-on of the waters of the river Timeles to the city in the age of the Antonines. This assumption rested on the false reading ὲλ[ειο]δ[ι]ὰκτο[υ]ς introduced by Boeckh. The word ὲλειοδὶὰκτοςis taken to mean a ‘conduit for draining marshes’ (LS9, s.v.). Sherard's copy preserves the true reading ἒλ <α> ια δρακτοῖς πολλὰκις τεθεικὸτα. All that can be proved by the inscription is that Carminius Claudianus made several distributions of oil ὲν τῶ̣ καιρῶ̣ τῆς τοῦ Τε<ι>μὲλου ποταμοῦ εἰσαγωγῆς (l. 41); there is no proof that he paid for the construction of the aqueduct.

The epigraphic evidence for the earlier water-system rests on the reconstruction of the text of which BCH XIV (1890), 611–13, nos. 7 (cf. REG XIX (1906), 223–4, no. 126), 8 and 9 are fragments; no. 10 seems to be part of another copy of this, or a similar, inscription. Of these fragments the only one found by the expedition led by Professor Calder in 1934 was no. 7; the improved readings in this inscription are from a photograph.

The British excavations at Mycenae in 1953 were continued with a research grant from the American Philosophical Society assisted by contributions from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, the British Academy, Bollingen Foundation, and the British School at Athens, under whose aegis the excavations were conducted. The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton has provided an ideal base for preparing the material for publication.

The excavations began on July 8th, and work ceased on August 24th. On August 25th the bulk of the finds was moved to the Nauplia Museum and stored in the room reserved for the finds from Mycenae. The finds from 1952 are already in this room. We improved its facilities this year by the erection of some wooden shelving. The days from August 26th to August 30th were spent at Nauplia in studying and arranging the finds and in photography. The carved ivories, the tablet and seal impressions have been taken to Athens, but the stone vases were taken to the Nauplia Museum with the pottery.

The Linear B administrative texts of Late Bronze Age Greece were written on clay tablets, whose production therefore formed the first stage in the process of document creation, though it generally remains unclear whether the tablets’ writers were also their makers. This study combines experimental archaeology with autopsy of the tablets from Pylos in order to investigate the methods by which the Linear B tablets were created at this site. It thereby sheds light not only on the physical processes involved in shaping the clay, but also on the decisions involved on the part of the tablet-makers, and hence on the relationship between the ‘making’ and ‘writing’ stages of the process of creating the Linear B documents.

The defence of Late Byzantine (fourteenth–fifteenth centuries) frontier zones frequently became the responsibility of military elites, borderlords, who enjoyed absolute power in these areas and immunity from any fiscal or other obligation towards the Byzantine state. In this article I present the case studies of two borderlord families: the brothers and military officials Alexios and John, and the Genoese family of the Gattilusi, who ruled large areas around the Northern Aegean in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and participated actively in their defence at a time when they were surrounded by enemies and plagued by piracy. The aim of the article is twofold. First, I consider the borderlords’ building activities, modes of self-representation and the creation of new geographies as strategies for establishing control and legitimising their power. Second, I explore how the rise of these borderlords fits with Byzantine imperial policies and corresponds to changes in the character of Late Byzantine imperial authority and the role of the Byzantine emperor within and beyond the empire. Over the course of this article I hope to highlight the complexity of the political and economic situation in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and contribute to an understanding of modes of Late Byzantine government and power that move beyond simplistic frameworks of decline and fall.

Nobody flashed a shield at the Battle of Marathon, for it is scientifically impossible: hoplite shields were curved, and you cannot reflect a flash from a curved surface. The shield can only have been waved (as Herodotus says), making it a short range signal, not from far-off traitors in Athens but traitors at Marathon, signalling the movements of their own army to the enemy. The Persians' voyage round Sounion was long and tedious, and the quickest way to Athens would be to land as soon as possible after Marathon, at Loutsa, and for the cavalry to dash for the city. The signal warned that this route was blocked, hence Plan B—Sounion.

Early in 1921 the Neuchâtel Asphalte Company, in beginning the construction of the new coast road from Old Phaleron to Vouliagmene(see map, Fig. 1), found not far inland from the small promontory of Hagios Kosmas some ancient foundations, and by them the inscription, which is here published. The discovery was communicated by Mr. Bottomley, Manager of the Company, to the British School, and to him I am indebted for permission to publish it, and also for the sketch plan of the ancient foundations here shown (Fig. 2). On the top of a low hill the line of a wall (about 1·50 m. thick) of the late fifth or fourth century B.C., built of rectangular blocks of poros, appeared, and on the top of this the inscription was found as indicated in the plan (Fig. 2). Slightly north of the inscription was a large block running out westwards at right angles to the main wall. If the main wall is the boundary of the Shrine of Dionysos mentioned in the inscription, it is possible that this big block formed part of the shrine itself. In any case it seems likely that we should recognise in these remains, scanty though they are, the ruins of the Dionysion in which the inscription was to be erected. On the south side of the road a double tomb came to light (Fig. 2). In the upper tomb, which was covered by a large tile so curved that it was in section half an ellipse, a small aryballos with a simple anthemion ornament in a very late red-figure style was found with a few much-decayed bones, perhaps those of a child; but in the lower tomb, which was made of two shallow rectangular troughs of terra-cotta, there were only a few bones. The tomb, which cannot be earlier than the late fifth century B.C., would not be likely to have any connection with the Dionysion, and was in any case outside it.

There are several explanations current about the origin of the triglyph. First, that the frieze of triglyph and metope started from a decorative feature of Mycenaean art and survived—invisibly to us–until eventually Doric architecture emerged. Secondly, that triglyphs are the fossilised remains of barred wooden windows, which early Greeks needed but their successors did not. Thirdly, that triglyphs are the flattened vestiges of an upper row of columns, abandoned by the timid masons of the seventh century. Fourthly, that the triglyph represents the end or a facing of the end of a wooden beam, this though in all ascertainable early instances the beams run from the course above the triglyph. Fifthly, and liable to the same objection, that the metopes were originally the ends of beams and the triglyphs bars between them. To each of these explanations—and probably to any other that has been or can be devised—there are serious objections. But since the treatment and the prominence of the orthodox triglyph give it an appearance of being an important structural member and particularly one of wood, the most popular explanation is the fourth, which derives the triglyph from the wooden beam. If this is accepted, the argument may reasonably be pushed further.

In a rescue excavation in the Demetrokali plot in the Chora of Naxos, part of a building complex, with a paved road, was discovered. Characteristic vases are presented (local imitations, and imports of Minoan types) which date the unit to the LC II period and show that Naxos at that time formed part of the network of communications with Crete and the eastern Aegean.

About four miles south of the modern railway station of Diakophto in Achaia, on a high saddle between the valleys of the rivers known to Colonel Leake as the Bokhusia and River of Kalavryta, just north of the modern village of Mamousia, are the remains of a small walled ancient city. Leake supposed these ruins to be those of the ancient Achaean city of Keryneia: later the French Scientific Commission in the Morea identified them with the town of Bura: Leake accepted this view, which prevailed generally until it was refuted by Professor Ernst Meyer of Zürich in 1938. I was not at first inclined to accept all Professor Meyer's arguments; he has, however, courteously answered my objections, and a re-examination of the evidence has convinced me that he is right and that the ruins are indeed those of Keryneia.

I visited the ruins at the end of 1950 and in the foundations of a small building above the theatre discovered an antique bronze in the form of the head and neck of a goose. This I took to the National Museum in Athens, where it was cleaned and found to be of such interest that a small joint excavation by Mr. Zapheiropoulos, Ephor of Antiquities, and myself, was agreed upon.

This excavation was carried out in May 1951. Unfortunately Mr. Zapheiropoulos was unable to be present himself, but I had the benefit of the guidance of his experienced foreman, Mr. Andreas Mitropoulos.

Although the slopes of the καστρί had been rifled by native diggers there were indications on the southern side, at a site called Τὰ ῾Ελληνικά that something still remained. The trial pits struck at once two small burial-enclosures, lying close together. The northern of the two proved to be a structure some six by seven metres, with the western wall lacking, divided into two unequal compartments.

In the Addendum to the editio minor Kirchner quotes with approval the opinion of Wilhelm that the two fragments published separately as IG ii2. 121 and IG ii2. 185 belong together. As far as I have been able to ascertain, this suggestion has never been withdrawn. There are, however, a number of reasons which make it clear that this proposed join must be rejected.

Both pieces are of white marble and are housed in the Epigraphical Museum at Athens. IG ii2. 121 (= EM 6958) constitutes the top right part of a stele and has a right edge preserved. The dimensions are: maximum height 0·366 m., maximum width 0·222 m., maximum thickness 0·151 m. The surface is rather badly worn. Part of the bottom of a heading in large letters (of 22 mm. height) is preserved at the very top. Below this there is an uninscribed space of 0·113 m., followed by the remains of some six lines of text which comprise part of the prescript of the decree.

In the sepulchral inscription IG ii2. 10453 we are offered Άγλώκρ[ιτος] Τορωνα[ος]. The name Aglokritos, however, cannot stand, for there is room only for a name with a maximum of nine letters. The two extant transcriptions by George Finlay appear to offer two additional letters (AT/IA) at the end of each line, letters which were read by no-one else, Koumanoudes included. It is suggested in this article that Finlay failed to maintain his customary accuracy in making his sketches, and that we should place no faith in the supposed letters AT/IA at the right-hand edge of the stone. We believe that the only nine-lettered male candidate—the female name Aglokrate being less likely than the expected, but ten-lettered Aglokrateia—is Aglokreon.