I have been moved to write this article by receiving a letter from a man of learning and sense, whose name, if I were at liberty to mention it, would be familiar to readers of this journal. Speaking of mythology, he said: ‘It is a desert of names to most of us, with heavy Germans grubbing for solar myths; but there is a core of imagination, if some one would point it out to us.’ I wish to make it clear that the desert of names is no essential part of the subject; that Germans, heavy or light, no longer grub for sun-myths unless they are strangely behind the times and out of tune with the rest of the world in their researches; and that the core of imagination is quite easy to find, and refreshing when found.

The Persian wars is a vague term. I use it to cover the A period between the battle of Marathon (490 B.c.) and the peace of Callias (448 B.c.): I use it merely as a label, and do not wish to imply that the Persian wars were the cause of the change which takes place in Greek art during that period. This change can be seen in all the arts: in sculpture the landmarks are the west pediment of the temple of Aphaia at Aegina, the east pediment of the same temple, the west pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, and the east pediment of the same temple: in literature the change is perhaps more easily traced in the works of Pindar than elsewhere. In the early odes, e.g. Pythian X (498 B.c.), the connexion of the myth with the rest is purely external, for it is linked on by the one word ΥΠερβορέων, in the later odes the whole is often subordinated to the moral which Pindar wishes to point: in Pythian IV (462 B.c.) the moral is ‘Do not banish good men’, and the myth of Pelias and Jason gives a disastrous instance. The earlier ode is composed of beautiful parts loosely joined together, the later is an organic unity with a moral purpose running through the whole. This same change can be traced in Greek vases. Here we have a large number of works of art which can be dated with considerable accuracy and assigned to particular painters. The criteria for dating need not be considered here: the attribution to painters is largely the work of J. D. Beazley and rests ultimately on stylistic grounds. In some cases we have signatures and can call the painter by his name, e.g. Euphronios, Euthymides, but more often none of the vases are signed and the names are conventional, e.g. Berlin painter, Niobid painter. I shall consider in turn subjects, composition of the whole picture, and composition of the single figure,2 during two periods, the ‘ripe archaic’ and the ‘early classical’, which are bounded on the one side by the ‘early ripe archaic’, on the other by the ‘classical’: the late works of Euphronios and Euthymides (early ripe archaic) with the early works of the Berlin painter and his fellows (ripe archaic) are to be dated in the decade 500–490 B.c., the ripe works of the Berlin painter and his fellows from 490 to 480 B.c., the late works of these painters 480 to 470: then come the ‘early classical’ painters, the Penthesilea painter, the Niobid painter, &c., till 450; with the Achilles painter the other boundary is crossed into the ‘classical’ period.1

Mycenae, Knossos, Ur of the Chaldees—Schliemann, Arthur Evans, Woolley—these are names which leap to the mind at any mention of excavation, names glamorous with the romance of discovering by some magic of Prospero's new civilizations old beyond the historian's dreams. But excavating is not all romance, not all the discovery of the undreamed of. Much good work without any glamour has been done by adding one small fact here to another small fact there. And as for the magician's wand the true magic lies in the faith and imagination of those great diggers.

No other personality of the ancient Greek world proved so interesting to his own and to later generations as that of Socrates. Plato and Xenophon, both closely associated with him in his later years, made their first-hand portraits soon after his death. Xenophon's is a plain outline devised to bring out Socrates' moral character and his social and political views; it gives us many sayings but little of picturesque detail. Plato's representation is infinitely more rich and varied, drawn with fuller insight into a many-sided character, and enhanced by his own marvellous dramatic gift. From the point of view of precise truth Plato has no doubt given us too much. The problem of ‘the historical Socrates’ is ever with us; and while discussion centres chiefly on the philosophical doctrines which he expresses in the dialogues, and the question whether they (taken severally or as a whole) were actually conceived by him or by Plato, the same misgiving necessarily arises about the purely personal behaviour and sayings which Plato attaches to his hero. If we attempt to correct Xenophon and Plato, so to speak, by each other, and to arrive between them at a simpler composite picture, we may well be reminded that each observer of a great man has his own angle of vision, and sees as true for him what he is best able to see. Each kind of portrait has its own truth and its own value. It is probable that we shall all continue to find mainly what we seek, and that no one will now succeed in getting behind Xenophon and Plato.

In the first number of Greece and Rome Mr. Symonds reminded us that the bearing of art and archaeology on literature can be studied by visits to sites and museums, and suggested that ‘even a holiday expedition to the Roman Wall is not beyond the bounds of ambition’. Indeed, once Newcastle or Carlisle is reached the motor-car has made a trip to the Wall a simple matter. A cursory visit starting from Newcastle takes but a few hours. A twenty-mile drive over the West Turnpike, Wade's Road as it is popularly called, along the line of the Wall with the earthworks visible for most of the way and a fragment of the Wall itself to be seen not far from the city boundary, brings us to Chesters. Here is the camp, or more properly fort, of Cilurnum, the fort baths, the bridge abutment, and the museum. After Chesters we travel a further ten miles. A substantial length of the Wall is soon seen on the right, while the earthworks line both sides of the road for most of the way, and at Limestone Bank are cut through solid rock. Then with less than half a mile's walk across the fields we come to Housesteads. Here we can see the fort of Borcovicium (or Borcovicus), and then walk a few hundred yards to the west to see a milecastle and get the well-known view of the Wall at Cuddy's Crag. If the start is from Carlisle the mileage is more, Housesteads being about half-way to Newcastle but Chesters ten miles farther east. If we come from the south by road we may leave the North Road at Durham and travelling by Lanchester, Consett, and Corbridge (Corstopitum), join the West Turnpike at Portgate where the Roman Road of the first of the Antonine Itineraries passed through the Wall on its way to the Cheviots and Scotland: or we may turn off earlier and make for Teesdale and Alston, to join the West Turnpike three miles north of Haltwhistle.

On a hill-side rising above the sheltered waters of Suda Bay, on the north coast of western Crete, lie the scattered remains of the ancient city of Aptera or, as it was locally called, Aptara. Near the summit of this hill stood until recently a wall, constructed at a late period of limestone blocks, several of which were inscribed, taken from some earlier building. This wall has now disappeared, and its component stones have been scattered or broken. The left-hand portion of one of them has, however, lately come to light in a neighbouring field, bearing the following text engraved in letters characteristic of the Hellenistic period.

Lucan, fine poet though he be, is yet one of the most faulty and incalculable of the whole recalcitrant tribe. At the very outset we are surprised by a monstrously fulsome dedication to Nero of a work apparently devoted to a vilification of the man on whose amazing career Nero's empire is founded. Satire being quite out of the question, we must suppose that, despite his republican sympathies, Lucan, recalled as Suetonius says from Athens and received with marked favours, felt some acknowledgement required. At the worst we may regard it as a prudent step to forestall any treacherous slave-copyist, or delator who might have heard a partial recitation; and after Seneca's disgrace in 62, in which year the separate publication of books i–iii indicated by Vacca may have occurred, caution would be still more needful. To the same precaution it may be due that, in the poem proper, anti-Caesarian bias is not immediately apparent. The initial attitude seems impartial: general causes are mentioned; we get the plain statement:

Quis iustius induit arma, Scire nefas; magno se iudice quisque tuetur: Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni;

and even some hesitation by Caesar himself, who, at the Rubicon, confronted by the Genius of Rome, exhibits terrors equal to any recorded of pious Aeneas; though after this he is consistently resolute, and is soon credited with a savage desire for bloodshed2 quite inconsistent with his reported actions and with history.