When a new journal makes its bow to the public, it is expected to submit to a δoκiμασíα and to explain the reasons for its existence. Greece and Rome is a classical journal, or, as its claim might be stated more modestly, a journal for readers of the classics. It has many elder sisters, the Classical Quarterly, the Classical Review, the Journals of Hellenic and of Roman Studies, to which it would be an impertinence to appear as a rival. But Greece and Rome has no intention of rivalling these grave and reverend seniors; its function is rather to be a supplement. For all of these, though many of their articles have a wide appeal, are in fact the journals of the professors and the learned dons, whose business is in the deep waters of the minutiae of classical scholarship, and of the latest developments in its many branches. But there is another public, less learned perhaps but not less keen, the classical schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, who, though their occupations do not permit them to keep abreast with details, are yet eager to know the general trend of recent criticism and to hear of important new discoveries in archaeology or to learn the gist of a striking new theory. There are many too, as the list of the members of the Classical Association makes clear, whose avocations lie in quite different fields, but who maintain their study of the classics and their love of all connected with the ancient world. It is for such as these that Greece and Rome hopes to cater. It will be its endeavour to provide interesting and attractive articles on general topics connected with the study of the classics as well as to give an efficient record of work that is being done.

The visitor to Algiers who is interested in Roman archaeology naturally and rightly thinks first of Timgad and Lambèse. If he takes train to Setif, spends a night at Djemila, motors across country to Batna, and, after visiting the famous camp and the even more famous town, returns through Constantine, he should have enriched his knowledge of the Roman Empire appreciably. But time and money may preclude such a tour as this. It is pleasant to realize that, even within a comparatively restricted circle, there is a great deal worth seeing.

In Greek art we have a conspicuous example of a twofold character that belongs only to the greater types of creative expression. This character is both permanent and fluid. On the one hand, it can never go out of fashion, because it embodies principles of life that respond to the aspirations, if not the capacities, of intelligent humanity in every age. On the other hand, being far too vital to be merely static, it continually allows of fresh and powerful re-interpretation, so that natural lovers of art can always see and enjoy it at first hand through the aesthetic consciousness of their own time.

If, in two thousand years time, any research student is sufficiently interested in the life of twentieth-century Britain, he may read The Times History of the War, as we read Thucydides; he may dig up London and try to reconstruct Westminster Abbey, as the Athenians are now rebuilding the Parthenon. But if our student wants to know how the ordinary Englishman lived, and what were his amusements, he will have to read the modern novel, if indeed any have survived so long. Now the Greek had no novel. The fifth-century Athenian found living far too exciting to waste any of a short life either in reading or in writing novels, even if he had spent sufficient time indoors to cultivate a taste for either; while the Spartan would have suppressed any such attempt, and its author, with ruthless energy. Consequently we cannot turn to any such source to find out what games the Greek boy or man played. No doubt there are allusions scattered throughout Greek literature, especially in the Comedies of Aristophanes, but to give his allusions their true significance is as difficult a task as our student two thousand years hence will find it to reconstruct any phase of modern society from the pages of Punch.

In one of the winding dells of the Arcadian uplands a little white-walled city slept sunnily on a knoll beside the riverbed, where the thread of the summer stream curled slowly among the rushes. The sun stood blazing in the south, and the people of the city lay resting peacefully in patches of shade under the temple roofs or under the colonnades by the fountain. The market-place was silent; a few shopkeepers dozed under their booths, where their merchandise was sheltered from the heat of the summer noon. The narrow streets, winding among the blank white walls of the houses, were deserted. On a small hill above the market-place stood the temple of Zeus, with its gables fronting east and west. In the shade of the eastern gable two boys were standing and straining their eyes into the glare of the sun to watch the white track which climbed the hills before them. Both of them at once saw a little cloud of dust rise on the crest of the hill, and the form of a man running. ‘The runner!’ they shouted, and their shout woke the cool shadows along the northern colonnade of the temple. One after another, men came out and joined them, and the elder boy darted down the temple steps, across the market-place, and down one of the narrow streets crying all the while ‘The runner! The runner!’ The town woke from its sleep; shopkeepers, porters, nobles, men, women, and children gathered on the temple steps before the runner had reached the bottom of the valley; and as he climbed the short ascent, and ran through the open city gate, an eager crowd awaited his arrival. He reached the open space in front of the temple. His face and hair were covered with dust and sweat, as were his sinewy legs and arms. He stood gasping for a moment to get breath for his announcement to the silent eager crowd. Then in a hoarse but exultant voice he cried, ‘Stymphalians, Hagesias won the mule-car race yesterday morning!’