The copious discussion which has been raised in recent years on the subject of the Four Hundred at Athens has brought out at any rate one certain conclusion. Of our two main authorities for the revolution of 411 B.C. neither Thucydides nor Aristotle can be pronounced entirely right or wrong, and it is no longer admissible to settle the differences between them by canonising the one and ruling the other out of order. Both our authorities can be convicted of some palpable mistakes, but again both can be proved right by collateral evidence on many points of detail. In reconstructing the history of the movement our choice between these two sources must therefore not be made on the ground of any a priori preference accorded to the one or the other. The only safe procedure is to adjudicate each question outstanding between them on the special merits of the case. It is not to be expected that even by this method finality can be attained. But a review of recent controversy will show that only by a pragmatic method of treatment is there much chance of collecting a nucleus of agreed truth.

We have next to inquire into the relation of these lives to one another. One way of doing this is to consider the authorities they quote. The Herodotean Life naturally stands on one side; IV. also as being clearly V. less its quotations, may be neglected. I mark with an asterisk the ἅπαξ ϕερόμενα in each case.

A study of the Greek numeral systems as illustrated by extant inscriptions has convinced me that there are many misconceptions still current which require correction, and that there is an urgent need for the collection and tabulation of the evidence for the acrophonic systems of Greece, those, that is, of which the numerals employed in Attica down to Roman times form the best known example. This task I hope to essay in the forthcoming volume of the British School Annual, but meantime I may briefly discuss three instances which have not hitherto met with the attention they deserve. If the results attained are not in all cases certain, I hope that I shall at least succeed in calling attention to the problems and in stimulating someone else to seek and to discover their true solution.

The general conviction that the true nature of ancient Greek music is practically incomprehensible in modern times arises from many causes, of which the most potent are:—

1. That hitherto all explanations have been based on the extant formal treatises, which deal either with the decadent elaborations of solo cithara-playing, or the purely theoretical calculations of the self-styled Pythagorean school, which latter professedly despised the actual performance of music.

2. The attempts to elucidate the subject make no allowance for the fact that the extant specimens of noted music extend over a period of at least eight centuries, and no one explanation is likely to fit either the whole of these or the casual references to music to be found in general Greek literature.

3. Thanks mainly to Aristoxenus, the modern mind has become so permeated by the quarter-tone theory of the enharmonic genus, that even so simple a record as the celebrated Euripides fragment has been generally interpreted as involving this minute interval. The arguments against this theory, at least as regards vocal music, are weighty and almost conclusive; but their full development requires more space than is available here.

The marble head which is described in the present paper, and which is represented in the accompanying Plate, was lately acquired by the Cyprus Museum, and now forms part of the collections which have at last found in the new building a home worthy of their great archaeological importance.

The history of the head is somewhat obscure. According to the information I received, the head was lying for more than twenty years in the storehouse of a certain dyer in Nicosia, and was lately sold to a coffee-house keeper, from whom it was secured for the Museum. From the same dyer were bought about twenty years ago by Mr. E. Constantinides two marble statuettes, the provenance of which was given at the time as the site of the ancient Lapethos. It is therefore most probable that our head, as sharing with the two marble statuettes the imprisonment in the dyer's cellar, may have come from the same place, though of course this suggestion is by no means certain.

The statue reproduced on Pl. II. was found two years ago in the village of Atfih which lies about forty-five miles south of Cairo on the edge of the eastern desert. Atfih preserves the name and occupies the site of the ancient Per nebt tep aht, the city of the cow-headed goddess Hathor. The Greeks, who identified Hathor with their own Aphrodite, translated the name into Aphroditopolis. The ruins of the town are covered by the modern village, but in the adjoining desert is a large cemetery, mainly of the Ptolemaic period, which Mr. Johnson has recently excavated in search of Greek papyrus.

The statue was found accidentally by a labourer digging in the village and was secured for the Cairo Museum by the local Inspector of the Antiquities Department. It is made of a block of rather soft limestone and is considerably more than life size, the height of the figure without the plinth being 2·5 m. Both forearms are missing. The right leg from knee to ankle and parts of the left leg are restored in plaster. The features are badly damaged. There are no remains of paint or gilding on the surface of the limestone.

In an article in the Annual of the British School at Athens. I have endeavoured to show that the geography of Boeotia lends no support to the theory that the Cadmeans were Phoenicians. Yet from the fifth century onwards at least, there was a firmly established and, as far as we know, universally accepted tradition that they were—a tradition indeed lightly put aside by most modern scholars as unimportant. If the arguments from geography are sound, then this tradition must be learned theory, and theory only. That this is so cannot of course be proved; for the authors by whom it was established, if it was established, are lost to us. We cannot even show, for this theory itself, that it is probable; for the methods even of Herodotus, and his reasons for his theories, are often obscure. But if we can show that it is a possibility—and not a bare possibility, but a very natural one—then the arguments brought forward in the Annual can be allowed their full weight.

The counterpart of the well-known ‘Ludovisi Throne’ now that it is exhibited in Boston, and has been admirably published in the Berlin Antike Denkmäler, is accessible to study and criticism, and has naturally attracted a great deal of attention. All further discussion must be based upon that published by Prof. Studniczka, who gives an accurate and sympathetic description, a full quotation of illustrative material, and a judicious and convincing criticism of earlier theories. There is, however, one aspect of the matter which he passes over very lightly, and this is the question of the genuineness of the new portion now in Boston, as a portion of the same structure with the Ludovisi relief in the Terme at Rome. He refers, indeed, to some doubts that had been expressed; but he thinks they are not to be taken seriously, and are sufficiently refuted by his general discussion of the monument: he regards them, in fact, as on a level with the doubt at first expressed by some authorities as to the genuine archaic character of the Ludovisi relief. The question cannot, however, be dismissed so lightly. The beauty and simplicity of the Ludovisi relief have almost universally impressed artists and amateurs as well as archaeologists; and these qualities are conspicuously absent from the Boston portion, their place being taken by an affected and complex composition and a mingled collection of types, some of them archaic, some of them showing the influence of later art. The artistic impression produced is so different that it seems worth while to analyse its sources; and it is particularly to be noted that Prof. Studniczka's learned and exhaustive study fails to produce any very close parallels to the subject and character of the work.

The two objects figured on Plate VII. are casts from the two sides of a limestone mould in the British Museum (Fig. 1). The mould is grooved round the edge, where it is a good deal broken away. The diameter is 11·4 cm., the thickness, 1·9 cm. The mould was acquired by the Museum in 1910. Its provenance is not known. The descriptions which here follow apply to the casts.

The sculptured drums of the columns of the Ephesian temple are important works both in scale and in beauty. Each of them was nearly twenty feet in circumference and six feet high. The most perfect of the drums, now in the British Museum, had eight life-size figures filling this space (Fig. 1); one of them is obviously Hermes, and the drum which bears it may conveniently be named from this figure.

The present paper is a continuation of my article in vol. xxxi, of this Journal (1911), pp. 161–215, and it contains the inscriptions promised on the final page of that article. The sixth inscription (No. LXXII.) was recopied by Sir W. M. Ramsay and myself in 1912, but we added little to Professor Callander's copy. Several further texts discovered in 1912, and careful revisions of many of the known inscriptions, are reserved for treatment in another place. The inscriptions in my former paper are referred to as Nos. I., II., etc.

When I wrote my paper on this coinage which was published in this Journal (1911, pp. 151–160) I was unaware that a find of coins had then recently taken place at Vourla (Clazomenae), which at once added to our knowledge of the coins of the Revolt, and confirmed my attribution of them. This find has been published in the Revue Numismatique (1911, p. 60), by M. R. Jameson, who being unacquainted with my previous paper published in the Proceedings of the British Academy for 1908 (vol. iii. pp. 119–122) came independently to the same conclusions as myself and gave the find to the time of the Ionian Revolt. Such support as that of M. Jameson greatly strengthens my position.

The pretty vase figured at the head of this paper passed from Prince Louis Napoleon's possession into the hands of the late Auguste Dutuit, who bequeathed it along with his other treasures to the city of Paris. The same subject, a winged woman holding bow and arrow and bending to touch a fawn, is repeated with very slight variations on an unpublished lekythos in Syracuse. To judge from her weapons, the woman must be the winged Artemis who is familiar to us from primitive Greek art: but small, brisk, and dainty, she is greatly changed from the strong-armed Potnia Theron. Although it may often be observed that hunters love in a curious sort the fleet or violent people of the woodland whom they pursue and destroy; yet no one could think that this little lady ever used the weapons she carries to hurt or kill: borne on wings, she overtakes the swift feet, but the chase is not in earnest and ends not in death but in a caress: she is kindly to the rough young of fiery lions, and delightful to tender forest creatures that love the breast.

I contributed to the first number of the J.H.S. for 1911 an article on the development of Spartan foreign policy, to which Dr. Grundy replied in the following issue. Inasmuch as my article was the promulgation of a new theory running counter to the views already published by Dr. Grundy, I looked forward to a reply from him which would establish on clearer grounds of evidence the views of that section of his Thucydides which deals with Spartan foreign policy; or, at any rate, if he did not care to work over old ground again, to an attempt definitely to controvert my evidence and conclusions. If his reply had at all conformed to my expectations, I should not have ventured to make any further demands upon the space of the Journal, since I cannot see that journalistic controversy adds anything either to learning or to the amenities of life. But Dr. Grundy's answer consists of little else than a repetition of ipse dixits, and a somewhat intolerant arraignment of my conclusions, supported by a wholly insufficient and even misleading representation of my arguments.