The islands of the Marmara group, of which the largest are Marmara, Pasha Liman, Aphisia, and Koútali, lie north and west of the Cyzicene peninsula in the sea to which they give their name. The following account is derived from my own gleanings during a short stay in Marmara and Pasha Liman (1907), supplemented from the detailed monograph published by M. Manuel Gedeon of the Greek Patriarchate, who visited all the islands of the group in 1894, studying chiefly the Byzantine and later antiquities.

B.M. B46. The catalogue describes this vase thus:—

Acquired 1867: Blacas Coll. Dinos. Ht. 13 in. Diam. 12½ in. Slightly restored, imperfectly fired. Around rim, chain of lotus and buds; on shoulder, tongue-pattern. Two friezes: above, banquet scene, of seven couches, on each of which two male banqueters; between the two end couches, group of five servants, in attendance on the banqueters; below, animal frieze. Beneath this a broad zone of black, and on bottom, polypus pattern.

The principal scene shows a series of seven couches, on each of which recline two bearded male figures, facing to 1.; seven of them wear wreaths. Alongside each couch stands a table, bearing viands for the banquet. From 1. to r., the first, fourth, sixth, tenth and thirteenth hold out phialae in varying attitudes; the third, eleventh and fourteenth hold out kerata, in the act of drinking, or to have them refilled, while the seventh and eighth also have each a keras; the fifth holds out a kantharos; the twelfth raises an apparently empty r. hand; the second also raises his r. hand, but the object he holds is hidden by the first figure; the ninth plays the double flute.

Of the children Echidna bore to Typhon the Chimaera was certainly the most illogical. She might even be considered as the very strangest among all the fantastical beings orientalising art in Greece liked to represent. For though she was called the goat, yet she stands before us as a lion, and the only thing there is of a goat about her is a head, that grows like a parasite out of the lion's back, and, in most cases, looks piteous rather than terrific. Even the later addition of a pair of forefeet cannot contribute to making her look formidable. We are told that she has a mighty weapon: the fiery flames she can eject from her mouth. Yet perched as she is, it is not easy for her to make use of this weapon; she will have to manœuvre very skilfully in order not to harm the lion, whose head will always come between her and the enemy they are confronting.

In the literature of the Elgin Collection there is not infrequent reference to the ‘Tomb of Aspasia’ and its contents, which are of interest. The name, however, as I show below, has not even such measure of authority as may be supposed to attach to a local tradition.

During Philip Hunt's stay at Athens, his attention was called to a large tumulus in the Attic plain, and he made arrangements for its excavation. ‘The Calmuck,’ he wrote to Lord Elgin, November 28, 1802, ‘is to begin his excavation of a Tumulus near the Piraeus tomorrow.’ When Lord Elgin visited Athens in January, 1803, on his homeward journey from Constantinople, he sent men from the Diana frigate to continue the excavation, the Diana being the man-of-war in which, as a returning Ambassador, he made his passage.

Nothing apparently was found at this attempt. Indeed the tumulus was much too large an undertaking for such cursory treatment. Fifteen months later the work was taken up again by Lusieri, who reported to Lord Elgin (May 18, 1804) that while he was for the time being excluded from the Acropolis, he was employing the workmen ‘in excavations in various places, not without success.’ This is followed by the account of the excavation ‘du grand tombeau dans les vignes pour aller au Pirée,’ which has been already printed in this Journal.

Once only—seven years after the battle of Leuctra—there was actual fighting within the sacred precinct, the Altis, of Olympia,—in the 104th Olympiad (364 B.C.). From time immmoreial, before and since that year, the inhabitants of Elis, as Polybius (iv. 73) phrased it 200 years later, ‘enjoyed on account of the Olympian games’ so unique and privileged a dispensation that Olympia and the whole of Elis was a Holy Land, and feared no ravages of war. The Eleans, by the same token, were ideally conceived of as living consecrated lives (ίερὸν βίον) and enjoyed immunity from battle and sudden death. In his account of the one and only battle of Olympia, Xenophon—writing after he had lived for twenty-three years within an afternoon's stroll of the Olympian Altis—alludes in passing to the θέατρον by way of explaining just where the fighting took place.

The objects described in this article have for the most part been acquired by the Trustees of the British Museum in the course of the last four years through Sir Cecil Smith, late Keeper of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Sir Cecil Smith has kindly given his assent to their publication, and Mr. Arthur Smith, the present Keeper, has added his permission.

‘Since the discovery of the ῾Αθηναίων Πολιτεία in 1890’ the learned editors of the Oxyrhynchus papyri tell us, ‘Egypt has not produced any historical papyrus at all comparable in importance to these portions of a lost Greek historian, obviously of the first rank, dealing in minute detail with the events of the Greek world in the years 396 and 395 B.C.’ Drs. Grenfell and Hunt are indeed to be congratulated first on having made so great a discovery—a piece of luck which their long and arduous labours, systematically and scientifically conducted, have so richly deserved—and secondly they are still more to be congratulated on the success with which they have pieced together and deciphered the text and illumined their interpretation with clearly written and closely argued introduction and notes. They have not contented themselves, as they well might have done, merely with arranging and deciphering the text—a work demanding the greatest patience and the most exact scholarship—but they have boldly tackled, and with great acumen, the difficult question of the authorship of the work and many historical problems raised both by the fragmentary nature of the text itself and by comparison of its statements with those of other extant authorities.

Sing, Goddess, of the Wrath of Achilles son of Peleus,

Fatal and accurséd Wrath: for on the Greeks it laid

Innumerable Griefs, and many souls of stalwart Heroes

Hurl'd headlong to the house of Death, and of their bodies made

A prey for dogs, a feast for birds; fulfilling the Design

Of Zeus:—Begin the story when the King, the son of Atreus,

First fell apart in quarrel from Achilles the divine.

δῖος is one of Homer's favourite heroic epithets. He uses it for hero after hero, when the name scans suitably. It must be part of an inherited stock-in-trade. Yet here, where the form of the paragraph gives it emphasis, the ‘faded’ epithet is vivid and significant. The music haunts us.

It haunted Homer when he made the Odyssey:— ‘Muse … the resourceful Man … his Wife … the Nymph, bright among goddesses … the gods … godlike Odysseus.’ It haunted Virgil:— ‘Arms and the Man … Fate … Juno's Wrath … the Gods … the walls of Rome,’ and Milton:— ‘Man … One Greater Man … sing, Heavenly Muse….’

I propound a question which I cannot answer. The period at which the Greek minuscule hand came into the world withdraws itself from direct evidence, and can only be approached by induction from dates apparently considerably distant. I have, however, facts to detail which do not seem to have been combined elsewhere, and which admit of a conclusion which I believe has not been drawn. And though the conclusion may not be right, the subject is of enough importance to justify a guess. With all the discoveries of papyrus and the survivals of uncial, the minuscule hand of the ninth to the sixteenth centuries is that in which we read nearly all our Greek classics, and imitated by the first printers has given us our present-day Greek type and modern Greek writing.

No tradition remained in Greece of the place, manner, or date of the origin of this hand. Of late a mistranscription of a sentence in the fourteenth century MS. Canonici graec. 23 by Cramer (An. Ox. iv. 400. 5) has given rise to some singular speculations (Gardthausen, Gr. Pal., p. 205).

J'espérais bien n'en plus parler; j'en ai parlé, jadis, assez longuement. Mais un important article, publié en 1915 dans l'Hermes par E. von Stern et dont je n'ai eu connaissance qu'en ces temps derniers, m'oblige à en dire encore quelques mots.

Il s'agit, une fois de plus, de ce Πτολεμαῖος ὁ Λυσιμάχου appelé aussi Πτολεμαῖος Έπίγονος dont fait mention un décret voté, en 240 avant notre ère, par les citoyens de Telmessos en Lycie; qui, par la faveur de Ptolémée III Évergètes, était devenu peu avant cette date prince souverain de Telmessos; et qui reçut des Telmessiens, en récompense de ses bienfaits, les plus rares honneurs.

The questions involved in this passage continue to be matter of debate. At this point in the dialogue the Forms are not yet regarded as causes, or as ‘in’ particulars; they are here introduced as in each case the perfect type, which particulars so named imperfectly resemble. Thus, equal things are described as being ‘like’ αὐτὸ τὸ ἴσον How far can this statement be reconciled with the case of the other Forms, which are presently instanced as on a par with ‘the Equal’ (75 c–d, οὐ γὰρ περὶ τοῦ ἴσου νῦν ὁ λόγος ἡμῖν μᾶλλόν τι ἤ καὶ περὶ αὐτοῦ τοῦ καλοῦ καὶ αὐτοῦ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ καὶ δικαίου καὶ ὁσίου). Further, what is the point and significance of the plural phrase αὐτὰ τὰ ἴσα?

(I) αὐτὸ τὸ ἴσον Plato does not at any point in his argument indicate that he finds any difference in status between αὐτὸ τὸ ἴσον and the other perfect types. He refers to it in terms which become familiar in relation to the Forms of being. Thus, 74c, ἐκ τούτων . . .τῶν ἴσων, ἑτέρων ὄντων ἐκείνου τοῦ ἴσου 74d, ὅταν τίς τι ἰδὼν ἐννοήσῃ ὅτι βούλεται μὲν τοῦτο . . . εἶναι οἶον ἄλλο τι τῶν ὄντων, ἐνδεῖ δέ, κτλ 75a, ἰδόντες τὰ ἴσα ἐνενοήσαμεν, ὅτι ὀρέγεται μὲν πάντα ταῦτα εἶναι οἶον τὸ ἴσον, ἔχει δέ ἐνδεεστέρως . . . ἐκείνου τε ὀρέγεται τοῦ ἔστιν ἴσον, καὶ αὐτοῦ ἐνδεέστερά έστιν 75b, εἰληφότας ἐπιστήμην αὐτοῦ ἴσου ὅτι ἔστιν It is after this passage of exercise, so to speak, in the concept of αὐτὸ τὸ ἴσον that he explicitly (75c–d, already quoted) places this Form on a level with αὐτὸ τὸ καλόν and the rest.

Few Greek statues are so famous as the draped marble figure, somewhat larger than life, known under the name of ‘Sophocles,’ which has been for many years the chief attraction of the Lateran Museum (Figs. 1, 2). Indeed it was on account of this statue, and on the occasion of its discovery, that Pope Gregory XVI ordered a part of the Lateran Palace to be converted into a Museum, wishing to provide the gem with a worthy shrine of its own.

Nor is such fame undeserved.

The calm and dignified attitude, the high-spirited head, the clever and harmonious arrangement of the drapery, the careful, broad and supple workmanship—everything combines to make our statue not only a masterpiece of Greek art, but the classical type of an Athenian gentleman shown in the bloom of full manhood, as he may have been met with sauntering about the theatre or agora in the fifth century B.C.

Though all do not agree that we have here, as has been often said, the finest lifesize portrait which has come down to us from Hellenic sculpture, at any rate, since the first day of its appearance, artists and archaeologists have been unanimous in its praise.

I return to this subject, on which I wrote in 1921, because there is a good deal to be said which is new and which should, I think, be pretty conclusive. I have recently been compelled to write once again on Alexander's universalism, and the two matters are interconnected; also Professor Wilcken has put forward a new view of the principal plan, that for the conquest of the Mediterranean basin, which I think is untenable. The importance of the question of this plan for our ideas of Alexander needs no emphasising.

The document which contains the plans is given in Diodorus xviii, 4, 2–5, and Wilcken, like every German scholar to-day, believes that that document comes from Hieronymus and is therefore true. I have traced this belief back as far as I can, and cannot find that anyone has ever attempted to prove it; it arises from the unquestioned fact that (Agathocles apart) the basis and much of the detail of Diodorus' books xviii–xx are from Hieronymus. But the question of xviii, 4, 2–5 stands thus, xviii, 5 is certainly from Hieronymus.

The construction of the Frogs of Aristophanes is of a normal conventional type. From the appearance of Dionysus in his strange garb, appropriate to the patron of a heroic stage run mad on realism, to a Dionysus whose wine is new and his bottles old, the customary series of comic incidents develops the conventional situation. This introduction presents us with the antecedents, the background, and the grouping of a comic dispute, The contest forms the main part of the drama; and, quite conventionally, it is separated from the introduction by a parabasis which offers a mixture of serious and comic advice. That the background is the nether world: that the disputants are so eminent a pair as Aeschylus and Euripides: that the judge is the god of all tragedy and comedy himself, and the chorus blessed spirits of the sanctified—all this illumines the old forms with a fresh and unrivalled originality. But the mechanical structure is simple and conventional, as has been said.

Excavations at Sparta have cleared up many of the problems connected with the class of pottery now definitely recognised as Laconian, but the great number of the mythological scenes, found mainly on kylikes, form a group quite distinct in spirit and design from the other types of decoration used on Laconian ware, and it is still a question whether the vases with these scenes (nearly all of them found outside Greece) could really have come from the workshops which turned out the vases found in Spartan soil. There must be some distinct and powerful cause, lying outside the normal growth of local artistic tradition, to account for this new development, and this cause, as I will try to shew, seems to be the coming of Bathycles of Magnesia to build the great Throne of Apollo at Amyclae.