Scenes from the history of Pandora are rare in works of Greek art. There have at present been published, so far as I am aware, only five representations of her, in two reliefs and three vases. These all represent her birth or her coming into being. All the vases are in the British Museum. To these I have to add a fourth vase (Pl. I.), recently presented to the Ashmolean Museum by Mr. Edmund Oldfield, and bringing before us a fresh scene from the interesting history of the strange being made by the gods for the delusion and betrayal of men.

The tale of Pandora, as it appears in Hesiod, is so well known that I need only glance at its main features. When Prometheus had stolen for men fire from the gods, Zeus, determining to punish him, caused Hephaestus to make of earth a beauteous woman, whom, the goddesses adorned with ornaments, but in whom Hermes implanted a deceitful heart and a treacherous tongue.

In the archaic room of the Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome there is a fragment of a colossal foot wearing a high sandal of the type known as Tyrrhenian. (Fig. 1, from photographs for which I have to thank the authorities of the British School at Rome.) The measurements, as given by C. L. Visconti, are:—length ·26m., breadth ·37m., indicating a total length of ·86m. It is important to notice that the fragment is not broken at the back, but is made in a separate piece. From this fact we may conclude with certainty that the foot belongs to a female figure, and protruded originally from long drapery, so that it was unnecessary to carve more than the front of the foot in a separate piece; and with great probability, since there are no dowel holes or other visible signs of attachment, that the statue to which the foot belonged was acrolithic, i.e. it had the trunk and limbs made in wood, while only head, hands, and feet were carved in marble.

The epistates of the prytaneis is last attested in 403/2 and the epistates of the proedroi is first recorded in 379/8. So much for the direct epigraphic evidence. Though Rhodes believed that the proedroi might not have been in existence as late as the 390s, MacDowell and Hansen proposed that they were instituted soon after 403/2. But a little noted passage of Apollodorus suggests a low date for the introduction of proedroi.

A bas-relief of Pentelic marble found about twelve years ago in Argolis portrays with much beauty the family of the God of Medicine awaiting, in the presence of their father, the approach of male and female suppliants. In the two youths who form part of the group immediately behind Asklepios, it is easy to recognise his sons Machaon and Podaleirios; while the three maidens near them must be his daughters Hygieia, laso and Panakeia. One other female figure, who wears a veil and Stephane, and is of more stately aspect, would seem to be Epione, the wife of Asklepios. Aegle and Akeso, who are also sometimes named as daughters of the god, are here omitted. Epione, in spite of her intimate relations with Asklepios, appears to have been chiefly honoured locally—at Epidaurus, and it is her eldest daughter Hygieia who is really the most important member of the Aesculapian family. The almost constant association of Hygieia with her father brought her into the fullest prominence as a medical divinity, though at the same time it, to a great extent, prevented her from attaining to an independent exercise of power. Most modern writers on Greek mythology and religion have generally suffered her to be absorbed in the greater and more interesting personality of her associate, and have often had but little to tell of Hygieia, except that she was represented ‘as a virgin dressed in a long robe, feeding a serpent from a cup.’

The discovery of a new “Hittite” inscription was one of the more solid results of a short and too hurried journey in Asia Minor which I made with Mr. J. W. Crowfoot during July and August of last year, and its publication may not be inopportune at a moment when fresh interest has been aroused in this species of script by the discoveries of Mr. Arthur Evans in Crete.

After a rather abortive attempt to re-explore the obscure and rugged borderland between Lycaonia and Pamphylia, the net result of which was the discovery of just enough to make the topography of this dark corner even less intelligible than before, we turned towards Cappadocia, where we had hopes of finding at least some pre-Hellenic monuments. Years ago Professor Ramsay and Mr. Hogarth had heard a report of what was presumably a Hittite inscription near Nev-sheher (Soandos), a town two days' journey west of Caesareia Mazaca: important things were said to have turned up near the latter city since M. Chantre's visit: and we learnt also of the existence of hieroglyphic stones at Arapison (Zoropassos) on the Halys.

The object of the following pages, the substance of which was read before the Cambridge Branch of the Hellenic Society in 1883, is to examine into the true nature of the land-system of the Greeks of the Homeric age by means of the evidence contained in the poems themselves.

On à priori grounds we might have expected, or at least should not be surprised, to find in the Iliad and Odyssey some traces of that primitive system known as the ‘Open-Field’ or ‘Common-Field’ system of agriculture, which the researches of recent years have proved to have once prevailed over a great part of the earth, and of which many survivals still exist.

The four antefixes from Tarentum, shown in Plate XXXII., where they are reduced in size to about half the actual diameter, are only specimens selected from the not inconsiderable number of types found in recent excavations. All that I have seen are marked by great breadth and freedom of execution. Even those which seem to have been originally cast, in the rough, in the same mould have undergone such subsequent touching up and remodelling as makes them distinct works of art. Identical types sometimes occur in slightly varying sizes which implies successive moulds imitative of some established original. The faces when found are covered with a hard and rough lime-deposit, but the removal of this often reveals traces of colour laid as usual on a white priming. The Medusa, head in the plate appears to have been coloured to the life—cheeks pink, lips red, and not only the pupil, but even the iris of the eye painted. The colour of eyebrows and lashes is dark, that of the hair now a dirty brownish-yellow—like the tint of the common yellow lichen—probably modified by time or by the action of the acid used to remove the lime accretion. The modelling of the lips shows that fleshy and life-like firmness which is peculiar to the best time of Greek art. Under the chin of this, or a similar head I notice the marks of the moulder's finger, but instruments seem to have been used also. The lines of the hair, though fine in the plate, lose considerably by the absence of the part by the cheeks, where over each ear there rises a snake curved like a flattened S. The specimens which show these do not come up in features to the one figured. The colour on the snakes is blue-green. The small button above the centre of the brow is a curious feature.