So far as authority goes, Kaerst founded his theory of Alexander's worldkingdom on two passages in Diodorus and on nothing else. The first, 17, 93, 4, alludes to Ammon having conceded to Alexander the power over the whole world, τὴν ἁπάσης τῆς γῆς γῆς ἐξουσίαν the reference is to 17, 51, 2, where Alexander says to the priest of Ammon, εἶπέ μοι εἴ μοι δίδως τὴνἁπάσης <τῆς> γῆς ἄρχην and the priest replies that the god grants this. The second passage is 18, 4, 4, the story of Alexander's supposed plan to conquer Carthage, etc., and go to the Pillars, from his alleged ὑπομνήματα Every one will agree with Kaerst when he says that the political information in the Arrian tradition is imperfect, and that it is very desirable to supplement it; but the real question, which has to be faced, is, are we in a position to supplement it? It is no good using unsound material as a supplement; it is better to say we do not know, if it comes to that. My object here is to examine the Diodorus passages and see what kind of material they offer.

The contention of this paper is that the growing disbelief in the ancient casualty figures of one's own side and the tendency to regard them as ‘propagandist’ are generally mistaken. The arguments turn on the origins of the figures and on the practicalities of warfare. In the last section special attention is given to those of Alexander's citizen forces. The casualties of mercenaries are not considered.

Books xviii–xx of Diodorus' Bibliotheca Historica have long been regarded, apart from the sections on Sicily and Italy, as closely based on the work of Hieronymus of Cardia, a friend of several of the leading Macedonians, and as giving a reliable, if condensed, account of the events succeeding the death of Alexander. What is said there about the obscure naval events of the crucial year 323/2 must then provide the framework into which any other information about those events is to be fitted.

For the uprising of 323 and 322 BC by the Greek states against the Macedonian domination, the name ‘The Lamian War’ has universal currency, identifying the overall conflict through reference to the siege of Lamia in the winter of 323/2. Given the relative insignificance of that particular event in determining the outcome of the war, the name does not seem to be particularly appropriate. Yet there is ample ancient evidence to indicate that the term ὁ Λαμιακὸς πόλεμος was used also in antiquity to signify this struggle.

Of all the states in ancient Greece, Attica seems to have had the most interesting and complete system of land defences. A chain of important fortresses, of most of which there are still considerable remains, follows the line of the Kithairon–Parnes range: Eleutherai, Oinoe, Panakton, Phyle, Dekeleia, Aphidna and Rhamnous. It may appear at first that this series of strongholds was designed expressly to mark off Athenian territory, but whilst incidentally and in large measure they served this end, in origin they were intended rather to defend the various roads from Attica into Boeotia. A fresh examination of these forts and their relation to the Attic frontier may be of some service and interest.

The natural boundary of Attica on the N.W. is the mountain ridge which begins on the Halkyonian sea-coast behind Aigosthena and continues almost due eastward to the Straits of Euboea, reaching the sea at Cape Kalamos. It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that the early tradition made the Megarid and Attica into a single kingdom. Plato, describing an idealised primitive Attica, gives as the boundaries the Isthmus and the heights of Kithairon and Parnes extending down to the sea, with Oropos on the right and the Asopos on the left.

This paper deals with Plato's use of poikilos and cognates to describe democracy. It does not argue that Plato's Republic contains empirical analyses of some contemporary event, but supposes that an historical reading of the book is possible and legitimate. Post Peloponnesian War Athenian society experienced profound socio-economic changes. Echoing the aristocratic élite's circumspect anxiety when faced with the nouveaux riches, Plato clearly regards obsessive greediness as one of the root causes of the corruption of any political system. Referring to democracy, the philosopher invents the himation poikilon or ‘embroidered coat of many colours' metaphor. By materializing the multifaceted concept of poikilia, this metaphor gives a single and palpable form to the principal topoi of anti-democratic rhetoric: the himation poikilon evokes the motley constitution of the Athenian regime, the tyrant's ostentatious opulence, aped by the demos turannos, the inconstancy of the demos, the deceitful character of democracy and, last but not least, its penchant for spectacles.

Although the incidence of suicide in classical antiquity has been studied for over a century, a proper methodological basis for such a study has been established only recently. The scholars who have been most concerned with this issue are Hirzel, Katsouris, Aigner, Walcot, Seidensticker, and, recently, van Hooff, and they have approached the topic in various ways. Although their interpretations have contributed to our knowledge of suicide in ancient Greece, they have rarely done more than analyse and classify examples of suicide as these occur in classical literature: we have not used our knowledge of the topic to re-examine the literature. The task of investigating the ways in which poets made use of contemporary notions about—and attitudes towards—suicide for their own dramatic purposes still needs to be carried out.

In his article on The Sickness at Athens Mr. Watson Williams gives strong reasons for identifying the sickness with bubonic plague, and then goes on to say regretfully, ‘Thucydides, it is true, does not mention buboes’. But are we so sure that he does not? What are the ἕλκη which he mentions along with φλύκταιναι (ii. 49.5) as the outward manifestations of the disease? We have had no adequate explanation of these. Liddell and Scott render them as ‘plague-ulcers’, but this is obviously a conventional translation not based on any serious study of the symptoms of the sickness. Professor Page has given us a detailed discussion of Thucydides' medical vocabulary, but has shed no light on the word ἕλκος. He begins by telling us that ‘ἕλκος is a term of general reference, most commonly signifying a lesion of the soft parts of the body (the context must decide whether “sore”, “ulcer”, “wound”, or what else is intended)’; then, without any discussion of its context, we find him translating the word as ‘sores’ and finally he seeks to persuade us that the phrase ϕλυκταίναις μικραῖς καὶ ἕλκεσιν ἐξηνθηκός is equivalent to ‘crimson or dusky red spots covering the greater part of the body’. Sir William MacArthur, arguing persuasively for typhus, and Professor Shrewsbury, pressing the claims of measles, approach the problems from the medical standpoint, without any serious discussion of vocabulary, and neither offers any comment on the meaning of ‘ἕλκος. Other theorists appear to ignore it completely and concentrate on those symptoms which may be made to fit any infectious fever and particularly on those which are sufficiently vaguely described to allow of a little discreet distortion of the evidence. But surely we cannot hope to identify the sickness until we have decided what the ‘ἕλκος are, for, in the absence of laboratory tests, it is after all mainly by the skin eruptions and other external manifestations that we distinguish one infectious fever from another.

It is well known that in his eighth year, 1162 B.C., Ramesses III repulsed onslaughts by the Peoples of the Sea or Sea Raiders as they are often called. The migrating horde was composed essentially of a group of closely related tribes, the Philistines, Tjekker and Dene. They were dressed identically alike in the Sea Raider kilt which was divided into panels and fell to a point in front, and they wore a headdress of feathers, as it is supposed to be, Fig. 1. This, it will be noted, is the very dress of the follower of the chariot on the ivory gaming box from Enkomi, Fig. 2. The panelled kilt falling to a point in front is there, as is the headdress on which even the row of circles or rings so often decorating the head band is shown, as well as the neck guard fitting to the back of the head. Another detail on the Enkomi box allies the scene to the Philistines and therefore to their relatives the Tjekker. It is that like those of the Philistines the charioteer leans forward over his horses. This is a very rare attitude to be adopted, though significantly enough it can be found occasionally among the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh. It is also to be seen on one of the Megiddo ivories of a date not later than c. 1150 B.C. It does not occur in the Mycenaean paintings. The point to which the kilt falls is not quite like that of the Sea Peoples for it is broader. On the other hand, the Egyptian paintings show it on a man coming from ‘the ends of Asia’, that is to say the extremest north of Syria. Quite other evidence proves it to be a north Syrian or perhaps Hurrian detail, for it is shown much later on the Loftus ivories from Nimrud which are under this influence. Besides this, one of these ivories shows a kilt which is just that of the Sea Raiders, but without the tassels.

This article revisits the question of how elegy was performed at the symposion, and argues that, rather than being either musical or non-musical, elegy situates itself between speech and song. None of the passages in which elegy mentions song are clearly self-referential: they tend to be generic, set in the future, concerned with other performers and other compositions or altogether too slippery in their language to pin them down. Moreover, there are a number of elegiac pieces that appear designed to allow symposiasts to shift from song to speech or speech to song, thereby introducing a new mode of performance, and so are themselves transitional. These observations about the way elegiac texts position their own performance are complemented by considerations about their actual performance. Evidence both from ancient musicologists and from other tonal languages suggests that inbetween modes of delivery were common in Greek poetry and the metrical shape makes elegy a prime candidate. The final section of the article turns to the difficult term elegos in fifth-century drama. It argues that several of these passages draw on inbetweenness as one association of elegos and thus decreases the gap between elegos and surviving elegy. A coda points out that the elegiacs in Euripides' Andromache are a further example of elegy transitioning between two modes of performance.

In the early part of the fourth century it was the regular practice for Athenian treaties to specify the authorities who were to swear the oath on either side, and, although the fifth-century material is more scanty, three clear instances suggest that the habit was already established by 425. The notable exception is the Peace of Nikias, and with it the Spartan alliance of 421, in which not the quality but the number is prescribed, seventeen from each city. Kirchhoff suggested that this odd number might be built up, on the Spartan side, from the two kings (who in fact head the list), the five ephors (the eponymous ephor Pleistolas comes third and the next four might be his colleagues; cf. Tod, GHI 99), and a board of ten. Kirchhoff refused to speculate about these ten beyond saying that it was a normal number, but this gap in his argument can perhaps be filled from a passage in Diodorus (below) which has received no satisfactory explanation. Normal Athenian practice would not oblige Athens to conform to the Spartan number, and if Kirchhoff is right we should perhaps suppose that Sparta asked for numerical parity. The next question will be, how the Athenians made up their seventeen.

The first strophe opens with a wish and a syntactical problem:

εἴ μοι ξυνείη φέροντι μοῖρα τὰν εὔσεπτον ἁγνείαν λόγων ἔργων τε πάντων,…

The sentence is often interpreted as though φέροντι were φέρειν: ‘may it be my destiny to possess’. However, for this meaning the infinitive is clearly required; there is no valid parallel for the use of the participle supposed here. Burton offers: ‘may a share of life be my companion provided that I win or possess purity’; purity is a precondition for life. This interpretation is possible but improbable, for the use of μοῖρα as a synonym for βίος would be obscure in this context. It is altogether easier to interpret with Kamerbeek: ‘would that Destiny were with me when I (“so long as I” or the like)’; the chorus hopes for the favour of fate, provided that this is earned by purity of word and deed. The hope thus embraces an intention to avoid all impurity of word or action. Against this interpretation it has been objected that μοῖρα is a constant presence, not a helpful power which might desert. However, συνεῖναι is attested with the sense ‘favour’ (Aesch. Sept. 671, Soph. OT 275); and the notion that fate may favour individuals or groups is attested (Pindar O. 2.35 ff., P. 3.85 f).

One of the most basic features of the imagery employed by Aischylos in the Oresteia is the consistent perversion of normally propitious aspects of human existence, with the result that they become sinister and destructive. As Anne Lebeck puts it, ‘in Agamemnon those forces which should be beautiful, benevolent, and life-giving are converted into their opposites’. Male and female interchange their proper roles, sacrificial language cloaks impious deeds of vengeance, the hunting of animals turns into the hunting of men, the wealth of the house of Atreus becomes the blood in which that house is drenched, and the fertility of the whole land is corrupted by its application to death instead of life. The deliberate misuse to which Aischylos puts each of these structures has been well surveyed; taken together they lend dramatic reinforcement to a central theme of the Oresteia, that man's world is in a state of chaotic disorder from which it will not recover until the dilemma of vengeance v. justice has been solved. What I should like to do here is to trace out a similar arrangement in the substantial fire imagery of the trilogy. Fire, of course, as Aischylos himself tells us in the Prometheia, is one of the basic tools of mankind, a device used to provide many of the comforts of civilisation. Yet the same element, when handled improperly, may also ravage and destroy (compare the problems encountered by the satyrs in the Prometheus Pyrkaeus).

What follows is an attempt to interpret the Hesiodic Shield of Herakles by the same method as I have used elsewhere for the ‘Shield of Achilles.’ Long ago Brunn attributed obscurities to interpolation, mixed the zones, and allegorized; but nevertheless perceived that a real composition was in the poet's mind. Studniczka endeavoured to prove that the shield which Hesiod described was a real shield. But to support his theory he had to manipulate the text; his positive evidence was weak; it was, indeed, too soon for such an enterprise, and perhaps it is too soon still; and what was known then about archaic Greek art led in another direction. Recently, Mr. R. M. Cook has argued that while parts of the description of Herakles' shield were based, in subject and in phrasing, on the Homeric ‘Shield of Achilles,’ most of the other parts had parallels, sometimes very close, in archaic Greek art; and at a meeting of the Hellenic Society on 3rd May, 1938, he supplemented this argument with illustrations. Assuming, not unreasonably, that the vase-paintings are fairly representative, he showed that all the required models are to be found within the decade 580–570 B.C., and within the Attic and Corinthian schools. He found no evidence of the influence of Ionia, nor of Chalcis. He noted that these results agree with the view, based on historical and literary arguments ‘perhaps inadequate’ (I follow the summary circulated at the meeting of 3rd May, 1938) that the poem was written about 575 B.C. by a Boeotian or a Thessalian.

Kars-Bazaar is about four hours from Boudroum; in its situation it agrees with Flaviopolis, standing on a branch of the river Pyramus, at the foot of the mountains. Unfortunately none of the inscriptions reveal the name of the site.

‘A very handsome tessellated pavement in a cottage, with an elaborate pattern, in the centre of which is the following legend.’ Copied by Mr. Bent.

Probably from the floor of an early church. Dedicated by the guild of fullers. It is interesting to see these trade-guilds, so common under the Empire in Asia Minor, passing unchanged into the Christian Church. For συνέργιον = συνεργασία, see C. I. G. 4346 and Addenda, p. 1163 (from Side).

The Imperial Ottoman Museum has recently acquired a very valuable and interesting gold ring (Fig. 1) which was found in 1894 or 1895 in a tomb at Lampsacus. The Museum authorities subsequently undertook further excavations in the necropolis of which this tomb formed part, and it is a matter for great regret that no detailed report of the results was drawn up; we are therefore forced to content ourselves with the somewhat meagre information given by the late Baltazzi-Bey to M. Salomon Reinach, according to which the necropolis yielded fragments of red-figured pottery and specimens of silver autonomous coins of Lampsacus. Both these details are of importance in fixing the date of the ring; for on the one hand silver coins of this class belong almost exclusively to the fourth century, and on the other, the manufacture of painted vases was not continued after that date. When we add that the evidence of coins and inscriptions proves that this was the most flourishing period in the history of Lampsacus, we have strong a priori reason for assigning the ring to this century, while a consideration of the style of the intaglio may help us to fix the date within narrower limits.

There is a bird perched on the neck of a bull on a Late Bronze Age krater from Enkomi in the British Museum (plate I 1). It has long legs and a long neck, and it is much larger than any of the crow tribe, so often seen on cattle. Its long pointed bill is fixed on a point in the bull's neck probably removing a tick or something of the sort. The operation is painful and the bull tosses his head. On the other side of the vase the bird has lost his footing but still keeps the grip of his bill on the neck of the bull (plate I 2). That daggerlike bill is longer than the one on the other side of the vase. We must therefore suppose that the bill in the earlier scene has been inserted into the bull's neck to a considerable depth. No wonder the bull is plunging about to dislodge the operator.

A bird with long neck, long legs, and long beak can only be a marsh bird, and as it is hunting for insects on the neck of a bull, it can only be a Cattle Egret (plate I 4.), though its body bears some resemblance to the bodies of birds which are probably meant for geese or swans; its beak is more formidable. Presumably this insect-hunting bird is not a deity revealing him or herself; but perhaps Cypriots are more secular than Mycenaeans.

This paper is a much revised version of that read to the Classical Association at Bangor on April 11, 1956; here I intend to concentrate on the development of the trilogy with particular reference to the Prometheus Purphoros, on the meaning of the trilogy and (in an excursus) on the questions of authenticity and date.

The Medicean Catalogue records three Prometheus plays by Aeschylus—our surviving Προμηθεὺς Δεσμώτης , the much-cited Προμηθεὺς Λυόμενος and the Προμηθεὺς Πυρφόρος Pollux ix 156, x 64 (with citation) adds a Προμηθεὺς Πυρκαεύς The Luomenos followed on the Desmotes and included the actual release of Prometheus. Pollux' citation of the Purkaeus has an anapaest in the fourth foot, suggesting that the play was satyric and therefore probably to be identified with the satyric Prometheus recorded as accompanying the Persae group of plays; with it should probably be associated the verse in Plutarch: τράγος γένειον ἆραπενθήσεις σύ γε (TGF 207: τοῦ δὲ σατύρου τὸ πῦρ ὡς πρῶτον ὤφθη, κ.τ.λ.) and also the long fragment recovered from Pap. Oxy. 2245. These last two items go some way to show that the Purkaeus dealt with the original discovery or bestowal of fire; with regard to its omission from the catalogue, it should be borne in mind more constantly than it has been that the other plays which accompanied the Persae—the Phincus and the Glaukos of Potniai—have been omitted too; and while it is hard to imagine what particular misfortune can have befallen a number of plays of the same group, it would be rash to assume that there can have been none.