That cremation is unknown in the Mycenaean world, even in its latest phases, and inhumation equally foreign to the Homeric poems is a curious, if familiar, fact, and at once raises the question of the length of the interval which separates the fall of Mycenae from the appearance of cremation in the Aegean area. To fix an absolute date for either event is impossible; but the increasing number of carefully excavated sub-Mycenaean and proto-Geometric tombs makes it possible to note certain features in the rise, spread and, in certain regions, the dominance of the practice, and slightly to narrow the chronological limits.

At Mycenae cremation does not appear at all, not even among those depositions in chamber tombs which were accompanied by pottery of the ‘Granary’ class and therefore belong to the latest period of the city or may even be slightly later than its fall. Similarly, two of its ordinary concomitants are lacking, the arched fibula and iron as a useful metal.

This article reviews several books published since the turn of the millennium that explore the role and representation of animals in different areas of ancient Greek and Roman culture. Despite differences in focus and outlook, these books herald the arrival within classical studies of the questions, concepts and methods of human/animal studies as an emerging field of enquiry. This article takes their publication as an opportunity to take stock and to outline the relationship between these disciplines. I explore how current research on ancient animals resonates both in existing debates in classical scholarship and within the context of the larger interdisciplinary debate. I also suggest how this debate can point to productive avenues for further enquiry in classical studies. More specifically, I argue that the interdisciplinary debate sets an important agenda, which should be embraced more fully by classical studies. Classical scholarship on the role, function and perception of animals in different areas of ancient Greek and Roman life can provide important insights into one aspect of the heritage – Western conceptions of humanity and the place of the animal within it – which has not yet received the attention it deserves. I conclude that classical scholarship can make a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary debate, helping it deliver on its stated goal of examining and challenging Western concepts of self, as well as the ideologies of ‘the other’ underpinning them.

Homeric archaeology long dominated the study of early Greece, but new approaches have recently revolutionized the field. Drawing from these approaches, I offer a regional and diachronic analysis of Homeric stories about Crete, an assessment of the reception of these stories by the island's inhabitants throughout antiquity and an account of their impact on medieval to modern literature and art. I find that Cretan interest in Homer peaks in the Hellenistic period, but also argue for the much earlier familiarity of some Cretans with stories that underlie the Homeric epics. This argument relies on an analysis of the archaeological assemblage of a Knossian tomb of the 11th century BC, which includes a range of arms that is exceptional for both Aegean archaeology and the Homeric epics. In the epics, this equipment is carried by the Knossian hero Meriones, whose poetic persona can be traced back to the Late Bronze Age on philological and linguistic grounds. Based on this, and on current understandings of performance at death, I argue that the Knossian burial assemblage was staged to reference the persona of Meriones, therefore suggesting the familiarity of some Cretans with early stories that eventually filtered into the Homeric epics.

In describing the sacred grove () of Asklepios in the territory of Epidaurus, Pausanias (ii 27.1) mentions two of the rules that were in force there: (he has just mentioned that the ἄλσος is surrounded on all sides by boundary stones), and, secondly,

Those about to give birth or to die were eventually accommodated immediately outside the peribolos in a building constructed for them in Pausanias' own time by ‘Antoninus, a Senator’. The eating accommodation was provided earlier, most obviously in the building generally described as the καταγώγιον. Since this lies between the temple of Asklepios and the theatre, which is itself, according to Pausanias we can assume that sacrificial meat consumed in it had not been taken outside the boundaries.

Aëtius ii 20.1 (DK 12A21) Aëtius ii 25.1 (DK 12A22), on the moon, is similar, ending

It is generally supposed that is the nozzle of a bellows; but G. E. R. Lloyd, Polarity and analogy 313 ff. is doubtful of this interpretation, pointing out that only one, doubtful, parallel can be cited for this meaning of πρηστήρ, and that the nozzle of a bellows does not emit fire. He concludes, however, that if πρηστήρ has its normal, meteorological, sense, ‘it seems impossible to interpret … αὐλός … for this must surely refer to some sort of pipe or tube and this seems quite inappropriate to such phenomena as lightning or whirlwinds … “Bellows” … appears to give the best sense for this difficult phrase’.

My purpose here is to show that has a good meteorological sense. According to Aristotle Mete. 371a15 ff., the πρηστήρ is a variant of the τυφῶν, which is a whirlwind (370b22) which forms within a cloud (ib. 28), and, being unable to separate itself from the cloud, descends to the earth, bringing the cloud with it (371a9, ff., and especially 11 ff. ). This seems to be the ‘tornado’ or the ‘waterspout’ of modern meteorology. A tornado is ‘a very intense, progressive whirl, of small diameter … From the violently-agitated main cloud-mass above there usually hangs a writhing funnel-shaped cloud …’ The ‘funnel-shaped cloud’ is presumably the cloud which Aristotle's whirlwind ‘draws down with it’.

It was suggested to me by Mr. T. J. Dunbabin that the question of Attic B.F. export might be treated by grouping chronologically—as far as possible, for the sake of convenience, in twenty-year periods—the Attic B.F. ware hitherto found at various sites. This method of grouping differs slightly, of course, from that of Payne, and I have not found it possible to adhere strictly to it throughout (e.g., for the middle of the sixth century), but it perhaps serves as well as any other for the purposes of what aims at being an economic rather than a purely archaeological survey.

Throughout the paper only the earliest finds from any one site are listed. Although this method may well seem to give an undue importance to certain sites which were apparently but scant importers of the ware, it would be impossible—within the scope of such a paper—to give exhaustive lists of the finds of every date.

I do not know of any book or published paper devoted to Cleostratus. In the indexes to most histories of astronomy you will seek his name in vain, and, where you do find it, you are referred to a few jejune paragraphs or more often to a single sentence. Boll in his Sphaera (1903) honours him with three pages (191–194), based on a passage in Pliny and a scholium on Euripides, but he misinterprets both passages and holds one of them to be based on a misunderstanding of some older writer. Nearly all the passages bearing on him are to be found with notes of varying value in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ii. (1912), pp. 197, 198, where they occupy rather more than a page. Some valuable comments and one reference which is not in Diels will be found in Breithaupt's treatise De Parmenisco Grammatico (1915). And yet, for all this neglect, there are attributed to Cleostratus two capital contributions to Greek astronomy, viz. the introduction of the signs of the zodiac and the authorship of the eight years' cycle of intercalations.

• (i) By an oversight which I can neither explain nor excuse, I entirely failed to take account of the relevant Panathenaic amphorae attributed by Sir John Beazley to the Eucharides Painter (ABV 396):

1. 9. Athens, Acropolis 947, fr. … B, man holding auloi (Graef, Heft 2, pl. 61).

2. 10. Leningrad from Kerch. A, Athena; B, aulete on platform between two men on ground level, both leaning on rhabdoi. Arch. Anz. 1912, 339–40, figs. 23(A), 24(B).

3. 12. Athens, Acropolis 1060, fr. … B, two men on platform (= aulode and accompanist?) facing standing man with rhabdos (Graef, Heft 2, pl. 62).

• (ii) Since my article appeared, Dr Dorothy Kent Hill of the Walters Art Gallery (to whom I am indebted for most of the references on which these addenda are based) has published in AJA lxiii (1959), pl. 47 (fig. 3—A, fig. 4—B) a further Panathenaic amphora which she attributes to the Eucharides Painter:

• Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery 48.2107 (acquired 1958). A, Athena; B, man on platform playing kithara between two men leaning on rhabdoi.

In my publication of the al Mina excavations (JHS LVIII, 7-9) I argued that although al Mina itself, owing to the disappearance of the greater part of the ancient site, produced no remains earlier than the eighth century B.C. yet that it existed in a much earlier period could be deduced from the evidence afforded by the ‘residential’ town at Sabouni where Attic black-figured and Mycenaean pottery were found. Further evidence is now available. In 1947 we found in a pocket in the steep side of the acropolis one of the well-known ’dolly’ Mycenaean figurines; this was important because the few Mycenaean sherds previously discovered might just as well have been of the Xllth century, i.e. posterior to the invasion of the Peoples of the Sea which marked the beginning of a new era in North Syrian history, whereas the figurine is definitely earlier than that catastrophe. This year (1948) two of the peasants who cultivate the hill site brought me three seals found by them when ploughing; all are earlier than 1200 B.C. and one cylinder belongs to the first half of the second millennium. The connection between Sabouni and the port of al Mina is perfectly clear for all the periods represented on the latter site and should hold good for the earlier periods also. If Sabouni, and ex hypothesi al Mina, were flourishing at the time when Alalakh was a royal city we can be sure that al Mina was the port of Alalakh through which the Syrian town had its contacts—amply illustrated by our discoveries—with Cyprus and Crete. I originally chose the two sites for excavation on the theory that such was the case; now for the first time we have direct evidence for their being contemporary.

The purpose of this article is somewhat ambitious. It is proposed to adduce evidence in support of the thesis, which the writer has already briefly maintained elsewhere, that the majority of the dates, earlier than the period of the Persian Wars, which pass current in our Greek history text-books, are wrong, and should be ‘scaled down’ by a certain proportion of their distance from 500 B.C. The virtue of 500 B.C. as a base-line lies simply in the fact that it falls in the middle of the generation that saw the beginnings of Greek historical prose writing in the hands of Hekataios of Miletos and others.

The genius of Herodotos, the considerable amount of contemporary information gleaned by later Greek scholars from the early elegiac, lyric and iambic poets, the vivid personalities of these poets themselves, and the systematising labours of generations of logographers and historians, ultimately reduced to order by Eratosthenes and transmitted to us by Eusebios—all these conspire to obscure from us the fact that the whole Archaic period in Greece is not an historic but a proto-historic age; an age known to us, not from contemporary historical writings, but through a synthesis of archaeology, references to historic events in a literature still exclusively poetic, references to our area in historical documents from a more mature adjacent region (such as Assyria), and genealogies and oral traditions that survived long enough to be written down later.

This paper focuses on two problems connected with our sources for Athenian politics between 510/09 and 488/7 B.C.:

(i) In the Athenaion Politeia attributed to Aristotle (henceforth Ath.), ostracism is included in the laws of Cleisthenes (22.1). But later (22.3) the author of the Ath. dates the first ostracism (that of Hipparchus, son of Charmus) to the year 488/7. Depending on the date of Cleisthenes' laws, this leaves a gap of thirteen to twenty years between the institution of ostracism and its first use. Yet the very nature of the law suggests that it was passed for immediate use.

(ii) Cleisthenes' rival, Isagoras, is described in Ath. 20.1 as φίλος τῶν τυράννων. This label conflicts with two details in the political struggle. It involves Cleomenes, who had recently expelled the tyrants from Athens, in an astounding volte-face in supporting one who is known as φίλος τῶν τνράννων. Secondly, Isagoras had had the opportunity of imposing by force the kind of government he wanted—but it was an oligarchy (Hdt. v 72.1, Ath. 20.3: a council of three hundred), not a tyranny. How did the inappropriate label originate?

The reaction of most scholars to the first problem has been to reject the ascription of ostracism to Cleisthenes in Ath. 22.1 and 22.4 and date the institution of ostracism to shortly before the first recorded ostracism.

It may be taken for granted that in any branch of learning it is a pleasant, and may be an instructive, task to turn one's back now and then on progress and research, and look backwards along the path which we and our predecessors have trodden, and to reflect on what we owe to those who were the pioneers in the exploration of our subject. And it seems no less true that the study of Greek history is a fit theme for such a backward glance, even if it is difficult, and at times impossible, to isolate it completely from the general background of Greek learning, particularly at the Renaissance.

I propose, therefore, to examine the background and the progress of the study of Greek history between 1350 and 1500, not continuously, for the task would be too laborious, but at intervals of fifty years, noting certain landmarks associated with each of these dates, and touching on the main developments in each of these half-centuries.

In the year 1350 there occurred a noteworthy event, fraught with immediate delight to the two participants, and with momentous and quite unforeseen consequences for the future of classical learning, namely, the meeting of Petrarch and Boccaccio in Florence. One of the things that helped to bring them together was their common enthusiasm for Greek, of which Boccaccio had already attained some knowledge; Petrarch, though a few years older, was still hoping, and eagerly striving, to acquire the rudiments of the language.

In his magnificent report on the American excavations at Persepolis E. F. Schmidt published a fragment of a stone plaque found in the Treasury (frag. 2 on FIG. 2). This plaque bore a sketch of a human torso, which G. M. A. Richter considered to be Greek work of about 500 B.C. : she identified the figure as ‘Heracles wearing a chiton with a lion's skin over it which is knotted on the chest’. This fragment was lost when the ship in which the finds from Persepolis were being transported to America was sunk by submarine action during the Second World War. But recently Giuseppe Tilia discovered further fragments in a storeroom at Persepolis, which he recognised as probably belonging to the same plaque; and from these Prof. Boardman has been able to determine that the original scene was of a contest between Herakles and Apollo.(FIG. 1).

The new inscription of Public Imprecations from Teos, apart from many other interesting features, represents what is surely the most important new evidence to accrue for a generation on the relations between Greek colonies and their mother cities. The inscription was admirably published by P. Herrmann in the editio princeps, and helpful contributions followed from Merkelbach and Lewis before its republication in SEG xxxi (1981; appeared 1984) 985, and, most recently, by McCabe and Plunkett.

From what sources did Herodotus draw the materials for his history? At what date or dates did he compose it? These inquiries have an endless fascination for the student of Herodotus, which is not lessened by the fact that they admit of no certain answer. The combinations which will be suggested in this paper have, so far as I know, not been suggested before; but if, as is extremely likely, they have already been made, there is always a certain interest in the fact that two inquirers, working independently, have come to the same conclusions.

It is not necessary to give evidence of the fact that Herodotus himself was highly satisfied with his own sources of information as to Persian history, and that he considered he could speak with authority upon it. (Cf. e.g. i. 95.) Nor is it necessary to give evidence for the view that Herodotus had on some points official or semi-official Persian information: e.g. in his account of the satrapies in Bk. III., of the Royal Road in Bk. V., and of the Persian army in Bk. VII.

These two points will be assumed, and also that Herodotus is a trustworthy witness, that he reports truly what he has heard, without exaggeration or suppression, and that he had some idea of the differing value of various witnesses.

Lines 380–7 have been much discussed, sometimes in isolation, without due regard for context in speech, scene, and play; and sometimes with regard primarily to the history of ideas, or of Greek moral values. Phaidra states that virtue may be subverted, despite knowledge, by pleasure, of which αὶδώς—dual, harmless and harmful—is an instance. A notorious problem of interpretation centres on the related questions of how αὶδώς, shame can be listed among ήδοναί, pleasures; and of what is meant by dual αὶδώς. The interpretation here advanced is bold, but in essence simple: in this context, αὶδώς is a euphemistic metonymy for ἔρως, which is harmless and pleasurable in its proper place (allied with sexual σωφροσύνη), but potentially troublesome or painful (bringing sexual αὶσχύνη).

The drawings we shall be looking at are those engraved on the backs of bronze hand-mirrors. The shape of the mirror is circular. The handle is sometimes made in one piece with the disc; but sometimes, especially in the earlier period, it was made separately of wood and bone, and joined to the disc by means of a tang. At a guess there may be fifteen hundred such mirrors. The quality of the drawing varies from good to bad. The range of subject is wide. There are, first, scenes from everyday life, especially, as is natural, toilet-scenes and courting-scenes; and secondly, scenes in which the lovers are not ordinary mortals, but divinities or heroes and heroines. Among these it is not surprising that two couples are especially popular: Aphrodite, and Adonis; Helen, and Paris or Menelaos. But there are also a very great number of heroic scenes that have no connection with toilet or courting. Sometimes one can see why a particular subject is chosen to decorate a mirror: the interest in Helen extends to the egg from which she was born. If Tyro is a favourite, one might perhaps guess that it is for the sake of the perfect complexion which gave her her name: but nearly always the subject chosen testifies only to the boundless love of the Etruscans for Greek heroic legend and Greek heroic characters, a love which women shared with men. Some legends are represented with more circumstance on Etruscan mirrors than in any extant Greek monument; of others there is no Greek representation, only an echo in a late writer; to others an Etruscan mirror is the only witness. Etruscan ladies could read: the personages are very often named; and these hundreds of inscriptions not only enable us to identify the persons and increase our knowledge of the myths, but are an invaluable aid to the study of the Etruscan language. The names of Greek heroes, heroines, and minor deities appear in Etruscanized versions, from which much may be learned about the character of the Etruscan tongue.

I have long suspected the 500 elephants of Ipsus, as the number is too remote from anything else known. Omitting these, the largest force of elephants which Greeks ever saw in action was the 200 of Porus; the largest force which any Greek ever commanded was the 120 or there-abouts which Eudamus brought to Eumenes; the largest force which any king is recorded on good authority to have possessed is the 150 of Antiochus III. The number which Alexander (who never used them in battle) collected in India cannot be ascertained; but the uniformly modest numbers which, Eudamus' force apart, figure in the history of the Successors before Ipsus show that he cannot have brought away from India anything approaching 200. The vast figures attributed by various writers to Indian kings and peoples may be neglected, though doubtless Chandragupta, reckoning in the forces of his vassal kings, did control a large number. I have now by accident stumbled on something which certainly will explain the number 500 attributed to Seleucus; it remains to be seen whether the explanation be the correct one. I am not claiming to give an exact proof that it is, but there is a very high degree of probability. I had better indicate the proposed explanation first before coming to the Greek evidence about Seleucus.

By the last quarter of the fifth century it was generally agreed that there were three basic forms of government: monarchy, democracy and oligarchy, and this basic division continued to the end of the classical period. For the Athenians, this choice was for practical purposes reduced to one between democracy and oligarchy: kings might appear on the tragic stage, but in contemporary Athens sole rule was synonymous with tyranny, a form of government which had been beyond the pale since the expulsion of the Peisistratids. Indeed, in the late fifth century it was the object of a public hysteria which affords Aristophanes much scope for satire, particularly in Bdelycleon's speech in Vesp. 488 f.

In the summer of 1950 it proved possible to continue the British excavations at Mycenae which had been suspended in 1939 owing to the war. The Greek Government courteously granted the necessary permission and Dr. Papademetriou, Ephor of Antiquities for Argolis, and Mr. Petsas cooperated most cordially throughout. The work was carried out under the aegis of the British School at Athens which made a generous grant towards the funds and Mr. J. M. Cook, the Director, and Mr. Sinclair Hood, the Assistant-Director, who both took part in the excavations, afforded all possible assistance.

The excavations were especially concerned with the following points: the further exploration, within and without the Cyclopean walls, of the Prehistoric Cemetery to which belonged the royal Shaft Graves found by Schliemann; an attempt to trace the line of the Middle Bronze Age wall of the earliest citadel which preceded the Cyclopean fortress; the re-examination of Tsountas' House, an important building within the walls first excavated in 1886; the clearing of the Epano Phournos tholos tomb; the further exploration of the Cyclopean Terrace Building discovered in 1923; and the investigation of a newly discovered building, now known as the House of Stirrup Jars, near the so-called Tomb of Clytemnestra. The architect of the expedition, Mr. Charles Hobbis, R.I.B.A., also assisted the Greek authorities at their request in the conservation and repairs in progress at the Tomb of Clytemnestra and the Lion Gate.