I must ask the readers of the Hellenic Journal to take the somewhat disjointed notes that follow strictly for what they are, namely, addenda to my paper in last year's Journal (vol. xxiii. 1903) on the ‘Mystica Vannus Iacchi.’

My object in writing that paper was to elucidate the mysticism of the ‘fan’ and thereby, I hoped, to throw some light on an obscure chapter in the history of Greek religion, namely the shift from the worship of Demeter to that of Dionysos. Incidentally it became necessary to examine the various forms of winnowing ‘fans.’ My personal interest in this necessary step in my argument was slight and my statement of evidence, I fear, inadequate and superficial. Since the appearance of the article many friendly critics have supplied me with material to fill the gaps left by my ignorance, and the examination of this material has not been without its use to me in clearing up some obscurities as to the mysticism of the fan.

It has always been usual to approach the question of Thucydides' narrative of Pylos and Sphacteria with all its difficulties on the assumption that the main object of Eurymedon and the Athenian fleet was originally the affairs of Corcyra and Sicily, and afterwards the rescue of Demosthenes and the garrison of Pylos. Yet this view involves a manifest contradiction. Eurymedon was in a hurry; he left Demosthenes with an insignificant force, with the absolute certainty that he would be attacked and that he himself would have to come back and help him; all this must have been thought of beforehand ; why then did he leave him? or having left him, why did he come back to help him, stultifying thereby his own plan of operations?

The answer may perhaps be found in strategical considerations. The expedition was first fitted out with a view to interference in the affairs of Sicily; but there intervened a more immediate object, for a chance presented itself of catching the Peloponnesian fleet. Let us assume therefore that Eurymedon's main purpose was the destruction of the Peloponnesian fleet wherever found, and then let us see what this involves (i) in regard to the strategy at Pylos, (ii) in regard to the local difficulties in Thucydides. It will be found to have the greatest influence upon both.

Among the problems furnished us by that curious and interesting episode of ancient history—the collision of Hellenism and Israel under the fourth Antiochos—is the apparently flat contradiction between the conduct of Antiochos, as it appears in the Book of Daniel, and his conduct, as presented to us by classical authorities. It is not that opposite judgments are passed upon a personality or a policy from the standpoint of a worshipper of Jehovah and of a Greek observer—there would be nothing to surprise us in that. If the Book of Daniel did no more than denounce Antiochos for impiety towards the God of Israel, its statements would create no difficulty. But, as a matter of fact, it does not stop short there. It is an additional touch of horror in the portrait of the heathen king, that he not only ‘speaks marvellous things against the God of gods’ (ch. xi. 36)—this we were prepared to find—but that he ‘magnifies himself above every god.’ ‘Neither shall he regard the gods of his fathers, nor the Desire of women’ (probably Tanimuz), ‘nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all’ (v. 37). Now one of the things about Antiochos IV., which most impressed the Greek world, was his profuse devotion to the Hellenic gods.

There are in the literary sources few examples of curial life extending over three generations with such a continuity of detail as is provided by Libanius in his references to the family of Argyrius. Yet in the more accessible works of reference, the student of the social life of the later Roman Empire will discover merely a shortened version by Ensslin (PW. Suppl. VII, 680) of Seeck's note on Obodianus (Briefe, 222). In addition, the index of the Teubner edition of Libanius presents much confusion between grandfather and grandson.

Towards the end of his life, Libanius addressed to the Emperor Theodosius an open letter upon the parlous state of the curiae at the time, contrasting their present hard lot with the state of things which had prevailed earlier in the century. In dealing with the recruitment of fresh blood into the curia, he cites as an example of previous practice the conduct of his own grandfather (Or. xlix. 18). He, some years before his death in 324, had been instrumental in securing for a young foreigner named Argyrius an introduction into the curia of Antioch. This he had succeeded in doing, despite Argyrius' alien birth, his youth, and lack of property, even against the opposition of the then governor and the then sophist of the city, Zenobius. Oddly enough, there was a family relationship between Zenobius and Argyrius, which Libanius mentions at a later time (Ep. 101).

In the Department of Archaeology of the Manchester Museum is a terracotta figurine that is clearly intended to be a model of the Athena Parthenos of Phidias. Though very worn, and of undistinguished provincial Roman workmanship, a'description of the figure, and some comments upon it, are offered here because it perhaps sheds light on all our other replicas of this famous work (Plates XIX-XX)

When the figurine first emerged from the Manchester basements in 1970 comparison with the other published replicas then generally known suggested that it had some unique and interesting features that would make its publication worth while; however, since then Mr B. B. Shefton has most opportunely drawn my attention to a figurine in Exeter that has many points in common (Plate XXII), while Mrs Leipen's valuable collection of all the replicas relevant to the reconstruction of the statue made at the Royal Ontario Museum lists another figurine, in Geneva, that must be from the same mould (Plate XXI). This figure was acquired by the Musée d'art et d'histoire in 1916 from a local family with no antiquarian interests and of unimpeachable reputation, in whose possession it had been since at least 1870—ten years earlier than the discovery of the Varvakeion statue, the only other replica-type in the round to have the column; it had evidently been found on their land at Bassy, near Seyssel in the department of Ain, about 35 km. south-west of Geneva. Its authenticity has at times been doubted, but among the compelling arguments that Deonna brought forward in its defence were the humble circumstances of its discovery, and the fact that its former owners had made no effort to publicise their find. In support of this one can now adduce the statuette in Manchester, whose provenance is unknown, but which was presented to the museum by Miss Hilda Ransome, the author of The Sacred Bee (London, 1937) at some date before 1933, since when it has lain among the museum's reserve collections, apparently forgotten.

The material here discussed is far from being exhaustive, since it seems to me that a careful study would yield further groups of vases of this class. I use the word ‘groups’ for safety; I am not sure that some of the pieces which I put together were not produced by a single painter.

Some of the vases are attributed according to the style of only a part of their decoration. Thus London F285 is attributed to the Stoke-on-Trent group because of the reverse, which has no stylistic connexion with the obverse and the head of Nike on the neck.

When I mention proveniences I rely on second-hand information, but I notice that vases which I put under the same heading because of their common style are often cited as having been found in the same area. In my classification of the vases according to shapes, when possible I follow Beazley in ARV.

I do not find it easy to decide on the date of these groups in the absence of external evidence or any information on the conditions in which they were found. Stylistically none of them could be earlier than 350 B.C., and as the extensive use of white-gold colour and the clumsiness of the drawing could hardly have appeared earlier than the Darius painter, I should be inclined to place them late in the fourth century.

For a few general remarks on the representation of human heads by themselves in the last phase of Attic, Campanian, Apulian, and Etruscan red-figured vases see Beazley, EVP, p. 10.

Military history proper must begin with the battle of Marathon; it is the first battle of which history preserves for us even a moderately detailed account in respect of the relative numbers and equipments of the contending armies, the precise situation and local peculiarities of the conflict, the positions of the armies before the battle, the circumstances of the actual collision, and the decisiveness of the result. There are uncertainties as to the maps which should illustrate the far later battles of Pharsalus and Philippi, that determined the fate of the empire of the world, but we have a perfectly satisfactory ground-plan, from the country as it still exists, of the first great collision of Hellenic and Asiatic power on the western coast of the Aegean. Herodotus, to whom we are chiefly indebted for an account of it, was not a contemporary, having been born about six years later, 484 B.C. His account, no doubt, is meagre where information would be most valuable, and he is anything but a skilful military critic, and, like many others of the most successful historians, he neglects details that might be dry to make room for others not rigidly authenticated that are pointed and picturesque. Still, even so he supplies us with many circumstances which he might value simply for the sake of sparkle, but that enable us by comparison with other stray notices to divine some very critical facts about the battle, which he himself either did not fully know, or, not duly appreciating, failed to set down. If after study of all subsidiary information duly compared and combined it seems possible to recover a very fairly authentic account of the battle, it will be no doubt at the cost of some reduction of what is most marvellous in the account of Herodotus; but the story will still be sufficiently romantic, no moderate remainder of marvel will be left, and there is full compensation for the sacrifice in certified credibility and historical instruction.

The site of Poemanenum is a vexed question in Mysian topography, on which no clinching evidence is as yet forthcoming: it is important for its bearing (a) on the Roman road-system, and especially on Aristides' routes, and (b) on the geography of the Byzantine wars. The position of the place may thus be deduced from two sets of data relating respectively to the Roman road-post and to the Byzantine fortress: those who work from road-evidence alone tend to place the site either on the Aesepus at Gunen, or, more vaguely, in the Tarsius valley: those who lay stress on the Byzantine evidence point inevitably to Eski Manyas, a village some few miles south of the lake of the same name.

The claims of Eski Manyas to the Byzantine site appear to me incontestable: to put quite briefly what has often been discussed at length, we have here remains of the strongest Byzantine castle in the district, in a position corresponding to what we know of Poemanenum; and, besides this, an echo of the ancient name is evidently preserved.

The procedures involved in, and duration of, Athenian trials have been the subject of much attention, and it is the communis opinio that a public trial in Athens lasted for one day only. Yet the evidence for this is mostly circumstantial and difficulties arise when one tries to reconcile a lengthy trial, as evidenced by the existence of very long speeches, with a one-day trial period. The purpose of this note is to question the standard view and to put forward the suggestion that certain trials could extend up to two or three days in length. By way of introduction we may summarize what evidence we have.

According to AP 67.1 only one public (as distinct from private) case per day was tried in a court of law and the modern assumption is that the issue had to be resolved by the end of that day. Therefore, the speeches of both prosecution and defence were of a fixed length of time and measured by the κλεψύδρα. This was a large amphora with a plugged hole at the bottom which was filled with water.

Two of the greatest monuments of the ancient world date from the fifth century B.C. and they embody respectively the ideals of the Persian and of the Athenian Empire. There had been nothing in all Asia as sumptuous as Persepolis; the Acropolis of Athens, a quarter its size, was given a magnificence absolutely unprecedented in Greece. A comparison between the two schemes must reflect the divergence between the Persian and the Greek outlook but also reveal some elements in common, if only because of an inevitable resemblance in ways of thinking among contemporaries when confronted with rather similar problems. But it must not be taken for granted that every parallel between them is fortuitous. There is reason to think that the sculptors employed at Persepolis were largely Greeks—conscripted subjects of Persia, no doubt; the sculptors of the Acropolis were by no means all Athenian but came also from other Greek states, and surely there must have been talk among them of the tremendous project from which many of their colleagues had returned to cities east of the Aegean. Persepolis was built steadily from about 500 to 460, by which time the reconstruction of the Acropolis had begun; its earliest Periclean building, the Parthenon, was commenced in 447. It is conceivable that some particular sculptor may have carved figures in the friezes of both Persepolis and the Parthenon; workmen who could attain the requisite standard must have been in demand. At any rate one Greek artist from the Persian service seems to have gone as far west as Delos, to judge by imitation there of the Persepolis type of column-base, in the Thesmophorium, a building datable about 480–460.

We know of several Greek translators of works originally written in Latin. Of non-Christian, purely literary material, we know of six. First, there is Claudius' powerful freedman, Polybius, who turned Homer into Latin prose and Vergil into Greek prose (Seneca Consol. ad Polyb. 8.2, 11.5). Then, under Hadrian we have Zenobius ‘the sophist’, who translates Sallust's Histories and “so-called Wars’ (Suda Z 73). The translation into Greek of Hyginus' Fabulae can be dated precisely, for its unknown author tells us that he copied it up on 11th September 207 (CGIL iii 56.3off.). Similarly, the extant translation of Eutropius' Breviarium by Paianios, probably a pupil of Libanius, can be dated securely to about 380. The translation of the same by Capito (Suda K 342), which survives in excerpts, is placed with some confidence at the beginning of the sixth century. The date and identity of the last of our translators, ‘Arrian the epic poet’, who rendered the Georgics of Vergil (Suda A 3867), is unclear.