The sole reliable text of the Periplus Maris Erythraei is H. Frisk's, published in 1927. He not only re-examined the one important manuscript that has survived but brought to bear his knowledge of the language of the Greek papyri of Egypt, which is close kin to that written by the plain-spoken captain or merchant who composed the Periplus. As a result, he was able to eliminate in passage after passage the freewheeling emendations introduced by nineteenth-century editors and return to the wording of the manuscript.

When Alexander turned back at the Hyphasis (Beas), how much did he know about what lay before him? And why, in the vulgate tradition, does he know of the distant Ganges and the distant kingdom of Magadha, but not of the next great river to the Beas, the Sutlej (a question often asked), or of anything else between the Beas and the Ganges? The answer is not difficult, once the elements of our tradition are sorted out chronologically; that, as in so many questions, is the real problem.

We possess one contemporary document bearing on the matter which has escaped notice, a satrapy-list or gazetteer of ‘Asia,’ i. e. Alexander's empire, dating from the last year of his life; very possibly Hieronymus used it by way of introduction to his history of the Successors, and it now forms the basis of Diodorus 18, 5 and 6. We can date this document with certainty. It includes the Indian provinces, and so is later than Alexander's return from India. The ‘Hyrcanian sea’ (not Caspian) is still a lake, so it is earlier than Patrocles. Chandragupta is unknown, so it is certainly earlier than Megasthenes and probably earlier than circ. 302. Porus is still alive, so it is earlier than 317.

In JHS xciv (1974) 38 ff. (with Plates IV–V), J. G. Griffith discusses the subject-matter of the scene on the late fourth-century amphora discovered in 1949 at Panagjurischte in Bulgaria, in which a group of four determined-looking men armed only with swords attacks a house-door which has just been half-opened by a startled servant of diminutive stature. Connected, apparently, with the assault is a trumpeter, and finally there is another pair (not obviously involved in the action) consisting of a bearded figure, taken to be a seer since he holds ‘a liver, lobe and all’, which he shows to his more youthful companion.

Griffith has little difficulty in exposing the improbability of earlier attempts to identify a mythological scene—Achilles discovered at Scyros, the Seven against Thebes, or the preliminaries to the murder of Neoptolemus at Delphi, and proposes a novel view that the attackers are komastai, whether the occasion is a ‘genre-scene’ from comedy, or a characteristic scene from real life, in either of which cases help in identifying the individuals would be unnecessary and irrelevant. But I must confess that I find this proposal far-fetched: the attempts to account also for the trumpeter and seer are desperate enough, but he really fails to make a credible case for the use of swords in such escapades, even granted the violence often referred to in literary evidence about the komos, whether fisticuffs among rivals for the favours of the courtesan or mistress, or the use of cudgels, levers and torches to break down, or burn, the door by the ‘exclusus amator’.

L. claims that the reconstruction of the trieres proposed in AT, being based on late 5th century and 4th century evidence, is misleading for the earlier ships, and that the Greek ships of 480, unlike the later ones, were not built for speed and manoeuvrability, and carried more than ten hoplites. He goes on to say that the Greeks won at Salamis ‘because their ships stood up to ramming better’ than those of their opponents. For this last view he cites no text in evidence, and as far as I know there is none. There is the statement in Herodotus (viii 60a) that the Greek ships were heavier; but L. attributes this greater heaviness not to thicker planking but to the greater number of armed men they carried, which would entrail a broader hull and bulwarks but not thicker planking.

I begin this note by announcing a palaeographical discovery of some interest concerning the famous Venetian manuscript of Athenaeus (MS. Marcianus gr. 447), which is our only source for most of the text of that author. Examination of the handwriting has convinced me that folios 3–348, nearly the whole manuscript, were written by John the Calligraphier, the scribe who was commissioned by Arethas of Caesarea to produce well-known and important copies of Plato (MS. E. D. Clarke 39) and Aristides (MS. Laurentianus Plut. 60.3 and Parisinus gr. 2951). The accompanying illustration should make the identity clear (see plates xi). It is worth noting that owing to a special circumstance the two previously published facsimiles did not permit the identification of the hand. They were both selected from a part of the book where John wrote in a rather larger hand than usual; for in this manuscript, unlike the others that he copied, his writing gradually became larger as he progressed. This, however, was a habit common to many scribes and does not cast any doubt on the validity of identifying his hand here.

The first consequence of identifying the hand is that it becomes possible to date the manuscript fairly precisely. The other books written by John are dated to A.D. 895 and c. A.D. 917–28, and as the span of thirty-five years is at least as long as a calligrapher can be assumed to have exercised his profession, it seems reasonable to place the Athenaeus between the two other books.

It was in 1900 that Dr. Dörpfeld first proclaimed, to the German Institute at Athens, that Leukas and not Thiaki was the Ithaka of Homer. In 1902 he read to the Archäologische Gesellschaft of Berlin a paper on the subject, which in 1903 was published in Mélanges Perrot. To this paper Wilamowitz gave a scathing and even contemptuous reply in 1903, and Dörpfeld rejoined in his Leukas, 1905, which also contains his original essay. Since then the controversy has raged without intermission, but it has been almost confined to Germany. This country has not so far contributed any comprehensive paper on the subject, and it would not be easy, so many are the matters that the dispute embraces, and so warm and minute has the discussion become, to prepare a statement with less than a considerable volume at one's disposal. I therefore propose to confine myself here to one of the points in the controversy, and I select that which the Leukadists, as they are called for short, regard as supplying the best evidence in their favour, and which is consequently noticed in nearly all papers and treatises on the subject. This includes the incident of the return voyage of Telemachus from Pylos to Ithaka, his escape from the ambush laid for him by the Wooers at the island Homer calls Asteris, and the identification of that island on the modern map.

Few peoples of the ancient world have given rise to so much controversy as the Pelasgians; and of few, after some centuries of discussion, is so little clearly established. Like the Phoenicians, the Celts, and of recent years the Teutons, they have been a peg upon which to hang all sorts of speculation; and whenever an inconvenient circumstance has deranged the symmetry of a theory, it has been safe to ‘call it Pelasgian and pass on.’

One main reason for this ill-repute, into which the Pelasgian name has fallen, has been the very uncritical fashion in which the ancient statements about the Pelasgians have commonly been mishandled.

An inscription found at Demirdjidéré in Caria, and published by A. Laumonier in 1934, deals with the granting of the citizenship of some unnamed city (probably Alinda) to Dionytas and Apollas, officials in the chancery (ἐπιοτωλαγραφῖον (sic)) of Olympichus, the στρατηγὀς of a Hellenistic king, whom Laumonier very reasonably identifies with Philip V of Macedon: Olympichus he assumes to be the Carian dynast of that name, whose machinations against the town of Iasus in about 202 B.C. are recorded in three well-known inscriptions, which Holleaux published in 1899. Unfortunately, in dating his inscription to the year 202, Laumonier paved the way for certain unjustifiable conclusions about the relations of Macedonia and Caria during the last quarter of the third century B.C.; and as these conclusions have since been drawn by Lenschau, it is important, I think, to point out their tenuous basis before there is any risk of their becoming widely accepted.

I. The Problem.—The purpose of this note is to suggest a possible solution of a notorious difficulty in that curious and interesting historical document, the Thalassocracy-list quoted by Eusebius from Diodorus; and, secondly, to trace the historical implications following on the adoption of that suggestion.

The list of ‘those who held the empire of the sea, from the fall of Troy to Xerxes' crossing into Europe,’ was evidently given by Diodorus in the lost ‘second volume’—Books VI to X—of his Historical Library in forty books. That work, we know, was arranged in sections of five books each, the second of which covered exactly that period—from the Τρωικά to the Μηδικά—and this no doubt gives us the reason why the list does not continue so as to cover the thalassocracy of Athens. The latter fact cannot therefore, unfortunately, be used as evidence for an early fifth-century origin for the document. This, however, obviously need not deprive the list of all interest for us, especially since it appears to be corroborated by such evidence on its subject as we have from other sources.

At the outset of the parallel lives of Alexander and Caesar, Plutarch warns his readers that what he offers them is biography, not history, and that consequently he will attend more to details which reveal character than to the great events. These he will either treat summarily or even omit entirely. Both the plan and the matter of the Life of Alexander are in harmony with this preface. The first ten chapters, which bring the story down to Alexander's accession, teem with anecdote and characterisation; then, after a rapid sketch of the wars in Illyria and Greece, the main narrative begins in ch. 15, with the crossing of the Hellespont. From thence to the end the biography is a historical sketch with digressions at intervals to illustrate various sides of Alexander's character. Thus the appointment of Aristotle as tutor to Alexander is followed by a disquisition on his attitude to learning and philosophy in general (7–8); the treatment of the captive women at Issus provokes a discussion (21, 5–23) on Alexander's continence, and subsequently on his temperance and habits of life. The journey to Siwah is followed by a general discussion of Alexander's views on his own deification (28), while the longest of such digressions, occasioned by the burning of the palace at Persepolis, deals with Alexander's generosity and his attention and loyalty to friends (39–42, 4). The common characteristics of these digressions are their disregard of chronology, their anecdotic content, and the prominence of the Letters of Alexander among the sources named in them; indeed, the only other sources appearing by name are Onesicritus (8, 2), Aristobulus (21, 9) and the official diaries (23, 4), each once.

In a paper on Ancient Oil Mills and Presses I touched upon Heron's screw-cutter, an instrument for cutting an inside screw thread in wood, described by him in his Mechanics (iii. 21). In relation to the oil-presses, it was a mere side-issue; but since the editor of the text, L. Nix, did not seem to have understood the instrument fully, I gave my own interpretation of the text, and a reconstruction, on paper, of the instrument.

This interpretation, or rather, the reconstruction, has been called in question by Mr. E. J. Andre Kenny, who in Antiquity, 1933, 7. 249, declares, that it is ‘ technically impossible.’ If that is the case, either the text, or my interpretation of it (or both), would seem to be at fault. Quite apart from the general inadvisability of starting an argument against a review it seems clear that such a question could only be satisfactorily answered in one way: by a practical experiment.

The article by Mr. J. Wells in a recent number of this Journal, in which he endeavours to disprove the genuineness of the Γῆς Πϵρίοδος commonly ascribed to Hecataeus, comes as a timely warning against the prevalent tendency to treat Hecataeus as if his contribution to the scientific development of Greek thought could be estimated with any degree of certainty. The poverty of content of the extant fragments purporting to be from Hecataeus, and the scantiness of allusions to this author by other ancient writers, leave but a precarious basis for generalisation on the scope and value of his work; and they certainly do not suffice to determine his influence upon Herodotus and the chroniclers of the fifth century. Furthermore, they quite bear out Mr. Wells' contention that the claims recently made out on behalf of the scientific eminence of Hecataeus have been exaggerated.

By the kind permission of Professor Sieveking and of Mr. A. M. Woodward, who has informed me of the existence of these objects and has sent me the photographs here reproduced and the necessary notes, I am able to publish a few small objects in ivory, bone, and bronze which were acquired in 1911 by the Museum der Kleinkunst in Munich. A summary account of them by Professor Sieveking has already appeared in the Münchner Jahrb. der bildender Kunst, 1912, p. 73. The channel by which they reached Munich is naturally obscure, but there can be no doubt that they were found at the Orthia sanctuary at Sparta, the excavation of which was finished in 1910, the year before the objects were acquired at Munich. Even before this information reached me, I had learned by a curious accident that there had, in fact, been some small pilfering from the Orthia excavation by one of our workmen.