According to a theory which has been very commonly accepted by archaeologists in this country, the local names of Greece prove that a single language was once spoken there and in Asia Minor which was totally different from Greek, Thraeian, Illyrian, or Phrygian. It was neither Aryan nor Semitic, and resembled that of the Lycian inscriptions. At a later date, whether before or after the arrival of the Greeks, certain Thraeian and Illyrian elements were added, but they contributed little to the sum of geographical names.

This belief is founded on the occurrence in Greece of local terminations in -σσ- and especially in -νθ-, which are considered to be foreign, and on their identification with the suffixes -σσ- and -νδ-, which are well known in Lycia, as well as in other districts of Asia Minor, and are derived from the native Lycian language.

The following pages contain the meagre results of a hasty journey from the borders of Galatia to the Cilician coast, undertaken in July, 1887, by Mr. H. A. Brown and myself, after parting at Bey-keui with Prof. W. M. Ramsay, who wished to return direct to Smyrna. Our object was to reach Cilicia Tracheia by way of Phrygia Paroreus, and the Melas valley, pursuing in the former district a new route and especially selecting the unmapped and undescribed hill-path from Ilghin to Konia. From Konia we were to have turned westward to Beysheher, and thence struck over Taurus. But only the first part of this programme was carried out at all, owing to the indisposition of my companion, which became so serious by the time that we reached Konia that all idea of further exploration had to be abandoned, and we made direct for the sea. In another respect also the journey was not entirely satisfactory. I now know better than I knew then that an archæologist, who would discover much in Anatolia, must travel with a certain train of pack-animals and attendants: the Englishman who, proud of his power of endurance, discards all superfluities and travels with what he can carry on his own horse excites no admiration but much contempt in the minds of the villagers. “This is a poor man,” say they, and he is shown only just as much of what he wishes to see as will silence his importunity. We had made the initial mistake of travelling too “light,” taking neither tents nor beds, nor cooking utensils, nor indeed anything but the contents of our own saddle-bags, and depending entirely on the favour of the villagers both for lodging and food; and in consequence, while we suffered a good deal of unnecessary hardship, we saw less than might have been discovered by explorers more magnificently equipped.

The recent enthusiasm of English explorers for the prehistoric antiquities of Greece, if involving some neglect of things ‘merely Hellenic,’ has at least resulted happily in the enrichment of our museums. The Minoan civilisation can at present be studied only in Crete, England, and America; and while the journey to Crete is always necessary for an adequate understanding of the subject, the introductory idea can be better acquired at home, where the material is limited by selection and less bewildering in bulk and variety. Crete and Minoan art are naturally associated with the Ashmolean Museum; and it is perhaps overlooked that the British Museum has at the same time acquired, by gift of excavators and of the Committee of the British School at Athens, a collection of originals and reproductions not indeed comparing with the splendour of Oxford, but valuable in representing most of the important sites, and especially useful to students in possessing an arranged series of sherds of every period.

The statue reproduced on Pl. II. was found two years ago in the village of Atfih which lies about forty-five miles south of Cairo on the edge of the eastern desert. Atfih preserves the name and occupies the site of the ancient Per nebt tep aht, the city of the cow-headed goddess Hathor. The Greeks, who identified Hathor with their own Aphrodite, translated the name into Aphroditopolis. The ruins of the town are covered by the modern village, but in the adjoining desert is a large cemetery, mainly of the Ptolemaic period, which Mr. Johnson has recently excavated in search of Greek papyrus.

The statue was found accidentally by a labourer digging in the village and was secured for the Cairo Museum by the local Inspector of the Antiquities Department. It is made of a block of rather soft limestone and is considerably more than life size, the height of the figure without the plinth being 2·5 m. Both forearms are missing. The right leg from knee to ankle and parts of the left leg are restored in plaster. The features are badly damaged. There are no remains of paint or gilding on the surface of the limestone.

The Niobid krater in Paris (Louvre G341) is not one of the masterpieces of Greek vase painting. The vase is not even one of the best works of the artist, who receives his name, the Niobid Painter, from the rare depiction of Apollo and Artemis killing the children of Niobe on the reverse. The vase is, however, one of the touchstones of the history of ancient Greek art. The Niobid krater has this distinction because it is the earliest contemporaneous witness to the new developments in mural painting in the Early Classical Period, developments best understood from the descriptions of the traveler Pausanias six centuries later. The actual quality of the Niobid krater is therefore secondary to its documentary value.

Since the krater's discovery in 1881, most discussion has focused on the iconography of the scene on the obverse, showing a group of warriors with Athena (PLATE IIa). The ambiguity of the scene comes from the large number of figures and the lack of action or iconographical evidence to help in their identification. Of the 11 figures, only Herakles (figure 6 on PLATE IIb), with his club and lionskin and Athena (4) in her aegis and helmet are clearly identifiable.

John Boardman has recently published a Sam Wide Group cup, on the interior of which is painted a caricature of Oedipus and the Sphinx. His accompanying illustration (Plate II 1) fully confirms the interpretation offered, that the Theban Sphinx— for once, in its physiognomy as well as in its anatomy, obtrusively male—is committing the nuisance of public masturbation. Although such offensive conduct seems, as Boardman observed, inexplicable within the Sphinx's mythic context, the artist's motive for this innovation becomes clearer if one can detect here an instance of the easy ‘glide from the contemporary into the mythical world’.

First, however, it should be recalled that, at least as early as Aeschylus' satyr play Sphinx, the Theban pest could be called Σφίγγα δυσαμϵριᾱν πρύτανιν κύνα (182 Mette, 236 Nauck).

The Ilioupersis cup of Onesimos in the J. Paul Getty Museum offers a unique opportunity for the study of Ilioupersis iconography (PLATES la and lb). The tondo in the cup's interior features the murder of Priam, and the surrounding circular zone contains eight further scenes of the sack in all, nine scenes decorating a single surface. In his recent article on the cup, Dyfri Williams has discussed the iconography of each of these scenes individually. In this paper I hope to complement Williams' acute observations by drawing attention to the visual and thematic interaction among the nine scenes when viewed in combination.

Four years ago, in dealing with the Myths of the Odyssey, I raised afresh the time-honoured difficulty of the art-form of the Sirens: Why are the sweet singers of Homer pictured as hybrid monsters—birds with the faces of women ? Much that I then said about the Sirens may, I hope, still hold good; but the final solution or part solution of the difficulty which I arrived at, I now believe to be mistaken, and, with more complete material at hand, I hope in the present paper to offer a new, and possibly a more satisfactory, solution. I fell then into the not uncommon error of projecting into the mind of the Greek vase-painter a great deal of allegorizing tendency and somewhat mystical moral purpose which was really conspicuous by its absence; my familiarity with the literary forms and the literary growth of mythology was much wider than my acquaintance with the manner and the influence of artistic tradition. The power of tradition in an art and still more in a handicraft is not easily overestimated. The thought and expression of the handicraftsman is governed by the art forms that lie ready to his hand, just as the thought of a writer is moulded and fashioned by the language he employs. Each must use current phraseology, only elevating or debasing it a little according to his proper faculty.

In last year's volume of this Journal (ix. pp. 82, 83) Mr. Theodore Ben described the situation of this Carian town, which he discovered about three miles to the north-east of Loryma. In laying before the reader the inscriptions found on this site, from which we recover its name, I would call attention to the accompanying Map of Casarea and its neighbourhood, prepared by Mr. Bent at my request. He has made it the more valuable by adding the following memoranda:—

‘During investigations on the southern coast of Caria, near the promontory anciently called Cynossema, and now known as Cape Aloupo or Fox, we were anchored in the Bay of Aplotheka, around which are the ruins of ancient Loryma. Whilst here, we heard from the peasants of a curious harbour and ruins at a little distance from the bay. Accordingly we rowed along the coast in our boat past several islets, and soon arrived at this harbour, the entrance of which is not a stone's throw across, though it opens within into a considerable basin surrounded by high mountains.

The ordinary silver coinage of Athens from B.C. 480 to 400 is almost unvaried. By the former date a head of Athena and an owl of fixed and conventional archaic type had been adopted for the coin (Pl. XIII. 1). The olive-wreath which adorns the helmet of the goddess seems to have been adopted during the glow of triumph after Marathon. At the end of the century there were certain issues of gold coins, of which we shall speak later. But the great mass of the coinage was in silver. The Athenians obtained silver in abundance from the mines of Laurium and those of Thrace, and it was part of Athenian policy to circulate the coins as widely as possible, and to make them the standard currency of the Aegean. Silver was to Athens what gold was to Persia, the backbone of the finance of the state, and, together of course with the tribute of the allies, the source whence came the plentiful wealth which Athens used for great building-works at home and for expeditions abroad.

The question of the location of the Enneakrounos fountain-house is one of the most controversial problems in Athenian topography.* It is known that a spring, which had been called Kallirrhoe, was embellished and given the name Enneakrounos during the Peisistratid tyranny. The location of the fountain-house, however, is disputed. Some references place Enneakrounos in the vicinity of the Ilissos stream to the south-east of the city; other sources state or imply a location in the city centre.

The text of the alliance between Athens and Sicilian Egesta is partially extant in IG i2 19 and IG i2 20.1–2. Crucial for the dating of the inscription and the alliance which it records is the third line of the first fragment, for it contains what remains of the name of the eponymous archon who held office at the time. Only the last two letters of the archon's name are clear and undisputed: they are ON, and appear in stoichoi 37 and 38. (See Plate XXIII a). On the basis of these two letters, only five fifth-century B.C. archons appear as possibilities: the name must be restored to read ηάβρον (458/7), Ἀρίστον (454/3), Ἐπαμείνον (429/8), Ἀριστίον (421/0), or Ἀντιφο̃ν (418/7).

In electing me to the Presidency of the Hellenic Society you have paid me the highest compliment to which any British Hellenist can aspire. It is an honour which I accept with all gratitude and, I can assure you, with all humility. It is impossible for me to look back at the names of the distinguished men who have already held the post, without reflecting that I am not of their rank—I am by profession neither a great academic teacher nor, like my old schoolfellow and friend Sir Arthur Evans, whose position I am prematurely called upon to fill, a man who has devoted his whole life to the advancement of archæology. It would be an impertinence in me to praise the work done by Sir Arthur; it is on the lips of all the learned world.

When I think of Evans as we knew him at Harrow, I remember him in a double capacity. First as a scientific observer, by inheritance, as I need not remind you, from his distinguished and many-sided father. Whether it was a question of coins, of flint implements, or of natural history, Evans was always the leader of our school Scientific Society—matched only in some points by another friend, too soon lost to science, Frank Balfour. I remember one small matter, which always strikes me as characteristic—that Evans exhibited at one of our meetings specimens of leaves of plants from the carboniferous epoch which he had picked out of the coal-scuttle in his room.

There is a fundamental problem in Aristotle's metaphysics which has received a good deal of attention ever since Eduard Zeller emphasized it in his book on Aristotle in the nineteenth century. The difficulty has often been expressed as an inconsistency between three propositions to each of which Aristotle is committed:

(1) No universal is substance.

(2) Knowledge is of what is most real.

(3) Knowledge is of universals.

Note.—The illustrations which I have given are not to be regarded as finished drawings, but rather as the best results that could be obtained from the records of my working note-books, and of measurings made in the midst of the statues. The whole purpose is to submit a practicable method.

It is strange that it should be believed by many artists and critics of art that no doctrine of human proportions was known in the schools of the great masters. For the contrary would seem to be the true case, if we are to judge by the practice and the comments of the artists and their friends. Egyptian and early Greek, and indeed all symbolic art is obviously based on measured proportions. The remark of Diodorus (I. 98) about the twentyone parts by which the body was measured in Egyptian sculpture may not be enough for a theory of an Egyptian canon, but it agrees well enough with the plainly systematic treatment of the sitting and the standing figures. It is more difficult to believe that the Egyptian sculptor had not a set of ratios which he used in his work.

The island of Delos is rather less than four miles long from north to south, with a greatest breadth of about a mile and a half. In its midst the granite platform of Cynthus rises to a height of some 350 feet above the sea-level. From the summit of Cynthus, looking westward, there is a view of rare beauty and surpassing interest. The narrow plain which extends along the western shore of the island was once covered by the ancient town of Delos. Near its middle point, a little to our right, and not far from the principal harbour, stood the temple of Apollo, with a cluster of sacred buildings surrounding it, in the brightness of Parian marble. The larger island of Rheneia, separated from Delos by a channel with an average breadth of half a mile, lies parallel with it on the west, but projects beyond it on the north,—veiling it from those who approach in a straight course from Syra. The two islets in this strait between Delos and Rheneia are now called Rheumatiari (ῥευματιάρια), ‘the channel isles’; the largest and southernmost once bore the name of Hecate, being the place where the women of Delos made their offerings of cakes to that goddess.