The philosophical treatise of Melissus of Samos is often maintained to have a strictly deductive argumentative structure. This article attempts to confirm this thesis by establishing that such a structure is instituted beginning from its title and introductory sphragis. Extant paraphrases of Melissus’ treatise are examined and are argued (in line with some previous treatments) to provide a highly illuminating indication that the work began from the hypothesis that something is. Next, an account of how the first verbatim fragment (DK30B1) takes up this prefatory material is given along with a reconstructed text and translation of the title, preface and argument for the sempiternity of what-is.

This article argues against the traditional dating of the attack of Prusias I of Bithynia on Heraclea Pontica to the 190s, that is to the time before the Apamean settlement (188). The following re-examination of the only surviving literary source to refer directly to this event (Photius’ excerpts of the history of Heraclea Pontica by Memnon), together with relevant information from several other literary and inscriptional texts, allows us to connect the attack of Prusias with the war between the Bithynian and Pergamene kingdoms, which would then be dated to c. 184–183. The other major conclusion presented is that this war had no direct relation to the outcome of the Apamean settlement, as has been the majority opinion.

In the first book of Hippocratic Regimen, an unclear excursus explains how the technai imitate, and thus allow us to understand, human nature. It is argued here that the new polysemy of the word organon at the beginning of the fourth century is utilized by the author in his comparison, that this observation allows new understandings of some difficult passages and that such polysemy applies to a specific organon, the glotta (‘tongue’ and ‘reed’).

Neither literature nor coins bear any witness to the cult of Aphrodite at Olbia, but we have an inscription which is of the highest interest.

[᾿Αφρο]δίτηι Εὐπλοίαι

[Ποσ]ιδεος Ποσιδείου

χαριστήριον

This inscription is of the first century after Christ; Posideos the son of Posideos is no doubt the same individual who dedicated offerings at Neapolis to Zeus Atabyrios, Athene Lindia, and ᾿ Αχιλλεῖ νήσου [μεδέοντι] Boeckh conjectures him to have been a Rhodian, no doubt because of the dedications to Athene Lindia and Zeus Atabyrios, and also because Aphrodite Euploia was worshipped at Cnidus.

The following report has been compiled at the request of the Editors of the Journal of Hellenic Studies and has been made as complete as the short notice given has allowed. I have to thank my colleagues of the Greek Archaeological Service and of the other foreign schools in Athens for the information, which they have so courteously placed at my disposal. Thanks are also due to the Managing Committee of the British School for permission to give a brief account of its latest work.

The course of Homeric criticism during the last twenty years or so has not indeed given us any grounds for thinking that unanimity on fundamental questions is likely to be reached in the near future, but it has accomplished one thing. It is possible now to think and speak of Homer as a man who was born at a definite fortunate moment, ate, drank, and even slumbered, composed two long epics much in the same way as other men of genius have composed great works, had his joys and sorrows, triumphs and disappointments, and ultimately died—it is possible to think and speak of him thus without being considered absurdly simple or simply absurd. And so one can venture to approach the problem of the last section of the Odyssey in just the same way that one would approach a similar literary problem in a later age of the world, taking it for granted that the poet lived and worked under ordinary human conditions. In this paper I assume without discussion the truth of the unitarian view that Homer was the author of the Iliad and of the Odyssey (at least to ψ 296), and also that the Odyssey is the later of the two; I assume that in composing them he was aided by the art of writing; and I assume that he lived about 900–850 B.C. at latest.

Since the first publication by Robert of the magnificent krater from Orvieto, which is one of the proudest possessions of the Louvre, its style has been brought in connexion with Mikon, more on account of the figures half disappearing behind the rocks, than on the rather problematic assumption that Mikon's Argonauts might have inspired the artist in the more extensive picture on the side of the vase opposite to the death of the Niobids. This last scene (Fig. 1) is perfectly clear, and would not be in need of any new commentary if Robert had not committed the error of taking the arrow, near the handle, as fallen (freccia caduta per terra), holding this to be a piece of thoughtlessness, rather uncommon with Attic ceramists, and if Hauser had not gone even further, blaming the painter for so absurdly making an unerring god shoot an arrow and lose it. Both of course are wrong, and it is the more surprising that he who understands what escaped Robert— namely that Apollo shooting and Artemis taking a new arrow suggest to our mind the presence, though unseen, behind the hills of the missing sons and daughters of Niobe—fails to understand that the painting is not a poor extract from a larger composition, but that it was precisely the perhaps somewhat extravagant intention of the artist to suggest more than he shows.

On page 68 of the Jahreshefte of the Austrian Archaeological Institute for 1899, Band II., I discussed the value of the letter Χ, and with considerable hesitation decided in favour of Schmidt's opinion that it represents θ. The conclusion was based on the only direct evidence available, namely the rendering of the Persian Mithrapata by the Lycian ΜΕΧΡΡΓΡΤΡ. This was greatly discounted by the fact that Mithrapata is also rendered by Mizrppata (T.A.M. 64), and that Mithra appears also in Lycian Mizretije (84) and the Cilician Μισραιος, which rather suggested that the letter was a sibilant closely akin to the Lycian z. It now appears certain that the last conclusion is correct.

The Troad has been so thoroughly explored of late years that my only excuse for saying anything about my own travels in it during the autumn of 1879 is partly that they were undertaken in the cause of archaeology, partly that I enjoyed the advantage of having Mr. Frank Calvert as a guide. Mr. Calvert has lived so long in the country, and is so well acquainted with its archaeology, in the interest of which he has excavated on various historic and prehistoric sites, that I could not fail to obtain a better knowledge of the whole district than has hitherto fallen to the lot of most visitors. Dr. Schliemann, moreover, had kindly placed his foreman and servant, Nikóla, at the disposal of myself and my friend, Mr. F. W. Percival, and as Nikóla is a native of Ren Keui, I had additional opportunities of making myself acquainted with Trojan topography.

Since Dr. Schliemann, however, has entered fully into this subject in his work on ‘Ilios,’ I shall content myself with a few selections from the notes I made during my journey, and draw attention to one or two matters which have not been observed before. But I must first of all confess myself a convert to the theory which identifies the Ilium of Homer with Hissarlik. If Troy ever existed, it could have only been on the site of Hissarlik.

In the Quarterly Review for July, 1916, Professor J. B. Bury writes as follows:—

‘The Trojans were doubtless early immigrants from the Balkan peninsula. How comes it that their rulers have Greek names? The name of Priam himself is not indeed obviously Greek, but in its Aeolic form Perramos it may well be so; and Priam's father was Laomedon. Hector is Greek as Nestor, and was in later time the name of a prince of Chios. Paris has the second name of Alexandros; and the natural assumption is that “Paris” was a Phrygian name given him by his Phrygian mother, Hecuba. The names of the other children of Priam who come into the story—Cassandra, Helenus, Deiphobus, etc.—are Greek. We have to choose between two inferences. Either the bards deliberately substituted Greek for foreign names, or the rulers of the Troad were Greek. The second alternative, startling as it may appear, seems to us to accord with other evidence and to afford the most satisfactory explanation of the data of the Iliad.

The British excavations at Mycenae in 1952 were conducted with a research grant from the American Philosophical Society assisted by contributions from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trustees, and the British School at Athens, under whose aegis the work was carried out. The principal objectives were the ruins by side of the modern carriage road once tentatively called a Hellenistic Gymnasium, further investigation of the Prehistoric Cemetery outside the Lion Gate to the west, the clearing of the House of the Oil Merchant (found in 1950 and formerly called the House of Stirrup Jars) and of the House ofthe Wine Merchant (found in 1951 and part of the Cyclopean Terrace Building).

The so-called Hellenistic Gymnasium, now completely cleared, proved to be a Fountain House to be identified with the Perseia Krene seen by Pausanias among the ruins of Mycenae. Here presumably Tsountas found the inscribed poros base which mentions Perseus and clearly belonged to a fountain. There are two basins, one wide and one narrow, built against a terrace wall of ashlar poros of late classical date. The existing ruins are Hellenistic, but overlie an earlier water channel. The water was probably led down from the well-known spring (now called neromána) which lies about twenty minutes above the acropolis to the east. Built into one of the basins is an inscription dating from the second quarter of the fifth century B.C., a boundary stone from a shrine of Hera. The identification of this Fountain House as the Perseia Krene confirms yet further the accuracy of Pausanias' account of Mycenae.

The recent little book by Heinrich Drerup, Griechische Baukunst in geometrischer Zeit, is considered by the fashionable school of Homer's interpreters to be the one and only study of the Homeric House. Thus, for M. I. Finley, in ‘The World of Odysseus Revisited’, his presidential address to the Classical Association for 1974, it ‘replaces all previous accounts of the subject’; and it seems to him particularly refreshing because it sees, in the rude buildings of c. 800 B.C., sufficient material for all the true descriptions that Homer may give of architecture. If Drerup is right, we shall need no recourse to the Bronze Age to explain anything; and in Drerup's own words, as translated by Finley (p. 21), ‘the over-worked Mycenaean palace has probably played out its rôle in Homeric archaeology’. Our initial feelings, that it was rather tendentious to include a work on Geometric Baukunst in a series on Homeric archaeology, are thus to be rudely brushed aside.

Now I must agree that the end of the Bronze Age does mark a great, if ragged break in building science. The Mycenaean range of materials was never recovered in Classical Greece; and certain technical achievements of the Bronze Age were not repeated either in Classical Architecture or at any time since. One of my favourite examples, though one to which the textbooks give little attention, is the neat design of ceremonial doorways during the later Bronze Age.

§ 1. Pindar is a classic of whom the study may be expected to grow with the growth of an interest in Greek archæology. Not, indeed, because it is indebted to him, so largely as to many other authors, for direct illustration. Rather because his ‘Odes of Victory’ are lit up in a new way by a fuller knowledge of the places with which they are concerned, of the contests which they celebrate, of the art and religion by which they were inspired. To take a single instance—the discoveries at Olympia, which have restored for us the main features of the altis, have given a new meaning for every modern reader to the beautiful, but hitherto indistinct, picture suggested by Pindar's description of ‘all the holy place resounding with festal joy,’ when ‘the lovely light of the fair-faced moon shone forth’ after a day of contests. Pindar's odes are poems of occasion, magnificent expressions of Hellenic life in its most distinctively Hellenic phases. Hitherto the real drawback to his popularity has not been obscurity of language, but the strain which he was felt to place on the modern imagination.

Nacoleia is situated at the western border of the wide treeless plain which extends over the greater part of northern Phrygia and Galatia. In front of it north and east lies the great valley, which is drained by the river Sangarius or Sagaris: behind it are the Phrygian mountains, in which are the most important remains of the old Phrygian kingdom about six hours' journey away. The ancient city was placed on an isolated hill at the mouth of a glen bordered by higher hills: the modern town of Seid-el-Ghazi lies below this hill in the glen. A very fine old mosque, which would well reward careful examination, is placed far up on one of the higher hills: in it are buried Seid-el-Ghazi, the Arab general of Haroun al Raschid, and his wife the Greek princess. Much interesting information about these personages, and about the later history of Nacoleia, may be found in Mordtmann's paper, Münch. Gel. Anz. 1860. It is unnecessary to repeat anything that has been already said by him about the city, which plays a considerable part in later Roman history and was the scene of several important battles.

The town of Prusa, of which Dio was a native, stood in a fertile valley in Western Bithynia near Mt. Olympus. To this day the country round Brusa is remarkably rich and beautiful and here were situated the vineyards and farms which belonged to Dio's family. His grandfather was a distinguished sophist, τὴν γὰρ οὐσίαν ἣν εἴχε πατρῴαν καὶ παππῴαν ἅπασαν εἰς φιλοτιμίαν ἀναλώσας, ὥστε μηδὲν ἔχειν λοιπόν, ἑτέραν ἐκτήσατο ἀπò παιδείας καì παρὰ τῶν αὐτοκρατόρων: and the sophistical or rhetorical bias of Dio's education is clearly reflected in his earlier speeches. It mattered little that the study of the classics formed part of the average education: his reading everywhere would be directed by teachers who held the ordinary sophistical view that exact thinking and deep study unfit a man for practical life and that success is achieved by those who have acquired the art of making a skilful and impressive use of ideas which do not differ materially from those of the ordinary citizen. In the view of this school philosophical epideixis was only a small part of sophistic, and Stoics, Cynics, Epicureans, Platonists, and Peripatetics were only dry-as-dust schoolmasters and pedants who, differing in everything else, united in disparaging the universal culture of the Sophists.

The casts of Greek and Roman sculpture in the Museum of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge were treated and repaired recently by M. B. Laymann, now of Heidelberg. During his final visit, in 1975, he also restored a cast of the Peplos kore (Fig. I ), supplying the missing parts by analogy, colouring it according to published indications and adding a meniskos, which is conjectural in form, size and height. As for its height, the meniskos cannot have been much lower, to judge by what remains of the spike of other korai (Acropolis 670, 673, 682); and if it had been much higher, it would have given less protection against bird droppings and from experiment my impression is that the effect, particularly of the longer spike, is more disturbing. The size decided on was that just large enough to protect the head; though Aristophanes (Birds, 1114–7) may imply that it protected the whole of a statue, such an extension seems to me awkward visually and in practice would have made the contraption liable to damage in a high wind.