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.

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 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.

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.

Recent research is making us daily better acquainted with Byzantine religious buildings. Saint Sophia is a byword in architectural history and the Byzantine style has been drawn on in the West perhaps more than any other. But of the secular buildings of Byzantium, of the great palaces so famous in history, few examples have been spared. Accounts tell us of the great palace at Constantinople, but of this vast collection of buildings little more than a single stair remains above ground. Of the palace of the Hebdomon, situated on the Sea of Marmora to the south of the capital, even less is to be seen, though further excavations would probably prove fruitful, and of the mediaeval palace of the Blachernae on the Golden Horn, which served as the Imperial residence after the eleventh or twelfth century, only a single building, the Tekfour Serai, survives.

The writer has been recently given the opportunity to study three lead coffins, ornamented in relief, now in the Palestine Museum, Jerusalem. They are as yet unpublished.

No. 1.—Inventory, Dept. of Antiquities (Part M), No. 1080, entry dated January 13, 1928. According to a report made to the Department it was discovered in 1923 during the repair of a road from Acre to Beirut, near the village of Ez-Zîb. It was found in one of a group of fourteen tombs opened up accidentally during the work. The coffin was found in a much-damaged state and conveyed first to the local museum, Acre, and then to its present place.

Description. What remains of the coffin is in six fragments:— (a) A short side, measuring 24 by 35 cm. It is decorated with four columns of the Corinthian order with simplified capitals. The shafts of the columns have parallel spiral flutings for the upper two-thirds of their length (12 cm. fluted, 6 cm. plain).

The inscription with which this article is concerned was first published by S. Ferri. It has been commented on by Ferri, by Wilamowitz, by Heichelheim, and by De Sanctis. The text reproduced below closely follows that of Ferri, but incorporates a few corrections suggested by Wilamowitz and accepted by De Sanctis.

The main content of the inscription is a series of constitutional regulations. By whom, for whom, and at what date were these issued? Ferri, observing a point of contact between the new constitution and that of the Arcadian Federation as described by Xenophon, and finding evidence in several passages of an overriding control by ‘Ptolemy,’ concludes that the document was drafted c. 250 B.C. by the Arcadian reformers Ecdemus and Demophanes, on behalf of the short-lived Κοινὸν τῶν Κυρηναίων of that period, and subsequently confirmed and amended by Ptoemy III Euergetes. In this opinion he has been followed by Beloch and De Sanctis. But he has been effectively criticised by Heichelheim, who points out (i) that the ‘Alexandrian minae’ mentioned in 11. 9–10 of the text went out of circulation under Ptolemy II Philadelphus and (ii) that the ‘Ptolemy’of our inscription, not being styled ‘king,’ can be none other than Ptolemy I Soter, who did not assume the royal title till 305–304 B.C.

The problem of the neutrality of Delos has been the subject of a searching investigation by W. W. Tarn published recently in this Journal. The argument turns mainly on a purely epigraphical question, namely, the interpretation of the formula for the setting-up of a stele in the decrees of the Island League. Its historical importance is great, because, if Tarn is right, we should be justified in utilising the Delian Royal festivals for the reconstruction of the political history of the third century, which has rightly been styled the darkest period of Hellenism. As in the fourth Excursus of his large work Antigonus Gonatas, the distinguished scholar maintains the thesis that Delos became a member of the Island League, and that the varying history of this League is reflected in the establishment of festivals in turn by the Ptolemies, by the Seleucids, and by the Antigonids. The evidence for his theory he finds in the argument that the Islanders, if they wished to set up an inscribed stele in Delos, were not obliged to address a petition to the Commune of Delos, requesting the grant of a site in the sanctuary; the Islanders therefore controlled the site and ground of Delos, which implies that Delos belonged to the League. Although I raised objections to Tarn's thesis, as did Roussel at an earlier date, I would gladly be the first to agree with him, had he succeeded in bringing forward convincing proof of this theory. As this has not been the case, in view of the wide significance of the problem I think it advisable to break silence and to expose my objections to the criticism of experts.

Polybios, in the course of a long fragment on the knowledge necessary for a general, preserved in the Codex Urbinas (IX, 17), has an account of an ineffectual attack on the town of Cynaetha in North Arcadia by Aratos during one of his early generalships. Aratos, he tells us, had made full arrangements for a simultaneous attack on the town from traitors within and Achaean troops without, and as a signal to the latter a man was to go and stand on a certain hillock dressed in a cloak. Unfortunately a sheep-owner, while looking for his shepherd, went and unwittingly stood on this very hill, whereupon the Achaeans attacked too soon and were disastrously repulsed. What was the cause of the failure asks Polybios, and answers ‘῾τὸ ποιήσαοθαι τὸν στρατηγὸν ἁπλοῦν τὸ σύνθημα, νέον ἀκμἡν ὄντα καὶ τῆς τῶν διπλῶν συνθημάτων καὶ παρασυνθημάτων ἀκριβείας ἄπειρον,᾿’ because the general was still young and ignorant of the principle of signals and counter-signals.

The incident has been inexplicably neglected: Beloch, Tarn and Ferrabino omit it entirely; Niese omits it from his article on Aratos in Pauly-Wissowa, and in his large work writes simply ‘Aratos unternahm einmal einen Versuch, sie (sc. Cynaetha) zu überrumpeln,’ vaguely indicating a date in the neighbourhood of 245–40; Pieske writing on ‘Kynaitha’ in Pauly-Wissowa, has a bare reference, and Freeman, mentioning it in a note, declares that the attack was one of the first of a series of events leading up to Cynaetha's joining the Achaean League. The words νέον ἀκμὴν ὄντα can, he adds, refer only to one of the earliest of Aratos' generalships, or possibly to some subordinate command held before he was general. In short, the incident has been almost completely ignored, and no attempt has been made to set it in its historical context. The purpose of this paper is to shew that it offers important evidence both for the date of Aratos' birth, and also for Achaean and Aetolian policy during the years 245–35.

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’).

The collection of elegiac poems which bears the name of Theognis offers one of the most interesting problems in the literary history of Greece, and, in spite of many tentative solutions, it must be admitted that the origin and composition of this anthology still remain a mystery. We know that the Theognidea include poems composed by Tyrtaeus, Mimnermus, and Solon, and it is therefore by no means unlikely that they also include a great number of other elegies that can no longer be traced to their proper sources. As the object of the following article is to discuss a few points connected with the poet's life and political surroundings, we must first of all discover some test which will enable usto distinguish the genuine poems of Theognis from those of other poets represented in the collection. We can safely assume that Theognis is the author of all the elegies in Book I. which contain the name of Cyrnus, the young noble to whom the poet addressed so many of his didactic and political poems. For the name of Cyrnus is the σφρηγίς referred to by the poet in elegy 19–26, as something which will lead to the detection of the theft, if the poems are stolen. The σφρηγίςcannot, as some suppose, be the name of the poet himself: the mere insertion of the name of Theognis at the beginning or end of a collection of disconnected poems would afford no protection against plagiarism. What was wanted was a mark attached to each poem, and it is to serve this purpose that the vocative Κύρνε is so frequently introduced.

Twenty-five years ago Paul Wilpert called for a thorough re-examination of our knowledge of the content of Aristotle's lost work De Philosophia. Expressing his reservations about the validity of our current reconstruction of the work, he wrote: ‘On the basis of attested fragments, we form for ourselves a picture of the content of a lost writing, and this picture in turn serves to interpret new fragments as echoes of that writing. So our joy over the swift growth of our collection of fragments is clouded by the thought that we are not thereby really nearing the original character of the work, but we are entangling ourselves ever more tightly in a picture we ourselves have created.’ As a corrective Wilpert called for a critical retracing of our steps since 1830 to establish a more secure reconstruction of this important lost work.

Since then there have been numerous, searching analyses of the ideas and fragments of De Philosophia, but at least one venerable old theory has escaped critical reappraisal: namely, the theory that in De Philosophia Aristotle discussed his doctrine of a fifth element, i.e. his belief that the heavenly bodies are composed of an element distinct from the four earthly elements, earth, water, air, and fire. This theory has become so widely accepted that it has virtually become a fact. When support is needed, most modern authors simply cite one or both of the two modern authorities on the early Aristotle, namely W. Jaeger and E. Bignone. The more meticulous restate the traditional evidence with complete confidence that this evidence proves their case. If Wilpert's hope for a firmly grounded reconstruction of the De Philosophia is ever to be achieved, one of the important desiderata today is a critical re-examination of the evidence for the fifth element in this work.

The inscriptions here published are for the most part in the Ghizeh Museum, where I copied them last year when assisting in the preparation of the catalogue of the Graeco-Roman rooms. They do not appear to have been edited previously, and offer some points of interest. The numbers given are those of the new catalogue.

The inscription is on a columnar statue-base of limestone ·88 metres high and ·53 in diameter, one side having been cut flat to receive it; the remainder of the surface is decorated with acanthus leaves. The letters are, in the first seven lines, ·026–·031 high: in the rest, ·015–·02. Date: 181, June 25th.

The stone was seen by Dr. Petrie about 1886 lying at Sakha (Xois), where he copied it, and appears to have been removed to the Museum three or four years ago. It is quoted by S. de Ricci in Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch. 1900, vol. xxii. p. 381.

The name of Commodus has been deliberately erased in 1. 5, every vestige of the letters being cut away. A similar erasure has taken place of the name of the prefect in l. 15, but the work has been much less thoroughly done there, by merely digging a line through the letters. The traces which remain are, however, insufficient to make the restoration of the name possible. The nearest in date of the known prefects is Flavius Pris[cus], mentioned in a Berlin papyrus of the year 181/2: but his name will not suit.

Despite increasingly sophisticated theoretical debate, scholars concerned with ancient historiography effectively still divide into two camps: historians, who want to use the texts as sources and assess them by criteria of accuracy, reliability, completeness of record and presence or absence of prejudice according to their presumed relationship to the facts which they purport to represent; and literary scholars, who want to interpret the texts as texts, with their own internal logic.

The document which is the subject of the following paper has the interest of being the only copy of the only direct record of a whole period of Greek literature—the period, namely, of the poets who carried on the traditions of Homeric art in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. It is a fragment in a double sense: first because it is a mere extract, and secondly because the pages on which it is preserved are themselves in a fragmentary condition. It professes to be derived from a certain χρηστομάθεια γραμματική—a kind of primer or résumé of Greek literature—the work of a grammarian named Proclus; and contains, with other matter, part of his account of the so-called ‘Epic Cycle.”

Regarding Proclus himself nothing is certain, except that he is not Proclus Diadochus, the Platonic philosopher of the fifth century. According to Welcker's probable conjecture, he is to be identified with Eutychius Proclus of Sicca, instructor of the emperor M. Antoninus