Sappho and her songs became popular throughout the Greek world very soon after her death, as reflected on Attic vases, in comedies and in the many references to her songs by authors of all times. One important source for her songs, especially before the discovery of the papyri at Oxyrhynchus and elsewhere, is Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae. This article presents a close analysis of three fragments of Sappho that were transmitted within this work, in order to establish the form of the fragments as they were incorporated by Athenaeus. Divergence from Sappho's original need not be the result of scribal error, but may represent a variation born in performance or active reception of the poems by Athenaeus or his source. Furthermore, the fragments demonstrate that it is insufficient to describe Athenaeus’ engagement with the Lesbian dialect as atticizing. By extension, the idiosyncracies of his quotations of Sappho's songs should be reflected in editions of the Deipnosophistae.

This article is a discussion and analysis of Aeschylus Agamemnon 104–05, with special reference to the epic models operating behind the typically Homeric enjambement ἀνδρῶν / ἐκτελέων. The ἄνδρες should be understood as the Argive heroes of the expedition against Troy, and not as the sons of Atreus, Agamemnon and Menelaus. This interpretation is supported by a number of examples taken from Archaic and Hellenistic epic poems.

In this article I review 11 books published since 2010 that bring the ‘material turn’ to classics. Some start from emic ancient perspectives on matter and materiality; others take their cue from current theoretical models such as those of the new materialisms. All offer new insights into our relationship with the material world and consider the material object as active within different paradigms. In reviewing these important volumes together, I question entrenched boundaries: from those between (sub-)disciplines to those between human and non-human agents. I explore the material turn not as an isolated phenomenon, but, first, as a cyclical ‘re’-turn and, second, as an integrated set of ideas incorporating (to name but a few strands) aesthetics, cognitive humanities, embodiment, affect and the senses. The books reviewed range from literary studies to archaeology to art history to material culture to heritage. Taken together, they set new directions for classics, and indeed for our thinking about our place in the world.

This paper investigates how Gregory of Nazianzus imitates and responds to the Greek literary tradition in the autobiographical poem ‘On his own affairs’ (2.1.1). Through six case studies, it contributes to the ongoing re-evaluation of Gregory’s literary merit. With learning, wit, subtle humour and faith, Gregory adapts and reinvents earlier poetry to express Christian themes. Imitation is at the heart of his poetic technique, but his imitations are never straight-forward. They include imitating both Homer and other poets’ imitations of Homer, learned word-play and combining references to non-Christian literature and the Septuagint. Gregory’s references add nuance to ‘On his own affairs’ and give pleasure to readers trained to judge poetry by comparing it to earlier poetry, especially the Homeric epics. They also demonstrate the breadth of his scholarship, which extends to Homeric variants, Platonic epigrams and the entirety of the New Testament and Septuagint. Above all, Gregory insists that he is a rightful participant in a living poetic tradition. He writes Greek poetry for the fourth century AD, just as Oppian did in the second century and Apollonius and Callimachus did in the Hellenistic period.

In the British Museum there are two fifth-century Attic vases (Nos. D 9 and D 10) of bee-hive shape (Fig. 1), of which the decoration consists of a series of mouldings alternately red, white, and black, with a black rim; the interior is white, also with a black rim. In their general style, their technique, and their decoration they are very similar to another vase of the same collection, D 8, a phiale mesomphalos, which bears the signature of the potter Sotades. All three vases were in the Branteghem Collection, and were described by Froehner, in his Catalogue of that Collection, under Nos. 160–162.

In the third volume of the Catalogue of Vases in the British Museum I described these vases, D 9 and D 10, as ‘Mastoi’; this is a form which, of course, owes its name to the pretty fancy which derives it from the model of Aphrodite's breast, and so was a favourite form of dedication in her temple at Paphos.

In my last article I tried to show that there is no adequate evidence for the statement that the Greek frequently jumped fifty feet or more, and still less for the theories of a ‘triple jump’ or a ‘hop, skip, and jump,’ which have been suggested simply to explain such a record. Other misconceptions are due to the same cause. The old idea, that the rods which so frequently occur in vase-paintings of the palaestra are jumping-poles, has been long since abandoned, and they are now recognised as akontia, or possibly measuring rods (κανόνες).

It is well-known how, in the spring of 1877, the German explorers at Olympia had the good fortune to dig up the chief parts of a statue which had been seen by Pausanias in the same spot, and had been described by him in the following words:—χρόνῳ δὲ ὕστερον καὶ ἄλλα ἀνέθεσαν ἐς τὸ Ἡραῖον, Ἑρμῆν λίθου, Διόνυσον δὲ φέρει νήπιον, τέχνη δέ ἐστι Πραξιτέλους (Paus. v. 17, 3).

The bulk of the statue is in exquisite preservation. The greater part however of the right arm of Hermes is missing. Since the whole motive of the subject depends upon the action of the arm, speculation has been busy as to the most probable restoration of this limb.

With a view to the solution of this problem, Benndorf has collected together a series of types of the Hermes and Dionysos group. His list is not exhaustive, and he seems to have passed over certain instances of importance.

My principal object in this paper is to attempt to show that a certain group of types contains the clue to the restoration of the missing arm, although they do not represent the arm in its true position; and on the other hand to show that certain types which have the arm in its true position, are untrustworthy guides as to the restoration of the attribute attached to it.

In describing the recent excavations at Zakro (Annual of the British School at Athens, vii. p. 121 ff.) I stated that the pottery found there could not be fully published yet. Pending the resumption of its study, however, three vases of exceptional excellence, which were copied in Candia by Monsieur E. Gilliéron, may be made known. One of these (No. 1) was found in fragments in the principal house (A) of the Lower Town (ibid. p. 129 ff.), which yielded also the hoard of sealings published in the previous issue of this Journal. The precise findspot was the doorway between the rooms 3 and 5 (v. plan, ibid. p. 131), which. I believe to have contained a stairway of two flights leading to an upper level or storey. These rooms were full of collapsed ruin, among which the fragments of this vase were dispersed. I offered a special reward, and had all sherds dug out of this house minutely examined; but about a third of the vase was not recovered. Part of a second vase (lip and neck) of precisely similar character came from the same rubbish. The other two vases (Nos. 2, 3) figured in the accompanying Plate (XII.) were built up from fragments found in the Λάκκος (Pit I.) on the western spur (ibid. p. 126) among countless sherds of Bronze-Age pottery of the best Cnossian period.

As the point of departure I take that controversial passage in Thucydides i. 13.2—

Now the controversy turns on the type of ship that Ameinocles built. Thucydides uses the general word ναῦς, which in Herodotus certainly and, according to Liddell and Scott, in Greek literature generally does seem to be a synonym for τριέρεις, and after Thucydides' use of the word τριήρεις in the previous sentence it would be natural to take ναῦς in the same sense. The Corinthians built the first triremes in Greece and Ameinocles built four of them for the Samians at the end of the eighth century, and there would be at least a reliable terminus ante quem for the introduction of the trireme into Greece. Here the matter would have rested, had not this date conflicted not only with the other literary records, including Thucydides himself, but also with the archaeological evidence, such as it is, which both seem to preclude such an early date.

The marshalling of the literary evidence against the supposition that triremes were built in Greece at the end of the eighth century has been admirably done by Professor Davison in the Classical Quarterly of 1947. He rightly comes to the conclusion that triremes could not have been introduced into Greece before the third quarter of the sixth century, and that in the disputed passage Thucydides was using ναῦς of ships generally and refraining from specifying the class; but in this case how flat the second part of the sentence sounds—the Corinthians were the first in Greece to use triremes, and Ameinocles the Corinthian built four ships of some sort or other for the Samians—nor does it seem to warrant the luxury of a precise date; and why four ships?

In the Compte rendu of the Russian Imperial Archaeological Commission for 1877, which has just made its appearance, Dr. Stephani, one of the most learned and experienced of archaeologists, has boldly attacked the antiquity of the graves discovered by Dr. Schliemann at Mycenae. The circumstances of that discovery will be fresh in the memory of our readers. As soon as English archaeologists had an opportunity of examining the various objects discovered by Dr. Schliemann in the graves, they at once gave their verdict, all but unanimously, that what was found belonged to the pre-historic times of Greece. And in this country it is now commonly assumed that the antiquities of Mycenae must form the subject of the first chapter of any account of Greek artistic production. But the reputation of Dr. Stephani is deservedly so great that his entry into the controversy compels us to a reconsideration of the whole problem, and a careful examination of the new light which he has to offer.

This task I have undertaken, not without reluctance. And whatever may be my inferiority to M. Stephani in the matter of learning and experience, I have over him the great advantage that whereas he judges of the Mycenaean treasures from engravings and photographs, I have seen them not once, but many times, have examined them with utmost care, and have for years been seeking in all quarters for anything to throw light on their date and origin.