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.

Mr. Petrie's excavations at Naucratis, in the first season (1884–5), threw new light on many branches of classical archaeology: and a full share has fallen upon epigraphy. That science, indeed, has acquired new facts which not only form an important addition where additional evidence was most needed, but also necessitate a modification of certain theories which have hitherto been regarded as certain and fundamental. It is difficult, though not impossible, to reconstruct a portion of the foundations without injuring the edifice built thereon. But this attempt must be made, if we would neither ignore newly discovered material, nor allow its discovery to shake our confidence in the whole complicated structure of facts and theories that constitutes the science of epigraphy.

In the chapter on the inscriptions which was incorporated with Mr. Petrie's Memoir, the present writer endeavoured to give to the earliest records of dedication their true interpretation, and to assign to them what seemed their due place in the history of the Greek alphabet. But, with another season's work in prospect, it appeared premature to do more than this, or to draw general conclusions which further discoveries might again modify.

In his discourse on the causes of the Peloponnesian War (Pericles 31–32), Plutarch devotes an inordinate time to what he calls ‘the worst charge [against Pericles], but that having the greatest number of supporters’. The elements of this charge may be outlined briefly:

1. Pheidias was indicted for embezzling the precious materials used in the construction of the great statue of Athena Parthenos. The informer was a certain Menon, a fellow workman, who was subsequently given immunity and tax-free status by a decree of the assembly proposed by Glycon.

2. At the same time, Pericles' consort Aspasia was indicted and his friend and teacher Anaxagoras was attacked indirectly through a law against religious nonconformity brought by Diopeithes.

3. While the people were still in this mood, Dracontides had a decree passed, requiring that Pericles' accounts be deposited with the council and that the dicasts try any resulting cases on the acropolis with ballots specially sanctified at the altar. This last clause was stricken from the bill by Hagnon, who specified that any resulting suits were to be tried by a jury of 1,500.

4. Because of all these attacks, Pericles resolved to start the war, using the Megarian decree as provocation.

Plutarch reports here the popular fancy—that Pericles started a foreign war to avoid domestic embarrassments. The development of this tradition is a well-known chapter in the history of Greek literature, but as it is fundamental to this discussion, a brief review is called for.

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.

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.

The pretty vase figured at the head of this paper passed from Prince Louis Napoleon's possession into the hands of the late Auguste Dutuit, who bequeathed it along with his other treasures to the city of Paris. The same subject, a winged woman holding bow and arrow and bending to touch a fawn, is repeated with very slight variations on an unpublished lekythos in Syracuse. To judge from her weapons, the woman must be the winged Artemis who is familiar to us from primitive Greek art: but small, brisk, and dainty, she is greatly changed from the strong-armed Potnia Theron. Although it may often be observed that hunters love in a curious sort the fleet or violent people of the woodland whom they pursue and destroy; yet no one could think that this little lady ever used the weapons she carries to hurt or kill: borne on wings, she overtakes the swift feet, but the chase is not in earnest and ends not in death but in a caress: she is kindly to the rough young of fiery lions, and delightful to tender forest creatures that love the breast.

In March, 1947, as Antiquities Officer of the British Military Administration, Dodecanese, I examined the spoil earth from a well dug a few years before in the valley of Vathy on Calymnus; a previous visit had shown that it contained prehistoric potsherds. The well had reached, at about nine metres down, the remains of a village of late neolithic and early Bronze Age date. No trace of the strata of occupation was found in situ, but the amount of pottery in the spoil heap compared with the size of the shaft did not indicate that those strata were thick. The neolithic wares included pieces of rather thin polished pottery, silvery-grey, greyishbrown or reddish in colour, seldom of a uniform tint. Such pottery is, in surface and colours, not unlike late neolithic from Knossos, but it is less thick. A piece of a large handle of round section and polished red surface, decorated with knobs at intervals along the convex edge, was found. This type of decoration on a similar handle is paralleled in Stratum I. at Lianokladhi. The Bronze Age pottery, mostly grey or black in colour, is more or less rough in texture. Very little similar to the black polished wares of Thermi I appeared, but a few examples of striated ware, and of incised decoration, were found. There was also part of a spoon covered with red wash decoration, and sherds ornamented with the addition of a ribbon of clay, pressed flat at intervals, and with imitation rivet-heads. Simply shaped legs from tripod or other vessels were found, and flat solid handles placed rising from the rim and shaped with two points or horns. Another find consisted of part of the rim of a large vessel with internal ledge handles and a row of holes pierced just below the rim. Handles included both ribbon and round (in section) varieties, one type of ribbon handle being similar to a characteristic Cypriote type of handle. Two flat bases are paralleled in Crete and Hissarlik. A plain black single conical spindle whorl is paralleled at Thermi.

Poésie d'apparat et de célébration, la lyrique de Pindare s'identifie à la préciosité d'un métal ou d'une pierre, et à l'art somptueux de l'orfèvrerie ou de l'architecture. Rivalisant avec elle, l'éloquence d'apparat reprend et développe ces images à l'époque impériale, pour se représenter et exposer son esthétique, l'esthétique de la seconde sophistique, qui, inspirée de celle de Pindare et de Platon, unit la fable et la vérité de l'ailleurs, l'illusion et la sagesse divine.

The tripod represented in Pl. XII. and in Fig. 1 is 26½ inches (m. 0·66) in height; the diameter is at the bottom 21½ inches (m. 0·54) and at the top 14 inches (m. 0·36). The material is limestone of a kind common in most parts of Greece, especially the Peloponnesus.

The tripod was presented to All Souls' College in 1771 by Anthony Lefroy. The stand bears an inscription recording the gift, which contains a curious phrase in which the tripod is spoken of as ‘aram tripodem olim matri deum in templo S. Corinthi consecratum.’ I know not what the S before Corinthi may stand for. But the important thing is that the monument comes from Corinth. This is again asserted in the lettering of a print of it published by Gori in the Numismata Lefroyana, and repeated in a Magazine called The Topographer (November, 1789, p. 514), where Gori writes ‘Trovato a Corinto.’ It may be doubted whether Lefroy had any solid reason for supposing that the tripod came from a temple of the Mother of the Gods. Such a temple did exist at Corinth on the slope of the Acropolis Hill, as we learn from Pausanias. But, so far as I know, no remains of that temple have been observed in modern times. It can scarcely be regarded as likely that Lefroy had any reason to suppose that the tripod came from the actual site of that temple: it is far more probable that the figures of women standing on lions were to him a sufficient proof that the monument came from the temple of the Mother of the Gods which is mentioned by Pausanias.