Few monuments of ancient art possess either a more obvious beauty and attraction, or a greater interest for the archæological student, than the sarcophagus painted with various scenes of an Amazonomachia, which was discovered in 1869 in a grave at a little distance from Corneto, the ancient Tarquinii, and was a few years afterwards acquired for the Egyptian and Etruscan Museum at Florence. Its date is probably not much after 300 B.C., and the pictures which adorn it, even if not the work of a Greek hand, offer us the best example we possess of the manner of Greek polychrome painting in that age. They have been already described by several highly competent writers, including Dr. Helbig and Otto Donner (Bull. dell' Inst. 1869, p. 198 sq.); the late Dr. Klügmann, who for years made representations of the Amazons in ancient art his especial study (Ann. dell' Inst. 1873, p. 239 sq.); Mr. Dennis (Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, 2nd ed., 1881, p. 96 sq.); and Dr. Woermann (Woltmann and Woermann, Hist. of Painting, English ed., 1880, vol. i., p. 100). But hitherto no adequate illustrations of them have been published. The sketches in slightly shaded outline engraved, (Mon dell' Inst., vol. ix., pl. lx.), to accompany Dr. Klügmann's article above referred to, furnish, indeed, a useful key to the shape and dimensions of the sarcophagus, and to the arrangement and subject-matter of its pictures. But of the style of the work they give little notion, and of its colouring, from the nature of the case, none at all. Coloured facsimiles of some selected portions of these most interesting paintings are published for the first time with the present number of the Journal of Hellenic Studies (Pls. XXXVI., XXXVII., XXXVIII.).

Among the objects brought from Tarentum by the Rev. G. J. Chester are certain disks of clay of some interest, though not of artistic value. They are circular and flat or cheese-like in form, with a diameter of 3½ to 3¾ inches, and a thickness of about ¾ of an inch. The inscriptions are impressed in the clay by means of a stamp, and run thus:

The order in date is that followed in the list. No. 1 is oldest, and the shape of the м seems to indicate that it may date from the fourth century B.C.; the other three are probably not earlier than the third century. Later they can scarcely be, for after that time the obol gave way to the Roman denarius and sestertius as a measure of value at Tarentum.

I am happy to offer this paper in tribute to the deep range of a dedicated Hellenist's life-work, not least for personal reasons. Professor Dodds first introduced me to the Ion towards the end of those happy twelve years of his career spent in the University of Birmingham. With his respect for Forsterian buckets let down into the subconscious, he may not be surprised that the introduction has had enduring effects. An early consequence was my verse translation of the play, eventually published in 1958 and, more recently (1968), produced on the stage by our Department of Drama and Theatre Arts. Translations of Greek and Latin authors play an increasingly important part in our contemporary cultural life, especially translations of Greek plays for the stage and for broadcasting. This is an area of activity which scholars should not ignore. What Gilbert Murray so successfully practised in his time, Milman Parry emphasized in another context: ‘…scholars must see that they must impose their truths before others impose their fictions’. Over the years I have followed the discussions in books and journals which have added to our understanding of the power and complex meaning of the play. Only some of these can be mentioned in what follows, to enable me to express agreement or a difference of opinion or emphasis.

The simply rationalistic interpretation of the Ion associated with the translation, preface, etc., by H.B.L. in 1889 and with the work of A. W. Verrall in 1890 and subsequently, was temporarily fashionable in certain quarters at the time. This interpretation no doubt stimulated further study of the play in this country, but there has been continuous corrective criticism of its aberrations.

The Season of 1910–1911 has witnessed the continuation of most of the excavations mentioned in the last of these reports, and the beginning of work in the island of Corfou (Kerkyra), which has, up to now, hardly yielded its full share of antiquities. This year, however, it has given us the most important discovery of the season, an almost complete sculptured pediment of an archaic Doric temple.

This discovery was made near the monastery of Goritsa, which lies to the south of the town of Corfou. Here the chance finding of a sculptured slab led to an excavation by the Ephor Versakis on behalf of the Greek Archaeological Society. The work was presently supported by the Emperor of Germany, Doctor Doerpfeld assisting at the excavation, and the Greek Government was represented later by the Ephor Rhomaios. The temple itself is much destroyed; the importance of the discovery consists in the almost complete preservation of the sculpture of one of the pediments.

It is a commonplace that the age of the early tyrants was an age of extraordinary commercial development. The invention of coinage, the most important invention in the history of commerce, dates from that age. In what personal relationship did the tyrants stand to this commercial development? They are often assumed to have been merely one of its passive products. Is it not possible that the founder of the tyranny was the man who turned to greatest advantage for political purposes the unique commercial conditions of the age in which he lived? Thucydides connects the rise of tyrannies with money making. Does not the saying χρήματ᾿ ἀνήρ which dates from this time, suggest that the tyrants were the leading members of this new class of nouveaux riches, and that they owed their political supremacy to their previous commercial predominance? The indications are of course exceedingly slight.

The remarkable Treasure, found on December 8, 1949, near the railway station of Panagjurischte, about 40 km north-west of Plovdiv (Bulgaria) on the fringe of a site where traces of earlier settlements had been observed, has attracted less attention in Western periodicals than its interest and importance deserve. I have had two opportunities of viewing the Treasure (in 1968 and 1972) in the Museum at Plovdiv. It is well displayed, but security arrangements are (very properly) such that it would be unreasonable to ask to handle the objects. Fortunately photographs are available giving accurate information on details, though these inevitably fail to reflect the overwhelming impression produced on the spectator by the find as a whole (plate 1a).

Date and Place of Manufacture

Metrological and epigraphical considerations conspire to date the find to the closing years of the fourth century B.C. (or possibly soon after the turn of the century) and suggest North-West Asia Minor as the place of origin. The total weight of the nine pieces is 6·172 kg of high-quality gold. Except for minor damage to two rhytons, all is excellently preserved; some small jewels which served for details such as eyeballs have been lost, but hardly anything is dented. Considered as bullion, this amount of gold is equivalent within 4 g to 730 darics (at 8·45 g) or to 1430 Attic drachmas (at 4·31 g), within 9 g. Since the phiale (plate IIId) scales 845·7 g, the figures neatly inscribed on the outside below the rim in small acrophonic numerals between 3—4 mm high (plate Ib) advertise its weight in terms of both these standards: these are H (=100, sc. darics) and ΗΓΔΔΔΔΙΙΙ, plus an indeterminate fraction, i.e. something over 196 Attic drachmas.

In the fourth book of Achilles Tatius' romance the young and beautiful heroine Leucippe collapses suddenly. When she is approached by the hero Clitophon she leaps to her feet, strikes his face, kicks his friend, and has to be overpowered and tied up. Several chapters later we learn that this behaviour had in fact been caused by an overdose of an unnamed aphrodisiac. In the meantime, however, bystanders, consisting of members of an Egyptian military force, have decided that μανία τις is the trouble, and proceed to diagnose with all the confidence of laymen the cause of her madness.

Their diagnosis takes the form of an ostensibly straightforward physiological explanation in carefully ordered (if rhetorical) phrases and employing technical terms.

The so-called ‘Chalcidian’ class of vases, in spite of their great technical and historical interest, have as yet received less of the close attention which has been applied to other better known classes, chiefly on account of the lack of definite material and definite information regarding them. No one has as yet treated of them comprehensively as a class, if we except the cursory survey of Klein, although a fair number have been separately published: pending therefore the maturing of the more complete study which seems desirable, the introduction of four new specimens of vase painting which we may call Chalcidian will not be without interest to archaeology; especially as the two at least which are figured on Plates XL.—XLIII. have each a further intrinsic value as contributions to the study of mythography.

There are in Scotland two ancient Athenian marble thrones which I had an opportunity of studying and photographing some years ago. Both have already been published, but not so fully as to make a fresh study of them superfluous. The more important is in the Earl of Elgin's collection at Broomhall, the other is at Biel, in East Lothian, and belongs to Colonel J. P. Nisbet Hamilton Grant.

An incomplete description of this marble was published in 1837 by von Stackelberg, he having seen it in Athens about 1810 on what he called ‘the site of the ancient Prytaneion’. His description was accompanied by neat engravings of two views of the throne and a view of each relief. After a lapse of time Michaelis produced further notes about it in his ‘Ancient Marbles in Great Britain’, Supplement I, in JHS V (1884) 146 ff. (with Plate XLVIII) under the title Marble throne with reliefs. He had little to say of the chair itself, much about the relief of the Tyrannicides together with a brief comment on the second relief and the inscription.

It will therefore be best to give a fresh description of the throne which can now be illustrated by new photographs taken while it was in the Edinburgh exhibition (Pl. VI, a; VII; VIII, c).