Many people have failed to understand the Alcestis, and for the reasons Goethe suggests. Romanticists are grieved because Admetus, Pheres, and Heracles are human beings. As M. Masqueray observes, ‘Notre hypocrisie s'accommode mal d'une telle franchise.’ Verrall is delighted that the characters should be human beings, but refuses to permit them to ‘talk Greek.’ His ‘rational’ theory that the object of Euripides was to ‘expose’ the miraculous legend, by suggesting that Alcestis never died at all, rests on an assumption that, to an Athenian, the resurrection of the heroine, ‘as a piece of history, asserted or denied,’ was a matter of religious moment. But, for a Greek, the truth of the alleged resurrection involved no vital issues. The first lesson of religion was not ‘Believe that Apollo, through Heracles, could raise Alcestis from the dead, and, believing, have faith and hope,’ but something very different: ‘Know that thou art mortal, and, being mortal, practise moderation.’ It was the unorthodox, the ‘progressive,’ who, in ancient Athens, ventured to believe that mortal men should ‘practise immortality.’ Euripides contributed to new ideas by criticising the old. But his task was as far removed from that of Verrall's ‘Professor T. H …’ as was the mind of Nikias from that of Mr. Gladstone. For an ordinary Athenian the point was not that Alcestis rose from the dead, but that she died to save her husband's life. To argue the possibility or impossibility of her resurrection would, I submit, have appeared to the Athenian as trivial as it is depressing. If we want to understand Greek plays, we must remember that they were written by Athenians for an audience which was pagan, not Christian, Greek, not English. The characters talk Greek. It is our business, before we begin to criticise, to ascertain exactly what they say.

Amongst the varied literary output of the fifth-century empress Aelia Eudocia is a hexameter paraphrase of the martyrdom of Saints Cyprian and Justina. The opening lines of the poem, which were rediscovered in the second half of the 20th century, describe the conversion of Justina (Justa) to Christianity through the preaching of a deacon named Praulius. Even as Eudocia remains close to her prose model(s), she imposes her own interpretation upon the text through subtle variation and careful choice of poetic vocabulary. In her version, she depicts the preacher Praulius as a Christian counterpart to the traditional singer of hexameter poetry, linked also to her own poetic activity. This description of Praulius’ transformational preaching, prominently placed at the outset of the poem, constitutes another programmatic passage in late antique Christian verse.

Penelope's ‘stout hand’ (χειρί παχείηι) in Odyssey 21.6 has troubled readers with its implication that the 20 years Penelope has spent waiting, worrying and weaving have sapped her beauty. Attempts to redeem the verse have only been partially successful at best. By applying semiolinguistic models for jokes to both Odyssey 21.6 and Penelope's increase in stoutness at Odyssey 18.195, this paper pursues the possibility that both passages are humorous. Rather than deride Penelope, the humour celebrates her quintessentially human susceptibility to age and suffering, as well as the virtues she develops in parallel with her husband therefrom. The Odyssey regularly uses humour to similar effect by applying traditional epic formulaic structures to a broader range of subjects than they normally accommodate and thus redefining the heroic virtues that those structures encode so that they exalt mundane human experience.

In the following pages I offer a brief survey of books and articles published in 1931 and 1932 which relate solely, or mainly, to Greek inscriptions. Their importance and their number have rendered the undertaking peculiarly difficult and have necessitated, if not the exclusion, at least the most rigorous compression of the paragraphs dealing with the Minoan and other pre-Hellenic scripts. To those scholars who have facilitated my task by sending me off-prints of their works I tender my heartiest thanks.

Death has in these years robbed epigraphical studies of a number of their most eminent representatives, among them H. Dessau, F. Durrbach, a leading authority on Delian inscriptions, C. Fredrich, editor of IG. xii. 8, M. Holleaux, outstanding in the Hellenistic field, O. Marucchi, an expert in Christian epigraphy, J. H. Mordtmann, Salomon and Théodore Reinach, and U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, for many years the director of the colossal enterprise of the Inscriptiones Graecae.

While excavating in the ruins of the palace of Sennacherib at Koujounjik in 1880 Mr. Rassam found a small figure of Herakles sculptured in calcareous stone, and inscribed on the front of the plinth with a dedication by a certain Sarapiodoros (Σαραπιόδωρος Ἀρτεμιδώρου—κατ᾿ εὐχήν), and on one side of the plinth with the name of the artist Diogenes (Διογένης ἐποίει). The letters are painted red. The figure is now in the British Museum. Its height is 1 ft. 9 in.

A Greek sculptor of the name of Diogenes is known only, so far as I am aware, in the one instance cited by Pliny, in speaking of the sculptural decorations of the Pantheon of Agrippa in Rome, among which he mentions Caryatides ‘in columnis,’ whatever that may mean. These Caryatides by Diogenes the Athenian were much admired. But if Brunn is right, as he appears to be in identifying the statue of this kind in the Vatican Museum as a survivor from the Pantheon, he is evidently right also in concluding that Diogenes had merely made very careful copies from the Caryatides of the Erechtheum. Even a careful copyist was perhaps rare to find in the time of Agrippa. Our Diogenes was no doubt also a copyist, but apparently not a very careful one. For this among other reasons he cannot well be identified with his Athenian namesake. If our Diogenes had been an Athenian he would have said so on the plinth unless he had sculptured his Herakles in Athens where there would have been no occasion to say it.

Until the Second World War, the antiquities collection held by the university in Leipzig included a set of four fragments attributed to Exekias, and long recognised by scholars as deriving from an amphora which in the subject of both obverse and reverse scenes was close to the type A amphora signed by Exekias in the Vatican Museum. Unfortunately the fragments were lost during the war; W. Herrmann has recently published them as war losses, listing all the information available on their history— the provenience is unknown. Three of the fragments bear a clear resemblance to side A of the Vatican amphora, which shows Achilles and Ajax intent on a board game, but the Dioskouroi scene on side B was identified only on the very slender evidence of T. 391 (Plate IVa), a small fragment bearing the head of a white dog.

This identification is now supported by the discovery that T. 391 joins cleanly with a hitherto unpublished fragment in Cambridge as may be seen in Plate IVc. The join is substantiated by the portion of the hand of ‘Polydeukes’ appearing on both fragments, by the leash held in that hand, and by the dog's paw, all of which bridge the break.

In Hellenica IX, 39–50, J. and L. Robert publish, with a full and admirable commentary, an interesting inscribed altar in the museum at Antalya. Their text and restoration of the main inscription is as follows.

The purpose of this article is to examine the meaning and function of certain expressions used for conveying thanks in Greek. It does not pretend to be an exhaustive survey of all the expressions which are used in this connexion, but is restricted in scope to the Greek of the classical period and to those expressions which were in common use in conversation to convey thanks when an offer, gift, etc., was being accepted or declined. These expressions it will be convenient to call ‘responsive formulae’.

The ordinary expressions for feeling or conveying thanks combine χάριν with a verb such as εἰδέναι or ἔχειν, but as readers of Greek literature will have become aware, if only subconsciously, these combinations are not to be found used responsively in the prose or verse of the classical period. Before this sweeping generalisation provokes outright contradiction, let it be freely admitted that cases of the responsive use do exist.

Discussion of the closing lines of Pindar's seventh Nemean has concentrated almost exclusively on the lines' relevance to the larger question that hangs over the poem: does the ode serve as an apologia for the poet's uncomplimentary treatment of Neoptolemus in an earlier Paean, and is Pindar here most plainly gainsaying the vilification in which he supposedly previously engaged. The reading that I offer suggests that a very different concern frames the conclusion to the work. Rather than seeking to exculpate himself, the poet announces instead that in the song that the audience has just heard, the composer has adhered to two prime virtues that the encomiastic genre should embrace: variatio and an ability to counter the language of blame. By reorienting the debate in this way, I aim to elucidate the striking metaphors and other rhetorical devices that fill the final lines, and most particularly to make sense of the canine imagery that seems so recurrent a motif. As my reading seeks to show, the dog is chosen as master trope both for his relation to the practice of invective and for his relevance to that stale act of repetition that the poet here rejects. By giving his audience a sample of the mode of speech that the calumnist practises, and that the praise poet may appropriate when combating the opposite genre, Pindar makes the merits of his own poetry shine the brighter, and invites the cognoscenti to appreciate his sophia. More broadly, the encomiastic singer's brief deployment of the weapons of the abuse poet allows us to understand something of the overlapping and symbiotic relations between the different genres in archaic Greek poetry.

Among the many genuine works of Greek Sculptors in the Museums of Athens there are three colossal heads and a piece of richly sculptured drapery, more striking perhaps in their originality than any others to be found there. Shortly after their discovery they were published with photographs by the Director of Antiquities, M. Cavvadias, under the title Fouilles de Lycosura, Athènes, 1893, and carefully described and appreciated. My excuse in venturing to bring them again to notice is the undeserved neglect with which works of such fine and unexpected quality have been treated.

The repairs of the Parthenon are drawing to a close and visitors coming to Athens next Easter may hope to see the temple freed from its casing of timber. They must be prepared for other changes also. Already the removal of part of the scaffolding and the re-erection of it in July round the Erechtheum have shown that the Greek authorities intend to carry into effect the scheme for rebuilding the North Porch and West Wall which aroused some vigorous protests when it was publicly announced in April. The Parthenon repairs have been works of conservation. The present scheme is one of restoration, and it is natural therefore that it should have aroused a good deal of hostile criticism.

A small Attic red-figure cup of considerable charm was recently acquired by a private collector in Hamburg. It is decorated outside as well as inside and has been mended from several fragments. The tondo and foot are undamaged, but a few minor rim fragments are missing, the largest robbing us of part of the central horseman: gone are the back of his neck, his right shoulder, the upper part of his right arm, most of the pelta and a section of the spear shafts, as well as three letters from the inscription. The surface is in superb condition, despite one or two chips and the slight flaking under the right hand of the woman on the interior. The measurements of the cup are as follows: height 7.2 cm, diameter without handles 19.5 cm and diameter of the foot 8.0 cm. The shape is of type ‘C’, with the fillet at the lower end of the stem. The handles are long and rather flat, scarcely rising above the rim. The lip has a reserved line inside and out. The fairly flat bowl meets the rim at a sharp angle. The stem is short, as is normal with type ‘C’ cups, and is strongly flaring at top and bottom. The fillet is marked by a reserved groove above and below. The foot has a flat upper contour. The profile of the edge of the foot is richly formed: the upper third being concave and the lower two thirds convex, while in the middle of the former there is a very slight ridge. Under the foot is a wide black band, as is usual among cups of type ‘C’.

This article presents three single-word inscriptions carved on blocks of the large retaining wall that supported the Classical temple of Hera at the Argive Heraion. Two of the inscriptions record the name Kleomachos, while the third presumably records the first three letters of a name beginning Epi… The inscriptions, which include local Argive letter forms characteristic of the mid-fifth century, appear on ordinary wall blocks in places where they could not have been read when the terrace was completed. From the evidence of similar inscriptions at Delphi, it is argued that the inscriptions at the Argive Heraion should be identified as the marks of local contractors responsible for supplying building material to the site at a time when the sanctuary was entering a major phase of expansion.

In the collection of Sir Frederick Cook at Doughty House, Richmond, are nine fragments of a large sarcophagus of surpassing interest for the modern scientific history of art. They were identified some two years ago by Mrs. Arthur Strong, who is engaged upon a new illustrated catalogue of the Richmond antiques which is shortly to appear in this Journal. Mrs. Strong at once communicated to me the existence of a sarcophagus of so much importance for the studies I had initiated in my book Orient oder Rom, and, by the courtesy of the owner, I at the same time received a set of photographs of the nine fragments.