Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe is a Greek novel that is extremely rich in historical and historiographical allusions. Virtually all of those so far detected derive from Greek texts and events in Greek history. In this article I shift the focus to Roman history, and suggest that Rome is not as absent as it is usually supposed to be in the Greek novels. In support of this claim, I propose that Chariton's choice of Sicily as a topographical setting can be related to three episodes from the Republican period that all involve Roman interventions in Sicily. Section I: the removal of Callirhoe (described at the beginning of the novel as an ἄγαλμα) from Syracuse recalls Verres’ provincial mismanagement of Sicily (73–71 BC), specifically his removal from Syracuse of Sappho's statue. Section II: the character of the pirate Theron is freighted with markers that point to the ‘pirate’ Sextus Pompey and his conflict with Octavian from 42–36 BC. Section III: Chaereas’ triumphant return to Syracuse at the end of the novel, loaded with spoils from the Persian king, symbolically reverses and redresses Marcellus’ sack of Syracuse in 211 BC. These all have significant ramifications for how readers (ancient and modern) approach the Greek novels.

Interpretations of metal graters and pottery tripod bowls as Leitfossils of a trans-Mediterranean ‘orientalizing’ culture of spiced-wine consumption have of late become a staple of scholarship on sympotic banqueting, shaping our perception of ancient wine-drinking and its role in cross-cultural interaction in the first half of the first millennium BC. Yet a closer look at the evidence for spiced wine and the use of graters casts serious doubt on assumptions of a widespread practice of adding ‘spices’ to wine during the Greek symposion and of the use of graters or tripod grinding bowls for such a purpose in the Mediterranean and Near Eastern world. A more plausible scenario, it is argued, arises from the well-attested association of graters with cheese and other primarily culinary commodities. It sees the grater’s prime function and symbolic significance shift from a use in Early Iron Age ‘Homeric’ hospitality to becoming a tool in the increasingly complex cuisines associated with the Archaic and Classical banquet – an indicator of evolving Mediterranean commensality with no less of an international horizon, but a commensality that involved interaction and shared consumption beyond the narrowly sympotic.

This paper proposes a new interpretation of the dimensions of the sun and moon wheels in Anaximander's cosmology. While the traditional reconstruction proposed by Tannery and Diels posits six measures for three different wheels (sun, moon and stars), it will be argued here that Anaximander gave only two basic measurements, one for the moon's wheel (19 times bigger than the earth) and one for the sun's (28 times bigger). These two values can be accounted for by their connection to the lunar month – a graphic representation of the wheels which includes motion accurately reproduces the relative positions of the sun and moon; in fact they are the smallest pair of figures from which a twowheel model can be made that represents the month correctly. Anaximander derived his two parameters by attempting to incorporate basic observational data into a cosmic model.

1. On a slab of marble, ht. 10½ in. × 10 in., found within the walls during the tentative excavation. It is broken on the lower edge, but the other edges are fairly complete. The greater part is occupied with a relief representing Hermes and a goddess who is presumably Andeiris (Fig. 1). Both figures face the spectator: on the left Hermes (apparently beardless), wearing short girt chiton, chlamys, and petasos, stands at rest with caduceus along left arm, and right hand resting on hip: on right is Andeiris, a draped woman. Unfortunately this figure is broken away diagonally from the left shoulder to the right breast, and the surface is injured throughout. It is consequently impossible accurately to distinguish the details.

The name vase of the Painter of the Oxford Brygos, a fragmentary red-figure cup from Caere of the late archaic period, is well known (Plates I, IIa). Since it came to Oxford in 1911 it has been augmented from time to time by new fragments; the latest addition is a fragment formerly in New York, now on indefinite loan to the Ashmolean Museum, which was seen by Dr Dietrich von Bothmer to belong to the Oxford Brygos cup. This fragment has now been incorporated in the cup and several other pieces have been rearranged, on both sides, to good advantage. There seems to be no reason to question the identity of the artist as originally defined by Beazley. The cup is signed under the handle by Brygos as potter, but the style is quite different from that of Brygos' most frequent collaborator, the Brygos Painter. If A. Cambitoglou is correct in identifying the Brygos Painter and Potter as one and the same, we must assume that on this occasion Brygos potted for a second artist. The purpose of this article is primarily to draw attention to the restoration of the Oxford cup and to attempt a re-interpretation of the vase as a whole; it also, however, has a secondary purpose, to publish for the first time the only other vase securely assigned by Beazley to the same artist. The latter is a cup formerly on the Roman market and preserved in drawings in the German Archaeological Institute in Rome. While we do not suggest that the two cups are necessarily a pair, they do have some interesting features in common. First, the Rome cup (Plate IIb—d).

The ten Minoan and two Island seals, which are here published for the first time (plate X), form part of the Bosanquet Collection of the City of Liverpool Museum. Although there exists a card-index for the collection, the entries for these twelve seals give no indication of their provenience: apart from No. 9 below which is described as having been ‘bought in Athens’ there is no record of whether they were found in the course of excavation or were purchased by Professor R. C. Bosanquet. Bosanquet was himself, with R. M. Dawkins, one of the original excavators of the site of Palaikastro, but there is no evidence to show that the Minoan seals were discovered on or near the site; and in the absence of any indication, their origin must remain unknown.

The seals themselves are in varying states of preservation. No. 7 is perhaps the least satisfactory, showing signs of extreme wear, although several of the others are by no means negligible additions to the Corpus. Nos. 1, 3 and 5 in particular are excellent representatives of their type. Indeed these ten Minoan stones offer a surprisingly wide sample of the total range of Minoan Glyptic, from the three-sided prism seal of MM IA (No. 1) to two LM III lentoids (Nos. 9–10), and including on the way examples of hieroglyphic, architectural and talismanic designs. Of the remaining two, No. 11 is a good and characteristic example of the Melian winged creature type, while No. 12 is a curious and enigmatic seal, probably also to be regarded as an Island gem.

Personal names in ordinary use between the fall of Knossos and the fall of Mycenae could have got into the tradition of heroic poetry in three ways. They could have persisted in common use (as some certainly did); or they could have existed as a stock of ‘names suitable for heroes’ on which the poets drew at will; or they could have come down attached to stories or incidents or professions, with the probability that some of them are historical. An analysis of all the personal names in the tablets is a task for someone better qualified to judge the probabilities of identification, but there may be some value in a preliminary study of the fifty-eight names listed by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick as ‘Names which can be exactly paralleled in Homer’. For the cautious restraint shown throughout their great book is as good a guarantee of accurate interpretation as could be found. The names are fairly evenly divided between Iliadand Odyssey—17 in both, 29 in the Iliad only and 12 in the Odyssey only—and of these Ilos or Iros must be omitted. The number seems too small to show significant tendencies, and it is the more surprising that they are found to cluster round certain localities or heroes. Names found in the tablets are printed in italics.

The questions concerning the art of Pergamon, its characteristics and later influence, depend partly for their solution on the reconstruction and explanation of the fragments in Berlin. Much progress has been made in the work during the last year. The discovery which decided what was the breadth of the staircase, and what were the figures which adorned the left wing and the left staircase wall, has been already mentioned in the Hellenic Journal. It is now officially stated that the staircase was on the west side of the altar, although Bohn, in his survey of the site, at first conceived that this was impossible. Assuming that this point is now settled, we may note what is certain, or probable, or what is merely conjectural, in the placing of the groups. We know that the wing on the left of the staircase, and the left staircase-wall, were occupied by the deities of the sea and their antagonists: by Triton, Amphitrite, Nereus, and others which we cannot name. Among them, also, we may perhaps discern the figure of Hephaestos, and in their vicinity we must suppose Poseidon. On the right wing of the staircase, and around the south-west corner, we have good reason for placing Dionysos, with Cybele and her attendant goddesses, although the order of the slabs on which these latter are found is not the same as was formerly supposed.

The rhyton here published was found in a tomb at Capua in 1872, as described briefly in the Bullettino of that year (p. 42); it was acquired in the following year by the British Museum, and was soon thereafter included, but only in one view, among the ‘Photographs of the Castellani Collection,’ pl. 12. Always much admired for its beauty, both in the modelling of the Sphinx and in the drawing of the figures which encircle the cup above her head or occupy the spaces under her body, this vase has been seen at a certain disadvantage, as I believe, from a defective interpretation of the subject painted round the cup. In the Bullettino this subject was called ‘Triton, Nike and other figures,’ and this description has remained unchallenged. But obviously the figure here named Triton does not end in the tail of a fish, as a Triton should end. It is the tail of a serpent, and therefore he must be identified with some legendary person possessed of this combination—a human body ending in the coils and tail of a serpent. There can be no doubt that he is Kekrops, Κέκροπα σπείραισιν εἱλίσσοντα as he is described by Euripides, or as he appears in a Berlin terra-cotta, representing the birth of Erichthonios. On the terra-cotta Athene receives the infant Erichthonios from Gaia, who rises from the earth holding him up.