Diomedes, king of the Bistones, a war-like people of Thrace, owned man-eating horses, which Herakles had to subdue: according to Apollodoros (ii 5.8) this was his eighth labour. Neither the number nor the order of Herakles' labours is certain; our earliest evidence for a canonical twelve is the metopal decoration of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia (470–457 B.C.). The second metope from the south corner of the eastern end of the temple is badly preserved, but enough remains to make it clear that Herakles was here represented standing in front of a single horse, subduing it in much the same manner as he does the Cretan Bull on the west end of the Temple. Earlier, in the sixth century, Bathykles had represented Herakles ‘subduing Diomedes’ on the ‘throne’ at Amyklae (Pausanias iii 8.12), but of this nothing remains.

Until the publication in 1961 of a papyrus with more than fifty new verses of a poem by Pindar, our earliest literary evidence for Herakles' encounter with Diomedes was the Alcestis of Euripides (438 B.C.): Herakles comes to the palace of Thessalian Admetus, on his way to the Bistones (ll. 482 ff.). The new poem, which probably antedates the Alcestis by several decades, begins, as preserved, with a brief mention of Herakles' theft of Geryon's cattle and the moral implications of his deed.

Miss Sylvia Benton, in a recent note, identifies the bird which appears on some of the coins of Stymphalos ‘rising above the leaves of a Water Plantain … with a Fritillary on either side… The bird wears ear-flaps, and for me a marsh bird with earflaps must be meant for the Great Crested Grebe’.

This identification seems to me convincing, though the bill as represented on the coins is perhaps rather short and thick. On April 29th and May 23rd 1974 I visited Stymphalos, in company with my family, in the hope of confirming that the Lake is still within the Grebe's range. This we were unable to do, and I am delighted to learn from Mr Buxton's note that ‘the bird breeds now on the Stymphalian lake’.

The Lake certainly offers in its extensive reed-beds a most suitable breeding-ground for Grebes, which build partly floating platforms of marsh vegetation to serve as nests. Adult birds sleep on the water and are fish-eaters. Grebes cannot therefore have suggested the different literary variants of this Labour of Herakles.

In his Vita Plotini, Porphyry recounts a colourful episode which, for a brief moment, brings to life the dynamics within the lecture room of Plotinus in Rome. The author explains how he was in the habit of posing questions to Plotinus frequently and persistently while his teacher was conducting his philosophical discourse before a mixed body of listeners. On one occasion, such an exchange between the two over the issue of the connexion between the soul and the body continued intermittently over a period of some three days, with the following outcome (Porph. V. Plot. xiii 12-15):

In my review of R. D. Dawe's Studies in the text of Sophocles (JHS xcvi [1976] 171 ff.), I reached the conclusion that scholars now possess all the information about manuscripts that is needed in order to constitute the text of the Ajax, Electra and Oedipus Tyrannus, subject to two provisos.

The first of these concerns the Jena manuscript (Bos. q. 7), a copy written late in the fifteenth century and containing only the first two plays. Reports of interesting readings found in it were given by Purgold in 1802, and since collations were not always undertaken very carefully at that date it seemed worth while to examine the book again to see whether the reports were correct. Thanks to the good offices of the University Library in Jena I was able to collate a microfilm, and am now in a position to state that Purgold did his work well. The interesting readings cited by subsequent editors are correctly reported, and so far as I can see there are no others of striking merit.

The other manuscript which seemed to deserve further investigation is in Milan (Ambrosianus E 103 sup.). It is usually assigned to the fourteenth century, and if this date were certain it would not deserve any special attention. In my opinion the script is of a type that must almost certainly be placed before the year 1300, probably c 1275, and in that case the book might be of some interest, since it could be early enough to escape the reproach of offering a text affected by Palaeologan scholars. I have now collated the text from a microfilm kindly supplied by the Ambrosian Library. A very small number of valuable readings came to light.

The importance of the ‘Melian Amphorae’ in the history of early vase-painting has long been recognised, but the difficulty of locating an isolated fabric which in itself consisted of only five complete examples, all of uncertain provenance, has hitherto prevented any adequate treatment. Any extension of the class would therefore have been welcome. But the amphora which is now added to the list (vide Appendix) has a value in itself beyond its cumulative importance. Not only is there stronger evidence in this case than in any of the others that the vase was actually found in Melos, but the decoration of the vase adds new figure-subjects and new schemes of ornament to those previously recognised as characteristic of the class. Indeed the whole ‘Melian’ class as at present constituted consists of large and elaborate vases, ceramic masterpieces, each of which possesses its own individual scheme of decoration. This appears very clearly in a comparison of the present amphora with two typical examples from those previously published, namely, the Herakles and the Artemis amphorae. In the Herakles vase the painter has produced his effect by an elaborate and ornate treatment both of the figure-scenes and of the ornament forms.

Two extreme views obtain as to the numbers of this fleet. Many modern writers have unaffectedly accepted, sometimes with conviction, the 1,207 (or 1,327) triremes of Herodotus. In sharpest contrast, we have Prof. Hans Delbrück's estimate of not over 300 triremes for Xerxes' fleet at the outset, or anyhow at Artemisium. Delbrück discards all Herodotus' numbers as equally worthless, and sets out to deduce the true figure from criticism of the naval battles and of probabilities; it leads to the result that at Salamis the Persians were actually outnumbered, which is the point that really matters. Several intermediate views have also been put forward; Dr. H. Welzhofer and Prof. J. Beloch have taken the figure as 1,207 ships, not warships, Welzhofer putting the warships at something over 400; Prof. J. B. Bury and Dr. J. A. R. Munro have suggested 800 triremes at the outset; while Dr. E. Meyer gives 600–800 to start with, not all triremes, and 400–500 at Salamis, the fleet being brought up by transports, etc. to the popular figure of 1,000. Naturally, most of these figures are guesses from the probabilities of the case; but Dr. Munro has recognised the crucial fact of the four divisions of the fleet.

This paper re-evaluates the narrative roles occupied by Geryon and Herakles in Stesichoros’ Geryoneis in the light of contemporary thinking about Herakles’ apotheosis. It proposes that Stesichoros activates his audience's awareness of Herakles’ fated divinity in order to reframe the hero versus monster encounter not as a duel between two mortal heroes – the usual interpretation – but as a showdown between a hero and a god. This reorientation destabilizes an audience's sympathies and self-identification, forcing a re-evaluation of the nature of both heroism and humanity. Following a discussion of the potential narrative roles in play, the prominence of Herakles’ apotheosis in the sixth century and its salience for Stesichoros’ audience is established. The apotheosis is then applied as a complementary lens to the long-recognized Iliadic intertexts in a reinterpretation of the encounter between Geryon and Herakles on Erytheia. Finally, the use of the apotheosis as a lens for interpreting two fragments beyond Erytheia is considered.

In the earlier number of the present volume (p. 143 sqq.) I gave some account of a MS. collection of inscriptions made by C. R. Cockerell in 1810–1814, and also gave copies of all those from the mainland of Greece, which appeared to be hitherto unpublished. The present paper will cover the rest of that collection, which is mostly derived from Asia Minor.

I add a complete list of the remaining contents of Cockerellľs volumes. Those unpublished are reproduced below; in the case of all those previously edited, a collation with the published copy has been made and kept, and I should be very glad to show these collations to any one interested in the matter.

This inscription, which affords no external indications of its origin, was published by Böckh among the Attic decrees on very slender grounds, which he himself practically recalls in the Appendix, C. I. G. vol. i. p. 900. With reason, therefore, Köhler in vol. ii. of new Berlin Corpus has not included it among the Attic decrees. In December 1880, I re-read this inscription, together with most of the other marbles in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. I verified the reading of the first line given by Dobree (Appendix to Rose's Inscriptiones Graecae), and adopted by Bockh, Appendix l. c. To the text of the decree there is therefore nothing to add, and it will suffice to append a copy of it in cursive. But I hope to show that the decree is from Halikarnassos, and to identify the revolution of Troezen to which it alludes.