The enemies of classics sometimes say that it is a dead subject. They depict the classical scholar as spending his time in re-reading, re-editing, or re-annotating texts which have been read, edited, and annotated for generations or centuries; and they contrast him with the student of science, before whom the inexhaustible riches of nature are displayed as his quarry. It were strange, if this were true, that classical study should possess—as by the common experience of public schools it does possess—a capacity unsurpassed by any other subject for turning out men of practical ability and aptitude for the affairs of the world. But it is not true. The enemies of classics, in this as in other instances, have erected a dummy in order to knock it over. They may be reproducing traditions of their fathers, or of their own boyhood; but they are showing that they have not kept abreast of their own times, and that they are not competent to criticise a study of which they know so little. Even natural science, with all its wonderful discoveries, has not been a more living subject during the last half century than the study of classical antiquity. Literature and archaeology—which mean the record of the thoughts of man as expressed in words and in art, during a period when that expression was at its highest pitch of perfection—have gone from discovery to discovery, from development to development, at a rate unequalled even at the Renaissance. These years have given fresh life to the study of the heroic age of human intellectual progress; they have shown that the treasures of antiquity are not only to be enjoyed but are to be increased.

An excellent survey of the evidence of Greek papyri for purposes of textual criticism together with some cautious generalizations was given by Sir Frederic Kenyon in the Transactions of the British Academy, 1904. The following paper gives a sketch of the present position of the question in the light of both his article and the new evidence which has accrued in the last 14 years.

In literary papyri from Egypt the proportion of extant to new texts is very small in the Ptolemaic period (B.C. 323–30), when apart from Homer, Euripides, Plato, and Demosthenes that all too scanty portion of Greek literature which has survived did not yet stand out very conspicuously from the rest in popularity. In the Roman period (B.C. 30–A.D. 284) the proportion of new to extant works represented in literary papyri is more in the direction of equality, while in the Byzantine period (A.D. 284–640) after the general adoption of Christianity there was a rapid decline of interest in classical studies, and by the 6th century not very many lost classical works seem to have been commonly studied in Upper Egypt, from which the papyri come. In 1904 Sir Frederic Kenyon was dealing with 189 papyri of extant works, of which 109 belonged to Homer, 80 to other authors. Now, however, nearly 300 more have to be added, of which about 120 represent authors other than Homer, so that the material for examination is more than double.

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.

It might seem waste of labour to examine minutely an account of the battle of Marathon and the Parian expedition so late as that contained in the brief life of Miltiades ascribed to Cornelius Nepos, more especially as I must confess that the results of my enquiry are in the main negative, and that such positive conclusions as I reach have not the charm of novelty, but serve merely to strengthen theories already well known, and in England at least widely accepted. But this late epitome is almost the only consecutive narrative of these events outside the pages of Herodotus. Marathon was sung by poets, and bespattered with rhetoric by patriotic orators, but such historical accounts as there once were of the battle have perished, save for the still later epitome of Trogus Pompeius made by Justin. Again there is good reason to think that Cornelius Nepos is here following the fourth-century historian Ephorus. This is manifestly the case in his account of the Parian expedition, the kernel of which is little more than a translation of the fragment of Ephorus preserved in Stephanus of Byzantium s.v. Paros. That Nepos drew his story of Marathon from the same source is the general, and as I shall hope to show, the right opinion, though it has been denied by Dr. E. Meyer. Further, the view of the campaign and the conception of the battle to be found in Nepos have been accepted as historical by many of the highest authorities in Germany, e.g., by Drs. H. Delbrück, G. Busolt, and in the main by Dr. E. Meyer.

In the Quarterly Review for July, 1916, Professor J. B. Bury writes as follows:—

‘The Trojans were doubtless early immigrants from the Balkan peninsula. How comes it that their rulers have Greek names? The name of Priam himself is not indeed obviously Greek, but in its Aeolic form Perramos it may well be so; and Priam's father was Laomedon. Hector is Greek as Nestor, and was in later time the name of a prince of Chios. Paris has the second name of Alexandros; and the natural assumption is that “Paris” was a Phrygian name given him by his Phrygian mother, Hecuba. The names of the other children of Priam who come into the story—Cassandra, Helenus, Deiphobus, etc.—are Greek. We have to choose between two inferences. Either the bards deliberately substituted Greek for foreign names, or the rulers of the Troad were Greek. The second alternative, startling as it may appear, seems to us to accord with other evidence and to afford the most satisfactory explanation of the data of the Iliad.

A Generous gift to the Ashmolean Museum, from Mr. E. P. Warren, has not only allowed the art-lovers of Oxford to enjoy an exquisite work of art, but has also enabled students of Greek sculpture to attain to a fuller knowledge of the style and technique of the great schools of the fifth century B.C. Our head appears to have been broken off a statue; unfortunately it is not complete. And as it had to be put together and bent into shape, any measurements will be of little value.

Perhaps an apology is due to the readers of the Journal of Hellenic Studies for venturing to call their attention to so fragmentary a vase as the one depicted in the accompanying illustrations, Figs. 1, 2; the excuse must be that the design offers certain points of interest which make one regret its mutilated state.

All that are preserved are the stem and part of the interior design, cm. 5·5 × 4·8, of a r.-f. kylix which was purchased at Orvieto and purports to have been found there. The clay is fine and well worked, the black varnish of the stem of a brilliant lustre. Of the exterior design there remains only a small section of the ring indicating the ground, and one long, slender foot.

The vase-painting published after a photograph in Pl. II. 1, and after a drawing in Fig. 1, has already been reproduced on p. 86 of my Vases in America; but it lost so much in reproduction that I considered it my duty to republish it as soon as possible in order to correct the unsatisfactory impression which the previous publication must have made: the editors of the Hellenic Journal have kindly offered me these pages for the purpose.

The painting forms the internal decoration of a fragmentary red-figured cup found at Cervetri and now in the possession of Mr. Edward Warren at Lewes. The stem and foot of the cup are lost, but the stem at any rate was of the normal type. The exterior was undecorated.

In 1898 there were discovered in the ruins of an ancient building (maybe a temple) near Novorossijsk several objects made of bronze (a candelabrum, the remnants of a tripod, the handle of a vessel, probably some consecrated plate), and together with them was found a woman's bust in bronze.

The style of the candelabrum reminds one closely of the candelabrum discovered in the vault of Mme. Zaitzeva in Kertch, and it dates consequently from the age of Augustus (see Rostovtzeff, Ancient Decorative Painting in the South of Russia, St. Petersburg, 1914, p. 207 f., Pl. LX.). The handle of a vessel, in all its details, is similar to handles of vessels found at Bori. The whole treasure found at Bori was published by E. M. Pridik (Materials for the Archaeology of Russia, No. 34), and it dates from about the beginning of the Christian era.

In the discussion of Greek dramatic origins, a curious passage of Apuleius has never, so far as I know, been mentioned.

In the second book of the Metamorphoses the hero Lucius describes a feast given at Hypata in Thessaly by his rich relative Byrrhena. After the feast Byrrhena informs him that an annual festival, coeval with the city, will be celebrated next day—a joyous ceremony, unique in the world, in honour of the god Laughter. She wishes that he could invent some humorous freak for the occasion. Lucius promises to do his best. Being very drunk, he then bids Byrrhena good-night, and departs with his slave for the house of Milo, his miserly old host. A gust blows out their torch, and they get home with difficulty, arm in arm. There they find three large and lusty persone violently battering the door. Lucius has been warned by his mistress, Milo's slave Fotis, against certain young Mohawks of the town—‘uesana factio nobilissimorum iuuenum’—who think nothing of murdering rich strangers. He at once draws his sword, and one by one stabs all three. Fotis, roused by the noise, lets him in and he quickly falls asleep.

The rulers of the Persian Empire, during whose reigns the Persian Imperial coinage was issued, were the following:—

Dareios I., s. of Hystaspes ... ... ... ... 521-486

Xerxes I., s. of Dareios I. ... ... ... ... 486-465

Artaxerxes I. Makrocheir, s. of Xerxes I. ... ... 465-425

Xerxes II., s. of Artaxerxes I. ... ... ... ... 425

Ochos = Dareios II. Nothos, s. of Artaxerxes I. ... 424-405

Arsakas = Artaxerxes II. Mnemon, s. of Dareios II. ... 405-359

Cyrus the Younger, s. of Dareios II. ... ... ... 401

Ochos = Artaxerxes III., s. of Artaxerxes II. ... ... 359-338

Arses, s. of Artaxerxes III. ... ... ... ... 338-337

Kodomannos = Dareios III., s. of Arsanes, s. of Artostes or Ostahes, s. of Dareios II. ... ... ... ... 337-330

The Persian Imperial coinage consisted of gold coins, generally known to the Greeks as Darics (Δαρϵικοὶ στατῆρϵς), with smaller denominations, and silver coins, generally known as sigloi (σίγλοι, σίκλοι, σίκλα, the same word as Hebrew shekel), which also had smaller denominations. The word Δαρϵικός was sometimes also used by the Greeks of the silver coins. The Persian name for the gold coins is not known; there can be little doubt that the word Δαρϵικός is ‘a pure Greek formation from the Greek form of the Persian name Darayavaush; just as “fanciful” is a pure English formation from the English form “fancy” of the Greek ϕαντασία.’

Since the first publication by Robert of the magnificent krater from Orvieto, which is one of the proudest possessions of the Louvre, its style has been brought in connexion with Mikon, more on account of the figures half disappearing behind the rocks, than on the rather problematic assumption that Mikon's Argonauts might have inspired the artist in the more extensive picture on the side of the vase opposite to the death of the Niobids. This last scene (Fig. 1) is perfectly clear, and would not be in need of any new commentary if Robert had not committed the error of taking the arrow, near the handle, as fallen (freccia caduta per terra), holding this to be a piece of thoughtlessness, rather uncommon with Attic ceramists, and if Hauser had not gone even further, blaming the painter for so absurdly making an unerring god shoot an arrow and lose it. Both of course are wrong, and it is the more surprising that he who understands what escaped Robert— namely that Apollo shooting and Artemis taking a new arrow suggest to our mind the presence, though unseen, behind the hills of the missing sons and daughters of Niobe—fails to understand that the painting is not a poor extract from a larger composition, but that it was precisely the perhaps somewhat extravagant intention of the artist to suggest more than he shows.