I suppose it may be thought that some apology is due, firstly for introducing in this paper what appear to be merely the scattered remains of a painted vase, and secondly because part at least of the fragments on Plate I. have been published more than once, and are already well known. I shall hope to show that both apologies are needless: for one reason, these fragments are quite sufficient to suggest to us probably all the beautiful picture that the painter had in mind; and for another reason, because the portions added since the original publication entirely alter the character of the scene.

It is much to be regretted that fragments of painted vases have not always received due attention at the hands of archaeologists. Among the records of travel in Greece of the early part of this century we frequently meet with descriptions of sites which were covered with fragments of painted pottery: but it was comparatively rare to find students like Sir C. Newton, or, as in the present case, Mr. James Millingen, who took the trouble to collect and preserve the fragments themselves. Recent excavations, such as those at Tiryns and Naukratis, and more recently still on the Akropolis at Athens, have taught us how much is to be learnt from a study of these apparently insignificant potsherds. Even if they do not always, as here, combine to show us a finished picture, they often prove invaluable documents of the keramic history of the sites on which they were found.

The vase which is the subject of the present paper is no new find. It has been for many years in the British Museum (Cat. No. 810), and was mentioned by Overbeck in his Heroische Bildwerke in 1851. It has not however hitherto been figured, and it may be well to take advantage of its publication in these pages to make a few observations on the general subject of vase-paintings which are connected with the myths of the Iliad.

The present vase is an amphora from Vulci, height nineteen inches. The form and decoration are given in the woodcut. On one side is a warrior standing to the left, clad in a chlamys, and armed with helmet, spear, and shield adorned with serpent. On the other side is a lady to the left, clad in Ionian chiton and overdress, her head enveloped in a kerchief; she raises her right hand; in her left hand is a baby boy, who turns and stretches his hands to the right. The main outlines of the figures are traced in black, but the folds of the Ionian chiton with light red; there are three incised circles on the warrior's shield. Under each figure runs a line of maeander pattern; an anthemion adorns the bottoms of both handles.

In a former paper in the Journal of Hellenic Studies I endeavoured to show that the primitive Hellenic unit of land measure was the γύης or plough-land, which was the portion of land lying between landmarks (οὖρα), being the amount which a pair of oxen (or mules) could plough in a day, the length of the furrow being a fixed quantity. Whilst I was able to point out some data for estimating the breadth of the piece, I was unable to throw any light on its length, or in other words on the length of the furrow.

The object of this paper is to inquire if we have the means of arriving at any solution of the question, based on fairly probable grounds. The scholia on the word πεντηκοντόγυον (cf. Ebeling, sub voc.) are as follows:

On the other hand the scholiast on Odyssey vii. 113 says:

Now in the first group of scholia it is evident that the explanations of γύης by πλέθρον, ζύγον, and ζεῦγος are all equivalent. The ζύγον and ζεῦγος mean a day's ploughing of a yoke of oxen (answering to Lat. iugum).

In a late number of the Journal of Hellenic Studies the present writer endeavoured to show, (1) that in the Homeric poems the gold talanton simply represented the value of the ox or cow, a relation which remained at Delos down into historical times, and (2) that the actual value of both units was a gold daric, or gold Attic stater (two drachms) of 130–135 grains Troy; in fact the standard on which all the gold coins, and a large proportion of the silver coins of Greek Proper were struck; and at the same time the basis of the standards of Asia Minor, Syria, and probably of Egypt. I then confined myself to the countries immediately bordering on the Aegean, and did not attempt to deal with the weight system of the Italian Peninsula. I propose in the present paper to examine the Roman system, and to seek for it, as I have tried for the others, a natural unit, by which I mean a metallic unit based on some older unit of barter.

Dr. Hultsch remarks (Metrologie, p. 151) that whilst the weight unit of the Roman pound is the most accurately known of all ancient standards, its origin on the other hand is the most obscure. The Roman libra weighed 327·45 grammes. Though it was adjusted at a later period to the Attic system, it plainly dated from a period long before Rome had come into contact with the culture of Athens.

The classical museums of the Baltic cities are among the least known in Europe, and the accounts of the objects they contain have hitherto been desultory or are not recent enough to be of sufficient value. The present paper is not intended as an exhaustive register of the classical antiquities of Copenhagen, Stockholm, and St. Petersburg, but only as a short notice of such among them as are of some archaeological importance, and about which nothing or not enough has as yet been said. Judgment on these is often precarious, because it is difficult to discover their ‘provenance’ or the circumstances of their discovery. Of the classical antiquities in the ‘Prindsen's Palast’ at Copenhagen a detailed account was given by Wieseler in the Göttingen Gelehrte Anzeigen of 1863 (pp. 1921—1952); but there is now much in the small museum which is not noticed in his account, and which therefore has probably been more recently acquired. To the archaic period belong certain terra-cottas from Santarin, found together with a few vases of the geometrical system of ornament; the latter have been published by Ross and noticed by Conze, but as far as I can discover the terra-cottas are still unpublished. Two of these are worth special attention: (1) a small slab showing a winged Gorgon in full flight, of which the execution well illustrates the development of the free figure from the relief. The body is worked on both sides, but the whole form shows the impress of the relief style in the same pose of the limbs as appears in the so-called Nike of Archermos, in the Nike of Olympia, and in the relief-figure found on the site of the Hyblean Megara. The form of all these suggests at once that the motive was originally designed for relief-work, perhaps for metal plates or terra-cotta slabs to be attached to a background.

Cities may be regarded in two lights. Firstly, they may be considered as collections of houses, with public buildings, market-places, and walls; as features of the natural landscape; as definite localities, with form, arrangement, and parts. Secondly, they may be regarded as bodies politic; as masses of inhabitants rather than groups of buildings; as personal rather than local. And it is obvious that by far the greatest interest attaches to them in the second aspect. In the first, however beautiful, they are but material, outward and visible; in the second they are living, spiritual, and immortal, with beliefs and customs, with heart and conscience. It is the people who make their city in its physical aspect, and it is only interesting as incorporating their history, and representing their character.

This is of course true always and everywhere. But no nation has been more fully alive to the truth than the Greeks. Among them the city was more homogeneous, more fully organized, more unified than among us, was more of a person and less of a place. If we further consider how strongly Greek art tended to avoid natural scenes of any complication, and to clothe all kinds of powers and abstractions in human form, we shall see how natural it is that the national painting and sculpture of the Hellenic race are scarcely ever occupied in bringing before us the external view of cities, but devote their energies to the portrayal of bodies politic in their human and moral aspects with the best resources at their disposal.

At the commencement of our cruise along the south coast of Asia Minor we first touched at Capo Krio and examined closely the tombs in the neighbourhood of Cnidos, which were constructed on rising ground about two miles to the east of the ancient town. Most of them were about 20 ft. square; some built entirely of polygonal masonry, others with the sides in polygonal masonry and the fronts in square-cut stones. Along this front ran a narrow line of square-cut stones on which in most cases traces of inscriptions appeared, but owing to the nature of the stone almost all the letters were defaced with the exception of the following:

…. ΤΑΣΣΑΣΕΡΜ. ΑΣ. …

In the upper chambers were many grave altars and memorial tablets; in two graves we found altars with snakes represented as coiled around them, and in another an altar with the ordinary bull's head and garland decoration, bearing the inscription ΟΔΑΜΟΣ (ἀνέθηκεν).

Proceeding along Capo Krio to the point where the land contracts into a narrow isthmus we found traces of other tombs which have lately been exposed to view by the washing away of the soil by a winter's flood. In these tombs have been found many small marble figures similar to those I found at Antiparos and described in this Journal (vol. v. p. 50). One represents a figure seated in a chair playing a harp similar to that in the Museum at Athens, which was found at Amorgos, another is of a female figure with a crescent on her head similar to one which I have seen, and which was discovered in the island of Tenos.

In the preceding pages Mr. Bent has given a brief account of his recent tour. The chief interest of it centres in the discovery of the sites of several Carian and Lycian cities, some of them hitherto unknown even by name. Mr. Bent has placed in my hands, for publication in this Journal, a number of impressions and copies of inscriptions from these sites and from other localities. Unfortunately they arrived in England just too late for them to be made ready for these pages. But the following are inserted by way of an instalment. The first two documents discover to us an unknown Lycian town. The third adds one more name to our list of Greek artists.

‘Wall-stone of a building inland from Lydae, about five miles.’ It is the next stone in the same course with the following. From Mr. Bent's impression.

Marble plinth from the Temple of Apollo at Anaphe. From an excellent impression of Mr. Theodore Bent. Present length of marble 20½ inches; height 5 inches.

I am not aware that this dedication has been previously published. It is inscribed in beautiful letters of the best time, and can hardly be later than the fifth century. The name of the artist is otherwise unknown. The surface is beautifully preserved, and the dots of interpunction are quite clear in line 2: in line 1 there were none. The characters in line 1 are slightly larger than in the second.

§ 45. War of Venice and Genoa.—The relations between Euboia and Attika continued to be peaceful. The Spanish lords of Athens had become less like a horde of robbers and more like a civilized community; they ceased to consort with Turks and infidels. Walter of Brienne indeed did not leave off his agitation against the Company, and he continued to importune Venice to form or join a league to restore him to his ducal seat. Venice however would not listen to him, and in 1344, when she bestowed on him the freedom of the city and allowed him to procure arms at Negroponte, she stipulated that such arms were not to be used against the Catalans. The Turks however continued their depredatory expeditions, and we learn that in 1341 Bartolommeo Ghisi, the Triarch, and the Duke of Naxos conjointly equipped a galley for the defence of the Archipelago and the coast of Euboia. It appears moreover that in 1343 Balzana Gozzadini, the widow of Pietro della Carceri, who acted as guardian for her son Giovanni, equipped another galley, and Negroponte itself was strengthened with new fortifications. These precautions seem to have protected the island efficiently for the next few years.

The progress of archaeological work in Greece will be most conveniently noted under three heads.

1. New arrangements made for the building of museums and the general arrangement and exhibition of antiquities already known.

2. Excavations on the Acropolis and other discoveries at Athens itself.

3. Excavations carried on in the remainder of Greece and Asia Minor by the Greek government, the Archaeological Society, and the Archaeological Institutes of Germany, France, America. The work of the British School in Cyprus will be matter for separate publication, and need not be noted here.

The arrangement of antiquities is put first to avoid subsequent repetition. It is to be understood throughout that unless the contrary is expressly stated all antiquities found in the Acropolis have gone to the Acropolis Museum, all those found elsewhere in Greece to the Central Museum.

On the Acropolis the second museum is nearly complete. It is intended to contain vases, terra-cottas, and minor antiquities generally, and all such as are likely to be of interest to the ‘professional’ archaeologist, architect, and artist only. To this museum the general public will not be admitted. The Greek government acting through the general-director, Mr. Kabbadias, is most liberal in allowing all possible facilities for study to foreign archaeologists, and it is good news that there will now be space and seclusion in which it will be possible for them to avail themselves of such liberality. The disposition of the more notable antiquities in the first museum is nearly complete. It is unnecessary to describe in detail a collection well known and perhaps, in the department of archaic art, the finest in the world, but it may be noted that at last the beautiful slabs of the Parthenon frieze and those of the Nike balustrade are set up to full advantage. A catalogue of the museum is promised, but not as yet published.