If the Hymns of Homer are, as probably they are, comparatively little regarded as a rule even by those who take a general interest in Greek literature and its history, this is certainly not for want of artistic merit, and still less for want of historic importance. However widely students have differed, or may differ, in their conclusions about this enigmatic collection, it is an undoubted fact, and worth insisting upon when every day a wider and more popular audience is invited to form a judgment on matters of criticism, that any theory of ‘Homer’, to be entertainable, must make its account with the Hymns not less than with the more celebrated epics. For the sake of this larger bearing, if not for the sake of the poem itself, the reader may be disposed to consider and weigh the following reflexions upon Homer's Hymn to Apollo.

The restoration of lost works of art in accordance with the descriptions of ancient authors and the monuments which serve to illustrate them presents problems which can never fail to be attractive to archaeologists. Nor has there been any lack of such attempts at reconstruction. The descriptions which we owe to Pausanias of the chryselephantine statues of Phidias, the paintings of Polygnotos, the chest of Kypselos, and the throne at Amyclae, have formed the text of such works, which reflect with considerable accuracy the standard of archaeological knowledge prevailing at the time to which they belong, and the quantity and quality of monumental evidence available. A glance at the Wiener Vorlegeblätter for 1888, Plate XII., where the successive restorations attempted of the Iliupersis of Polygnotos are reproduced side by side, will illustrate this; and even since that year a further step in advance has been taken by Robert's publication of his admirable restorations of both the great frescoes of Polygnotos, which may be held to represent the nearest approximation to the style of that painter which the discoveries and investigations of the last few years have enabled us to make.

Among the many discoveries made by the Greek Archaeological Society at Mycenae in 1886 there is one which, for the student of primitive religion, possesses a quite exceptional interest—I refer to the strange fresco here reproduced (Fig. 1). It was recovered at the excavation of a chamber belonging to the oldest period. The fresco itself was found on a wall somewhat to the south of this chamber, but evidently connected with the same group of buildings. M. Tsountas, the able director of the operations, describes it as It may be well to quote further his own account of the find. bearing on their shoulders a pole, which they grasp with their right hands—the left in each case not being shown.

The lecythus which is the subject of the present paper, and which is represented, after a drawing by M. Gilliéron, on Pl. IX., was bought by me at Chalcis in December 1893, and is now in the British School at Athens. It is said to come from Eretria, and this statement is doubtless true. Eretria is well known to be a mine of graves of all periods, especially the finest; and many excavations there, both authorized and unauthorized, have enriched the museum of Athens, and, by clandestine export, those of many foreign capitals also. Most conspicuous among the treasures recovered have been the lecythi with paintings upon a white ground. Our lecythus belongs to an uncommon class; a similar, but not identical variety is familiar to readers of the Hellenic Journal from the three examples published last year by Miss Sellers. Of the style and technique of the vase I shall speak later; at present we need only notice that the figures are in black or rather a rich dark brown varnish, laid on over a white ground, and that the style of the drawing, which, especially in the profiled outlines of the faces, is much finer than in the lecythi published by Miss Sellers, seems to belong to the beginning of the fifth century—a date which we shall, I think, find consistent with the results derived from more technical evidence.

The vase-fragments represented on Plates II.–IV. are with one exception here published for the first time and all belong to red-figured works. For the permission to publish them I am deeply indebted to M. Kavvadias, and I wish also to acknowledge help kindly given me by Dr. Wolters and Mr. Cecil Smith. Three of the works are in the early severe style, one shows the developed severe work and two belong to the advanced fine period. They are distributed on the plates merely with regard to convenience of publication. Nothing is more noticeable to any one glancing over the mass of vase-fragments from the Acropolis than the fact that while the preponderance of black-figured over red-figured works is very great (Dr. Graef puts the proportion at more than three to one), the vast majority of the former are poor in design and carelessly executed but the latter are nearly all careful and good. This seems to show—for the proportion can hardly be due to accident—that the older style continued in favour, probably because it was cheap, long after the introduction of a new method, and that the new school only produced works at the highest level of their ability, and by so doing ultimately commanded the market both at home and abroad. It is not till the second period of red-figured work that careless and hasty productions are turned out. Inferior artists seem to have contented themselves with imitations of successful masters: thus for example one seems to note imitations of Duris in museums.

The Greek head of which four different views are given on Plate V. 1, 2, and in Figs. 1 and 2 comes originally from the Borghese Palace whence it was acquired previous to the great sale. It is now the property of Mr. Humphry Ward, to whom I owe very sincere thanks for permission to publish it in this Journal. When the head came into Mr. Ward's hands it was tilted upwards at a very unpleasing angle and restored with a nose totally out of keeping with the style and proportions of the face: disfigurements which perhaps account for its neglect by the many archaeologists who must have seen it in its old Roman home. Even in that condition however, a close examination of the treatment of the hair and the eyes showed this acquisition of Mr. Ward's to be nothing less than a Greek original of the first half of the fifth century. In effect, when Mr. Hamo Thornycroft had mounted the head at a proper angle and replaced the old plaster nose by one more in keeping with the general character of the face, the full beauty of the head soon became apparent. Thus restored, the head was exhibited during the spring and summer of 1893 at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. I saw it there immediately on my return from Rome and was not only confirmed in my belief that the work was an original but I was also struck with its likeness to the ‘Aphrodite’ on the central slab of the now famous throne in the Museo Boncompagni-Ludovisi, and was thus led to connect it with that monument and a whole series of kindred works.

The contents of the famous ‘Grotta of Isis’ discovered on the Polle-drara estates at Vulci in 1839 have been generally known to archaeologists ever since the publication in 1844 of Micali's Monumenti Inediti, where a selection of them is given on Pll. iv.—viii., pp. 37—71. The quality however of the drawings there given is very far from answering the present requirements of study: and an adequate publication of these important remains has long been badly wanted. In the course of last year Professor Victor Horsley had a series of elaborate drawings made of some of the principal objects in the tomb, as a present to Professor Montelius. As the latter did not intend to publish the drawings in their elaborate form, Professor Horsley most kindly arranged with Mr. Murray that some of the more important should be presented to the Hellenic Society; it is thus owing to him that the Society is enabled to put this valuable series of drawings within the reach of scholars.

The excavations of the French School at Delphi are now in full activity. They have been looked forward to for years with the keenest interest, but hitherto there has been nothing to record but negotiations and preparations. Now that the work has actually begun, it has proved that even the most sanguine anticipations were not unfounded. The find in inscriptions and in sculpture is of extraordinary richness and interest, and will form an epoch in the history of archaeological discovery no less important than those marked by the excavations of Olympia and of the Athenian Acropolis. In comparison with Delphi, other discoveries must seem of inferior importance. But much valuable work has been done during the season, especially by the various foreign Schools in Athens.

In Athens itself, the excavations in the neighbourhood of the Pnyx and the Areopagus, begun by Professor Dörpfeld last season, have been continued. It will be remembered from last year's report that the chief object of these excavations was to solve some disputed questions of Athenian topography, especially the position of the spring Enneacrounos. A primitive system of waterworks was discovered in the hill of the Pnyx above the modern road; and these had been superseded later by an aqueduct and cistern, which there seemed to be good reason for attributing to the sixth century. There were also some traces of a building for the distribution of the water. Thus considerable probability was gained for the theory of Professor Dörpfeld, that the Enneacrounos was in this part of the town, although at the same time there was no evidence certain enough to convince those who were committed to a contrary view.

In the elaborate description which Pausanias gives of the throne of the Olympian Zeus, few parts have given rise to so much discussion and so much difference of opinion as the paintings by Panaenus, the brother of Phidias. It has been disputed both where they were placed, and how they were arranged.

It is the aim of the present paper to propose a new composition for this series of paintings, and, by doing so, to justify an old and recently somewhat discredited view as to the position in which they were placed. The cuts which are added serve to illustrate this new suggestion and to make clearer its advantages over those which have been previously made. The restoration of one side (p. 240), which has been very kindly drawn by a friend, must not, of course, be taken as an attempt to reproduce exactly the designs of Panaenus. But, since the groups or the figures that compose them are derived from fifth century works of Greek art, they may well give us a notion of the conditions, as to space and balance of figures, that determine the whole composition; and these conditions may be applied with some confidence, when we remember how closely even the greatest artists of this period often adhered to the accepted scheme for any group or subject.

My attention has been called by Professor R. B. Richardson to an occurrence of the word which we overlooked when we published our report on the excavations at Megalopolis, believing that we had come across a word not known before. On a tile at Sparta, published in the Athenian Mittheilungen ii. p. 441, and previously, but without the word in question, in the Bull. d. Inst. 1873, p. 191, is impressed the following inscription

In two recent numbers of the Classical Review two most interesting notes have appeared, the first by Dr. Verrall under the same title as that of the present paper, and the second a notice of the second volume of Rohde's Psyche by Miss Harrison. Dr. Rohde in his work and both Dr. Verrall and Miss Harrison in these notes are led to the conclusion, if they do not assume the fact as an axiom, that the worship of Dionysus is not an indigenous cult in Greece but came in from Thrace and the north. It is a fact which at first sight appears incontestable: the mythology of nearly every state in Greece has the tale of the incoming of the god from abroad. Thebes and Athens, Argos and Orchomenos, Corinth and Brasiae—all have their own stories of his advent. The very name Dionysus has a foreign, probably a Phrygian, derivation. Thus it is no wonder that modern mythologists almost without exception have adopted the view of the ancients themselves that the worship is one imported into Greece.

But, though it is evident that much of the later cult is undoubtedly not indigenous, there does yet seem to be a groundwork of a real old folk religion at the bottom of all these Phrygian and Thracian mysteries of later times. It would seem to be an almost unscientific method, if I may use the term without offence, on the strength of certain similarities in customs and cults between the deities of two different countries, to conclude that therefore the two are identical.

The terracotta relief, of which an illustration is given below, is one of the series of fragments with reproductions of the Parthenon frieze which have of late years attracted considerable attention.

The present fragment was bought by me in Rome, in February 1894, of a small antiquity-dealer in the Via Tor di Nona. The vendor vowed that it had been found in the bed of the Tiber, in the course of the works in connexion with the Ponte S. Angelo, but no doubt his statement merely indicates that the bed of the Tiber is for the moment the fashionable provenience. The terracotta is 10¼ inches high, and it is obvious that it contains a part of the design of the slab at the west end of the north side of the Parthenon frieze. The original marble is in the British Museum.

Hitherto, three similar fragments have been identified, viz.: (1) Priest and boy with peplos, at Copenhagen; (2) Upper part of Athene, in the Louvre, (3) Lower part of Athene and figure of Hephaestos in the Museo Kircheriano at Rome. All the fragments are published by Dr. Waldstein in his Essays on the Art of Pheidias.

The two Greek reliefs which are published together on Pl. XI. are recent acquisitions of the British Museum, and considerably strengthen its collections in a branch of ancient art in which it had previously been rather weak.

The earliest of the two reliefs is that of Glykylla (Fig. 1). It was brought to this country by a sailor trading to the Levant, and was by him offered to the British Museum, in 1893. It was said to have been found at Thebes, but this is doubtful. In style, at any rate, it is clear that it must be classed with the Attic relief's.

The material is Pentelic marble, with an untouched surface of golden colour. Height 3 ft. 1 in., width 1 foot 10½ ins. The relief is nearly perfect, only the upper part of Glykylla's face and the left arm of her attendant being injured.

In this charming sculpture we have one of the many forms of the theme of the jewel-casket. The seated lady, matronly and richly draped, is trying or putting on a bracelet about her left wrist, while her left hand is negligently raised. An attendant stands at her feet, holding open the lid of the casket, from which the ornament has just been taken, and watches the putting on. The bracelet is a massive one, with a spirally twisted design.