Papyri, ostraka, inscriptions and printed texts, some ancient, some mediaeval, and some subsequent to the Fall of Constantinople, bring to light almost daily a multitude of hitherto unknown words; words which complete or enrich our knowledge of the language, history, life, and civilisation of the Greeks throughout the ages. The discovery of a single word indeed may throw light upon much that was unknown or doubtful, and provide a key for a wide range of connected problems. Of the importance of collecting these words there can therefore be no doubt. Many scholars have from time to time set their hands to this work; sometimes, like S. Koumanoudis and Van Herwerden, by publishing supplementary dictionaries, sometimes by appending glossaries to their editions of texts. Stuart-Jones and Mackenzie's new edition of Liddell and Scott records new words, to the obvious advantage of those who consult it.

All members of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, about half a century ago, were acquainted with a row of little brown volumes which stood in the Bursar's study: they contained the records of his travels in most parts of Europe and the Near East, and anyone who thought of going abroad to those regions or was interested in their geography naturally betook himself to the Fellows' Buildings with any problems that presented themselves. Then the appropriate volume was brought out, and it was rarely that information was not forthcoming: wherefore the collection was known in College as the Book of Jasher.

Colonel Crowder was Bursar of Corpus from 1874 to 1892, and after his death in the latter year his journals were presented to the College by his nephew, Sir Matthew Dodsworth. They are now in the strong-room among the College MSS., and there is so much valuable information contained in them that it seems desirable to place their existence on, record and to give some idea of their scope and character.

It is a common-place of most scholars, followed enthusiastically by writers of text-books, that Greek sailors did not like the sea; they went from island to island, or crept along the coast. Rarely did they leave the sight of land, and then only the most venturesome; and they did not sail by night. I don't know that I have seen it stated in so many words, but it is implied that the close relations between Miletus and Sybaris were maintained by voyages across the Aegean to Corinth (e.g.: ‘Corinth becomes the centre of exchange with Italy: it pays better to break cargo at the isthmus than to sail round the stormy coasts of the Peloponnese’), thence (but in Milesian or foreign ships?) through the gulf, up the north-west coast to Corcyra, hurriedly and anxiously across to Otranto, then, following every curve of the coast, past Tarentum and Metapontum, to their goal. If goods must go further, as so many did to Etruria, they took another isthmus-route overland to Laus or Scidrus, thence along the coast again, even as far as Massalia and Emporiae.

The masterpiece of Oriental craftsmanship reproduced in Plates I—III is said by General L. P. di Cesnola to have been found in April 1875, in a rich but partially despoiled chamber-tomb at Amathus in Cyprus. Cesnola's account of the discovery exaggerates the depth at which chamber-tombs are found in Cyprus, but his plan corresponds fairly well with that of a large tomb (still accessible in 1894, and probably to-day) in the low ground north of the acropolis of Amathus. The silver bowl, already broken, and other objects, are said to have been found in a ‘copper cauldron,’ as if discarded by an earlier tomb-robber.

The ‘Amathus Bowl’ and a bronze shield-boss (rondache) said to have been found with it were published by G. Colonna-Ceccaldi in 1876 and republished in 1882 in his collected papers. The copper-plate illustration is signed S. Dardel, and was printed by Ch. Chardon ainé in Paris. If the ‘patère et rondache’ were brought separately to Paris, this may account for their alienation from the main Cesnola Collection. Dardel's engraving does not include the long ends of the rim, and is inaccurate in several details, as appears from the reproduction in fig. 1. It was reproduced on a smaller scale in Helbig, Homerisches Epos, 1884, Plate I, and repeatedly elsewhere.

That cremation is unknown in the Mycenaean world, even in its latest phases, and inhumation equally foreign to the Homeric poems is a curious, if familiar, fact, and at once raises the question of the length of the interval which separates the fall of Mycenae from the appearance of cremation in the Aegean area. To fix an absolute date for either event is impossible; but the increasing number of carefully excavated sub-Mycenaean and proto-Geometric tombs makes it possible to note certain features in the rise, spread and, in certain regions, the dominance of the practice, and slightly to narrow the chronological limits.

At Mycenae cremation does not appear at all, not even among those depositions in chamber tombs which were accompanied by pottery of the ‘Granary’ class and therefore belong to the latest period of the city or may even be slightly later than its fall. Similarly, two of its ordinary concomitants are lacking, the arched fibula and iron as a useful metal.

The student of Greek religion has no more difficult problem to face than that of the Prometheus Vinctus. In previous writings I had always evaded it, because I had not found any solution and I hoped that there might be one. Failing to find anything satisfactory myself or in the writings of others, I have spoken of it in the title of this paper as a paradox rather than a problem. And I am only now setting down my thoughts on it in outline, because I do not find that the religious difficulties of that play are appreciated in their full gravity either by the commentators or by the writers on Greek religion.

The play is unique among (a) the dramas of the Attic stage, (b) the literature of Greece, (c) the religious literature of the world. The truth of the first two statements can be proved by a rapid glance through the existing and recorded literature of Greece, especially through the products of the Attic drama.

Whenever our store of Greek sculpture is enriched by a new example of major importance, the new-comer naturally arouses great interest. The question immediately arises whether it conforms with what is already known of the Greek sculpture of that period or whether it reveals new features. In either case it becomes the object of keen discussion, for we are almost as eager to test the soundness of the edifice we have tentatively set up as to enlarge it.

The newly-acquired archaic marble statue in New York (Pls. IV, V) is such an important new-comer. Under the circumstances I have gladly accepted the invitation of the Editorial Committee of this Journal to present a short note on the statue pending its more detailed publication in Metropolitan Museum Studies and Brunn-Bruckmann-Arndt, Denkmäler.

The significance of the New York statue lies in the fact that it is the best preserved and so the most representative example of the earliest ‘Apollo’ figures—or kouroi as we now preferably call them—of Greece. That is, it stands at the beginning of the long line of development which began about 600 B.C. and culminated about a century and a half later in the Apollo of Olympia. Its only important contemporaries are the famous colossal figures from Sounion, one extensively restored, the other a mere torso, and the Dipylon statue, of which only the head and one hand have survived. The preservation of the New York statue, on the other hand, is astonishingly good.

Sir Charles Fellows writes on p. 503 of Travels and Researches:— ‘On the plain at the foot of the elevation upon which the city Xanthos was placed, we disinterred the remains of a mausoleum. In this room, which had vaults beneath, stood four sarcophagi, raised upon pedestals. … I have collected the fragments of each sarcophagus.’ The four sarcophagi are in the British Museum and are described in Vol. II of the Catalogue of Sculpture, nos. 957–960. As far as I am aware, there is no other reference to any of them in archaeological literature. Their obscurity in the Museum (no. 957 in the Mausoleum Room Annexe, the other three in the Sepulchral Basement), and also their association in the Catalogue with older, Greek sculptures have combined to withdraw attention from them. It can be readily understood that amid masterpieces of the archaic and classical periods these sadly fragmentary remains of late art failed to attract the eye. To-day, when sarcophagi are recognised as material of fundamental importance for the artistic and cultural history of the provinces of the Roman Empire, it seems appropriate to reconsider these fragments; for their provenience is certain and identical, and they present some new features to our study.

In the following pages I offer a brief survey of books and articles published in 1931 and 1932 which relate solely, or mainly, to Greek inscriptions. Their importance and their number have rendered the undertaking peculiarly difficult and have necessitated, if not the exclusion, at least the most rigorous compression of the paragraphs dealing with the Minoan and other pre-Hellenic scripts. To those scholars who have facilitated my task by sending me off-prints of their works I tender my heartiest thanks.

Death has in these years robbed epigraphical studies of a number of their most eminent representatives, among them H. Dessau, F. Durrbach, a leading authority on Delian inscriptions, C. Fredrich, editor of IG. xii. 8, M. Holleaux, outstanding in the Hellenistic field, O. Marucchi, an expert in Christian epigraphy, J. H. Mordtmann, Salomon and Théodore Reinach, and U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, for many years the director of the colossal enterprise of the Inscriptiones Graecae.

In the Sculpture Gallery of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, is exhibited an inscribed tombstone, bearing the following description: “Tombstone of Demetrios from Smyrna. Late Hellenistic or early Imperial period. Smoke-discoloured marble. Presented by J. W. Burgon, 1858.” As this has remained, to the best of my knowledge, unpublished, I sought the permission of the Keeper of the Museum, Mr. E. Thurlow Leeds, to publish it: I am grateful to him for his ready acquiescence. While I was engaged in studying the inscription and a squeeze of it actually lay on my table, I received from Freiherr F. Hiller von Gaertringen a letter asking whether I could trace the inscription referred to in a slip, now in the possession of the Prussian Academy, bearing, in the handwriting of August Boeckh, a copy of the text together with the following note: “Auf einem Grabstein von Athen, im Besitz des Herrn Burgon. Über die Inschrift ein Basrelief. Eine sitzende männliche Figur, deren Oberteil abgebrochen ist, in dem Sessel eine kleine, wunderlich gestaltete männliche Figur. Vor den Sitzenden zwei weibliche Figuren. Die Inschrift: [here follows a copy of the text]. Forchhammer versichert diese letzte Inschrift genau gelesen zu haben. Von Forchhammer durch [K.O.] Müller in England copirt.” Upon learning that the stone is now in the Ashmolean Collection, Freiherr von Hiller, with characteristic generosity, waived in my favour his claim to publish the inscription. He has also kindly read this article in manuscript.

Ptolemy I, son of Lagos and Arsinoe, is usually supposed to have belonged, through his mother, to a cadet branch of the Argead house and to have been a third cousin of Alexander. But a fragment of Euphantus, so far unexplained, leads up to the conclusion that his mother was not of the blood royal and that he had no connexion with the royal house at all. Hellenistic literature was full of fictitious relationships, which often found their way into history as facts; and we seem to have here another case of the same sort.

Euphantus is contemporary evidence for the period during which Ptolemy I was king. He was a pupil of Eubulides and the first philosophic teacher of Antigonus Gonatas; supposing he went to him when Antigonus was thirteen, as Aristotle did to Alexander, he was a known man in 307 or 306, while Ptolemy took the crown in 305. As he wrote a treatise on Kingship for Antigonus he was alive in or after 276, after Ptolemy's death; he wrote a history of his own time, and died of old age.

The American excavations in the Athenian Agora were resumed in February 1933, and continued till the middle of July. An account of the work up to May 1 has been published in AJA. 1933, 305 ff. The work is being carried on in four sectors (see AJA. pl. 35)

The wells and cisterns cleared during the latter part of the summer of 1932 are described by Homer Thompson in AJA. 1933, 289 ff. These provide clear evidence of the existence of houses where all traces of walls and foundations have disappeared, notably along the north foot of the Areopagus and north-east of the Theseum, and their contents shew that the inhabitation of this area goes back at least to the early sixth century B.C. In some cases (wells closed in the late sixth and early fifth centuries) the pottery found in the wells seems to indicate the proximity of potters' workshops or warehouses, and pots have been found which had contained miltos. This is further proved for the fourth century by the presence of misfired vase-fragments and lamps. Several pieces of archaic pottery found in these wells are illustrated in the article mentioned above— notably a large one-piece amphora of the earliest class, decorated with a massive sphinx (loc. cit. fig. 3), and from the same shaft an exquisite plastic vase (loc. cit. fig. 5, here Pl XVI)—Ionian, or Ionising, work of about 540 B.C., and without question one of the finest of all existing plastic vases.

The name of the vase-painter Apollodoros was discovered by Hartwig, who combined the incomplete inscriptions on two works so close in style that they must be by a single hand: the cup-fragment in the collection of the Marquess of Northampton at Castle Ashby (Pl. VI, 1) gives … odorosegraphsen, the fragmentary cup in the Louvre Apollod… The Castle Ashby fragment has been taken to represent actual fighting; but comparison with a fragment in the Villa Giulia suggests another interpretation. The Villa Giulia fragment shows, inside (Pl. VI, 3), the lower right quarter of a warrior moving to right, the shield on the left arm, the spear carried in the right hand. The device on the shield was the face of a satyr in full relief: what remains is the long beard. The shield-rim is inscribed [καλ]ϵναι. An apron hangs from the rim—a piece of felt or leather folded in two and fastened at the fold to the shield. On the outside of the cup (Pl VI, 2) we find the lower parts of two warriors moving quickly yet cautiously to the right: chiton, greaves, shield, spear carried low. To the right of the leader came the handle. On the other's shield-rim […να]1. Now I take the Castle Ashby fragment to have come from just such a scene. What we see there is head and shoulders of a young warrior moving to right, bending; helmet, chiton, wrap, spear carried, shield charged with a satyr's face in high relief; on the right, crest-tip and spear-butt of a second warrior moving in the same direction.

A small glazed earthenware portrait-head of a man, found accidentally on the site of the Middlesex Hospital, has been acquired by the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, as a gift from Mr. C. E. Grunspan. It is 32 millimetres (1 3/16 inches) in height; and is made of buff clay, covered all over with a vitreous glaze which varies in colour from brownish-green to bright blue. The neck is broken off from the nape to the base of the chin. The back of the head is cut off obliquely, but evenly, as though for attachment to a flat background; the oblique cut gives the face a quarter turn to the left. The head is hollowed out behind, and even this cavity is blue-glazed.

The man represented has a fleshy jowl, rather projecting lips, prominent eyes, and a somewhat retreating forehead, over which the straight hair is combed forward in a roll, held in position by a plain rounded diadem.