The vase now published is a Nolan amphora (height, 14¼ inches). It was acquired by the Ashmolean Museum from Castellani, and is No. 275 in the published catalogue of Ashmolean vases. As however it is unfortunately not engraved in that catalogue, I give here a sketch by Mr. F. Anderson of the two sides.

On one side is Eos, clad in chiton, winged, running r. with outstretched arms: on the other side is Tithonus standing l., bald but for a thin line of hairs, and leaning on staff. Under the figures is a line of maeander pattern. An Ε is scratched beneath the foot.

The date of the vase is about the middle of the fifth century, or a little later. Its main interest lies in its subject, the love of Eos and Tithonus being almost unrepresented in ancient art. Eos appears frequently on vases pursuing or carrying off young men: her pursuit of Cephalus is an ordinary motive in art: but the artists avoid Tithonus, either because he is unfamiliar to them, or perhaps with the usual Greek dislike for the incongruous and undignified.

The chief interest of the excavations that have taken place in 1892 is associated, directly or indirectly, with Delphi. The French School, under M. Homolle's direction, has now actually begun systematic work upon the site, which will probably continue for many years, and which is certain to yield results of the highest importance. Indirectly, also, the charm of Delphi has led to discoveries of the most valuable kind during the past season. The American School had, owing to the indefatigable exertions of Dr. Waldstein, raised a large sum of money with a view to the excavation of the site; and when the French School succeeded after all in establishing its claim to Delphi, the Americans turned their energies and their resources into another channel; their excavations at the Heraeum near Argos have realized the expectations that so promising a site could not fail to raise. One head, in particular, is a most valuable addition to the known monuments of the very finest period of Greek sculpture, whatever may be the ultimate decision of experts as to its exact position in the history of art.

I will, as before, begin my description of the year's excavation with Athens and Attica, and then go on to speak of what has been done both by the Government Department of Antiquities, the Greek Archaeological Society, and the Foreign Schools, in various parts of Greece. Finally, I will describe the progress made in the arrangement, cleaning, and cataloguing of antiquities in the Museums of Athens.

In 1886 the excavations conducted by the Greek Archaeological Society on the Acropolis at Athens laid bare the foundations of a large ancient temple immediately to the south of the Erechtheum. It was at once recognized that this temple must have been the one burnt by the Persians when they sacked Athens in 480 B.C. This conclusion has been generally accepted and there is no ground for questioning it. But Dr. Dörpfeld, who superintended the excavations and to whom we are indebted for a detailed plan and description of the existing remains, has propounded a theory that the temple was rebuilt by the Athenians shortly after the Persian war, and that it continued to exist as late certainly as the second century of our era and probably much later. If Dr. Dörpfeld had based this theory on the nature of the existing architectural remains, his judgment might well have been regarded as final, since no man living is better qualified than he to pronounce an opinion on all questions relating to Greek architecture. Certainly I for one would not have presumed to differ from him. But although Dr. Dörpfeld believes that the temple was twice burnt and twice rebuilt by the Athenians, he does not maintain that a single stone of the existing remains is of later date than the Persian sack. His theory of the restoration of the temple rests almost wholly on considerations of historical probability and on literary and epigraphical evidence. It is therefore one which every scholar is free to examine and estimate for himself.

As the re-arrangement of the sculptures at the British Museum has now reached the Mausoleum Room, the questions as to the restoration of that famous building are naturally brought to the front, and it is to be hoped that the occasion will arouse fresh interest in it in the minds of English friends of art and antiquity.

I do not propose in the present paper to do more than call attention to one point, the composition of the chariot-group which is sometimes supposed to have crowned the edifice. Larger and more general questions I leave. The restorations of Fergusson, Pullan and Petersen, which have been repeated by subsequent writers, all professedly follow the statements of Pliny, and hold the building to have consisted of a pteron standing on a lofty base, and supporting a pyramid on which the chariot-group stood. These writers all gave the Mausoleum the height fixed by Pliny of 140 feet: but recently Dr. Trendelenberg has called this view in question, maintaining that the full height was only 75 feet, and that the high base is a modern fancy. The question would be worthy of a more careful discussion than it has yet received. Both the older and the newer view are by no means free from difficulty: but I do not propose in this place to say more on the matter.

A remarkable Mykênæan gold-find brought to light some years since in the island of Ægina after finding its way into the London market has secured a permanent resting-place in the British Museum. In the interests of archæological science it must be a matter for rejoicing that our national collection should have received so important an accession in a department of ancient metal-work hitherto almost wholly unrepresented in any museum outside Athens. Opinions may well differ as to the propriety of removing from the soil on which they are found and to which they naturally belong the greater monuments of Classical Antiquity. But in the case of small objects, made themselves for commerce, and free from the same local ties, the considerations, which weigh under other circumstances, lose their validity, while on the other hand the benefits to be derived by students from their partial dispersion are not to be gainsaid. This, it is true, is not the standpoint of the Greek, or, for that matter, of the Turkish Government. But the theory that the present occupants of Greece or the Ottoman possessors of the Eastern Empire are the sole legitimate heirs even of such minor monuments of ancient culture is not likely to commend itself to the outside world.

Pausanias (viii. 29), on the way between Gortys and Megalopolis, after mentioning the ruins of Brenthe, from which the stream Brentheatis ran into the Alpheius, goes on to say: ‘After crossing the Alpheius the country is that called Trapezuntian and there are ruins of the city of Trapezus. Then, turning down on the left to the Alpheius from Trapezus, close to the river is a place called Bathos, where they perform a rite to the Great Goddesses every third year. And there is a spring there called Olympias, which does not flow every other year, and near the spring fire comes up. Now the Arcadians say that the reputed battle of the Giants and Gods took place here and not in Thracian Pallene. … And from the place called Bathos the city called Basilis is distant about ten stades; its founder was Kypselos, who gave his daughter in marriage to Kresphontes, the son of Aristomachos. But in my time Basilis was in ruins, and among them were remains of a shrine of Eleusinian Demeter. Going on from there you will again cross the Alpheius….' Two other mentions are made of Basilis by ancient authors. Stephanus of Byzantium (s. v.) refers to this account of Pausanias, and Nikander (ap. Athen. xii. 8), without giving any name, tells us that in a town founded by Kypselos on the Alpheius certain Parrhasii set up a shrine and altar to Demeter Eleusinia, and that there was a competition of beauty for women there, first won by Erodice, the wife of Kypselos, in which the competitors were called chrysophoroi.

To any student of early Greek bronze ornament the works of Dr. Furtwaengler on the Olympian bronzes must be well known, and as he has dealt at length with the development of patterns on bronzes, and as every day fresh evidence seems to be coming up which serves to confirm his views, there is no necessity for me here to do anything more than recount shortly the general characteristics and nature of this class of bronzes from the Acropolis. These, like those of Olympia, may be divided into two main classes according as they belong to the geometric or the oriental style; while a cross distinction may also be drawn between engraved or stamped ornament and relief. Originally however these two distinctions seem to have been one and the same, the geometric corresponding to the engraved or stamped technique, and the oriental generally to the relief; but later we find each of these forms of ornament translated into the other technique. The original distinction however is due to two main causes, the quality of the bronze used in the two factories and the nature of the objects principally produced in them. The bronze of geometric ornament is much harder and more brittle than that of oriental, which is soft but very tough: to work geometric bronze into repoussé relief would be almost impossible, while the finer quality of the oriental is peculiarly suitable to such a technique. Thus it is often possible simply from the feel of a bronze fragment to decide which factory it came from.

The immediate object of this paper is to publish three fragments of sculpture, which I had the good fortune to find on the Acropolis at Athens during the present year, and which may be, I think, claimed as belonging to the reliefs which ran round the bastion of Athena Nike. At the same time I should like to draw attention to, and discuss, certain corrections which have recently been made in some fragments of the same reliefs in the Acropolis Museum, and to make a few suggestions with regard to others.

The most important of the new fragments, which is reproduced in the plate, was found among a small heap of débris upon the top of the bastion fifteen yards to the east of the temple of Athena Nike. The marble is Pentelic; the sculptured surface measures roughly ·40 m. by ·28 m., the back of the slab is finished and the thickness from the back to the ground from which the relief springs is ·23 m., while the height of the relief is ·12 m. These measurements, which correspond exactly to the measurements of other slabs that we possess of the balustrade, the high relief, and delicate style of the torso all show that this fragment undoubtedly belongs to the balustrade. Further evidence is present in the small hole drilled in the top for the in-insertion of the bronze screen, which ran along the top of the slabs. The fragment consists of the left shoulder and breast, and portions of the left arm and wing of a Nike.

The vase-fragments from the Acropolis of Athens, here published for the first time (Plates XI. and XII.), with the exception of one which appeared long ago in Benndorf's Griechische und Sicilische Vasenbilder (Pl. XI. 6), are of the greatest interest, not merely as problems of restoration difficult enough to satisfy the most ardent enthusiast for Greek ceramography, but because of the important position they occupy among the vase-finds of the Acropolis, which have already revolutionized vase chronology, and to the careful study of which we may look for much more light in the future. They are perhaps the most important fragments in the black-figured style which have hitherto remained unpublished, and as the majority of these older fragments are either hasty and careless productions or less interesting in subject than the less numerous but more uniformly important remains of red-figured works, it is the more desirable that they should become known to the learned world. Several of the fragments were drawn for the Hellenic Society some years ago, and when I had opportunity of access to the Museum of the Acropolis two years back, it was my pleasant duty to search for other portions of the original vases, with a view to a more complete publication. I was successful in bringing together several that are now published, the drawings being executed by the practised hand of M. Gilliéron, who had been commissioned with the earlier work.

Some six months ago Mr. A. D. van Assendelft de Coningh presented the Leiden library with a set of seven waxen tablets, forming a small book. They were acquired at Palmyra in 1881 by his brother, Mr. H. van Assendelft de Coningh, officer in the Royal Dutch Navy. Mr. H. van Assendelft de Coningh died soon after his return to his country; we know, however, that the tablets were found at Palmyra from a fragment of a letter which he wrote some days before his death. It runs as follows: ‘During my brief visit to Palmyra I acquired these wooden tablets.’ The tablets came into the possession of Mr. A. D. van Assendelft de Coningb and were put aside with other souvenirs of his brother's travels. They happened to be shown to me and I easily saw that they contained Greek writing. The tablets were then presented to the Leiden library, the principal librarian of which, Dr. W. N. du Rieu, gave them the name of Tabulae ceratae graecae Assendelftianae, in honour of the generous giver and his deceased brother.

The seven tablets are covered with writing on both sides, except the first one, of which the recto-side is plain wood. Of the others the wooden surface is sunk to a slight depth, leaving a raised frame at the edges; they are of beech-wood, like most waxen tablets preserved in the British Museum. The wood is coated with wax of a very dark colour, probably due to pitch being added to the wax in order to prevent melting and to make the writing clearly visible. They measure 14·5 by 12 cm. (5·7 by 4·7 inches).

The terracotta antefix here published possesses some interest in itself, but more perhaps from the place and circumstances in which it was found. It is one of those examples of architectural decoration which date from an early time when the roofs and cornices of buildings were made of wood cased with terracotta. In such circumstances the vertical joints of the roof-tiles had to be protected against rain by covering-tiles, imbrices, which it was usual to make semi-cylindrical in shape. At the lower extremities these imbrices, presented a disagreeable aspect which called for decoration, and this decoration very frequently took the form of a palmette or a female face in relief which was repeated from the same mould and placed in a continuous series along the top of the cornice of the building. Till within recent years very little was known of this sort of archaic decoration, as may be seen on reference to the valuable memoir of Dörpfeld and others on the subject published in 1881. And though a good many objects of this class have been discovered since then they have not yet been collected and published.

The Thersilion, or assembly hall, built in close connexion with the theatre at Megalopolis, has now been completely cleared. Several plans of the building, including a conjectural restoration, have already appeared in the special Supplement to the Journal of Hellenic Studies, published this year. The latter was based on the small tentative diggings already made. The plan (Pl. XXI.) in this number shows the whole area, and includes many additions and corrections from the earlier plan.

The chief point of interest has been the arrangement of the columns behind the centre. It was evident at once, as soon as the clearing began, that the plan did not in all respects bear out Mr. Schultz's conjectural restoration (Supplementary paper, J.H.S., p. 19). This was due partly to the fact that in the previous small diggings on the site two columns in the outer row next the south wall had been missed, partly because it was found on remeasurement that the centre was incorrectly marked.

For the sake of convenience we propose to call the outer row of columns a, the second row b, and so on to the central scheme of four columns which we call e. The columns are further indicated by numbers; thus the southwest column in row a is a 1, the next following the line is a 2, up to a 17: the south-west column of b is b 1, and so with the other rows.

Mr. Benson in the preceding paper has given an account of the new facts which have been brought to light by the complete clearing of the Thersilion. With regard to these points of fact there can be no question and in the deductions to be drawn from them we are for the most part agreed. It remains to be seen whether from the remains before us we can reconstruct a building of any known Greek design, in other words, whether we can discover what was the builder's plan and how he developed it. At first sight a large columned hall of this nature appears to be un-Greek in character: the only parallel we can produce for it is the late Hall of the Mysteries at Eleusis, which however only resembles it in the badest characteristics. Where we do find halls which resemble this building however is in the East. The Hall of the hundred columns at Persepolis (Perrot et Chipiez, v. p. 723) presents several striking analogies: like the Thersilion it is a large square building on one side flanked by a portico while we have two doors on each of the other three. Now, as is clearly shown by the character of the building, the Thersilion belongs, in its original plan, to the earliest period after the foundation of Megalopolis by Epameinondas. That is sufficiently proved by the cramps and the. use of tufa rather than conglomerate for the foundation bases. Moreover just at this period we have a direct communication between Persia and Megalopolis in the person of Antiochus, who visited Susa as a delegate from the Arcadian league in 367 B.C. (Xen. Hell. vii. 1, 33–38 J.H.S. Supp. Pap. I. p. 128), and it is quite possible, whether he was the dedicator of the theatre thrones or not, that he brought back the idea of such a columned hall from the East. But it can have been only the general idea that was so brought to Megalopolis: the arrangement of the columns in the Thersilion is entirely different from that of its prototypes in the East, while the inward slope of the floor is also a new element. Thus, though this building may have owed its origin and shape to the East, its plan, as I will endeavour to show, is taken from a common Greek type, and is in fact simply that of a Greek theatre.

A singularly small contribution has been made by Aetolia to the vast and steadily growing mass of our epigraphical treasures. This seems to be due to two reasons,—a real dearth of inscriptions traceable in part to the character of the Aetolians themselves, and, secondly, the comparative neglect that Aetolia has suffered at the hands of travellers and archaeologists. The inscriptions given here are the results of a detailed exploration extending over part of each of the two years 1892 and 1893.

A large proportion, and those the most interesting of the inscriptions found, come from Naupaktos, or its immediate neighbourhood. This valuable maritime station was, as is well known, put by Athens into the possession of the exiled Messenians and with the downfall of her Empire it passed into the hands of the Achaean allies of Sparta: they seem to have kept it in spite of all the efforts of the Aetolians and it was not until 338 B.C. that its natural owners finally regained it by the gift of Philip of Macedon. From that time onwards Naupaktos played an important part in the history of the League. Pausanias visited the town and among its antiquities he mentions the ruins of a temple of Asklepios of some reputation. The site of this temple has been identified from the inscriptions cut in the face of a rock forming the back of a terrace near the springs called Kephalóvrysis, a few minutes' walk to the east of the town. The few fragments which are all that can now be deciphered of the numerous inscriptions which once covered the rock are given by R. Weil in his paper ‘Das Asklepieion von Naupaktos,’ Mitth. des deutsch. Inst. vol. iv. p. 22.

The following is the principal part of a letter published in the Athenaeum of August 5th last, explaining my change of view with regard to the scenic arrangements of the theatre at Megalopolis:—

‘In order to [explain my change of view] I must recall as briefly as possible the main point at issue between Mr. Gardner and Prof. Dörpfeld.

‘Before the theatre at Megalopolis stood a large building—the “Thersilion”—whose portico served as the background or frons scenae, in front of which the actors in the theatre played. The original level immediately in front of this portico—i.e. the level at which the actors originally stood—was 3 ft. 3 in. above the original level of the orchestra of the present theatre; but the level immediately before the portico was afterwards lowered, to precisely this extent, by the addition of three steps to its stylobate. So far all parties are agreed. Then arises the question on which the whole controversy turns—To what period, relatively to the “Thersilion,” is the theatre to be assigned? Is it contemporary with the portico in its original form? or is it contemporary with the lower steps of the portico? Mr. Gardner holds the former view, and thence draws the inevitable conclusion that there was either a terrace or a platform, some 3 ft.