The following observations were made during a general study of Greek horsemanship, but, being somewhat controversial and turning upon points of textual criticism and the interpretation of technical terms, they may perhaps be of interest to scholars rather than to the public.

(1) iv 2.

‘It is not only to save the corn from being stolen that a safe stall is good, but because it becomes obvious whenever the horse is [not] carrying out his corn.’

This sentence evidently describes some clear symptom of disease, for Xenophon continues: ‘Should you observe this happening, you may know that the body, being overcharged with blood, requires attention, or is overtired and needs rest, or that barley-sickness (κριθίασις) or some other sickness is making its onset. Just as with men, so with horses, all diseases are easier to cure at the onset than when they have established themselves and been treated mistakenly.’

The nature of ‘barley-sickness’ (colic) is excellently explained in Delebecque's commentary, but that of the warning symptom is doubtful, and depends on the precise meaning to be given to ἐκκομίζῃ. The manuscripts insert a negative particle before it; this is deleted by modern editors on the evidence of Pollux i 209:

‘There is a disease of horses, barley-sickness and congestion of the blood through surfeit. And when they “carry out” their corn, then one must remove it and feed grass only, or some other light diet.’

Empedocles' Fragment 100 contains an account of ‘the way that all things breathe in and out’. It may conveniently be divided into three sections:

A. Lines 1–5, the apparatus of breathing.

B. Lines 6–8, the manner in which breathing takes place.

C. Lines 8–25, an illustration taken from the working of the klepsydra.

I shall discuss the fragment under thesethree headings.

A. The Apparatus of Breathing

These lines (1–5) are translated as follows by Diels-Kranz: ‘Also aber atmet alles ein und aus: Allen sind blutarme Fleischröhren über die Oberfläche des Körpers hin gespannt, und an ihren Mündungen ist mit vielen Ritzen durchweg durchbohrt der Haut äusserste Oberfläche, so dass zwar das Blut drinnen geborgen bleibt, der Luft aber freier Zutritt durch die Öffnungen gebahnt ist.’ Thus the picture which Diels gives us is of tubes running out to the skin all over the body, and at the ends of the tubes perforated flaps of skin which will allow the passage of air but not of blood. The tubes are, furthermore, only partly filled with blood.

This line of interpretation has been followed by most scholars since, and it appears to derive some reinforcement from Aristotle, who in his comment on the passage at de respiratione 7, p. 473, b 1 ff., says: ‘They have passages through to the outer air.’ The ‘outer air’ would appear to mean the outer air outside the body, and we might therefore be tempted to suppose that Aristotle meant to say that these tubes ended up at the surface of the skin.

The publication of the fourth volume on the excavations conducted at Troy by the University of Cincinnati in the years 1932–1938 enables us to review with more confidence the historical events which lie, no matter at how great a distance, behind the Iliad and to reconsider the Homeric epithets for Troy in the light of new knowledge. We may at the start agree with the writers that no other city in the Troad except Hisarlik has any reasonable claim to be the site of Troy, and it is now clear that Troy VI, which was gravely damaged by an earthquake c. 1275 B.C., was succeeded by Troy VIIa, which had a real continuity with VI and was largely a rebuilt version of it, until it perished itself from fire c. 1240 B.C. VIIa has thus a substantial claim to be the Homeric city, and the date of its destruction agrees with that given by Herodotus for the Trojan War as κατὰ ὀκτακόσια (ἔτεα) μάλιστα ἐς ἐμέ (ii 145.4). We may ask how relevant the Homeric epithets are to Troy as we now know it and when they may have been introduced into the oral tradition which Homer inherited and used in the eighth century. At the start we may say that, while all of them are at least adequate for a walled city on the site of Hisarlik, and some are much to the point, not all are equally individual, and we may classify them according to their use for cities in general and for Troy in particular. In doing this we must remember that in the Homeric poems cities need epithets as much as gods and heroes do, and that there is bound to be a certain overlap between one city and another in the epithets applied to it. Though we may postulate a pool of adjectives suitable for cities from which the poet draws those that meet his needs most adequately, there are some which are confined to Troy and others which are specially appropriate to it.

In writing on Plutarch as a literary artist there is a tendency to confuse Plutarch's personality, which appears from his writings as ingenuous and somewhat naïve, with his style, which has all the sophistication of the classical renaissance of which his writings form a part. Actually, extensive acquaintance with many aspects of literary craftsmanship is visible in his work. His careful avoidance of hiatus was noticed as long ago as 1841 by Benseler. More recently it has been discovered that Plutarch writes rhythmical prose, with a great preference for certain definite forms. He is thoroughly versed in the various schemata for the presentation of material. Boissonade termed his style a mosaic because it is so well adapted for dealing with the various themes occurring in the Lives; Plutarch has in fact perfect command over matter and form as a result of a thorough acquaintance with a rich literary tradition.

The metaphors and similes which appear in this Life seem on a first reading in ill accord with the sophistication of its general craftsmanship. They are stereotyped into the thought-content, and even the diction, traditional for the symbolism they express. Their infrequency and the elaboration of the metaphors in particular makes them stand out starkly. This conspicuousness and careful articulation is significant. The metaphors and similes are in fact strikingly put so that they emphasise the passages in which they occur, and recall one another vividly to mind. Analysis reveals that they are used in two ways: as points of reference and emphasis (they occur only at important junctures) and to indicate the unity of lengthy passages. Long and elaborate metaphors occur at 11.1, 35.1, and 46.4, marking respectively the Germanic war, the civil war, and Marius' fate and death. A metaphor and simile grouped together, at 23.1 and at 32.1, 3 respectively, tell of Catulus' reverse and the Social War; two similes commence the developments which are to lead to Marius' death at 45.1–2. Less striking metaphors anticipate the civil war (10.5) and the Marian massacre (43.4).

‘Daphnis & Chloe: A most sweet & pleasant Pastoral Romance for Young ladies by George Thornley, Gent. … 1657.’ The well-known title-page of the first English translation of Longos from the original is characteristic of the attitude which has always prevailed towards this work. If we turn to the present day we find that the latest translator into English writes in his introduction ‘Daphnis and Chloe was only meant to be “a source of pleasure for the human race”, and might have been described by a second-century Graham Greene as an “entertainment”’. The intervening three centuries provide some acknowledgments of Longos' skill in individual departments—the description of nature, for example, or the management of plot—but taking the work as a whole scarcely any reader seems to have regarded it as more than an amorous triviality with a country setting; enjoyable in its pastoral descriptions; enjoyable in its amorous passages (or shocking, according to the taste of the reader); essentially trivial.

It is my object to argue that this view, by taking account of only one side of the book, misrepresents it as a whole. Longos meant us to find in his work a serious import, as well as entertainment, and the way in which he realises this intention in all the details of the story makes of it a serious work of art.

There are in the British Museum two groups of Greek vases, from two burials, which may for convenience be called the Burgon and Blacas tombs, after their finders. The present article gives the evidence for their discovery and an account of the individual vases; for those which have already been published in the Catalogue of the Greek and Etruscan Vases in the British Museum and in the Corpus Vasorum, I confine myself to major additions to the bibliography and to supplementary comment, while the unpublished pieces receive fuller treatment.

Thomas Burgon (1787–1858), a Turkey merchant who lived in Smyrna till 1814 and returned to the Aegean on various occasions after that date, made good use of his opportunities for excavating and collecting antiquities; he was no dilettante but a knowledgeable and careful worker, and when his business failed in 1841 he and his collection found a refuge in the British Museum. His name has long been familiar to the student of Greek vases from the Burgon amphora, the earliest known Panathenaic amphora, which is conspicuous both for its own merits and for its importance for the chronology of black-figure vase-painting; very conveniently, the Burgon amphora came from the Burgon tomb, in which it was associated with six much smaller vases.

No one doubts that Perikles enjoyed exceptional moral authority. Whether or not this authority was reinforced by legal powers superior to those of his fellow-generals—that is to say, by occasional grants of extraordinary powers, or by election to a generalship differing by definition from other generalships—is disputable. It has been held on the following grounds that he did possess such powers:

• (i) In certain years Perikles and another member of his own tribe were generals together, one of the remaining nine tribes being unrepresented. To be elected must have been an honour, because it was election against competition from the whole community, not from one-tenth of the community; it follows that when there were two generals from the same tribe it was the more eminent of the two who was elected and it follows from that that Perikles was elected

• (ii) In Th. i 116. 1 and ii 13.1 Perikles is described as general

• (iii) Th. ii 21.3–22.2 describe actions of Perikles in terms which are hard to reconcile with the supposition that he was acting in concert with nine other generals each with the same authority as himself. This is notably true of 22.1

• (iv) Th. ii 65.4. After his temporary disgrace in 430,

There have been two works of major importance dealing with the characteristics of Greek maenadism, separated by seventy years of rapid advance in the study of comparative religion. The first, which appeared in 1872, is Rapp's detailed study ‘Die Mänade im griechischen Cultus, in der Kunst und Poesie’. This has remained valuable long after the contemporary theories of nature-symbolism have been abandoned, and the distinctions he drew between the ‘artificial’ maenads of poetry or art and the actual cult-practice of Dionysiac religion in historical Greece is still on the whole valid. The second work is E. R. Dodds' article ‘Maenadism in the Bacchae,’ published in 1940, which has supplemented, but not basically altered, Rapp's principles by showing that, although it may be doubted whether anything very much like the ecstatic possession depicted in the Bacchae took place in classical Greece, sufficiently strong parallels exist between the presentation of maenads on vases and in the Bacchae on the one hand, and historical and clinical descriptions of hysterical excitement on the other, to suggest that the maenad had been at some time more than an imaginary creature; and in fact Bacchic practices of some types, apparently traditional, can be proved to have occurred in Hellenistic times. Somehow, it seems, some practical knowledge of religious hysteria reached Euripides and the vase-painters of the late sixth century, either surviving from the past or brought in from other parts of the Greek world.

A group of epigrams extending in the sixth book of the Anthology from 210 to 226 and seemingly derived from the Garland of Meleager includes four on the subject of a Gallus, or emasculated attendant of Cybele, who is preserved from the unwelcome attentions of a lion. They are ascribed as follows: 217 τοῦ αὐτοῦ (= Simonides), 218 Alcaeus of Mitylene, 219 Antipater, 220 Dioscorides. A fifth epigram at 237, by Antistius, comes from the later Garland of Philip of Thessalonica and is inspired by the earlier poems. The alleged authors of the first three need only a word. The Alcaeus of 218 is evidently the Messenian and not the Lesbian; in a group from Meleager Antipater must be the Sidonian, not the Thessalonican; and whether with Reitzenstein and Geffcken we trace the ascription of 217 to Simonides to deliberate imposture, or with Wilamowitz to a scribe's careless repetition of the heading of the four preceding epigrams (where τοῦ αὐτοῦ meant ∑ιμωνίδον), it is patently ridiculous, for the style is plainly Hellenistic and Γάλλοι do not appear in earlier Greek. Dioscorides seems to have flourished towards the end of the third century B.C., Alcaeus was writing about 200 B.C., and Antipater perhaps halfa century later. ‘Simonides’ is naturally not datable. Reitzenstein said that his epigram was obviously (jeder empfindet) based on Dioscorides, Geffcken that it was Dioscorides's model; and as the epigrams are connected only by their common subject, we are free to believe either or neither. In any case the whole group of these four epigrams cannot be widely separate in date. They belong to the period in which the Phrygian orgiastic cult of Cybele, the repens religio of Liv. xxix 10.4, was spreading abroad. It was in 204 B.C. that Attalus allowed the stone representing her to be removed from Pessinus to Rome, and thirteen years later that her temple on the Palatine was dedicated and the ludi Megalenses were established.

In the years immediately following the discovery of the ‘Stele dei Fondatori’ at Cyrene (SEG ix 3) considerable work was done on it, especially on the text, though the condition of this is still not entirely satisfactory. Some attempt was also made to establish whether the ὅρκιον τῶν οἰκιστήρων, which is included in the fourth-century Cyrenaean inscription, may be taken for what it claims to be, namely a seventh-century decree of Thera arranging for the foundation of the colony at Cyrene. The two main works devoted to this were articles by Ferri and Ferrabino. Neither of these can be said to give a final or satisfactory picture, and in fact scholarly opinion has for the most part simply followed Wilamowitz's conclusion, given in his short note appended to the first publication, that the ὅρκιον was invented for this occasion and is comparable with the later κτίσις Μαγνησίας The most that they allow the ὅρκιον is to represent a fifth-century source for Theraean history, used both by Herodotos and the composer of this document. Meiggs is an exception in believing ‘the main substance of the document … to be original’.

To attempt to relate the fantasies of Old Comedy to reality is no doubt a hazardous business. But the burlesque must have been based on facts, and familiar facts at that, if it was to be effective; and it may enlarge our understanding of the Frogs, and heighten our appreciation of its humour, to inquire what relation the journey of Dionysos may have had to places which were known to Aristophanes' audience. The places alluded to in the course of the journey have been identified in various more or less conflicting ways since at least the time when the Arguments to the play were written. There has been little hesitation over accepting at any rate some of these identifications, for it would certainly have been funny to see Dionysos call on Herakles in, say, Thebes or Tiryns; proceed from there to the Acheron or the Styx; and finally meet the souls of the Initiates in the underworld, moving in an everlasting procession to a ghostly Eleusis. But the fun would surely have been much more pointed had it been more consistent and relevant to the everyday life of the Athenians themselves; and it is the purpose of this article to suggest that it did in fact possess this consistency and relevance—that Dionysos was actually represented as following a route perfectly familiar to the audience, visiting places well known to them and indeed even in view to them as they sat in the theatre. At the beginning of the play Dionysos is on his way to call on Herakles and ask him what route he followed when he went down to the underworld to fetch Kerberos. Dionysos quickly reaches the house of Herakles, and if we take the indications of the play literally at this point we may conclude that this house was not far from Athens. It soon becomes clear that this conclusion is right. Herakles shows by his intimate knowledge of affairs at Athens that he lives in or near the city, and it is easy to see where he lives. He is not the Herakles at Melite, from whom he is sharply distinguished (501); but since Xanthias, when impersonating him, claims to be thinking of the Herakleia in Diomeia (650 f.), he must be the Herakles honoured in that festival. The Herakleia in Diomeia were the principal festival of Herakles at Athens, and were held at Kynosarges, a place outside the walls and not far from the Diomeian gate. There was a Herakleion there, between the city wall and the llissos; and that is evidently the house of Herakles in the Frogs.

It is usually taken for granted that throughout the first part of the fifth century B.C. until her defeat by Athens in or about 457 Aigina was a member of the Peloponnesian League and was consistently hostile to Athens and to the formation and growth of the Confederacy of Delos. I believe that the evidence for this view is weak, and that Aigina was never a member of the Peloponnesian League but probably was a voluntary member of the Delian League from its formation.

About 494 King Kleomenes of Sparta invaded the Argolid and defeated the Argives at Sepeia. For this invasion he used some ships belonging to Aigina, which he had taken by force. This implies that some kind of fight must have taken place recently between Aigina and the Spartans, or their allies. How could the Spartans, who were a land and not a sea power, capture ships from the Aiginetans, who had one of the largest fleets in Greece at that time? Only with the help of an ally whose naval power was stronger than Sparta's. Obviously this ally must have been Corinth. Corinth was always a naval power, and at this period she was hostile to Aigina, and she was undoubtedly a member of the Peloponnesian League. So the forces of the Peloponnesian League fought and defeated Aigina shortly before they defeated Argos in the middle 490s. There were, of course, traditional connexions between Argos and Aigina. Argos had assisted Aigina in a war against Epidauros and Athens long before; while after her defeat at Sepeia Argos demanded a fine of 500 talents from Aigina as an atonement for her treachery, and she could not have made this demand if she had not had, or claimed to have, some kind of alliance with her. It is therefore not surprising that the Peloponnesians should attack both Argos and Aigina at the same period.

Although the papyrologist and the palaeographer have by now made the study of books in the ancient world a preserve almost peculiarly their own, it may yet be helpful to indicate literary evidence for the reading and writing habits of the educated classes in periods and places in which such modern studies have as yet been able to provide little or no material. A case in point is Antioch in the fourth century A.D., where there is considerable information embodied in the little appreciated works of Libanius, by which light is shed on the question of the writing and publication of books of various kinds. Except for some recent remarks upon copyists and book distribution in Antioch made by Paul Petit, this body of evidence has remained virtually untouched, despite its value. There are limitations, of course; Libanius has no use for any other culture than that of the Hellene and the rhetor. Syriac is mentioned only once in all his writings, and then in a contemptuous aside (Or. xlii 31); Latin, which he realised was increasingly in competition with his own educational system, he met with determined opposition (e.g. Or. i 214, 234; x 14), while he looked upon Christian literature with all the rancour of a confirmed pagan (e.g. Or. xxx 21; xviii 178).

To him, as a schoolmaster, and to his students in rhetoric, books were essential, but it is clear that some restrictions were imposed both on master and pupil by the availability of texts. The ordinary school text seems to have been obtainable, subject to the rules of supply and demand, but other works were correspondingly harder to obtain. One must not look to him for indications of purchase price. It may have been necessary for the parents of his pupils to purchase books—it certainly appears as a normal item in their budget—but he never descends to the mundane question of cost. He himself usually got his books by presentation rather than by purchase, and in any case he maintained his own copyist. His fellow rhetors, Acacius and Demetrius, did the same, and the lending of a text for the purpose of taking a copy was normal practice (e.g. Or. liv 68). There was, however, in addition to the demand which these private copyists satisfied in the establishments of professional sophists or the wealthy families, some market for books for which the professional copyist catered. That there was also some traffic in second-hand books is indicated by Libanius' account of the repeated attempts to burgle his library and of the theft and subsequent misadventures of his prized text of Thucydides. This turned up in the possession of a freshman who had purchased it on the open market (Or. i 148). The ordinary student found the purchase of books a necessity, and Libanius reproves those parents who keep their sons so short of money that they are unable to buy the texts they need (e.g. Ep. 428.3).

The literature on the Acropolis seems to me as untidy as the site itself. Every discovery that could, on the present evidence, be made about its history, every truth that could be pertinently stated has already appeared, I should imagine, in one or other of the books or articles devoted to it since the Greek excavations of the eighties. I am merely attempting the humble but, I think, necessary task of sifting out what seem to me the more interesting discoveries, the more significant conclusions. Before we form any more theories, we must try to discover what under present circumstances we can reasonably know.

In this paper I shall have space only to consider the history of the main buildings, one or perhaps two large temples and perhaps a large propylon, up to the Persian destruction of the archaic Acropolis in 480 and 479. The minor buildings of poros, with triglyphs barely 1 foot or 15 inches wide, and walls or columns consequently less than 15 feet high, will interest me only incidentally. I have found no clear evidence for the sites of any of these, not even Wiegand's ‘Building B’, considered by J. A. Bundgaard (pp. 55 ff.) to be the precursor of the north-west wing in the Periclean Propylaea. Moreover I can isolate the problem of the large buildings more conveniently and with a clearer conscience, because it has already been isolated by C. J. Herington in his stimulating book, Athena Parthenos and Athena Polias (Manchester, 1955). His thesis is an interesting one, that from far back in the archaic period two important temples stood on the Acropolis. The more southerly, dedicated to Athena the Warrior Maiden (Parthenos), occupied a site somewhere within the limits of the present Parthenon. The more northerly and the more important in state ritual was dedicated to Athena as the City Goddess, and occupied the site between the present Parthenon and Erechtheum, generally known as the ‘Doerpfeld Foundation’. Every visitor to Athens will know this series of old broken walls just south of the Caryatid Porch. Wiegand's is still, I think, the most workmanlike plan of it (Wiegand, figs. 72 and 117—my Fig. 1). Herington's thesis, then, enables me to arrange my questions as follows. How many successive temples occupied the Doerpfeld Foundation, what did they look like and how were they related to one another? And again, was there any important temple on the site of the present Parthenon before the decade 490–480, generally considered the date when a marble Parthenon was first attempted ? Because of its possible scale, I shall also have to consider the date and form of the archaic Propylon. If it were a large building, it could be the source of various large fragments hitherto assigned to temples; and Heberdey, the latest American books, and now Bundgaard all make it rather large, between 15 and 20 metres square. (For the actual dimensions they give, see below, pp. 146 ff.)

In the Archaeological Institute of the University of Tübingen there is a lekane that was acquired by the late Professor Watzinger too late for inclusion in his Griechische Vasen in Tübingen It has recently been published in an article ‘Zu einigen böotischen Vasen des sechsten Jahrhunderts’ in the Jahrbuch des römisch-germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz iv by Dr Konrad Schauenburg, who regards it as Boeotian. This lekane (plate IX 1–5; Schauenburg, pl. 8) and one in Munich which goes with it (plate X 1–3, XI 1, 2; CV iii pl. 146.3, 5–7) are similar in many respects to Boeotian lekanai, but I hope to show that they are in fact of the same fabric as the three great grave amphorae from Eretria. The most recent discussion of these amphorae and full bibliographies are to be found in Mr John Boardman's article ‘Pottery from Eretria’, BSA xlvii (1952) 30 ff., to which I shall frequently refer.

In shape the two vases are near to Boeotian lekanai of the orientalising class except that the flat ribbon handles are ‘continuous’, that is, they are formed from a continuous strip of clay which is applied to the rim externally in such a way as to leave a rather pinched loop in the centre and a centimetre or so of the ribbon projecting at each end. The ribbony strip keeps its identity all along and nowhere does it merge into the rim; see plate X 2, 3, XI 1. By contrast, in orientalising lekanai (the largest single Boeotian class) there is no connexion between the projections and the handle, from which they are separated by about a centimetre of normal rim. For a typical example see CV Heidelberg i pl. 27.5. Both the Tübingen and the Munich lekanai have on the rim a row of reversed zeds similar to those which decorate the lip of the Wedding amphora and the Herakles amphora. Immediately above the foot there is a broad black band edged at the top with a red line painted over the black. The base within the foot-ring is decorated with a large black spot inside a small circle. The interior has a tondo framed by a red ring superimposed on the edge of the surrounding black, and two red circles are painted over the black a short distance below the rim. The surface of the Munich lekane has been coloured a deep red, well preserved under the foot. The black glaze on both vases is thinly applied and streaky.

Several investigations have been devoted to the Athenian calendar and to the cycles of Meton and Kallippos. However, most authors have not clearly distinguished between true and mean lunar months, nor between astronomical calendars and the Athenian calendar. In investigating the Athenian calendar, many authors have made use of the regular successions of full and hollow months described by Geminos in his Isagoge, without first making sure that these months were in actual use at Athens. Discussion as to whether ‘the month’ began with the astronomical New Moon or with the visibility of the crescent might have been avoided if the authors had realised that the word ‘month’ has several meanings and that in every particular case the meaning has to be inferred from the context. Peasants or soldiers, far away from civilisation, would start their month with the visible crescent, astronomers would make it begin at the day of true or mean New Moon, and cities would adapt their festival calendar to the needs of the moment, intercalating or omitting days in such a way that the festivals can be held at the days prescribed by law or tradition. Of course, it may happen any time that a civil month coincides with the astronomical or with the observed lunar month, but in absence of definite evidence we never have the right to identify a civil month with an astronomical month.

In his article entitled ‘Solon and the Megarian Question’ (JHS lxxvii) Mr A. French has given a valuable exposition of Solon's economic reforms in their relation to the strategic necessities of Athenian overseas trade. This, however, leads him to an assessment of the statesman's policy which it is rather difficult to accept, conflicting as it does both with tradition and the general probabilities of the situation. Further, it is partly based on an interpretation of a passage in Plutarch which is, I think, mistaken and indeed impossible, although it has been adopted by most authorities. Mr French's argument may be summarised as follows:

(1) In the pre-Solonian era the sea route to South Attica and Phaleron, still more to Mounychia, was dominated by a hostile Megara owing to her control of Salamis; hence only the ports of East Attica were available for overseas trade in bulk cargoes. Early imports of grain and timber would have been from Thessaly, for which these ports were particularly convenient.

(2) However, increasing population and the decline in soil fertility made it desirable to import wheat in large quantities from the Black Sea; this would necessitate delivery at a port nearer the city and therefore control of Salamis to prevent Megarian interference on top of the other considerable hazards of the Black Sea voyage. It would also necessitate a high price which, though in accordance with the internal agricultural conditions, would diminish the advantages of the additional external supplies to the impoverished population of Attica. The Athenian government must either embark on a naval programme, and fight Megara for Salamis, or use less grain, which meant limiting the population.

In his Historical Commentary (ii 358) Professor Gomme rejected long-suggested emendments to the text, which, as it stands, dates the Plataean alliance with Athens to 519 B.C. Difficulties in accepting this date were long ago pointed out by Grote (iv 2 94 n.), adducing the text of Herodotos v 78. It must be admitted that, if the dating is correct, the episode is quite out of keeping with all else that we know of Peisistratan foreign policy, for during the thirty-six years of the régime Athens is not credited with any other clash with a mainland power. On the fall of the tyranny Athens is involved in war with Boeotia, Euboea, Aegina, and repeatedly with Sparta.

A possible reason for the caution of the tyrants and the belligerence of the régime which followed their expulsion may perhaps be found in the nature of the defence force of which both governments disposed. Before the tyranny the Attic army had evidently consisted of the landed gentry leading the retainers from their estates; the squires (knights and hoplites) formed, with the Pentakosiomedimnoi, the only properly armed force in the state, and Peisistratos was very careful to disarm it at the beginning of his régime; there is no suggestion that the confiscated arms were ever distributed to other sections of the citizen population, nor of any organisation employed by the tyrants to mobilise any citizen militia; indeed the organisation of the latter was one of the most urgent duties later undertaken by Kleisthenes.

The British Museum has long been in possession of a limestone stele from the Cypriot village of Salamniou, some 12 miles north-east of Kouklia (Old Paphos). It has been published—save in one particular—very adequately (B.M. Catalogue of Sculpture no. 430). It is excellently illustrated by the photograph here reproduced (for which I am indebted to the kindness of Professor Ashmole); and I can usefully comment only upon the inscription which fills somewhat chaotically the pediment above the naked archer. The Catalogue is content to reproduce for this inscription a text of Deecke (SGDI 41) over which we need waste no time whatsoever: as Deecke himself very soon saw (Bezz. Beitr. xi 317 f.), he had read it backwards, not in the characteristic direction of the fifth and fourth century Paphian signary, but from right to left.

At the end of book X of the Philippika Theopompos gave a digression on die Athenian demagogues. In book XXV he gave a digression on Athenian lies. This, which may have been a shorter digression, specified two lies and questioned the accepted account of the battle of Marathon; perhaps Theopompos discussed these problems alone in full and contented himself with a general reference to other lies. One lie was the oath allegedly taken by the Greeks before the battle of Plataea; today many people believe, with Theopompos, that this oath was not authentic. The other lie was the peace of Callias. Today some people believe, against Theopompos, that the peace was authentic. It is not always easy to discover their reasons. Some of them claim to produce nebulous allusions to the peace from the text of Thucydides. This search in Thucydides for references to the peace is not likely to carry conviction; it simply draws attention to the silence of Thucydides about the peace in his account of the Pentecontaetia. In fact the positive evidence for the peace is flimsy, but there is one good reason for believing in the peace; that is the fact that no major fighting is recorded between Persia and the Delian League after 450. Whether this outweighs the reasons against authenticity is a question for judgement.