A detailed report in English and a brief mention in Latin record the rediscovery in 1883 of the ‘charter’ of Orcistus by W. M. Ramsay and J. R. S. Sterrett. Not till 1886 was a complete copy secured, but in 1883 at Alikel, besides ascertaining where the original lay hidden, they found and copied, each in his own notebook, two other documents of which only the dating has been published. In his report Ramsay thus refers to them: ‘we occupied ourselves … partly in copying a long inscription of 98 lines in length, half of which was more or less legible.’ This inscription, comprising (A) a deed of gift, (B) a decree, both dated in 237, is here edited from the copies of 1883; no others are likely to exist, for the pedestal bearing the original text ‘had been destroyed in search of treasure after we left.’

Sir William Ramsay has kindly lent me those two notebooks; three pages from his and one from Sterrett's are reproduced below; for permission to use them, as well as for invaluable information and advice, I am indeed grateful.

As long ago as 1893, Dieterich, in a famous article on the ‘initiation’-scene in Aristophanes' Clouds, pointed out that there are a great many echoes of ritual hidden in ordinary works of Greek literature, especially in comedy and tragedy. His hint was followed up in 1900 by F. Adami, whose paper remains a storehouse of such echoes, but who has by no means exhausted the subject. G. Thomson's article in a recent issue of this Journal collects a number of instances in the Oresteia of Aeschylus in which similar echoes can be heard. The purpose of the present contribution is partly to criticise the interpretation put by Thomson on certain of the references to mystic rites which Headlam and he have noted, and partly to attempt to carry the search a stage farther.

The point in Thomson's valuable paper on which most doubt will be raised in his readers' minds is his tendency to attribute to the Eleusinia all allusions to mysteries in the Oresteia. In his zeal for the exclusive glory of Eleusis, he assumes that its mysteries involved both rites and doctrines which the general consensus of scholars has denied to them. In one place he dismisses this general agreement by lumping modern authorities together as ‘archaeologists’ (p. 22, n. 13), a title which most of them, probably, would humbly deprecate. His procedure raises an important problem in method, and for this reason I may be excused for discussing some of his conclusions.

Rodin bought many antiques in his life, and these are now preserved in the Rodin Museum in Paris. They are not very well known, but they include a few fine pieces well worth seeing and studying. Some seventy ancient vases are on exhibition, and do not seem ever to have been published or described, apart from stray mentions in sale catalogues.

A few years ago I became interested in the collection, and noticed a very curious red-figured cup, which I shall describe.

Pl. I. Rodin Museum inv. Tc. 980 (formerly inv. 1943). Diameter 23·2 centimetres. The present height is 9·5 centimetres, but the foot is alien: it comes from a little-master cup. The handles belong: the ends of them are rounded, not squared as in late cups.

I: two satyrs. The left-hand one totters forward in a dancing movement, carrying a large wineskin on his back. He grasps the upper end with his left hand, just above his head, to prevent it sliding down. The right arm is lowered, with the fingers of the hand raised. His tail does not show, and his left leg is almost entirely hidden behind the krater on which his companion is seated; a bit of the calf appears to the left of the base. The second satyr, who wears a wreath of ivy, is sitting on the foot of a large calyx-krater which has been turned upside down; streaks on the uneven ground represent the remains of the wine: the feast is over.

During the latter part of the summer of 1936 I spent some six weeks in Cyprus, studying the Greek and Roman inscriptions of the island, with the intention ultimately of producing a small Corpus. The following article is the first of a series in which I hope to publish the more interesting portion of my results.

By kind permission of Sir Arthur Evans and of the British School at Athens, I am allowed to publish a marble relief found in 1903 at the Villa Ariadne, near Knossos (pl. III). Height ·69 m., width ·72 m., depth of relief ·05 m. It was discovered face downwards on a Roman drain, west of the tennis court. The drain carried a road, also of Roman date. The marble is so badly weathered that I cannot determine its origin. Both top corners missing and a break right across. The surface of Herakles is destroyed below the crack, except at the sides. Above the crack, the surface is worn. The boar's hind feet were not on the relief, its fore feet, ear, and snout are broken. Its head hangs sideways. Part of the lion skin in front of Herakles, and an object between it and the boar, probably the club, are also broken.

Herakles carries the boar on his left shoulder, on the folded lion skin. The mask and the mane hang in front, while folds appear before and behind Herakles and between his legs. His right hand grasps the boar's shoulder. His left hand does not appear, but it holds the club, the end of which shows below the boar's crest: so the hand is fairly low down, balancing the boar before dumping it on Eurystheus.

Acknowledgements are due to all those who have kindly supplied information and photographs: particularly to Dr. Riemann, of the German Archaeological Institute, who generously gave me a copy of his forthcoming report in Archaeologischer Anzeiger, and allowed me to make free use of it; to Professor G. Oikonomos, the Director of the Greek Archaeological Department; to Professors Shear and Morgan, and others of the American School; to M. Paul Lemerle, the Secretary-General of the French School; to Drs. Hampe and Kübler of the German Institute; and to Dr. Säflund of the Swedish excavations. They are in no way responsible for errors in this account.

Athens and Attica

In August 1937 the National Museum received an acquisition of the first importance. It had been known for some time that a marble kouros had been dug up at Anavysos in Attica by a gang of tomb-robbers in 1932, and smuggled out of the country.

Since 1856, when Schaefer declared that the text of Diodorus contains two parallel accounts of the opening of the Sacred War, the history of the years 357–352 B.C. has been the subject of controversy. At the present time two contentions have gained general acceptance: firstly, that Schaefer was correct in the divination of a doublet, and secondly, that the doublet having introduced a superfluous year of narrative, the two-year interval in Diodorus' chronology, between the seizure of Delphi by Philomelus and the declaration of the Sacred War by the Amphictyony, should be reduced to an interval of one year.

Within this modicum of agreement there has been ample room for dispute. The doublists, if I may so describe those who attribute a doublet to Diodorus, differ widely when they endeavour to set precise limits to their doublet: for instance, Schaefer, Kahrstedt, Cloche, and Beloch are at variance.

I am indebted to the Curator of the City Art Gallery, Manchester, for permission to publish the object illustrated on fig. i, which was acquired some years ago with a number of other Egyptian antiquities in the John Yates Bequest. It is of gold, the maximum dimensions being 4.0 × 3.6 cm. and the weight 3.43 grms. Three figures—Demeter, Persephone and Harpocrates—are represented, standing to front on an oblong base the front of which is filled with conventional scrolls of vine sprays with bunches of grapes set in a rectangular reel-border. Demeter wears a peplos with himation, the end of which is thrown over the 1. shoulder, and a corn wreath with two ears rising diagonally from the forehead; she holds a sceptre in 1.

It is to-day a known and undisputed fact that the Polis was not only the characteristic and historically important type of Greek State, but that as a religious and political community it was for centuries the foundation and the support of Greek culture. But so far a true ‘history of the Polis’ has not been written. A reason for this may be that the Polis stands as the abstract representative of an enormous number of concrete independent States widely differing in form and development and known to us through traditions widely differing in quality. We must try, and the attempt has already been made, to define the main lines of this historical phenomenon and its evolution, and before all else to obtain a clearer view of the beginning, climax, and end of this evolution in time and manner.

To do this it is not sufficient to study only the external historical facts. In like manner we cannot be content merely to observe, for instance, under the Empire of Alexander or in the Hellenistic State-world the political insignificance of the Polis, and hence to conclude its downfall; or in the perfection of political leading, and the splendour of Empire and culture, in Periclean Athens to see the perfection of the Polis.

Once again I attempt, not without some trepidation, the task of surveying briefly the work done during the past two years in the field of Greek epigraphy, following the same order and observing the same principles as in my previous bibliographies. I include some specially valuable reviews published in 1937 of books issued in 1935 or 1936; on the other hand, I omit certain works which, though bearing the date 1936, were not actually issued, or at least did not become accessible to me, until 1937 was well advanced. As before, I mark with an asterisk books or articles of which I have only a second-hand knowledge. Once more I express my heartiest thanks to all scholars who have facilitated my task by sending me copies of their works.

Death has taken a sadly heavy toll in the ranks of Greek epigraphists during the two years under review; among the more serious losses are those of A. von Premerstein, E. Preuner, G. Glotz, J. Geffcken, H. Collitz, E. Pridik, P. Orsi, R. Heberdey, A. B. West, T. Wiegand and P. Wolters. Happily, some of the veterans are left to us with undiminished vigour and ever accumulating experience, such as A. Wilhelm and F. Hiller von Gaertringen, whose impress will remain indelibly printed on epigraphical studies: both of these attained their doctoral jubilees in 1936, and the latter has added to the history of those studies an autobiographical chapter which is as valuable as it is modest.

The following is from my notebook of an Anatolian journey made in 1932. The text is from a copy on the spot subsequently checked by impression and photograph:—

In a fountain about 2 km. South of Salir (i.e. at the North end of L. Karalis), limestone stele broken above. In the field, two eagles, below them two female figures, below them a standing lion facing 1., with his r. forefoot on the head of an ox. Inscription on the moulded base. H. 1.29 m., W. 0.53–0.56, Th. 0.33–0.16, Letters 0.015–0.02.

Mr. H. W. Law's suggestion, made as a note in the last number of the Journal (p. 236), that the statue of the Hermes and Dionysos from the Heraeum was moved to that building from elsewhere in 146 B.C. is interesting. It would, of course, without doubt authenticate the statue as an original by Praxiteles, if its processes of reasoning could be considered as acceptable. Mr. Law, not doubting any more than I do, that the basis can be assigned to a second-century B.C. date, as Professor Dinsmoor has shown, assumes that therefore the statue must have been placed upon that basis at the time when that basis was made. That assumption obviously rules out the possibility of the statue having been carved in the second century A.D.

In the early years after its foundation in 1857, the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington pursued its policy of acquisition with a vigorously catholic taste. Since then its scope has become gradually limited to exclude work of the pre-Christian era, but in addition to the original purchases of Greek vases, the accession of large miscellaneous collections containing antiquities has contributed to what is now an excellent group of Greek and Roman objects. Important Greek vases were included in the big collection of modern European ceramics transferred in 1901 from the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, and in 1910 the late George Salting bequeathed his entire collection, other than paintings, to the Victoria and Albert Museum. His good taste in every other direction was sufficient guarantee that the Greek civilisations should be represented by work of more than average merit. Unfortunately, Salting kept few records concerning the provenance of his acquisitions, and so one of the finest Etruscan engraved mirrors in existence came to the Museum without a past history.