Fig. 1 gives the picture on the front of an Attic red-figured bell-krater which was formerly in the Roman market: about 1831 the vase belonged to the dealer Rosi, at another time to the dealer Campanari: it has since disappeared. The reproduction is taken from the lithograph (made from a drawing in Gerhard's apparatus) which was published by C. von Paucker, with a commentary, in AZ 1852, pl. 42 and pp. 450–8.

Two small pieces are marked in the drawing as restored. There may be a little restoration besides this: the cheekpieces of the helmets, part of the shield, and one or two small particulars, were either retouched in the original, or copied carelessly by the modern artist. The faces, too, especially those of the two left-hand figures, cannot be quite as they were in the original.

The date is about 450 B.C. As to the artist, there is much that recalls the Eupolis Painter, and the vase is almost certainly his work (ARV. p. 670 no. 3). Compare the drapery, especially, with that on his name-piece, the bell-krater in Vienna (1772: A, WV. E pl. 12, 1, whence Robert Herm. p. 65 fig. 52: A, von Lücken pl. 113: ARV. pp. 668–9 no. 1).

Various traditions about the origin of painting have come down to us from antiquity. Pliny, to whom we owe the most detailed accounts, is surprised that the careful Greeks contradict themselves so much. Yet actual facts underlie these contradictions. The claim of the Egyptians to have invented painting six thousand years before the Greeks is rejected as idle boasting by Pliny, and we agree as far as the number six thousand goes; but we recognise to-day that the Egyptians were painting some thousands of years before the Greeks. Aristotle puts beside the Egyptians as inventor of painting in Greece, Euchir, a relation of Daedalus—that is, the generation of Theseus. To-day we can say that the excavations of the last fifty years in Crete have justified him beyond his wildest fancy by revealing frescoes of the second millennium B.C. If another tradition gives names like Cleanthes, Aridices, or Telephanes as the first painters, this means that the oldest artist-signatures known to Hellenistic scholars gave these names. But these are all primitive beginnings, non-Greek, pre-Greek, and-archaic.

There are in Scotland two ancient Athenian marble thrones which I had an opportunity of studying and photographing some years ago. Both have already been published, but not so fully as to make a fresh study of them superfluous. The more important is in the Earl of Elgin's collection at Broomhall, the other is at Biel, in East Lothian, and belongs to Colonel J. P. Nisbet Hamilton Grant.

An incomplete description of this marble was published in 1837 by von Stackelberg, he having seen it in Athens about 1810 on what he called ‘the site of the ancient Prytaneion’. His description was accompanied by neat engravings of two views of the throne and a view of each relief. After a lapse of time Michaelis produced further notes about it in his ‘Ancient Marbles in Great Britain’, Supplement I, in JHS V (1884) 146 ff. (with Plate XLVIII) under the title Marble throne with reliefs. He had little to say of the chair itself, much about the relief of the Tyrannicides together with a brief comment on the second relief and the inscription.

It will therefore be best to give a fresh description of the throne which can now be illustrated by new photographs taken while it was in the Edinburgh exhibition (Pl. VI, a; VII; VIII, c).

1. A Bronze statue of Athena, armed, stood in the Forum of Constantine at Constantinople. This fact is witnessed by three well-known passages:

(a) Arethas, bishop of Caesareia (ninth to tenth centuries), commenting on a passage of Aristeides, wrote: ‘I believe this (i.e., the Pheidian χαλκῆ Ἀθηνᾶ of Aristeides, Κατὰ τῶν Ἐξορχουμένων, p. 408) is the one set up in the Forum of Constantine, at the porch of the council-chamber, or senate, as they call it now; facing it, on the right-hand side of the porch as you go in, is Thetis, the ⟨mother⟩ of Achilles, with a crown of crabs. The common folk of to-day call the Athena “Earth” and Thetis “Sea”, being misled by the marine monsters on her head.’ (Cf. Kougeas in Laographia IV, 1913, 240, 241.)

(b) Cedrenus (eleventh to twelfth centuries), after a note on the senate on the north side of the Forum, continues: ‘On the open square of the Forum stand two statues; to the west, that of Athena of Lindus, wearing a helmet and the monstrous Gorgon's head and snakes entwined about her neck (for so the ancients used to represent her image); and to the east, Amphitrite, with crabs' claws on her temples, which was also brought from Rhodes.’ (Cedrenus, ed. Bonn., I, p. 565; cf. Kougeas, loc. cit. sup.)

The year 1947–1948 has been one of limited activity. The presence of rebel bands continues to restrict movement in parts of mainland Greece and the Peloponnese; and the financial policy of the Greek Government has allowed little progress to be made this year in reconstituting the museums. The ban which the Ministry of Education imposed on excavation in Greece has not been withdrawn, though there are signs of a more liberal interpretation of it. On the other hand, the foreign archaeological institutions in Greece have intensified their activities within the limits imposed by present conditions; they have been happily strengthened by the founding on 10th May 1948 of a Swedish Institute in Athens.

The Kerameikos Museum is now opened by appointment for students. The principal sculptures of the National Museum have been unpacked in preparation for replacement; an exhibition of early Greek sculptures and works of art was formally opened in the new year; it includes the Delphi charioteer and the new kouros from Anavysos. Additions to Mrs. Stathatou's private collection include a Late Geometric amphora and stamped gold head-band which were found in a grave in the Mesogaia, a small archaic bronze steer's head, and a grave relief of the later fifth century B.C.

Πολυπραγμοσύνη and its opposite ἀπραγμοσύνη are typical abstract nouns of the fifth century, indicating human qualities, comparable to words like δικαιοσύνη and σωφροσύνη. There is, however, one thing peculiar to our two words: they are opposite extremes, but there is nothing between them. There is no πραγμοσύνη. Simple action (πρᾶξις), we may assume, does not easily reveal a man's character. It is only when he acts ‘much’ or ‘not at all,’ that a conclusion can be drawn as to his own nature. The psychological aspect is paramount, more than in words like δικαιοσύνη or σωφροσύνη which also represent an idea. As so frequently happens in psychology, it is the contrast which illuminates either particular quality. We can perhaps go one step further and assume that conceptions like these are more likely than not to spring from a rational and conscious awareness of real phenomena, while for instance δικαιοσύνη, although it is the abstract noun belonging to δίκαιος, at the same time originates from the desire to give a name to the abstract idea which dominates the world of δίκη). There is no ‘idea,’ there are only psychological facts, in ‘busybodiness.’

This ugly and unwieldy English word makes it plain that—at least in English—the concrete rather than the abstract noun belongs to ordinary speech, the man rather than the quality. The ‘busybody’ is indeed a type which, though little loved, is deeply rooted in the English mind, and this is undoubtedly the legitimate translation of πολυπράγμων

The Teian inscription CIG 3064, published by Boeckh from copies by Pococke and Guérin, is followed in the Corpus by a long explanatory commentary and has since been the subject of much discussion and controversy. It consists of a list of proper names, to each of which is added the phrase τοῦ (or ἐκ τοῦ) --- πύργου and a family name. I give a representative extract:

It is agreed that of the extant accounts of the battle of Gaugamela, that of Arrian is by far the best, the only one, in fact, that permits of a coherent reconstruction of what took place. The best modern accounts derive mainly from Arrian, and it may perhaps be felt that modern criticism has resolved satisfactorily the two or three important obscurities in his story, and that everything is now plain. With this opinion I cannot agree. To me Arrian's story is not obscure, but, equally, it is not complete; and what he omits is of such importance that without it I cannot see clearly why Alexander, and not the Persians, won this battle. I am not suggesting that really the Persians did win it; but my aim is to supply that part of the picture which (in my view) Arrian has left blank, and without which the manner of Alexander's victory is still not fully explained.

In the following pages I present a brief survey of those works in the field of Greek epigraphy which have come to my notice, directly or through reviews or bibliographies, between September 1945 and the close of 1947, marking by an asterisk those which I have been unable personally to consult. Among them are some books and articles published previously, but omitted from my last bibliography because still unknown to me when that was compiled. Even now I fear that many inevitable gaps remain, for the libraries to which I have access are still far from possessing all the relevant books and periodicals issued during and since the War. To all authors who, by sending me offprints of their works, have greatly lightened my task I express my cordial gratitude.

Greek epigraphical studies have suffered severe losses in the period under review. The death, on 10th December 1944, of the eminent Director of the Inscriptiones Graecae, U. Wilcken, was followed, on 25th October 1947, by that of the veteran epigraphist and indefatigable worker F. Hiller von Gaertringen, who had celebrated his eightieth birthday on 3rd August 1944. Other serious losses are those of A. S. Arvanitopoulos, L. Bizard, P. Collart, F. Cumont, E. Groag, J. Hatzfeld, A. E. Kondoleon, G. Lafaye, N. Pappadakis, and P. Roussel. The report of the deaths of M. Feyel and M. Segre has unhappily been confirmed. Appreciations of the characters and achievements of J. Kirchner, P. Foucart, M. Holleaux, W. Otto, and T. Wiegand have appeared from the pens of F. Hiller von Gaertringen, P. Mazon, M. Roques, H. Bengtson, and C. Watzinger respectively. The astonishing volume and quality of the work recently published, despite almost insuperable obstacles, by A. Wilhelm, now in his eighty-fourth year, evokes the admiration and delight of his many pupils and friends.

In March, 1947, as Antiquities Officer of the British Military Administration, Dodecanese, I examined the spoil earth from a well dug a few years before in the valley of Vathy on Calymnus; a previous visit had shown that it contained prehistoric potsherds. The well had reached, at about nine metres down, the remains of a village of late neolithic and early Bronze Age date. No trace of the strata of occupation was found in situ, but the amount of pottery in the spoil heap compared with the size of the shaft did not indicate that those strata were thick. The neolithic wares included pieces of rather thin polished pottery, silvery-grey, greyishbrown or reddish in colour, seldom of a uniform tint. Such pottery is, in surface and colours, not unlike late neolithic from Knossos, but it is less thick. A piece of a large handle of round section and polished red surface, decorated with knobs at intervals along the convex edge, was found. This type of decoration on a similar handle is paralleled in Stratum I. at Lianokladhi. The Bronze Age pottery, mostly grey or black in colour, is more or less rough in texture. Very little similar to the black polished wares of Thermi I appeared, but a few examples of striated ware, and of incised decoration, were found. There was also part of a spoon covered with red wash decoration, and sherds ornamented with the addition of a ribbon of clay, pressed flat at intervals, and with imitation rivet-heads. Simply shaped legs from tripod or other vessels were found, and flat solid handles placed rising from the rim and shaped with two points or horns. Another find consisted of part of the rim of a large vessel with internal ledge handles and a row of holes pierced just below the rim. Handles included both ribbon and round (in section) varieties, one type of ribbon handle being similar to a characteristic Cypriote type of handle. Two flat bases are paralleled in Crete and Hissarlik. A plain black single conical spindle whorl is paralleled at Thermi.

This inscription on an Attic gravestone (Conze, Die altischen Grabreliefs II , 887, pl. 172) is so printed, with trivial differences, by Kaibel, after Kumanudis, and by Koehler, but their rival attempts to explain 1. 2 defy both grammar and sense and need not be discussed.

Pausanias, in a number of familiar passages, has given us the names of certain ancient monuments associated with Tantalus and Pelops, and visible in his own day on Mt. Sipylus; he speaks as a native of the district. In the problem of identifying these with the various monuments known today in the Smyrna-Magnesia region, there is still no agreement; opinion, after much discussion, has divided itself into two main camps, one of which finds them in the immediate vicinity of Magnesia (Manisa), while the other locates them in the hills north of Smyrna, near the old ‘Aeolic’ acropolis of that city.

Ostrakon, from Naucratis; in the Ashmolean Museum (G. 141. i ) , presented by D. G. Hogarth in 1903, and published by him in JHS XXV, 1905 p. 118 (whence Preisigke, Sammelb. I no. 222). Handwriting probably late 2nd or early 1st cent. B.C.; Mr. C. H. Roberts draws my attention to the similarity of P. Tebt. i 3 (early 1st cent. B.C.).