My address this year deals with much the same subject as the Presidential Address of 1944, but from a slightly different and, I fear, less practical point of view. Dr. Pickard Cambridge knows the schools, the universities and the whole educational system far better than I do, and was able to make practical suggestions of real value. I am falling back upon the more general and preliminary question why we should pursue Greek studies at all, and indeed why this Society should not peacefully cease upon the midnight with as little pain as may be convenient. The worst of it is that I know that I am prejudiced; and probably almost everybody in the room shares my prejudices. My appeal is really being made to-day to those who do not need it. I am an old man, and therefore probably attached to the old system. I am speaking on behalf of my own studies, and can hardly help feeling that ‘there is nothing like leather.’ To take a broader and more political line, I belong to the old peaceful world, which could afford to be cultured and liberal and to support a class whose interests were in the pursuit of the higher values, and who, while they lived for the most part industriously and modestly, were not in any feverish anxiety about salaries and wages. That cultivated middle class has been exterminated in many parts of Europe and weakened everywhere, everywhere with disastrous consequences. Even in this country a Minister of the Crown has told us that our day is over; a new and more powerful ‘governing class’ is in the saddle. We do not know how much patience it will have with pursuits that are not economically justified.

In this paper I propose to concentrate on some few features in the style of Aeschylus. A clear and very readable account of his style in general has already been given by Prof. Stanford in the book published recently, but in that he deals lightly with the things with which I propose to deal now, the variations of style between the plays and the reasons of them.

But before we come to them, a word about the reasons for the character of his style in general. That, as all readers know, is full of ‘grandiloquence,’ or as the Greeks called it, ὄγκος, of various kinds, mouth-filling words and bold mixed metaphors, and so on. Prof. Stanford suggests incidentally that this may be due to convention, but that is hardly likely. There is little ὄγκος in the very scanty fragments of his predecessors in Tragedy, and it is probable that Aeschylus elevated the style, as, according to tradition, he elevated the staging of the plays.

The purpose of this paper is to enquire into Plato's attitude towards a group of related problems which at the present time have assumed an unusual importance. By ‘the irrational’ I mean that surd element in human experience, both in our experience of ourselves and in our experience of the world about us, which has exercised so powerful—and as some of us think, so perilous—a fascination on the philosophers, artists, and men of letters of our own day.

That contemporary problems and interests should determine the questions which we address to the great thinkers of the past is entirely natural and proper. But he who uses this approach needs to be alive to its dangers. Such contemporary interests have very frequently determined not only the questions which scholars have asked, but also the answers which they have put into the mouths of the defenceless dead. Too often we unconsciously identify a past thinker with ourselyes, and distort his thoughts to make him the mouthpiece of our own preconceptions; or else, unconsciously identifying him with our opponents, we belabour him with gusto, serene in the assured knowledge that he cannot hit back.

Such attention as the battle of Sybota has received has resulted rather in criticism of Thucydides than in clarification of the battle; yet, as the greatest naval battle between Greek and Greek before the Peloponnesian War, it is of some interest to the naval historian. My attempt to reconstruct the battle is based on the belief that Thucydides' account is accurate, though cursory in some respects, and contains enough topographical clues for my purpose. In interpreting these clues I have drawn upon the results of travels in Epirus, which I hope to publish elsewhere; the relevant data are adduced here in brief. The paper falls into two parts, a topographical introduction and the study of Thucydides' narrative.

The South Channel of Corfu is contained between the almost parallel coasts of Corfu and Epirus. The Corfu coast between Cape Lefkimo and Cape Bianco is low-lying with sandy beach and shallow water inshore; but south of St. Theodoro Point sunken rocks make approach dangerous, especially off Cape Bianco, where the Bianco Shoal stretches both south and east into the Channel. Thus in modern times the only area suitable for beaching is between Cape Lefkimo and St. Theodoro Point. There is no evidence of any general change since antiquity in the coastline or sea-level; and as this coast is sheltered from heavy seas the extent of the Bianco Shoal and the sunken rocks is likely to have been more or less constant. The stretch of coast between Cape Lefkimo and St. Theodoro Point is alluvial and may therefore have encroached slightly on the sea since antiquity. The Cape Leukimme of Thucydides should be identified with Cape Lefkimo; apart from the persistence of the ancient name, it alone affords the beaching facilities required for a naval base.

The showcases of the antique-dealers in Odos Pandrosou are full of little lekythoi which were painted for the tombs of humble men of the people, and which to-day are destined for modest purchasers or for the Inspectors of the Archaeological Section of the Ministry of Education, while for more important purchasers there are hidden away somewhere else works of much greater value. It is seldom that we are stopped by the art or the subject of one of these lekythoi.

In 1943 when I was making an inventory of the stock of one antique-dealer—that which was on show—I picked out one lekythos which the owner gladly presented to the National Museum (Plate IVa, Figs, 1 and 2). From the funeral pyre the surface of the vase has taken a brown-grey colour, and the many joins show that it had been thrown to be broken and burnt with the dead body.

A curious male figure wrapped in a himation up to the top of the head, so that only the -eye and the upper part of the head remain free, walks rapidly to the left, raising one leg vigorously. He lifts his himation with his hand to help him move. High boots cover his legs to a point just below the knee. The hanging wreath does not appear to be related to the interpretation of the picture, but is taken from the commonplaces of funeral lekythoi, especially white ones.

The purpose of this article is to present an account of the manner in which the changing styles of Greek Hellenism are reflected in later Etruscan reliefs. I have selected among the Etruscan urns and sarcophagi those reliefs which show in their style the closest reflection of Greek models; they are usually reliefs of superior quality, and can serve as fixed points around which to group other Etruscan reliefs. This method has one important advantage: it overcomes the difficulty created by the regional isolationism of later Etruscan schools. As is well known, Etruscan sculptors were apt to repeat the same composition in a great number of reliefs. An enterprising artist would create a new composition, usually by refashioning a Greek model. His colleagues in the same workshop, or at least in the same city, would copy him; and the process of re-copying might go on for several generations, resulting in ever cruder reproductions of the same design. Thus Greek compositions, long abandoned in their native land, could survive in Tuscany for a considerable length of time. And, in the case of later terracotta urns, re-copying even assumed a purely mechanical character. The original relief ‘A’ would be used to take a mould ‘B’; from this, in turn, new imprints would be taken; they, in turn, would serve as forms for new moulds.

Early in 1941 I attempted to compile a short account of the progress made in the field of Greek epigraphy during 1939 and 1940 (JHS lxii. 51 ff.), though fully conscious of its shortcomings, due in part to conditions caused by the war. The European phase of that war ended in May, 1945, and in the following pages I fill some at least of the gaps which remained in my last survey and report briefly on the works published between the beginning of 1941 and the summer of 1945, so far as they came to my knowledge, directly or indirectly, before the close of August, 1945. Many books and periodicals published on the Continent during that time are not yet accessible to me, but down to the early months of 1943 my record is, I hope, fairly complete, owing to the invaluable aid received from the ‘Bulletins’ of J. and L. Robert; to these I owe such knowledge as I have of most of the items marked with an asterisk to denote that I cannot myself consult the works in question. Again I offer to all authors who have facilitated my task by sending me copies of their publications this expression of my heartfelt thanks.

The Epic of Kumarbi is the latest of a number of epic works which have been recovered and restored to us by patient scholarship from the wreckage of the royal library of the Hittite Emperors at Hattušaš (Bogaz-köy). This particular text, however, is doubly noteworthy: for the sake of the story which it tells, and because it is evidently in essence not merely a piece of Hittite literature, but, in the form of a translation, a glimpse of another, more remote and virtually lost literature. For although this text is written in the normal Hittite language, the names of the divinities who play the chief roles in the drama are in fact not Hittite at all. A few are Babylonian, the rest Hurrian. That is to say, they are the gods of an important people or group of peoples who dwelt in south-eastern Anatolia, north Syria and north Mesopotamia, and spoke a language akin neither to the Indo-European speech of the Hittites nor to the Semitic languages. During the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C. many of these people were incorporated into the Hittite Empire, and their gods were received into the hospitality of the Hittite Pantheon. This text is evidently the translation of a Hurrian saga, and it is even reported that fragments exist (or existed) of the Hurrian original, but they have not been published. The present text originally extended over several tablets, many of which now survive, if at all, only in very battered form. The resultant lacunae make it very difficult for us to follow with certainty the meaning and sequence of action in the surviving fragments. The saga appears to be in three parts: The Struggle for the Kingship of Heaven, The Song of Ullikummi and Kumarbi and the Hero of the Flood. We shall be content for our present purpose with giving a summary of this poem. And a strangely primitive and barbarous story it is, doubtless of very great antiquity.

Archaeological work was carried out by the Italians in the Dodecanese up to September, 1943, and excavations were then still in progress both on Rhodes and Cos. On the Italian surrender at that date the Germans occupied the islands, and their restrictions on movement made all archaeological work impossible. During the British Military Administration numerous finds were made, but work was concentrated on preservation, and excavation was only undertaken when it was clearly essential to do so. In the Walled City of Rhodes the clearance of several large bombdamaged areas presents a golden opportunity to excavate into the levels of the Greek and Roman cities which have hitherto been all too well hidden by the medieval and Turkish buildings. It is to be hoped that something may be done to this end before the areas are covered over again by new buildings. I am indebted for most of the information contained in this article to Professor Morricone of the Instituto Storico-Archeologico di Rodi who also supplied Fig. 2.

During the war organised archaeological excavations in Cyprus were suspended. The Pennsylvania University Expedition to Curium continued at work during the early years of the war and then closed down. The Department of Antiquities staff was reduced and therefore could not undertake systematic excavations. Accidental discoveries, however, which were multiplied by digging operations by the Army, were attended to, and any excavation necessary for the safeguarding of the remains uncovered, carried out.

Tocra, the ancient Taucheira or Teucheira, in Cyrenaica was founded probably in the sixth century B.C. from Barce, to which it belonged in the time of Herodotus. Although it lies in what is now an easily accessible part of Cyrenaica, it has been very little visited by modern scholars. As is the case elsewhere in Cyrenaica, the outlines of the ancient city emerge distinctly from the ground even before excavation. The perfectly preserved circuit of the city walls goes back in origin perhaps to the fourth century B.C., but owes its present form to a reconstruction by Justinian after the defeat of the Vandals by Belisarius in A.D. 533. The stones for building the walls were taken from earlier buildings in the city, which thereby suffered much damage.

Alexandria. —At Kom esh Shuqafa the Graeco-Roman Museum under the direction of Alan Rowe carried out in 1941-2 supplementary investigations in the catacombs. These reveal that the catacombs and other tombs were cut out in a great semicircular rock plateau which originally rose to a height of fifty feet above the surrounding area. This had been obscured by the great mass of debris which had accumulated over and around the rock.

Olbia, I. ed. S. A. ZHEBELËV, 4to, 304 pp., L. Plans and Plates, 108 figs., French résumés throughout, Acad. of Sc. of Ukrainian SSR., Kiev, 1940.

Several attempts have been made to reconstruct the camp of Attila on the basis of the evidence supplied to us by the narrative of Priscus Panites, who describes in great detail what he saw during his visit to the camp in A.D. 448. Stephani has argued that the camp was of Germanic construction and that it was built by a Gothic war-prisoner from Sirmium. It may be said at once that this latter point is unlikely, for Priscus turns aside to mention that the stone baths of Onegesius were built by this war-prisoner; he would scarcely have specified this one building if in fact the whole camp had been constructed by him. Also, there is no indication in his text that the prisoner was a Goth. J. Strzygowski suggested that the camp was the work of Slavs, a conjecture which has, I think, won no acceptance. Most recently, Ferenc Vamos, in a very full discussion of the camp and its buildings, rejected both these views and suggested that the influence of two cultures can be detected in the camp: the culture of the nomads of central Asia and that of the sedentary Iranians—the Huns were introduced to the work of the latter by the intermediacy of the Alans. But before a decision can be reached on the origins of Hun architecture, we must be clear as to what it is precisely that Priscus tells us about the camp and the buildings in it.