‘Then the son of Peleus took an unwrought metal mass which anciently the mighty Eetion was wont to hurl.’ This σόλος αὐτοχόωνος, which was at once the weight to be thrown and the prize in the Homeric competition, was apparently a mass of pig iron just as it came from the furnace; probably, as Mr. J. L. Myres suggests to me, ‘the contents of one of the old open-hearth furnaces of the Mediterranean world, the natural unit quantity for the purveyor and buyer of the metal, the classical analogy to which is the mass of iron (μύδρος σιδήρεος) which the Phocaeans threw into the sea before their voyage westwards.

From what sources did Herodotus draw the materials for his history? At what date or dates did he compose it? These inquiries have an endless fascination for the student of Herodotus, which is not lessened by the fact that they admit of no certain answer. The combinations which will be suggested in this paper have, so far as I know, not been suggested before; but if, as is extremely likely, they have already been made, there is always a certain interest in the fact that two inquirers, working independently, have come to the same conclusions.

It is not necessary to give evidence of the fact that Herodotus himself was highly satisfied with his own sources of information as to Persian history, and that he considered he could speak with authority upon it. (Cf. e.g. i. 95.) Nor is it necessary to give evidence for the view that Herodotus had on some points official or semi-official Persian information: e.g. in his account of the satrapies in Bk. III., of the Royal Road in Bk. V., and of the Persian army in Bk. VII.

These two points will be assumed, and also that Herodotus is a trustworthy witness, that he reports truly what he has heard, without exaggeration or suppression, and that he had some idea of the differing value of various witnesses.

According to Polybius, there took part in the battle of Ecnomus 680 quinqueremes and 290,000 men, i.e. crews 204,000 and troops 86,000; while in the next year, at the battle of the Hermaean promontory, 550 quinqueremes were engaged. The only figures comparable to these in Roman history, manifest absurdities apart, are those given by Appian for the battle of Naulochus, and perhaps those for Actium. At Naulochus 300 ships of all sizes are said to have been in action on either side, and no doubt Agrippa's fleet, at any rate, did amount to this large number; while at Actium Octavian may have had anything up to 400. But in Octavian's time the population of all Italy may have been 7 to 8 millions; the Mediterranean was almost a Roman lake, and its entire resources went to furnish the fleets for the civil wars.

[Routes followed: (a) Panderma, Mihallitch, Kermasti, Kavakly, Susurlu, Eski Manyas, Yeni Manyas, Alexa, Panderma; (b) Panderma, Erdek, Karabogha, Gunen, Pomak Keui, Hautcha, Panderma; (c) Soma, Balukiser, Mudania, Brusa.]

1. Panderma, in private possession: stele 0·40×0·25 m., top broken, with relief:—

(1.) Worshipper with sheep; altar; (r.) Apollo standing, with kithara in left hand, patera in right. Below (letters 015):

The relief is of a type very commonly found in the district; cf. J.H.S. xxiii. 87 (39), xxiv. 20 (1), xxv. 58 (13).

It is proposed in this paper to deal shortly with five terracottas in the possession of the writer, which seem of sufficient interest to be illustrated. The first three are from Boeotia, the last two from Crete.

As is well known, the most primitive Greek standing figures in terracotta frequently take one of two forms—the columnar form, derived probably from the tree trunk, and the flat broad form (σανίς), taken apparently from the shape of a board of wood. These forms confirm the literary evidence that the most primitive statues were made of wood. The first three terracottas illustrate the latter type; in the second of them the boardlike form has been adapted by a singular device to a seated figure.

All students of Eusebius will feel grateful to Mr. J. L. Myres for his attempt in the last volume of this Journal to discover the original text underlying the list of thalassocracies, preserved in the Chronica of Eusebius, and to reassert its value as historical evidence. The problem that Mr. Myres has set himself is rendered difficult not only by the general obscurity in which the sources of early Greek history are shrouded and by our almost total ignorance of the history of many of the thalassocrats during the period assigned to them in the list, but by the complicated questions of textual criticism which surround the Chronica, and which this problem raises in a particularly aggravated form. While not venturing to follow Mr. Myres through the wealth of historical learning, which he has brought to bear upon the subject, I have thought that I might be able to contribute something by bringing my own studies in the Chronica into relation to the general question.

The Plate which illustrates this article represents a series of silver coins, Nos. 1–8, which bear a strong family likeness. They are all tetradrachms of the Euboic standard, and each displays on the obverse a peculiar bunch of grapes which would have excited even the infantine ridicule of the humblest painter of Dutch fruit-pieces. Two of these coins, Pl. IV. 2 and 8, both recent acquisitions of the British Museum, are unpublished, and present new types. Nos. 9–11 are bronze coins of Peparethus.

In type and style the most remarkable of these coins is Pl. IV. 1 = Fig. A. This piece was found in the island of Cos, but Mr. Barclay Head, who first made it known in 1891, attributed it in a very ingenious and learned paper to Cyrene. This attribution carried with it the assignment to Cyrene of the types here figured as Pl. IV. 3 (and 5), 4 (and 6), because all three types were found to be united together by a concatenation of dies.

In the collection of Sir Frederick Cook at Doughty House, Richmond, are nine fragments of a large sarcophagus of surpassing interest for the modern scientific history of art. They were identified some two years ago by Mrs. Arthur Strong, who is engaged upon a new illustrated catalogue of the Richmond antiques which is shortly to appear in this Journal. Mrs. Strong at once communicated to me the existence of a sarcophagus of so much importance for the studies I had initiated in my book Orient oder Rom, and, by the courtesy of the owner, I at the same time received a set of photographs of the nine fragments.

Mr. Fotheringham's paper, if I understand it rightly, divides itself into three parts. He corrects certain errors in my tabular statement of the evidence, and in my commentary on it; he criticizes my suggestion that the ‘List of Thalassocracies’ may represent a fifth-century document; and he reconstructs from materials comprised wholly in the existing texts of Eusebius' work an outline of the Eusebian view of the ‘List,’ as he understands it; the gist of which is that he thinks that Eusebius not merely incorporated in his Canones the names of all the states contained in the ‘List,’ but also intended to space the thalassocracies according to the numerals contained in the Excerpt. From this he infers that, where the numerals in the Excerpt are lost, they may safely be restored from the intervals indicated in the Canones; and from this, finally, (1) that the Excerpt was not mutilated when Eusebius incorporated it in his Chronographia, and (2) that it represented, in its missing section at all events, the same chronological scheme as underlies the rest of Eusebius' work, and not, as I had been led to suggest, a different, earlier, and more accurate system.