The silver statuette which is described in the present paper, and which is represented in the accompanying Plate (A.), acquires a peculiar interest both from its subject and from the circumstances of its discovery. In the first aspect it belongs to an exceedingly numerous class; a boy struggling or playing with a goose seems to have been a very favourite subject with Greek artists of certain periods; the popularity of such representations and the frequency with which they were reproduced are testified by at least fifty extant examples in various galleries and museums throughout Europe. But though belonging to so numerous a family, our specimen differs considerably, both in character and in composition, from all its other members; not more, however, than many of these differ among themselves. Then again, this statuette was discovered together with a hoard of coins, and thus we are able to fix at least a posterior limit of date for the invention not only of the type we find in this figure, but also of all others which show an affinity to it so close as to compel us not to assign them to any very distant period. It is clear, therefore, that we have here an additional clew of no small importance, which may help in the solution of a problem that has already given rise to much controversy among archaeologists.

The Attic sepulchral relief reproduced on Plate B, is the principal object in an interesting collection of antiques formed by the late Baroness Ruthven of Winton Castle, Haddingtonshire, and assigned by her to the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. The bulk of the collection, consisting of vases, mostly of a small size and of the black figured kind, but including several good Attic lekuthoi, is now deposited in the Museum, but the most notable objects remain still at Winton Castle. These comprise a fine hydria 13½ inches high, with a red-figured design (Paris, Helen and other figures with Erotes, etc.) very delicately drawn in the best style, and two sepulchral reliefs, of which one is small and of poor workmanship, and the other, now for the first time published, an interesting and charming work.

Four years ago, in dealing with the Myths of the Odyssey, I raised afresh the time-honoured difficulty of the art-form of the Sirens: Why are the sweet singers of Homer pictured as hybrid monsters—birds with the faces of women ? Much that I then said about the Sirens may, I hope, still hold good; but the final solution or part solution of the difficulty which I arrived at, I now believe to be mistaken, and, with more complete material at hand, I hope in the present paper to offer a new, and possibly a more satisfactory, solution. I fell then into the not uncommon error of projecting into the mind of the Greek vase-painter a great deal of allegorizing tendency and somewhat mystical moral purpose which was really conspicuous by its absence; my familiarity with the literary forms and the literary growth of mythology was much wider than my acquaintance with the manner and the influence of artistic tradition. The power of tradition in an art and still more in a handicraft is not easily overestimated. The thought and expression of the handicraftsman is governed by the art forms that lie ready to his hand, just as the thought of a writer is moulded and fashioned by the language he employs. Each must use current phraseology, only elevating or debasing it a little according to his proper faculty.

It is well-known that the antiquities of this Palace were sold by auction in 1882. In the sale catalogue, however, published by Messrs. Christie, Manson & Woods, no mention is made of nos. 1, 7, 8, 9 of my catalogue. All these being marble statues, I have little doubt that they have remained at the Palace, which is said to be still to-day richly furnished also with busts and other smaller antiquities. A few notes extracted from the sale catalogue will serve to supplement the notices given in my book. The kindness of my friend Mr. Scharf enables me to add the names of the buyers, and the prices as given in the priced catalogue. The woodcuts of the illustrated catalogue, which I have not seen, are said to be very poorly done; tracings of them lie before me.

No. 190 (no. 6 of my catalogue). Bust of Vespasian, of black basalt, with (modern ?) drapery of oriental alabaster. Woodcut. This bust, which was sold at the Strawberry Hill sale for £220 10s., fetched £336; T. Agnew & Son.

No. 191 (no. 4). Bust of Augustus, of antique Egyptian porphyry, with gilt ornaments. The woodcut shows the emperor crowned with a wreath, and clad in a breastplate (decorated with two pegasi flanking a central ornament), and an aegis below it, a mantle covering shoulders and part of the breast.

The following paper is the first of a series of two or three which will bring into contact the extant coins of Greece and the text of Pausanias, thus furnishing to many passages of the traveller's writings a running numismatic commentary.

The main object we have set before us is to collect and set forth the numismatic reproductions of works of art mentioned by Pausanias; but we have not excluded any numismatic types which at all illustrate the cults and the legends mentioned by him as existing in the various cities of Peloponnesus.

The importance of the work cannot be doubted when we consider that in the case of many of the statues mentioned by Pausanias the only copies known are those upon coins; we may therefore hope to reconstruct from numismatic evidence, at least the general schemes of many great works of art wholly lost, and thus furnish very important material for recovering the history of Greek art; especially the history of the succession of types of the chief deities of Greece, which is a subject of great and increasing interest to archaeologists.

Generally speaking, the coins on which we can place the most reliance as sources of information as to the monuments are those of Hadrian and the Antonines. These coins are also the best in point of execution; and we may add that they are contemporary with the travels of Pausanias.

In the reconstruction of the Pergamene frieze from the fragments which have come to the Berlin Museum much progress has been recently made, and it is now possible to follow—in respect of some of the slabs—a tolerably clear order to which certain mechanical or external signs in the stones themselves would appear to point. And this is a clue more helpful than that which the affinity of style or the natural relations of the figures can afford. It is partly on such grounds as these that the slab on which Dionysos appears has been assigned to the south-east corner of the staircase, and it has been conjectured that near to this, perhaps immediately on its right, was one on which was seen the form of a winged god whose left arm holds a shield, and whose right arm, wielding a sword, is swung over his head against a fallen antagonist.

The giant has sunk on his knee, and is raising in supplication or defence his left arm that dimly appears through the shaggy fell that envelopes it. A right hand grasping a stone, the fragments of a knee just lifted from the ground, are placed beneath, and probably belong to him. The drapery of the god is arranged for dramatic effect, as the exomis leaves the right side bare, so that the action gains force and clearness of expression. The composition can make no claim to originality, its forms are highly sculpturesque, and had long been a tradition of sculpture: a metope on the east front of the Parthenon (Michaelis, No. xiii.), on which a scene from the gigantomachy is represented, is the earliest source to which we can directly trace this motive.

I have been requested to examine a MS. collection, bound in two volumes, and entitled MS. Inscriptions collected in Greece by C. R. Cockerell, 1810–14. A fuller description of the contents is added on the title page, apparently by the hand of the collector himself—‘Inscriptions collected in various parts of Greece by C. R. Cockerell, from the year 1810–14; they were copied from the original manuscripts in this form by Signor Amati, in Rome, in 1815, and examined by Mr. Akerblad, who made all the notes and corrections in red ink. Mr. Walpole has made copies of those marked “Cd.,” and has noted those already in print’. It is evident, therefore, that we have here documents of considerable importance, especially as all trace of the original manuscripts referred to has been lost. Signor Amati, the transcriber, seems to have done his work with great care and accuracy, even the forms of letters being, in most cases, faithfully preserved. A comparison with other independent transcriptions from the same originals will soon show that we may rely on his copying; where mistakes occur, they are almost always such as would arise from indistinctness on the stone itself. This statement is of importance, for other transcribers, whether independent or immediately deriving their material from this book, often show a carelessness which can easily be corrected by a reference to it, and which has, in many cases, affected the copies preserved in the Corpus itself.

It is the part of sound criticism to beware of rashly assuming tendencies of any kind in dramatic poetry. The imaginative act of realising situation and character requires no end beyond itself. The faculty is satisfied with its own mere exercise; which may be as widely varied as the fables on which it works, or as human experience itself. If in single dramatists we find certain limitations, or an apparent preference for a particular class of subjects, we must not rush to hasty conclusions, but should distinguish as far as possible between accidental and essential differences, the former depending on the subject-matter which either chance or popularity threw in the artist's way, as jealousy for example in the Spanish drama, the latter resulting from the colour of his own thoughts, and his individual attitude (as an artist) towards the universe and towards mankind.

The power of Aeschylus as a mere dramatist is so great, that the neglect of such precautions is, if possible, more than usually disastrous to the study of him; while on the other hand, they are more than ever necessary in his case, because certain important tendencies, both of the man and of the age, are so apparent in him. In attempting, therefore, to characterise some of these underlying motives, it is necessary to warn the reader at the outset against expecting anything like a complete description or survey. Such motives are very far from accounting for that complex phenomenon, the Aeschylean drama. At most they do but constitute one of several factors that have worked together with the supreme dramatic instinct in the creation of it. Nor shall we be tempted by any theory into the error of supposing that the same motives are to be traced everywhere. Variety is the chief note of the highest invention, and though few chords remain to us of the Aeschylean lyre, they are suggestive of a widely ranging plectrum.—Readers of the Eumenides or of the Prometheus, however, cannot help surmising an intention of the poet standing behind his creation.

1. The interesting Prolegomena zu Aeschylus' Tragödien of R. Westphal (1869), which contains the germ of the idea worked out in Mezger's recent edition of Pindar, suggested to me to inquire why Aeschylus and the other pre-Sophoklean tragedians wrote tetralogies,—for this is the form in which Westphal's book suggests the question. But it becomes soon apparent that the real problem is why it was the habit to write a trilogy + a satyric drama; and this question contains two distinct parts: (1) why tragedy took the form of a trilogy— not a dilogy, tetralogy, or single drama; (2) why a satyric drama was also performed. Of these questions the latter has been discussed and adequately answered in every treatise on Greek drama.

Westphal was seriously misled through not keeping the satyric drama separate from the three plays that preceded it. These formed a connected whole and were really equivalent to one consecutive drama of three acts, from which the satyric piece was quite distinct, albeit its subject usually had some external connexion with them. He connected the tetralogical form with the fact first noticed by him that every Aeschylean play contains four χορικά, so that Aeschylus, he supposes, used a quadruple division as his artistic τϵθμός, in the same way as the Terpandric nomos was based on a seven-fold division.

In the history of Greek vase-painting the comparative rarity of early examples of undoubtedly Asiatic provenance is a problem that has always remained a vexed question. It is difficult to account for the fact that, whereas from the islands studding the coast of Asia Minor a rich harvest has been gathered, yet the examples hitherto recovered from the mainland itself may be counted on the fingers—at least, with the exception of a few found in the Troad. Since, therefore, anything should be valuable which adds to our information, or throws light upon the existence of an Asiatic school of black-figured vase-painting, I propose to introduce in as few words as possible the vase before us (Figs. 1, 2) as a possible product of Asiatic soil, and as a commentary upon the examples we already possess.

It is an amphora of an unusual form, rather more rounded in proportion than the customary shape, reminding us perhaps in this of the rounded outline of the so-called Oriental oinochoe; unfortunately, only about half of the many fragments into which it was broken were found in Mr. Biliotti's excavations in Rhodes, so that the painted panels on each side are sadly dilapidated; still, enough remains to show us the intention of the painter, and, what is more important, perhaps, the technical conditions under which he worked.

Mr. Bent has brought from Antiparos, and the British Museum has acquired, several of those stamped handles of diotae which have been the subject of numerous papers by various savants, and of a special work by M. Dumont (Inscriptions Céramiques).

To record the find-spots of the several classes of these handles is a matter of some importance, because they furnish us with archæological evidence in a matter of great complexity, where archæological evidence is rare and desirable—in the matter of ancient Greek commerce, its marts and its course. The stamped handles which bear the names of Rhodian magistrates and potters are, as is well known, found in all parts of the Levant from Kertsch to Egypt and Sicily; those which derive from Cnidus are also found in many places; Thasian handles are found chiefly on the shores of the Euxine sea, but at Athens and elsewhere also. Why Rhodes, Cnidus, and Thasos should in Hellenistic times have almost monopolized the trade in wine, or why these states should have monopolized the custom of using stamps for handles of wine-jars, we do not know. But the latter statement at all events must be true: there are but very few other known sources of stamped handles.

When on a visit to this island last winter, I felt much curiosity about the almost legendary gold and silver mines of Siphnos, which in former ages made the inhabitants so rich, and which enabled them to build their ‘Prytaneum and white-browed Agora.’ The story of these mines we owe to Herodotus, and as the veracity of the statements of this historian, so far as Orientalism is concerned, is being sorely impugned just now, it will be satisfactory to find that on Hellenic subjects he does not entirely draw on his imagination. He tells us that the Siphniotes were the richest of all the islanders, owing to the gold and silver mines which existed there, but that they were mean in their donations to the oracle at Delphi, and hence the Pythian oracle prophesied ill for them. ‘When in Siphnos there shall be a white Prytaneum, and a white-browed Agora, then will they have need of a shrewd man to protect them from the wooden troop and red herald.’ When the Samian fugitives came and sacked their town, the Siphniotes recognized too late the purport of this warning, for the Samiotes came in boats painted with red paint, doubtless with the miltos or red paint, mines of which still exist in the neighbouring island of Keos.

In the Gazette archéologique for 1880 (pp. 52–55; pl. 6) M. Al. Sorlin-Dorigny published, with a photograph, an interesting statue of a Roman Emperor found at Hierapytna in Crete and preserved in the Constantinople Museum (cf. Catalogue du musée impérial de Constantinople, 8vo. 1871, no. 123). This statue was originally thought to be one of Metellus Creticus or of Caracalla, but—though the likeness is not very close— there can be little doubt that M. Sorlin-Dorigny is right in assigning it to the Emperor Hadrian. The Emperor is represented standing, facing, with his left foot trampling on a captive. He wears a cuirass, and a paludamentum which is flung behind over his back, so as to form ‘une espèce de fond sur lequel la statue se détache en haut relief.’ The cuirass, says M. Sorlin-Dorigny, ‘est une des plus belles que nous connaissions et en même temps lľune des plus intéressantes. Le motif sort du banal usité pour ces sortes de représentations, qui se composent le plus souvent de griffons affrontés ou de prisonniers agenouillés au pied d'un trophée. Ici la scène est plus romaine … c' est la représentation de la louve légendaire, des jumeaux, et du couronnement de Pallas, la grande protectrice de Rome, par deux Victoires ailées…La déesse est de face, debout et dans lľattitude de la lutte; elle porte le casque et la tunique talaire recouverte de lľégide; de la droite levée elle brandit une lance et dans sa gauche elle tient un bouclier; à ses pieds sont des deux animaux symboliques, la chouette et le serpent.’ ‘Les lambrequins de la cuirasse sont ornés de sept médaillons. Celui du milieu représente la tête de face de Jupiter-Ammon.’

[The Honorary Secretaries of the Egypt Exploration have handed us for publication the following summary, drawn up by Mr. Petrie, of the results of his year's excavation at Nebireh. It may serve as an acknowledgment by the Committee of the Fund of the aid already received from the Society of Hellenic Studies; and as an invitation to further co-operation in the future.—Ed.]

The season which is now drawing to a close has been one of great interest in the work here, though of an interest which would scarcely be expected, since not Egyptian but Greek antiquities claim our attention.

There are few truths that are more forcibly impressed on the attention of any one engaged in restoring the lost monuments of antiquity than the painful one—that no form of written words is sufficient to convey a distinct idea of a building which has been destroyed. No adequate reproduction of its form can be made unless the words are accompanied by a diagram or drawing of some sort, or when these cannot be obtained, unless some sufficient remains of the building still exist to make its restoration possible, or if neither of these be attainable, unless it proves to be part of a known series—in other words, unless some edifices exist, either before or after it in date, so similar in form and purpose as to enable us from a study of their peculiarities to appreciate the meaning of the terms applied to the one we are attempting to restore.

The Temples of the Jews are a conspicuous illustration of this truth. Though so minutely described in the Bible or by Josephus, nothing can be more discrepant than the notions entertained by restorers of their forms and dimensions, and it is only very recently that we have begun to perceive that they form a part of a series (though it must be confessed not of familiar or well understood types), and that we begin to realize their forms with anything like distinctness. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, and the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, were important buildings of which we knew nothing till very recently, except from written descriptions; and nothing could be more various than the restorations that were proposed to reconcile their features with the verbal texts. Thanks to the excavations conducted by Messrs. Newton and Wood, we now know what the real appearances of these celebrated buildings were with sufficient exactness for all practical purposes.

Having visited these two outlying islands of the Sporadic group last winter, and having spent in them over two months, I propose to put together a few notes on the antiquities to be found in each. They are islands which are very difficult of access and rarely visited by foreigners, and are consequently peculiarly retentive of customs and myths which bear the stamp of extreme antiquity. Both these islands appear to have had a much more considerable population in ancient times than they have now, though much behind their neighbours on Rhodes and Kos in the arts and civilisation.

The principal feature of the small island of Telos is a precipitous mountain which rises directly behind the chief of the two modern villages of the island, on the summit of which is a fortress covering a triangular plateau about three quarters of a mile in circumference; the foundation of the walls of this fortress are Hellenic, on which during the Middle Ages more modern walls have been constructed. In the centre of this fortress there stands an Hellenic temple now converted into a church, and almost buried on two sides by the débris of Hellenic masonry covered with brushwood. From the gateway which enters the walls on the south side, a broad approach with steps flanked on either side by huge blocks of stone leads straight to the temple; the form of the proaulion is easily distinguished, and the north wall of the temple is almost intact and built of neatly fitting stones without mortar of a coarse bluish marble.

The position of Polykleitos in the history of Greek sculpture is peculiarly tantalizing. We seem to know a good deal about his work. We know his statue of a Doryphoros from the marble copy of it in Naples, and we know his Diadumenos from two marble copies in the British Museum. Yet with these and other sources of knowledge, it happens that when we desire to get closer to his real style and to define it there occurs a void. So to speak, a bridge is wanting at the end of an otherwise agreeable journey, and we welcome the best help that comes to hand. There is, I think, some such help to be obtained from the terra-cotta statuette recently acquired in Smyrna by Mr. W. R. Paton.

But first it may be of use to recall the reasons why the marble statues just mentioned must fail to convey a perfectly true notion of originals which we are justified in assuming were of bronze. In each of these statues the artist has been compelled by the nature of the material to introduce a massive support in the shape of a tree stem. That is at once a new element in the design, and, as a distinguished French sculptor has rightly observed, this new element called for a modification of the entire figure.