The recent discovery of a copy in marble of the chryselephantine statue of Athenè Parthenos, by Pheidias, has already led to the publication of several memoirs, the most recent of which by Michaelis has anticipated much that I had intended to say here. There are, however, certain points which seem to me still open to discussion. The statuette, as I have already stated in the Academy, is 1·05 metre, or rather more than 3 feet 4 inches high, inclusive of the base, and 93 centimeters without it. It represents the goddess armed with a helmet and aegis; her left hand rests on her shield set edgeways, her right hand advanced sustains a figure of Victory, her left leg is slightly bent, so that the weight of the body rests on the right leg. The goddess is clad in a talaric chiton, without sleeves, over which is an upper fold or garment falling in rich pteryges down the right side.

Dr. Schliemann has proved that Hissarlik was a seat of human habitation from a prehistoric age. This has not been proved for any other place which could claim to be the site of Homeric Troy. Assuming that ‘the tale of Troy’ is founded on a central fact—i.e., that a very old town, placed as the Iliad roughly indicates, was once besieged and taken—the claim of Hissarlik to be the site of that town is now both definite and unique. Thus far, Dr. Schliemann's argument is unanswerable. It is not my purpose to discuss here the further questions which arise as to the relation of his discoveries to places or objects described in the Iliad. The subject of which I would speak is historical rather than strictly archæological, yet one which, within certain limits, has a distinct bearing on Dr. Schliemann's results.

What was the belief of the ancient Greeks as to the site of Homeric Troy? And, in particular, how did they generally regard the claim of the Greek Ilium (at Hissarlik) to be considered as occupying the Homeric site?

The journey which Aelius Aristides made in the year 167 A.D. from Smyrna to Pergamus, and which he relates with much detail in the opening of the fifth book of his Hieroi Logoi, is the most valuable evidence left as to the relative situation of Smyrna, Larissa, Cyme, Myrina, and Gryneion: and a careful study of it is the best foundation of a knowledge of Southern Aeolis. The main facts are as follows (Arist. ed. Dind. i. p. 534). On the first day his baggage was sent on in front to Myrina to be ready when he arrived in the evening. When carriages had been got ready and he himself was prepared to start, noon had arrived. In the great heat he did not like to undergo the fatigue of travelling at this hour, and waited at his house in the suburbs of Smyrna till the heat passed. The comfort of his villa was seductive, and some matters of business detained him, so that he lost a great deal of time, and when he reached the khan before the Hermus, the sun was setting. He deliberated whether he should spend the night there, but the discomfort consequent on passing the night in a bad inn without his baggage made him resolve to go on. As he was crossing the Hermus, night had just set in, which shows that it was about one hour after sunset. A cool wind invigorated him, and he was glad on reaching Larissa, ἤδη βαθείας ἑσπέρας, that the baggage was still in front, and that the inn was no better than the previous one. A little after midnight he reached Cyme. Every place was shut up, and he encouraged his followers, who apparently were anxious to stop here, to go on. On the journey the cold became more severe. About cock-crow he reached Myrina, and found his baggage in the street, as it had reached the town after every place was shut. After in vain trying to get admission to any inn, they at last were received into the house of a friend. As they entered it was still quite dark, but after a fire had been kindled the morning star had arisen, and the light of day began to appear. He resolved, therefore, not to go to sleep by day. His road then lay through Gryneion, where he stayed some time to sacrifice to Apollo, to Elaea, where he spent the night; but in these cases no indication is given of the time required for the journey.

The bust here published was acquired by the British Museum in 1879 from Alessandro Castellani, but without an accompanying record of where it had been found. The marble is Italian and the workmanship Roman, or, as it is generally termed, Graeco-Roman. In the type of head and in the features is to be traced a powerful and pathetic original. The chin is aesthetically large, the eyes and eyebrows are strained forward as if by constant intensity of pathos, in contrast to the relaxation of muscle produced by an equable mind. Doubtless the original is to be sought in the schools of Praxiteles and Scopas; but in the search for it allowance must be made for great differences. In this marble the collar-bones and the strongly-marked muscles of the neck are represented so as to aid the effect of the strain on the neck rather than for the sake of truth to nature. The object of the sculptor has been to produce a first impression, not of form but of action. He has been regardless of form, now exaggerating, as in the muscles of the neck, now reducing such details as the right wing of the helmet to a condition of subordination which has a paltry effect. The feathers which cover the helmet are from the hand of an ordinary workman. The left wing has been made of a separate piece and let in, but is now wanting.

It might be a question whether this head is not that of Hermes rather than of Perseus. The fact of its having been made to fit into a term—as may be seen from the angle at which the chest-bones project—would be in favour of Hermes, while the winged cap would in its present condition equally suit him.

The vase from which the designs on Plate X. are copied is a Kylix, or shallow two-handled cup, 5 inches high by 12¾ inches in diameter. It was acquired by the British Museum in 1850, together with other objects included in the sale of the collection of Dr. Emil Braun, who had procured it from the dealer Basseggio: in the sale catalogue it is stated to have been found at Vulci.

Notices of this vase have appeared in various works from time to time; Dr. Braun himself exhibited it at the Roman Instituto (Bulletino di Corr. Archeol. 1846, p. 106); Gerhard, in the Archäol. Zeitung for 1846, p. 289, described it briefly; and it is included in the Catalogue of Vases in the British Museum, No. 824*. In publishing for the first time, so far as I am aware, an engraving of this magnificent vase, it may be worth while to add a more detailed description than has hitherto appeared.

The custom of dedicating or of specially setting apart articles of use or ornament to divine beings has been common to many peoples, and has come down from a remote antiquity to the present day. Nor is the motive which prompts the action one in any way foreign to the impulses by which men are moved. A danger escaped, a victory achieved, is not unnaturally believed to be due, at all events in some measure, to powers not of the lower world, who can control and even overrule the designs of mortal men. In the temples, therefore, of the gods, and in other places hallowed by the more immediate presence of the divinity, it has been the habit to offer various things in recognition of benefits already bestowed, or in the hope of favours to be granted in the future. The pot of manna and Aaron's rod which budded laid up in the Tabernacle, are as trite as are the models which the same pious feeling still deposits in Christian churches, in remembrance of shipwrecks escaped from or of diseases cured. In no country was the custom more observed than in Hellas, where it was usual to dedicate a tenth of the spoil taken in war, and where at the great shrines so large were the offerings, that many of the states had θησαυροί, in which were preserved the almost innumerable votive objects dedicated to the Gods. In Greece itself there was no place, not excepting Delphi and Dodona, where more evidence of the observance of the custom was to be found than at Olympia, and in the temple where dwelt the cloud-compelling wielder of the lightning, the mighty dispenser of victory, Zeus, the King of Gods and men.

Mr. Murray's suggestion, in the last issue of Hellenic Studies, that a great flight of steps led from the higher level of the ground between the Parthenon and the Erechtheum to the court of the Pandroseum, is certainly ingenious, and on first sight so plausible, that many no doubt will accept it as explaining a difficult point on the topography of the Acropolis at Athens. There are, however, reasons which induce me to hesitate before admitting it to be a solution of the problem, whileas the question which it raises is both interesting and important, I am desirous of an opportunity for stating some of the reasons which make me pause before assenting to his proposal.

In the first place, a flight of steps extending 70 feet in one direction and with the return measuring nearly 100 feet altogether, is so remarkable a feature, that it is difficult to understand how it comes that neither Pausanias, nor any other author, ancient or modern, makes any allusion to it. Even the celebrated dog of Philochorus who—after Pausanias—is the most important witness for the arrangement of this temple, would hardly have rushed through the Temple of Minerva Polias, down into the Pandroseum, had this magnificent flight of stairs afforded him far more obvious access to the altar of Jupiter Herceios under the olive-tree, where he sought shelter.

In the course of a careful examination of the coins of Corcyra, I have come upon a variety of types which seem to me to allude to races of galleys. That the Greeks had such races is in itself probable, and is clearly proved by the testimony of ancient writers. But on consulting the ordinary works on the games and races of the Greeks, as well as those which deal with naval archæology, I have found that the matter has hitherto almost entirely escaped observation. I therefore feel called on to add a new chapter, which will indeed be but a short one, to the history of Greek athletic sports. And I imagine that Englishmen, who take so much interest in the races of yachts and rowing-boats, will not be ungrateful to me if I am able to show that such races are of greater antiquity than is commonly imagined.

That galley-races are as old as Homer may seem a rash assertion; yet this does seem to be implied in a passage of the Odyssey, though it is not directly asserted. This passage occurs in the 8th book of the Odyssey, at the place where Alcinoüs is speaking of the aptness in athletic sports of his subjects the Phaeacians.

This inscription, which affords no external indications of its origin, was published by Böckh among the Attic decrees on very slender grounds, which he himself practically recalls in the Appendix, C. I. G. vol. i. p. 900. With reason, therefore, Köhler in vol. ii. of new Berlin Corpus has not included it among the Attic decrees. In December 1880, I re-read this inscription, together with most of the other marbles in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. I verified the reading of the first line given by Dobree (Appendix to Rose's Inscriptiones Graecae), and adopted by Bockh, Appendix l. c. To the text of the decree there is therefore nothing to add, and it will suffice to append a copy of it in cursive. But I hope to show that the decree is from Halikarnassos, and to identify the revolution of Troezen to which it alludes.

In the first number of this Journal I passed in review a rare survival of antiquity, the Oracle-inscriptions of Dodona. These, as was there stated, formed a part only of the collection of C. Carapanos. For the remainder, though many of the inscriptions are of great interest, dialectically, archaeologically, and historically, I cannot claim the attraction of novelty which so conspicuously characterised the Oracle-inscriptions as relics sui generis. I have thought, however, that it may be not unacceptable to English students to have before them in an accessible form the full tale of the Dodonaean texts, so far as they are legible and not absolutely fragmentary. As, then, in the former number I gave the Oracle-inscriptions seriatim with more or less of commentary, so I propose in the following pages to attempt an examination and explanation of the documents which complete the catalogue. It will be hardly necessary to say that, as before, my indebtedness to previous critics—Bursian (Sitzungsber. d. kön. Baier. Ges. d. Wiss. Ph.-Hist. Cl. 1878), Blass, Fränkel, Christ, Carapanos himself—is considerable.

According to the enumeration given on p. 229 of the first number of the Journal, the inscriptions remaining to be noticed are (1) Ex voto inscriptions on bronze. (2) Inscriptions on bronze or copper: these comprise (a) decrees of citizenship; (b) deeds of manumission; (c) deeds of proxenia; (d) a deed concerning right of intermarriage; (e) donation of property; (f;) purchase of a slave. (3) An inscription on an iron strigli. (4) Two or three inscriptions on terra cotta. (5) A proxenia-decree, the most complete in the collection, on a limestone tablet.

The traveller from Athens who desires to visit the Boeotian Orchomenus proceeds thither on the turnpike-road by way of Eleusis, Thebes, and Lebadeia. He leaves Athens by descending the Hermes Street, turning to the right nearly opposite to the Theseum, and passing on the left the magnificent ancient funeral monuments at the Hagia-Trias as well as the Dipylum, and other vast ruins brought to light in the adjoining excavations. He soon passes to his left the Botanical Garden, enters (18 minutes) the vast plantations of olive trees, and sees at a distance of half a mile to his right the hill of Colonos, which has been rendered celebrated by Sophocles, and on which are the sepulchres of Charles Lenormant and Karl Otfried Müller. In the grove he successively passes three arms of the river Kephissus, which are nearly always dry; among the olive trees there are several to which the famous Athenian botanist, Th. von Heldreich, ascribes an age of more than 1,500 years. It is probable that for some distance from its issue from the olive grove (20 minutes) the present road is identical with the ancient sacred road, for we see there the little chapel of St. George, apparently on the site of a temple on the ancient roadside; a number of excavated rock-cut tombs, which border the road, can leave almost no doubt in this respect. But at the foot of the conical hill of Poikilus, at the entrance of the defile (20 minutes), the sacred road appears to have turned to the right, whilst the modern way turns to the left. The defile is bordered on the right by Mount Icarus, on the left by Mount Corydallus (that is, lark, Alauda cristata), which latter is crowned by a tower and ruined walls. On the left, in entering the defile, we see in an excavation foundations of large stones, which mark the famous sepulchre of the Hetaera Pythionike, excavated in 1855 by General Vassoignes. This monument, which is described by Pausanias as the most remarkable and most magnificent of all ancient Greek tombs, was—according to him—erected by the Macedonian Harpalos in honour of Pythionike, with whom he had fallen so deeply in love that he had made her his lawful wife.

There seems a sort of general agreement among modern historians of Greece to accept the 1st Olympiad (776 B.C.) as the trustworthy starting point of solid Greek chronology. Even Grote, so sceptical about legends, and so slow to gather inferences from them, accepts this datum. There is only one exception, I think, to be found in Sir George Cox, who evidently rejects the Olympiad register, who will not set down in his chronology any figure higher than 670 B.C., and even that under the protest of a query.

When we come to inquire on what authority so early a date can be securely established, we find a sort of assumption, not supported by argument, that from 776 onward the Eleians kept a regular record of their great festival, and as a matter of fact such a record is extant. It was generally acknowledged and cited by the later historians of Greece, who determined events according to it. Above all, the critical doubts of philologists are soothed by the supposed authority of Aristotle, who is reported to have made researches on the question, and to refer to the list as if authentic; he even mentioned a discus at Olympia with Lycurgus' name inscribed upon it, but in what work, and for what purpose, is unknown. I know that Aristotle is considered an infallible authority by modern philologists, so much so that those who are ready enough to deny even general inspiration to other authorities, seem almost to attribute verbal inspiration to this philosopher. One other Greek authority shares with him this pre-eminence—the historian Thucydides. And it so happens that in his Sicilian Archaeology (book vi.) Thucydides gives a number of dates, with precision and without hesitation, which reach back to 735 B.C., and therefore persuades his commentators that accurate dates were attainable up to a period close to the 1st Olympiad. These are apparently the silent reasons which have determined the general consent of modern historians.

In the former part of this paper I started from the fact that the use in Attic prose of forms in -οσυνος, -οσυνη, is limited by certain rules as to meaning and etymology, which do not apply to Ionic literature; and I observed that the usage of the Attic tragedians followed in these respects the practice of the Ionians. This being so, I advanced the hypothesis that the tragedians and their audiences must have been aware of the peculiar character of these words, and that upon investigation the passages of tragedy in which they occurred would be found to have in other ways also an Ionic colour or a special connection with Ionic language and tradition, which colour or connection the reader must perceive if he would fully appreciate the tone, and in some cases the meaning, of the author. So far as the limit of my space extended this anticipation was, I think, fulfilled. I showed that in some cases certainly (p. 272), in others almost certainly (p. 279 foll.), these words were actually inflected according to the Ionic rule.

Professor Gardner's article on this highly interesting subject in the last number of the Journal of Hellenic Studies gives so excellent a summary of its data, and reasons upon these data so judiciously, that the few remarks I venture to offer here are intended to be supplementary much rather than critical.

First, as to the ἃλμα, or Long Jump. Mr. Gardner says: ῾ ὑπὲρ τὰ ἐσκαμμένα πηδᾶν was proverbial for describing a long leap. What were these ἐσκαμμένα? The scholiast to Pindar (Nem. v. 34) says that after every leap a fork was drawn across to mark its length, so that he who leaps beyond all marks distances his rivals. This seems the natural explanation of the phrase.’ Now the scholiast's words are, ἡ δὲ μεταφορὰ ἀπὸ τῶν πεντάθλων, οἷς σκάμματα σκάπτονται ὅταν ἅλλωνται· ἐκείνων γὰρ κατὰ τὸν ἀγῶνα πηδώντων ὑποσκάπτεται βόθρος ἑκάστου τὸ ἅλμα δεικνύς. Might not the last words, especially taken in conjunction with the ὑπὸ of the compound verb, mean, ‘showing where each was to jump to’ (or ‘where each expected to jump to’), and thus agree with the explanation, also referred to by Mr. Gardner, that the ἐσκαμμένα were marked before the leaps were taken?

In a paper ‘On some Pamphylian Inscriptions,’ published in the first volume of the Journal of Hellenic Studies, p. 242, my principal object was to establish the value of the symbols ψ and in those inscriptions. I was able to bring many analogies for the value assigned to ψ, viz. that of a palatal sibilant; but I could find no analogy outside of the Pamphylian inscriptions for the interpretation of as being in some cases equivalent to the English wu. At the time I did not notice that the Pamphylian explained as was suggested in my paper, afforded an exact parallel to a Naxian inscription, the interpretation given of which by Bentley was doubted by Kirchhoff, Griech. Alph. p. 73, solely because it was so singular. In the Naxian inscription the form [Τ]Ο ΑϜΥΤΟ is given by Bentley as equivalent in meaning and scansion to the Attic ταὐτοῦ; in other words ἀϜυτοῦ; is a dissyllable.

A Remarkable instance of the injury that may be done by the so-called restoration of broken or marred works of art is afforded in the case of two Greek vases in the British Museum which have lately been cleaned. It is obvious that the chances are very much against the probability of a vase arriving in an entire state at its final place of deposit in a museum or collection; and that it is to the advantage of an unscrupulous dealer to hide, as far as possible, all traces of fracture or restoration: unfortunately, therefore, it is too commonly the case that a vase while undergoing repairs is treated with a wash of modern paint which, while it hides the fractures, dulls the glaze and mars the fresh metallic gleam, the peculiar charm of Greek pottery: frequently also the imagination of the modern artist is drawn upon in supplying missing details of the design, with the effect, at any rate, of misleading the student; and sometimes, as in the case of both the vases to which I refer, of completely obliterating important inscriptions. The most mischievous error of all is when a part of one vase is used to supply a missing portion of another: a vase which I have lately seen taken to pieces, was found to be made up from fragments of no less than three different vases. Restoration of this kind necessarily involves a certain amount of hacking the materials into shape, whereby portions of the original design are irretrievably ruined.

Pausanias (X. 17, 6) seeks to convey a definite notion of the rams in Sardinia by saying that they had the form which an Aeginetan sculptor would give a wild ram, except for a shagginess on the breast which was too thick for Aeginetan art. The spareness of form implied here, and still more distinctly in the extraordinary swiftness which he ascribes to these rams, seems to agree very well with what remains of the sculpture of Aegina; and in calling attention to this circumstance (Greek Sculpture, p. 187) I supposed that Pausanias had in his mind only the general characteristic of the Aegina school, to which he refers on other occasions. But it occurs to me now that he may have been thinking specially of Onatas and the statue of Hermes Kriophoros, which he had seen at Olympia and described (v. 27,8). Onatas receives great praise from Pausanias (v. 25, 7), and no doubt was to him a representative of the school of Aegina.