After Herodotus describes the stock-taking in Greece on the eve of Xerxes' invasion, and before he passes to the actions at Thermopylae and Artemisium, we are briefly told of an expedition to Thessaly (vii 172–4). As Xerxes approached the Hellespont, Thessalian envoys appealed for help to the Greek loyalists, who sent a large army in response. This enterprise argues a very high degree of confidence and organisation among the loyalists, and yet the sequel is strangely disappointing, for just a few days after reaching their destination the Greek forces withdrew again and were seemingly disbanded. Understandably enough the episode has puzzled scholars, and no ogreement exists as to either the motives behind the expedition or the reasons for the withdrawal. The facts need to be re-examined, especially as Herodotus' testimony has in one respect been misconstrued and another vital piece of evidence has escaped attention. I shall argue that the expedition was capably and resolutely planned as the main line of defence against Xerxes; that the federal authorities in Thessaly co-operated to the fullest; that the Greek army adopted the best strategic position for their purpose; and that the scheme miscarried only because of obstruction from an unexpected quarter. The dismaying failure of the Thessalian expedition helps to explain why the subsequent efforts of the loyalists during the campaign of 480 were so often confused or behindhand.

The word ‘little-master cup,’ as I use it, covers, first, ‘lip-cups,’ ‘band-cups,’ and variants of them; second, ‘Droop’ (or ‘Antidoran’) cups. I shall not deal with Droop cups; for I can add nothing to Ure's admirable study. I confine myself to lip-cups, band-cups, and their variants. Much of what I shall say has been said already, and I draw attention to the concise and accurate treatment which these also have received from Ure.

Into the origin of the shapes I do not enter for the present. The forerunner is the Attic ‘Siana cup.’

The material of the following paper falls conveniently under two headings, but the arguments respecting each are intimately connected, and cannot fairly be appreciated apart. It may be well, therefore, at the outset, to summarise briefly the conclusions at which I have arrived.

1. The Erinyes at Delphi and elsewhere are primarily local ancestral ghosts. The conception of Homer, and in part of the tragedians, of the Erinyes as abstract, detached ministers of divine vengeance is comparatively late, and belongs rather to literature than to popular faith.

2. The ghosts of important persons are conceived of as locally influential after death, and, being potent for good or evil, present a sort of neutral fond. In this neutral aspect they are Κῆρες, Μοῖραι, Τύχαι.

3. This neutral fond of Κῆρες, Μοῖραι, Τύχαι etc., is probably from the first conceived of in its dual aspect. The ghosts are pleased or angry, white or black, Eumenides or Erinyes—probably from the first the malignant aspect is somewhat uppermost.

The main narrative of Thucydides is characterised by a third person ‘objective’ style where signs of the narrator are concealed. But this predominant narrative mode is punctuated by passages (2. 65, 6. 15, etc.) where the narrator interrupts the main account, referring to himself in the first person and/or to time outside that of the main narrative. These rare intrusions of the voice of the narrator-historian—‘narrator interventions’—are the most quoted and discussed in the whole History. Reaction to them has been of two sorts. They have either been seen as later additions and used as the centrepiece of analyst interpretations of the History, or they have been treated as expressions of the ‘judgement’ of the historian, providing the key to the History's meaning. The result of these approaches is unsatisfactory. The interventions are either bracketed as foreign to the original plan of the historian, or given special status as the exclusive source of his meaning. The effect is to cut them loose from the reading of the rest of the work, as intrusions of another stage of composition or of another voice which no longer narrates, but gives judgement. Worse still, such interpretation compares the decontextualised ‘judgements’ it has isolated from the narrative and declares them inconsistent with each other. Such ‘extrinsic’ approaches to the interventions risk reducing Thucydides’ text to a patchwork of differing and competing voices and opinions.

The conflict between Prometheus and Zeus has long dominated critical discussion of the play and diverted attention from the only mortal to appear onstage. Prometheus is widely applauded as humanity's saviour and Zeus condemned as an oppressive tyrant, but the fate of the maiden Io is largely discounted. Her encounter with Prometheus, however, is the longest and most complex episode in the play, and it provides a very different perspective on events. The elaborate forecast of her journeys delivered by Prometheus deploys the ‘discourse of barbarism’ to picture a primitive world ravaged by savage violence and hostile monsters. The lands through which Io is to travel are devoid of the civil and religious institutions of the classical Greek polis and oikos. Yet the episode also foretells how this barbaric world will evolve under the aegis of Zeus. Argive Io, as ‘wife’ of Zeus, will found a ‘new family’ of mortals who will introduce and champion the norms of Greek civic culture in his and her name alike. Prophecy, allusion and foreshadowing thus reveal the Zeus of this play to be not the harsh and destructive despot imagined by most today, but the benevolent source and ultimate arbiter of justice for both gods and humanity.

Mr. Newton in his History of Discoveries, p. 583, gives the following account of an excursion to the peninsula which lies to the west of Budrum (Halikarnassus) where he was then excavating:—

We next proceeded to examine the hill with the level top. This hill is called Assarlik.

Ascending from this gateway we passed several other lines of ancient walls, and on gaining the summit of the hill found a platform artificially levelled. There are not many traces of walls here. The sides of the hill are so steep on the north and east that they do not require walls. The platform terminates on the north-east in a rock rising vertically for many hundred feet from the valley below. The top of the rock is cut into beds to receive a tower. The view from this platform is magnificent.

[After brief mention of several tombs passed in the way down, Mr. Newton proceeds:]

The acropolis which anciently crowned the rock at Assarlik must have overlooked a great part of the peninsula and commanded the road from Halicarnassus to Myndus and Termera. From the number of tombs here, and their archaic character, it may be inferred that this was a fortress of some importance in very early times.

1. I happened to be staying in Constantinople in the late summer of 1922 as the guest of General Sir Charles Harrington, and I was there when the Chanak crisis of that year arose. I visited the Narrows of the Dardanelles at a time when Kemal's leading troops were approaching the Asiatic coast of the Dardanelles, and there was then naturally much debate as to whether and how he would attempt to cross into Europe. It occurred to me at the time that it would be of interest to study what Xerxes had done 2402 years previously, and on returning to Constantinople I borrowed a Herodotus from the American College, and when the crisis had died down I went back with it to the Dardanelles. In that district, during the dry season, the problem of water supply looms large, and I was at once struck on reading Herodotus by the fact that this had been also Xerxes' chief difficulty, in that portion of his march which took him from the Scamander, the modern Mendere, across the Hellespont to the Hebrus, the modern Maritza.

Moments before Euripides' Polyneices and Eteocles square off for their final, fatal battle in the Phoenissae, each prays for divine assistance (1359–76). Their prayers, though very brief, are by the standards of Greek drama rather formal. Polyneices, as Theban as his brother Eteocles, is leading a force of Argives against Thebes to recover the kingship he claims is rightfully his. As he prays he looks toward distant Argos and invokes ‘Lady Hera’, for, he says, ‘I am now yours, because I married Adrastus’ daughter and dwell in his land' (1364–6). He has left his homeland, married into an Argive family, and now lives in Argos, and he must therefore appeal to an Argive deity. Hera is here made a doubly appropriate recipient of his prayer—by locality as patroness of the Argolid and by function as protectress of marriage, her two major roles in the religion of Greek life and tragedy. Eteocles, commanding the home forces against invaders, looks to the nearby temple of ‘Pallas of the golden shield’. He invokes her as the ‘daughter of Zeus’ and, like Polyneices but less explicitly, explains why he appeals specifically to her. He wishes to kill ‘the man who has come to sack my fatherland’ (1372–6). This Athena ‘of the golden shield’ is patroness of Thebes and, in more general terms, a goddess who aids the city in defence against foreign invaders. Like Hera she is doubly appropriate, in terms of locale and function, to her worshipper's needs.

When is it rational to commit suicide? More specifically, when is it rational for a Platonist to commit suicide, and more worryingly, is it ever not rational for a Platonist to commit suicide? If the Phaedo wants us to learn that the soul is immortal, and that philosophy is a preparation for a state better than incarnation, then why does it begin with a discussion defending the prohibition of suicide? In the course of that discussion, Socrates offers (but does not necessarily endorse) two arguments for the prohibition of self-killing, at least in most circumstances, which have exerted a long and powerful influence over subsequent discussion of the topic, particularly in theist contexts. In the context of the Phaedo itself, however, this introductory conversation plays a crucial role in setting the agenda for the remainder of the dialogue and offering an initial discussion of the major concerns of the argument as a whole. In particular, the discussion of the nature of suicide is intimately bound up with Socrates' conception of true philosophy as a ‘preparation for death’, the relationship between soul and body, and the immortality of the soul. My intention is to provide a reading of that passage (61e-69e) which asks whether the Phaedo can offer a philosophically satisfying distinction between suicide and philosophy and how it relates to other ancient philosophical attitudes to self-killing. I argue that Socrates does not think that being dead is always preferable to being alive, and that the religious views expressed in the passage are consistent with his general stance on the benevolence of the gods.

‘Daphnis & Chloe: A most sweet & pleasant Pastoral Romance for Young ladies by George Thornley, Gent. … 1657.’ The well-known title-page of the first English translation of Longos from the original is characteristic of the attitude which has always prevailed towards this work. If we turn to the present day we find that the latest translator into English writes in his introduction ‘Daphnis and Chloe was only meant to be “a source of pleasure for the human race”, and might have been described by a second-century Graham Greene as an “entertainment”’. The intervening three centuries provide some acknowledgments of Longos' skill in individual departments—the description of nature, for example, or the management of plot—but taking the work as a whole scarcely any reader seems to have regarded it as more than an amorous triviality with a country setting; enjoyable in its pastoral descriptions; enjoyable in its amorous passages (or shocking, according to the taste of the reader); essentially trivial.

It is my object to argue that this view, by taking account of only one side of the book, misrepresents it as a whole. Longos meant us to find in his work a serious import, as well as entertainment, and the way in which he realises this intention in all the details of the story makes of it a serious work of art.

The account of the reforms of Ephialtes given in the Aristotelian Ath. Pol. (25) is as follows:

For about seventeen years after the Persian Wars the constitution lasted unchanged with the members of the Areopagus pre-eminent, despite a gradual decline (καίπερ ύποφερομένη κατά μικρόν). With the increase of the mass of citizens [if that is the right way to understand the phrase αύξανομένου τοῦ πλήθους] on becoming leader of the People Ephialtes, the son of Sophonides, who was thought to be both uncorrupt and just in his attitude to the constitution, attacked the Council [sc. of the Areopagus]. First, he brought down many individual Areopagites, by bringing lawsuits against them for their acts of administration. Then in the year when Conon was archon (i.e. 462/1) he had removed from them all the additional functions (τὰ έπί'θετα) by means of which they guarded the constitution (δι’ ὧν ἧν ή τῆς πολιτείας φυλακή) and accorded some to the Council of the Five Hundred and some to the People and the Courts.

One day in the year 326 of our era Nicagoras, torch-bearer of the Eleusinian mysteries, made his way unsuspectingly past the buried tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings near Thebes, and climbed towards the entrance of the tomb immediately above it. Though it had itself long since been robbed, the making of Ramses VI's sepulchre had at least produced a generous scree, to which Tutankhamun owed his current oblivion and future fame. Scrambling cautiously over this, and the accumulation of sand and stones in the tomb's entrance, Nicagoras followed his dragoman down a long corridor. We can tell from its thick encrustation of graffiti that this tomb was by far the most popular with visitors; and Nicagoras's practised guide knew exactly what appealed to the different sorts of people who made up his clientèle. Learning that the Athenian was a priest, and a cultured man with philosophical interests, he made a point of stopping in front of a scene which shows the soul standing before Osiris, the god of the dead, thanks to which this tomb is sometimes called the ‘Tomb of Metempsychosis’.

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.

The eleventh ode of Bacchylides begins and ends at Metapontum. But most of it is devoted to two myths about Tiryns. The first of these is the insult to Hera by the daughters of King Proitos and their consequent madness: they leave Tiryns to roam in the wild, until with the permission of Hera they are cured by Artemis, to whom they then build, with their father, an altar. The second is the earlier quarrel at Argos between the brothers Proitos and Akrisios which led to the foundation by Proitos of Tiryns. The latter myth is framed by the former, and the correspondences between the two are carefully implied: the story of the Proitids begins and ends with the foundation of the altar and cult of Artemis at Lousoi in the Arcadian mountains (41, 110), while the inner story begins and ends with the foundation of Tiryns (60-1, 80-1). Just as the girls’ departure from Tiryns led to the establishment of the altar, so the men left Argos and founded Tiryns. Both the joins between the stories are cemented by the idea of departure from a town (55-61, 80-4). Both stories move from a strange piece of folly to consequent suffering, prayers, divine ‘stopping’ of the suffering (76, 108), and finally the building of walls or altar. Similarly Alexidamos, deprived of an earlier Olympic victory by the ‘wandering wits’ of the judges, is now having his Pythian victory celebrated at Metapontum.

The ode celebrates a number of victories (all of them, as we shall see, in the δόλιχοϲ, the ‘long’ race) won by a certain Ergoteles, of Himera in Sicily. It is not in any proper sense an Olympian at all: the first victory mentioned was at Olympia, which is why the ode was classified by Aristophanes of Byzantium among the Olympians; but the most recent of the victories, the immediate occasion of the ode, was won not at Olympia but at Pytho.

The ode begins with an invocation of Fortune, and a prayer that she should protect the victor's city. From this it proceeds, in the regular fashion of the Greek hymn, to a statement of Fortune's power; and this statement then merges into a gnomic passage on the instability and unpredictability of human affairs, from which in turn we emerge to the victor and to his changing fortune and final success.

Empedocles' Fragment 100 contains an account of ‘the way that all things breathe in and out’. It may conveniently be divided into three sections:

A. Lines 1–5, the apparatus of breathing.

B. Lines 6–8, the manner in which breathing takes place.

C. Lines 8–25, an illustration taken from the working of the klepsydra.

I shall discuss the fragment under thesethree headings.

A. The Apparatus of Breathing

These lines (1–5) are translated as follows by Diels-Kranz: ‘Also aber atmet alles ein und aus: Allen sind blutarme Fleischröhren über die Oberfläche des Körpers hin gespannt, und an ihren Mündungen ist mit vielen Ritzen durchweg durchbohrt der Haut äusserste Oberfläche, so dass zwar das Blut drinnen geborgen bleibt, der Luft aber freier Zutritt durch die Öffnungen gebahnt ist.’ Thus the picture which Diels gives us is of tubes running out to the skin all over the body, and at the ends of the tubes perforated flaps of skin which will allow the passage of air but not of blood. The tubes are, furthermore, only partly filled with blood.

This line of interpretation has been followed by most scholars since, and it appears to derive some reinforcement from Aristotle, who in his comment on the passage at de respiratione 7, p. 473, b 1 ff., says: ‘They have passages through to the outer air.’ The ‘outer air’ would appear to mean the outer air outside the body, and we might therefore be tempted to suppose that Aristotle meant to say that these tubes ended up at the surface of the skin.

The bridging of the Hellespont by Xerxes was a unique achievement. How was it done? The Chorus of Elders in Aeschylus' Persians expressed their wonder at ‘the flax-bound raft’, and Herodotus described the construction of the two bridges, each with warships as pontoons, with cables well over a kilometre long, and with a roadway capable of carrying a huge army. Classical scholars have generally found these accounts inadequate and even inexplicable, especially in regard to the relationship between the pontoons and the cables. The Hellespont has strong currents which vary in their direction, turbulent and often stormy waters, and exposure to violent winds, blowing sometimes from the Black Sea and sometimes from the Mediterranean. How were the warships moored in order to face the currents and withstand the gales? Did the warships form a continuous platform, or was each ship free to move in response to weather conditions? What was the function of the enormous cables? How and where were they made? Did they bind the pontoons together? Did they carry the roadway? How were they fixed at the landward ends? This article attempts an answer to these questions through the collaboration of a classical scholar and a mechanical engineer.

The recent discovery in Bahrain of a Greek inscription, dating to the 120s BC, transforms our understanding of the Arab-Persian Gulf in the Hellenistic period. The inscription, recording the dedication of a shrine to the Dioskouroi on behalf of the first independent king of Characene, indicates that Bahrain was a garrisoned node within the Seleucid Empire and the centre of the previously unknown archipelagic administrative district ‘Tylos (Bahrain) and the Islands’. Seleucid and Characenian control of Bahrain is placed within the longue durée political history of relations between southern Mesopotamia and Dilmun. The cultic dedication to the Dioskouroi traces the consciously Hellenizing modalities of Characenian emancipation from the Seleucid Empire and the development of a coherent maritime religious network in the Gulf.

This paper examines the range of symbolic associations surrounding the relief sculpture (Democracy crowning the Athenian people) that accompanied the law proposed by Eukrates against the establishment of tyranny. It examines some of the investments made in it by various communities and individuals. The role of personifications in political allegory is examined. This analysis shows both the potency of personifying representations of the Athenian people and the interpretative complexities that they create.