The defeat at Marathon made it doubly necessary for the Persian government to undertake the subjugation of the Greeks across the sea. If there was ever to be peace on the Aegean that ‘Majuba’ must be ‘wiped off the slate.’

This time there was to be no mistake. The expedition was long and carefully prepared, and was planned on an enormous scale. The number of Xerxes' host cannot indeed be demonstrated, but it may be estimated with some probability, and the historian is bound to attempt an estimate. No sane critic could accept the millions of Herodotus. Nor would many now be found to admit the 700,000 or 800,000 given with or without garniture by Isocrates, Ctesias, and the later authors who mostly depend upon Ephorus. These figures seem to have been deduced from Herodotus. In iv. 87, the land forces led by Darius against the Scyths are said to have numbered 700,000, and it is implied that they were the full levy of the entire empire. In viii. 100 and 113, Mardonius is to be left with 300,000, while Xerxes goes home with the larger part of the army (cf. Thuc. i. 73). In vii. 20, Xerxes' host is larger than that of Darius or any other on record.

There has been a tendency in recent studies of Aeschylus to exalt Zeus or Fate into a position of supremacy from which they dictate and determine the actions and the conditions of men. The argument of this paper is that Aeschylus believed men to be free in taking some actions and at the same time recognised the limitations which circumscribe the conditions of men. This argument is developed through a study of the issues which Aeschylus set forth in the Oresteia, and it leads on to an analysis of the meaning of Moira and of the extent of human responsibility.

I take as a starting point Professor H. Lloyd-Jones' interpretation of the guilt of Agamemnon. It expresses the exaltation of Zeus and the powerlessness of man in a precise and striking manner. In his view Agamemnon had no choice when he was faced with the demand for the sacrifice of his daughter at Aulis; and even if he had had a choice he could not have exercised it, because his power of judgement was taken away by Zeus. As Lloyd-Jones puts it, ‘Zeus is indeed determined that the fleet must sail; Agamemnon has indeed no choice. But how has Zeus chosen to enforce his will?…by sending Ate to take away his judgement so that he cannot do otherwise.’ Lloyd-Jones sees the same thing happen when Agamemnon is asked by Clytemnestra to walk on the purple carpet. ‘Zeus has taken away his wits. But why has Zeus done so? For the same reason as at Aulis; because of the curse.’ Agamemnon is seen as a puppet, of which the strings are pulled by Zeus. But Agamemnon is only one figure in what Lloyd-Jones describes as ‘the grand design of Zeus’.

We may regard Imperial religion as having two main elements, the piety of public life or of the family on the one hand, the more intense piety of the small group or of the devout individual on the other. These two, though differing, are not to be regarded as opposites; they rest on the basis of common conceptual forms and of common beliefs, deepened and enlarged in the second case. In both we find μυστήρια, in both also the intimate association of the well-being of city or Empire with the ritual. Even in its individualism this religion is not consciously individualist; the possessor of religious experience may regard what has been manifested to him as a revelation of truth that all men share. Religion in either form is distinct from magic, if we mean by that term the individual's attempt to put supernatural forces in harness for his own ends. Such magic is different from religion and can be quite divorced therefrom. Nevertheless, such isolation is not characteristic of the Empire. The religious practised magic, and it could hardly be said that in their belief they were free from magical conceptions; the later Neoplatonists, in their attempt to spiritualise and revive paganism, took magic under their protection.

The relation of Sparta to the other Greek states in the early days of Greek history has been little examined and less understood. As a result two erroneous hypotheses have found their way into the stock-in-trade of the ancient historian. The first of these is that the development of Sparta was quite exceptional and unique among the Greek states; the second is that the foreign policy of Sparta was wholly opportunist, or, so far as a guiding principle can be traced, was mainly influenced by the domestic question of the helots.

It is the object of this article to prove:—

(1) That down to 550 Sparta underwent a political development closely analogous to that of the rest of Greece.

Bringing it all back home, Odyssey xxiv holds an encounter with narration in the relative calm of Laertes' garden, a final and significant retrospection and re-narration of narrative. Always ‘une mise en scène du Père’, Narrative invites us to relive with Odysseus the ‘inferential walk’ on which his father once took him through the trees of his childhood. We explore with and through him the force of narration in forming his (or any?) life-story. Of the signs that persuade father to recognize son, the scar on Odysseus’ thigh has sutured healthy readings; the fruit-trees in Laertes’ orchard have scarcely picked their weight. This essay explores the sign of the trees, beginning with its interaction with the scar, as the staging of an exemplary model of cultural/narrative productivity.

The structures along the west side of the Athenian Akropolis have long delighted visitors approaching the site and have challenged scholars for generations. By happy coincidence a variety of different studies has recently been published which emphasized different aspects of the approaches to the citadel and once again remind us of the many problems still remaining to be solved.

Ira S. Mark concentrated on the shrine of the Athena Nike. He dealt primarily with the Mycenaean bastion enclosed within the later ashlar masonry of the classical podium, the various early remains of the shrine, which lie roughly 1.30 m. below the floor level of the classical temple, and the historical background of the temple itself. He published a few of the many early drawings of the bastion made by Nikolaos Balanos and his associates and re-examined the early walls crowning the archaic bastion, which he divided into various stages. Although, in my opinion, his chronology needs adjustment, his division of the walls built along the edges of the basion into different phases helps us to understand in more detail the history of the site and is a welcome addition. One of these earlier walls, which had long been considered to be Mycenaean, was dated by Mark to a much later phase (Fig. 1, 15). He suggested that the wall was a post-Mycenaean addition built in this position to enclose the east side of the shrine. This wall lies parallel to the West Cyclopean Wall and had been thought to represent the eastern limit of the bastion. The fragmentary remains of this wall, which are no longer visible, were originally recorded by Panagiotis Kavvadias and Georg Kawerau and its existence has bedeviled all attempts to restore a Mycenaean gate in this area.

This note is meant to comment on a point arising out of P. A. Brunt's and G. T. Griffith's articles on Alexander's cavalry (JHS lxxxiii (1963) 27 fr. (at 42 ff.) and 68 ff.). In the course of their arguments, they examine two passages in which Arrian lists the grievances which, by 324, the Macedonian soldiers felt against Alexander. Brunt examines vii 6.2 f. and comes to the conclusion that the grievances there listed were mainly recent, and that the reorganisation of the cavalry into four (and soon five) hipparchies, as well as the admission of Orientals to them, took place after the Gedrosian disaster. Griffith examines vii 8.2 and concludes from this passage that some Orientals served inside the hipparchies during the Indian campaign. I here wish to point out that the two passages concerned need closer scrutiny.

It is important to notice that they must be taken closely together. In 6.2 f. we have (i) the epigoni; (ii) the King's ‘Medic’ dress; (iii) the Susa marriages; (iv) Peucestas' Orientalistn; (v) the integration of Orientals in the Companions (at length). In 8.2 we have (i) the King's ‘Persian’ dress; (ii) the epigoni; (iii) the integration of Orientals in the Companions (briefly). Chapter 6 is a λεγόμενον, its scene Susa; chapter 8 is from the main source (probably Ptolemy), its scene Opis. Chapter 8 leads on to the famous mutiny; chapter 6—obtrusively—fails to lead on to anything: in its place, it is a pointless interruption of the narrative.

It has long been seen that there were two distinct versions current in antiquity of the course of events after the late summer of 411, when Thucydides' History comes to its abrupt end. Xenophon's version survives in the original, but the alternative is preserved continuously only in Diodoros' epitome, generally brief and often distorted, and it can now be taken as established that this depends on the work of Ephoros, composed in the middle of the fourth century. For much of the time the two versions are most obviously distinguished by small differences of detail, numbers of ships or of casualties or the like, but often enough the divergence is more radical, and in such cases, down to this century, preference was usually though not invariably given to Xenophon as the contemporary source. Since the publication of the London fragments of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia it has been apparent that Ephoros made use of this work, written by a historian of high quality who was at least nearly contemporary with the events he described; and there has been much controversy over (e.g.) the irreconcilable accounts of Agesilaos' campaign towards Sardis in the summer of 395, in Hell.Oxy. 11 (with Diod. xiv 80) and in Xen. Hell. iii 4.20–4. The publication of the Florentine fragments by Bartoletti in 1949 invited us to compare divergent accounts of the Ionian War.

The federal union of the Ionian cities established on the coast of Asia Minor and on the adjacent islands has not yet been the subject of any comprehensive study. In the standard books on Greek federations it has received no more than passing mention. Freeman has made some instructive comments on it, but has not followed its fortunes beyond the earlier years of its existence; Swoboda has not found room for a description of it in his recent and up-to-date manual.

Thucydides' brief account of the events which have come to be known as the First Peloponnesian War has left considerable doubts about Sparta's precise role. Her first clearly attested expedition is that to help Doris in 458 or 457, but fighting had been going on for some two or three years before this and several members of the Peloponnesian League were involved in it. The question is whether Sparta and her League as a whole were also involved, and if so, from what date. Scholars have taken differing views on this problem and one of the most recent, and important, treatments of it firmly advocates an early commitment to war by Sparta and her League. It is the purpose of this paper to suggest a different interpretation of the evidence and to claim that it is one which fits better into the context of Spartan behaviour throughout the whole period c. 460–445 B.C.

The paper focuses on Herodotus' authorial self-representation, and on the problem of the intellectual tradition and genre(s) behind the Histories. The main assumption is that the opening sections of the work are a natural place to present its subject and principles to the public. Despite and beyond the notoriously loose grammatical structure of the first sentence, this paper offers a formal analysis of the whole ‘extended preface’ (incipit through 1.5.4), a carefully organized large-scale ‘pedimental composition’. A detailed examination of this structure yields the following results: (1) the stories about the abductions of women form an ironic attack against a peculiar model of causality of some contemporary Greek poets and writers, whose pragmatic outlook deprives the world of its ethico-religious dimension. (2) Conversely, Herodotus himself propounds a symbolic view of the world and seeks a monistic principle encompassing the past and the whole range of human experience. He ultimately finds it in the idea of the ‘cycle of human affairs’. This idea is the carefully stated subject of the Histories. (3) Although he belongs to the agonistic and display-oriented intellectual world of the sophistic era, Herodotus poses as a ‘sage’ capable of penetrating the whole variety of ‘all things’. Thus, he refers his reader to the tradition of wisdom literature. (4) Not unlike Thucydides, Herodotus' research into the greatest military conflict thus far forms in his view the best possible paradigmatic diagnosis of the human condition – much better than that of his fellow wise men (poets, philosophers, etc.) because based on the firm ground of verifiable historical data. (5) Although Herodotus is intent upon seeing the world from the standpoint of a single organizing principle, one of the most salient features of the Histories is the notion of the ‘marvellous’ (thômaston), which clearly elicits the pragmatic or factual attitude of the thinkers he dislikes. Many problems we experience when interpreting this author are due to the tension between the two attitudes. (6) This inherent breach in Herodotus' mind should be seen as a result not of a development or evolution of his work and thought, but of the contemporary debate between two diametrically opposed types of knowledge, viz. between the exponents of polymathiê, or Vielwisserei, and those of sophiê, or ‘wisdom’. Herodotus' contemporaries active in the field of arkhaiologia (including mythography, genealogy, etc.) and periêgêsis (geography, ethnography, etc.) were widely considered ‘polymaths’. Herodotus' ambition to apply the monistic (and symbolic) bent of wisdom literature to the subject-matter dominated thus far by the ‘pluralistic’ (and pragmatic) way of thinking was at least partly responsible for this discontinuity in his thought, but also accounts for the originality of the Histories.

Prior to 1918 the so-called Lycurgean reform at Sparta was dated not later than the ninth century B.C. AS Grote aptly said, ‘it would seem, in the absence of better evidence, that a date [about 830–820 B.C.] … is more probable than any epoch either later or earlier’. In 1918 Wilamowitz-Möllendorff published what he considered to be better evidence—a fragmentary poem which was ascribed by him to Tyrtaeus and which was believed to indicate that in the latter part of the seventh century B.C. the Spartan army was still brigaded by the three Dorian tribes, Hylleis, Pamphyloi, and Dymanes. In the light of this new evidence—new, that is, to us but not to the ancient authorities—he and other scholars have shifted the date of the reform by a couple of centuries or more into the late seventh or middle sixth century. The shift of date flouts all the other evidence of the ancient authorities (Tyrtaeus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristotle, Plutarch, etc.); in consequence these authorities are held to be mistaken, their manuscripts to be corrupt, their meanings to be other than they appear, or their views to be due to misconceptions which modern scholars can dispel. The result is that the ancient evidence has been severely tousled. The more logical the scholar is, the further he is impelled to discountenance all the other ancient evidence—once he has accepted Wilamowitz-Möllendorff's interpretation of the meaning of the new fragment. In this paper the view is advanced that the ancient authorities are in general sound both in manuscript and in meaning and that the new fragment does not yield the conclusive evidence for a late dating which has been supposed. It should also be noted that two of the supports on which the late dating once rested have been undermined by the re-dating of the archaeological evidence at Sparta and by the realisation that hoplite warfare commenced at Sparta c. 700 B.C. In Part I of the paper the ancient evidence is re-considered and in Part II the general conclusions are stated.

The vase reproduced on Pl. II. and in Figs. 1 and 2 was sold by Messrs. Sotheby in the summer of 1919, and is now in the collection of Mr. William Randolph Hearst of New York. It is unbroken and well preserved. The height is sixteen inches and a half, say forty-two centimetres. Photographs of both sides were published in the sale catalogue; but the drawings from which Pl. II. has been made have not been published before.

The shape of the vase is not a common one. It is a kind of amphora; and I use the word amphora, unqualified, to cover all those types in which the neck passes into the body with a gradual curve; instead of being set sharply off, as it is in the neck-amphorae, in the amphora of Panathenaic shape, and in the amphora with pointed foot.

Three types of amphora were used by the makers of red-figured vases. Type A, which has flanged handles and a foot in two degrees, is used by black-figure painters as early as the middle of the sixth century, is a favourite with the painters of the archaic red-figured period, and disappears about 460. Type B, which has cylindrical handles and a foot in the form of an inverted echinus, is older than type A; for it is used by Attic painters at the very beginning of the sixth century.

I am indebted to Sir Leonard Woolley for his invitation to publish the red-figured vases found in his excavations at Al Mina; to Mr. Martin Robertson, who has helped me in many ways, and was the first to notice many of the joins; to Mr. C. O. Waterhouse for the drawings and photographs. I give only a selection of the finds, but have omitted, I think, little of importance. The red-figure is all Attic.

The black-figure from Al Mina is scanty, poor, and no older than the earliest red-figure sherds found there, which are from eye-cups:—

1. Three fragments of an eye-cup. The largest measures 0·041 m. across. A, part of the left-hand eye; shank and heel of the figure, cutting across the tear-gland. B, part of the left-hand eye and of the ground-line. The fragment not figured gives another bit of eye. Not one of the very earliest eye-cups: about 525.

2. There is no saying whether a third fragment of an eye-cup belongs to the last or not: the cup was bilingual, and part of the b.f. interior remains, a centaur with a stone in his right hand: greatest breadth 0·060 m.

Red-figure does not become plentiful at Al Mina until well on in the third quarter of the fifth century. In the fourth century the import increases. There is little archaic red-figure, and most of what there is belongs to the end of the period.

In the sketch of the pottery of Knossos that appeared in the Journal of Hellenic Studies for 1903, pp. 157–205, it was sought to give a general account of Knossian ceramic development on the basis of such finds as were to hand up to date.

Since then, however, further evidence has been accumulating such as serves to bring into clearer outline particular phases in development. This happens to be specially true of the Middle Period. The object, accordingly, of the present paper, which I undertake by kind permission of Dr. Arthur Evans, is to examine the new ceramic materials in so far as they are illustrative of the successive phases of Middle Minoan ceramic development.

The results of a special examination of the pottery found in Early Minoan deposit up to date are to the effect that the two kinds of ground, respectively light and dark, coexist from the very beginning of the use of paint in Cretan ceramics. Thus it can no longer be a question of the one kind of ground supervening upon the other at any later stage but only the problem of the relation to each other, throughout the course of their collateral development, of two kinds of background which co-exist from the beginning and so co-exist in virtue of a technical principle which is as old as any decorative art.

After exploring the north side of the Lycos valley, and before proceeding down the right bank of the Maeander towards Ortakche (see Part I. init.), we spent a short time in the Phrygo-Lydian borderland, seeking for some evidence to clear up the uncertainties attaching to the situation of Sala, Tralla, Aetos, Kallatebos, and Apollonos-Hieron. (See Plate IV.)

In discussing this district, I enjoy the advantage of having before me the work of three previous explorers, Prof. Ramsay, Prof. Radet, and the late Dr. Karl Buresch. I have been careful to quote the opinions of these critics, though I must sometimes differ from them, because it is convenient for the reader to have before him all the views that are, or have been, held in regard to each town. Amid a few differences, I find myself in general agreement with Prof. Ramsay and Dr. Buresch. In the development of their views from the earliest to the latest stage there is, happily, a steady approximation towards the same results; and yet, by a strange accident, this approximation was quite unconscious, for Dr. Buresch knew only Prof. Ramsay's earliest views, while Prof. Ramsay in his latest work had only a very imperfect knowledge of Dr. Buresch's earliest opinions. I regret that I am obliged to differ more widely from the results reached by M. Radet, and, as some readers might put a wrong construction on such expressions of dissent, I would here record my appreciation of the value of his fresh and suggestive work. When a subject is in process of growth, every suggestion and every fresh point of view are valuable, and it is only by due consideration and open criticism of all proposed combinations that we can cherish the hope of ultimately reaching, or approximating to, the truth.

Our knowledge of Greek Architecture depends almost entirely on its actual remains. Undoubtedly the Greeks themselves were much concerned with its more theoretical aspects, and in pursuit of this wrote a large number of treatises, descriptive and analytical, which are frequently referred to by our chief authority for ancient architectural theory, Vitruvius. Since, with one exception—and that only in part (Philo Mechanicus, named by Vitruvius vii praef. 14 as an author ‘de machinationibus’)—none of Vitruvius' Greek sources survives, we experience considerable difficulty in controlling the information he gives us about these aspects of Greek architecture, especially when we try to apply his various theories to the actual remains. First, for all we know, theories and techniques described with some prominence by Vitruvius may not have had a corresponding prominence in the Greek authorities, or actual practice. Secondly, a theory described by Vitruvius as apparently universal may actually have been very limited, either in scope or time. It is in fact true to say that many of Vitruvius' ideas of Greek architecture apply to the Hellenistic period only. Thus the passage on the spacing of columns (iii 3) must owe much to Hermogenes, two of whose temples are given as examples.

At least fifty small iron sickles were found in the pit on Rheneia to which the Athenians removed the contents of the Delos graves during the purification of 425 B.C. Various scholars have attempted to associate these with Thucydides' (i 8.1) report of the identification of Carian graves by the armour found in them on the occasion of the purification, and Herodotus' remark (vii 93) that Carian soldiers carried daggers and sickles (drepana). Similar sickles were also found in fifth-century graves on Rheneia, so the practice was clearly not a particularly ancient one in Herodotus' and Thucydides' day, but it was equally not a normal practice in any other part of Greece. The pit yielded the usual assemblage of Classical grave furniture with one notable exception — strigils — and it is worth considering whether, on Delos and Rheneia, these simpler small iron blades, like sickles, were employed as strigils. The usual Classical strigil is an elaborate affair of bronze with a curved hollow blade and shaped handle. It was used to scrape oil and dirt from an athlete's skin, a regular piece of palaestra equipment, and regarded as a peculiarly personal possession, like a man's favourite pipe or razor. On several Archaic and a few Classical gravestones the dead is characterised as an athlete with strigil and oil bottle, and strigils are very common offerings in Classical graves all over Greece. We would expect them on Delos: we have the ‘sickles’ instead. Clearly, for the purpose of removing oil from the body they would have served just as well. They are small for agricultural use (blades 10 to 17 cm. long) and with only one hole for fastening they could hardly be considered very sturdy implements.

During the last eighteen years our knowledge of Asia Minor has advanced by leaps and bounds, but all parts of the country have not shared alike in the general progress. Galatia in particular—we are now speaking of the country on this side of the Halys—has received comparatively little attention from archaeological travellers. Humann and Domaszewski's journey in 1882 and some journeys made by Prof. Ramsay in the following year and by Dr. Körte in 1894 (in the vicinity of the Sangarios) constitute the whole contribution that has been made to the exploration of this region since the publication of M. Perrot's Exploration de la Galatie (1862). A good deal has been done in the meantime by geographers to improve the modern map of the northern frontiers, notably by W. von Diest, whose work is always as nearly a picture of the country as can be attained without a regular survey. That he may be able to continue it is the fervent wish of all who are interested in Asia Minor. But there are few points fixed with any certainty on the ancient map, and there are large districts which are either hardly known (like the country near the great Salt Lake) or have never been visited at all.

The study of the Phrygian cities, the concluding part of which is here published, claims to be complete in the sense that it enumerates and places every polis, i.e. district, which had at any period a self-centred municipal existence; besides this it enumerates and discusses many villages and towns which formed part of the territory of these πόλϵις. The hope of the writer is to make a study of the local history of the whole central plateau of Asia Minor, tracing from the beginning of recorded history to the Mohammedan conquest the varying fortunes of every district, collecting the scanty indications of its social condition at different points in this long time, and essaying a picture of the growth and decay (which sometimes recur in a second cycle) of its civilization. The present study is restricted by the conditions of available space to the narrowest limits of a preliminary survey of the entire country of Phrygia. This survey is founded on certain principles, some of which are here enunciated for the first time, while others have been to a certain degree recognized and stated by M. Waddington and Professor Hirschfeld, though they have never been consistently applied and carried out to their logical conclusion. I may here briefly state them.