Democritus' theory of vision combines the notions of images (εἴδωλα) streaming from objects and air imprints, which gives him the resources to account for the perception of the relative size and distance of objects, not just their characteristics. This perspectival explanation of the visual theory accommodates important but overlooked evidence from Vitruvius. By comparing Democritus' theory with ancient developments in visual representation, my analysis provides a new approach to the evidence of atomist vision. I begin with the process of vision before turning to the Peripatetic objections, showing how a unified theory of vision takes into account all of the ancient testimony and provides possible atomist responses to the criticisms raised against it. I also identify the importance of vision via air imprints as an important metaphor for the conventionality of sensible qualities. Understanding these fundamental issues puts us in a better position to assess Democritus' place in the development of ancient optics and of atomist approaches to sense perception.

Much has been written, in recent books and articles on early Greek history, of the so-called ‘trade-leagues,’ whose existence is thought to be implied by the statements of ancient writers about the feuds and alliances of the Greek cities before the Persian Wars. This conception is stimulating and in part sound, but over-simplified and ‘diagrammatic’; it is very easy, where the evidence is so incomplete, to make too much of such information as we have. The ‘trade-leagues’ did exist, but they must have been extremely loose-knit. Evidence of formal organisation such as we should naturally associate with the word ‘league’is wholly lacking. Miletus, Chios, Eretria and their allies—Samos, Chalcis, Corinth and their allies—form, each group, an entente cordiale rather than an alliance properly so called; and certain states, notably Naxos and Paros, seem to transfer their allegiance from one side to the other as circumstances dictate.

The examination of the cleroterium by Sterling Dow left few questions connected with it untouched. His publications on this ingenious device are as follows: ‘Allotment Machines', Prytaneis: A Study of the Inscriptions Honoring the Athenian Councillors, Hesperia, Suppl. i (1937) 198–215, with photographs (hereafter referred to as P); ‘Aristotle, the Kleroteria, and the Courts’, HSCP 1 (1939) 1–34 (hereafter referred to as H); ‘Kleroterion’, in PW, Suppl. vii (1940), col. 322–328 (hereafter referred to as PW). G. Klaffenbach summarised Dow's analysis in ‘Antike Losungsapparate’, Die Antike xiv (1938) 353–355. Prior to Dow, notice of one fragment of a cleroterium was published by B. Tamaro, ‘Pianta Epigrafica dell’ Acropoli', ASAA iv/v (1921–22) 63 nr. 124. P has clear photographs of all remains then known. There are drawings in PW based on the drawing of I and photographs of I, II, III, X, and XI in P—Dow labelled the remains with roman numerals; I follow his labelling. Drawings in P are found opposite the photographs of I and of VI; in H, as frontispiece. Since Dow's publications appeared, there has been no reconsideration of his work nor any re-examination of his reconstruction. This is proof of the quality of his work.

In 1960 when I first studied Dow's reconstruction, I relied on the excellent and revealing photographs in P. My own mechanical aptitude made me feel uneasy over certain small details in the reconstruction.

This study concerns navigation in a geographical sense and in the sense of the reader finding a way through a complex text with the help of points of reference. Recent studies in Athenaeus have suggested that he was a more sophisticated writer than the second-hand compiler of Hellenistic comment on classical Greek authors, which has been a dominant view. Building on these studies, this article argues that Athenaeus' approach to his history of ancient dining draws on traditional poetic links between the symposium and the sea, and expands such metaphors with a major interest in place and provenance, which also belongs to the literature of the symposium. Provenance at the same time evokes a theme of imperial thought, that Rome can attract to herself all the good things of the earth that are now under her sway. Good things include foods and the literary heritage of Greece now housed in imperial libraries. Athenaeus deploys themes of navigation ambiguously, to celebrate diversity and to warn against the dangers of luxury. Notorious examples of luxury are presented – the Sybarites and Capuans, for example – but there seem to be oblique warnings to Rome as well. Much clearer censure is reserved for the gastronomic poem of Archestratus of Gela, which surveys the best cities in which to eat certain fish. The Deipnosophists deplore the immorality of the poet and his radical rewriting of their key authors Homer and Plato, while at the same time quoting him extensively for the range of his reference to geography and fish. This commentary on Archestratus is a good example of the Deipnosophists' guidance to the reader, Roman or otherwise, who wishes to ‘navigate’ the complicated history of the Greek deipnon and symposium.

The excellent report by H.-R. Schwyzer in his long article on Plotinus in R.-E. (Bd. XLI (1951), col. 477–81), presents the reader with a picture of the present state of research concerning Ammonius, while giving a critique of previous discussions. A significant feature of the situation is this: simultaneously with the endeavour to obtain a clear picture of Ammonius's doctrine from the reports in Nemesius of Emesa and Hierocles (Photius, Bibl. cod. 214 and 251)—reports whose upper and lower limits are controversial—a new and fruitful attempt has been made to work back to Ammonius as the common source behind numerous concordances between Plotinus and Origen. Following the lead of René Cadiou, who, in his epoch-making work La jeunesse d'Origène (Paris, 1935), demonstrated the importance of Ammonius for the development of the theology of Origen, de Jong has given a convenient conspectus of the parallels between Plotinus and Origen (Plotinus of Ammonius Saccas, Leiden, 1941). But this gives rise to some problems of general procedure. What justification is there for Schwyzer's assertion (op. cit. 480. 65) that ‘it is a priori improbable that Plotinus would have studied the writings of Origen’? This depends upon the presupposition that Christianity, and in particular its theology, during the years of Plotinus's studies at Alexandria, was of far too slight importance, intensive or extensive, to have had any influence upon a man of the spiritual calibre of Plotinus.

Throughout the Peloponnesian War, no state remained as aggressively hostile toward Athens as Corinth. Following the affairs of Corcyra and Poteidaia, Corinth successfully argued that war be declared against Athens. After ten years of fighting, when Sparta agreed to the Peace of Nikias, Corinth refused to accept its terms and make peace with Athens. We know that Corinth and Athens were directly engaged in hostilities in 419 and 416 and were on opposing sides in the fighting between Epidauros and Argos in 418. After Athens sent forces against Sicily in the summer of 415, Corinth voted independently to support Syracuse and encouraged Sparta to increase hostilities against Athens in both Greece and Sicily. When the Peloponnesian War came to an end in 404 with the final Athenian defeat, Corinth continued to oppose peace with Athens and urged that the city be destroyed.

About the mid-seventh century, polychrome styles of vase painting appeared in five different Greek wares, and in a sixth ware a short time after. By polychrome here is meant the use of a light brown or reddish brown paint for male flesh in human figure scenes, to go with the normal colours found on seventh-century Greek vases, black, red and white. The use of this light brown or reddish brown paint may have begun a little earlier, e.g. for parts of animals, but it would be confusing to call this partial polychrome and to regard this as a preliminary step towards the distinctive use of brown for male human flesh. The six wares in which polychrome vases appear are Protocorinthian, Protoattic, Argive, Naxian, ‘Melian’ (likely from Paros), and a ware found at Megara Hyblaea. Except for ‘Melian’ polychrome which continues to the end of the seventh or early sixth century, each of these polychrome styles flourishes for a brief time and then disappears.

In the National Museum of Athens there is a cup—formerly part of the Empedocles collection—which Beazley has attributed to an artist near the Pithos Painter, an early red figure cup-painter of the coarser wing; its approximate date would be the last decade of the sixth century. In the interior (plate XIIa) it bears the representation of a youth removing a big circular rock from an altar-shaped supporting feature. The scene has been interpreted by Beazley as the punishment of Sisyphus. Zancani-Montuoro, although with some reservations, includes the cup in her catalogue of the representations of Sisyphus before the end of the archaic period. Her hesitation concerns the age of the stone-lifter: ‘La figura della kylix Empedocles e molto simile per atteggiamento’ (i.e. to the Louvre cup G 16 with Sisyphus painted by Epiktetos—to which, incidentally, she gives the wrong number G 20) ‘ma la mancanza di barba e le proporzioni efebiche (l'esilità degli arti in ispecie) possono far sospettare che il personaggio mitico sia stato franteso o il suo schema adattato ad una rappresentazione del genere.’

Of peculiar interest among the Arundel marbles of the Pomfret donation at Oxford, is a slab in the shape of a pediment, ‘in which there is in basso relievo the figure of a man as big as the life with his arms extended as if he was crucified, but no lower than about his paps is seen, the cornice cutting him off as it were; and this extension of his arms is called a grecian measure, and over his arm is a grecian foot.’ The marble thus described by George Vertue, the engraver, was first published in Chandler's Marmora Oxoniensia, Pt. I., Pl. lix., No. 166, but its importance was completely overlooked until the late Prof. Matz, in one of his last papers, published a better drawing and pointed out the artistic interest of the relief as a sculpture belonging to a rather early period of Greek art. On the other hand, the merit of the monument as an authentic document of Greek metrology was set forth, at my request, by my friend Dr. Fr. Hultsch, the author of Griechische Metrologie, whose views are repeated in my Ancient Marbles in Great Britain. The chief result of his exposition was that our relief unites in a most interesting way the indication of the length of a fathom (ὀρλυιά) of 2·06 or 20·07 m. with that of a foot of 0·295 m., which is not, as one might expect, the sixth, but exactly the seventh part of the fathom. As such a division of the fathom does not agree with the well-known facts of Greek metrology, Hultsch imagined that the foot on our marble might rather be a modulus used by sculptors and architects, and he observed that the recent excavations of Olympia seem to show the dimensions of some of the temples, particularly of the very old temple of Heré, to be based on a double measure, on a foot but little longer (of 0·298 m.), as well as on a fathom of 2·084 m. which, again, corresponds to seven of those feet.

En divers passages de ses Vies des philosophes et des sophistes, Eunape de Sardes livre des indications autobiographiques qui ont permis à certains historiens de dater plusieurs événements de sa vie. Dans sa seizième année (63.24–25=485B; 79.14–15=493B), Eunape fut envoyé par sa famille à Athènes pour étudier la rhétorique. A son arrivée, il fut enrôlé parmi les disciples du sophiste Prohérésius (64.8–65.14=485–6B; 79.15–16=493B). Le maître était alors, ainsi qu'il l'apprit lui-même à Eunape, dans sa quatre-vingt-septième année (63.25–64.1=485B). ‘Après une cinquième année’ (79.17=493B), Eunape ‘avait envie d'aller en Égypte’ (ἠπείγετο…εἰς τὴν Αἲγυπτον), sans doute pour poursuivre ses études, ‘mais ses parents en le rappelant en Lydie l'en empêchèrent’ (οἱ δὲ πατέρες καλοῦντες ἐπὶ Λυδίας ἐξεβιάσαντο); en fait, ‘une chaire de sophiste lui était proposée’ (κἀκείνῳ μὲν σοϕιστκὴ προὔκειτο) (79.17–20=493B). Prohérésius mourut quelques jours plus tard (79.20–21=493B).

Bacchylides' eleventh epinician ends not with renewed praise of the victor but with an extension to the ode's main myth which forges a link between the Arcadian cult of Artemis founded by Proetus and his daughters and the foundation of the victor's home city of Metapontum by Achaean colonists identified with the heroic captors of Troy. The culmination of the ode in praise of a successful colonial foundation, it is argued, is the key to the principles on which Bacchylides has selected and moulded the mythological elements that he deploys in the rest of the ode. Proetus' foundation of Tiryns resolves the civil strife which threatened to destroy Argos and commends colonization as a means of social and political progress; while the cult of Artemis at Lousoi, founded to expiate the Proetids' offence against Hera, emphasizes the role of marriage in maintaining the strength and solidarity of the community. The emphasis in both these myths on the divine intervention which rectifies human error links them to the experience of the victor and to the theme of the proper cultivation of the gods that is emphasized in the ode's conclusion. In constructing mythical narratives that are exemplary for the victor and his community, Bacchylides departs from mythological tradition in significant respects and in ways which suggest that the ode's argument reflects both the victor's status in the community and perhaps also the circumstances of its own performance.

The dialogue Xenophon stages at Cyropaedia 3.1.14–31 constitutes a sophisticated theoretical treatment of Greek foreign-policy motivations and methods, and offers an implicit rebuttal to Thucydides' realist theses about foreign relations. Comparison of this passage to the historians and Attic orators suggests that Xenophon was attempting to systematize conventional Greek conceptions: the resulting theoretical system, in which hybris is regarded as the main obstacle to interstate quiet, and control of other states depends not only upon fear but upon superior excellence and the management of reciprocity, is likely to approach closer than Thucydides' theses to mainstream classical Greek thinking about foreign relations.

Gordion, the principal city of Phrygia, was an important center for the worship of the major Phrygian divinity, the Great Mother of Anatolia, the Greek and Roman Cybele. Considerable evidence for the goddess's prominence there have come to light through excavations conducted at the site, first by Gustav and Alfred Körte and more recently by the continuing expedition sponsored by the University Museum in Philadelphia. These include sculptural representations of the goddess and numerous votive objects dedicated to her. The material pertinent to the goddess and her cult in Gordion during the most prominent period of Phrygian culture, the eighth and seventh centuries BC, is similar to that from other contemporary Phrygian centers. Even after the loss of Phrygian political independence in the seventh century, the cult of the goddess in Anatolia continued to flourish, and the older traditions of iconography and votive types were maintained. During the Hellenistic period, however, we see a different version of the goddess at Gordion. The earlier Phrygian forms of cult image and votive were gone, and in their stead are figurines and votive objects which are clearly of Greek inspiration. The Mother goddess was still at home in Gordion—several stone and terracotta representations of her from this period attest to that—but her visual image had become thoroughly Hellenized.

The Greek calendar has not received as much attention from students of Greek religion as it deserves. The data have been collected by Bischoff. Nilsson has always appreciated its importance, and his contributions to the subject have laid a broad and solid foundation for further research. Both Farnell and Harrison neglected it, and Deubner's Attische Feste (1932) is less adequate in this respect than Mommsen's Feste der Stadt Athen (1898). The question of intercalation was raised in an acute form by Fotheringham, and has never been satisfactorily solved. Meanwhile progress has been made in the study of the Egyptian and Babylonian calendars, with results that have an important bearing on the Greek. This paper does not pretend to be exhaustive. It is merely a discussion of some of the wider issues that arose in the course of an attempt to solve a particular problem—the peculiar method adopted at Olympia for fixing the date of the Games.

By comparison with Aeschylus and Sophocles, Euripides makes remarkable use of young children in his tragedies. There are vocal parts, sung by individual children in Alcestis and Andromache, cries off for the two boys in Medea, and a song for a supplementary chorus of boys in Supplices. Important episodes concern silent children on stage in Heracles and Troades, lesser roles occur in Hecuba and Iphigeneia in Aulis, and suppliant children may be on stage throughout Heracleidae. No children figure in the extant plays of Aeschylus, and Sophocles gives them silent parts only in Ajax and Oedipus Tyrannus. It seems reasonable to suppose that children are proportionally more central to Euripides’ idea of tragedy, and that individual plays might be studied from this angle. Accordingly I propose to analyse the part of the children in Alcestis, not with questions of methods of performance in mind, but for what the presence, action, utterance or absence of children at any point can tell us about the issues and themes of the play.

In JHS cv (1985) 108–28 M. Vickers makes far-reaching claims for the dependence of Attic fine pottery on metalwork. I take them more or less in his order. Bronze Age and not only in Greece, but perhaps he reckons such imitation a recurrent phenomenon. At any rate his principal concern is with mature Black-figure and Red-figure.

This paper forms a brief and synoptic study of the use made by Greek thinkers of explanations and causes that lie outside immediate sense-perception; and of the extent to which these unperceived causes outstripped not merely sense but also common-sense, so as to become, simply judged in themselves, unexpected, improbable, or paradoxical. I propose first to examine the main Presocratic philosophers and their predecessors, to discover how far their theories exceeded the range of sense-perception on the one hand and common-sense on the other; then to assess more briefly the reaction of the Sophists, Socrates and Plato, with some consideration of Aristotle and his successors and special attention to the concept of teleology. The aim of this survey, from which much will inevitably be omitted, is to direct from a fresh angle a slender ray of light on the nature of Greek speculative thought—on the character of its dogmatism and the character of its assumed clarity.

If philosophy is the search for causes, then it must soon concern itself with the unseen, with what lies beyond perception. Proximate causes of particular sensed events may be found in other sensed events; but the philosopher's attempt to explain man's experience as a whole requires the inference of causes and relationships outside the immediate range of direct physical experience.

Our party was camping this summer near Yalowadj on the actual site of the ancient Pisidian Antioch, when Mr. Kyriakides, a Greek resident in the town, brought us news of buildings and ‘written stones’ on the summit of a neighbouring peak. Such news in Asia Minor not infrequently leads to a mare's nest, as Prof. Sterrett found in this very district, but Mr. W. M. Calder of Brasenose College determined to test the information. Next day, accordingly, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Kyriakides, he and I set out for the mountain, and we were fortunate enough to find the long-lost ἱɛρόν of Men Askaenos. On the two following days Sir William and Lady Ramsay also visited the shrine, and took up some Turkish workmen to clear away a little of the débris encumbering the remains. Having no permit, we could not make any proper excavations, but merely opened up some of the inscriptions, and this only on a very limited scale. In the circumstances, we were unable to give, either to the inscriptions or to our more general observations, such a careful and minute study as we could have wished, so that this report is only provisional and nothing is to be taken as final until excavation confirms each point.

It is ‘commonly asserted’, says G. S. Kirk, and ‘almost universally assumed’, that Hesiod came ‘at the point of transition from mythopoeic to rational modes of thought’. H. Diller gives this ‘common assertion’ a more precise meaning: Hesiod represents ‘a bridge from mythical to philosophical thought (my emphasis). This view of Hesiod is justified in various different ways. Diller himself stresses the contrast Hesiod makes in the prooemion to the Theogony between what is true and what is false but resembles the true; this he interprets as the type of self-conscious rejection of rival accounts which is echoed in the work of the earlier Presocratics like Heraclitus. For O. Gigon this passage in the Theogony has a specific reference to Homer: Hesiodic ‘truth’ is there opposed to Homeric myth, Logos to Mythos. The Theogony is also philosophical both in so far as it is concerned with a search for beginnings, and because of the universality of its scope. In addition to these formal features, both Diller and Gigon find philosophical elements in the content of the poem, though on this point their conclusions differ sharply. Diller attributes to Hesiod himself that discovery which is often regarded as one of the main contributions of the Presocratics: the discovery that the world operates in accordance with impersonal laws. Gigon, by contrast, suggests that things in the Hesiodic world are seen as products of will, analogous to the products of human activity.

Through the kindness of Mr. Newton I was informed that the British Museum is now the possessor of an inscribed gold tablet found on the site of the ancient Petelia, in Southern Italy, which had been considered as lost after the death of Millingen, to whom it first belonged. The inscription was published by Franz in 1836, and after him by Göttling; afterwards it appeared in the third volume of the Corp. Inscr. Gr. No. 5,772, and recently again in Kaibel's Epigrammata Graeca ex Lapid. No. 1,037. Franz's first reading, from the original, was not quite satisfactory, and the modified reading given by him afterwards, and by the others, was not founded on the inspection of the original, a fac-simile of which was never published. Recent discoveries having thrown a new light on this monument I was glad to hear of its existence in the British Museum, and Mr. Newton kindly favoured my wish of seeing it published again more completely and exactly, with a fac-simile. He entrusted this task to Mr. Cecil Smith, to whose skilful accuracy we are indebted for the fac-simile here published, representing the monument slightly larger than its real size, as well as for the following explanatory note on the reading of the inscription.