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.

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.

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.

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.

Ancient authors often cited each other inaccurately through misunderstanding or carelessness; and this can cause problems in the collecting of fragments of authors of whose works some, but not all, survive. For a distinction has to be made between inexact citations of extant works and citations which, although resembling such works, do in fact seem to derive from material now lost. Such problems occur repeatedly in connection with the botanical writings of Theophrastus; and one particular group of problems stems from a section in the epitome of Bk ii of Athenaeus.

The circumstances under which a find of impressed clay nodules was made in a Mycenaean house at Kato Zakro, in East Crete, in May 1901, are related in the Annual of the British School at Athens vii. p. 133. The nodules are of a fine clay baked, probably intentionally and not by the conflagration which destroyed the house, to varying shades of red. A great number are broken, but the more perfect, including many bearing two and three impressions, show a groove on one edge, about an eighth of an inch deep and a little more wide, scored with straight and oblique scratches. This is the impress of something Cylindrical, to which the nodule was pressed while still wet. The appearance of the clay in the grooves shows that this object was not textile, and it may most reasonably be supposed to have been a reed, perhaps a papyrus stalk. The number of nodules is in all about 500.

Passages from Plato often inspired in late antiquity a speculative profusion of ingenuities that can scarcely have been intended by the author. Even in the Timaeus, however, few passages could be found which were to undergo so much elaboration as the sparse and incidental remarks in the Sophist concerning Being, Life and Mind. These terms are given some prominence in the Enneads of Plotinus, where it remains nonetheless very difficult to reconstruct a hierarchical order either of dignity or of procession, or to give the triad that cardinal place in his system which is certainly accorded to the triad One-Mind-Soul. If the term Life is to take a place between Being and Mind it must be sharply distinguished from Soul, which is always inferior to the intellect in the ontology of the true Platonist. Plotinus is one of the most exact of philosophers, and if he fails to make the discriminations which would be necessary to anyone wishing to understand this nomenclature, it is because he is not expounding such a triad even as a subordinate part of his system: at most it might be thought to be implied or presupposed.

At the very beginning of the Delian Confederacy, in describing its organisation during the winter of 478–477 B.C., Thucydides records (i 96) that permanent arrangements were made for the collection of contributions in money from those cities which preferred to supply cash rather than ships for the furtherance of the new League's activities. These arrangements included the establishment of officials to receive, disburse, and be generally responsible for the cash funds, but Thucydides' brief account of their appointment has given rise to difficulties. He says, in the barest terms, The last four words are loosely attached to describe the office's function and are explicative of not what concerns us are the seven words before the comma.

Thucydides' phrase, with its emphatic clearly puts out of court the idea of E. M. Walker that the Hellenotamiae began when the tribute-lists began, i.e. in 454–453, when the treasury of the Confederacy was moved from Delos to Athens and Athenian control of it was more firmly secured. Walker's view was adequately refuted both by Gomme and by the authors of The Athenian Tribute Lists; it also runs contrary to the sense of Xenophon's remark (Poroi 5.5) about the acquisition of control of fleet and treasury by Athens. Since the Athenians commanded from 478, as the result of the treasurership must have been Athenian from the same date—or so, unless he be held to ignore all chronological distinctions, Xenophon clearly implies.

In a recent article which does much to enhance understanding of an important but neglected work, David M. Olster has drawn attention to the historical and political background against which George of Pisidia, panegyrist of the Emperor Heraclius (AD 610–641), composed his major surviving poem, the Hexaemeron. Olster rightly casts doubt on the validity of the distinct categories of ‘panegyrical’ and ‘theological’ into which George's poetry has traditionally been classified, and illuminates the significance of the Creation theme as a metaphor for political renewal at a time when the Byzantines achieved great victories against Persia after a prolonged period of disaster in the first decades of the seventh century. These observations lead him to the view that all of George's poetry should be interpreted in political and panegyrical rather than theological or religious terms.

According to Polybius, there took part in the battle of Ecnomus 680 quinqueremes and 290,000 men, i.e. crews 204,000 and troops 86,000; while in the next year, at the battle of the Hermaean promontory, 550 quinqueremes were engaged. The only figures comparable to these in Roman history, manifest absurdities apart, are those given by Appian for the battle of Naulochus, and perhaps those for Actium. At Naulochus 300 ships of all sizes are said to have been in action on either side, and no doubt Agrippa's fleet, at any rate, did amount to this large number; while at Actium Octavian may have had anything up to 400. But in Octavian's time the population of all Italy may have been 7 to 8 millions; the Mediterranean was almost a Roman lake, and its entire resources went to furnish the fleets for the civil wars.

Few sections in the whole of Book ii of Herodotus' History present such difficulties as Chapter 91. The problems posed are: first, what and where was Neapolis? Second, who was the Perseus mentioned by Herodotus? Third, how could the Χεμμîται, Egyptians by Herodotus' own admission, have retailed to Herodotus so thoroughly Greek a story as the tale of the sandal of Perseus? Fourth, how could Egyptians have set up gymnastic contests in the Greek fashion as Herodotus claims that they did? The present article is intended to offer a solution to all of these problems.

Where uncertainty is so rife it is perhaps reassuring to find some data which can be regarded as beyond dispute. The geographical position of the city of Chemmis at least is certain. It was the capital of the Ninth Nome of Upper Egypt, usually called Πανὸς πόλις or Πανῶν πόλις by later writers, and stood, as the survival of the name proves, on the site of the modern town of Akhmîm.

The starting-point of this article was Cornford's essay, ‘A Ritual Basis for Hesiod's Theogony’, recently published in The Unwritten Philosophy. He showed it to me soon after he had written it in 1942. It is only a sketch, but it struck me at once as important, because it opens a new approach to the conclusion he had reached many years before in From Religion to Philosophy. I told him this and begged him to pursue the subject, but he smiled and said, ‘I leave that to you’. Hence the title of this article, which is a tribute to his memory.

His From Religion to Philosophy appeared in 1913. In the same year Eduard Norden published his Agnostos Theos: Untersuchungen zur Formengeschichte religiöser Rede. In this study, starting from the Sermon on the Areopagus, Norden shows that the Greek and Latin authors employ, in poetry and prose, certain forms of speech, liturgical in origin, which can be traced independently in the Old Testament. The two streams, the Hellenic and the Hebrew, drawn from Babylonia and Egypt, were reunited in Christianity, notably by St. Paul, who, in virtue of his birth and upbringing, was equally well versed in both. Later, in the Byzantine liturgy, they were reinforced by a third stream, the Syrian, of the same ultimate origin.

In preparing an article on the Erinyes in the Oresteia, to be published in JHS 1983, I found it necessary to define my attitude to a number of subsidiary issues (whether or not I felt able to solve them). I shall discuss some of these issues here, under two general headings, by way of preface to the main article.

I wish to consider three questions: when and how the chorus appears, where Apollo enters, and whether Apollo is accompanied by Hermes.

Most scholars have supposed that the chorus, or some of it, is seen by the audience immediately after the Pythia's second exit at 63. Oliver Taplin, however, in his admirable book on Aeschylus, has argued that none of the chorus becomes visible until 140, immediately before the Parodos. His first argument for this later entry is that we have only one parallel, namely Euripides' Supp., for the chorus's presence in the orchestra well before its first song. True enough, but how many parallels do we need? There are only three extant tragedies in which the chorus is so much a party to the action that its silent presence could possess some dramatic point; two of these are Eum. and Euripides' Supp., and the third is Aeschylus' Supp., which, since it begins with the Parodos, cannot affect the issue either way. So the anomaly, such as it is, will merely be a by-product of the totally anomalous character of the chorus of Eum.; one could just as well point out that this is the only extant tragedy in which the chorus is addressed before its first song in an extended rhesis.

This short article concentrates upon a very small part of the material culture of Thasos in an attempt to show how knowledge and discussion of the local archaeology can not only elucidate the study of Greek ‘colonization’, but also is vital to a clear understanding of the process. The Greek colonization of Thasos, and indeed of Thrace, is currently written from a wholly Hellenocentric and text-based perspective, behind which lies an unspoken and pervasive comparison with Western European colonialism. Behind my discussion lies the opposing conviction that Greek colonization must be considered at the local level, and in the context of an understanding of social developments within the area settled. This discussion of the cave of Pan thus indicates both how an archaeology that concentrates only upon Greek material culture can miss important features, and how an awareness of the archaeology of local populations can elucidate the processes of Greek ‘colonization’.

The dates of Croesus’ reign, traditionally 560–546, derive mainly from the Nabonidus Chronicle, for Cyrus’ conquest of Lydia, and Herodotus 1.86.1, that Croesus ruled Lydia for 14 years. Part I of this essay questions the reliability of 1.86.1's ‘14’. Herodotus often uses formulaic or traditional numbers, including seven, for dating and elsewhere. Seven, twice seven, 14 and 70 recur frequently in the Croesus logos. Croesus’ reign may be a formulaic twice seven: seven prosperous years before Solon's visit, followed by seven disastrous years. It therefore may be unhistorical. Part II adduces other passages in Herodotus, and other evidence, that Croesus ruled Lydia already in the 580s. Nothing dates Alyattes after 585. Part III considers possible consequences of redating Croesus for the dates of early electrum and bimetallic coinages, the latter beginning perhaps in the 570s, as does Croesus’ Artemision at Ephesos. Part IV doubts what happened to Croesus when Sardis fell. Herodotus adapted one version for his own purposes. He probably invented Croesus’ role as wise warner to Cyrus and Cambyses.

The framework of this paper is a defence of Burnet's construal of Apology 30b 2-4. Socrates does not claim, as he is standardly translated, that virtue makes you rich, but that virtue makes money and everything else good for you. This view of the relation between virtue and wealth is paralleled in dialogues of every period, and a sophisticated development of it appears in Aristotle. My philological defence of the philosophically preferable translation extends recent scholarly work on εἶναι in Plato and Aristotle to γίγνεσθαι, which is the main verb in the disputed sentence. When attached to a subject, both verbs make a complete statement on their own, but a statement that is further completable by adding a complement. The important point is that the addition of a complement does not change the meaning of the verb from existence to the copula. Proving this is a lengthy task which takes me into some of the deeper reaches of Platonic and Aristotelian ontology, and into discussion of whether Greek ever acquired a verb that corresponds to modern verbs of existence. I conclude that even when later authors such as Philo Judaeus, Sextus Empiricus and Plotinus debate what we naturally translate as issues of existence, none of the verbs they use (εἶναι, ὑπάρχειν, ὑφεστηκέναι) can be said to have existential meaning.

With disarmingly open conceit, the Younger Pliny tells Pontius Allifanus that ‘my hendecasyllables are read, are copied, are even sung, and Greeks (who have learned Latin out of love for my poetry book) make my verses resound to cithara and lyre’ (Epist. 7.4.9). By Pliny's time, Greek musicians (and actors) were widely distributed and organized in a worldwide guild centred at Rome, so it will not surprise us that Greeks are the ones setting the verses to music. But what sort of music? When Pliny went out to hear his beloved poems sung to cithara and lyre, what did it sound like? Or, more generally, what did Pliny, or Martial, or, in an earlier generation, Horace see and hear when out for an evening's musical entertainment at the hands of a Greek troupe? Until fairly recently, we have known precious little. Literary sources give the odd anecdote, such as the reports of Nero's performances, but in general tell us little specific about the content or style of musical entertainment in the Roman era. And sources speaking more technically about music itself lend the impression that nothing significant happened after the ‘New Music’ was introduced in the fourth century BC.

It has long been suspected that the eponymous heroine of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata was intended to evoke the historical Lysimache, priestess of Athena Polias at the time of the play’s first production. But the reasons for this (partial) identification have been relatively little discussed. This paper argues that the Lysistrata engages more closely than has traditionally been assumed with urgent political issues at Athens in late 412 and early 411 BC, in particular with the decision in summer 412 BC to broach the ‘Iron Reserve’ of 1,000 talents set aside at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (Thuc. 8.15.1). A possible intervention of the historical Lysimache in the controversy over the appropriate use of the ‘Iron Reserve’ would help account for various otherwise surprising features of the Lysistrata.

This paper, and the plates by Mr. A. C. Blunt which accompany it, are the first-fruits of a journey in Phrygia, October 15 to November 27, 1881, for which Mr. Blunt was sent out specially by the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. It would be both unbecoming and unnecessary for me to speak of the drawings which he contributes to this paper; but I may say that he learned photography in the few days that were at his disposal before leaving England specially for the work of the expedition, so that he has been enabled to verify at home, by means of photographs, the drawings that he made on the spot. In addition to this, we together compared most of his drawings with the original monuments, and spared no care to attain accuracy. It has been necessary for me to write in Athens without seeing the completed drawings: this has added much to the difficulty of the work, but the reader who finds the text correspond with the plates will thus have an additional proof of the accuracy of both. I should, however, have found it quite impossible to write what I have here written without constant help from the drawings, the artistic taste and clear memory of one friend who accompanied us, to whom are due the discovery of many monuments in the two necropoleis, and several of the drawings here published.

The north-west corner of Asia Minor, Lesbos and, in particular, Mytilene, have long been recognised as the home of these grey wares called Lesbian or Aeolic bucchero. With remarkable tact, citizens of Mytilene resident in Naukratis proved the point by inscribing their names and place of origin on the grey vases they dedicated. Their evidence was, however, supplemented by the discovery of grey pottery like their own in towns as near Lesbos as Larissa and Troy VIII.

Several centuries before Lesbian bucchero flourished, the same district produced a distinguished grey ware of which the home was in the sixth city of Troy. This pottery left descendants in the seventh city—side by side with the Buckelkeramik—and these descendants would seem to be the direct ancestors of the bucchero of Troy VIII, Lesbos and other Aeolic sites.

Returning to Troy VI, we find that some of its grey wares are unmistakably Minyan, which enables us to carry the pedigree further back still. Minyan ware is found in the second Minoan period, about 1900 B.C. Nor can it be denied that the fabrics of Troy VI are derived ultimately from those of Troy II and Troy I.