This article revisits the question of how elegy was performed at the symposion, and argues that, rather than being either musical or non-musical, elegy situates itself between speech and song. None of the passages in which elegy mentions song are clearly self-referential: they tend to be generic, set in the future, concerned with other performers and other compositions or altogether too slippery in their language to pin them down. Moreover, there are a number of elegiac pieces that appear designed to allow symposiasts to shift from song to speech or speech to song, thereby introducing a new mode of performance, and so are themselves transitional. These observations about the way elegiac texts position their own performance are complemented by considerations about their actual performance. Evidence both from ancient musicologists and from other tonal languages suggests that inbetween modes of delivery were common in Greek poetry and the metrical shape makes elegy a prime candidate. The final section of the article turns to the difficult term elegos in fifth-century drama. It argues that several of these passages draw on inbetweenness as one association of elegos and thus decreases the gap between elegos and surviving elegy. A coda points out that the elegiacs in Euripides' Andromache are a further example of elegy transitioning between two modes of performance.

Of all the states in ancient Greece, Attica seems to have had the most interesting and complete system of land defences. A chain of important fortresses, of most of which there are still considerable remains, follows the line of the Kithairon–Parnes range: Eleutherai, Oinoe, Panakton, Phyle, Dekeleia, Aphidna and Rhamnous. It may appear at first that this series of strongholds was designed expressly to mark off Athenian territory, but whilst incidentally and in large measure they served this end, in origin they were intended rather to defend the various roads from Attica into Boeotia. A fresh examination of these forts and their relation to the Attic frontier may be of some service and interest.

The natural boundary of Attica on the N.W. is the mountain ridge which begins on the Halkyonian sea-coast behind Aigosthena and continues almost due eastward to the Straits of Euboea, reaching the sea at Cape Kalamos. It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that the early tradition made the Megarid and Attica into a single kingdom. Plato, describing an idealised primitive Attica, gives as the boundaries the Isthmus and the heights of Kithairon and Parnes extending down to the sea, with Oropos on the right and the Asopos on the left.

Re-examination of the well-known Atarbos base in the Akropolis Museum shows that the monument had two distinct phases which have generally been ignored in previous discussions: it originally consisted of a pillar supported by the extant right block decorated with the relief of purrhikhistai; subsequently, the pillar was removed, the base was doubled in size, and three bronze statues were erected. Close examination of the remains and the style of the reliefs indicates that the original period dates to 323/2 BC with the second phase following within a year. In light of this chronology, the prosopography of the family is reviewed and new restorations are suggested for the base's inscriptions. In its first phase, the monument belonged to a newly identified series of memorials consisting of rectangular bases with pillars supporting either a relief or a Panathenaic amphora. Such structures commemorated victories in various tribal events of the Panathenaia and were set up both by individuals and by tribes. The earliest known example appears in a vase painting of c. 430-420 and the type continued to be used until at least 323/2. The identification of this series also provides further evidence for history of the purrhikhē, the cyclic chorus, the anthippasia, and the apobatic race at the Panathenaia, as well as the identities of specific victors in these contests.

This paper deals with Plato's use of poikilos and cognates to describe democracy. It does not argue that Plato's Republic contains empirical analyses of some contemporary event, but supposes that an historical reading of the book is possible and legitimate. Post Peloponnesian War Athenian society experienced profound socio-economic changes. Echoing the aristocratic élite's circumspect anxiety when faced with the nouveaux riches, Plato clearly regards obsessive greediness as one of the root causes of the corruption of any political system. Referring to democracy, the philosopher invents the himation poikilon or ‘embroidered coat of many colours' metaphor. By materializing the multifaceted concept of poikilia, this metaphor gives a single and palpable form to the principal topoi of anti-democratic rhetoric: the himation poikilon evokes the motley constitution of the Athenian regime, the tyrant's ostentatious opulence, aped by the demos turannos, the inconstancy of the demos, the deceitful character of democracy and, last but not least, its penchant for spectacles.

In the early part of the fourth century it was the regular practice for Athenian treaties to specify the authorities who were to swear the oath on either side, and, although the fifth-century material is more scanty, three clear instances suggest that the habit was already established by 425. The notable exception is the Peace of Nikias, and with it the Spartan alliance of 421, in which not the quality but the number is prescribed, seventeen from each city. Kirchhoff suggested that this odd number might be built up, on the Spartan side, from the two kings (who in fact head the list), the five ephors (the eponymous ephor Pleistolas comes third and the next four might be his colleagues; cf. Tod, GHI 99), and a board of ten. Kirchhoff refused to speculate about these ten beyond saying that it was a normal number, but this gap in his argument can perhaps be filled from a passage in Diodorus (below) which has received no satisfactory explanation. Normal Athenian practice would not oblige Athens to conform to the Spartan number, and if Kirchhoff is right we should perhaps suppose that Sparta asked for numerical parity. The next question will be, how the Athenians made up their seventeen.

In May, 1918, Captain A. E. W. Salt, then Base Censor at Salonica, sent me a rough copy of an inscription, about which he wrote: ‘It is copied from a stone which I had cleaned, lying not 100 yards from my house near the Hippodrome, not, I think, in its original position’. I was unable to examine the stone personally, and my reading of the text is therefore based wholly upon Captain Salt's copy, which fortunately proves to be remarkably accurate if the difficulties of making such a copy and its provisional nature are borne in mind. It is here reproduced, save that I have ignored certain erasures and corrections, giving only the text as finally read by Captain Salt.

The Imperial Ottoman Museum has recently acquired a very valuable and interesting gold ring (Fig. 1) which was found in 1894 or 1895 in a tomb at Lampsacus. The Museum authorities subsequently undertook further excavations in the necropolis of which this tomb formed part, and it is a matter for great regret that no detailed report of the results was drawn up; we are therefore forced to content ourselves with the somewhat meagre information given by the late Baltazzi-Bey to M. Salomon Reinach, according to which the necropolis yielded fragments of red-figured pottery and specimens of silver autonomous coins of Lampsacus. Both these details are of importance in fixing the date of the ring; for on the one hand silver coins of this class belong almost exclusively to the fourth century, and on the other, the manufacture of painted vases was not continued after that date. When we add that the evidence of coins and inscriptions proves that this was the most flourishing period in the history of Lampsacus, we have strong a priori reason for assigning the ring to this century, while a consideration of the style of the intaglio may help us to fix the date within narrower limits.

The Editors of this Journal have reason to think that a considerable body of its readers will be glad to be furnished with reproductions of the monuments, mainly vase paintings, that are discussed in connexion with Bacchylides. Even those to whom the published illustrations are readily accessible will probably find it convenient to have them brought together for reference, in a collection made from this point of view.

III. The story of Croesus.—In the story as told by Bacchylides, Croesus voluntarily ascends his pyre, with wife and daughters; he invokes the gods, and more especially Apollo; he orders the pyre to be kindled; Zeus extinguishes the flames, and Apollo takes Croesus and his children to the land of the Hyperboreans. According to Herodotus, Croesus with his companions is placed on the pyre by order of Cyrus. After Cyrus has changed his mind, and his servants have made ineffectual attempts to extinguish the pyre, Croesus invokes Apollo, who extinguishes the flames. Fig. 1 shows the well-known vase in the Louvre, representing the subject. It had already been interpreted, before the discovery of Bacchylides, as evidence of an alternative version of the story, in which the sacrifice was voluntary. Croesus sits enthroned, and makes a solemn libation, while an attendant Euthymos is busy with the pyre. Some of the commentators interpret the objects that he holds as torches, but they are quite unlike torches, as usually represented (cf. J.H.S. xi. Pl. 6), and resemble more nearly the whisks for sprinkling lustral water. If this is the correct interpretation their use further emphasises the ceremonial character of the scene.

Kars-Bazaar is about four hours from Boudroum; in its situation it agrees with Flaviopolis, standing on a branch of the river Pyramus, at the foot of the mountains. Unfortunately none of the inscriptions reveal the name of the site.

‘A very handsome tessellated pavement in a cottage, with an elaborate pattern, in the centre of which is the following legend.’ Copied by Mr. Bent.

Probably from the floor of an early church. Dedicated by the guild of fullers. It is interesting to see these trade-guilds, so common under the Empire in Asia Minor, passing unchanged into the Christian Church. For συνέργιον = συνεργασία, see C. I. G. 4346 and Addenda, p. 1163 (from Side).

The remarkably well-preserved treaty with Chalcis has long formed a fixed point in Attic epigraphy, since it is confidently associated with Pericles' suppression of the Euboean revolt in 446 B.C. But is this dating and interpretation really certain? From the decree itself we learn that it was modelled on similar arrangements for Eretria, of which fragments in Ionic script survive. Now Hesychios records a decree, passed ἐπὶ Διφίλον, which regulated the seizure of hostages from the wealthiest Eretrian families. The simplest hypothesis is that both this decree and a parallel one for Chalcis preceded D 16 and 17. But this lands us in serious difficulties. If ἐπὶ Διφίλον gives the archon-date we must put the extant decrees in 442/441, which is inconveniently late for the orthodox view. The alternative is to separate Hesychios' decree from D 16 and 17, as Gomme suggested. There would then have been new trouble in Eretria three years after the settlement, which necessitated fresh recourse to hostages. Now if we once allow that Athens could take such drastic action in peacetime, what guarantee have we that the Chalcis Decree represents the settlement after armed revolt? It also might be an example of arbitrary Athenian intervention in the face of suspected disloyalty. In trying to save orthodoxy we have exposed the weakness of its basis. Another line of defence proves even more damaging. It is fair to suggest that ἐπὶ Διφίλον does not after all give the archon-date. Very few decrees before 421 are dated by the archon either in their prescript or internally. The normal dating is by the secretary of Council for a particular prytany.

One of the most basic features of the imagery employed by Aischylos in the Oresteia is the consistent perversion of normally propitious aspects of human existence, with the result that they become sinister and destructive. As Anne Lebeck puts it, ‘in Agamemnon those forces which should be beautiful, benevolent, and life-giving are converted into their opposites’. Male and female interchange their proper roles, sacrificial language cloaks impious deeds of vengeance, the hunting of animals turns into the hunting of men, the wealth of the house of Atreus becomes the blood in which that house is drenched, and the fertility of the whole land is corrupted by its application to death instead of life. The deliberate misuse to which Aischylos puts each of these structures has been well surveyed; taken together they lend dramatic reinforcement to a central theme of the Oresteia, that man's world is in a state of chaotic disorder from which it will not recover until the dilemma of vengeance v. justice has been solved. What I should like to do here is to trace out a similar arrangement in the substantial fire imagery of the trilogy. Fire, of course, as Aischylos himself tells us in the Prometheia, is one of the basic tools of mankind, a device used to provide many of the comforts of civilisation. Yet the same element, when handled improperly, may also ravage and destroy (compare the problems encountered by the satyrs in the Prometheus Pyrkaeus).

The first strophe opens with a wish and a syntactical problem:

εἴ μοι ξυνείη φέροντι μοῖρα τὰν εὔσεπτον ἁγνείαν λόγων ἔργων τε πάντων,…

The sentence is often interpreted as though φέροντι were φέρειν: ‘may it be my destiny to possess’. However, for this meaning the infinitive is clearly required; there is no valid parallel for the use of the participle supposed here. Burton offers: ‘may a share of life be my companion provided that I win or possess purity’; purity is a precondition for life. This interpretation is possible but improbable, for the use of μοῖρα as a synonym for βίος would be obscure in this context. It is altogether easier to interpret with Kamerbeek: ‘would that Destiny were with me when I (“so long as I” or the like)’; the chorus hopes for the favour of fate, provided that this is earned by purity of word and deed. The hope thus embraces an intention to avoid all impurity of word or action. Against this interpretation it has been objected that μοῖρα is a constant presence, not a helpful power which might desert. However, συνεῖναι is attested with the sense ‘favour’ (Aesch. Sept. 671, Soph. OT 275); and the notion that fate may favour individuals or groups is attested (Pindar O. 2.35 ff., P. 3.85 f).

There is a bird perched on the neck of a bull on a Late Bronze Age krater from Enkomi in the British Museum (plate I 1). It has long legs and a long neck, and it is much larger than any of the crow tribe, so often seen on cattle. Its long pointed bill is fixed on a point in the bull's neck probably removing a tick or something of the sort. The operation is painful and the bull tosses his head. On the other side of the vase the bird has lost his footing but still keeps the grip of his bill on the neck of the bull (plate I 2). That daggerlike bill is longer than the one on the other side of the vase. We must therefore suppose that the bill in the earlier scene has been inserted into the bull's neck to a considerable depth. No wonder the bull is plunging about to dislodge the operator.

A bird with long neck, long legs, and long beak can only be a marsh bird, and as it is hunting for insects on the neck of a bull, it can only be a Cattle Egret (plate I 4.), though its body bears some resemblance to the bodies of birds which are probably meant for geese or swans; its beak is more formidable. Presumably this insect-hunting bird is not a deity revealing him or herself; but perhaps Cypriots are more secular than Mycenaeans.

What follows is an attempt to interpret the Hesiodic Shield of Herakles by the same method as I have used elsewhere for the ‘Shield of Achilles.’ Long ago Brunn attributed obscurities to interpolation, mixed the zones, and allegorized; but nevertheless perceived that a real composition was in the poet's mind. Studniczka endeavoured to prove that the shield which Hesiod described was a real shield. But to support his theory he had to manipulate the text; his positive evidence was weak; it was, indeed, too soon for such an enterprise, and perhaps it is too soon still; and what was known then about archaic Greek art led in another direction. Recently, Mr. R. M. Cook has argued that while parts of the description of Herakles' shield were based, in subject and in phrasing, on the Homeric ‘Shield of Achilles,’ most of the other parts had parallels, sometimes very close, in archaic Greek art; and at a meeting of the Hellenic Society on 3rd May, 1938, he supplemented this argument with illustrations. Assuming, not unreasonably, that the vase-paintings are fairly representative, he showed that all the required models are to be found within the decade 580–570 B.C., and within the Attic and Corinthian schools. He found no evidence of the influence of Ionia, nor of Chalcis. He noted that these results agree with the view, based on historical and literary arguments ‘perhaps inadequate’ (I follow the summary circulated at the meeting of 3rd May, 1938) that the poem was written about 575 B.C. by a Boeotian or a Thessalian.

This paper is a much revised version of that read to the Classical Association at Bangor on April 11, 1956; here I intend to concentrate on the development of the trilogy with particular reference to the Prometheus Purphoros, on the meaning of the trilogy and (in an excursus) on the questions of authenticity and date.

The Medicean Catalogue records three Prometheus plays by Aeschylus—our surviving Προμηθεὺς Δεσμώτης , the much-cited Προμηθεὺς Λυόμενος and the Προμηθεὺς Πυρφόρος Pollux ix 156, x 64 (with citation) adds a Προμηθεὺς Πυρκαεύς The Luomenos followed on the Desmotes and included the actual release of Prometheus. Pollux' citation of the Purkaeus has an anapaest in the fourth foot, suggesting that the play was satyric and therefore probably to be identified with the satyric Prometheus recorded as accompanying the Persae group of plays; with it should probably be associated the verse in Plutarch: τράγος γένειον ἆραπενθήσεις σύ γε (TGF 207: τοῦ δὲ σατύρου τὸ πῦρ ὡς πρῶτον ὤφθη, κ.τ.λ.) and also the long fragment recovered from Pap. Oxy. 2245. These last two items go some way to show that the Purkaeus dealt with the original discovery or bestowal of fire; with regard to its omission from the catalogue, it should be borne in mind more constantly than it has been that the other plays which accompanied the Persae—the Phincus and the Glaukos of Potniai—have been omitted too; and while it is hard to imagine what particular misfortune can have befallen a number of plays of the same group, it would be rash to assume that there can have been none.

The continuing and polemical debate over the authenticity of the Peace of Callias has become so complicated that it would be a positive service to scholarship to remove some of the more contentious evidence and reduce the scope of the argument. That is the object of this article. A fragment of Callisthenes has bulked very large in the modern literature. According to the received view the Olynthian historian denied the existence of a formal peace between Athens and the Persian King and alleged that the King observed a de facto limit to his empire, never venturing west of the Chelidonian islands. For sceptics this is grist to the mill. A writer of the mid-fourth century rejected the Athenian patriotic tradition, and it is assumed that he had good reason to do so. On the other hand defenders of the authenticity of the Peace stumble over Callisthenes' apparent denial and are forced to counter-denial or to sophistry. What is common to both camps is a tendency to refer to the evidence of Callisthenes without noting that the original text is lost. The ‘fragment’ (which it is not) is preserved by Plutarch in a sophisticated passage of source criticism and due attention needs to be paid to his mode of citation. Only then can we begin to elicit what Callisthenes may have said and reconstruct the probable context in his historical exposition. As always, we need to approach the unknown through proper study of the known.

As the task of publishing the immediate results of this journey has been entrusted to me, my first duty is to acknowledge the many obligations under which Professor W. M. Ramsay has placed me. Neither my companion Mr. G. A. Wathen of St. Peter's College, Cambridge, nor I, had had previous experience in this form of research, and we were fortunate in beginning the study of Asia Minor under his auspices. A large proportion of the materials here given was collected by him alone; and it is no exaggeration to say that without him we could have accomplished practically nothing, even if we had made the attempt. As I am increasingly conscious that the period of noviciate, on which I then entered, did not end with the journey, I am glad to think that my obligations to him extend to the time of the preparation of this Report. The same reason also makes me glad to know that Professor Ramsay is himself working these results into their place in the General History and Geography of Asia Minor. In this gladness all those interested in such studies will share.

My next duty is to thank all those who, in various ways, helped us to carry out the objects we had in view. On the one hand, we are especially indebted to the British Ambassador at Constantinople and to the Turkish Governor of the Vilayet of Konia; on the other, the funds at our disposal were largely increased, not only by the gifts of friends, but by contributions from the Managers of the Craven Fund, Cambridge, and the Worshipful Company of Mercers, London.

The Greeks had a proverb which compared talkative persons to ‘the gong at Dodona.’ Menander (342–291 B.C.) in his Arrephoros made one of his characters remark:

‘Give this creature Myrtile the merest touch or simply call nurse, and there's no end to her talking. To stop the gong at Dodona, which they say sounds all day if a passer-by lays a finger on it, would be an easier job than to stop her tongue; for it sounds all night as well.’

A fragment of Kallimachos (c. 310–c. 240 B.C.) implies the same proverb:

… ‘lest it might be said that I was but awakening the echoes of the bronze at Dodona.’

Ptolemy I, son of Lagos and Arsinoe, is usually supposed to have belonged, through his mother, to a cadet branch of the Argead house and to have been a third cousin of Alexander. But a fragment of Euphantus, so far unexplained, leads up to the conclusion that his mother was not of the blood royal and that he had no connexion with the royal house at all. Hellenistic literature was full of fictitious relationships, which often found their way into history as facts; and we seem to have here another case of the same sort.

Euphantus is contemporary evidence for the period during which Ptolemy I was king. He was a pupil of Eubulides and the first philosophic teacher of Antigonus Gonatas; supposing he went to him when Antigonus was thirteen, as Aristotle did to Alexander, he was a known man in 307 or 306, while Ptolemy took the crown in 305. As he wrote a treatise on Kingship for Antigonus he was alive in or after 276, after Ptolemy's death; he wrote a history of his own time, and died of old age.