The four best-preserved aulos pipes unearthed at Pompeii are examined and their original pitches are as far as possible determined by mathematical analysis. It is argued that the scales of the instruments as well as specific details of their mechanism fit well with our knowledge of music from the Roman Imperial period.

In the play of Aeschylus the problem before the first jury of the Areopagus was this. A man kills his mother at the order of a god, because she killed his father. Can he be held guilty for an act which racial custom demanded and a god sanctioned? And yet, shall matricide go unpunished, or can that man claim to escape from the Erinyes, whose right and duty to avenge a mother is no less certain than a son's right and duty to avenge his father? The jury could not make up their minds: their votes were equally divided. It is hardly easier for us to give a clear answer to the problem which puzzled those Athenians; and we have a further problem which they were spared—what did Aeschylus think? on what grounds did he acquit Orestes? what did he mean by his solution?

Editors and critics have answered these questions differently. Sidgwick holds that in the Eumenides ‘the stage is lifted from earth to heaven: it is the powers of light, Apollo and Athena, who are active to protect the morally innocent against the powers of darkness, the Erinyes and the shade of Clytaemnestra, who persecute the technically guilty. The lower view, that guilt lies in the deed, is embodied in the pursuing Furies, and here conflicts with the higher view that the innocent heart must be saved…. The gods of light fight with the gods of darkness, and overcome.’ Verrall's explanation is allied to this but more refined. He sees in the play the conflict of two Rights—of justice absolute and inexorable with the relative justice of a civic community—of the lex talionis with equity; and he sees in the reconcilement of the Eumenides a mysterious identification of Vengeance and Grace.

The objections against the transmitted ending of OT (1424–1530) raised by scholars since the eighteenth century and most recently by R.D. Dawe deserve to be taken seriously, but only the last 63 lines (1468–1530, called B below) are open to truly serious objections, both verbal and dramaturgical. By contrast, objections against 1424–67 (called A below) are mostly slight, and in addition they are protected by an earlier passage in the play that seems to prepare the audience for Creon's demand that Oedipus re-enter the palace. A is genuine and gives us the end of the play as Sophocles wrote it: probably we have lost only a brief reply by Creon to Oedipus’ requests and some choral anapaests. A postscript discusses the meaning of 1451–57. I argue that these look to the future (infinitive πέρσαι plus ἄν standing for optative plus ἄν), and that έπί τωι δειν⋯ι κακ⋯ι means that Oedipus is being saved ‘for some dreadful mischief’, i.e. to cause such mischief to others, an allusion to the cursing of his sons and its result, the war of the Seven against Thebes.

Ancient trade between Mediterranean lands and Atlantic Europe was first and foremost a quest by Mediterranean folk for tin, of which the indigenous supplies were insufficient. In this quest the Greeks had a vital interest, in view of the great development of their bronze industry. What actual part did they take in the Atlantic tin traffic?

This question raises two others, which will require a brief notice. From what part of the Atlantic seaboard, and by what route, was the tin fetched?

Fortunately we need not reopen the controversy over the Cassiterides or Tin Islands, which in the common Greek belief were the source of Western tin. This belief was in any case a mistaken one, for in Western Europe there are no tin deposits worth mentioning on any archipelago of islands. Moreover, the discrepancies between the notions of various ancient writers as to their situation suggest that the name ‘Cassiterides’ was applied in turn to more than one of the Western tin districts. We may therefore circumnavigate the problem of the Cassiterides by treating them as a floating expression like the ‘Spice Islands’ of early modern times, and refusing to attach the name specifically to any one metalliferous area.

This article offers a fresh approach to the well-known questions surrounding the identification of Longus' character Philetas with the Hellenistic poet Philetas or Philitas. Noting that the poet was famed in antiquity also for his critical writing, particularly his lexicographical work the ataktoi glôssai, it argues that the fictional characters Daphnis and Chloe consult Philetas for, among other things, a lexical definition of erôs.

Sir Charles Fellows writes on p. 503 of Travels and Researches:— ‘On the plain at the foot of the elevation upon which the city Xanthos was placed, we disinterred the remains of a mausoleum. In this room, which had vaults beneath, stood four sarcophagi, raised upon pedestals. … I have collected the fragments of each sarcophagus.’ The four sarcophagi are in the British Museum and are described in Vol. II of the Catalogue of Sculpture, nos. 957–960. As far as I am aware, there is no other reference to any of them in archaeological literature. Their obscurity in the Museum (no. 957 in the Mausoleum Room Annexe, the other three in the Sepulchral Basement), and also their association in the Catalogue with older, Greek sculptures have combined to withdraw attention from them. It can be readily understood that amid masterpieces of the archaic and classical periods these sadly fragmentary remains of late art failed to attract the eye. To-day, when sarcophagi are recognised as material of fundamental importance for the artistic and cultural history of the provinces of the Roman Empire, it seems appropriate to reconsider these fragments; for their provenience is certain and identical, and they present some new features to our study.

Towards the close of 1938 Professor Bernard Ashmole sent me a photograph, taken by Miss Freya Stark, of an inscription discovered by her on an island near the head of the Persian Gulf, and suggested that I should publish it in this Journal. This I do with the kind permission of Miss Stark, to whom I here express afresh my sincere thanks.

In a searching analysis of ‘The Campaign and the Battle of Marathon’ (JHS lxxxviii [1968] 13–57) Professor N. G. L. Hammond has paid me the compliment of mentioning my discussion of the range of the ancient bow (17 n. 27). The evidence had suggested to me that the bowshot was ‘at least 160–175 metres, but not as far as 350–450 metres’. These results, in Hammond's words, fail to

‘take into account the nature of the target. For instance his lower figure is based on the firing of incendiary arrows (his T1 = Hdt. viii 52.1), which needed no power of penetration, and the higher figure is based on unarmoured horses at that distance being out of range (his T2 = Hdt. ix 22–23), which is almost equivalent to the extreme range because a horse is easily stung into action by an arrow.’

The near equivalence of ‘out of range’ and ‘within extreme range’ may raise an eyebrow; but let it pass. On the essential point we agree: in Herodotus ix 22–23, two stades is beyond effective bowshot.

So far as the terminus a quo is concerned, the Persian fire arrows shot from the Areopagus must have had some power of penetration; for they were useless unless they stuck to the wooden wall. Moreover, the target was twenty-eight metres higher than the launching-point; if the line of flight were projected downwards to the level of the archers, the cast would have been greater. Again, Herodotus says that the Persians wound hemp around their arrows. Hollow heads for incendiary arrows (JSA-A iii [1960] 22–24) were apparently a later invention; at any rate piles from this assault on the Acropolis are all typical Iranian war-heads (Hesperia ii [1933] 341–342; iv [1935] 114–117). The tinder binding—bulky enough to keep a spark through the trajectory, and then to kindle the barricade—would interfere with the smooth flow of air past the shaft and curtail the range. It follows that, if a fire arrow from the Areopagus could reach the Acropolis 155 metres away, a war arrow from the same bow would carry even further. There are uncertainties, admittedly, but it seems unwise to jettison the testimony of Herodotus viii 52.1 on these grounds.

The fifth-century horoi of sacred lands, found in Aigina, marked the property of two named cults, of Athena and of Apollo and Poseidon. They are inscribed (for the most part) in the Attic dialect and script, surprising features one or both of which they share with similar stones from Samos, from Chalkis and from Kos. The accepted view is that they were set up following Athens' seizure of Aigina during the summer of 431 BC, when the Athenians expelled the islanders and installed a colony of their own people who remained until 404. For the setting aside of temene for the gods would naturally accompany such a foundation in confiscated territory, as it did in Mytilene four years later. Yet some of the inscriptions bear such early letter-forms as angular tailed rho and three-barred sigma, forms long regarded as confined in Attic texts to the period before 446/5. There is thus a clear contradiction between the accepted view of the context of these inscriptions and the tenets of ‘orthodox’ epigraphical doctrine. In editing the inscriptions for IG iv (see on nos 33–8), Fraenkel acknowledged the contradiction but was unshaken by it, though he did concede that the placing of the horoi could have been no later than the very outset of the colony: ‘Tantum vero rationi palaeographicae erit tribuendum, ut statim post occupatam insulam instituisse terminationem sacrorum Athenienses sumamus.’

The article ‘Signa priscae artis: Eretria and Siphnos’ in JHS ciii (1983) 49—67, by David Francis and Michael Vickers (hereafter ‘FV’), is part of a programme of investigation of ‘fixed points’ in Archaic archaeological chronology, the tendency of which is to demonstrate that the conventional chronology is some half-century wrong. This broaches various problems of wider significance, not made explicit in the article and not considered here. The present Note considers the article alone, since some features of the content and manner of the arguments give ground for concern. It is written mainly as a guide to students who may have been puzzled or impressed that such radical new views could be published so confidently. Briefly, FV argue that the Temple of Apollo at Eretria should be dated to the 470s, and that, although Herodotus places the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi c. 525, we ought to be happy with a date in the 470s for this building also.

The construction and the development of the plough in Greece and Italy in ancient times is not a subject of general interest either to scholars or to archaeologists. It is, however, one which presents itself from time to time to students of Hesiod and of Virgil, and, since the obvious works of reference give but meagre aid to the enquirer, I have attempted to supply here a fuller account than is to be found elsewhere both of the literary and of the monumental evidence, in the hope that a more detailed discussion may not be without its uses.

I propose in the first part of this paper to discuss and give a rough classification of the types of ancient plough which are represented on the monuments. In the second and third parts of the paper I shall attempt to sift the considerable number of ancient authorities who deal with the subject and to supply some comments suggested by the monumental evidence. The authorities, even when not directly concerned with Hesiod and Virgil, fall conveniently into line with the ancient commentators on those poets, and I shall deal first with Hesiod and then, more briefly, with Virgil.

Many authorities on ancient Greek architecture state that during the fourth century B.C. the Doric order was in a decline, and that by the Hellenistic period it was virtually abandoned for temples. The archaeological evidence, it is argued, seems to bear this out. Doric temples were built during this period, but they can be dismissed, for instance by Dinsmoor (Architecture of Ancient Greece 267) as ‘for the most part imitations of earlier works, and completion of earlier undertakings, together with a few sporadic but minor structures in which the style was adopted for conservative reasons’. It is clear, however, that the objection was not against the Doric order as such, since it was employed in all Greek areas to the virtual exclusion of the other orders (at any rate externally) in such buildings as stoas, of which large numbers were constructed during this period. We are to suppose, therefore, that it was only for temples that the other orders, Ionic and Corinthian, were considered superior to Doric, and that it was this belief that led to the decline and eventual abandoning of the Doric order. Since Vitruvius (iv 3.1) refers to statements by certain distinguished architects of the period to the effect that Doric was not suitable for temples, it would seem that the case is proved; moreover we are given the causes of this revulsion, quod mendosae et disconvenientes in his symmetriae conficiebantur, and more specifically, quod impedita est distributio et incommoda in opere triglyphorum et lacunariorum. The problems caused by the corner triglyphs in Doric buildings have been admirably expounded by Professor Robertson, and it is not my purpose to discuss them further. I intend instead to discuss whether their effects, during the Hellenistic period, were quite as catastrophic as have been thought.

The Second Stasimon of Oedipus Tyrannus has over the years drawn forth many divergent interpretations. So Carey's recent attempt to clear the cluttered paths towards it of accumulated debris must be warmly welcomed. We may now regard it as untenable to see criticism of Oedipus behind the reference to tyranny. We should not look for hostile comment upon Jokasta and Oedipus for what they have said in the preceding scene about the Laius oracle. At 873, we should accept the paradosis, recognising that it is not impossible for the word τύραννος to mean ‘tyrant’ in tragic texts. We should reject Scodel's attempt to introduce the idea of stasis into the argument, and interpret ὔβρις φυτεύει τύραννον as an account of what motivates the tyrant to take power (cf. Bacchylides 15.59–60 [Snell] and A. Ag. 1346f, 1612f., 1633 for this idea4).

1. A Bronze statue of Athena, armed, stood in the Forum of Constantine at Constantinople. This fact is witnessed by three well-known passages:

(a) Arethas, bishop of Caesareia (ninth to tenth centuries), commenting on a passage of Aristeides, wrote: ‘I believe this (i.e., the Pheidian χαλκῆ Ἀθηνᾶ of Aristeides, Κατὰ τῶν Ἐξορχουμένων, p. 408) is the one set up in the Forum of Constantine, at the porch of the council-chamber, or senate, as they call it now; facing it, on the right-hand side of the porch as you go in, is Thetis, the ⟨mother⟩ of Achilles, with a crown of crabs. The common folk of to-day call the Athena “Earth” and Thetis “Sea”, being misled by the marine monsters on her head.’ (Cf. Kougeas in Laographia IV, 1913, 240, 241.)

(b) Cedrenus (eleventh to twelfth centuries), after a note on the senate on the north side of the Forum, continues: ‘On the open square of the Forum stand two statues; to the west, that of Athena of Lindus, wearing a helmet and the monstrous Gorgon's head and snakes entwined about her neck (for so the ancients used to represent her image); and to the east, Amphitrite, with crabs' claws on her temples, which was also brought from Rhodes.’ (Cedrenus, ed. Bonn., I, p. 565; cf. Kougeas, loc. cit. sup.)

Cities may be regarded in two lights. Firstly, they may be considered as collections of houses, with public buildings, market-places, and walls; as features of the natural landscape; as definite localities, with form, arrangement, and parts. Secondly, they may be regarded as bodies politic; as masses of inhabitants rather than groups of buildings; as personal rather than local. And it is obvious that by far the greatest interest attaches to them in the second aspect. In the first, however beautiful, they are but material, outward and visible; in the second they are living, spiritual, and immortal, with beliefs and customs, with heart and conscience. It is the people who make their city in its physical aspect, and it is only interesting as incorporating their history, and representing their character.

This is of course true always and everywhere. But no nation has been more fully alive to the truth than the Greeks. Among them the city was more homogeneous, more fully organized, more unified than among us, was more of a person and less of a place. If we further consider how strongly Greek art tended to avoid natural scenes of any complication, and to clothe all kinds of powers and abstractions in human form, we shall see how natural it is that the national painting and sculpture of the Hellenic race are scarcely ever occupied in bringing before us the external view of cities, but devote their energies to the portrayal of bodies politic in their human and moral aspects with the best resources at their disposal.

A small Corinthian phiale mesomphalos of which a few joining sherds were found at Perachora, had been decorated outside with animals in a rather perfunctory style, and inside with a figure-scene, a frieze with the figures' feet towards the centre of the bowl (plate XXIIIa). The surface was finished differently inside and outside, a striking instance, as J. K. Brock points out, of variation in technique without chronological implications. Surface-finish and painted decoration together also exemplify how a change in the entire approach of Corinthian artists—both potter and painter, in this case—will often accompany a change of subject-matter. The filling-ornaments enhance the difference: outside, a rather dense filling of the usual solid shapes; inside, a dot-rosette only.

The subject of the inside picture is described as ‘three padded dancers, the one in the middle holding a horn’. Padded dancers are undoubtedly present, the best-preserved figure (on the right) is wholly typical, except for his excited gesture indicating that something unusual is afoot. But his neighbour is different. Nude, slim-waisted, strong-limbed, he comes striding in from the left, turning his head towards the quarter whence he came. He too has lively arms, their length expressively exaggerated; in his right hand he holds what could certainly be a misdrawn horn, though it should be said that padded dancers take better care of their drink.

The following paper is the first of a series of two or three which will bring into contact the extant coins of Greece and the text of Pausanias, thus furnishing to many passages of the traveller's writings a running numismatic commentary.

The main object we have set before us is to collect and set forth the numismatic reproductions of works of art mentioned by Pausanias; but we have not excluded any numismatic types which at all illustrate the cults and the legends mentioned by him as existing in the various cities of Peloponnesus.

The importance of the work cannot be doubted when we consider that in the case of many of the statues mentioned by Pausanias the only copies known are those upon coins; we may therefore hope to reconstruct from numismatic evidence, at least the general schemes of many great works of art wholly lost, and thus furnish very important material for recovering the history of Greek art; especially the history of the succession of types of the chief deities of Greece, which is a subject of great and increasing interest to archaeologists.

Generally speaking, the coins on which we can place the most reliance as sources of information as to the monuments are those of Hadrian and the Antonines. These coins are also the best in point of execution; and we may add that they are contemporary with the travels of Pausanias.

This article presents a comprehensive study of the offence of trauma ek pronoias(intentional wounding) in Athenian law. Part I catalogues every occurrence of the words τραùμα and τιρώσκω in the Attic orators and concludes that the requisite physical element of trauma ek pronoias was the use of a weapon. Part II analyses all attested trauma lawsuits and concludes that the requisite mental element of the offence was a bare intent to wound. Part III addresses the procedural evidence for trauma ek pronoias and concludes that the action for trauma was a graphê, not a dikê. Two appendices discuss the use of the terms trauma and pronoia in Plato's Laws and Aristotle's Rhetoric (Appendix A) and a reference to trauma ek pronoias in Lucian's Timon (Appendix B).

The district which forms the subject of the following remarks is that which we know from Strabo, as well as from numismatic evidence, to have formed the kingdom of Olba, ruled over in ancient times by a family of priest-kings, priests of Jove, dynasts of Olba, and toparchs of Lalassis and Kennatis. Having made a careful exploration of this district, and collected therein the inscriptions which are to follow, I propose to treat the subject-matter under four distinct heads, into which the ground traversed naturally divides itself:—

First, the ruins of the three great coast towns between the mouth of the Lamas gorge and the plain of Selefkeh, namely Augusta-Sebaste or Elaeussa, Corycos, and Pseudo-Corasion.

Secondly, the first plateau above the sea, studded with ruined towers and villages, and chiefly remarkable for the three great caves or depressions in the ground, one dedicated to the Corycian Jove, a second to the Olban Jove, and a third alluded to only by Pomponius Mela as Typhoneus.

οὐ παλαιὸν εὕρημα λύχνος. ‘The lamp is not an ancient invention.’ The words of Athenaeus (15, 700e) have often been quoted. The lamp was familiar to Minoans and Myceneans, but it died out, and does not reappear till the seventh century. In the dark age that intervened, the Greeks, as Athenaeus goes on to say, used the light of the torch and of other pieces of wood: φλογὶ δʾοἱ παλαιοὶ τῆς τε δᾳδὸς καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ξύλων ἐχρῶντο. There is only one mention of a lamp in Homer: in Odyssey 19, 33–4 Athene, unseen, lights Odysseus and Telemachos with a lamp: ‘Pallas Athene went in front with a golden lamp, making a very fine light’:

According to a modern writer, ‘the lamp is significantly of gold, and in the hands of Athena, it is therefore something rare and costly, or to speak historically, something new’: but I confess I cannot see how this follows from the text.