Modern writers have generally assumed that the political affiliations of Aeschylus were aristocratic. That his sympathies were with the democrats has, however, been ably maintained by Sir R. W. Livingstone on the basis of a consideration of the Eumenides, a play which explicitly exalts the aristocratic court of the Areopagus, and has usually been taken as proof of Aeschylus' opposition to the democratic measures of Ephialtes and Pericles. Livingstone bases his argument upon the eloquent enthusiasm of the poet for Athens' future, and upon the fact that the functions assigned the Areopagus in the play are those which it still retained after the democratic reforms of Ephialtes, not those of which it had been despoiled.

In this paper I advance an interpretation of Prodicus' conception of the correctness of names or terms. I advance this interpretation through examining a distinction between pleasures and pleasure terms that several ancient authors, most importantly the fifth-century Neoplatonist Hermias, attribute to Prodicus. Since Hermias lived many centuries after Prodicus, it is questionable whether Hermias' testimony is accurate. Consequently, I first present evidence to support the view that Hermias' testimony is accurate. Subsequently, I examine the grounds and context of Prodicus' distinction. I reject the view that Prodicus was interested in drawing distinctions between near synonyms according to standard usage. Instead, I argue that Prodicus' linguistic distinctions follow substantive distinctions between natural kinds.

From The Roman to the Turkish conquest of Greece, a period of sixteen centuries, Athens produced only three historians: Dexippos, Praxagoras and Laonikos Chalkokondyles. Of the two first only meagre fragments have come down to us; indeed, of the three treatises of Praxagoras, The Kings of Athens, composed when he was only nineteen, his History of Constantine the Great, written at the age of twenty-two, and his maturer study of Alexander, King of Macedon, only a summary of the second, amounting to two pages, has been preserved by that omnivorous reader, Photios, in his Library. Such juvenile histories cannot, however, have had much greater value than prize essays, conspicuous rather for their correctness of style than for any seasoned judgment. But we may regret that only thirty-five pages of the three works of Dexippos, The Events after the Death of Alexander, The Historical Epitome, which went as far as the time of Claudius II. in 268, and The Scythian Affairs, have survived. For Dexippos was an author of a very different type, a man of affairs as well as of letters, the type of historian of which we have familiar examples in England in Grote and Macaulay, in Clarendon and Bryce. A worse writer, but a better general, than his model, Thucydides, he defeated the Goths when they invaded Athens, on which occasion a Gothic leader urged the sparing of the Athenian libraries, in order that the Athenians might unfit themselves for the arts of war by much study of books! After these two historians, who flourished, Dexippos in the third, and Praxagoras in the fourth centuries, no Athenian took their place till, in the second half of the fifteenth, Laonikos Chalkokondyles composed the extant ten books of his history, one of the most interesting and valuable productions of the mediaeval Greek intellect.

A detailed report in English and a brief mention in Latin record the rediscovery in 1883 of the ‘charter’ of Orcistus by W. M. Ramsay and J. R. S. Sterrett. Not till 1886 was a complete copy secured, but in 1883 at Alikel, besides ascertaining where the original lay hidden, they found and copied, each in his own notebook, two other documents of which only the dating has been published. In his report Ramsay thus refers to them: ‘we occupied ourselves … partly in copying a long inscription of 98 lines in length, half of which was more or less legible.’ This inscription, comprising (A) a deed of gift, (B) a decree, both dated in 237, is here edited from the copies of 1883; no others are likely to exist, for the pedestal bearing the original text ‘had been destroyed in search of treasure after we left.’

Sir William Ramsay has kindly lent me those two notebooks; three pages from his and one from Sterrett's are reproduced below; for permission to use them, as well as for invaluable information and advice, I am indeed grateful.

A new approach to the ancient world is only too often a wrong approach, unless it is based on some concrete discovery. But I think it fair to talk of new perspectives, at least, in the study of Greek mythology. Certainly the old and familiar ones are no longer adequate. Indeed it is surprising, in the light of fresh intuitions about society, literacy, the pre-Homeric world, and relations with the ancient Near East, that myth—one of the most pervasive aspects of Greek culture—has been left in its old and rather cobwebby pigeon-hole. Rose's simple paraphrases are accepted as adequate for students; Nilsson's sparse pages in his history of religion are rightly respected, though some of them are too simple; the Murray-Cook-Harrison-Cornford reconstruction of religion, ritual and myth is regarded as a little excessive, but perhaps not too far out; Kerényi and Eliade are roughly tolerated, if not widely read by Classicists, and their books are ordered in profusion for the library; the psychological side is adequately taken care of, or so it is supposed, by what is left from Freud and Jung, with Cassirer as sufficient authority for the sources of mythical imagination.

Many of these critics had their moments of brilliant insight, but most were misleading in their theories taken as a whole. We can now accept that many myths have ritual counterparts, and some have ritual origins, without having to adopt Cornford's belief, developed after Harrison, Frazer and Robertson Smith, that all myths are such.

The standard translation of μύΩΨ in Plato’s Apology of Socrates 30e is ‘gadfly’. However, this word was generally translated as ‘spur’ until the 1800s. This article re-evaluates the scholarship that led to the ‘gadfly’ translation and argues that the ‘spur’ translation is correct based on the use elsewhere in Greek literature of μύΩΨ and other significant words in the passage.

Among the topics this paper will discuss, the leading one is that of the moral psychology of the Laws; it will not, however, attempt a general study of this, but will confine itself to the question whether that work presupposes any particular division of the soul into parts. The problem seems to have been on the whole neglected by scholars. Apelt in his Platon-Index says briefly that the soul is there treated as tripartite, which is certainly not true without qualification. Neither England's commentary nor Ritter's affords much help. The latter does, indeed, touch on the question in Volume II of his Platon; he there states that the Laws treats the soul as tripartite, and supports this by referring to I. 644C and IX. 863B, but neither passage proves his point, the second actually suggesting that it requires some modification, as will be argued below. The best treatment known to me is the discussion of the second of these passages by L. Gernet in his translation (with commentary) of Book IX, but it requires some expansion and supplementation.

It will be well to begin by recapitulating briefly the main points in the moral psychology of the Republic. The soul is there divided into three parts or (better) elements, the rational, the spirited and the appetitive, and this division has two aspects: (a) an analysis is thus provided which can be used in the interpretation and appraisal of all action whatever, the soul being in the right state and the agent's actions right in consequence when the rational element controls the appetitive through the agency of the spirited; (b) at the same time each of the three elements represents a drive towards one of three goals, the rational towards knowledge, the spirited towards honour and public distinction, and the appetitive towards pleasure (interpreted as bodily pleasure), or towards material gain as a means to the attainment of pleasure. Secondly, each of these three drives may predominate in any individual soul (though it is commonest for the last to do so, and least common for the first), and the three are therefore to be correlated with three ways of life, that of the thinker, that of the soldier or man in public life, and that of the merchant or other person engaged in a money-making enterprise, and further these ways of life are specially characteristic of different races. Thirdly, the three elements in the soul and the three types of character are correlated by Plato with the three classes in his ideal state, the rulers, the auxiliaries and the artisans. Fourthly, the distinction of three elements in the soul is made the basis for interpreting the four virtues, wisdom being the virtue of the rational element and courage of the spirited (ideally under the control of the rational), while justice consists in the maintenance of the proper relation between the three elements, the rational controlling the appetitive through the agency of the spirited, and temperance in the willing acquiescence of the appetites in the rule of reason. On the larger canvas of state organisation, the three classes will have as their specially characteristic virtues wisdom, courage and temperance respectively, while the state as a whole will be just if the correct relation between the three classes is maintained and the reason of the rulers preserves its control with the help of the auxiliaries. Fifthly, the tripartition of the soul is applied in Book IX to the discussion of pleasure, pleasures being graded as higher or lower according to the element in the soul which enjoys them; indeed, Plato argues that the pleasures of the rational element are not simply superior to those of the other two but more real as well.Finally, Book X suggests at least that the rational element is the real self, that it alone is immortal, and that the other two exist merely in virtue of our temporary attachment to a body.

A. K. Grayson's valuable volume, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, contains not only a rich collection of historiographic writing from the period before the Macedonian conquest, but has also added several new fragments to the Babylonian Chronicles series for the early hellenistic period, in addition to a useful re-edition of the Chronicle of the Diadochoi. These fragments constitute what survives (or is known at present to survive) from the apparently last chronicles of the corpus which began in the reign of Nabonassar (747–34 bc) and continued down to and into the early Seleucid period. When precisely (and why) the corpus came to an end is at present unknown. The new post-Alexander fragments are probably all from the third century bc, nos 11 and 12 from the early third century, while nos 13 and 13b are of later third century date.

Ephesos was one of the great cities of the ancient world; in the period of the Roman empire, it was the capital of the province of Asia, and on one celebrated occasion its religious life came into sharp conflict with early Christianity (Acts xix 23-41). From the earliest days of methodical excavation in Turkey, Ephesos has provided a magnet to travellers and archaeologists. Hence a problem that involves the cults and the topography of imperial Ephesos can claim more than an antiquarian interest.

Any one who investigates the mythology of Athens is confronted first and foremost by the figures of Cecrops and his daughters, Pandrosos, Herse, and Aglauros. Such shadowy personalities as Porphyrion, Kolanios, &c., are obvious interpolations from other local cults, and as such quâ Athens may be disregarded. In visiting the outlying demes Pausanias was told of other kings (P. i. 31, 5) who preceded Cecrops. Well and good for the demes, jealous of their local heroes and anxious to interpolate their names in the genealogical table of the pre-eminent Athens; but for Athens herself, and for the Athenian Apollodorus (Bibl. iii. 13, 8), it is with Cecrops the autochthon that the real live mythology of Athens begins—he is a person in art as well as in literary tradition. Above all, for our present purpose he has three famous daughters, whose personalities and activity are considerably more vital than that of their father.

In dealing with Athenian local cults (Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, p. xxxiii.), and especially on examining the ceremony of the Hersephoria, I was constantly haunted by the conviction that behind the personalities of these three sisters more was hidden than came to light on the surface. Father and daughters alike seemed to me too personal—if I may be allowed a seeming contradiction—to be mere impersonations. Cecrops we are usually told is the eponymous of the Cecropidae; his three daughters some mythologists hold are impersonations of the dew, a view I hope I have shown is unsatisfactory, if not untenable (op. cit. p. xxxiv.), or else they were incarnations of certain attributes and aspects of Athene, bearing to her much the same relation as Erectheus to Poseidon. If so, these incarnations are very vivacious, and their activity is strangely independent and even adverse to that of the goddess herself. Such solutions somehow fail to carry conviction. The subject has been so long and so ably investigated that it is with considerable deference I offer for criticism a solution I believe to be wholly novel.

Pindar, perhaps more than any other ancient poet, seems to demand from his interpreters declarations of their critical premises. In recent years scholars customarily have made initial acknowledgment to the work of E. R. Bundy, as psychoanalysts must to Freud, before they begin to offer their own modifications to and expansions of his fundamental work. Much contemporary scholarship has concentrated on the identification and classification in the odes of the elements whose function Bundy labelled and explained. But useful as this type of analysis has been for exorcising the demon of biographical interpretation, it has, like all orthodoxies, prevented perception of other equally important truths. It constitutes no radical heterodoxy to try to account for the fact that each individual ode, for all its dependence on common conventions of structure and of content, makes a different impression. Nor is it unreasonable to try to explain what makes Pindar's style and approach distinctive.

In my own work I have argued, though perhaps not always convincingly, that language as well as structure contributes to an ode's coherence. Scholars trained in America are more willing to assume that repetition of phrase or theme within a poem has significance, and that metaphors can simultaneously bear more than one connotation. The issues at stake have most recently been delineated by Michael Silk, in his discussion of the effect of metaphor in archaic poetry: ‘By “patent”, I mean effects whose existence is not in doubt, though their character may be disputed; by “latent”, those whose effective significance is so tenuous or marginal that one resents the impression of solidity that even mentioning them produces. Such insensitivity is more common than it should be among American classicists, many of whom have also been influenced by the “New Criticism”…’ As illustration of the erroneous American approach Silk cites Cedric Whitman's description of the thematic relation of fires in the Iliad. Silk himself avoids the trap Whitman falls into by considering only ‘patent’ metaphors, and these consistently out of context, so that there is no necessity to comment on the existence or non-existence of thematic connections among them. But it is possible—at least logically—to frame the question differently, and to ask whether a metaphor cannot have patent and latent associations at the same time.

ἀναψηφίƷειν is to put to the vote for the second time an issue on which a decision has already been taken. Until recently known only from Thuc. vi 14 in pre-Aristotelian prose, the word is now shown by SEG X 38B 11–14 (v. infra) to have been not a literary coinage but a recognised procedural term. The noun *ἀναψήφισις is not yet recorded; but since a convenient way of referring to this rather complex conception is needed, I suggest that ‘anapsephisis’ should be used. I include in this conception the putting of the issue either in exactly the same terms as on the first occasion or in the form λῦσαι τὸ ψήφισμα ὃ εἶπε … περὶ …

In 1898 there were discovered in the ruins of an ancient building (maybe a temple) near Novorossijsk several objects made of bronze (a candelabrum, the remnants of a tripod, the handle of a vessel, probably some consecrated plate), and together with them was found a woman's bust in bronze.

The style of the candelabrum reminds one closely of the candelabrum discovered in the vault of Mme. Zaitzeva in Kertch, and it dates consequently from the age of Augustus (see Rostovtzeff, Ancient Decorative Painting in the South of Russia, St. Petersburg, 1914, p. 207 f., Pl. LX.). The handle of a vessel, in all its details, is similar to handles of vessels found at Bori. The whole treasure found at Bori was published by E. M. Pridik (Materials for the Archaeology of Russia, No. 34), and it dates from about the beginning of the Christian era.

The vase illustrated in pll. Vl–IX(a) and figs, 1 and 2 is a red-figure volute-krater belonging to the Museum of Ethnology and Archaeology at Cambridge, and now deposited on loan at the Fitzwilliam Museum. It came to the Museum of Ethnology and Archaeology in 1886 with the Barrett Collection, but nothing further is known of its history. It was attributed to the Berlin Painter by Professor J. D. Beazley in Attische Vasenmaler, and in his Berliner Maler he classed it among the half-dozen earliest works of the master. Until recently it was severely repainted, but has now been cleaned. Much is missing; the surface is rubbed, and the restorer had not hesitated to plane away the edges of fragments where he could not arrange a clean fit; but it remains a fine and interesting piece.

Modern are: foot, with much of the lower part, including most of the rayed area and lower part of reverse figure; volute of one handle; rim, upper register and most of lower register of neck on obverse; patches on body and reverse neck (evident in photographs). The foot has been restored on the model of a complete volute-krater decorated by the same artist some years later. In the body pictures relief-contour is used rather sparingly, as usual in this artist's work; the small figures on the neck, like those on the London volute-krater, show a much fuller use of it. Thinned glaze is used for the usual inner body-markings; on the youth on B, however, they have all been obliterated, except for the end of one line on the back and of one on the upper arm. On this figure it is also used for drapery folds running from the righthand contour, both in the area about the waist and across the leg.

Mentior at si quid, merdis caput inquiner albis corvorum, atque in me veniat mictum atque cacatum Iulius et fragilis Pediatia furque Voranus.

Horace, Satires I, viii, 37–9.

The years following the liberation of Greece from Turkish rule in 1833 witnessed what was perhaps the greatest display of industry on the Athenian Acropolis since the Periclean building programme. In 1837 the Greek Archaeological Society was founded for the purpose of carrying out a systematic if unscientific excavation of the Acropolis down to the classical level. The excavators sought first to clear the area of the Turkish buildings and accumulated débris which cluttered the surface, and then to work on the partial restoration of the ancient buildings: the Parthenon, the Propylaea and the Erechtheum.

The question as to whether Seleucus was included in the Peace of 311 B.C., when the allied coalition came to terms with Antigonus the One-Eyed, has been frequently discussed. Droysen's opinion that he was not seemed to be confirmed in a conclusive manner by Munro's discovery at the end of the century of the Scepsis inscription, in which Antigonus, in an official letter to the city of Scepsis in the Troad, sets out the terms of the peace treaty and the names of the participants; for, as in the brief passage of Diodorus dealing with the same event, there is no mention of Seleucus. Nevertheless, Beloch and others were unconvinced, and supported their dissenting view by pointing to the fact that the historical record showed no clear trace of fighting between Antigonus and Seleucus immediately after 311. Subsequently, however, it was established that such fighting did take place at that time by the discovery of fragments of a Babylonian chronicle relating to the Successors. This new evidence also made it clearer than ever that Seleucus had not been included in the Peace, by showing that the chief motive of Antigonus in making peace then was the wish to be left free to combat Seleucus, who had just re-established himself as an independent power in the eastern satrapies of the empire. The correct interpretation of the evidence would seem to be that given, for example, by Rostovtzeff: that Seleucus was excluded from the Peace, because Antigonus insisted upon this condition; that Cassander, Ptolemy, and Lysimachus acquiesced; and that war was at once waged against him by Antigonus.

Palladas' attitude to Christianity has been much discussed in recent years. It is not of purely academic interest whether he was a pagan or Christian, for Christianity did not remain ‘the beggars' religion’, and it is the conversion of just such a figure as Palladas, a schoolmaster steeped in the classics but scornful alike of the traditional gods and the Platonism that had taken their place for the intellectual pagan of his day, that marks a vital stage in the christianisation of the Roman Empire. For nowhere did the traces of paganism linger longer than in the University circles of Alexandria. However the arguments adduced by P. Waltz to show that it is ‘infiniment probable que Palladas était chrétien’ carry but little conviction, and it seems much more likely that Palladas was and remained a pagan. The following poem, though overlooked or misinterpreted in most recent discussions, can perhaps be made to cast a little more light on the matter:

φιλοχρίστῳ Planudes (Marcianus 481): φιλοχρήστῳ Lascaris (editio princeps, 1494), edd. plerique. ‘Here we are, Victories, the laughing maidens, bearing victories for the city that loves Christ (?). Men painted us who loved the city, carving the symbols that are proper for Victories.’

In the course of a careful examination of the coins of Corcyra, I have come upon a variety of types which seem to me to allude to races of galleys. That the Greeks had such races is in itself probable, and is clearly proved by the testimony of ancient writers. But on consulting the ordinary works on the games and races of the Greeks, as well as those which deal with naval archæology, I have found that the matter has hitherto almost entirely escaped observation. I therefore feel called on to add a new chapter, which will indeed be but a short one, to the history of Greek athletic sports. And I imagine that Englishmen, who take so much interest in the races of yachts and rowing-boats, will not be ungrateful to me if I am able to show that such races are of greater antiquity than is commonly imagined.

That galley-races are as old as Homer may seem a rash assertion; yet this does seem to be implied in a passage of the Odyssey, though it is not directly asserted. This passage occurs in the 8th book of the Odyssey, at the place where Alcinoüs is speaking of the aptness in athletic sports of his subjects the Phaeacians.

The publication of the fourth volume on the excavations conducted at Troy by the University of Cincinnati in the years 1932–1938 enables us to review with more confidence the historical events which lie, no matter at how great a distance, behind the Iliad and to reconsider the Homeric epithets for Troy in the light of new knowledge. We may at the start agree with the writers that no other city in the Troad except Hisarlik has any reasonable claim to be the site of Troy, and it is now clear that Troy VI, which was gravely damaged by an earthquake c. 1275 B.C., was succeeded by Troy VIIa, which had a real continuity with VI and was largely a rebuilt version of it, until it perished itself from fire c. 1240 B.C. VIIa has thus a substantial claim to be the Homeric city, and the date of its destruction agrees with that given by Herodotus for the Trojan War as κατὰ ὀκτακόσια (ἔτεα) μάλιστα ἐς ἐμέ (ii 145.4). We may ask how relevant the Homeric epithets are to Troy as we now know it and when they may have been introduced into the oral tradition which Homer inherited and used in the eighth century. At the start we may say that, while all of them are at least adequate for a walled city on the site of Hisarlik, and some are much to the point, not all are equally individual, and we may classify them according to their use for cities in general and for Troy in particular. In doing this we must remember that in the Homeric poems cities need epithets as much as gods and heroes do, and that there is bound to be a certain overlap between one city and another in the epithets applied to it. Though we may postulate a pool of adjectives suitable for cities from which the poet draws those that meet his needs most adequately, there are some which are confined to Troy and others which are specially appropriate to it.

Seneca devoted two of his letters to Lucilius to a problem which had been treated quite differently in previous philosophical doctrine. Letter 94 is written against philosophers who believe that there is no need for praecepta, for single precepts and moral sentences or proverbs concerning individual and specific situations in human life. Moral progress rests solely and entirely upon the knowledge of some basic decreta which belong in the context of a scientific theory and provide sufficient help for every occasion in human life. The second letter, 95, deals polemically with those who admit nothing but praecepta in their educational programme and who reject every kind of dogmatic knowledge. The first group is represented by Aristo the Stoic, whose contempt of praecepta is also attested by Sextus Empiricus. For the other group, Seneca does not quote an authority. He does not mention Cynics and Sceptics who rejected moral and general dogmatism alike, and it seems to be very likely that he was thinking of his own teacher Sotion and the Sextian school who had no interest in ethical theory, but were very famous for their use of moral and psychagogic sentences.

Seneca's own opinion is far from being original. He says that both—praecepta and decreta—are useful and even necessary, and this position was already held by Cleanthes, Panaetius and the majority of Stoics, by Aristotle and other philosophers.