Papyri, ostraka, inscriptions and printed texts, some ancient, some mediaeval, and some subsequent to the Fall of Constantinople, bring to light almost daily a multitude of hitherto unknown words; words which complete or enrich our knowledge of the language, history, life, and civilisation of the Greeks throughout the ages. The discovery of a single word indeed may throw light upon much that was unknown or doubtful, and provide a key for a wide range of connected problems. Of the importance of collecting these words there can therefore be no doubt. Many scholars have from time to time set their hands to this work; sometimes, like S. Koumanoudis and Van Herwerden, by publishing supplementary dictionaries, sometimes by appending glossaries to their editions of texts. Stuart-Jones and Mackenzie's new edition of Liddell and Scott records new words, to the obvious advantage of those who consult it.

All members of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, about half a century ago, were acquainted with a row of little brown volumes which stood in the Bursar's study: they contained the records of his travels in most parts of Europe and the Near East, and anyone who thought of going abroad to those regions or was interested in their geography naturally betook himself to the Fellows' Buildings with any problems that presented themselves. Then the appropriate volume was brought out, and it was rarely that information was not forthcoming: wherefore the collection was known in College as the Book of Jasher.

Colonel Crowder was Bursar of Corpus from 1874 to 1892, and after his death in the latter year his journals were presented to the College by his nephew, Sir Matthew Dodsworth. They are now in the strong-room among the College MSS., and there is so much valuable information contained in them that it seems desirable to place their existence on, record and to give some idea of their scope and character.

It is a common-place of most scholars, followed enthusiastically by writers of text-books, that Greek sailors did not like the sea; they went from island to island, or crept along the coast. Rarely did they leave the sight of land, and then only the most venturesome; and they did not sail by night. I don't know that I have seen it stated in so many words, but it is implied that the close relations between Miletus and Sybaris were maintained by voyages across the Aegean to Corinth (e.g.: ‘Corinth becomes the centre of exchange with Italy: it pays better to break cargo at the isthmus than to sail round the stormy coasts of the Peloponnese’), thence (but in Milesian or foreign ships?) through the gulf, up the north-west coast to Corcyra, hurriedly and anxiously across to Otranto, then, following every curve of the coast, past Tarentum and Metapontum, to their goal. If goods must go further, as so many did to Etruria, they took another isthmus-route overland to Laus or Scidrus, thence along the coast again, even as far as Massalia and Emporiae.

The masterpiece of Oriental craftsmanship reproduced in Plates I—III is said by General L. P. di Cesnola to have been found in April 1875, in a rich but partially despoiled chamber-tomb at Amathus in Cyprus. Cesnola's account of the discovery exaggerates the depth at which chamber-tombs are found in Cyprus, but his plan corresponds fairly well with that of a large tomb (still accessible in 1894, and probably to-day) in the low ground north of the acropolis of Amathus. The silver bowl, already broken, and other objects, are said to have been found in a ‘copper cauldron,’ as if discarded by an earlier tomb-robber.

The ‘Amathus Bowl’ and a bronze shield-boss (rondache) said to have been found with it were published by G. Colonna-Ceccaldi in 1876 and republished in 1882 in his collected papers. The copper-plate illustration is signed S. Dardel, and was printed by Ch. Chardon ainé in Paris. If the ‘patère et rondache’ were brought separately to Paris, this may account for their alienation from the main Cesnola Collection. Dardel's engraving does not include the long ends of the rim, and is inaccurate in several details, as appears from the reproduction in fig. 1. It was reproduced on a smaller scale in Helbig, Homerisches Epos, 1884, Plate I, and repeatedly elsewhere.

The student of Greek religion has no more difficult problem to face than that of the Prometheus Vinctus. In previous writings I had always evaded it, because I had not found any solution and I hoped that there might be one. Failing to find anything satisfactory myself or in the writings of others, I have spoken of it in the title of this paper as a paradox rather than a problem. And I am only now setting down my thoughts on it in outline, because I do not find that the religious difficulties of that play are appreciated in their full gravity either by the commentators or by the writers on Greek religion.

The play is unique among (a) the dramas of the Attic stage, (b) the literature of Greece, (c) the religious literature of the world. The truth of the first two statements can be proved by a rapid glance through the existing and recorded literature of Greece, especially through the products of the Attic drama.

Whenever our store of Greek sculpture is enriched by a new example of major importance, the new-comer naturally arouses great interest. The question immediately arises whether it conforms with what is already known of the Greek sculpture of that period or whether it reveals new features. In either case it becomes the object of keen discussion, for we are almost as eager to test the soundness of the edifice we have tentatively set up as to enlarge it.

The newly-acquired archaic marble statue in New York (Pls. IV, V) is such an important new-comer. Under the circumstances I have gladly accepted the invitation of the Editorial Committee of this Journal to present a short note on the statue pending its more detailed publication in Metropolitan Museum Studies and Brunn-Bruckmann-Arndt, Denkmäler.

The significance of the New York statue lies in the fact that it is the best preserved and so the most representative example of the earliest ‘Apollo’ figures—or kouroi as we now preferably call them—of Greece. That is, it stands at the beginning of the long line of development which began about 600 B.C. and culminated about a century and a half later in the Apollo of Olympia. Its only important contemporaries are the famous colossal figures from Sounion, one extensively restored, the other a mere torso, and the Dipylon statue, of which only the head and one hand have survived. The preservation of the New York statue, on the other hand, is astonishingly good.

In the Sculpture Gallery of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, is exhibited an inscribed tombstone, bearing the following description: “Tombstone of Demetrios from Smyrna. Late Hellenistic or early Imperial period. Smoke-discoloured marble. Presented by J. W. Burgon, 1858.” As this has remained, to the best of my knowledge, unpublished, I sought the permission of the Keeper of the Museum, Mr. E. Thurlow Leeds, to publish it: I am grateful to him for his ready acquiescence. While I was engaged in studying the inscription and a squeeze of it actually lay on my table, I received from Freiherr F. Hiller von Gaertringen a letter asking whether I could trace the inscription referred to in a slip, now in the possession of the Prussian Academy, bearing, in the handwriting of August Boeckh, a copy of the text together with the following note: “Auf einem Grabstein von Athen, im Besitz des Herrn Burgon. Über die Inschrift ein Basrelief. Eine sitzende männliche Figur, deren Oberteil abgebrochen ist, in dem Sessel eine kleine, wunderlich gestaltete männliche Figur. Vor den Sitzenden zwei weibliche Figuren. Die Inschrift: [here follows a copy of the text]. Forchhammer versichert diese letzte Inschrift genau gelesen zu haben. Von Forchhammer durch [K.O.] Müller in England copirt.” Upon learning that the stone is now in the Ashmolean Collection, Freiherr von Hiller, with characteristic generosity, waived in my favour his claim to publish the inscription. He has also kindly read this article in manuscript.

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.

The name of the vase-painter Apollodoros was discovered by Hartwig, who combined the incomplete inscriptions on two works so close in style that they must be by a single hand: the cup-fragment in the collection of the Marquess of Northampton at Castle Ashby (Pl. VI, 1) gives … odorosegraphsen, the fragmentary cup in the Louvre Apollod… The Castle Ashby fragment has been taken to represent actual fighting; but comparison with a fragment in the Villa Giulia suggests another interpretation. The Villa Giulia fragment shows, inside (Pl. VI, 3), the lower right quarter of a warrior moving to right, the shield on the left arm, the spear carried in the right hand. The device on the shield was the face of a satyr in full relief: what remains is the long beard. The shield-rim is inscribed [καλ]ϵναι. An apron hangs from the rim—a piece of felt or leather folded in two and fastened at the fold to the shield. On the outside of the cup (Pl VI, 2) we find the lower parts of two warriors moving quickly yet cautiously to the right: chiton, greaves, shield, spear carried low. To the right of the leader came the handle. On the other's shield-rim […να]1. Now I take the Castle Ashby fragment to have come from just such a scene. What we see there is head and shoulders of a young warrior moving to right, bending; helmet, chiton, wrap, spear carried, shield charged with a satyr's face in high relief; on the right, crest-tip and spear-butt of a second warrior moving in the same direction.

The epitaphs and other verse inscriptions which are preserved for us in literature impose on us a certain caution. The good-will which our authors have brought to the reading of monuments is like what we bring to the singing of hymns: when lulled by the authority of the verse-form and of the occasion, we can accept things which the poet cannot have intended. I take as example the ‘green hill far away Without a city wall.’ The poet does not say that the hill is unwalled but that it is outside Jerusalem: yet to understand him to say the former is both easy and common.

The moral is important. What generations of intelligent piety can acquiesce in is one thing: what the poet can have meant is another. We must not, therefore, be shocked to find Herodotos also acquiescing in what the poet never meant him to believe. Recording the Battle of Thermopylai, and concluding with the action in which (he says) only Spartans and Thespians fought, he then names the bravest of the Spartans, and then of the Thespians.

Cyprus has in many ages been famed for artistic achievement of many kinds, but the excellence of its mural painting from the twelfth to the sixteenth century is only now being recognised. The Asinou frescoes, probably the most remarkable of all, have recently been described, and elsewhere in the island are many others deserving attention not merely as documents but as monuments of art. Among them are the paintings here reproduced, about seven-eighths of the collection in the Theotokos church near Galata. When visiting it in October 1932 I was unable fully to note all its decoration and other features, but the present incomplete account may perhaps encourage experts to study these well-preserved examples of work in the Byzantine tradition executed by Greek artists during the period of Venetian rule (1489–1570). The church (Fig. 1) stands isolated in a grove of trees beside a mountain brook on the left of the main road leading to Galata about half a mile below that village. No houses or farm buildings are near it, but about eighty yards away is a similar and larger church (Hagia Paraskeue) erected in 1502.

To the review in the last number of this Journal of Mr. Philip Argenti's The Massacres of Chios, described in contemporary diplomatic reports I would like to add a note on a little book published at Chios in 1921 by Mr. Stylianos G. Bios, a professor in the gymnasium of Chios. This book is called Ἡ σφαγὴ τῆς χίου εἰς τὸ στόμα τοῦ χιακοῦ λαοῦ, ἤτοι διηγήσεις περὶ τῆς σφαγῆς, ἱστορικαὶ σημειώσεις καὶ ποιήματα ἀναφερόμενα εἰς τὴν σφαγήν, and the title very exactly describes the contents. In the first part we have in ninety-five pages forty-three stories of personal experiences of the massacre. Some few of these stories and anecdotes must have been written down some time before the book was published, because they are taken down from the mouths of very old people, who were children at the time and in one way or another escaped with their lives. The majority of the stories, however, are at second hand, but at good second hand; that is to say, they are the words of people who had themselves heard of the events from actual eyewitnesses. In the second part of the book full details are given of the ages and names of those who told the stories, and for those who were not themselves eye-witnesses the names of their informants. The third part contains a few poems and some popular ballads about the massacre. All the stories are written out in dialect, with explanations of the harder words.

In a review of Mr. M. G. Mikhailidis-Nouaros' Λαογραφικὰ ∑ύμμεικτα Καρπάθου, published in Vol. LII (1932) of this Journal, p. 335, I noticed as remarkable and interesting his statement that people in that island, when writing to their friends and relations abroad, will often compose the letter, either entirely or at all events for the most part, in μαντινάδες, those distichs which, half improvised and half traditional, are sung at most of the greater occasions of village life in the Greek islands. That is to say, they avoid prose composition. Such a letter can hardly contain much news in our sense of the word: it serves, however, to transmit the feelings of the writer in the only form in which he or she has learned to express them. Of these letters the author gives a couple of recent examples. The point has a certain interest, because it has been remarked that the most primitive literary composition is apt to be in verse, and that prose is an art coming later.

Whoever advances a theory in opposition to the common opinion cannot expect to meet at once with consent. Therefore I value it highly that the review of my paper Die Artemistempel von Ephesos (JHS. 1932, 130) inclines to accept my chronology of the Ephesian archaic finds, this chronology having been the main object of the paper. I would welcome the statement that ‘few would nowadays be unwilling to follow Rumpf in bringing the ivory figurines down into the sixth century’ (I myself indicated this date in AM. 1925, 30, note 4); but this assertion seems rather optimistic, considering the widespread approval extended to V. Müller's Frühe Plastik.

In a notice of my edition of the Agamemnon which appeared in the last number of the Journal (1932, 323), the reviewer says: ‘As an example (i.e. of Lawson's many conjectures) we may mention ὄμβροι δέ in 560, which gives good sense and saves the grammar, but the original error cannot have been palaeographical: ἐξ οὐρανοῦ γάρ of the manuscripts is therefore said to have been a gloss on ὄμβροι. But why should anyone want to tell us that rain comes from the sky?’

In IG. iv. fasc. i, which comprises the inscriptions of Epidaurus, H. von Gaertringen published on p. xxv of the prolegomena a revised version of the stemma published by Fraenkel on p. 264 of IG. iv.

There is a small group of reliefs from late Etruscan urns which are identified as representations of the Gaulish raid upon the sanctuary of Delphi in 279 B.C. The reliefs vary a good deal in detail and no general type for the subject can be traced, but but the narrow shape indicates Volterra; the material is tufa (Fig. 1).