The year 1949 has seen a great improvement in conditions in Greece. The Peloponnese and Central Greece have been completely cleared, and archaeological sites in the north can now be visited; excavation has been resumed by the Archaeological Society and the foreign schools. The Italian School has returned to activity with Dr. Doro Levi in charge. Funds have not yet radiated to the provinces, but the metropolitan museums are being restored and a fourth gallery has been opened in the National Museum; the Eleusis Museum is being put in order.

There is no news from the Acropolis apart from Prof. Orlandos' recent discovery that the cover tiles in every third row on the roof of the Parthenon were bigger than those in the intermediate ones. Orlandos has secured and underpinned the wall and rock at weak points on the south side of the Acropolis, and has made considerable progress with the restoration of the orchestra pavement and cavea of the Odeum of Herodes. J. Travlos has cleared part of an establishment with handsome mosaic floors which preceded the Early Christian basilica by the Arch of Hadrian.

In Evolution, I tried to date tripod-cauldrons by the development of their shape and decoration, and by the style of human and animal figurines upon them, particularly by the style of horses on tripod-handles. I now want to compare tripod-horses with horses on stands, but first I must examine the foundations, and cast a glance at dating evidence afforded by fibulae.

In my former study I ventured to tamper with the order laid down by Furtwängler. Not unnaturally, some of his successors at Olympia resisted. They have not met my contention that tripods with solid legs and handles show a consistent development in section from solid to flat, in decoration from simple to elaborate, but they still find it necessary to insert elaborate plated tripods, decorated with advanced horses, into the sequence, so that late solid tripods can imitate their patterns. Plated tripods cannot go in the middle of the series, as Furtwängler said, because too many solid tripods are hybrids between his classes I and III. Hampe puts plated tripods before the decorative period of solid tripods and equates the horses of the last-named with Boeotian rabbits of the seventh century. A horse is a horse and rabbits are different. Early seventh century horses are not at all like rabbits. Let him look again at his own Boeotian brooches.

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.

Two vases exist on which the sanctuary of Chryse is definitely identified by inscriptions. The first is an Attic red-figure stamnos, Louvre G413, attributed to Hermonax, on which is depicted Philoktetes being bitten by the snake at the altar of Chryse. The second is an Attic red-figure bell-krater, Vienna Inv. 1144, of the late fifth century B.C., which depicts Herakles sacrificing at the altar of Chryse. With the first vase may be associated an Attic red-figure calyx-krater, Louvre G342, attributed to the Altamura Painter, which bears no inscriptions, but undoubtedly represents the same scene; and with the second may be grouped four other vases of the late fifth and early fourth centuries B.C., which resemble it sufficiently closely to suggest that they too represent the sanctuary of Chryse. The interpretation of the two Louvre vases has never been in doubt, since they obviously illustrate the story of the biting of Philoktetes by the snake in the sanctuary of Chryse, but the interpretation of the other group of vases has been the subject of some dispute. In this article, therefore, I propose to discuss the connection of these vases with one another and with the two Louvre vases, and to examine their relation to the literary treatment of the legends concerning this sanctuary.

Prior to 1918 the so-called Lycurgean reform at Sparta was dated not later than the ninth century B.C. AS Grote aptly said, ‘it would seem, in the absence of better evidence, that a date [about 830–820 B.C.] … is more probable than any epoch either later or earlier’. In 1918 Wilamowitz-Möllendorff published what he considered to be better evidence—a fragmentary poem which was ascribed by him to Tyrtaeus and which was believed to indicate that in the latter part of the seventh century B.C. the Spartan army was still brigaded by the three Dorian tribes, Hylleis, Pamphyloi, and Dymanes. In the light of this new evidence—new, that is, to us but not to the ancient authorities—he and other scholars have shifted the date of the reform by a couple of centuries or more into the late seventh or middle sixth century. The shift of date flouts all the other evidence of the ancient authorities (Tyrtaeus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristotle, Plutarch, etc.); in consequence these authorities are held to be mistaken, their manuscripts to be corrupt, their meanings to be other than they appear, or their views to be due to misconceptions which modern scholars can dispel. The result is that the ancient evidence has been severely tousled. The more logical the scholar is, the further he is impelled to discountenance all the other ancient evidence—once he has accepted Wilamowitz-Möllendorff's interpretation of the meaning of the new fragment. In this paper the view is advanced that the ancient authorities are in general sound both in manuscript and in meaning and that the new fragment does not yield the conclusive evidence for a late dating which has been supposed. It should also be noted that two of the supports on which the late dating once rested have been undermined by the re-dating of the archaeological evidence at Sparta and by the realisation that hoplite warfare commenced at Sparta c. 700 B.C. In Part I of the paper the ancient evidence is re-considered and in Part II the general conclusions are stated.

Cook Wilson remarks that one of the chief doctrines of the Timaeus ‘relates to the existence of evil … all cosmogonies which attribute the world to some divine activity find a difficulty here. Some assume another spirit, an evil one, though partly subordinate to the good one; others, to avoid making an evil spiritual principle, assume an unintelligent matter, or in general some form of Necessity beside the Good Spirit. We should suppose that Plato, if not monist, would incline to the latter and should have thought he clearly adopted it in the Timaeus.’ In Laws X, ‘soul’ is the cause of evil as of good. So Plato says one thing at one time, another at another. But his interpreters do not like to admit this. Professor Cornford found the spiritual view of evil lurking in the Timaeus too. Mr. Vlastos and lately the Rév. Père Festugière, though they differ about the meaning of Laws X, agree that for Plato the κακοποιόν is always matter. I think that we should not try too hard to smooth over the discrepancies in what Plato says about evil. They call attention to something obscure, perhaps incoherent, in his metaphysical thinking.

The account given by Thucydides (I. 107. 2–108. 2) of the Spartan expedition to Central Greece that culminated in the battle of Tanagra is not entirely satisfactory. The main problem that arises out of it may be put in the form of a question: why did the Spartans need such a large force, namely 1,500 hoplites ‘ἑαυτῶν’ with 10,000 more ‘ τῶν συμμάχων ’, merely for the purpose of coercing the Phocians? It is not, I think, an unreasonable criticism to say that the aim and strength of the expedition, as given by Thucydides, seem quite out of proportion, and most modern historians have found it difficult to accept his account in full. The problem has usually been solved by assuming that the Spartans had an ulterior motive, namely the re-establishment of a strong Thebes as a check to Athens. But a careful reading of Thucydides should make it quite clear that he at any rate knew nothing of any ulterior motive. For at the beginning of his account he gives the Spartans' desire to protect the people of Doris as the sole motive for the expedition. Then, he goes on, after dealing with the Phocians the Spartans started out on the homeward journey (‘ άττεχώρουν πάλιν ’). But finding that they were cut off by the arrival of an Athenian squadron in the gulf of Corinth, while the land route was already blocked because of the Athenians' control of the Megarid, ‘ they decided to remain in Boeotia and consider what was the safest way for them to get home ’. The Athenians thereupon marched into Boeotian territory to oppose them, and the result was the battle at Tanagra. This account, I think, makes it sufficiently plain that in Thucydides' opinion the battle of Tanagra was entirely the result of an Athenian attempt to trap the Spartan expeditionary force, and that if left to themselves the Spartans would have gone straight home after dealing with the Phocians. Thus the usual answer to the problem involves a serious departure from Thucydides' account of the affair. But in addition this theory of an ulterior move directed by Sparta against Athens does not fit in at all well with what is known of Spartan policy during this period. For it is remarkable that throughout the fifteen years of the First Peloponnesian War Spartan activity against Athens was almost nil, in spite of many attacks on members of her confederacy, the complete subjugation of at least one of them, Aegina, and several raids oh her own territory: apart from the Tanagra campaign, the only positive action taken by the Spartans themselves was the rather half-hearted invasion of Attica led by Pleistoanax in 446. It is beyond the scope of this note to consider the reasons for this inactivity on the part of Sparta, but the fact that they were so little active at this time gives very good grounds for believing Thucydides' account of the original cause of the campaign under consideration.

In a lecture on the Working of the Athenian Democracy delivered to the Hellenic Society at Burlington House on 3 May, 1949, Professor A. W. Gomme attacked the view ‘ that μοναρχια or principate describes with sufficient accuracy, not only Pericles' actual position, but Herodotus' and Thucydides' conceptions of it ’. To the word μοναρχια Gomme attached the meaning of absolute rule, typified in fifth-century thought, and in Herodotus, by the Persian kingship: by ‘ principate’ he meant the direct, single rule of an Augustus. To both he drew the parallel of modern dictatorship in a totalitarian state. Since he cited me as subscribing to this view in its most extreme form, in so far as I approved of E. M. Walker's remarks on the strategia in the Cambridge Ancient History and took Darius' arguments in favour of a monarchy for Persia in Herodotus iii 80–2 as ‘ Herodotus’ own justification for Pericles' unique position at Athens ', I feel that I should make some reply; and am grateful to the editor of the Journal for this opportunity of doing so. I am also grateful to Professor Gomme for letting me consult his MS. so that I have been able to take up the point with him on a surer foundation than that of memory, and have had the privilege of a second acquaintance with a brilliant lecture.

My difference with Professor Morrison can, I think, be best expressed as follows. (1) In Herodotos' debate there is no compromise between democracy and monarchy (any more than between either of these and oligarchy), no comfortable Polybian mixture of good elements. Otanes especially is quite uncompromising: ἐμοὶ δοκέει ἔνα μὲν ήμέων μούναρχον μηκέτι γενέσθαι οὔτε γάρ ἡδύ οὔτε ἀγαθόν . . . πλῆθος δὲ ἄρχον . . . τούτων τῶν ὁ μούναρχος ποιέει ούδέν, and so throughout. The μούναρχος is autocrat or nothing. And the remarks of Megabyxos and Dareios on democracy remind one of the Old Oligarch, no friend to Perikles. (2) Although I agree of course that it is Greek thought and not Persian that informs the debate, it is not for nothing that it is Dareios, the best of μούναρχοι, who defends μουναρχίη; that is, at this stage Herodotos has the Persian monarchy in mind. And (3), in as much as it is Greek experience, not Persian, that is behind Dareios' description of the failures of oligarchy and democracy that lead inevitably to μουναρχίη, it is Greek experience of the rise of tyranny—ἐ ςἔχθε αμεγάλ αἀλλήλοισ ιἀπικνέοται, ἐξ ὧν στάσιες ἐγγίγνονται, ἐκ δὲ τῶν στασίων φόνος, ἐκ δὲ τοῦ φόνου ἀπέβη ἐς μουναρχίην; and from democracy, τοῦτο ςὲ τοιοῦτο γίνεται ἐς ὃ ἂν προστάς τις τοῦ δήμου τοὺς τοιούτους παύσῃ ἐκ δὲ αὐτῶν θωμάзεται οὗτος δὴ ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου, θωμαзόμεος δὲ ἀν' ὧν ἐφάνη μούναρχος ἐών. The enemies of Perikles likened him to Peisistratos and his power, to a tyranny; but was Herodotos among these enemies ? (Alkibiades might have read the last sentence quoted above as his justification for ‘aiming at a tyranny’). And not Peisistratos, but other Herodotean tyrants are in some measure like the oriental μούναρχος, Kleisthenes of Sikyon (compare him with Croesus) and Polykrates: does Herodotos wish to suggest that Perikles was like either of these? More particularly since he was a wise man and knew that Xerxes-was as much a μούναρχος-type as Dareios.