In discussing the transition from bronze to iron in Anatolia, Dr. Stefan Przeworski incidentally identifies Homeric conditions with the stage in the historical development of metallurgy which he calls Chalcosideric. Professor Nilsson and Miss Lorimer have argued briefly but effectively that the poems contain elements from different periods; but belief in an historical ‘Homeric Society’ dies hard and justifies a more detailed examination of all the references to metals in the poems.

Przeworski's transitional age began about 1300 B.C. in Anatolia and about a century later in Greece; in both it ended about 700 B.C. Before it began, bronze was the useful material for all industrial purposes, and the rare uses of iron were ornamental or magical. After it ended, iron was the normal industrial material, and the more malleable bronze was used for fine work or elaborate modelling. The characteristics of the intermediate period are: 1. Imitation of Late Bronze Age types in iron. 2. Simultaneous appearance of bronze and iron objects of the same purpose and type. 3. Inlay of bronze objects with iron. 4. Combination in the same weapon or tool of iron working and bronze ornamental parts. 5. Addition of iron working parts to bronze objects such as cult-wagons and utensils. 6. Use of bronze rivets on iron weapons and tools. 7. Repair of bronze objects with iron parts (Przeworski 175–6.) Most of these characteristics are so technical that they are unlikely to be reflected in poetry. Moreover, so many bronze objects were in common use at all periods, including the full Iron Age, that the most significant evidence may be taken to be the relative value of the metals, the relative frequency of bronze and iron weapons and tools, and the degree of familiarity shown with the methods of the forge as distinct from the foundry.

When the Messenger in the Oedipus Coloneus looked back, he saw that Oedipus had disappeared and that Theseus was screening his eyes with his hand. Then Theseus made adoration to earth and to the Olympus of the gods, both at once: ὁρῶμεν αὐτὸν γῆν τε προσκυνοῦνθ̓ ἅμα καὶ τὸν θεῶν Ὄλυμπονἐνἐν ταὐτῷλόλῳ (1654 f.). There was nothing strange about such a salutation. The Sausageseller in the Knights was bidden to ‘adore earth and the gods’ (ἔπειτα τὴν πρόσκυσον καὶ τοὺς θεούς, 156), and did so, presumably with the same familiar ritual gestures which Theseus used. But the phrasing in the Coloneus is emphatic (ἅμα … ἐν ταὐτῷ λόγῳ), and Jebb has one of his percipient notes: ‘The vision which [Theseus] had just seen moved him to adore both the χθόνιοι and the ὕπατοι. This touch is finely conceived so as to leave the mystery unbroken.’ The mystery, that is, of the passing of Oedipus. οὐ γάρ τις αὐτὸν οὔτε πυρφόρος θεοῦ | κεραυνὸς ἐξέπαξεν οὔτε ποντία | θύελλα κινηθεῖσα τῷ τότ̕ ἐν χρόνῳ, | ἀλλ̕ ἤ τις ἐκ θεῶν πομπός, ἤ τὸ νερτέρων | εὔνουν διαστὰν γῆς ἀλάμπετον βάθρον.

The purpose of the following remarks is to suggest a close relationship of thought between the Oedipus Coloneus of Sophocles and the Oresteia of Aeschylus; to suggest, further, that both dramas performed, in terms of the same conceptions, a religious function which tragedy was peculiarly fitted to perform.

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.

Plato says that the Spartans arrived one day late for Marathon because they were at the time engaged in a war against Messene, and he hints that they had other difficulties too. As there is no mention of this revolt of the Messenians in Herodotos or Thucydides, or in any later historian, it is generally supposed that Plato (whose historical references are notoriously inaccurate) was simply mistaken about it. Nevertheless, two curious facts seem to support him: Zankle was seized about this time by Anaxilas of Rhegion and renamed Messene because, says Pausanias, Messenians fleeing from the Spartans after an unsuccessful revolt formed the bulk of his forces; secondly, Strabo says that the second Messenian War was the one in which Tyrtaios was engaged, and that there were two later wars between Messene and Sparta—the last of these, the fourth, was presumably the one which followed the earthquake of 465; the third may then be Plato's war in 490. These two supporting indications have not convinced most historians, for Thucydides gives a different explanation of the renaming of Zankle, and Strabo does not clearly and definitely refer to a revolt in 490. It has also seemed surprising that no authors earlier than Strabo and Pausanias should have preserved the tradition of the war. The question has often been discussed, most recently and fully by Jacoby, who decides that the revolt is a fiction.

Herodotus in the course, of his description of Kambyses' conquest of Egypt gives both the earliest and the only detailed account we possess of Polykrates, the tyrant of Samos. Thucydides makes a brief reference to him, also dating him to the reign of Kambyses (ἐπὶ καμβύσου), 530–522 B.C. Other references, as will appear, are late, scattered, and incidental. In attempting to determine the length of the Samian tyranny, Herodotus will, therefore, be our most important source of evidence. Although his interest is concentrated on the career of Polykrates, he provides enough information about Samian activities in the immediately preceding period to suggest that Polykrates is, in most cases, continuing a policy already initiated a generation before him. The difficulty of compressing into the brief period of Kambyses all that is referred to the tyranny of Polykrates is notorious, as is also the difficulty of reconciling with the usually accepted dates of Polykrates the chronological references to other people connected with the Samian tyranny. There is a similar problem about the dating of two of the great Samian works which Herodotus describes, the water tunnel of Eupalinos, and the Heraion of Rhoikos. The usual assumption that the Samian tyranny began with Polykrates' seizure of power in the middle or late thirties is not, I think, adequate to explain the evidence. There are various indications that the Samian tyranny, or a régime at Samos which closely resembled the subsequent tyranny, had begun in the generation before Polykrates, and that Polykrates himself, because of his spirited resistance to Persia, has been credited with what was in reality the achievement of a continuous policy which had been begun earlier, perhaps by his father.

There are in the literary sources few examples of curial life extending over three generations with such a continuity of detail as is provided by Libanius in his references to the family of Argyrius. Yet in the more accessible works of reference, the student of the social life of the later Roman Empire will discover merely a shortened version by Ensslin (PW. Suppl. VII, 680) of Seeck's note on Obodianus (Briefe, 222). In addition, the index of the Teubner edition of Libanius presents much confusion between grandfather and grandson.

Towards the end of his life, Libanius addressed to the Emperor Theodosius an open letter upon the parlous state of the curiae at the time, contrasting their present hard lot with the state of things which had prevailed earlier in the century. In dealing with the recruitment of fresh blood into the curia, he cites as an example of previous practice the conduct of his own grandfather (Or. xlix. 18). He, some years before his death in 324, had been instrumental in securing for a young foreigner named Argyrius an introduction into the curia of Antioch. This he had succeeded in doing, despite Argyrius' alien birth, his youth, and lack of property, even against the opposition of the then governor and the then sophist of the city, Zenobius. Oddly enough, there was a family relationship between Zenobius and Argyrius, which Libanius mentions at a later time (Ep. 101).

If what I am giving you this afternoon is little more than a series of rather conjectural reflections about well-known matters, my excuse is that I was tempted by an invitation from an old and highly valued pupil to speak in memory of an intimate companion of the distant days when I was young, a companion from whom I learnt much. Marett, like Frazer and Jane Harrison and others, used his knowledge of Greek as a bridge towards the study of anthropology in general. It is a specially helpful bridge, because the Greeks, with their extraordinary command of literary expression, have left articulate evidence about their thought and feelings and customs at a stage of development when other peoples had no literature. One is always surprised at the coexistence in Greece of the highly developed and the utterly primitive. Dr. Galton in a speculative guess at the intelligence quota of different human groups put the fifth-century Athenian about twice as high as the nineteenth-century Londoner; yet an Athenian army was reduced to terror by an eclipse of the moon, contemporaries of Thucydides worshipped at the Diasia an imaginary enormous snake, and while Aristotle was writing his treatise on dramatic poetry some of his contemporaries were introducing Ludi Scenici to Rome as a medicine against a pestilence.

The bronze piece here studied is in the possession of Sir John Beazley, and it is at his invitation that I publish it. I must thank him both for his invitation and for enabling me to study the object repeatedly and at leisure. It was acquired in Paris.

The object is a thin, ovoid piece of bronze with a projection, representing the head of a snake, within the circle. The whole object is doubtless thought of as a coiled snake. The dimensions of the whole are: inner diameter from Α of ΝΑΙΩΙ to Ω of ΑΝΕΩΗΚΕΝ, 0·065 m.; distance from tip of snake's head to opposite inner edge, between Σ and Τ of ΕΣΤΡΑΤΟΥ, 0·050 m. The bronze is of a regular width, save that it widens slightly behind the projecting head; normal width, 0·008 m.; width behind head from outer edge to base of head, 0·010 m. Length of snake-head, 0·027 m. Average thickness, 0·003 m.; max. thickness of head, 0·005 m.

The piece, which is covered with a green patina, is perfectly preserved save for a narrow strip where the surface has been removed, which appears as a black streak on the photograph. This may be original, and due to a flaw in casting, since the dots of the inscription, which are in its path, appear to be undamaged by it.

The present bibliography, relating to the years 1950 and 1951, follows the same lines as those of former years. Books and articles which I know only at second hand are marked by an asterisk. My cordial thanks are due to those scholars who have lightened my burden by sending me copies of their works.

Death has inflicted severe losses on epigraphical studies. Adolf Wilhelm, who for more than half a century stood in the foremost rank of Greek epigraphists and maintained his tireless activity, despite increasing infirmity, until nearing his eighty-seventh year, died in Vienna on August 10, 1950. Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus tam cari capitis? J. J. E. Hondius, founder and editor of SEG and Secretary of the Epigraphical Congress which met at Amsterdam in 1938, died suddenly at the Hague on November 5, 1950, in his fifty-fourth year; in him ‘epigraphy has lost one of its most devoted and tireless servants, and all scholars in his field will mourn his passing’. Among others who have recently died are G. M. Bersanetti, E. Capps, E. Hermann, M. Launey, G. P. Oikonomos, A. Olivieri, A. Passerini, A. Stein, and N. Vulič. Further tributes have been paid to the work of P. Jouguet, A. Rehm, and P. Roussel.

L. 1 fin. Apparently ΠΙ perhaps ΕΠΙ. L. 2 init. The fork of the upsilon is just visible. L. 6 fin. Τ or Π.

Too little remains to permit a reconstruction, but we have evidently a fragment of a regulation concerning catches of fish. (I take it that ἰχθύν in l. 3 is collective.) There can be little doubt that we have here evidence of a dalyan at Caunus in antiquity as to-day. (See Part I, p. 14 n. 15.) The fish are principally of two kinds, kefal and levrek, both excellent eating; in the summer and winter respectively they go up from the sea to the lake to spawn, and returning some two months later are caught in huge quantities. Wherever exactly the bed of the river may have lain in ancient times, there is no reason to suppose that the habits of the fish were any different then. For ancient fisheries in Asia Minor see Broughton, Economic Survey IV, 566, 799.

The material here discussed is far from being exhaustive, since it seems to me that a careful study would yield further groups of vases of this class. I use the word ‘groups’ for safety; I am not sure that some of the pieces which I put together were not produced by a single painter.

Some of the vases are attributed according to the style of only a part of their decoration. Thus London F285 is attributed to the Stoke-on-Trent group because of the reverse, which has no stylistic connexion with the obverse and the head of Nike on the neck.

When I mention proveniences I rely on second-hand information, but I notice that vases which I put under the same heading because of their common style are often cited as having been found in the same area. In my classification of the vases according to shapes, when possible I follow Beazley in ARV.

I do not find it easy to decide on the date of these groups in the absence of external evidence or any information on the conditions in which they were found. Stylistically none of them could be earlier than 350 B.C., and as the extensive use of white-gold colour and the clumsiness of the drawing could hardly have appeared earlier than the Darius painter, I should be inclined to place them late in the fourth century.

For a few general remarks on the representation of human heads by themselves in the last phase of Attic, Campanian, Apulian, and Etruscan red-figured vases see Beazley, EVP, p. 10.

In a recent paper (JHS LXXII 1 ff.) is set out the distribution of speeches in the Odyssey, and the principles of their arrangement within its principal episodes. It is an obvious and necessary counterpart, to apply the same method of study to the Iliad. Though much has been done by Sir John Sheppard in The Pattern of the Iliad (1932), he has not made express use of the grouping of the speeches; and the present paper is designed to supplement his analysis of their contents by the special examination of their positions in the general design. I am still acutely aware of my debt to The Pattern of the Iliad; and it seems to me only possible to set out my own suggestions in full, at the cost of some repetition from a work so closely linked in its general theme.

Speeches in the Iliad (over 670) are more numerous than in the Odyssey (629 + 8 in Demodocus' second lay), but their distribution is similar:

The largest number, fifty, is in Odyssey XVII; forty-five are in Iliad XXIV.

The pace set in the last three years has been maintained. Golden Mycenae and Nelean Pylos again outshine the rest, but Eleusis has come to the front with the acclaimed Tombs of the Seven. Olympia has yielded the helmet of Miltiades and Argos amazing discoveries of eighth-century armour in a two-drachma burial. Important finds have been made in the islands, and among notable discoveries in Athens is a first-class fragment of an archaic boxer's stele and the epitaph of a Carian prince whose son fought with the Persian fleet at Salamis. The terrible earthquakes in the western islands wrecked the museums—not least those in Ithaca, which were filled with the rich finds from British excavations of recent years; much has been retrieved, but the tasks of reconstitution will be slow and costly. Work is progressing at the Acropolis Museum, and new galleries are due to open in the National Museum. There is again good progress to report from the provincial museums, especially in Crete. The indefatigable Prof. Orlandos and his associates continue their work of repair and restoration around the Acropolis, at the Aphaia temple, and among the Early Christian and Byzantine monuments; among the objects of their attention this year may be recorded the monasteries of Osios Loukas, the Meteora, and the Holy Mountain.

The British excavations at Mycenae in 1953 had the following main objectives: the further exploration of the Prehistoric Cemetery outside the Cyclopean walls to the west of the Lion Gate, the area south of the Perseia Krene where a fine wall of ashlar poros was discovered in 1952, the houses to the north and south of the House of the Oil Merchant, and further investigation of the Cyclopean Terrace Building. At the same time work was begun on the excavation of the area within the Acropolis between the South House and Tsountas' House. The excavations were supported by a research grant from the American Philosophical Society, with contributions from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, the British Academy, the Bollingen Foundation, and the British School at Athens, under whose aegis the work was conducted.

In the Prehistoric Cemetery several tombs of the Middle Helladic period were discovered. On the northern edge of the cemetery an interesting group of graves was found, one of the latest Mycenaean period, L.H. IIIC, and two of the developed Geometric period. With the larger of the latter, a cist grave, nineteen vases were found which included undecorated vases of excellent fabric and a shallow bowl of ‘Pie Ware’ which demonstrate the contemporaneity of these styles. These vases, together with two others from a Proto-Geometrie grave dug into the ruins of the House of Shields, form a series illustrating the gradual evolution of culture at Mycenae from the end of the Bronze Age into the Iron Age. They show that there was no sudden break in its development, but only a slow evolution as in Attica. The ‘Dorian Invasion’ was not a cultural revolution.

There was no excavation in Neolithic or Chalcolithic sites, but a notable event was the publication of the report by P. Dikaios on his excavations in the mainly pre-pottery settlement at Khirokitía, in which he reviews the relationship and chronology of the cultures preceding the Early Cypriot. A new site of the Erimi stage was located at Palaiómylos near Ayios Thomas by surface finds, including a headless andesite idol of fiddle shape, now in the Limassol Museum.

Bronze Age

Further material from the Kafkála cemetery between Dhenia and Akaki reached the Cyprus Museum through confiscation of pottery looted in the south area, where the tombs are relatively small and poorly furnished. It includes some good red polished II and III and also black polished pottery. With the sponsorship of the Department of Antiquities and the assistance of Mr. G. R. H. Wright of the British Institute of Archaeology in Ankara, Mr. Justice Griffith-Williams undertook the excavation of two of the large looted tombs in the north part of the cemetery. These proved to be Middle Cypriot, and yielded large quantities of fragmentary but restorable white painted pottery. A small intact Early Cypriot II tomb group was excavated in the south area as part of the same operation. At Onísia near Dikomo a Middle Cypriot cemetery was brought to light by cultivation and one tomb with typical furniture, including some bronze weapons, was excavated by the Department.

The British Museum recently bought by auction a number of terracottas in a lot together, of which two (1953, 4–10, 1 and 2) are of more than usual interest (Fig. 1). These are virtually identical and must have been made in the same mould. They are hollow, moulded front and back, and open underneath; there is no vent in the back. The modelling of the front is summary but careful: that of the back is sketchy in the extreme; this is due not to careless moulding, but to the cursory treatment of the back of the model from which the mould was made. The clay is rather coarse but homogeneous, pale orange in colour, and contains a fair amount of mica.

The Attic red-figure kylix (Figs. 1–2) which is the subject ο this note was acquired by the Reading Museum prior to 1896. It is mentioned in Stevens, Descriptive Catalogue of Reading Museum, 1896, p. 41, as having been dredged from the Thames. Closer provenance is not recorded, but the vessel was most probably found near Reading.

The kylix, which measures 5·95 in. across the rim, bears a fairly heavy deposit of lime, a feature characteristic of many river finds. The lime has been removed in order to expose the painting, which is a figure in the coarsest style of the ‘Pithos’ painter (Beazley, ARV, pp. 116–17, 952), representing a reclining, naked youth wearing a tiara, seen from behind. Typical of kylikes with decoration of this type is the large drinking-horn splashed across the lower part of the figure. Close parallels to the painting occurred at Al Mina (Beazley, JHS LIX, 1939, pp. 2–3, nos. 6–14) and are ascribed to the late sixth century B.C.

This has been put together recently from many fragments in the Corfu Museum (Inv. no. 235, found before 1914 in Corfu itself). It is of Chalcidian shape, very near to that of the example in the Villa Giulia (Mingazzini, I vasi Castellani, no. 428, pl. 43, 5), but with the upper handle more arched and a light moulding under the foot. Height 313 mm., diameter of lip 305 mm., brownish-red clay, paint of poor quality, surface damaged. Several fragments of body are missing. For the type cf. Lane, BSA XXXIV (1933–4), 49.

It is interesting to record this find made on the route of exports towards Sicily, Calabria, Campania, and Southern Etruria.

In May and June 1952, as a member of the Anglo-Turkish expedition working at Sultantepe, between Harran and Urfa, I excavated a bath building in the Roman settlement at the foot of the mound. The main hall of the bath was paved with a fine mosaic, decorated with geometric patterns, some of which had affinities with motifs current at Antioch on the Orontes during the first half of the fifth century A.D. At the northern end of the pavement, incorporated in the mosaic, was a five-line hexameter inscription in a tabula ansata (Fig. 1). The inscription was almost undamaged, except for a diagonal break at the left-hand end (which resulted in the loss of about four letters in ll. 1/2, and of about three or two in ll. 3/5), and a small hole which obliterates three letters not far from the beginning of l. 1.