It may be taken for granted that in any branch of learning it is a pleasant, and may be an instructive, task to turn one's back now and then on progress and research, and look backwards along the path which we and our predecessors have trodden, and to reflect on what we owe to those who were the pioneers in the exploration of our subject. And it seems no less true that the study of Greek history is a fit theme for such a backward glance, even if it is difficult, and at times impossible, to isolate it completely from the general background of Greek learning, particularly at the Renaissance.

I propose, therefore, to examine the background and the progress of the study of Greek history between 1350 and 1500, not continuously, for the task would be too laborious, but at intervals of fifty years, noting certain landmarks associated with each of these dates, and touching on the main developments in each of these half-centuries.

In the year 1350 there occurred a noteworthy event, fraught with immediate delight to the two participants, and with momentous and quite unforeseen consequences for the future of classical learning, namely, the meeting of Petrarch and Boccaccio in Florence. One of the things that helped to bring them together was their common enthusiasm for Greek, of which Boccaccio had already attained some knowledge; Petrarch, though a few years older, was still hoping, and eagerly striving, to acquire the rudiments of the language.

The best start in the attempt to understand Aeschylus is Professor F. M. Cornford's clearsighted explanation of his method. On the stage of Aeschylus, great forces are broadly symbolised, working, according to the Pythagorean scheme, through antagonism to a new harmony. It is also important to see the life-work of any great poet as a single process; Aeschylus solves problems in early plays, and afterwards surpasses them in more complex problems, which find their solutions in their turn. His material is a great range of political, moral, intellectual, and religious conflicts, all active in his own world. By symbolising them on the stage, he found a way from small things such as party quarrels to a sublime comprehension of the work of God and man, interacting together, within the framework of time. This is not so strange as it appears. The grandest and truest achievements of humanity often look like by-products.

I suggest that a poet may, and perhaps always does, first assimilate his world in time, and next create from that world a universe not limited to time and known actuality. A great poet's world is like ours, full of everyday things, but he likes them more, fascinated alike by the good and the evil. What he makes is not an everyday affair, but something more eternal. The transition from the poet's world to the poet's universe is like a transition from politics to religion and mysticism.

By 446/5 the Delian League had become the Athenian empire. Peace had been made with Persia, but Athens had firmly retained her hold over the allies. More important, Sparta recognised the Athenian claim in the Thirty Years' Peace. ‘We will allow the cities their independence,’ Pericles could say on the eve of the Peloponnesian War, ‘if they were independent when we made peace.’ So much is clear, but the chronology and nature of the development of Athenian imperialism are both uncertain. We are coming to know or reasonably to guess considerably more of the decisive transition to empire following the Peace of Callias, but the imperial measures of those crowded years can only be appreciated in true perspective if we have a right understanding of the preceding period. The main purpose of this study is to re-examine the development of Athenian imperialism in the fifties.

In his concise summary of Athens' rise to power, Thucydides emphasises the significance of the reduction of Naxos: to contemporaries Athenian action may have seemed less questionable. The Persian danger was still serious, and history had shown that the largest of the Cyclades might be a menace to the Greek cause, if it got into the wrong hands. Certainly the League was still popular after the collapse of Naxos, as Cimon's Eurymedon campaign clearly shows. From Caria to Pamphylia the Greek cities welcomed freedom from Persia and gladly entered the League: only at Phaselis was the show of pressure needed.

Thucydides i, 77: .

It has been said of this passage, ‘The words of the Athenian orator in Thucydides i, 77: are a familiar puzzle, and any new attempt to discuss them is apt to excite a smile.’ The whole of the chapter in which they stand has received much attention from editors of Thucydides, and from those concerned with the judicial organisation of the Athenian Empire. The problems which present themselves are four in number: (a) the identity of the allies whose complaints are the subject of this passage; (b) the correct division, if division is necessary, of the sentence ; (c) the interpretation of the term ai ξυμβόλαιαι; (d) the extent to which conclusions on a–c are borne out by other literary references and by the epigraphical evidence.

The Greek calendar has not received as much attention from students of Greek religion as it deserves. The data have been collected by Bischoff. Nilsson has always appreciated its importance, and his contributions to the subject have laid a broad and solid foundation for further research. Both Farnell and Harrison neglected it, and Deubner's Attische Feste (1932) is less adequate in this respect than Mommsen's Feste der Stadt Athen (1898). The question of intercalation was raised in an acute form by Fotheringham, and has never been satisfactorily solved. Meanwhile progress has been made in the study of the Egyptian and Babylonian calendars, with results that have an important bearing on the Greek. This paper does not pretend to be exhaustive. It is merely a discussion of some of the wider issues that arose in the course of an attempt to solve a particular problem—the peculiar method adopted at Olympia for fixing the date of the Games.

The material I have had before me in this essay is comparatively scanty. Like many other students, I have not paid very much attention to Campanian in the past; and I am now dependent on published reproductions, a few photographs, a few originals, and not many notes of all the originals no longer accessible. Most of the reproductions published hitherto are poor or incomplete. The great majority of the vases come from irregular excavation, with no record of the circumstances in which they were found; and even where the search has been properly conducted, the published reports, with a few exceptions, are not fully illustrated. All this to explain gaps, errors, hesitations: not to crave indulgence.

We begin with what may be called the Owl-Pillar Group, from the subject of two well-known vases. A list was given in Vases in Poland, p. 77, and the style characterised. The present list is more detailed, and includes additions. Most of the Berlin examples had already been put together by Furtwängler in his catalogue.

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.

Among all the tantalising questions relating to Lycian pillar tombs, the one that has never been touched is that concerning the top openings which are usually called doors. Yet an enquiry into their meaning may, I think, prove a crucial test. These apertures measure in width 0.20 m. (Isinda Tomb), 0.30 m. (Lion Tomb), 0.41 m. (Harpy Tomb), and 0.45 m. (Trysa Tomb). They give access to a sort of cavity the floor-level of which, however, is a good deal below the bottom of the opening, and from within they must have looked rather like windows. All these openings are high (4-6 m.) above the ground and were filled with stone slabs. No coffin could have passed through them, for their size is exceedingly small. Yet they are called doors. What was their real purpose? Were they for offerings, or for cremation urns, or for sacrifices? Is this tower-like tomb to be compared with Persian cremation towers, or with primitive granaries, or is it a survival of some legendary burial in trees?

A feature of the new Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World by M. Rostovtzeff should not escape attention for its implications in a matter of historical method. This work—a κτῆμα ἐς αἰεί —contains, in fact, not one story, but two stories. What is called Summary and Epilogue (pp. 1026-1312) is in method and problems something completely different from the bulk of the study (ch. III-VII). Rostovtzeff, who is a historian of splendid intuition rather than of close reasoning, has obviously not perceived this fact. He has not clearly delimited the two subjects, thereby adding a difficulty to his critic, who runs the risk of being Over-schematic.

Three or four years after the publication of Mr. Walbank's book it would be idle to join in the chorus of praise which the most eminent authorities on the history of the Hellenistic Age have unanimously and deservedly showered upon it. But the time has come to show how far the author has succeeded in combining pioneer-work in a new province with the results which a former generation of scholars had already been able to achieve. Nothing, indeed, can better testify to the vitality, timeliness, and many-sidedness of the present book than its author's efforts to put to the test, in his most recent writings, the conclusions which he had already reached, to enlarge and revise, if need be, some points he had not previously dwelt upon with all the desirable minuteness, and to sound again the principles on which this volume rests. Hence one might justifiably describe it as a Janus-like portrait of Philip V. On one side it connects with and reflects the labours of Mr. Walbank's predecessors, chiefly the late Maurice Holleaux. But its other face looks to a basically different treatment of the history of the late third and early second centuries B.C.— more in agreement with the intellectual requirements and the tenets of a new school of historical writing. In this way, if I may venture to use these words, Mr. Walbank's book partakes of the past and the future; and it is, I submit, a merit, and perhaps its strongest attraction, that it should stimulate the reader to recollect the experiences of its forerunners, and to work out new solutions for old problems.