The expenses of this investigation were to a great extent defrayed by grants of money which the University of Oxford and the Principal and Fellows of Brazenose College were kind enough to vote me for the purpose.

I am greatly indebted to the advocacy of my friends Professor Pelham and Mr. Macan in obtaining these grants.

In the winter of 1892–3 I did some topographical work in Southern Boeotia. The results of that work were, to myself at any rate, satisfactory in the sense that I felt when the work was finished that I had done something towards clearing up my own ideas with regard to important parts of the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, and that I might possibly, if I stated my views with sufficient clearness, help to free the minds of others from difficulties to which the study of those portions of the histories must inevitably give rise.

It is with some diffidence that I publish the following paper. It is indeed the result of considerable study of the literature of the subject, and of the best of a week's work on the spot last autumn. But unfortunately I never expected, when I went to Pylos, that I should have so much to say about it, and I took with me neither leave to excavate, nor appliances for measurements and photography. I feel therefore that my views can scarcely in the nature of things carry with them the same weight as those which Mr. Grundy has based on the detailed survey which he conducted under the auspices of the University of Oxford a week or two before my visit. I am afraid our conclusions on certain points may prove to differ. My documentary evidence is at present non-existent, and my measurements are one and all rough and approximate. I can only ask Mr. Grundy and the reader to remember that I spent more than forty hours exploring the ground, and that, as survey work was unhappily out of the question, I had thus ample time to form an opinion on the topography of what is after all a very limited area.

At Mycenae in 1876 Dr. Schliemann lifted the corner of the veil which had so long enshrouded the elder age of Hellas. Year by year ever since that veil has been further withdrawn, and now we are privileged to gaze on more than the shadowy outline of the picture of a far back age. The picture is still incomplete, but it is now possible to trace the salient points. Can we in comparing it with pictures of certain peoples who have dwelt in and reigned at Mycenae, pictures preserved for us elsewhere, identify it as that of any previously known? The object of this little essay is to make such an attempt.

The name Mycenean is now applied to a whole class of monuments—buildings, sepulchres, ornaments, weapons, pottery, engraved stones—which resemble more or less closely those found at Mycenae. I think I am right when I say that archaeologists are unanimous in considering them the outcome of one and the same civilization, and the product of one and the same race.

Eight years ago, I had the honour of speaking at the Philologists' Convention at Zürich on the methods aims and materials of archaeological research in Italy. A summary of work, both prospective and retrospective was then not inappropriate, for we stood at a point of transition. With the altered constitution of the Archäologisches Institut, the death of Henzen and the retirement of Helbig one epoch had come to an end, and we had reason to suppose that the new period would present many features of difference.

Until the unification of Italy there could be no question of a thorough scientific and consistent investigation of the country. Even the Istituto di Corrispondenza archeologia, the only scientific body whose activity was not confined within the bounds of a single state, found itself so hampered by want of means and the hindrances arising from the bad condition of communications, that all it could do was to contribute a meagre report of discoveries made in the limited area including Rome itself, Southern Etruria, where excavations were undertaken by the Papal government and private persons, and Pompeii, where under the Naples government work was slowly proceeding. In other districts excavation either fell entirely into neglect or took the form of secret and irresponsible plunder.

From August, 1894, till the middle of last year, the explorers of Pompeii were employed in excavating the house of A. Vettius, a house distinguished among its fellows by its sumptuous marble fittings and lavish decoration, and still more so by the splendid series of brilliant frescoes with which its walls are still adorned.

According to the official plan, the position of the house should be defined thus:—Regio VI., insula 12.

It lies opposite the Casa del Labirinto, close to the north-east of the Casa del Fauno, to the south of the third tower of the North Wall, counting from the Gate of Herculaneum eastwards. It possesses no tablinum, but a very fine peristyle, the Corinthian columns of which have not (as is usually the case) flutings filled for one-third of their height with stucco painted red or yellow.

‘In this city of Buto there is a sanctuary of Apollo and Artemis. The particular temple of Leto, which was described as the place of the oracle, is itself, I found, large and has a stair ten fathoms in height. But in what was visible to me, the most astonishing thing was this: there is in the enclosure there a temple of Leto, wrought from a single stone in respect of height as well as of length, and each wall equal to these [stones]. Each of these [stones] is of forty cubits. And for the covering in of the roof there is another stone imposed, having a supertecture (?) of four cubits’.

The white lekythoi represented on Plates IV.–VII. and Figs. 1 and 2 are members of a series, twelve or more in number, all bearing a marked family likeness in style, subject, and inscription. They are of interest to the historian as presenting pictures of Athenian domestic life in the years of peace which followed the Persian War: to the student of sculpture as anticipating in a curious way many of the types and motives of later grave-reliefs: and to the student of vase-technique as bridging the interval between the white-ground kylikes of the ‘severe’ school and the ‘Lécythes blancs attiques à représentations funéraires’ on which M. Pottier has written. Here is the list. For the sake of clearness I have placed the inscriptions of the white-ground lekythoi on the left-hand side of the page, those of the red-figured on the right.

The inscriptions which follow were copied during a short tour in the west of Crete during July and August, 1893. So far as I know they are unpublished, but I trust I shall be pardoned if I have missed any previous notice of any of them. I saw and verified all those published in B.C.H. xiii. 68 ff. and that in the Syllogos at Retimo, id. 47. The type used below is selected so as to represent each individual letter as nearly as possible, without regard to the conventional printers' alphabets. The result is an apparent mixture of incongruous forms, which is however largely duo to the very irregular lettering actually in use in the remoter parts of Crete in the later Greek periods.

1. On a block of fine-grained blue marble, the base of a stele: 31 cm. high, 40 broad, and 46 long: the back and left side broken: original length at least 70 cm., for the socket for the stele is 22 cm. distant from the perfect (right) side face, and is continued to the left beyond the break. The inscription consists of four elegiac couplets; the first line is cut close to the upper edge of the stone, and is consequently much effaced. The letters average 10 mm. in height and breadth, and are of the third or late fourth century.

The sites and inscriptions which follow were noted during a series of short journeys made in 1893 and 1894 with the help of grants from the Hellenic and Royal Geographical Societies. The geographical and descriptive results are published in Journ. Roy. Geog. Soc. viii, (shortly to appear), and a short account of the geology in Journal Oxf. Junior Scientific Club, ii. 33 (Jan. 1896): cf. Proc. Brit. Ass. 1893 (Nottingham), p. 746. An account of Telmessos, Karyanda and Taramptos has already appeared in the Hellenic Journal, xiv. 373 ff.

These researches are confined to the area included between Latmos (Besh-parmak) and the Latmian Gulf (Denizli Liman) on the north, the Marsyas valley (China Chai) on the east, the Gulf of Keramos on the south, and the sea on the west. Though sites already identified were in nearly all cases visited, they are not discussed here, unless there is fresh evidence to bring forward.

A Short journey round the north side of Mt. Latmos, undertaken in the autumn of 1896, has enabled W.R.P. to complete his investigation of the ancient sites of this neighbourhood. The purely geographical results are appended to our paper in Journ. Roy. Geogr. Soc. ix. (January, 1897), and are incorporated in the map which, by the courtesy of the Royal Geographical Society, we are able to append to this account of the archaeological results. The latter are arranged in geographical order along the actual route.

At Sirgin Kishla on the Deniz Liman (Latmic Gulf) the fortified site or ‘kastron’ turns out to be a late mediaeval settlement.

Mr. Hogarth in his Devia Cypria, page 9, describes a scarab found near Chrysochou, as follows :—

‘It is beautifully engraved with a group of Heracles, armed with bow, quiver and skin, wrestling with a lion, while behind him stands a draped female figure, without any distinguishing attributes. Over the group are cut the following characters:

i.e., genitive of the name , which occurs in the twenty-first line of the bronze tablet of Dali (Sammlung der gricch. dialekt-Inschr. i. p. 28). I was unable to take an impression of the scarab, or to examine it satisfactorily; but I should judge the lettering to be of the fourth century B.C.’

The tripod represented in Pl. XII. and in Fig. 1 is 26½ inches (m. 0·66) in height; the diameter is at the bottom 21½ inches (m. 0·54) and at the top 14 inches (m. 0·36). The material is limestone of a kind common in most parts of Greece, especially the Peloponnesus.

The tripod was presented to All Souls' College in 1771 by Anthony Lefroy. The stand bears an inscription recording the gift, which contains a curious phrase in which the tripod is spoken of as ‘aram tripodem olim matri deum in templo S. Corinthi consecratum.’ I know not what the S before Corinthi may stand for. But the important thing is that the monument comes from Corinth. This is again asserted in the lettering of a print of it published by Gori in the Numismata Lefroyana, and repeated in a Magazine called The Topographer (November, 1789, p. 514), where Gori writes ‘Trovato a Corinto.’ It may be doubted whether Lefroy had any solid reason for supposing that the tripod came from a temple of the Mother of the Gods. Such a temple did exist at Corinth on the slope of the Acropolis Hill, as we learn from Pausanias. But, so far as I know, no remains of that temple have been observed in modern times. It can scarcely be regarded as likely that Lefroy had any reason to suppose that the tripod came from the actual site of that temple: it is far more probable that the figures of women standing on lions were to him a sufficient proof that the monument came from the temple of the Mother of the Gods which is mentioned by Pausanias.

As Overbeck in the fourth edition of his Geschichte der Plastik has recanted his doubts as to the period and authenticity of the sculptures of the Basis of Mantineia, it is fair to regard them as undoubted works of about B.C. 370, and as coming at all events from the workshop of the master whose statues stood above them. Thus the discovery of this basis must be regarded as a very fortunate addition to our sources of knowledge, both of the art of Praxiteles, and of the types of the Muses in the fourth century. Fig. 3 gives these slabs in what I hold to be the true arrangement.

The vase figured on Plate XIII. is an Athenian cup in the possession of a member of the Hellenic Society, Mr. C. W. Mitchell, who acquired it in Athens. It is of the heavy, somewhat squat form, with thick handles and in-set lip, such as Brygos, for example, specially affected, and measures ·194 m. in diameter, ·096 m. in height. The design, occupying the centre of the interior only, is in the red colour of the clay, enclosed within a thin line, against the brilliant black glaze: unfortunately the parts of the surface which were not protected by the glaze have slightly suffered from the effects of acid or ignorant cleaning, so that the sketch-marks and the finer inner-markings have almost entirely disappeared: these latter were probably not extensively employed, but faint traces still remain at the lower part of the abdomen, and on the cheek, where the whiskers (, cf. Xen. Symp. iv. 23) are indicated by brushmarks in thinned black. The outline of the hair against the black background is indicated by a wavy engraved line; and where it shows against the neck and face, by a row of minute dots fringing the sharply defined edge of the black paint. The wreath of vine, the ties of the flute and mouthpiece case, and inscription () are in purple.

This well known passage has given rise to some discussion in recent years, the words being the centre of the fray.

The Scholiast says

Most modern commentators have followed the Scholiast. But Mr. J. A. Stewart in the Classical Beview (Vol. vii. 3–59) follows the President of Magdalen College, Oxford, in stating that the Scholiast was led astray by the proverb and that there is really no reference at all to the game ot Polis, and compares with it the passage from the Meno, 77 A.

The excavations, the results of which are described in the following paper, were conducted in the spring of 1894 by the British School at Athens. The work was under the charge of Mr. A. G. Bather and myself; Mr Ernest Gardner, then director of the School, was also present during a portion of it. I have thought it better to give first a history of the two towns, as known from literature and the evidence of inscriptions, and then to describe the sites, and the discoveries which are the result of our work. The unpublished inscriptions which we dug up or copied on or near the sites are collected in an appendix, and we give (Pl. XIV.) a sketch map of the district. A plan of the gate and a plan of the τέμενος at Abae also accompany the paper. These plans and map are the work of Mr. F. W. Green, who is an expert in such matters, and undertook to do the work for me from general directions which I gave him about the sites.