The three lekythoi with black figures on a white ground, now published for the first time on Plates I., II., and III., were found in 1888 in the excavations carried on by the Greek Government on the site of the ancient Eretria. They are now in the Central Museum at Athens, and have been catalogued and briefly described by M. Staes in the Δελτίον ἀρχαιολογικόν for 1889 (pp. 99 and 139). The vases are of almost unique interest: two of them belonging to the cycle of the adventures of Odysseus, subjects from which have proved so curiously rare in vase-painting, while the third gives an episode in the story of Herakles and Atlas, of which the solitary monumental instance up to now had been the famous metope of Olympia (Friederichs-Wolters, 280). The beauty of the vases, the perfect state of their technique and of their preservation, no less than the interesting problems connected with mythography which they raise, have already won for them considerable celebrity; I therefore wish to record my special thanks to the Ephors of Antiquities in Athens for allowing me the publication of the vases—so graciously accorded to me during my studentship at the British School at Athens in 1891. Mr. Ernest Gardner, Director of our School, had the kindness to supervise the drawings which have been executed by M. Gilliéron. It had been my intention to make the publication of these lekythoi the occasion for a discussion of white-faced ware in connection with the whole subject of Greek painting proper, but I have unfortunately been prevented from collecting the necessary material in time for the present number of the Journal.

We have all been accustomed to associate the familiar form of the trident with a marine deity, whether the Greek Poseidon or the Roman Neptune, but it may not have occurred to many to enquire what is the particular appropriateness of such an emblem to the ruler of the sea, or in what way it was adopted as his emblem. It is my purpose to offer some suggestions which may throw light on the subject, and may further tend to show that, in artistic representations at least, the trident is merely an evolution of a somewhat different form, that it is in fact the development of an originally purely decorative ornament.

Such developments of simple decorative motives into definite mythological representations are by no means uncommon in Greek art. In a former number of this Journal Miss Harrison has traced the ‘Odysseus and Sirens’ type to a purely decorative origin. The same writer, in her Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, pp. cxiv., cxxv., suggests that the tortoise of the robber Skiron slain by Theseus, and the clue which guided that hero through the labyrinth of the Minotaur, found their way into mythology from vase-paintings in which they were merely decorative. These may be only suggestions, but I am of opinion that difficult points in many myths may be cleared up in this way.

The objects which form the subject of the present paper, and which may be easily identified by the accompanying cuts, Nos. 5—8, have for some time been a puzzle to students of Mycenaean archaeology. Certain specimens exhibited in the cases of the Mycenae Room in the Polytechnic Museum at Athens are described as ‘objects of unknown use’; and although some suggestions have been thrown out in various publications of isolated examples, I do not think any satisfactory explanation of them has yet been offered. The cause of this failure seems to be the impossibility of understanding properly any such specimen, apart from the whole class to which it belongs. I will therefore begin this paper with a list of instances which, while not pretending to be exhaustive, is at least representative, and so will give some notion of the character, size, shape, and material of the objects now before us.

Iron is mentioned in the following passages of Homer (ὅστις ποτ᾿ ἐστίν, εἰ τόδ᾿ αὐτῷ φίλον κεκλημένῳ, τοῦτό νιν προσεννέπω), and in these passages only:—

Δ 123, 485, 510; Ε 723; Ζ 48; Η 141, 144, 473; Θ 15; Ι 366; Κ 379; Λ 133; Ρ 424; Σ 34; Υ 372; Χ 357; Ψ 30, 177, 261, 834, 851; Ω 205, 521; a 184, 204; δ 293; ε 191; ι 393; μ 280; ξ 324; ο 329; π 294; ρ 565; τ 13, 211, 494, 587; φ 3, 10, 61, 81, 97, 114, 127, 328; ψ 172; ω 168, 177.

These passages form a basis for discussing two interesting and important points in the Homeric question: (1) whether Homer's acquaintance with iron differs so much in different books that we must believe those books to belong to different ages; and (2) whether iron plays such different parts in Homer and in Mycenae that we cannot believe the Homeric age to be coincident with the Mycenaean period.

Dr. Dörpfeld, as was to be expected, has published in the Mittheilungen an answer to my article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies for 1891.

Excepting in two corrections of detail, of which I recognize the value, and shall have occasion to make mention in the proper place, he does not appear to me to have shaken in the slightest degree the position that I took up, namely, that the great sub-basement wall under the south flank of the Parthenon was built for a temple named the Hecatompedon anterior by many years to the time of Cimon, and that the remains of large limestone architraves frieze and cornice in the north wall of the Acropolis belonged to that temple and not to the archaic temple of Athene near the Erechtheum, the discovery of which will always be associated with Dr. Dörpfeld's name. I must assume that the readers of this article will have before them both my original paper in the Hellenic Journal, already referred to, and Dr. Dörpfeld's answer in the Mittheilungen which, so far as it affects my argument, I will endeavour to answer point by point.

I propose in the following article to inquire what can be determined concerning the procedure of the Gortynian Inscription. It is scarcely necessary to insist on the importance of the subject. This is the only document that we have that gives us an authentic record of the earlier stages of Greek law. The history of Greek law is little known; knowledge of it is most valuable for the light that it throws on the social and political life of Greece, and especially because it supplies a most important element in the comparative study of law. The legal side of history can never be neglected with impunity. Even though the Greeks never became such accomplished lawyers as the Romans, their legal and political institutions were closely connected, and our ignorance of their laws often prevents us from understanding their politics.

It is however for its relation to the laws of other nations that Greek law deserves chiefly to be studied. Our knowledge of the early legal antiquities of European races is still very limited.

The Ashmolean Museum has recently acquired an interesting small amphora (height m. ·29) which Mr. Arthur Evans was fortunate enough to discover when excavating in the cemetery of Terranova (Gela) in Sicily. It is of somewhat late date, perhaps about B.C. 500, but certainly much earlier than the destruction of Gela by the Carthaginians in B.C. 405. Mr. Evans has kindly handed over the publication to me.

There is a feature worthy of mention in the technique of the vase. No red is used, but white appears, especially on the side on which Herakles is represented, being used for the basis on which the foot of Herakles rests, and part of his lyre: also there are white spots on the wreath of the Satyr of the other side.

A coloured plate of this vase will be published in my forthcoming Catalogue of Vases in the Ashmolean Museum (Pl. I. A). Meantime I here print a rough engraving of the designs of it; since it seems to deserve a more lengthy discussion than is allowed by the plan of the Catalogue.

I consider that on the two sides of the amphora we have representations of two scenes in the adventure of Herakles and Cacus, not however treated in the serious vein of mythological representation, but in the lighter vein of comedy. This adventure of Herakles is so familiar to scholars from its treatment by Livy and Virgil, Ovid and Propertius, that it is needful only to briefly sketch it.

The vase of which an illustration is given on Plate IV. is one that has lately been acquired by the British Museum, and is in many ways of exceptional interest. It is a specimen of a peculiar class of local vases, which first became known through excavations made in 1888 on the site of the Kabeirion at Thebes. A full account of these excavations and their results was given by Dr. Winnefeld and other writers in the Athenische Mittheilungen for 1888, Vol. xiii. pp. 81, 412 ff.

The vase under discussion is not the only one of this kind in the Museum; two similar vases were acquired in 1889, one of which is illustrated in the Museum Catalogue of Vases (1893), p. 75. These two vases (numbered B 77—8) are skyphoi of the same shape and technique as our present one, and bear designs of a very similar character, though not of such great interest.

The remains of pottery discovered in the Kabeirion are not confined to this local class; vases and fragments covered with plain black varnish were found, and a fair number of examples of Athenian pottery or imitations of the same, mostly with red figures.

The principal object of the present paper is the publication of a remarkable addition to the west pediment of the Parthenon, which is due to the practised eye of Herr Karl Schwerzek of Vienna. At the same time I would take the opportunity of calling attention to other additions and corrections which have been made in the last two or three years, in the sculptures of the Parthenon, as represented by the collection in the Elgin Room of the British Museum. Most of them have already been pointed out in the Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, Vol. i. (1892), but a somewhat fuller discussion seems desirable than is consistent with the scheme of a Catalogue.

The West Pediment of the Parthenon.

The figure, which is known according to the system of notation introduced by Prof. Michaelis as Q, with her attendant figures P, R, was still in good preservation in 1674, when the pediment was drawn by Jacques Carrey for the Marquis de Nointel. Carrey's drawing of the three figures and of the adjoining group is reproduced in the annexed cut (Fig. 1), which has been taken from the facsimile in the British Museum, corrected in certain details from the photograph published in the Antike Denkmaeler, Vol. i. Pl. 6.

In the collection of the terra-cottas at the Polytechnic in Athens many of the figures have points of interest bearing on the development of art, or on the science of comparative mythology or religion. One small figure (No. 943) is, on the other hand, of especial interest to the medical mind, affording as it does a good specimen of the typical leper physiognomy. It is a pitiful glimpse into the olden time which this figure gives, and, no less than a living imported leper I saw last spring at the Evangelismus Hospital, does it strike a discord with the beauty of Athens and its surroundings.

This little figure is in the midst of a number of small, thick-set figures in rough terra-cotta, of uncertain origin. They were bought at a sale, and their history cannot now be traced ; but from their general character they are classed with others of about the third century B.C. They were evidently intended to be caricatures of contemporary life. Jolly, rollicking men suggest noisy Bacchic carousings; a portly, elderly woman bends with somewhat comical, grandmotherly solicitude over her nursling; and other well-executed, but more or less coarsely imagined, figures are so obviously designed to provoke laughter, that one pulls up with a start, and almost with a shudder, before the poor leper No. 943.

It would seem to be a difficult matter in archaeology to get rid once for all of an erroneous idea which has firmly asserted itself; at any rate it is desirable when an error has been combated without complete success, to adduce any fresh proofs of the truth that may occur. For this reason I venture to reintroduce a question which, as many will doubtless think, has really been finally settled, I mean the distinction which, to the Greek mind at any rate, existed between the Siren and the Harpy. These two mythological creations were to the Greeks as regards outward form as widely distinct as possible; the Siren has in Greek art the form of a bird with human head, or human bust and arms; the Harpy has invariably the winged figure of a woman, with no other distinguishing feature, unless it be that in one instance her hands are drawn in a method suggestive of claws. And yet we hear it constantly asserted that the Harpy has sometimes in Greek art the body of a bird, like a Siren; and when a figure occurs which has a bird's body with the upper part of a woman's body, this is still described, as in the old catalogues, as ‘a Siren or Harpy.’

The error has arisen principally owing to the fact that in the later monuments and literary notices the type of the Harpies became assimilated to that of the Sirens.

The interchange of typical compositions among vase-painters, by which one type frequently did duty for a variety of subjects, makes it very difficult to decide how far scenes of daily life were intended by the artist to convey a legendary significance; and this difficulty is increased by the fact that the painters were, practically at all periods, in the habit of adding mythological names at haphazard to their figures, with the object of imparting a supposititious interest to their design. This seems to have been especially the case in the period following the great compositions of Polygnotos and Mikon. Thus on a r.f. pyxis in the British Museum (E 769) we have a scene which is apparently no more than an ordinary group of women at toilet, but each of the figures has a familiar mythological name, Iphigeneia, Danae, Helene, Klytaimnestra, and Kassandra.

It was formerly the custom among archaeologists to interpret every scene, no matter how commonplace, as mythological or symbolic; in the natural reaction which has set in after this, I think perhaps we may occasionally overlook the full significance of some scenes which, apparently of ordinary daily life, really have had a deeper meaning to those who made them. Take for example such subjects as occur in the sculptured pediments of temples; a warrior setting out in his chariot, or the meeting of two warriors; these scenes, which are in their local surroundings full of significance, would convey nothing to us if we had not the independent evidence of literature or of locality which explains them.

During a visit to Egypt in 1890 and 1891 I acquired the ostraka of which facsimiles are given herewith. Professor Mahaffy has deciphered the inscriptions.

The earlier ostrakon, which I bought for half a piastre (1d.) from a lad near Luxor, measures 44 inches in height by 5 in greatest breadth, narrowing to 2¼. Professor Mahaffy pronounces it to belong to the Ptolemaic period, and it may probably be dated as early as 235 B.C., the twelfth year of the third Ptolemy.

It is a misfortune almost necessarily incidental to the excavation of any site so rich in ancient remains as the Acropolis at Athens, that smaller objects and such as have a less obvious archaeological value, are sadly neglected: and the fate of the bronze fragments excavated during the seasons 1885—9 affords the strongest proof of this fact. At the time of the excavation the Greek authorities selected those objects in bronze which had any obvious archaeological interest, and placed these in the larger Museum on the Acropolis. All the other bronze remains were indiscriminately and somewhat carelessly packed in several large boxes and stored in the small Museum. The evil results of this are twofold: in the first place, owing to careless storing and the piling of heavy objects on the top of light, a large number of fragments have been further broken up; and secondly, there is absolutely no record of the place or depth at which any of these were found. How important such a record would have been, will be well realized by any student of Dr. Furtwängler's great work on the Olympia bronzes, though this same also does much to lessen the gravity of our loss.

It is a generally accepted opinion that the marble figures which adorned the intercolumniations of the most magnificent amongst the Xanthian sepulchral monuments, now in the British Museum, represent the chorus of the Nereids, though there is as general a discord amongst those who have treated the question as to the meaning of their presence there. This seems a sufficient reason for questioning the accepted theory.

Let us state in a few words the subject: young maidens, clad in the thinnest garments, sailing by aid of their mantles over sea and shore, indicated by a fish, a dolphin, a waterfowl, a crab and a shell. They do not soar as high as the Nike of Paionios, who leaves the eagle beneath her in her flight, but they hover over the water without touching it, as is especially to be seen by the swimming waterfowl beneath one of them.