Of all the states in ancient Greece, Attica seems to have had the most interesting and complete system of land defences. A chain of important fortresses, of most of which there are still considerable remains, follows the line of the Kithairon–Parnes range: Eleutherai, Oinoe, Panakton, Phyle, Dekeleia, Aphidna and Rhamnous. It may appear at first that this series of strongholds was designed expressly to mark off Athenian territory, but whilst incidentally and in large measure they served this end, in origin they were intended rather to defend the various roads from Attica into Boeotia. A fresh examination of these forts and their relation to the Attic frontier may be of some service and interest.

The natural boundary of Attica on the N.W. is the mountain ridge which begins on the Halkyonian sea-coast behind Aigosthena and continues almost due eastward to the Straits of Euboea, reaching the sea at Cape Kalamos. It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that the early tradition made the Megarid and Attica into a single kingdom. Plato, describing an idealised primitive Attica, gives as the boundaries the Isthmus and the heights of Kithairon and Parnes extending down to the sea, with Oropos on the right and the Asopos on the left.

I have deferred the publication of ten new Neo-Phrygian inscriptions discovered in 1912 and 1913, and of my revisions of some of the known texts, in the hope that further revision might be practicable. Careful revision of more of the texts, e.g. Nos. VI, XII, XV, XXV, XLVIII, is essential to a definitive publication of these inscriptions. Such publication should be accompanied by a discussion of the date of the Neo-Phrygian inscriptions, and by a map showing their distribution in relation to the Imperial estates and their bearing on the boundaries of Galatic Phrygia. A provisional discussion of these and other points has appeared in the Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society, No. X. p. 25 ff. The present paper is another provisional instalment, called for by the publication of Professor Sayce's paper on p. 29 of this issue of the Journal. I have continued the numbering adopted in J.H.S. 1911, p. 161 ff. and 1913, p. 97 ff.; it should be observed that the collection includes several Greek inscriptions. Among the inscriptions first published by myself, Nos. LII and LXVI are in Greek; the second contains at most a Phrygian dative form; the former should be transcribed (ll. 4 ff.) π(ρωτ)οκωμήτης Παρεθθ(ω)ν ϒοῃ Όρονδίῳ εὐχήν. The village was probably Παρεθθα, Βαρεττα, or Βαρδαεττα (Dedeler): see Ramsay in Studies in the Eastern Roman Provinces, p. 250 f.

The notes which follow are intended to be a supplement to Professor W. M. Calder's Corpus Inscriptionum Neo-Phrygiarum in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, XXXI and XXXIII (1911–13), and above, p. 22. The Corpus is so complete and the interpretation of the inscriptions so ingenious and thorough that little room is left for addition and correction. My supplementary notes, therefore, will not be numerous.

(1) In No. LXIX it is clear that ξως κε πεις κε must mean ‘both living and dead,’ and that consequently πεις signifies ‘dead.’ Hence in No. XII we must read ζειρακεοι πειες κε, and translate ‘living and dead (let them go accursed to Attys).’ The verb has the plural suffix -νου, corresponding with -du in Boghaz Keui Hittite. This settles the reading of No. VII, which must be [ζειρ]ακεοι ειροι Ατι ετι ττ[ετικμενοι ειττ]νου. Ειροι perhaps means ‘untimely’; cp. ἦρι.

By the kindness of the owner, Mr. Arthur Bernard Cook, an inscribed electrum coin of the well-known ‘lion’ type is depicted in Fig. 1; its inscription, which exists only in part on the examples in other cabinets, appears to be complete. In the list below, the Keeper of the Department of Coins in the British Museum describes the specimens known in various sizes—Mr. Cook's being No. 5—and shows that the series has been attributed either to Lydia or to an Ionian city. The inscription seems to have been originally the same on all these specimens; it was, however, omitted from the collection of texts in Lydian script (Sardis, VI. ii. p. vii, note 1), because the uncertainty of the reading on the coins then available made its Lydian character doubtful and precluded the transcription of a trustworthy copy. Had Mr. Cook's coin been known to me in 1924, I should have included it in that small corpus as ‘No. 52.’

Some years ago I contributed to the Νέα Ήμέρα, then a flourishing Greek weekly journal in Trieste, a treatise on Greek Cynegetics. Pressing occupations compelled me to stop short at the chapter on Dogs—their Greek names and various breeds. Among the considerable material collected on this subject there occurred the following definition from Hesychius: Φόλυες· κύνες οἳ πυρροὶ ὄντες μέλανα στόματα εἵχον. Now dogs whose mouths could be said to be black were unknown until the so-called chows were quite recently introduced into the West from China. Evidently we have here some copyist's error, such as abound in this invaluable vocabulary, so highly prized by Coray. It appeared to me that the problem might be solved by a close inquiry into the use and meaning of the word φόλυς.

For permission to publish these two inscriptions, now in the Epigraphic Museum at Athens, the writer is indebted to Professor Leonardos, Director of the Museum, and to Professor Keramopoullos, who discovered them. His thanks are further due to Dr. J. J. E. Hondius for having resigned a prior right to publication of the second, to Mr. C. T. Seltman for the photograph of the first, to Mr. E. P. Austin for the photograph and measurements of the second, to Mr. A. M. Woodward for his notes, and to Mr. M. N. Tod for valuable criticisms.

I. This stele, which is of Pentelic marble, was found in the house of Athanasios Katzoules by the church of S. Spyridon in Athens, in the part anciently called Agra, and was taken thence to the Epigraphic Museum on June 28th, 1914; its number is 12381. In height it measures 48·5 cm. above ground, 32 cm. below, in breadth at base of gable 25 cm., at ground level 29 cm. The greatest width of lettering is 23·5 cm., its average height about 23 mm., and the height of the inscription is 24·5 cm.

My remarks about the Mithraeum at Capua in J.H.S. 1925, p. 100, require correction in view of Professor Minto's excellent publication of his discovery in Notizie degli scavi, 1924, p. 353 ff. It is not true that ‘the initiate … appears to be represented as a child, not as a man.’ In the stucco decorations of the podia the initiate is in fact represented as smaller than the mystagogue and the officiating priest (see figures 10–15 in Minto's article). It is possible that the officiants were supposed to act the parts of divine personages and were therefore represented as larger than human in accordance with a common artistic convention. In any case there is in the stuccos no additional evidence for Mithraic belief in the rebirth of the initiate as a child.

The later developments of black-figured vase painting in Boeotia are known mainly from the finds made at the Theban Kabeirion and from associated Kabeiric vases which are to be found in some numbers in the museums of Europe. Kabeiric is, however, only one of several B.F. styles that had their vogue in Boeotia in the later fifth and fourth centuries. A still commoner is one in which the decoration consists mainly of floral patterns in which the palmette predominates, with occasionally a bird, animal, or a grotesque human figure introduced in a subordinate position. Vases of various shapes with this decoration are found in some abundance in Greek museums, more especially at Thebes, Chaeronea, Schimatari (Tanagra), Chalcis, Nauplia (where the museum possesses two collections, the Nikandros and the Glymenopoulos Collections, both formed mainly in Boeotia), and the National Museum at Athens. They are not from the same potteries as the Kabeiric vases, though they are akin to them. Their artistic merit is slight, and this is no doubt the reason why so few have reached museums outside Greece, and why still fewer have ever been published. Nevertheless, the fact that they exist in considerable numbers of itself makes them historically important, especially as the fabric has well-marked characteristics which render it possible to trace a chronological sequence and perhaps local styles.

Existing accounts of this war only know what now appears to have been its second phase; but the material now available should enable us partially to reconstruct the first phase, and recover for the history of Asia something of two lost years, 276 and 275. The starting point is Mr. Sidney Smith's new readings and translation of the fragment of the Babylonian chronicle concerning Antiochus I, with which the decree of Ilium, O.G.I. 219, works in and out; overlapping them come the letter of Ptolemy II to Miletus and the Milesian decree in reply.

The Babylonian chronicle shews that in spring 276 the army of Ptolemy II invaded Seleucid Syria, and some time later in 276 Antiochus defeated it and drove it out; while heretofore it has been supposed that it was Ptolemy who defeated Antiochus some time in 274–3. On the face of it, then, Ptolemy was the original aggressor in the long series of wars between the two kingdoms. But can the war be traced back before spring 276? There had been bond enough between Ptolemy I and Seleucus I to prevent actual war so long as either lived; but once Seleucus was dead (280), Ptolemy II immediately threw down the gauntlet by recognising Keraunos as king of Macedonia, which Antiochus I claimed; while next year he damaged Antiochus considerably, for Miletus, Seleucid in 280/79, became Egyptian some time in 279/8. It does not follow there was fighting; but Ptolemy restored to Miletus a long-lost piece of territory, which must have become King's Land; and if he took King's Land from Antiochus it was an act of war.

The Turkish conquest of Greece produced four Greek historians—Laonikos Chalkokondyles, Doukas, Phrantzes and the Turkophil Imbrian, Kritoboulos. I have already dealt with the first; the present paper treats of the second and third of the four. Doukas' history has been preserved not only in the Greek text but also in an old Italian version, which in some places supplies materials lacking in our Greek original. Doukas is an author worthy of study; for he was truthful and in several instances an eye-witness—qualities which, in the opinion of historians, far outweigh the barbarism of his style, which so much offended his supercilious editor in the defective Bonn edition.

The chronology of early Cypriote sculpture has only once been treated in detail, when Professor J. L. Myres, in his Handbook of the Cesnola Collection, attempted to distinguish styles and arrange them in an intelligible sequence. His conclusions cannot be neglected by the student of ancient art, for if they are correct some of the most ambitious statues date from the first half of the seventh century B.C., which means that sculpture is at least a century older in Cyprus than in other Greek lands. (It must be remembered that the island was as Greek then as it ever was; an Assyrian inscription records the names of ten Greek kings reigning in it at this time. The object of this paper is to examine how far his distinctions are accurate and to put forward an alternative arrangement.

Foreign influence is evident in a large number of statues in native limestone, and Myres' view is that one influence is Assyrian and contemporary with Assyrian domination, which began in 709 B.C., and the next Egyptian. It was Amasis, 570–526 B.C., who actually effected the annexation, but Myres ascribes the earliest imitations of Egyptian art to the end of the seventh century, thereby making the duration of the two periods more alike. The Persian conquest, which is not later than the time of Darius, results in a decline of pure Egyptian style and the rise of an eclectic art based on Egyptian and older traditions that passes insensibly into a variety of late archaic Greek. In the next few pages I shall endeavour to show that he has been too definite in describing the Oriental influence as mainly Assyrian, and so there is no proof that it is as old as the seventh century, and that he has grouped as Oriental certain sculptures which are early archaic Greek.

I. Solon's Currency Reform

The repetition of the article in τὴν…αὔξησιν without another substantive may on linguistic grounds be suspected. Some time ago Mr. Hill was tempted to suggest τήν τε τ.μ.κ.σ. αὔξησιν κ.τ.τ.ν. <μείωσιν> (Num. Chron. 1896–7, p. 285), but resisted the temptation to ‘such audacity’ because he held (very oddly) that Solon increased, not decreased, the weight and value of the drachma. Now that Mr. Seltman in his Athens: Its History and Coinage has made it clear that Solon reduced the drachma, and has pointed out that the reduction in the coinage and the raising of the market weights and measures went hand in hand (they were ‘part and parcel of the same emergency legislation. A man got more in weight for a lesser sum of money,’ p. 17 n. 1), we should adopt Hill's emendation, which is no very startling alteration of the MS. We thereby get a gain in lucidity, which we are justified in taking because the text as it stands is suspicious. Note that not only does Androtion's theory of Solon's reform (Plut. Sol. 15) support the view that the drachma was reduced and show that this view must have been known to Aristotle, but that Plutarch's language also suggests the emendation: τὴν ἅμα τούτῳ γενομένην τῶν τε μέτρων (<καὶ σταθμῶν>?) ἐπαύξησιν καὶ τοῦ νομίσματος τιμήν (though τιμήν itself is not the word one expects and is, I am sure, corrupt), τὸ νόμισμα is, of course, ‘the standard coin,’ in this case the didrachm.

This marble head was acquired by the Ashmolean Museum in 1923 from a British officer, Mr. L. T. Bower, who had purchased it in Constantinople. The vendor stated that it had come from Eski-Shehr in Asia Minor, the ancient Dorylaeum (Fig. 1).

The measurements of the head are as follows: —

Height from fracture of neck to top of head, 30 cm.

Height from chin point to top of head, 28·3 cm.

Width of face between the front of the ears, 17·3 cm.

Depth between back of head and eyebrows, 23·2 cm.

Width of neck, 13·8 cm.

Length of nose from bridge to tip (which is intact), 5·9 cm.

Width of nose at nostrils, 4·7 cm.