It is a well-known fact, of which proof in recent years has not seldom been forthcoming, that the sea, on the rare occasions on which it has revealed to us its archaeological secrets, has nearly always given us beautiful works, for the most part in bronze, far better preserved than the discoveries on dry land. That, however, it should one day have presented us with what is certainly one of the most perfect works of just the most obscure period of Greek art in the fifth century B.C., belonging to those years of the Pentekontaetia from which we should have so much desired to have an original statue, was beyond even the most optimistic of hopes. Such is the principal find made in the sea off Artemision in Euboea in October 1928 (Pl. VII).

There is no doubt that we have before us the figure of a god. That is shown not merely by its height (ca. 2·10 m.), but also by the character and spirit incorporated in it. Its stance, the manner of its movement (a movement which has also at the same time an inner balance and poise), various details of the body and the hair—all show that it is a work belonging to about 460 B.C. It is easy for us to distinguish figures spiritually and stylistically analogous on other monuments of this period (cf. e.g. a Poseidon on an amphora at Würzburg: Gerhard, Auserlesene Vasenbilder, xi. 1).

Of the sources of Homer in the literary sense we can know nothing. There is no antecedent, no contemporary literature extant; and no analysis of later works will yield anything that can be proved to represent a literary tradition earlier than Homer. Archaeology, however, which has made the origins of Hellenic culture in some degree intelligible, has at least furnished a solid stage and a veritable background for the action of the Iliad. How much did Homer know of the past? A systematic examination of the archaeological data which the poems offer suggests that he knew a great deal; knew it with a precision which cannot be explained away as fortuitous, and about so remote a past that we must postulate a stream of tradition traceable much further back than the siege of Troy. For the purposes of this paper Homer means the author of the Iliad in substantially its present form, whose floruit the present writer would not put earlier than the ninth century, and the term is used, without prejudice, for the author of the Odyssey also. Eratosthenes' date of 1184 for the fall of Troy is assumed less because it came to be accepted as the standard date in antiquity than because it fits so well into what we know of the history of the Mediterranean world at that time.

In 1908 there was excavated at Rhitsona a particularly richly furnished single-interment grave that included among the 400 odd items of its furniture two comparatively insignificant black-figure vases, a little spout vase and a lekythos, the interest of which was not immediately recognised. Recent work on the black-figure pottery of Boeotia shows that these two vases belong to the same fabric as the famous lekane in the British Museum, B 80, which has been the subject of much controversy in the matter of its origin and date as well as of the interpretation of the scenes upon it.

The years 1927 and 1928 have borne fresh and eloquent testimony to the vitality and interest of epigraphical studies in the unabated stream of books and articles dealing with Greek inscriptions, whether newly discovered or previously known but imperfectly read, restored or interpreted. Once more, therefore, I essay the difficult task of presenting a brief survey of the progress made during these two years, following, as before, the order of the Inscriptiones Graecae so far as Europe is concerned and that of the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum for Asia and Africa. I have made no attempt to mention all reviews, but have included references to those which summarise works not widely accessible or make important contributions to the subjects under discussion, even though in some cases they did not appear until 1929.

In the British Museum there are two fifth-century Attic vases (Nos. D 9 and D 10) of bee-hive shape (Fig. 1), of which the decoration consists of a series of mouldings alternately red, white, and black, with a black rim; the interior is white, also with a black rim. In their general style, their technique, and their decoration they are very similar to another vase of the same collection, D 8, a phiale mesomphalos, which bears the signature of the potter Sotades. All three vases were in the Branteghem Collection, and were described by Froehner, in his Catalogue of that Collection, under Nos. 160–162.

In the third volume of the Catalogue of Vases in the British Museum I described these vases, D 9 and D 10, as ‘Mastoi’; this is a form which, of course, owes its name to the pretty fancy which derives it from the model of Aphrodite's breast, and so was a favourite form of dedication in her temple at Paphos.

This report, in which the usual arrangement is adopted, includes all the excavation-accounts which have reached me up to September 30th, 1929. Those concerning the work of the French School, the German School and the Greek Archaeological Service relate to work done in 1928; the rest mainly concern the campaigns of 1929.

American School

During the season of 1929 the American School, under Professor Rhys Carpenter, have continued their work on Old Corinth, selecting three areas for excavation:—the first, just north of the Peribolos of Apollo and east of the Lechaeum Road, revealed a large though much-destroyed Roman thermal establishment, where the well-preserved floor-piers of two hypocaust rooms and a deep marble-lined pool leave no doubt as to the purpose of the building, identified by Professor Carpenter with the famous Baths of Eurykles, described by Pausanias. The second area lies between the Temple of Apollo and the village road on the north. In antiquity the rocky hill on which the Temple stood had been cut away to a vertical rock-face, some 20 feet high, and Professor Carpenter's purpose is to restore the ancient isolation of the Temple.

Among the recent acquisitions of the Ashmolean Museum are the two reliefs which form the subject of the present paper, and which I am permitted to publish by the courtesy of the Keeper, Mr. E. T. Leeds. The Museum already possessed a fragment of a Nymph relief of the ordinary type (three draped female figures moving in procession within a grotto (Chandler, Pars I, Tab. L. No. CXXIV = Michaelis, Anc. Marb., No. 133) so that the two new reliefs materially enrich that group in the Collection.

I. Dance of Pan and Nymphs (Pl. XIVa).—Pan occupies the centre of the composition; he moves quickly to his left, leading three female figures in a dance round an altar-shaped stone. He is dressed in a panther skin, which covers his bent right arm; a long narrow mantle is thrown over his left shoulder, one end of which floats behind him, the other is twisted round his left arm, in which he holds a pedum; his head is turned back over his right shoulder towards the nymph who follows him (No. 1). His figure is in high relief (3 cmm.), his head, the floating ends of his scarf and his legs so much undercut as almost to seem detached from the background. The body of the first nymph is also in high relief (2½ cmm.), and is twisted round to present a three-quarters view; her right arm is thrown back to grasp ah end of her drapery, her left is raised to her shoulder.

The accounts of the war in Euboea (349–8) given by Beloch and Kahrstedt are contradictory, their chief points of difference being:—(i) Was there only one expedition to Euboea at this time or two? (ii) When did the incident of the kidnapping of Molossus take place? (iii) Was the result of the war a victory for Athens or for Euboea, or was it indecisive? The ancient authorities upon whom we depend for the solution of these problems are divided into two kinds:—one fairly consecutive narrative (Plut. Phocion, XII–XIV), and many allusions or disconnected anecdotes to be found in the orators Demosthenes and Aeschines, and their scholia.