For three hundred years and more the meaning of the figures on the Portland Vase has been a matter for speculation of the most strange and varied character.

During the first half of this century there was something of a lull, but ten years ago Professor Erika Simon, after a wide-ranging and sensitive study of all the evidence, put forward a highly ingenious theory connecting the scenes with the ancestry of Augustus and, shortly after, Professor L. Polacco embroidered it further. In 1964 Mr Denys Haynes produced the excellent little book which is on sale at the British Museum: this was reviewed by Professor H. Möbius, who had his own theory, elaborated since in a longer article; and Professor H. Biesantz has exposed the weaknesses of all the solutions, without however propounding one of his own.

The wide differences of opinion among these scholars have prompted me to place on record some observations I made twenty years ago, when we first acquired the vase at the British Museum; and I shall take Mr Haynes' book as a starting-point, because it is the latest comprehensive account, and, being persuasively argued, bids fair to hold the field.

However, before we begin to examine the vase in detail, a few words must be said on its technique, its date, and the circumstances in which it was made (plates I–IV, VI–VII). The technique was to make a bubble of very dark blue glass, clear but so thick that it cannot be seen through, and over it a skin of white translucent glass reaching as far upwards as the base of the neck: then to join two deep-blue glass handles from the middle of the neck to the shoulder of the vase; and, finally, using the technique of the cameo-carver, to carve, and carve away, the white glass layer in order to produce figures and landscape. The blue glass becomes the background of the scene where the white has been completely removed: where the white has been thinned but not completely removed, the blue provides suggestions of shadow and distance.

Neoptolemus, after defensive action with his shield against the missiles of the Delphians, decides to break away from the altar and try to escape—making in so doing ‘the well-known Trojan leap’, as Euripides says. This phrase plainly implies knowledge of a notorious incident of such a sort, associated, one might presume, with Neoptolemus himself. The schol, ad loc. however refers to a leap made by Achilles from the invasion ship on to Trojan soil, when a fountain of water shot up at the place he landed with his prodigious jump. This incident may be alluded to in El. 439, where the invasion fleet is said to have brought In later literature the legend is confirmed by Lycophron Alex. 245 (with schol.) and Antimachus fr. 59, where The fact that Antimachus uses a simile which resembles of the Delphians in the Andromache might also be thought to connect the two passages, but the image is a common one and Antimachus seems to borrow more directly from Achilles' leap on Hector in Il. xxii 138–9

But although this explanation of ‘the Trojan leap’ is plausible enough, and Norwood in his edition observes ‘obviously Neoptolemus leaping down from the altar suggests Achilles leaping down from the ship’, there is also evidence for a Trojan leap of Neoptolemus himself, and if this story (like the leap to shore of Achilles) came from a familiar Epic Cycle account of the war at Troy, it would be reasonable to suppose that Euripides had in mind an incident involving Neoptolemus rather than his father.

These notes on the beginnings of Greek sculpture contain little that has not been said before, but aim at applying a severer logic to the evidence and the conclusions drawn from it. The problems may be defined as what models were used by early Greek sculptors, why they chose those models, where the choice was made, and what the impulse was that induced them to take up this new art.

The earliest surviving Greek sculpture worth the name is of the Daedalic style, which Jenkins has analysed neatly in his Dedalica. This style began in the second quarter of the seventh century and continued into the last quarter. So much is fairly generally accepted.

The artistic influence of Egypt on Greece has been propounded since the eighteenth century, and there are still many students who see its effects in sculpture. Usually their arguments are very general, asserting similarity of types and technical methods rather than of style. Of the Archaic Greek types the kouros is most apparently comparable to Egyptian—an upright, four-square figure with arms held to its sides and one foot in front of the other. Except for the stance this is the most obvious pose for a standing figure, and there are essential specific differences, well defined by Schrader. The stock Egyptian male has a support behind the forward leg, tilts backwards, and wears a kilt; the Greek kouros stands free, has a more mobile poise and is naked (except in the Daedalic style for a belt). As for resemblances in detail, Richter and Carpenter single out the roll of stone clenched in the hand of some Greek kouroi; this does not seem a regular or very early feature, and it may be a technical coincidence to avoid hollowing the inside of the closed fist. The ‘layer wig’ of course, though of Egyptian origin, is not so common in Egyptian sculpture and was already naturalised in Phoenician and Syrian art.

In 355/4 Demosthenes asserted that there were ‘perhaps sixty or slightly more’ recurrent liturgies performed every year in Athens. Böckh doubted this figure, thinking it a serious underestimate, but neither he nor any later scholar has pressed this doubt to the point of tabulating the relevant evidence in detail. It may therefore be found useful if I do so here, for it will emerge with some clarity that Böckh's doubts were well-founded.

Demosthenes' word ‘recurrent’ (ἐγκύκλιοι) achieved some currency in the last century as a quasi-technical term. By it he meant the civilian liturgies—choregia, gymnasiarchy, etc.—in contrast to the military liturgies the imposition of which was irregular and unpredictable; but since every known civilian liturgy in Athens formed part of the celebration of a festival, it may perhaps be clearer to think of them as festival liturgies and to arrange the evidence not according to the category of liturgy but by festival. I begin with the certain cases.

This article is concerned with the antecedents to the formation of the group known as οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι καὶ οἱ σύμμαχοι, and correctly styled the (First) Athenian Alliance (in distinction from the Second Athenian Alliance) and with the problems of its constitutional arrangements. So much has been written in the knowledge of subsequent events—by Herodotus, Thucydides and modern scholars—that it is particularly difficult for us to see this topic in its historical perspective, that is to see how the Athenian Alliance grew out of what went before. For example, the hegemony enjoyed by Athens in the Alliance has been described by many as the means by which she was later to fulfil her imperialistic ambitions, but few have studied its powers in relation to earlier examples of hegemony; yet it must have been these earlier examples of hegemony which were active in men's minds in 478/7 B.C. After a section, A, on the nature of the evidence, I therefore keep to the historical order and discuss in section B the campaign of Mycale down to the capture of Sestus; in section C the operations under Pausanias and the change of hegemony; in section D the creation of the Athenian Alliance; and in section E the relationship between Athens and the Allies.

In 1957 Mr Lobel published, in the twenty-fourth volume of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, a large fragment of a commentary on the Spartan poet Alcman. It is the second column of this papyrus which I propose to discuss; lines 13 to 22 give us some information about the Spartan royal family, and lines 22 to 25 seem to be saying something about the Spartan tribal organisation. Unfortunately, however, much of the left-hand side of the column is missing at this point; and when, from line 22, we do at last have a few letters from the left-hand side, we are faced with a gap running up the right-hand side as well. Because of this, it will be necessary to spend some time in an attempt to discover what the papyrus said, what it might have said, and what it could not possibly have said. Until this is done, no historical conclusions can safely be drawn.

Before starting on an examination of the text, however, it would be as well to state what can be known about the author of the commentary. We can be certain that he had the work of previous scholars before him. In line 4 he refers to Theon, the Augustan grammarian, and in line 5 to Tyrannion; there were two grammarians of that name, and we cannot tell which he means (Lobel 54). Furthermore, in line 28, τῶν λοιπῶν is best taken as meaning ‘the other commentators’ (see p. 70). Whether or not he was an intelligent man is a question on which it is better not to dogmatise. He is capable of interpretative remarks of dubious value (lines 9–13, with Lobel ad loc.). There is certainly a muddle in the third column, which may indicate stupidity on the part of the commentator, or carelessness on the part of the scribe. We should not assume too readily that what he says is the gospel truth about early Sparta. On the other hand, we should remember that he might be working from a reliable source.

Time has done almost its worst with the cultural and social history of Western Greece in the period from Hieron's succession in 478 to the death of Aeschylus in 456. It has left us no complete work by any Western Greek author; and for a chronicler of the period it has been able to do nothing better than a Diodorus Siculus. As a result, most of those details in the picture that are not missing are obscure. Close observation is fruitless, except only at one or two points where there still falls the brilliant but fugitive light of a Pindaric ode. Even so, if we step far enough back, a general composition emerges about which, I believe, there will not be much disagreement.

This was a precocious culture, largely called into being by artificial means, and hence short-lived. But while it lived it anticipated in many ways the culture and the problems of Old Greece a generation and more later. Here already was at least one city-state swollen to outsize proportions, with a fluid population for which the moral and social patterns of the close-knit archaic community must inevitably have been losing their meaning. Here already was that violent confrontation of old and new, tradition and free inquiry, which is more familiar to us from the Athens of the late fifth century, from the time of Euripides, Socrates and Aristophanes. There is a religious background of essentially rather primitive mortuary beliefs—that whole region, of course, is the demesne of the Two Goddesses—though these beliefs themselves are taking on new and far from primitive shapes in the minds of the Pythagoreans and their associates. In abrupt contrast to them stand the utterly modern and sophisticated minds of the native Epicharmus and the immigrant Xenophanes; and half-way between there is a Sicilian who embodies in one man the contradictions of the epoch: Empedocles, poet and scientist, author (to the consternation of the learned in modern times) both of the Περὶ Φύσεως and of the Καθαρμοί. The same time, in Syracuse, sees the beginnings of a school of rhetoric—rhetoric, carrying in itself all those fearsome questions as to the relation between the word and the thing, between beauty and truth, which were to perplex Plato well into the fourth century.

Because our knowledge of ancient cartography is extremely limited, owing to the lack of surviving examples, the discovery of an accurate and competent map as the reverse type of a rare series of coins dating from the fourth century B.C. is of enormous significance. For this is the earliest Greek map to come down to us in any form and the first physical relief map known. Hitherto we have had to rely on the descriptions of maps in the ancient authors as our sole source of information about early Ionian cartography, whereas now we have an actual example. One would not normally expect to find a map as a coin type; most ancient maps were presumably drawn on vellum or papyrus. Even today, with much more sophisticated techniques of engraving, maps are very rarely found on coins, although they are common on postage stamps. Babelon, Head and Imhoof-Blumer were consequently not likely to consider this solution in trying to decipher the reverse type in their discussion of this series around the turn of the century; the map has so far remained unrecognised.

Appropriately the coins are from Ionia, the home of Thales and Anaximander, the early geographers. Only 35 examples of this series of Rhodian-weight tetradrachms and 6 of the bronze of the same type have been traced (plates X–XI). The obverse type is the figure of the Persian king, running or kneeling right, wearing the kidaris and candys, and holding a bow in his left hand and a spear in his right. The reverse is a rectangular incuse with irregular raised areas and is usually heavily stippled. The style of the reverse changes considerably, but the type is recognisable throughout as a map depicting the physical relief of the hinterland of Ephesus, an area of approximately 90 square miles (plate IX). It is unique both as a coin type and as a map.

The London fragment of the Oxyrhynchus historian begins with a narrative of the voyage of Demaenetus to Conon and the reaction which it provoked. This is the last incident with which P deals under the winter of 396/5, and he describes it as approximately contemporaneous with some other incident, not improbably the mission of Timocrates. With one ship Demaenetus sailed off to join Conon, lacking the authorisation of the people, but not before secretly communicating his plan to the boule. The language of the following section gives the impression that the boule was taken aback by the extent and vigour of the outcry, which might indicate that prior anti-Spartan acts had not created such a disturbance. The action of Demaenetus was less trivial than it may at first seem; it was also more concrete, less easy to excuse or minimise than what had gone before. One of the twelve ships which Athens was allowed, and which could easily be counted, was gone, and Sparta would know perfectly well where it had gone. She had recently suffered a serious reverse in her struggle with Persia, the loss of Rhodes, whilst the apparently unconcealed object of Timocrates had been the incitement to war of the cities of Greece. In the circumstances Sparta would perhaps be more likely than before to treat the least unfriendly move by Athens as an act of war, especially if it took the form of assistance to Persia, whilst at Athens meditation on the possibility of war, inspired by Timocrates' appeal, would create an acuter awareness of the likely results of defeat and so promote greater caution and respect for Spartan sensibilities among prudent men.

Already by Pindar's day the term ‘Boeotian pig’ was an old reproach, and indeed Boeotia was ‘a slow canton, as the nimble Attics would say, a glorious climate for eels, but a bad air for brains.’ My choice of title does not, however, stop there. Anyone brought up in Scotland or in the north of England will know the word ‘pig’ in another meaning than the usual, will know it as a pot, a jar, a crock, and the use of this meaning in the phrase ‘Pig and Whistle’ is perhaps more widely known. Porcelain also establishes a connexion between pigs and pottery.

Boeotian pottery is the Cinderella of the local schools, offering few of the usual attractive groups and classes of work which distinguish most other centres, and much of the potting and painting done in Boeotia is indeed poor or mediocre. It has, however, an interest of its own which makes it worth looking at—the interest one can take in seeing first-rate work copied and adapted for local use and in noting the influence of more brilliant craftsmen on their less well-endowed neighbours. Part of the trouble with looking at Boeotia is that we see Greek pottery through the eyes of Athens; we have come to judge Greek work by the standard of Athens and to consider that a different approach means necessarily an incompetent attempt at mimicking Athenian work. In many cases this is so, for the influence of Attic work on the less original centres was widespread and rarely good. Occasionally a Boeotian artist produced work which rivals Attic, but this is uncommon, and it is more likely that such an artist was an immigrant Athenian. We may also run into the danger of regarding ‘Boeotian’ as having the same range in meaning as ‘Athenian’, whereas we are really dealing with different local centres, e.g. Thebes, Tanagra, Coroneia, Thespiai. Thus we must not expect a continuous tradition of development along a single line, and this makes dating hazardous. Boeotian artists did produce local work which is distinctive, and they used the basic techniques of black-figure and red-figure in ways and combinations different from their neighbours; they also had their own variations with added white and purple. For shapes too they preferred a slightly different range and their own local variations.

We should like to make the following additions and modifications to our article ‘The Cycle of Agathias’ in JHS lxxxvi (1966) 6–25:

p. 7: We might have added that AP xiii, xiv, xv and probably iv as well are non-Cephalan.

p. 7, n. 11: We would now retract the view that Planudes used the Palatinus direct. Cf. Gow, Sources and ascriptions 51, and F. Lenzinger, Zur griechischen Anthologie (Diss. Zürich, 1965) 31–55. But our argument at, e.g., p. 12, para. 4, is unaffected, since it is clear that Planudes used a MS closely allied to the Palatinus (more closely, indeed, than Lenzinger, op. cit. 55, supposed).

p. 8, n. 18: We should now place Eutolmius in the Cycle rather than in Palladas' Sylloge, and probably admit Diogenes as well. Possibly also, on the strength of their titles, Thomas Scholasticus (xvi 315) who may be the Thomas mentioned by Agathias in xvi 80. This latter Thomas is probably not, as Beckby (index nom. s.v.) supposed, a painter, but the man who commissioned the painting in question or wrote the epigram for it (cf. G. Mathew, Byzantine Aesthetics [1963] 74). Mathew assumes that he is the Thomas Curator of xvi 41: this is certainly possible, but no more.

p. 10: i 34 was written before Agathias' fourth year of legal studies. It was in 551 or 552 that he began them (see ch. i of Averil Cameron's forthcoming monograph on Agathias), and so the poem can be dated to 554 or 555. For the question of the inclusion of this poem in the Cycle see below on p. 22.

In huius bibliothecae vol. lxxxvi (1966) Averil et Alan Cameron de Agathiae Cyclo disserentes p. 19 de homonymis Theaetetae poëtae egerunt. Inter eos auctorem opusculi περὶ' Αττικѽν ὀνομάτων in cod. Laurentiano lvii 24 traditi afferunt, quod adhuc ineditum sit. Attamen iam ante fere xxx annos hanc tractatiunculam, quae sparsa scholia in Platonem insertis locis ex ipso Platone et excerpta lexicographica (praesertim ex Suida) continet, publici iuris feci (Mnem. Ser. iii, Vol. vii [1939] 63–75). Apparuit Theaetetum nomen auctoris non esse: Θεαίτητος in titulum opusculo superscriptum irrepsit ex primis annotationibus, quae ex scholiis in Theaetetum excerptae sunt (inc. sch. ad διωλύγιος 162A; p. 25 Greene).

The battered stone which bears the bouleutic oath and a decree of the demos about the boule has the same width as and is universally agreed to be a companion piece to IG i2 115. That text begins with a decree of 409–8 ordering the anagrapheis to obtain Draco's law on homicide (from the basileus, as R. S. Stroud will show) and write it on the stone. On the face of it, they are merely to make a copy, and, though the stray voice has been raised to suggest that they altered the text, most discussion has been about the age of the text before them and the changes that it might have undergone before 409.

The bouleutic stone is unprotected by a decree, as it stands, and encouragement for those who might wish to suppose that it represents a revised text comes from Philochorus F 140, which suggests a change in legislation about the boule in 410–9. There has not, to my knowledge, been any very great enthusiasm for massive revision or new formulation. To put it at a minimum, (1. 34) and (l. 41) do not sound like consitutional procedure or even formal language of 410, and there has been at least one attempt to carry the whole document back beyond the Persian War. The archaisms convinced even Hignett ‘that it was to some extent a copy of an earlier law’, but he found it ‘incredible that in 410, when the full democracy had just been restored after an oligarchic interlude, a law on this subject should have been no more than a faithful copy of a previous law; some additional safeguards suggested by previous experience must have been inserted.’

It is due to the efficient scholarship and generous kindness of Professor Henri Seyrig that I am able to publish the texts of three new enquiries from Dodona. In 1929 he bought three lead tablets in Athens, which were sold to him as coming from that site. They were at that time still rolled up in the form in which most of them have been found. This fact itself can be regarded as a strong confirmation that they were genuinely derived from Dodona. Professor Seyrig proceeded to unroll the strips and fortunately copied carefully the texts which he found within. He then put them aside, and when some years later he looked at them again, the lead had completely disintegrated. Thus the original tablets are gone, but Professor Seyrig's copies survive, and he has kindly put them at my disposal for publication.

These enquiries are generally quite typical of those already found, but also have some individual features of interest. They are all from private enquirers asking Zeus for guidance on personal subjects. The lead tablets showed no signs of previous use. They were not palimpsests, as are some other extant examples. Also as preserved at the time of copying, they showed no marks on the reverse of the tablets, such as were used to distinguish one enquiry from another after it had been rolled up. But such marks may have been on the back of the first line or two, which in each of the three instances appear to be missing.

These notes supplement and correct my article ‘Greek Mosaics’ in JHS lxxxv (1965) 72–89 (hereafter GM).

I. Additions:

Miss Elizabeth Ramsden, who is making a corpus of Roman mosaics in Greece, has drawn my attention to three important pebble-mosaics omitted from my survey. I am most grateful to her for this, and for permission to use her descriptions and photographs, reproduced in plates XXIII and XXIV. I am also very grateful to Professor Orlandos for permission to publish the photographs of the mosaic in Sicyon, no. 1; and to the late Dr. N. Verdelis for permission to publish those of the fragment in Athens, no 3. I know these two floors only from photographs and descriptions; nos. 2 and 4 only from the publications.

1. Sicyon Museum, from Sicyon (Kiaton). Found by Professor Orlandos in 1940 and published by him in Praktika 1941, fig. 6 (see also BCH 1940/1 241, fig. 7). Here, plate XXIV. 2.80 × 2.80 m (without entry-panel); blue-black and white pebbles, with a few red.

Diodoros makes a notorious mistake in his dates for the Eurypontids at Sparta during the fifth century. Under the archonship of Phaidon, 476/5, he records (xi 48.2) the death of Leotychidas, after a reign of 22 years, and the accession of Archidamos, who went on to rule for 42 years. Accordingly, after these 42 years have passed, we find the death of Archidamos and the accession of Agis recorded in 434/3 (xii 35.4). In three subsequent passages, however (xii 42.6; 47.1; 52.1), Diodoros mentions activity of Archidamos during the early years of the Peloponnesian War. Three passages in Thucydides (iii 1.1; 26.2; 89.1) lead us to suppose that Archidamos died sometime in 427, probably in 427/6 (cf. Gomme, Commentary i 405). Thus, given that Diodoros is correct in the length of the reign, 42 years, then his accession date is seven years too high—476/5 instead of the correct 469/8. In consequence, his dates for Leotychidas and Agis are also seven years too high.