A detailed report in English and a brief mention in Latin record the rediscovery in 1883 of the ‘charter’ of Orcistus by W. M. Ramsay and J. R. S. Sterrett. Not till 1886 was a complete copy secured, but in 1883 at Alikel, besides ascertaining where the original lay hidden, they found and copied, each in his own notebook, two other documents of which only the dating has been published. In his report Ramsay thus refers to them: ‘we occupied ourselves … partly in copying a long inscription of 98 lines in length, half of which was more or less legible.’ This inscription, comprising (A) a deed of gift, (B) a decree, both dated in 237, is here edited from the copies of 1883; no others are likely to exist, for the pedestal bearing the original text ‘had been destroyed in search of treasure after we left.’

Sir William Ramsay has kindly lent me those two notebooks; three pages from his and one from Sterrett's are reproduced below; for permission to use them, as well as for invaluable information and advice, I am indeed grateful.

As long ago as 1893, Dieterich, in a famous article on the ‘initiation’-scene in Aristophanes' Clouds, pointed out that there are a great many echoes of ritual hidden in ordinary works of Greek literature, especially in comedy and tragedy. His hint was followed up in 1900 by F. Adami, whose paper remains a storehouse of such echoes, but who has by no means exhausted the subject. G. Thomson's article in a recent issue of this Journal collects a number of instances in the Oresteia of Aeschylus in which similar echoes can be heard. The purpose of the present contribution is partly to criticise the interpretation put by Thomson on certain of the references to mystic rites which Headlam and he have noted, and partly to attempt to carry the search a stage farther.

The point in Thomson's valuable paper on which most doubt will be raised in his readers' minds is his tendency to attribute to the Eleusinia all allusions to mysteries in the Oresteia. In his zeal for the exclusive glory of Eleusis, he assumes that its mysteries involved both rites and doctrines which the general consensus of scholars has denied to them. In one place he dismisses this general agreement by lumping modern authorities together as ‘archaeologists’ (p. 22, n. 13), a title which most of them, probably, would humbly deprecate. His procedure raises an important problem in method, and for this reason I may be excused for discussing some of his conclusions.

Rodin bought many antiques in his life, and these are now preserved in the Rodin Museum in Paris. They are not very well known, but they include a few fine pieces well worth seeing and studying. Some seventy ancient vases are on exhibition, and do not seem ever to have been published or described, apart from stray mentions in sale catalogues.

A few years ago I became interested in the collection, and noticed a very curious red-figured cup, which I shall describe.

Pl. I. Rodin Museum inv. Tc. 980 (formerly inv. 1943). Diameter 23·2 centimetres. The present height is 9·5 centimetres, but the foot is alien: it comes from a little-master cup. The handles belong: the ends of them are rounded, not squared as in late cups.

I: two satyrs. The left-hand one totters forward in a dancing movement, carrying a large wineskin on his back. He grasps the upper end with his left hand, just above his head, to prevent it sliding down. The right arm is lowered, with the fingers of the hand raised. His tail does not show, and his left leg is almost entirely hidden behind the krater on which his companion is seated; a bit of the calf appears to the left of the base. The second satyr, who wears a wreath of ivy, is sitting on the foot of a large calyx-krater which has been turned upside down; streaks on the uneven ground represent the remains of the wine: the feast is over.

During the latter part of the summer of 1936 I spent some six weeks in Cyprus, studying the Greek and Roman inscriptions of the island, with the intention ultimately of producing a small Corpus. The following article is the first of a series in which I hope to publish the more interesting portion of my results.

By kind permission of Sir Arthur Evans and of the British School at Athens, I am allowed to publish a marble relief found in 1903 at the Villa Ariadne, near Knossos (pl. III). Height ·69 m., width ·72 m., depth of relief ·05 m. It was discovered face downwards on a Roman drain, west of the tennis court. The drain carried a road, also of Roman date. The marble is so badly weathered that I cannot determine its origin. Both top corners missing and a break right across. The surface of Herakles is destroyed below the crack, except at the sides. Above the crack, the surface is worn. The boar's hind feet were not on the relief, its fore feet, ear, and snout are broken. Its head hangs sideways. Part of the lion skin in front of Herakles, and an object between it and the boar, probably the club, are also broken.

Herakles carries the boar on his left shoulder, on the folded lion skin. The mask and the mane hang in front, while folds appear before and behind Herakles and between his legs. His right hand grasps the boar's shoulder. His left hand does not appear, but it holds the club, the end of which shows below the boar's crest: so the hand is fairly low down, balancing the boar before dumping it on Eurystheus.

Since 1856, when Schaefer declared that the text of Diodorus contains two parallel accounts of the opening of the Sacred War, the history of the years 357–352 B.C. has been the subject of controversy. At the present time two contentions have gained general acceptance: firstly, that Schaefer was correct in the divination of a doublet, and secondly, that the doublet having introduced a superfluous year of narrative, the two-year interval in Diodorus' chronology, between the seizure of Delphi by Philomelus and the declaration of the Sacred War by the Amphictyony, should be reduced to an interval of one year.

Within this modicum of agreement there has been ample room for dispute. The doublists, if I may so describe those who attribute a doublet to Diodorus, differ widely when they endeavour to set precise limits to their doublet: for instance, Schaefer, Kahrstedt, Cloche, and Beloch are at variance.

I am indebted to the Curator of the City Art Gallery, Manchester, for permission to publish the object illustrated on fig. i, which was acquired some years ago with a number of other Egyptian antiquities in the John Yates Bequest. It is of gold, the maximum dimensions being 4.0 × 3.6 cm. and the weight 3.43 grms. Three figures—Demeter, Persephone and Harpocrates—are represented, standing to front on an oblong base the front of which is filled with conventional scrolls of vine sprays with bunches of grapes set in a rectangular reel-border. Demeter wears a peplos with himation, the end of which is thrown over the 1. shoulder, and a corn wreath with two ears rising diagonally from the forehead; she holds a sceptre in 1.

The following is from my notebook of an Anatolian journey made in 1932. The text is from a copy on the spot subsequently checked by impression and photograph:—

In a fountain about 2 km. South of Salir (i.e. at the North end of L. Karalis), limestone stele broken above. In the field, two eagles, below them two female figures, below them a standing lion facing 1., with his r. forefoot on the head of an ox. Inscription on the moulded base. H. 1.29 m., W. 0.53–0.56, Th. 0.33–0.16, Letters 0.015–0.02.

Mr. H. W. Law's suggestion, made as a note in the last number of the Journal (p. 236), that the statue of the Hermes and Dionysos from the Heraeum was moved to that building from elsewhere in 146 B.C. is interesting. It would, of course, without doubt authenticate the statue as an original by Praxiteles, if its processes of reasoning could be considered as acceptable. Mr. Law, not doubting any more than I do, that the basis can be assigned to a second-century B.C. date, as Professor Dinsmoor has shown, assumes that therefore the statue must have been placed upon that basis at the time when that basis was made. That assumption obviously rules out the possibility of the statue having been carved in the second century A.D.

The celebration of the Centenary of the ‘ National and Capodistrian University,’ to give it the full title which it has borne officially since 1911, was held for eight days in April, and passed off amidst the hospitality for which Greece is proverbial. The present writer, one of the few delegates who was also present at the seventy-fifth anniversary in 1912, when that eminent historian and admirable organiser, the late Sp. P. Lampros, was Rector, could not but compare the dimensions of modern Athens and modern Greece with those of the smaller capital and the restricted kingdom, then on the eve of the first Balkan War. In the expansion of Greece, both scientifically and politically, the University has played a great part. It has produced eminent scholars and apostles of the ‘ Great Idea,’ men who have laboured for the advancement of Greek learning and the creation of greater Greece.

H 113 is a red-figured lekythos, the head, neck and handle missing: present height 18.5 cm. Its subject is Nike standing before a small altar; on this is a bowl into which she pours a libation.

H 124 is a red-figured lekythos, entire; height 25.4 cm. Nike, in running attitude, before an altar, holds a torch in each hand; the left raised, and with the right kindling a flame on the altar. The wing is different in design from that in H 113, and is detached.