The Persian army, moving on Athens after Thermopylae, found the city deserted, but the Acropolis held by temple servants and ‘a few poor men’: who, remembering the oracle of the ‘wooden walls,’ ‘for a long time’ defended wooden breastworks against the Persians, but were in the end overpowered.

Dr. G. B. Grundy, having recounted thus far the Herodotean story, writes (The Great Persian War, p. 357):

‘But the strangest part of the whole story is the account of the impression created in the fleet by the news of the capture. The inconsistency between the description of the garrison and its defensive works, and the alarm created by the capture of the fortification, is so glaring as to be irreconcilable, and modern historians have naturally been led to form conjectures as to what actually took place.’

Furtwängler's reconstructions of the pediments of the temple of Aphaia, though in the main right, can be improved in certain details. The object of these notes is to criticise certain suggested improvements. I take the West pediment first. Schrader has recently advocated a return to something like the Cockerill scheme. His chief objections to Furtwängler are that the blocks of the Geison as arranged by Furtwängler do not agree with the footprints of the figures which they are meant to carry, that Furtwängler's assumption of a fourth prostrate figure is based on a fragmentary arm which may well belong to the East pediment, that the combatants should be divided into friends on one side of Athena and foes on the other, and that it is impossible for the archers to shoot out into space. I take these points in order. Furtwängler, as far as possible, put the Geison blocks in positions corresponding to those in which they were found; Schrader's chief objection is to Block 5, in which, he says, the space is not the right shape for the plinth of the Athena, but there is no doubt that there is room enough, and as no ancient edge of this plinth is preserved, how can we tell what was its shape? Secondly, the only evidence (fr. 62) which Schrader adduces for a piece of one pediment being found among the remains of the other rests, as Pfuhl has shown, on a misprint. The desire to have friends on one side of the pediment and foes on the other is purely modern; the Gigantomachies of the Megarian treasury and the Hekatompedon and the Centauromachy of the West pediment at Olympia all take no account of the sides of the pediment in dividing the combatants. Schrader quotes no parallels for his own reconstruction (Fig. 2) because there are none; it involves far too much overlapping, which Greek sculptors of the archaic period avoided when working in the round; Schrader has to assume that a piece was cut out of the shield of the figure which lies in front of Athena to make room for her legs. Furtwängler, however, can adduce numerous parallels from Greek vases for his reconstruction (Fig. 1): the Geryon cup of Euphronios has just such a battle over a fallen foe with Athena helping one of the combatants. The reason for this similarity of composition is not that both were borrowing from Samian models, as Furtwängler suggests: the West was ahead of the East in such things: there is no cross-influence, but the compositional problem of the pediment is the same as that of the outside of the cup. Studniczka also suggested that the archers should be turned inwards, but this transposition spoils the central groups and puts the caesura too near the outside: the Furtwängler group would naturally be completed by a friend of the fallen man, but this is precluded by the raking cornice. Another transposition is more likely. Wolters wanted to transpose nos. 1 and 13, and correspondingly 33 and 24. There is some evidence for this, because in Cockerell's first drawing, when he was most influenced by the position in which the figures were actually found, no. 13 is placed in the corner. Nos. 1 and 33 are more weathered than no. 13, which would be curious if they had been in the corners protected by the slanting Geison. Nos. 1 and 33, if placed in the middle, obscure the legs of the combatants less than would no. 13 and its fellow. Nos. 1 and 33 are nearer death than no. 13, therefore it is natural to fight over their bodies and to fight with no. 13.

The following summary is principally compiled from reports supplied by the excavators or by their colleagues, to all of whom I wish to express my thanks. I again owe a special debt to the Director of the German Institute, Prof. Karo, who kindly sent me the proofs of his article in Arch. Anz. 1931, from which I have been able to fill several gaps. For details which could not, for reasons of space, be included here, I make reference to that article, to Prof. Oikonomos's Ἔκθεσις τῶν πεπραγμένων τῆς Ἀρχαιολογικῆς Ἑταιρείας and to M. Béquignon's article in B.C.H. 1930, 4520 ff.

Athens and Attica

The American excavations in the Athenian Agora, conducted by Prof. T. L. Shear, made a very satisfactory beginning in the early summer of 1931; they will be resumed in February 1932. Two sectors, each of about 1200 square metres area, were excavated, and in each important results were obtained. In the northern area the foundations of a large building which runs from north to south across the entire area as far as the cutting of the Athens-Peiraeus railway (how much further in this direction it may go cannot be said) came to light. This building, a narrow structure with two rows of columns on its east side, is identified with the Royal Stoa which Pausanias places on the right as one enters the Agora (Fig. 1); another narrow building, as yet partially excavated, may be the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios. A water-channel in a wide street immediately west of this latter Stoa yielded some inscribed stelai which had been used as cover-blocks; others are still in situ and will be removed next year.

In the following pages I attempt briefly to survey the publications of 1929 and 1930 relating to Greek inscriptions, following the same general lines as in my last Bibliography. Their number and their volume will, I trust, serve alike to justify my bold venture and to explain the necessarily meagre and inadequate indication of their contents which is here presented.

During the years under review epigraphical studies have suffered very serious losses in the deaths of K. J. Beloch and E. Meyer, who, though primarily historians, realised to the full the importance of epigraphical materials for the reconstruction of Greek history, of C. Michel, the compiler of the deservedly famous Recueil, of B. Leonardos, the tireless excavator of the sanctuary of Amphiaraus at Oropus, whose courtesy and helpfulness as Ephor of the Epigraphical Museum at Athens have won the gratitude and regard of numerous scholars, and of F. Halbherr, the leading authority on Cretan inscriptions and editor-elect of the Cretan volume of the Inscriptiones Graecae.

In my Attic Black-figure: a Sketch I gave a short account of the Amasis painter, and a list of his works. Since then, I have published a vase by him, and fragments of six or seven others; and Dr. Kraiker has prefixed an important study of him to his Epiktetos. One or two of the following vases are mentioned in my A.B.S. list: but most of them are new.

My thanks are due to Senator Marchese Giorgio Guglielmi di Vulci and to Captain E. G. Spencer-Churchill for their kind permission to publish vases in their collections; to Captain J. E. Acland, Dr. L. D. Caskey, Prof. A. von Salis, Dr. A. Maiuri, Dr. P. Marconi, Mr. H. W. Maxwell, Mr. A. Merlin, Dr. A. Minto, Dr. B. Nogara, and Mr. E. Stefani for their kind permission to publish vases in Dorchester, Boston, Heidelberg, Naples, Palermo, Bristol, the Louvre, Florence, the Vatican, and the Villa Giulia; to Mrs. Ure for sending me photographs of the Dorchester fragments and allowing me to publish them; to Prof. C. Albizzati for generously waiving his claim to publish the Vatican fragments; to Mr. G. R. Stanton for help at Bristol; to my wife for all the photographs reproduced except fifteen.

Mr. Wainwright's article on the Keftiu in the last number of J.H.S., coupled with the introduction to it in J.E.A., has brought back to my memory his article in the Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology in 1913 which converted me to his view that the Keftiu of the Egyptian monuments were to be located somewhere in Cilicia. Maspero had suggested Northern Syria for their home; English scholars were inclined to place them in Krete. I am still on the side of Mr. Wainwright, but there are one or two statements in his articles which require to be supplemented, if not corrected.

There are several inscriptions in the Greek Corpus in which occurs the word ἴκρια or its derivatives ἰκριῶσαιἰκριώματα etc., and in the majority of them it is sufficiently evident from the context that ἴκρια means ‘scaffolding,’ i.e. wooden erections used by workmen for operations carried on at a height from the ground, especially in connexion with the building or repair of temples. This is the recognised meaning of the word in such places. But there are certain exceptions—inscriptions in which, though the same word occurs, it has been given a different rendering— not ‘scaffolding,’ but ‘fence’ or ‘balustrade’ (Latin cancelli). The very full article on ἴκριον by Frickenhaus in Pauly-Wissowa will be found to include the occurrences of the word in inscriptions, and it sets out (ii. 2) the cases where this exceptional rendering ‘fence’ or ‘balustrade’ has been generally accepted. These are I.G. iv. 39; i2. 94; i2. 371, 22. It is with these three inscriptions that I propose to deal in this note.

Mr. Campbell Thompson tells us, in the Ill. London News of June 27th, 1931, that in excavating at Niniveh he discovered a Parthian settlement on the foundations of the destroyed temple of Ishtar. In some of the houses belonging to this settlement were found great quantities of ‘the blackpainted ware, the like of which is found in South Mesopotamia and Persia.’ As this kind of pottery, decorated with geometric ornaments and animals, in all the places where it has hitherto come to light, must be dated about 3000 B.C., he is much surprised by his find, and the only explanation he suggests is that there must have been some Parthian virtuoso who collected antiquities. Now this seems most improbable, for who would at that time care for ancient pottery of no great beauty or attractive appearance, supposing even that after so many centuries unbroken vases were still found in sufficient quantities to encourage collectors?

The International Conference on the Protection and Preservation of Monuments of Art and History took place in Athens from October 21st, 1930. Part of the time was taken up in visits to Daphni and Eleusis, and in a cruise to Nauplia (for Epidauros, Tiryns and Mycenae), Crete (Knossos, Phaestos and Malea) and Delos.

About three days only were available for the reading of papers and discussions, which ranged over a large field, covering monuments of all periods, the chief aim being to collate evidence as to methods already adopted in different countries, and to discuss the possible advantage to be derived from centralised study or action by the International Museums Office. As a result, the Conference passed a series of resolutions which, though for the most part of a somewhat generalised order, will, it is hoped, enable the Office to prepare measures with the view of implementing at least some of the agreed principles.