The site was discovered by Andreas Lekatsas, then proprietor of the Stavros Hotel, in his vineyard, and excavated for the British School, at his generous invitation, in two campaigns in 1937 and 1938. It lies on a steeply sloping hillside just above the path leading up from the cave side of Polis Bay, and commands a splendid view down the Ithaca channel towards Same in Kephallenia (plate 1a). Its main area (christened TL), presumably a sizeable house, consisted of a ramp leading up to a heap of large roughly dressed stones, with one large loose rock in the middle; this suggested that the house had been destroyed by a fall of rock caused by an earthquake. On a terrace leading eastwards from the house were the remains of three small curvilinear huts, impinging upon one another, built of small stones; this area, L, was dug and planned by F. H. Stubbings. On a higher terrace beyond L we found some walls of a rectangular house with more regular stonework; this, House T, was dug and planned by H. Thomas.

Because Echelos carries off a bride Iasile in a four-horse chariot, on a relief found at a shrine near Phaleron, most writers have thought that this relief fixes the site of the Panathenaic Hippodrome. In fact it does the exact opposite. This bride is not coming home, she is going away: Echelos lives somewhere else, Phaleron is not his territory. It belongs to the family of an otherwise unknown nymph Iasile, and a host of gods and goddesses engaged in child-care, but not to Echelos. He is a stranger making a treaty and successfully buying favours. Note that the chariot proceeds steadily uphill, so away from the sea; Hermes is guiding it, so the gods approve. He has his foot on a small hill: we shall consider later where that may be. It is a gay relief with a reminiscence of the Parthenon horses. On the other side a lady, Artemis(?), receives a bearded man, a river-god and three nymphs—the wedding reception, solemnizing the treaty.

I am delighted with Mr Anderson's article in this number of the Journal (171–2) on the Greek names of sea-birds. Δυτῖνος is a rare word and it must refer to a bird diving from the surface like our divers, the commonest of which is our Little Grebe (Podiceps ruficulus), but of course the term could include all ducks. The name κολυμβίς could also be applied to all these birds but it need not be confined to them. The Greeks knew that terns dived from a height and said κηξ or καυάξ: Homer compares the bird to the lady, who fell into a hold (Od. xv 479).

There is a picture of two birds with plumage like that of Black-throated Divers or Great Northern Divers on a Middle Minoan mug found at Palaikastro near the sea in East Crete (Unpublished Objects 92 fig. 77: Zervos, Crete no. 742). One bird is diving from a rock, towards a root on the bottom, the other is standing on a stone opening its beak to give an alarm signal. It might be objected to this picture that divers do not dive from rocks, nor stand upright on stones; otherwise it is a good picture. According to the Guide to Birds of Britain and Europe, there appear to be two birds, but I can only find one Latin name: Colymbus Arcticus. In spite of its name the bird is known in Greek waters.

In my quest for Aurai in Greek art, I have been surprised by the haste of commentators to label each and every running woman as a Nereid. Surely it should depend on the evidence. I begin with two Attic pyxides in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The first GR 1. 1933 was given and published by Miss Lamb in CVA Cambridge ii pl. 26. In Beazley, ARV 297, this vase was said to be in the Manner of Douris. In ARV 451 this vase has lost its own reference and acquired that of GR 10. 1934 (Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Reports xxvi [1934] 3, fig. 4; see the correction in Paralipomena p. 521 [Addenda II, to p. 376]).‘Nereids’ is an inadequate description of either vase; for both include different sexes.

The pyxis 1. 1933 is not in good condition. The central figure is surely not the male, as Miss Lamb says, but a running woman taking up twice as much room as anyone else. She holds one dolphin and has lost another, so she must be the heroine Thetis. On one side of her stands a man with a dark beard, but he holds an old man's crooked stick, so he must be Nereus in spite of his dark beard: and a frightened Nereid rushes by him to the left: on a third side a stationary woman has just frightened a woman with a sceptre off her chair; the sceptre holder must be Doris. Here then we have a Peleus and Thetis scene, but there is no room for Peleus.

There is a bird perched on the neck of a bull on a Late Bronze Age krater from Enkomi in the British Museum (plate I 1). It has long legs and a long neck, and it is much larger than any of the crow tribe, so often seen on cattle. Its long pointed bill is fixed on a point in the bull's neck probably removing a tick or something of the sort. The operation is painful and the bull tosses his head. On the other side of the vase the bird has lost his footing but still keeps the grip of his bill on the neck of the bull (plate I 2). That daggerlike bill is longer than the one on the other side of the vase. We must therefore suppose that the bill in the earlier scene has been inserted into the bull's neck to a considerable depth. No wonder the bull is plunging about to dislodge the operator.

A bird with long neck, long legs, and long beak can only be a marsh bird, and as it is hunting for insects on the neck of a bull, it can only be a Cattle Egret (plate I 4.), though its body bears some resemblance to the bodies of birds which are probably meant for geese or swans; its beak is more formidable. Presumably this insect-hunting bird is not a deity revealing him or herself; but perhaps Cypriots are more secular than Mycenaeans.

Dr. Bernabò-brea has kindly given me a new photograph of this monument. It shows the red paint at the outer corner of the gorgon's eye, which makes her eye look bigger and more sinister. It is not, however, a leer such as many early gorgons wear: the pupil is still in the middle of the eye. A lesion in this region of the eye may be due to strain. Our artist is depicting a gorgon under pressure. We must think away two round, dark shadows behind the top of the plaque: the real top is level with the upper end of the gorgon's ears. Dr. Bernabò-Brea was good enough to discuss the plaque with me, and he allowed me to study it outside its glass case. Here are a few observations:

1. What Should Not Be There—the bud-like mark above the nose.

The new photographs show that there is no evidence for it in the original. Payne omits it from his drawing and thereby makes the picture stronger and more archaic. No other full-length gorgon seems to have a ‘bud’. Many Corinthian gorgoneia have ‘buds’, the earliest is on the Timonidas vase in Middle Corinthian times. This difference in treatment may be due to the feeling that a gorgon was a living creature, while a gorgoneion was more like a space to be filled. The ‘bud’ has come to our gorgon from a gorgoneion found in Gela, probably of a later date and from a non-Corinthian colony. The same fate of unsponsored restoration overtook a gorgon on a gravestone in Athens, but, as far as my memory serves, the restoration has since been removed.

After the close of Mr. Heurtley's excavations, an attack on the site by illicit diggers showed that the deposit had not been exhausted and that there were still fine vases (e.g. 1023, Plate 22) to be found there. Moreover, some of the conclusions drawn from the facts observed at Aetos merited further investigation.

Date of Building 9: Bench mark for both excavations was the threshold of St. George's Church. Heurtley kindly allowed me to use some of his plans, so we uncovered part of Building 9, and were thus able to fit the plans of the two excavations together. I have included Building 9 on my plan (Fig. I ), also the ‘Cairns’ 1, 2, 4, and Wall 6. An undisturbed part of the foundation trench of Building 9 contained sherds of sixth-century Corinthian kotylai, so it cannot be the Protocorinthian temple as Heurtley suggested: no offerings were connected with it.