Professor A. H. M. Jones in the appendix to his new book (pp. 161–80), Athenian Democracy (see below, p. 182), tackles afresh the problem of the population of Athens during the Peloponnesian war, and introduces three novelties: that the 13,000 hoplites of Thucydides ii 13.6 mean hoplites of the age-classes 20 to 39, not 20 to 49 as most of us, if not all, have assumed from Lykourgos, Leokrates 39–40, and some other evidence; that klerouchoi (but not apoikoi) remained in Athens, drawing rents from their kleroi in the subject states, all now within the hoplite census and included in the 13,000; and, the most important of the three, that to get a true picture of mortality rates and so of the relative strengths of different age-classes we must liken the Athenians to certain groups of persons in the Roman Empire between the first and third centuries A.D. and to India at the beginning of the present century, not to any European country during the last hundred years.

Jones takes me to task for suggesting that the at first sight surprising number of ‘oldest and youngest’ in the reserve to whom during the war was allotted the defence of the walls (Thuc. ii 13.7) was in part to be accounted for by the inclusion of all those in the classes 20 to 49 who were not fit for active service in the hoplite ranks, who would be a source of weakness rather than of strength to an army. ‘There are serious objections to this theory’, he says (p. 162). ‘It is in the first place not what Thucydides says. Secondly, it is pure speculation, unsupported by any evidence.’ ‘Let us then’, he adds, ‘set aside this theory and examine the facts afresh.’ This promises well.

In his History of the Athenian Constitution (Oxford, 1952, pp. 159 ff.) Mr. Hignett rejected Aristotle's attribution of the law of ostracism to Kleisthenes and this rejection met with approval from R. J. Hopper in a review of his book in JHS lxxvi (1956) 141. In preferring a later date for the law, Androtion's date—or what is supposed to be Androtion's date, for without the full context of Harpokration's quotation we cannot be sure that the τότε πρῶτον of that passage is so precise in its reference as to imply a date significantly later than Aristotle's—Mr. Hignett relies mainly on the well-established argument (which he imagines may well have been Androtion's also) that ‘the authors of such a law cannot have intended to let it remain a dead letter … it must have been passed not long before its first application’ (p. 164). Indeed, this must be regarded as his only decisive (so intended) argument, for, as far as sources are concerned, he states ‘the Atthidographers … had no documentary evidence for the date of the law’ and ‘the different dates given by different writers are all due to conjecture’ (p. 160). Here he has the agreement of Jacoby, who says in FGH iii(b) (1954) 121 ‘there was as little documentary evidence for the introduction of ostracism as for the Seisachtheia’ (i.e. none at all), but the latter's conclusion is more cautious—‘our tradition does not allow of making a final decision between the dates of Androtion and Aristotle’ (p. 124).

Our purpose in this paper is, first, to re-examine the historical (and even merely logical) possibilities in this question and to suggest that the more cautious conclusion is the proper one in the light of these possibilities; and, secondly, to review certain other conclusions, based on archaeological as well as literary evidence, arrived at by recent writers regarding the actual history of the institution, in order to see whether some of these too would not need to be more cautiously stated if all the possibilities were taken into account.

The circumstances under which a find of impressed clay nodules was made in a Mycenaean house at Kato Zakro, in East Crete, in May 1901, are related in the Annual of the British School at Athens vii. p. 133. The nodules are of a fine clay baked, probably intentionally and not by the conflagration which destroyed the house, to varying shades of red. A great number are broken, but the more perfect, including many bearing two and three impressions, show a groove on one edge, about an eighth of an inch deep and a little more wide, scored with straight and oblique scratches. This is the impress of something Cylindrical, to which the nodule was pressed while still wet. The appearance of the clay in the grooves shows that this object was not textile, and it may most reasonably be supposed to have been a reed, perhaps a papyrus stalk. The number of nodules is in all about 500.

The battle took its name from Pydna because it was fought ‘in the plain before Pydna’. Accordingly the first need is to identify the site of Pydna as it was in the year of the battle, 168 BC. Originally a Greek city, planted by settlers from the south on the coast of Pieria and possessing a good harbour (Diod. xi 12.3, xix 50.4), Pydna was acquired by the Macedonian king Archelaus, who moved the people to a site two or three miles inland (Diod. xiii 49.2). In the ensuing period the original site was reinhabited. For Pydna appeared as an independent city in the 360s (IG iv2 95, II 6), ‘a Greek city’ (Ps.-Scylax 66) ‘on the coast’ (Ps.-Scymnus6i8). When Philip II captured it, he had good reason to maintain it as a port. In 317–316 BC it was besieged by land and by sea. It was certainly on this coastal site in 168 BC.

It used to be thought that Pydna was on the elevation 56 m due cast of the old part of the village Makri Yialos (now having a regular population of 1,600). However, we found only a little pottery there and that probably of recent date; and the fact that there is a toumba, covering a Macedonian built tomb, on the elevation shows that it is not the site of a settlement. On the other hand, on the coast to the south between the hotels ‘Achilleion' and ‘Ancient Pydna’ there are the clear remains of an acropolis, its highest point being 36 m above sea level. As we walked over the site we collected one piece of Attic Black-Figure pottery, much excellent black glaze, and sherds of Hellenistic gray ware and relief ware. The present area of the acropolis is some 400 m from east to west and 150 m from north to south. Its natural defences are formed by cliffs on the seaward side and by steepish slopes on the three landward sides. These defences were reinforced by a circuit wall, of which the northern part is indicated today by a swell in the ground at right angles to the road just north of the top.

This article reviews a range of important recent work on Greek religion. It looks first at the critique (common to a number of the books under review) of the polis-religion model associated with Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood and then attempts to draw out a number of emerging themes: a comparative approach, a focus on the gods or on individual worshippers and a cognitive perspective. It then examines in more detail the application of the terms ‘belief’ or ‘theology’ to the field of Greek religion and the extent to which any picture of Greek religious experience may be said to be logically coherent, before looking forward to possible future directions of study.

Mr. Milne's article in the last volume of the Journal (xxviii. 121 ff.) calls attention to an interesting class of documents, the tablets or ostraka which served as school-books in Graeco-Roman Egypt. The British Museum has recently acquired two unusually good and complete specimens of this class. As they are, to the best of my belief, the most perfect that have yet come to light, it seems worth while to publish them in extenso.

The first (now Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 37516) is a single wooden tablet, 1 ft. 4½ in. in length, 5¼ in. high at the left-hand end, and 4¾ in. at the right-hand end. Projecting from the left-hand end is a small knob, nearly an inch in diameter, through which a hole is bored, by which means the tablet could be suspended from a nail in the wall of the school, as in the well-known kylix of Douris at Berlin. The corners at both ends are rounded.

This paper, and the plates by Mr. A. C. Blunt which accompany it, are the first-fruits of a journey in Phrygia, October 15 to November 27, 1881, for which Mr. Blunt was sent out specially by the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. It would be both unbecoming and unnecessary for me to speak of the drawings which he contributes to this paper; but I may say that he learned photography in the few days that were at his disposal before leaving England specially for the work of the expedition, so that he has been enabled to verify at home, by means of photographs, the drawings that he made on the spot. In addition to this, we together compared most of his drawings with the original monuments, and spared no care to attain accuracy. It has been necessary for me to write in Athens without seeing the completed drawings: this has added much to the difficulty of the work, but the reader who finds the text correspond with the plates will thus have an additional proof of the accuracy of both. I should, however, have found it quite impossible to write what I have here written without constant help from the drawings, the artistic taste and clear memory of one friend who accompanied us, to whom are due the discovery of many monuments in the two necropoleis, and several of the drawings here published.

The short dialogue entitled Nero or on the digging of the Isthmus, preserved in the manuscripts of Lucian, is an intriguing piece. The contents are quickly summarised. Nero's abandoned attempt to dig through the Isthmus of Corinth is discussed by the two interlocutors, a certain Menecrates and the philosopher Musonius Rufus, who is said to have taken part in the digging (1). The scene is apparently the rugged Aegean island of Gyara to which the historical Musonius was exiled. The discussion broadens out to include Nero's tour of Greece, with a particular focus upon his singing; and it concludes as the news breaks of Nero's death (11). Menecrates' role in the discussion is limited to that of ‘prompter’, while Musonius assumes the authoritative, pedagogic role in the dialogue. Is there any unified meaning to this text? And why the dialogue form (given that Menecrates' role in it is so perfunctory)? This paper proposes one set of answers to these questions, by siting the Nero in the context of the cultural history of Greco-Roman relations, an area that has attracted much attention over the years (and has been further reinvigorated in the light of post-colonial theory).

Not much attention is given to the diolkos across the Isthmus of Corinth, nor is much known about it. There are a dozen or so explicit or probable references to it in ancient literature, one relevant inscription and some remains of its track. The remains, principally at the west and close to the modern canal, are from a paved roadway with two parallel channels about 1·50 m apart, evidently to hold the wheels of some sort of carrier; and associated pottery and inscribed letters suggest that it was constructed in the late seventh or early sixth century B.C. The written references tell us that the eastern end of the diolkos was at Schoinos, that it was said to be 40 stades long, that warships were transported across the Isthmus in 412, 220, 217, 102 and 30 B.C., that the diolkos was in use in the early period of the Roman Empire, and that some ships were too big for it: there is, though, no precise statement of the commercial use of the diolkos.

Yet transport of warships is not likely to have been the normal use of the diolkos: ancient historical writers were more interested in war than commerce, and warships cannot have needed transporting very frequently.

The argument of this paper is that the fort on the Euryalus at Syracuse was modernised by Archimedes, who is recorded to have been the chief military engineer or scientific adviser to his native city before and during the siege by the Romans.

The fort lay outside the populated area of Syracuse though within the walls. The town had originally been confined to an island between the two harbours, but soon extended on to the mainland of Sicily; the ground to the west was swampy, hence the suburbs necessarily spread up the Epipolae hill to the north. This hill forms a tilted plateau, 3½ miles long, which slopes towards the island, but is surrounded elsewhere by a cliff, except at the inland extremity where it joins on to higher country. Since the cliff afforded a strong line of defence, the town walls were eventually carried all round the edge of the plateau, making them 17 miles in circuit. This great extension was the work of the tyrant Dionysius I, in the year 402 and later; the need for it had been demonstrated twelve years earlier, when the Athenians captured the plateau and almost starved the town into surrender. The strongest part of the fortifications was necessarily at the inland extremity of the plateau, the one place where nature provided no obstacles. Here the highest ground runs off to the west in a ridge that rises into two gentle mounds, one of which was called Euryalus, meaning the ‘wide nail’ (or wart). The town-walls included only one of these summits, and upon it stands the fort in question, overlooking one of the main gateways of the city.

It is agreed that of the extant accounts of the battle of Gaugamela, that of Arrian is by far the best, the only one, in fact, that permits of a coherent reconstruction of what took place. The best modern accounts derive mainly from Arrian, and it may perhaps be felt that modern criticism has resolved satisfactorily the two or three important obscurities in his story, and that everything is now plain. With this opinion I cannot agree. To me Arrian's story is not obscure, but, equally, it is not complete; and what he omits is of such importance that without it I cannot see clearly why Alexander, and not the Persians, won this battle. I am not suggesting that really the Persians did win it; but my aim is to supply that part of the picture which (in my view) Arrian has left blank, and without which the manner of Alexander's victory is still not fully explained.

In the winter of 1905–6 Mr. C. T. Currelly and I acquired a large number of ostraka from the dealers of Luxor and Karnak, amongst which were several examples of school exercises. A few ostraka of this class, and tablets of a similar kind, have already been published; and, by comparison of these with our collection, it is possible to gather some facts in connexion with the methods of instruction pursued in the Greek schools of Egypt.

The ostraka purchased were said by the dealers to have come mainly from the neighbourhood of Karnak, and to have been found at different times during the preceding five years. The majority of those here published—all those from our collection except numbers II, IV, VI, IX, X, XVI, and XVII —appear, however, to belong to one group: they are written on pottery which is discoloured in a rather unusual way, and are very distinct in this respect from any other of those bought with them; while from the general character of the writing the texts upon them may with reasonable probability be regarded as contemporary. It seems in accordance with the facts to suppose that the finder of these ostraka had chanced on a spot where a schoolmaster of Thebes had taught his classes in the open air near a rubbish heap, on which material for writing exercises might be obtained in plenty, to be thrown away again as soon as used: or possibly, if it is more in accordance with educational dignity to imagine the school as held among more savoury surroundings, we may have here the contents of the waste-ostrakon-basket which were deposited on the dust-tip after a day's work.

Several investigations have been devoted to the Athenian calendar and to the cycles of Meton and Kallippos. However, most authors have not clearly distinguished between true and mean lunar months, nor between astronomical calendars and the Athenian calendar. In investigating the Athenian calendar, many authors have made use of the regular successions of full and hollow months described by Geminos in his Isagoge, without first making sure that these months were in actual use at Athens. Discussion as to whether ‘the month’ began with the astronomical New Moon or with the visibility of the crescent might have been avoided if the authors had realised that the word ‘month’ has several meanings and that in every particular case the meaning has to be inferred from the context. Peasants or soldiers, far away from civilisation, would start their month with the visible crescent, astronomers would make it begin at the day of true or mean New Moon, and cities would adapt their festival calendar to the needs of the moment, intercalating or omitting days in such a way that the festivals can be held at the days prescribed by law or tradition. Of course, it may happen any time that a civil month coincides with the astronomical or with the observed lunar month, but in absence of definite evidence we never have the right to identify a civil month with an astronomical month.

About fifty miles to the north-east of Baghdad, an irregular eminence known as Tell Asmar has covered till recently the town of Eshnunna, which was abandoned to the desert after its destruction by Hammurabi in the twentieth century before Christ. The excavations now being conducted there by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago have unearthed, among other important finds, a number of cylinder seals from early Dynastic and Akkadian levels, of which those reproduced in Fig. 1 and Plate II, 1, together with one seal (Plate II, 2) from the Southesk collection, form the basis of this article.

It will be observed that the designs shown in Fig. 1, a Sumerian impression pieced from fragments of clay, and Plate II, 1, an Akkadian stone cylinder of about 2500 B.C., both represent the conquest of a hydra-like monster. The impression has a serpent, two of whose seven heads have already been severed by a crudely-rendered man or god who holds a head in either hand, the stumps being visible above the living heads which still menace him. The scene is placed between friezes of scorpions, among whom is a single-headed snake, while a dragon with scorpion-tail stands behind the hydra, a participant, it may be, in the contest. An almost obliterated inscription in pre-Akkadian signs throws no light on the artist's intention.

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.

In Book xii of the Greek Anthology many of the old motifs of erotic poetry are applied to the love of boys. Among these motifs a form of the carpe diem calls our attention. Youth and the beloved's charms are there granted a very short span: the growth of hair marks the end of a boy's attraction. Of this basic idea we find numerous variations in over thirty epigrams, Hellenistic and late, not unlike those on the more general motif of fleeting youth. We shall group the poems and interpret them according to the variations of this motif.

The boy is now willing to love when it is too late: the hairs have come. The lover, whether by threats, warnings, or vaunts that it has happened, implicitly rejects the advances of the young man.

Ia. Our first epigram (Asclep. 46 = A.P. xii 36) is headed Ἀσκληπιάδου Ἀδραμυττήνου. If by Asclepiades of Samos it would be chronologically the first in our list. Yet the ascription is far from certain, and the choice of the epigram as our starting point is, therefore, arbitrary.

The history of ancient decorative wall-painting has yet to be written. The attention of the whole world was attracted by the wonderful discoveries made in Pompeii, and indeed for many years Pompeii stood for ancient decorative wall-painting in general.

That Pompeii so completely overshadowed modern ideas on the evolution of this art is due in great measure to the fact that at Pompeii it had found a wonderful exponent and explorer in the late Professor August Mau. His book dealing with the Pompeian decorative mural painting at once became a classic and influenced profoundly text-books and popular works on the history of ancient art and customs.

Two facts, however, should be borne in mind. First, that the decoration of Pompeian houses illustrates the art of one epoch. only—the Hellenistic and the earlier Roman Empire, except for a few examples from a still earlier age, and those not before the third century B.C. Also it should be remembered that this art at Pompeii can be taken as characteristic only of Italy and indeed only of Southern Italy; it does not follow that it developed on the same lines in other regions of the ancient world.

Some of the most important inscriptions in Central Anatolia, copied by old travellers with fair accuracy, are concealed in the great collections, such as C.I.G., with false or defective transcription in which their value is lost. The object of this article is to illustrate by examples the importance and the right method of re-studying them. In order to show the facts, as the basis for a new restoration (which will in every case be found closer to the original copy than the published transcriptions), brevity is best served in several cases by quoting former transcriptions fully.

In using the copies of older travellers the chief principle is to emend as little as possible. Certain letters, however, are liable to be confused by any copyist in a difficult text, and correction in such cases is needed within limits. Also, there is a personal equation which can be established in respect of each. Copyists vary in excellence, some being much more trustworthy than others, and there are certain errors to which some are more prone than others.

Thucydides' full description of the harbor at Pylos is part of his discussion of the Spartan strategy for thecampaign (iv 8).

. . . and the Lacedaimonians . . . expected the Attic fleet from Zacynthos to come to the rescue and intended, if they had not captured Pylos by that time, to block up the entrances to the harbor, so that the Athenians could not sail in and use it as an anchorage. (The island called Sphacteria extends alongside the harbor, and lies close to it: hence the anchorage is safe and the entrances narrow–the entrance by Pylos and the Athenian fortifications giving a passage for two ships through the channel, and the entrance by the mainland on the other side a passage for eight or nine . . . ) These entrances then, they intended to block up tightly with ships lying parallel to each other, prows to the enemy: and since they were frightened that the Athenians might use Sphacteria as a military base, they ferried hoplites across to it, and stationed others along the mainland. By this plan, they thought, the Athenians would find both the island to be enemy-occupied and the mainland, which gave them no chance of landing (for the coast of Pylos itself, outside the entrance and towards the open sea, is harborless, and would give them no base of operations to help their troops): and equally they themselves would probably be able to capture the place by siege, without a sea-battle or any unnecessary danger–there was no food in it, and it had not been properly prepared for a siege. This, then, was their agreed plan . . .

Although one would think this a clear and detailed geographic description, historians have not yet found a location at Pylos for the harbor which satisfactorily matches it.