There are in Scotland two ancient Athenian marble thrones which I had an opportunity of studying and photographing some years ago. Both have already been published, but not so fully as to make a fresh study of them superfluous. The more important is in the Earl of Elgin's collection at Broomhall, the other is at Biel, in East Lothian, and belongs to Colonel J. P. Nisbet Hamilton Grant.

An incomplete description of this marble was published in 1837 by von Stackelberg, he having seen it in Athens about 1810 on what he called ‘the site of the ancient Prytaneion’. His description was accompanied by neat engravings of two views of the throne and a view of each relief. After a lapse of time Michaelis produced further notes about it in his ‘Ancient Marbles in Great Britain’, Supplement I, in JHS V (1884) 146 ff. (with Plate XLVIII) under the title Marble throne with reliefs. He had little to say of the chair itself, much about the relief of the Tyrannicides together with a brief comment on the second relief and the inscription.

It will therefore be best to give a fresh description of the throne which can now be illustrated by new photographs taken while it was in the Edinburgh exhibition (Pl. VI, a; VII; VIII, c).

Many people have failed to understand the Alcestis, and for the reasons Goethe suggests. Romanticists are grieved because Admetus, Pheres, and Heracles are human beings. As M. Masqueray observes, ‘Notre hypocrisie s'accommode mal d'une telle franchise.’ Verrall is delighted that the characters should be human beings, but refuses to permit them to ‘talk Greek.’ His ‘rational’ theory that the object of Euripides was to ‘expose’ the miraculous legend, by suggesting that Alcestis never died at all, rests on an assumption that, to an Athenian, the resurrection of the heroine, ‘as a piece of history, asserted or denied,’ was a matter of religious moment. But, for a Greek, the truth of the alleged resurrection involved no vital issues. The first lesson of religion was not ‘Believe that Apollo, through Heracles, could raise Alcestis from the dead, and, believing, have faith and hope,’ but something very different: ‘Know that thou art mortal, and, being mortal, practise moderation.’ It was the unorthodox, the ‘progressive,’ who, in ancient Athens, ventured to believe that mortal men should ‘practise immortality.’ Euripides contributed to new ideas by criticising the old. But his task was as far removed from that of Verrall's ‘Professor T. H …’ as was the mind of Nikias from that of Mr. Gladstone. For an ordinary Athenian the point was not that Alcestis rose from the dead, but that she died to save her husband's life. To argue the possibility or impossibility of her resurrection would, I submit, have appeared to the Athenian as trivial as it is depressing. If we want to understand Greek plays, we must remember that they were written by Athenians for an audience which was pagan, not Christian, Greek, not English. The characters talk Greek. It is our business, before we begin to criticise, to ascertain exactly what they say.

Plotinus is, up to a point, a classical intellectualist in the manner of Aristotle, and, he would himself have certainly thought, of Plato. He professes, that is, to give an account of everything that is in any degree real in the universe (and even a kind of account of the unreal) which is certainly and unchangingly true and can be demonstrated to be so by rational processes. This account culminates in the description of an eternal realm of intelligible intellect which can be (and indeed really always is) our own, certainly and imperturbably possessed. This systematic account of reality, as is well known, breaks down, and we have to break out of it, in a very startling way at the top. Beyond the Platonic-Aristotelian Intellect-Intelligible, the world of real being which is Νοῦς and νοητά, lies the One or Good beyond being, which is neither intelligent nor intelligible. When we have completed our understanding of reality, we have to leave it all behind in order to find what turns out to be the only thing we want, the source of all values and the goal of all desire, which alone makes it worth the effort to attain to Νοῦς on the way, as it is the only reason why Νοῦς is there at all.

‘O Sogenes of the Euxenid clan, I swear that I did not, having stepped up to the line, hurl forth my tongue like a bronze-cheeked javelin which sends the neck and strength of limbs without sweat from the wrestling before the limb falls in the glare of the sun.’ Nem. vii 70–3)

In the passage given above, Pindar employs the image of the javelin thrower to describe the kind of poet which he is. Within the simile there occurs the participial phrase, τέρμα προβαίς, which I translate as ‘having stepped up to the line’, the line here being the one from which the athlete throws the javelin and over which he cannot step without being penalised. However, before I present my reasons for this interpretation of the phrase, it will be helpful to explain more fully the meaning of the simile.

First the image itself. The poet compares himself to a javelin thrower in order to assure the audience that his pronouncements do justice to the merits of the victor. In Greek athletics the javelin throw was one of the five contests which comprised the pentathlon, the other four event being the foot race, discus, long jump, and wrestling.

What was the number of the ξυγγραφεῖς who were appointedat Athens in 411 B.C. to introduce modifications into the democratic constitution? Thucydides says ten, and Aristotle thirty (Thuc. VIII. 67. 1; Ἀθηνάιων πολιτεία 29 § 2). It is now generally assumed that the only way to resolve this discrepancy is to reject one of the two conflicting numbers as a mere mistake, and that the error is on the part of Thucydides.

Another solution has recently been put forward by Miss Mabel Lang, who concludes that Thucydides' ten ξυγγραφεῖς and Aristotle's thirty ξυγγραφεῖς were two distinct bodies, and that both authors after all were in the right. She points out that the Ten and the Thirty differed not only in their numbers, but in their attributes and achievements, and that they probably functioned on different occasions. Whereas the Ten were αὐτοκράτορες (i.e. had authority to by-pass the Council and present their report direct to the Popular Assembly), the Thirty lacked ‘autocratic’ power. Whereas the Thirty in due course submitted a scheme of reforms which was duly ratified by the Assembly (Ἀθ. Πολ. 29 § 5–30 § 1), the Ten never produced their programme (Thuc. VIII. 67. 2).

In the collection of Sir Frederick Cook at Doughty House, Richmond, are nine fragments of a large sarcophagus of surpassing interest for the modern scientific history of art. They were identified some two years ago by Mrs. Arthur Strong, who is engaged upon a new illustrated catalogue of the Richmond antiques which is shortly to appear in this Journal. Mrs. Strong at once communicated to me the existence of a sarcophagus of so much importance for the studies I had initiated in my book Orient oder Rom, and, by the courtesy of the owner, I at the same time received a set of photographs of the nine fragments.

At the Sotíra Neolithic settlement P. Dikaios, working for the Curium Expedition, has followed up his trial of 1947 with the clearance of the greater part of the hill-top. A tightly-packed group of house foundations of light construction was laid bare. In form they ranged from circular to rectangular with rounded angles (Fig. 1); the upper parts of the walls were evidently of mud brick and the roofs of the rectangular houses probably flat. The topmost floors overlay a demolition layer which sealed well-preserved hearths, post-holes, andother features. These lower floors yielded an unusually rich series of implements, of flint, stone and bone, as well as bowls and jugs of the combed ware characteristic of this site.

New Neolithic–Chalcolithic sites have been noted by G. Eliades in the neighbourhood of Paphos, notably a large one of the Erími culture at Kissónerga. A site of the Khirokítia stage has been located near the monastery of Apostolos Andreas, not far from the point of the Karpas peninsula; and one of the Sotira period at Kouphóvounos near Kandou by J. S. Last.

This article attempts to summarise the results (1) of those excavations carried out in Greek lands in 1924 of which no report was available in time for my account printed in the last volume of the Journal, and (2) of the excavations of 1925 of which reports had come to hand before the end of September. This system will be followed in the accounts which I hope to contribute annually henceforward.

American School

The varied activities of the American School included excavations at the sites of Corinth, the Argive Heraeum, and Eutresis in Boeotia. At Nemea and Phlius, the opening campaigns at which sites were described in my report of a year ago, no further work was done in the summer of 1925. At Corinth, thanks to a generous subsidy by, and the personal enterprise of, Professor T. L. Shear, substantial progress was made with the Herculean task of clearing the theatre, where, on the south side of the orchestra, the depth of the deposit of earth proved to be 12 metres; before the season closed, over 5000 tons of debris had been removed to a dump a quarter of a mile away. In the west of the cavea the seats proved to be all destroyed, but a remarkable discovery was made, in the form of a wall, originally ca. 2·80 metres high, surrounding the orchestra. This where cleared was preserved to a height of 1·70 m., and was painted in fresco with scenes of life-sized figures engaged in combat with lions. One combatant, in action with a lion which charges him from the left, is clad in a long purple under-garment, with a white over-garment fastened at the knee; another wears a short garment which hangs down in front, leaving the legs bare to the hips, and white sandals; other figures, variously clad, and also fighting lions, appear in other scenes.

In 1903 the Russian Archaeological Commission purchased a hydria from a dealer at Olbia which is now in the collection of ancient vases in the Hermitage (Fig. 1). Being considered by some authorities a forgery, the vase was not published in the Report of the Commission. I can assert that there is no doubt as to the authenticity of the vase. Apart from small injuries there are no important parts broken off or restored. The shape, but for some slight variations, is that of a typical late archaic hydria; sharp divisions are avoided, the shoulder being connected with the body by a soft curve and the same profile used for the foot. The ring above the foot is quite flat and not separated from the foot. On the lip of the vase there are two sharp projecting tongues instead of the “rotelle” of the archaic type (Fig. 2).

The handles are round and curved slightly upwards. The varnish is very bad and dull, being laid on very thin, so that the surface of the clay shows through. There are spots where the fire has turned the black varnish red. The clay is of a dull yellow colour, badly cleansed, with holes in the polished surface, evidently in consequence of small stones and pieces of glimmer which have broken away. The surface of the clay, in the panel reserved for the design, is of a reddish colour. The greater part of the foot, the stripes under the horizontal handles, the inner parts of all three handles and the outer part of the lip are left unvarnished. Judging from the quality of the clay and the special character of the varnish, the vase appears to be Etruscan work.

In his notice of the above paper in the last number of the JHS, p. 287, the reviewer makes one remark which is likely to pepetuate an old error. ‘ In 1909,’ he writes, ‘ Butler found the base of a composite pier ’ etc. What I wrote was that ’ there was no trace of any [such] pier and it is evident that he [Butler] made some mistake when he was working up his notes in America ’ (op. cit., p. 8). The point is crucial, and in a previous account of the church I published photographs to show that the pier never can have existed : see the Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement for January 1936, Plate II.