It is a privilege to be allowed to take a part, however humble, in the chorus of heartfelt congratulation, sincere admiration and affectionate good wishes which will greet Professor Sir John Beazley on the occasion of his sixty-sixth birthday. Among my proudest memories is the fact that, during the tenure of my Readership in Greek Epigraphy, my duties were ‘to lecture or give instruction … under the direction of the Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art’, and I owe much to his inspiration, his example and his friendship. Nor will it, I hope, be inappropriate if I here offer to him notes on some inscriptions presented to the University of Oxford and housed and exhibited in the Ashmolean Museum, with which the thought of Beazley, the gracious genius loci, is for me, as for many others, inseparably associated. I shall say nothing of the interesting group of Greek inscriptions in Pusey House, nor of the large collection of Latin inscriptions in the Ashmolean, and shall, in the interests of brevity, confine myself in the present article to the Greek inscriptions which were in the possession of the University in 1763, leaving to a future occasion some remarks on the considerable accessions made since that date.

The following list of coins bought on our journey may be of interest as showing what the currency of the districts must have been. Only Greek coins are here treated; of Roman coins it was noticed that denarii rarely occur earlier than Trajan, after whom they become increasingly common, while the copper hardly appears till the second quarter of the third century.

In a paper published in this Journal last year (xvi. p. 280) I proposed an arrangement of the sculptures of this basis. Unfortunately I overlooked a very able paper on the same subject by Dr. Amelung, Die Basis des Praxiteles aus Mantinea, München 1895, in which certain observations of a technical kind in regard to the sculptures are made, observations which must be carefully considered before any arrangement of the basis can be regarded as established. I give a translation of these observations.

‘All three slabs are on their left end cut off by a straight line, and have there at bottom a vertical dowel-hole, to receive a dowel rising from below. Thus all on this side joined other slabs. Both the slabs with figures of Muses on their right end have similar flat surfaces. The Marsyas slab is different. At its right end the marble projected above and below so far as the mouldings are concerned, but these projecting mouldings are roughly cut off. The surface of the end between the projections is not perfectly flat, but follows a slight curve. It is evident then that this slab at its right end met neither of the Muse-slabs. Clearly the cornice and basis projected from the front of the basis to the side, and were roughly cut away when the slab was fitted into the pavement of the church.

Il frammento è conosciuto, ma non è altrettanto conosciuto come sia entrato, uscito e ritornato nella collezione vascolare del Museo. Ne mancano inoltre riproduzioni a base fotografica complete nel diritto e nel rovescio. A queste lacune intende riparare lo scritto dedicato qui alle onoranze di un maestro insigne, che allo studio della ceramica antica, nelle sue innumerevoli manifestazioni grandi e piccole, ha dedicato una parte cospicua della sua attività scientifica. Esso appartiene ad uno stamnos del Museo Gregoriano-Etrusco, descritto dal Helbig nel I° volume del Führer (ed. 3̂, p. 313, n. 503), che si trova ora nella sala VI, vetrina K, n. 22, e che misura cm. 38,4 di altezza e cm. 16,6 di diametro alla bocca.

In una delle facce, quella secondaria, si vedono due figure ammantate ritte ed affrontate; quella a destra è un giovinetto in ascolto, quella di sinistra, forse un maestro di palestra, ha i capelli annodati con un semplice nastro e stringe un alto bastone a nodi con manico ricurvo. Vedi Fig. 1. Nell'altra faccia, la principale, si vede Eracle con le mani protese in avanti verso una donna in atto di fuggire, la quale doveva tenere con la destra uno scettro. Vedi Fig. 2. Ma la scena, così come risulta ora, è opera prevalentemente di restauro moderno. Nell'originale alla figura di Eracle dovevano mancare le mani ed anche la clava, se pure questa esisteva; e della seconda figura rimaneva ben poco: la parte inferiore della persona, da sopra le ginocchia in giù, e la testa nel tratto superiore alla bocca, tanto che, invece di una donna fuggente, il Beazley (loc. cit.) vi ravvisa Nereo; e al loro posto, nella curvatura tra il collo e la pancia dello stamnos, fino dall'antichità era stato inserito un frammento di tazza attica, contrassegnato col nome di Douris e fermato al corpo del vaso con quattro grappe di bronzo, di cui sono ben visibili i fori. Vedi Figg. 2, 3, 4.

Asia Minor, interposed like a bridge between Europe and Asia, has been from time immemorial a battlefield between the Eastern and Western races. Across this bridge the arts, civilisation, and religion of the East had passed into Greece; and back over the same bridge they strove to pass beautified and elevated from Greece into Asia. The progress of the world has had its centre and motive power in the never-ceasing collision of Eastern and Western thought, which was thus produced in Asia Minor. One episode in the long conflict has been chosen by Herodotus as the subject of his prose epic: but the struggle did not stop at the point he thought. It has not yet ended, though it has long ceased to be of central importance in the world's history. For centuries after he wrote Greek influence continued to spread, unhindered, further and further into Asia: but as the Roman empire decayed, the East again became the stronger, and Asia Minor has continued under its undisputed influence almost up to the present day. Now the tide has again turned, and one can trace along the western coast the gradual extinction of the Oriental element. It does not retreat, it is not driven back by war: it simply dies out by a slow yet sure decay. It is the aim of this set of papers to throw some light on one stage in this contest, a stage probably the least known of all, the first attempts of the Greek element to establish itself in the country round the Hermus. Tradition has preserved to us little information about the first Greek settlements. The customary division into Aeolic, Ionic, and Doric colonists is not a sufficient one. Strabo clearly implies that there was a double Aeolic immigration when he says (p. 622) that Cyme founded thirty cities, and that it was not the first Aeolic settlement; in another passage (p. 582) he makes the northern colonists proceed by land through Thrace, the southern direct by sea to Cyme. I hope by an examination of the country and the situations, never as yet determined, of the minor towns, to add a little to the history of this Southern Aeolic immigration, in its first burst of prosperity, through the time when it was almost overwhelmed in the Lydian and Persian empires and was barely maintained by the strength of the Athenian confederacy, till it was finally merged in the stronger tide of Greek influence that set in with the victory of Alexander. More is known of Myrina, and still more of Cyme, than of any of the other towns: but both are omitted here, because it may be expected that considerable light will be thrown on the history of both by the excavations conducted on their sites by the French School of Athens. Till their results are published, it would be a waste of time to write of either city.

In this section of the Report it will be my object to present as complete a statement as I can of what is known and what has been written on the subject of Paphos; and this should include a short specification of the chief points on which the late excavations either have thrown, or may be expected to throw, more light. On large and general questions, such as the origin and history of the Aphrodite worship in general, or even its history in the whole of Cyprus, I cannot enter here.

It is inevitable that the chapter must consist largely of quotations. The source of these is not far to seek. Meursius' ‘Cyprus’ in Creta, Cyprus, et Rhodos (Amsterdam, 1675, in 4to) contains a wonderfully comprehensive survey of the ancient literature of the subject. An essay by Frederick Münter, Bishop of Seeland, carries this survey a stage further, and makes some further additions to it. This essay is entitled, Der Tempel der Himmlischen Göttin zu Paphos (Copenhagen, 1824, 4to). It forms a supplement to his former tract, Religion der Karthager. It is illustrated with four plates, and supplemented by an architectural essay on the plan of the temple, from the pen of Gustav Friedrich Hetsch. These two books have assisted me to most of my quotations. I have added a few others from later books, and from my own reading.

The ancient building which I propose to describe, one of the most interesting of its kind in Cyprus and the East, has been casually mentioned by A. P. di Cesnola (Salaminia, p. 2, 1882) as a wall; ‘perhaps a part of the ancient wall bounding the interior area of the harbour :’ an architectural, topographical, and geological impossibility. By R. H. Lang (Cyprus 1875, p. 25) as ‘a Cyclopean ruin.’ By Unger and Kotschky, who add to an insufficient account an indifferent drawing (Die Insel Cypern, Wien, 1865, p. 533), but, with greater judgment, describe it as a Cyclopean well temple. L. Ross (Denkmäler u. Forschungen, Arch. Zeitung, April 1851, p. 328) calls it a Phoenician tomb, cp. L. P. di Cesnola, Cyprus, p. 171, German edit. R. Pocock (1745, II. 217) speaks of it as ‘a chapel built of three stones, the four sides consisting only of two stones, and it is covered with a third, which is angular at the top. If I mistake not, I may say, this Saint (Catherine) was buried in this chapel, and there seems to have been a tomb in it.’ I begin by explaining my drawings, made with great care on the spot; every stone was measured, and reduced to scale. R denotes rock, M masonry. See Pl. XXXIII.