¹ This problem has been finally solved, ex cathedra, by Rizzo: There must always have been a plastic model (p. 70); no evidence given. Maker of hypothetical model and engraver of die assumed (when convenient) to be the same person; no evidence given. The lowest point of probability and the highest of dogma is reached when we are solemnly told (p. 33) that in order to produce a slight modification of what (in spite of special pleading) will always remain, however prettily finished, a second-rate die, the artist certainly re-worked (‘ha certamente rielaborato’) the plastic model in a number of minute details. Did engravers of gems always make preliminary models? This is surely relevant. The reply is affirmative or negative according to one's fancy; no evidence needed. Modern practice is decisive only against the dogmatic assumption that there must always have been a model, for modern gem-engravers sometimes work from a highly finished model (usually translated into intaglio), sometimes from a rough sketch, and sometimes cut the stone direct.

² ‘Ma io contesto che un archeologo possa avvalersi di continui confronti coi tipi monetali (op. cit. p. 47)…. Il quale avrebbe fatto meglio a studiare direttamente le monete’ (id. p. 34); and so on. In the event, it is clear (id. p. 6, and p. 46, note 4) that Rizzo has done very much what I have—studied the coins where he had ready access to them, casts or publications where he had not, the difference being that I did not claim the title of numismatist, whereas he describes himself as ‘not primarily a numismatist.’ Whatever the definition of a numismatist, scrupulous regard for evidence is the first essential in this, as in any other form of archaeology, If Rizzo had visited the British Museum, he would perhaps have realised that it contains one of the two nest collections of coins, and casts of coins, in the world: it has been open to my constant demands for twenty years with a generosity unknown elsewhere.

³ ‘The general style is a somewhat dry archaic, its origin possibly Corinth’ (Proc. Brit. Acad. XX, p. 109 (19))Google Scholar. ‘Lo Ashmole ha, infatti, supposto che gl'incisori siracusani copiassero i tipi delle monete arcaiche di Corinto’ (Rizzo, op. cit. p. 24).

⁴ Op. cit. p. 76. ‘Apprendiamo … che esso è opera di arte calcidese … lo stesso autore si affretta a soggiungere, che non vi sono prove evidenti (sic!) per dimostrare la verita della sua asserzione.’ This manipulative skill is not confined to English and Italian: it has been applied with equal success to Greek: Rizzo, , RM XL (1925), p. 235Google Scholar; on which see Trendall, , Paestan Pottery, p. 105Google Scholar.

⁵ The belief current until some fifty years ago that there can be ‘accurate’ and ‘inaccurate’ restorations of Greek sculpture is revived by Rizzo, in Transactions of the Numismatic Congress (1936), p. 132Google Scholar, and of course in his Prassitele, passim.

⁶ It would have been a kindness, both to the Author and to his readers, if some reviewer had pointed this out when Prassitele first appeared, for such comparisons are apparently to be a feature, and certainly (as is claimed in the advertisement) the most original feature, of yet another work.

⁷ Op. cit. p. 60: ‘codesto tetradrammo del Tauro fu coniato immediatamente prima dell'anno 476. Lo stesso Maestro aveva, pochi anni innanzi, modellato ed inciso un altro tetradrammo … per … Naxos.’

⁸ Op. cit. p. 57: ‘appartengono al principio del secolo quinto, forse non prima dell'anno 490, certo non dopo il 480.’

⁹ Op. cit. p. 59: ‘lo stile escluderebbe, da solo, la supposta data posteriore all'anno 461.’

¹⁰ Op. cit. p. 76, note 26.

¹¹ That the change in drawing from frontal to profile eye was starting to take place just after 480 at Syracuse is shown by the following evidence: (a) one die of a tetradrachm in the ‘Damareteion’ series (Boehringer, Die Münzen von Syrakus, Pl. 15, R275 probably late in the series since it is linked with dies of the same series in a very broken condition), already has the eye rendered in profile; so, apparently, have most of the obols of the ‘Damareteion’ issue: (b) the coin of Leontini based on the Damareteion has a profile eye (see Proc. Brit. Acad. XX, p. 111Google Scholar (21), Pl. X, 39).

On the other hand the series illustrated in Rizzo's fig. 17, which seems to succeed the ‘Damareteion’ issues, retains the frontal eye.

¹² Certain in the coins illustrated op. cit. fig. 35, 4 & 6; ‘probable’ only in those illustrated id. fig. 35, 1, 2 & 3 (cf. fig. 39), because, apart from the small scale, some of the dies were corroded when the coins were struck. This is obvious when the coin, and not a cast or an illustration, is examined. This corrosion (the reason for which, though it is interesting and may have some bearing on the chronological problem, cannot be discussed here) is apparently what Rizzo means when he speaks of imperfect technique (‘tecnica imperfetta’ p. 51), and explains (p. 55) the difficulty engravers had in rendering the human face, gradually achieving it in dies arbitrarily assumed to be successive. If I do not misunderstand him, and he really believes that the roughness of the first coin, illustrated in his fig. 39 is due to the engraver's inability to carve (instead of to the corrosion and subsequent re-cutting of the die), comment is difficult; adequate comment impossible. Numismatic evidence (from the Ognina hoard) for the later date of at least some of this series can be produced by numismatists, and must have been temporarily forgotten by Rizzo, who clearly knows of the hoard; (see E. S. G. Robinson's forthcoming review in the Numismatic Chronicle.) Herzfelder's verbal suggestion, quoted by me (Proc. Brit. Acad. XX, p. 114Google Scholar (24), note 2) that the Bull/Nike coins are interspersed among those with Victorious chariot/Head of Apollo types, is ignored by Rizzo: it renders evitable his ‘inevitable consequence’ on p. 58.

¹³ Op. cit. p. 59: ‘conserva ancora l'occhio disegnato di pieno prospetto.’ In Rizzo's fig. 35 the litra A does (from a hasty glance at a picture of it) look as if it has a frontal eye: but it is clear, on proper examination, that the inner corner is wide open—i.e. the eye, though long, is in profile. About B (my Plate XX, 6) there is no doubt: it is simply a profile eye.

¹⁴ Op. cit. p. 66: ‘questa unica differenza.’

¹⁵ Proc. Brit. Acad. XX, p. 113Google Scholar (23), note 2. Rizzo cites the circle of dots, its interruption by the beard on both coins, and the double curve of the truncated neck among the resemblances which prove that the dies were by the same hand. But since the circle of dots is a very common border, and since its interruption by the beard was (like the double curve of the neck) also a feature of the litrae of Catana (Plate XX, 6), the dies of which were engraved (on his own hypothesis) before Aetna was founded, and by another artist, these arguments are nothing to the purpose.

¹⁶ I do not consider this an argument against common authorship, and should not have mentioned it had not Rizzo himself used it elsewhere (in the rhetorical passage on p. 29) as if it were: a good engraver can surely vary the height of his relief at will, It was an error of taste to restore the Aetnaean coin (op. cit. pp. 6 and 61), but I cannot convince Rizzo of this if he cannot see for himself that it destroys the balance of this exquisite design: deviations of millimetres have importance when the design depends for its effect on fractions of millimetres. If he could not resist tampering with it, the beard should have been restored on the analogy of the Aetnaean litra (his fig. 44, 5) rather than on that of the Naxian tetradrachm. Or has he not noticed that they differ? And the fake should, in honesty, have been labelled.

¹⁷ The similarity between the truncation of the neck of Dionysus on the Naxian coin and the truncations on certain coins of Syracuse, Catana and Leontini, though minimised by Rizzo (op. cit. p. 66), is in fact very close. Those of Catana and Leontini (e.g. Proc. Brit. Acad. XX pl. XIII, 57, 58) are certainly after 461, and, most numismatists would say, also those of Syracuse (e.g. Rizzo, op. cit. fig. 24, 6, 9).

¹⁸ An important distinction, as anyone who has studied the coinage of the second half of the fifth century must be aware.

¹⁹ It might be maintained that this was a safer method of cutting the letters, and sometimes it was possibly adopted for that reason (cf. Casson, in Transactions of the Numismatic Congress (1936), p. 48Google Scholar). But the Aetnaean die has every appearance of being carefully and unhurriedly executed, and the Naxian, engraved on Rizzo's hypothesis some years before, was perfectly successful by the other method; is in fact an exquisite piece of lettering.

²⁰ Op. cit. p. 72: ‘La presenza della lettera Χ invece che della Ξ … è inconcepibile nell' alfabeto siceliota dopo l'anno 461.’

²¹ Op. cit. p. 73: ‘disegno da me ideato e diretto.’

²² Op. cit. p. 75: ‘Essi hanno tutti la testa folta di capelli fin sulla fronte, come il Sileno di Naxos.’ I cannot but admit the entire correctness of this observation so far as it concerns the silens of Epictetus. Is it conceivable that Rizzo has failed to observe that the hair of the Naxian silen is swept in wild fashion backwards, and does not come clustering on to the forehead at all?

²³ There is, I think, no relief of the first half of the fifth century to compare with this for solidity; and the drawings and reliefs round about 500 B.C. which Rizzo cites, neatly disprove, by their lack of consistent foreshortening, the very point he is seeking to establish. The anatomical resemblances described at such length (pp. 69 ff.) are of course not resemblances of style, but of the human body.

²⁴ There are naturally less forthright ways of dealing with inconvenient evidence: a good example in Rizzo, , RM. XL (1925), p. 235Google Scholar (already exposed by Trendall, , Paestan Pottery, p. 102Google Scholar, note 2).