Inadequacy of our Theory. To whoever may desire to understand the music of ancient Greece, I would recommend that he put away from his mind that sense of superiority which our progress in counterpoint, harmony, form and orchestration has engendered, and devote his attention to the shortcomings of our music, for they relate to those very matters concerning which Greek music has the most to teach us.

Our music has come down to us from remote ages through the Greek system. The first stage in its progress was marked by the collection of a multiplicity of Harmonies and modes, not unlike those upon which the classical music of India is based. Of the diatonic scales, some were soft, employing septimal or soft intervals, and others were hard, employing semitones, and major and minor tones, differing among themselves in the order in which these intervals were strung together. The Greeks may have added to this collection. Their chief contributions to musical progress, however, were instrumental heterophony and the science of intervals. They were driven to the use of the former by the tyranny of the ‘metrici’. Thus the long and short of Greek poetry led indirectly to the harmonic system of music, which is one of the main achievements of European civilisation. The foundations of musical science were laid by Pythagoras. The results of his labours were soon apparent in the classification of the enormous number of scales in use, the adoption of a musical notation based upon an intricate system of correlated keys, and the art of modulation. In the break-up of Roman and Greek civilisation, the subtle distinctions between the various Harmonies were the first features of the music to go under. Curiously enough, the innovations introduced by the master minds of Greece survived in the art of modulation, and the contrapuntal tradition. A new series of keys was invented. This degenerated, under the growing influence of keyed instruments, and the craze for unlimited modulation, into the musical freak of equal temperament, in which a scale, grotesquely out of focus, is set up as a standard and basis of theory. Players on the pianoforte and organ perform tempered music in tempered tones to admiring audiences.

In May, 1918, Captain A. E. W. Salt, then Base Censor at Salonica, sent me a rough copy of an inscription, about which he wrote: ‘It is copied from a stone which I had cleaned, lying not 100 yards from my house near the Hippodrome, not, I think, in its original position’. I was unable to examine the stone personally, and my reading of the text is therefore based wholly upon Captain Salt's copy, which fortunately proves to be remarkably accurate if the difficulties of making such a copy and its provisional nature are borne in mind. It is here reproduced, save that I have ignored certain erasures and corrections, giving only the text as finally read by Captain Salt.

According to the calculations of Busolt, whose elaborate essay on the Spartan army may be regarded as the standard work on this subject, the forces which King Cleombrotus took into action at Leuctra consisted of four out of the six μόραι, each containing 35 out of the 40 service classes, and 300 ἱππεῖς, or Guards.

That 35 classes were mobilised for the campaign of Leuctra is directly attested by Xenophon and cannot be called into question. That four out of the six μόραι took part in the battle is an inference from another passage in Xenophon, which states that three years previously Cleombrotus was despatched to Central Greece with four μόραι.

This inference is only valid if we may assume that the Spartan forces in Phocis were maintained at undiminished strength from 374 to 371 B.C. But such an assumption is hardly justified. A priori it is unlikely that a force representing some 60 per cent, of the entire military establishment of Sparta should have been marooned in Central Greece for three years on end. The Spartan government was of necessity most economical in the use of its citizen troops. As a general rule it reserved them for the critical operations of a field campaign and recalled them home at the close of each fighting season. For the routine duties of garrison service it relied almost entirely on mercenaries. But the emergency which had necessitated the sending of a large field force to Phocis in 374 B.C. had passed away long before the campaign of Leuctra. In 374, no doubt, a strong Theban force was concentrated for the invasion of Phocis. In 373 and 372, however, the Thebans were preoccupied with the coercion of Thespiae and the occupation of Plataea; and in view of the ill-concealed hostility of Athens and the presence of an Attic force on the Boeotian border at Oropus, we may fairly assume that a considerable portion of the Theban field forces had during these years to be called away from the Phocian frontier.

In the Dorset County Museum at Dorchester there are thirteen fragments of Attic Black Figure pottery which form part of a collection of antiques acquired by the Museum in 1885 from the late Mr. Charles Warne, F.S.A. Most of Mr. Warne's collection consists of objects of local interest, and nothing is known of the history of the Greek fragments beyond the fact that on the back of one of them is written the name Campanari. This fragment no doubt came from Campanaria's excavations in Tuscany, but there is no evidence to show whether all the pieces have the same provenance, nor even whether they were all acquired by Mr. Warne from the same source.

The most interesting of the sherds is a fragment of an eye-kylix which once bore the signature of the maker. The clay is fine and clear, the glaze good. The outside decoration needs no description, since every detail can be seen in the photograph here published (Fig. 1). The inside is black with a line reserved in ground colour just below the rim. As it stands to-day the inscription … ϟ ΕΓΟΙ … is somewhat baffling. The remaining ϟ of the signature tells us little, since there are not more than half a dozen known Black Figure potters whose names do not end in this letter. The identification of the master, therefore, depends on the discovery of a signed vase with kindred decoration.

The important inscription from Epidaurus, published in Aug. 1921 by M. Cavvadias, raises many questions beside those dealt with in the very full commentary. Cavvadias attributes the document to 223 and the Achaean League. It is, I think, certain that it cannot belong to the Achaean League, and almost certain, as I hope to show, that it belongs to 303 and the revived League of Corinth of Demetrius I. The last few lines of the inscription have long been known (I.G. iv. 924), and have been exhaustively studied by A. Wilhelm, who placed the fragment which in I.G. is marked β; Cavvadias does not refer to Wilhelm's study, and unfortunately omits any mention of β from his restoration. The document contains no proper names.

‘In the pottery of the Geometric style,’ says Dr. Buschor in his Greek Vase Painting, ‘are latent the forces which we see afterwards expanding in contact with the East as well as the oldest beginnings that we can trace of that brilliant continuous development which led to the proud heights of Klitias, Euphronios and Meidias. Its producers may be unreservedly described as Greeks.’

The statement is a challenge to the less cautious supporters of the continuity of Bronze and Iron Age culture in Greece. But it is concerned only with vases and vase-painting. One is tempted to search farther afield for fuller illumination, particularly in branches of art other than vase-painting. Whatever stage of development a culture may be in, it always requires pottery, however crude and in however small a quantity, since pottery is for use: objects purely ornamental, however, can, under certain circumstances, be dispensed with. In pottery, therefore, a certain minimum of continuity in tradition and inheritance from previous cultures is inevitable; but in the arts of pure adornment this may not be the case. Thus sculpture and bronze work are branches of art which may remain submerged during periods of unrest and upheaval.

We know roughly, says Prof. Murray, how a rhapsode set to work. He would be tempted to introduce bright patches. … He would abhor the subordination of parts to the whole.

This tendency, he suggests, explains the occurrence both in Θ (555 ff.) and in II (297 ff.) of the well-known description of a cloudless sky: ‘Such lovely lines, once heard, were a temptation to any rhapsode, and likely to recur whereever a good chance offered. The same explanation applies to the multiplied similes of B 455 ff. They are not meant to be taken all together; they are alternatives for the reciter to choose from.’

I quote this pronouncement, not because I want to quarrel with the most generous of scholars, but because it hits on particularly instructive passages. The constellation of similes at B 455 ff. marks, I suggest, a provisional climax in the movement of the poem, and the images here chosen are poetically relevant, not only to the immediate context but to the whole design. Similarly, the image of Θ 555 ff. is not isolated, but provides a climax and a consummation to the whole series of images which decorates the movement Γ–Θ. The kindred, though more impressive, image of Π 297 ff, marks the beginning of yet another series.

The following notes, made during my work for the British School at Rome on the sculptures of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, are here published by permission of Prof. H. Stuart Jones, General Editor of the forthcoming catalogue, and at the suggestion of Mrs. Arthur Strong, for whose constant help and criticism I wish to take this opportunity of recording my thanks. The summary descriptions are not intended in any sense to supplant, but rather to supplement the catalogue; and their appearance here is due to the belief that new theories are best published separately before being embodied, if only because the conclusions reached can in this way be substantiated by arguments, especially in the form of photographs, which would there be out of place. The note which had its beginnings in the Esquiline stele has grown to the dimensions of a separate article, and in view of its possible interest has been so printed.

The course of Homeric criticism during the last twenty years or so has not indeed given us any grounds for thinking that unanimity on fundamental questions is likely to be reached in the near future, but it has accomplished one thing. It is possible now to think and speak of Homer as a man who was born at a definite fortunate moment, ate, drank, and even slumbered, composed two long epics much in the same way as other men of genius have composed great works, had his joys and sorrows, triumphs and disappointments, and ultimately died—it is possible to think and speak of him thus without being considered absurdly simple or simply absurd. And so one can venture to approach the problem of the last section of the Odyssey in just the same way that one would approach a similar literary problem in a later age of the world, taking it for granted that the poet lived and worked under ordinary human conditions. In this paper I assume without discussion the truth of the unitarian view that Homer was the author of the Iliad and of the Odyssey (at least to ψ 296), and also that the Odyssey is the later of the two; I assume that in composing them he was aided by the art of writing; and I assume that he lived about 900–850 B.C. at latest.

I think that those who take an interest in the history of the modern Greek language may possibly welcome a short note on a manuscript in the British Museum, which appears to me to be worth some attention, chiefly perhaps from the point of view of the part played by Greek culture in Roumania in the seventeenth century.

The manuscript in question is Add. MS. 38890 in the Department of Manuscripts, British Museum. It was acquired at Hodgson's sale, June 25, 1914, Lot 413, and is from the collection of the Hon. Frederic North, but was later in the possession of Richard Taylor. It is well written and presents but few difficulties of decipherment, and the number of errors is comparatively small. At the end the date of completion is given, viz. December 1686, and the place of writing—Bucharest.

I think the general character of the MS. will be best explained by the reproduction of the short preface prefixed to it. I give it here, together with a translation. The pages and lines are those of the MS., and spelling, punctuation and abbreviations are reproduced as they stand, though I have not adhered to the very fluctuating use of the acute and grave accents.

The starting-point for the following discussion is the stele from the Esquiline (Plate XI.). We remark first its stylistic relationship with a series of terracottas from Locri Epizephyrii, many of which have been published by Quagliati in Ausonia, iii. 1908, p. 136 sqq. and by Orsi in Bollettino d'Arte, iii. 1909, p. 406 sqq. and p. 463 sqq., while there are other examples in various museums. For style, we may compare particularly Aus. l.c. Figs. 9, 33, 44; Boll. l.c. Fig. 16, and Fig. 1 (=B.M. Terracottas, B488, Pl. XXI.): for subject Aus. l.c. Fig. 1. If this connexion can be established, the consequences are of importance, for the stele from the Esquiline has often been compared in style with the Ludovisi Throne, and the Ludovisi Throne involves the Boston reliefs. Before examining this comparison we must mention yet another work which has been brought into relation with these monuments, the so-called Ino-Leucothea relief of the Villa Albani. Its connexion with the Esquiline stele and with some of the terra-cottas is, in fact, equally striking. With the stele it has in common, in the seated figure the emphatically linear treatment of the himation, that is to say, a tendency to draw rather than to model; and the identical device for rendering the softer material in the standing figure (a device also used in the terra-cottas, while the line of the front of the thigh is indicated through the drapery in the same way. In short, it is fair to say that if a reduced copy of the Albani relief had been unearthed among such terra-cottas as Aus. l.c. Figs. 4, 15, 44, 45, 46, 58, and Boll. l.c. Fig. 43, to mention only a few examples, we should not notice any incongruity of style, and the subject in some cases is curiously similar.

The second neolithic period in Eastern Thessaly is sharply severed from the first by the intrusion of a new culture which appears as something foreign and alien on the shores of the Pagasean Gulf. The pottery, for example, seems utterly different from that of the first period. The forms belong to a distinct series and are typologically older. The absence of feet and strap handles, so well developed in the A wares, precludes us from deriving Dimini ware from any of the latter. The characteristic designs, too, based on the spiral and the meander, are entirely foreign to the earlier series. Moreover, the use of fortifications beginning with this pottery (the traces of an earlier wall at Sesklo are exceedingly problematical), and restricted to its area, heightens this impression of foreignness. So too do the ‘megaron’ houses of Dimini and Sesklo, which do not seem to find their explanation in the curvilinear or square huts of the first period.

As to the provenance of this culture, the recent declaration of Sir Arthur Evans, that the origin of the spiral motive in Minoan ceramics is not to be sought in Crete itself, should dispose of the only reason for deriving it from the south; for there seems no ground for supposing that the Cycladic spirals antedate those of Dimini. Indeed I have argued in a previous paper, and my conclusion has been supported by more recent investigations, that Thessaly II. must be dated well back in the Early Cycladic Period. On the other hand, the theory of a northern origin has been strengthened by the discovery of Dimini ware in the Strymon valley. Indeed the general analogies between Dimini ware and the widespread group of painted and incised spiral-meander pottery north of the Balkans have been long recognised, and elaborate theories of an invasion, not only of Thessaly, but even of Crete itself, have been built up thereon.

Our evidence for events in Argos after her crushing defeat by Kleomenes at Sepeia (circ. 494 B.C.) is so scrappy, incoherent, and to a large extent so late, that accurate reconstruction is well-nigh impossible. But a fresh attempt may at least throw into relief certain points which deserve more consideration than they seem to have received.

If we except the passage in Aristotle, Pol. 1303A (the exact significance of which is disputed), our sole authority for the so-called Servile Interregnum is Herodotos, Bk. 6, 83. It is necessary to quote the passage in full.

Ἅργος δὲ ἀνδρῶν ἐχηρώθη οὕτω ὥστε οἱ δοῦλοι αὐτῶν ἕσχον πάντα τὰ πρήγματα ἄρχοντές τε καὶ διέποντες, ἐς ὅ ἐπήβησαν οἱ τῶν ἀπολομένων παῖδες. ἔπειτέ σφεας οὑτοι ἀνακτώμενοι ὀπίσω ἐς ἑωυτοὺς τὸ Ἂργος ἐξέβαλον• ἐξωθεύμενοι δὲ οἱ δοῦλοι μάχῃ ἔσχον Τίρυνθα. τέως μὲν δή σφι ἦν ἄρθμια ἐς ἀλλήλους, ἔπειτα δὲ ἐς τούς δούλους ῆλθε ἀνὴρ μάντις Κλέανδρος, γένος ἐὼν Φιγαλεὺς ἀπ᾿ Ἀρκαδίης• οὕτος τοὺς δούλους ἀνέγνωσε ἐπιθέσθαι τοῖσι δεσπότῃσι. ἐκ τούτου δὲ πόλεμός σφι ἦν ἐπὶ χρόνον συχνόν, ἐς ὄ δὴ μόγις οἱ ᾿Αργεῖοι ἐπεκράτησαν

Dr. Macan infers from this chapter ‘the admission of the “slaves” to the franchise.’ The wording of the first sentence in the extract may seem to support this inference, but Dr. Macan himself considers the chapter to involve both ‘exaggeration and misconception,’ and we may later see some considerations that tell against his inference. For myself I can find in Herodotos' account no convincing evidence of the actual and formal enfranchisement of the slaves. On the contrary, they are throughout described as δοῦλοι, and the last episode in the narrative is an attack from Tiryns of these slaves against their masters. Another remarkable point is that until the outbreak of hostilities at the finish, we hear nothing of any actual conflict between the slaves and their Argive owners.