In the standard handbooks on the techniques of Greek architecture, the problem of lifting heavy architectural members is considered mainly in terms of the various cranes and hoists based on compound pulley systems which are described by Vitruvius and Hero of Alexandria. It is assumed that the same basic method was employed also in the Archaic period, and that the use of an earth ramp by Chersiphron to raise the architraves of the temple of Artemis at Ephesos in the mid-sixth century was exceptional. If this is true, it is a matter of some interest in the history of technology. The simple pulley, used not to gain mechanical advantage but just to change the direction of pull, is first known from an Assyrian relief of the ninth century B.C., and may well have been known to the Greeks before they began to build in megalithic masonry in the late seventh century B.C.; but the earliest indisputable evidence for a knowledge of compound pulley systems is in the Mechanical Problems attributed to Aristotle, but more probably written by a member of his school in the early third century B.C. This is a theoretical discussion of a system which was already used by builders, but it is not so certain that practice preceded theory by three centuries or more. It is therefore worth looking again at the evidence for the use of cranes, hoists and pulleys in early Greek building.

André Aymard, in a pair of articles now more than twenty years old, directed his attention to a thorough collection and evaluation of not only Macedonian, but of all hellenistic royal titulature. The conclusions of the impressive structure of fact and theory which he propounded in those articles have been widely accepted. But it seems likely that in the case of Macedonia he has been misled by pre-existing constitutional theory (despite his sensible rejection of its most outrageous aspects) into overvaluing the constitutional significance of the evidence from Macedonian royal style. This article is concerned with re-examining and re-interpreting the evidence for Macedonian titulature, and with testing the conclusions which Aymard drew from it.

There are two basic questions to be considered in this connection, the second dependent on the first: (i) is it correct, in any sense, to speak of ‘official’ titulature of the Macedonian kings (and therefore, a fortiori, of ‘false’ or ‘correct’ titles)? (ii) if so, what, if anything is the significance of variants, and what, if anything, can be learnt from them about the nature of the Macedonian monarchy? If we are to find an answer to (i), we must obviously look at the usage which the kings of Macedon themselves chose to use, particularly in their administrative and political public acts, and if any usage occurs with overwhelming frequency this should clearly be sufficient to establish a prima facie case that that usage is the normal one, though we might still retain doubts as to whether it could legitimately be called ‘official.’

The remarkable Treasure, found on December 8, 1949, near the railway station of Panagjurischte, about 40 km north-west of Plovdiv (Bulgaria) on the fringe of a site where traces of earlier settlements had been observed, has attracted less attention in Western periodicals than its interest and importance deserve. I have had two opportunities of viewing the Treasure (in 1968 and 1972) in the Museum at Plovdiv. It is well displayed, but security arrangements are (very properly) such that it would be unreasonable to ask to handle the objects. Fortunately photographs are available giving accurate information on details, though these inevitably fail to reflect the overwhelming impression produced on the spectator by the find as a whole (plate 1a).

Date and Place of Manufacture

Metrological and epigraphical considerations conspire to date the find to the closing years of the fourth century B.C. (or possibly soon after the turn of the century) and suggest North-West Asia Minor as the place of origin. The total weight of the nine pieces is 6·172 kg of high-quality gold. Except for minor damage to two rhytons, all is excellently preserved; some small jewels which served for details such as eyeballs have been lost, but hardly anything is dented. Considered as bullion, this amount of gold is equivalent within 4 g to 730 darics (at 8·45 g) or to 1430 Attic drachmas (at 4·31 g), within 9 g. Since the phiale (plate IIId) scales 845·7 g, the figures neatly inscribed on the outside below the rim in small acrophonic numerals between 3—4 mm high (plate Ib) advertise its weight in terms of both these standards: these are H (=100, sc. darics) and ΗΓΔΔΔΔΙΙΙ, plus an indeterminate fraction, i.e. something over 196 Attic drachmas.

Modern scholars have long recognised that much of the coinage minted by Seleucus I Nicator and Lysimachus was originally designed as some form of propaganda. They have met, however, with only partial success in trying to delineate more precisely the nature and purpose of that propaganda. Especially problematical have been those coin motifs which appear to advertise various omens, prophecies, and logoi about Seleucus and Lysimachus, which, in turn, would have lent a charismatic sanction to the kingships of both men. These will be our main concern here; I wish to propose some refinements and some complete revisions of my predecessors' conclusions about this coinage as propaganda. But, in so doing, I will need to review much of the evidence for other kinds of propaganda employed by these two men.

The campaigns of Alexander in Asia have been extensively studied, but no one has given a detailed account of his campaign in Illyria. The reason is that for many years the interior of Albania has been less accessible than any part of Alexander's route in Asia. It was my own interest in Epirus and Macedonia and my travels in parts of south-eastern Albania which first led me to speculate on the location of Alexander's battle against Cleitus and Glaucias. I came then to the conclusion that the city of Pelion and the battle near it were to be placed by the upper Devoll in the plain of Poloskë. This conclusion was based on a study of the ancient literary evidence and generally on a second-hand knowledge of the terrain; for I had made only one trip and that by car from Florina to Bilisht in the plain of Poloskë and thence to Korcë (Koritsa). In September 1972 I was able to visit this plain through the kindness of the Albanian Government and of my Albanian colleagues. In Section A of this paper I describe the geographical features and the ancient remains in the relevant part of south-eastern Albania, and in Section B I try to reconstruct the campaign of Alexander in this region.

Our main pieces of evidence about the bastards who exercised in the gymnasium of Kynosarges not far outside the walls of Athens are the following:

(1) Plutarch, Themistocles 1: Themistocles' mother was a Thracian (or Carian) and he therefore exercised at the gymnasium of Kynosarges where the nothoi were enrolled (syntelein), the gymnasium being sacred to Heracles because he, too, being the son of a divine father but a mortal mother, was a nothos among the gods. Themistocles persuaded aristocratic friends to exercise with him at Kynosarges and thus abolished social discrimination between pure-born Athenians and nothoi.

Ten years ago an article in these pages stressed the importance of detailed analysis of the traditions involving the Carians, and archaeological evidence was used to check the assertions of the literary record. In that instance the extremer version of the tradition in question was shown to be largely inexact, while the less extreme preserved the probable truth of the Carians' habitual use of certain military devices. That the ghost of pan-Carianism should be well and truly laid is all to the good; yet I hope to show here that the literary record, such as it is, of the presence of Carians in the Lydian capital is reasonably substantiated by the archaeological and epigraphic material.

Herodotos' Carian source pointed to an old relationship between the Lydians and Carians, symbolised by the temple of Carian Zeus at Mylasa and by the kinship of the eponymous heroes Car and Lydus. According to this source linguistic affinities existed between Lydians and Carians. In Strabo's time Lydians and Carians together inhabited the plain of the Maeander, though the Carians evidently exercised sole possession of the land to the south of the river. In the late seventh and sixth centuries, however, Lydians and Carians lived cheek by jowl in Aphrodisias, and there is good archaeological and epigraphic evidence for a Lydian community in the city. Whether this means that we must attempt to redraw the boundary between Lydian- and Carian-speakers (if such a boundary is logically acceptable) or whether the Lydians represented a trading community in a foreign (if friendly) city, remains to be seen. There is some evidence to suggest that Carians were present in archaic Smyrna, and epigraphic documentation for their presence, if not in Ephesos, at any rate at Belevi. They had a natural interest in their northern neighbours.

In discussions of Aeschylus' theology one of the passages most often quoted is the so-called ‘hymn to Zeus’ in the first chorus of the Agamemnon (Ag. 160–83). Fraenkel in his commentary goes so far as to call it ‘the corner-stone not only of this play but of the whole trilogy’. The passage concludes with two lines which in all modern editions are read as a statement, though our oldest manuscript, the Medicean, writes them as a question. Textually the difference is merely one of accent, but the difference of accent carries with it a reversal of meaning. As a statement the lines mean that the gods are something to be grateful for, that there is some χάρις or kindness associated with them. Taken as a question they deny this. Clearly then it is of great importance for the interpretation of Aeschylus to decide which is the correct reading.

The lines in question, written without accents, are

Our oldest manuscript, M, as I have said, writes ποῦ with an accent. So does our next oldest, the manuscript 468 of the Biblioteca di San Marco, generally known as V. If this reading stems uncorrupted from the time when accents were first applied to the text of Aeschylus and if at that time the oral tradition of the poet's words was not yet dead, then it will not be destitute of authority. But the thread is far too tenuous to bear any weight of proof.

Equally there can be no argument from authority on the side of reading the lines as a statement. For though Triclinius and the closely associated manuscript F write που without an accent as an enclitic, this is as likely as not to be due to simple conjecture.

I begin with two modern texts, both as it happens printed on the first page of earlier issues of this journal, and each, I think, expressive of a strong body of opinion in Homeric scholarship, at least in the English-speaking countries, at the time of their writing. First, Miss Dorothea Gray in 1954: ‘Belief in an historical Homeric society dies hard’. Secondly, Professor Adkins in 1971: ‘I find it impossible to believe … that the bards of the oral tradition invented out of their own imaginations a society with institutions, values, beliefs and attitudes all so coherent and mutually appropriate as I believe myself to discern in the Homeric poems. This aspect of the poems is based upon some society's experience’. Miss Gray's prophecy, whether or not one shares the misgivings that it embodied, was thus soundly-based: the seventeen years between these two quotations have indeed witnessed a powerful revival of the belief that the social system portrayed in the Homeric poems, and with it such attendant features as the ethical code and the political structure, are in large measure both unitary and historical. One good reason for the vitality of this belief is the simple fact that it has been alive since Classical times. Another is that it has received support from several influential recent works: if pride of place should be given to M. I. Finley's The World of Odysseus, on whose conclusions Professor Adkins expressely says that he takes his stand, a number of others should be acknowledged also. Whereas Finley located the social system of the Odyssey most probably in the tenth and ninth centuries B.C., A. Andrewes in his book The Greeks extends this type of inference when he argues for an historical origin in the ‘migration period’ of the twelfth and eleventh centuries for the Homeric political system. As influences on the other side, one may mention T. B. L. Webster's work in isolating Mycenaean practices and features, whose divisive effect on the social pattern is apparent; while G. S. Kirk has a significantly entitled chapter in his The Songs of Homer, ‘The cultural and linguistic amalgam’ (my italics). Most recently, the early chapters in the German Archaeologia Homerica have shown a certain tendency to discern a consistent and historical pattern in the allied area of the material and technological practices of the poems. It is true that in one chapter the author is led to conclude that the metallurgical picture of the Iliad is substantially earlier than that of the Odyssey, and that the date of composition of the former poem must accordingly be very much earlier. But this is only because he is pressing the arguments for the ‘historical’ case one step further: the historical consistency of the metallurgical pictures in each of the two poems is, for him, so apparent and so precise that each can and must be given an historical setting, even if the two are separated by a long period.

The three-sided Boston relief (Plate XIIIa), which is to be dated in the second quarter of the fifth century, has been the object of a long controversy with regard both to its subject matter and to its authenticity, which has been doubted by some scholars. The authenticity of the monument will be taken for granted here, since the work of Jucker, and especially the recent exhaustive stylistic and scientific study by Ashmole and Young leave no possible room for doubting it. Another aspect of the relief which I will take for granted in this paper is the artistic milieu which created it, since it has been convincingly shown that it is of South Italian, and more specifically Epizephyrian Locrian, origin. The object of the present paper is to discuss the iconography of the monument, especially with reference to the cult and religious environment of the city in which it was produced.

The interpretation of the central scene and the two side-panels of the Boston relief is still a matter of controversy, although many hypotheses have been put forward since the monument first appeared in the antiquities market. Discussions of the iconography of this relief tend more often than not to connect the problem, in some way or other, with the subject matter of the Ludovisi throne (Plate XIIIb), another three-sided relief belonging to the artistic environment of Locri Epizephyrii, but of a much higher artistic quality. The interpretation of the scenes on the Ludovisi throne has not provoked the same amount of controversy, and it would, I think, be a fair statement that the interpretation of the central representation as the birth of Aphrodite is now generally accepted—more accurately, it is the new-born Aphrodite being assisted out of the sea, and to the shore, by the Moirai or the Horai. On each of the side-panels a female figure is shown, a naked pipe-player on one, a heavily draped young matron burning incense in a thymiaterion on the other. They have been interpreted as hetaira and young bride or wife, two contrasting figures associated with Aphrodite's Locrian cult.

Doubts about the reliability of Aristotle's accounts of his predecessors have been current for some time, at least since Heidel's 1906 paper in which he aimed to show that the presocratics did not, pace Aristotle, have Aristotle's conception of ἀλλοίωσις, involving as it does the notions of unchanging substance or essence, and attribute. Such doubts were given massive substantiation in Cherniss' famous book. More recently McDiarmid has shown that Theophrastus' Physical Opinions, the main source for the subsequent doxographical tradition, while it may quote extensively from the writings of the presocratics, is heavily dependent (in wording, selection of quotations from the presocratics, and organisation of material) on Aristotle's account. I only mention McDiarmid's work here because some of what he says provides the point of departure for Guthrie's defence of Aristotle, which I want chiefly to examine. My thesis is that there are some misunderstandings and pseudo-issues which crop up among what may be referred to as the three parties (Cherniss, McDiarmid, and Guthrie) to the dispute over the trustworthiness of Aristotle's accounts of the presocratics; but that once these are cleared away there remains a genuine disagreement over the reliability of Aristotle's interpretations; and that in this disagreement Guthrie has not given arguments sufficient to prove his point.

1. For more than two thousand years research into the origins of the Greek lexicon had been understood and carried on in the spirit exemplified but also mocked in the Platonic Kratylos. The revolutionary change came in the early nineteenth century when after many inspired guesses Franz Bopp (1791–1867) finally and definitively proved in 1816 that Greek, in company with many European languages, derived, like Indian and Iranian, from one prehistoric ancestor, the whole family being dubbed Indo-European by the well-known physician and physicist, Dr Thomas Young, in 1813, three years before the publication of Bopp's work. But the first true etymologist was August Friedrich Pott (1802–87) who with the two volumes of his Etymologische Forschungen, published in 1833 and 1836 respectively, laid the foundations of Indo-European, and therewith also Greek, etymology.

Throughout the nineteenth century, and even down to our own days, the main emphasis has been on the IE origins of the Greek vocabulary.

In 1962 B. B. Shefton shed much light on the iconography of the centauromachy at the feast, and in 1972 J. P. Barron shone more light on the relationship of this iconography to the lost painting of this subject in the Theseion. Barron convincingly argued, from the evidence of early classical vase paintings and the west pediment at Olympia, that the mural painting in the Theseion was the source of this new theme, the misbehaviour of the centaurs at the wedding feast of Peirithoos, and that it was painted between 478 and 470 B.C. He further suggested that the composition was on more than one level, that it showed both the brawl at the banquet and the pitched battle outside, that the centrepiece of the scene was a pair of figures fighting back to back, and that an axe-swinger was present, among other things.

Most of these inferences seem sound, and yet it is as difficult to visualise what the painting looked like as when Robert in 1895 suggested that the fragments of a krater in Berlin reflected the centre of the composition. These fragments seem to fit Barron's criteria as well as anything else, for the composition is on several levels, two heroes fight back to back, the one on the left swings an axe, and at his feet lies the tail of a centaur, which Robert (with more optimism than proof, I think) considered to be a centaur already killed; there is even a hint of the outdoor conflict. Barron does not, however, revive Robert's suggestion—wisely, I believe—nor does he offer another. Nevertheless I think it might be worthwhile to return to the problem of what the centre of this lost mural painting may have looked like and consider why it remains so persistently elusive.

Mr John Boardman's suggestion that the sickles dedicated to Artemis Orthia at Sparta were used as strigils is most enlightening, and perhaps I may be allowed to find support in it for a theory that I have advanced elsewhere, that this form of sickle is the ξυήλη of Xenophon, Anabasis iv 7.16; iv 8.25. It is true that the dedicating inscriptions never use the word ξυήλη. The sickle is only named twice, being called δρέπανον once and once δρϵπάνη. But this may be explained by the late date of all the inscriptions. Ξυήλη is only found in the two passages already cited from Xenophon, in the lexicographers (Hesychius and the Souda s-v.), who also give the Doric form ξνάλη, and in Xenophon's Cyropaedia (vi 2.32), where it means a spokeshave for smoothing the shafts of spears. It is probable that the word was obsolete even at Sparta in the Hellenistic period, and that even in Xenophon's time it was not in common use throughout Greece. Pollux (i 137) mentions the Laconian ξυΐνη in a list of weapons, including δρϵπάνη and δορνδρέπανον, and this misspelling (more probably that of a scribe writing from dictation than Pollux's own) does indicate the unfamiliarity of the word.

John Boardman has recently published a Sam Wide Group cup, on the interior of which is painted a caricature of Oedipus and the Sphinx. His accompanying illustration (Plate II 1) fully confirms the interpretation offered, that the Theban Sphinx— for once, in its physiognomy as well as in its anatomy, obtrusively male—is committing the nuisance of public masturbation. Although such offensive conduct seems, as Boardman observed, inexplicable within the Sphinx's mythic context, the artist's motive for this innovation becomes clearer if one can detect here an instance of the easy ‘glide from the contemporary into the mythical world’.

First, however, it should be recalled that, at least as early as Aeschylus' satyr play Sphinx, the Theban pest could be called Σφίγγα δυσαμϵριᾱν πρύτανιν κύνα (182 Mette, 236 Nauck).

The sculpture of the East pediment of the Temple of Aphaia on Aegina is usually dated between 490 and 480 B.C. This seems to me too late, to judge by the torsion of the fallen soldier of the left corner and of the stooping youth from the middle of the right side (Plate XVIb-c). In the youth there is a small turning at the waist and this is managed competently by an organic twist. In the fallen soldier, where the torsion is much greater, the change of direction is made not by a twist but by an abrupt swivel; and though the waist was partly masked by the right arm, generally the sculptors who carved this pediment did not neglect those parts of their figures which could not be seen. From this it should follow that at that time they were acquainted only partially with the revolutionary innovation of organically twisting anatomy.

In vase painting the organic twisting of the torso was mastered during the last ten or fifteen years of the sixth century. So too in relief sculpture, notably in the Ball-players relief. In free-standing sculpture symmetrically frontal poses still remained normal, but that does not mean that it was simply retarded; and pedimental figures, though in the round, generally followed the rules for reliefs, anyhow before the Parthenon.

In a ‘Note on Sea-birds’ [JHS xcii (1972) 172–3] Miss Sylvia Benton comments on Mr J. K. Anderson's preceding Note, Θρᾷξ, Δυτῖνος, Καταρράκτης. But if we are to identify the species to which ancient names refer we must limit ourselves to those species which are now, or can be shown to have once been, present in Greece, and for this both accuracy of observation and a knowledge of the literature on the ornithology of Greece seem desirable. Miss Benton says: ‘A ship on which I was sailing was dive-bombed by Gannets just east of the harbour of Tinos: no doubt they were defending their nests on the cliffs’. But the Gannet (Sula bassana) is a bird of the North Atlantic which does not now nest, if it ever did, in the Mediterranean nor indeed south of 51° N. on the eastern coasts of the Atlantic, so that these dive-bombers, whatever they were, could hardly have been Gannets. There are only two authentic records of Gannets in Greece at all, in May 1853 and in April 1965 (A. Kanellis: Catalogus Faunae Graeciae; pars II Aves ed. W. Bauer, O. v. Helversen, M. Hodge, J. Martens. Thessaloniki, 1969).

In a recent issue of this journal (xci [1971] 137–8), R. M. Cook argued convincingly that the term ἐποίεσεν should not be taken to mean the craftsman who threw the vase but rather should be taken as a sign of ownership by the head of the workshop producing the pot. While in agreement with Cook's rejection of ἐποίεσεν as a term referring to the craftsman who threw the vase, I am not altogether satisfied with his alternative proposal. Why was the designation of ownership painted on the vase, and by whom was it painted? Cook's suggestion would have the signature act as a trade name to identify the product. If so, why were so few pots designated in this manner? We would expect that a trade name would almost automatically be placed on all goods emanating from a workshop and that if this became customary in the more prominent workshops it would have been adopted in the lesser ones. In short, why were not all Greek vases so designated—at least in the second half of the sixth and the first half of the fifth century?

The only ἐποίεσεν signature to appear with any frequency or consistency is that of Nikosthenes on the special amphora form which now carries his name. Other workshops do not provide the extensive signatures; however, if we can determine the meaning of the signature in the Nikosthenic shop we will not be far from the use of ἐποίεσεν in other workshops.

In a recent article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies Dr O'Brien rejects a suggestion I made some time ago in an attempt to explain the apparent contradiction in our evidence for Empedocles' distribution of living-creatures among the elements. Whereas Aëtius tells us that this distribution took place on the principle of ‘like to like’, Aristotle informs us that Empedocles held that certain aquatic creatures are very fiery and take to the water to cool themselves. It was suggested then that these aquatic creatures mark an exception to the general rule of ‘like to like’ and took to the water to cool themselves, because they have an excessive endowment of the element fire and, therefore, require a rather more powerful cooling-system; in their case, the inspiration of air is inadequate to cool their internal heat.

Although O'Brien is willing to accept that it is ‘very possible’ that Empedocles subscribed to the doctrine of innate heat, he nevertheless does not find this suggestion persuasive. It is not my intention directly to defend my standpoint here. Let it suffice for me to stress again that there are exceptions to the general rule of ‘like to like’ and that Empedocles himself points them out, namely that in the case of such creatures as shellfish and turtles, which manifestly do exist at our present stage of the world's evolution (i.e. when Strife is gaining predominance), it is the earthy part which is uppermost.

Professor I. Noshy, in a paper read to the 1968 conference of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Libya and published in its proceedings, has re-formulated Chamoux's view of the chronology of the reign of Arkesilas III, to which I proposed an alternative in JHS lxxxvi (1966) 99–103. Noshy upholds Chamoux's view that Arkesilas' appeal to Samos (Hdt. iv 162–3) was made to Polykrates before 525 (when he medized during Cambyses' Egyptian expedition (Hdt. iii 13 and iv 165), after which, according to Noshy (p. 73) he could only have appealed to his Persian patrons). He attempts to reduce the awkwardly long interval between these events and Arkesilas' murder by updating Aryandes' Libyan expedition, which followed the murder, to 519. Like Chamoux, he connects Aryandes' rebellion against Darius and his execution with the visit of Darius to Egypt, recorded by Polyainos (vii 11) and fixed to 518 by the date of the death of the Apis bull which Darius mourned. In Noshy's view, Aryandes' Libyan expedition was not authorised by Darius, whose impending visit caused him to recall it before the wider purpose of subduing the Libyan tribes was accomplished (pp. 64–5). He suggests further, that, contrary to the testimony of Herodotus (iv 164.4–5.1), Arkesilas' sojourn at Barka, which he places between 525 and 519, was by his own choice, with the object of subduing aristocratic revolt in western Cyrenaica, and that he never had to take refuge there, but was able to return to Cyrene between expeditions, only handing over the government to Pheretima while he was away on campaigns (p. 69). During this period, Noshy supposes that he founded Euhesperides to serve as an outpost in western Cyrenaica (pp. 70–1).