Along with Pindar, Aeschylus is doubtless the user of the most spectacular and colourful imagery among classical Greek authors, and like Pindar he is not afraid to mix his metaphors. These lines from the Agamemnon would probably be placed in such a category by most readers who attend to the combination of images, ἄνθος Ἀργϵίων being taken as the rather commonplace and ‘dead’ metaphor of the ‘flower of the host’, etc., found elsewhere in Aeschylus and other writers before and after him; and I have the impression that none of the commentators seems to have thought it worth asking in what sense a flower could be spoken of as ‘carded by rubbing’. Now I do not think Aeschylus chose his words so carelessly—or with such deliberate incongruity—as this, and propose that with ἄνθος he was at the same time alluding to another sense of the word which more effectively sustains the image when juxtaposed to the words τρίβῳ κατέξαινον. Although this sense is not well attested, nor recognized in the lexica, it seems that ᾄνθος might be used of the flock or nap on wool, like ᾄωτος.

‘Much hero-cult was directly engendered by the powerful influence of Homeric and other epics.… We so often hear how saga reflects cult that we are in danger of ignoring the reverse truth that cult may reflect saga; for cult was often mimetic of past events, and the memory of these was preserved mainly by saga-poetry.’

Thus L. R. Farnell, in 1921. He was doing his best to create order out of chaos, writing at a time when it had been fashionable to explain away almost all heroes as faded deities. His method was to sort out the various categories of hero: the genuine faded deities, the vegetation spirits, the epic heroes, the ancestors, the eponymous figures, and finally the heroes who lived in historical times. Greek hero-worship has always been a rather untidy subject, where any general statement is apt to provoke suspicion; yet no one has since shown any good reason for rejecting Farnell's groundwork. This in itself is a tribute to the clarity and thoroughness with which he presented the literary evidence in the first place. Nevertheless, if a new edition of his book were contemplated today, it would need some substantial archaeological footnotes; indeed, during the last fifty years, every type of hero-cult has been illumined in some measure by the results of excavation—especially the cults of epic heroes, to which most of this paper is devoted; for the interval since 1921 includes most of the digging careers of Blegen, Wace, and Marinatos—to name the three archaeologists whose fieldwork has supplied in greatest measure the most abundant kind of evidence that we are looking for: that is, the evidence of veneration shown by later Greeks for the tombs of their Mycenaean predecessors.

The date and circumstances of the first Greek settlements on the Black Sea are matters of considerable disagreement. This is the result both of the scattered nature of the literary evidence on the subject, and of the dearth of archaeological evidence for Pontic settlements other than those on the western and northern shores. A century ago it was commonly thought that although the great majority of colonies were sent out in the seventh and sixth centuries, Trapezus and Sinope, as our sources say or imply, were founded in the middle of the eighth. For a variety of reasons, among them an increased reliance on archaeologically secured dates, this view went out of favour, and opinion inclined toward the view that the Greeks did not enter the Black Sea at all until after 700. This view was both expressed in and supported by Rhys Carpenter's thesis that not until the penteconter was invented (an invention which he dated to the early seventh century) could the Greeks make head against the four-knot current which flows through the Bosporus from the Black Sea. Articles by B. W. Labaree and A. J. Graham, however, have undermined Carpenter's argument, and it is now once again not unusual to find references to Greek activity in the Black Sea before 700.

The argument in the Protagoras which starts with an analysis of giving in to pleasure in terms of ignorance, and leads into a demonstration that courage is knowledge, is certainly one of the most brilliant in Plato and equally certainly one of the trickiest. My discussion deals mainly with three problems: (I) Precisely what absurdity is detected in the popular account of moral weakness, and where is it located in the text? On the basis of largely formal considerations I believe that the absurdity is a much less subtle affair than has been thought, and that it is located at 355c-d. (II) What is the connection between knowledge and belief in 358b-d, and how do these two concepts figure in the arguments which precede and follow this passage? Here I want to comment on differences between the Protagoras and other Socratic arguments. (III) How good is the argument at 356–357e which analyses moral weakness as ignorance? There are several problems here, including a fundamental puzzle of the dialogue, namely that, apparently, Plato uses a non-Socratic hedonism to establish the Socratic thesis that virtue is knowledge. Here I agree with those critics who see irony at the expense of the sophists—sophistic teaching is shown to be grounded in hedonism—but in addition I suggest that Plato also offers an oblique criticism of hedonism itself in the course of which basic points of real substance are made. This interpretation fits in with various other features of the dialogue, including the curious fact that, though the main argument proceeds on a thorough-going hedonistic basis, Socrates is subtly but distinctly not committed to that basis. Hence the unity of the dialogue is supported, and as well an attitude to hedonism is given which is more consistent with that of other dialogues, while we are able to see the Socratic paradox in its regular role as a tool of ethical exploration.

The Achaean war against Rome in 146 continues to provoke befuddlement and perplexity. Few problems in antiquity have proved so intractable to solution. The event was of major import: the last futile outburst of Greek resistance to Roman power, calling forth a new era, an enforced reorganisation of Greece and its subjugation, for all practical purposes, to the Roman governor of Macedon. Greek independence was thereafter chimerical. Yet the origins and motivations for that fateful struggle remain as puzzling as ever. Understandably so. A half century earlier, the Achaean League had thrown off allegiance to Macedon and opted for collaboration with Rome. A formal alliance followed in subsequent years. Relations between the two powers were sometimes rocky, but never issued in overt conflict during that half-century. In the three great eastern wars of the second century, against Philip V, Antiochus III, and Perseus, Rome and Achaea were on the same side. Yet in 146, when Rome's military might should have been incontestable, the Achaeans engaged her in a suicidal and ruinous war that brought the dissolution of the old League and the overlordship of Rome. Small wonder that the episode causes bafflement.

‘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.

In the year 346 Isocrates wrote his discourse the Philippus (v) which he sent to Philip II of Macedon urging him to lead the Hellenic cities in an invasion of Persia. This ninety-year-old teacher of rhetoric did not invent the so-called Panhellenic idea; it was first proposed by Gorgias in 392 and again celebrated by Lysias in 384. When Isocrates took up the notion in his Panegyricus (iv) of 380 and urged Athens and Sparta to assume joint leadership in a war against Persia, he repeatedly defends himself for speaking on a well-worn theme by the claim that he will do so in a superior fashion (iv 3–4, 7–10, 15). Ignored by the Athenians and Spartans, Isocrates seems to have felt that his proposal would find better reception among strong individual leaders, and he appealed probably to Jason of Pherae in the late 370s (see v 119; cf. Xen. Hell. vi 1.12; Isocr. Ep. vi 1), to Dionysius I of Syracuse in about 368 (Ep. i, esp, 7–8), and certainly to Archidamus of Sparta in about 356 (Ep. ix, esp. 17–9). The discourse to Philip, however, was surely of much greater political importance than Isocrates' previous appeals because it was addressed to an individual who was actually acquiring the strength to wage war against Persia. The Athenian rhetorician, inspired by the Peace of Philocrates, claims that he hopes to persuade both his fellow citizens and Philip that reconciliation of the Hellenic cities and an expedition against the Persians under the leadership of the Macedonian king would be to their mutual advantage (v 7–9). In this article, I shall argue, first, that certain opinions, proposals, and arguments contained in the Philippus show that the author was prevented by the requirements of good propaganda from making a fully candid and practical plan of action, but, instead, advocated a programme that would please the greatest possible number of Greeks.

After Herodotus describes the stock-taking in Greece on the eve of Xerxes' invasion, and before he passes to the actions at Thermopylae and Artemisium, we are briefly told of an expedition to Thessaly (vii 172–4). As Xerxes approached the Hellespont, Thessalian envoys appealed for help to the Greek loyalists, who sent a large army in response. This enterprise argues a very high degree of confidence and organisation among the loyalists, and yet the sequel is strangely disappointing, for just a few days after reaching their destination the Greek forces withdrew again and were seemingly disbanded. Understandably enough the episode has puzzled scholars, and no ogreement exists as to either the motives behind the expedition or the reasons for the withdrawal. The facts need to be re-examined, especially as Herodotus' testimony has in one respect been misconstrued and another vital piece of evidence has escaped attention. I shall argue that the expedition was capably and resolutely planned as the main line of defence against Xerxes; that the federal authorities in Thessaly co-operated to the fullest; that the Greek army adopted the best strategic position for their purpose; and that the scheme miscarried only because of obstruction from an unexpected quarter. The dismaying failure of the Thessalian expedition helps to explain why the subsequent efforts of the loyalists during the campaign of 480 were so often confused or behindhand.

Pelasgus goes off to summon his people, bidding the chorus pray for their desires to be fulfilled. They appeal to Zeus to ward off the lust of men, and in the antistrophe claim his support as the ancestor of Epaphus. M's γϵνέσθω in 527 must mean fiat, an impossible sense with no closer analogue than LXX γένοιτο γένοιτο. Schütz' γένϵι σῷ, adopted by most modern editors, gives good sense with little change, but removes the sense-pause at period-end (here marked by hiatus and the sequence ). Period-end without pause is sufficiently infrequent in Aeschylus (about 10%) to deter us from introducing it by emendation, and especially infrequent when marked by hiatus (about 6%). Moreover, πϵίθου or πιθοῦ is not a word used by mortals to gods in prayer (though Pindar so addresses his Muse, P. 1, 59).

Miss Sylvia Benton, in a recent note, identifies the bird which appears on some of the coins of Stymphalos ‘rising above the leaves of a Water Plantain … with a Fritillary on either side… The bird wears ear-flaps, and for me a marsh bird with earflaps must be meant for the Great Crested Grebe’.

This identification seems to me convincing, though the bill as represented on the coins is perhaps rather short and thick. On April 29th and May 23rd 1974 I visited Stymphalos, in company with my family, in the hope of confirming that the Lake is still within the Grebe's range. This we were unable to do, and I am delighted to learn from Mr Buxton's note that ‘the bird breeds now on the Stymphalian lake’.

The Lake certainly offers in its extensive reed-beds a most suitable breeding-ground for Grebes, which build partly floating platforms of marsh vegetation to serve as nests. Adult birds sleep on the water and are fish-eaters. Grebes cannot therefore have suggested the different literary variants of this Labour of Herakles.

Dr D. O'Brien in his interesting article ‘The effect of a simile: Empedocles's theories of seeing and breathing’ (JHS xc [1970] 140–79) unfortunately reverts to D. J. Furley's view that, in the clepsydra simile of Empedocles fr. 100, air must be parallel to air and water to blood. This involves him in interpretations which have no basis in the text of Empedocles. It is obvious, from the clear parallelism of sentence structure presented by Empedocles and duly noted in my article of 1960, that water is parallel to air, and air to blood. The relevant lines are (as quoted from Ross by Dr O'Brien):

The general sense is:

Just as, in the case of the clepsydra, water comes in and out through the sieve in accordance with movements of air on the other side of the sieve:

So, in the case of breathing, air is breathed in and out through holes at the back of the nostrils in accordance with movements of blood on the other side of the holes.

In JHS xciv (1974) 38 ff. (with Plates IV–V), J. G. Griffith discusses the subject-matter of the scene on the late fourth-century amphora discovered in 1949 at Panagjurischte in Bulgaria, in which a group of four determined-looking men armed only with swords attacks a house-door which has just been half-opened by a startled servant of diminutive stature. Connected, apparently, with the assault is a trumpeter, and finally there is another pair (not obviously involved in the action) consisting of a bearded figure, taken to be a seer since he holds ‘a liver, lobe and all’, which he shows to his more youthful companion.

Griffith has little difficulty in exposing the improbability of earlier attempts to identify a mythological scene—Achilles discovered at Scyros, the Seven against Thebes, or the preliminaries to the murder of Neoptolemus at Delphi, and proposes a novel view that the attackers are komastai, whether the occasion is a ‘genre-scene’ from comedy, or a characteristic scene from real life, in either of which cases help in identifying the individuals would be unnecessary and irrelevant. But I must confess that I find this proposal far-fetched: the attempts to account also for the trumpeter and seer are desperate enough, but he really fails to make a credible case for the use of swords in such escapades, even granted the violence often referred to in literary evidence about the komos, whether fisticuffs among rivals for the favours of the courtesan or mistress, or the use of cudgels, levers and torches to break down, or burn, the door by the ‘exclusus amator’.

Ἀναξιμένης ἐν ᾶ Φιλιππικῶν περὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου λέγων φησίν ἔπειτα τοὺς μὲν ἐνδοξοτάτους ἱππεύειν συνεθίσας ἑταίρους προσηγόρευσε, τοὺς δὲ πλείστους καὶ τοὺς πέζους εἰς λόχους καὶ δεμάδας καὶ τὰς ἄλλας ἀρχὰς διελὼν πεζεταίρους ὠνόμασεν, ὄπως ἑκάτεροι μετέχοντες τῆς βασιλικῆς ἑταιρίας προθυμότατοι διατελῶσιν ὄντες.

This fragment of Anaximenes of Lampsacus, a historian contemporary with Philip II and Alexander, cited by Harpocration and the Suda to explain the use of pezetairoi in Demosthenes ii 17, alleges that some Alexander not only accustomed the Macedonians of highest repute to serve in the cavalry but also organised the foot in lochoi, decads and ‘other commands’, apparently those of the writer's own day, and entitled them pezetairoi. Since that title already existed, and was known by both Anaximenes and the lexicographers to have existed, in the reign of Philip, the Alexander named cannot be Alexander III. Taking the information offered seriously, most scholars either suppose Alexander I (c. 495–50) or Alexander II (369–8) to be meant, or refer the innovations to Archelaus (c. 413–399) or even to Philip II (359–36). Emendation can of course only be based on the assumption that the excerptors misunderstood the text of Anaximenes before their eyes.

In a recent issue of this Journal (XCV, 1975, pp. 231–2), R. F. Willetts reviews the excellent publication of J. N. Coldstream, Knossos, the Sanctuary of Demeter (BSA, Suppl. Pap. 8, 1973). He draws attention to a boustrophedon inscription on a silver ring bezel, which he transcribes, after Coldstream:

The reading seems to support Willetts' own views on the cult of Demeter as a Mother-Goddess in Crete.

May I express some doubts about the actual reading of the dedication? I recently had the opportunity of examining the Knossos ring in the Heraklion Museum, by courtesy of the Director, Dr Alexiou, and of his Assistant, A. Lebesi. Magnifying techniques and contrasted lighting were available in the now well-equipped laboratory of the Museum. It appears that the lettering of the inscription is not exactly what Coldstream believed, although his photograph and facsimile are fairly accurate. First, the supposed digamma is a true alpha, with parallel strokes, as often occurs on archaic stones: the figure is quite similar to the other alphas of the text if you read it in the proper sense, i.e. as the first letter of the second direct line. Secondly, the last sigma of the retrograde line, with its two short angular strokes at sharp angles at each end of the hasta, seems most unlikely. There is actually a kind of cross-hatching on the surface, which is rather deceiving, but upon it you can distinguish the three bars of a delta, a very clear, although small and slightly debased one. The hasta forms one of these bars, and one other is the upper stroke of the so-called sigma.

The casts of Greek and Roman sculpture in the Museum of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge were treated and repaired recently by M. B. Laymann, now of Heidelberg. During his final visit, in 1975, he also restored a cast of the Peplos kore (Fig. I ), supplying the missing parts by analogy, colouring it according to published indications and adding a meniskos, which is conjectural in form, size and height. As for its height, the meniskos cannot have been much lower, to judge by what remains of the spike of other korai (Acropolis 670, 673, 682); and if it had been much higher, it would have given less protection against bird droppings and from experiment my impression is that the effect, particularly of the longer spike, is more disturbing. The size decided on was that just large enough to protect the head; though Aristophanes (Birds, 1114–7) may imply that it protected the whole of a statue, such an extension seems to me awkward visually and in practice would have made the contraption liable to damage in a high wind.

In a short paper I have tried to show that passages of the Periplus Maris Erythraei which seemed incompre hensible to, and were altered by, critics and editors, are in reality perfectly sound, when examined in the light of the usus auctoris, late Greek prose usage or the context. I should like to offer a few more examples here.

R. Lattimore's translation is neat and accurate:

There is a rocky island there in the middle channel halfway between Ithaka and towering Samos,

called Asteris, not large, but it has a double anchorage

where ships can lie hidden. There the Achaeans waited in ambush.

I assume that Homeric Ithaca is the island now called Ithaki and that Samos is Kephallinia. The channel will then be the Ithaca Channel, and here there is only one island, now called Daskalio (FIG. 1). So Daskalio = Asteris. So far, so good; Homer has deftly pinpointed the location of the ambush by associating it with the only small island off the west coast of Ithaca.

Daskalio is certainly πετρήεσσα; indeed it is nothing but a narrow shelf of rock about 200 yards long, and rising only about 15 feet above water level (Plate IIIa). No one can deny that it is οὐ μεγάλη; the phrase may well be a litotes. It is not strictly in ‘mid-channel’, being 3,000 yards from Ithaca and only 800 yards from Kephallinia, but this may pass in a poetic description. It is with the ‘double anchorage’ that Homer's description appears to lose touch with reality.

7 πῖαρ Plut.: πυαρ pap. Ath. Pol. ἀνταράξας … ἐξεῖλε pap., coniecerat Gildersleeve: ἂν ταράξας ἐξέλη Plut.

Solon is answering his critics (Aristotle, Ath. Pol. 12.5). The demos has never had it so good. The ‘bigger and stronger men’, μείζους καὶ βίαν ἀμείνονες, also have cause to thank him. For if anyone else had had this office, ‘he would not have restrained the demos, nor would he have stopped, before’, etc. Plutarch (Vit. Sol. 16) introduces the lines in almost the same words.

V. 7 is difficult. Bergk and others construe: ‘until, having stirred up the milk, he had taken the cream’. There are two objections to this. Firstly, the word order would involve an interlacing of main and participial clauses which Greek normally eschews. Bergk claims that Solon is peculiar in the freedom of his hyperbaton, but the examples he quotes (frr. 1.43–5 and 23.5D) are not of this type and are very much easier. Secondly, the sense: ‘it is not usual to stir up milk when it is wanted to skim off cream’. Linforth recognised the force of this argument, and concluded, in the truth of the ancient evidence, that πῑαρ refers to butter.

The purpose of this note is to make known a fine pair of joining fragments, one in the Louvre, the other in a private collection in Oxford, which come from the outside of a cup by Onesimos. The Louvre fragment, Cp. 11342, listed in the second edition of J. D. Beazley's Attic Red-figure Vase-Painters but not previously figured, gives part of a male leaning to the right on a knotted stick. He is draped in an himation with a two-line border pattern. His chest is frontal but he twists to the right, his right arm reaching across and down to the right, while his left, comfortably tucked in the material of the himation, rests on the top of the stick. The new Oxford fragment adds the head of the youth, his right shoulder and the tops of two of the billows of the himation as it passes over the upper part of the left arm.