Less than a decade ago Robin Seager wrote that further discussion of the Peace of Callias would be inexcusable. Needless to say, discussion has continued. Wherever one stands, on the problem as such, it ought to be admitted that new ideas have been put forward, or (since it seems unlikely, on a topic so much discussed, that anything new can now be said) at least old and forgotten ones have been revived and put in new perspectives. Meiggs's estimate of a special treatment to be expected every two years has stood up well enough: Klaus Meister's bibliography lists twenty special treatments between 1945 and 1982, and one (by S. Accame) appeared in the same year (1982) as Meister's own.

In recent years classicists and ancient historians have devoted renewed attention to the Archaic Age in Greece, the period from approximately the eighth century to the fifth century BC. Important articles, excavation reports and monographs, as well as books by Moses Finley, L. H. Jeffery, Oswyn Murray, Chester Starr and others, not to mention a recent volume of the Cambridge Ancient History, bear witness to the vigor of recent scholarship in this area. Among many of these treatments of the period, moreover, is evident an increasing recognition of the close connection between social and economic developments and the political life of the Greek cities of the period. At the same time that this renewed interest in the Archaic Age has become so prominent in classical studies, a group of scholars working in more modern periods has developed a fresh approach to the role of ritual and ceremonial in civic life, especially during the European Middle Ages and Renaissance. Deeply influenced by cultural anthropology, they have found in the often surprisingly rich documentation about festivals, processions, charivaris etc. important insights into the societies in which these activities took place. Classicists looking upon this movement may be inclined to undervalue its originality and perhaps its controversiality, pointing out that a serious interest in ancient festivals has long been prominent in classical scholarship and is well represented in recent books such as those by Mikalson, Parke and Simon and such older works as Martin Nilsson's frequently cited Cults, myths, oracles and politics in ancient Greece (Lund 1951). Yet there is a great difference both in method and in results between the traditional approaches to ceremonial represented in the study of ancient Greece and those being developed in more recent fields.

One day in the year 326 of our era Nicagoras, torch-bearer of the Eleusinian mysteries, made his way unsuspectingly past the buried tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings near Thebes, and climbed towards the entrance of the tomb immediately above it. Though it had itself long since been robbed, the making of Ramses VI's sepulchre had at least produced a generous scree, to which Tutankhamun owed his current oblivion and future fame. Scrambling cautiously over this, and the accumulation of sand and stones in the tomb's entrance, Nicagoras followed his dragoman down a long corridor. We can tell from its thick encrustation of graffiti that this tomb was by far the most popular with visitors; and Nicagoras's practised guide knew exactly what appealed to the different sorts of people who made up his clientèle. Learning that the Athenian was a priest, and a cultured man with philosophical interests, he made a point of stopping in front of a scene which shows the soul standing before Osiris, the god of the dead, thanks to which this tomb is sometimes called the ‘Tomb of Metempsychosis’.

There have been numerous attempts to understand the role and importance of the Great Dionysia in Athens, and it is a festival that has been made crucial to varied and important characterizations of Greek culture as well as the history of drama or literature. Recent scholarship, however, has greatly extended our understanding of the formation of fifth-century Athenian ideology—in the sense of the structure of attitudes and norms of behaviour—and this developing interest in what might be called a ‘civic discourse’ requires a reconsideration of the Great Dionysia as a city festival. For while there have been several fascinating readings of particular plays with regard to the polis and its ideology, there is still a considerable need to place the festival itself in terms of the ideology of the polis. Indeed, recent critics in a justifiable reaction away from writers such as Gilbert Murray have tended rather to emphasize on the one hand that the festival is a place of entertainment rather than religious ritual, and on the other hand that the plays should be approached primarily as dramatic performances.

The study of recent ‘traditional’ Mediterranean rural economy has long been a predilection of ancient historians and archaeologists working in that area. Traditional practices and production norms have been used by ancient historians in the interpretation of the often enigmatic testimony of the ancient agronomic writers, while archaeologists have used the same information to fill in the many gaps in the material record supplied by the spade. Much of the relevant data on traditional rural economy are gleaned from the accounts of early travellers or of modern geographers, ethnographers and agronomists. But comparanda acquired at first-hand enhance the credibility of archaeologists and ancient historians as fieldworkers, and chance summer encounters with Cretan shepherds or Cycladic fishermen are valuable currency in competitive displays at academic conferences.

Books xviii–xx of Diodorus' Bibliotheca Historica have long been regarded, apart from the sections on Sicily and Italy, as closely based on the work of Hieronymus of Cardia, a friend of several of the leading Macedonians, and as giving a reliable, if condensed, account of the events succeeding the death of Alexander. What is said there about the obscure naval events of the crucial year 323/2 must then provide the framework into which any other information about those events is to be fitted.

For all its notoriety, Classical archaeologists find the Parthenon frieze a difficult object with which to come to terms: its position on the building is seen as perverse, its subject-matter impenetrable, and its ‘style’ anomalous. This paper sets out to show that these difficulties are inter-related.

Wedding ritual in tragedy tends to be subverted. In explaining and arguing for this generalisation I hope also to shed new light on some of the passages deployed.

My starting point is the actual wedding ceremony. How did the Athenians of the classical period imagine that it was celebrated? Our evidence derives largely from contemporary drama and vase-painting. The picture presented by this evidence coheres very well in certain respects with that derived from other periods and places: Sappho, Catullus' imitation of the Greek, the lexicographers, and so on. For example, one important element that is found in the Attic and the non-Attic evidence alike is the ambiguity, for the bride, of the transition. The abrupt passage to her new life contains both negative and positive elements. On the one hand it is like the yoking of an animal or the plucking of a flower. It means isolation, separation from her friends and parents. It is an occasion of resentment and anxiety, comparable to death.

The focus of this paper is a series of representations depicting a youth, with or without spears, pursuing a girl who is fleeing before him (PLATES IIb—c and IIIa—d). I call the pursuits in which the youth is carrying spears ‘type 1’ and those in which he is not ‘type 2’. I also discuss various matters pertaining to girls, marriage and the relations between the sexes, and to myths such as Peleus' capture of Thetis.

At present there appears to be general agreement that Cyprus entered the Persian Empire some time between c. 545 and 539. It will be argued here that this event did not occur until 526 or 525. The point involves other, much broader issues. Any power wishing to control Cyprus must possess a substantial navy. When, then, did Persia acquire sufficient naval strength to control the eastern Mediterranean? This last problem in turn raises the question of when the Persians annexed the countries of the Levant and Asia Minor from which they drew the whole of their fleet. Finally, because elaborate theories concerning the development of sixth century Cypriote sculpture have been built upon the conclusion that Cyprus submitted to Persia c. 545, a revision of that date will have important repercussions upon the history of Cypriote art.

In the centennial JHS, R. Goulet proposed a radical revision of the chronology of the life and literary productions of Eunapius of Sardis. Briefly stated, Goulet argued that Eunapius had arrived as a student in Athens in 364, rather than 362, and identified the later date with the terminus of the first ἔκδοσις of Eunapius' History, the publication of which he placed not before 395. This date, in turn, forced him to explain references in Eunapius' other known work, the Vitae Sophistarum, to post-364 events that had already been treated in the History, as anticipatory allusions integrated into accounts of earlier affairs. Though Goulet's reconstruction has as yet gone unchallenged, its infirm foundation of hypothesis supported by special pleading collapses beneath the weight of the evidence at hand.

It has become fashionable to discover political allusions in subjects painted on Attic pottery of the Archaic period. These allusions are of two kinds, not always clearly distinguished. One is deliberate party propaganda, especially for or against Pisistratus or his sons. The other, which reflects results of political action, need not have political intent: Theseus, for instance, was becoming more popular in Athens by the end of the sixth century, with official encouragement it seems, and his more frequent representation in art may be due simply to that popularity. Here I am concerned only with partisan propaganda, and particularly that concerning Pisistratus and his equation with Heracles. Though the propagandist theory has by now quite a literature, it is surprising that there has been little objection, at least in print.

In JHS cv (1985) 108–28 M. Vickers makes far-reaching claims for the dependence of Attic fine pottery on metalwork. I take them more or less in his order. Bronze Age and not only in Greece, but perhaps he reckons such imitation a recurrent phenomenon. At any rate his principal concern is with mature Black-figure and Red-figure.

Opramoas of Rhodiapolis in Eastern Lycia is one of the best known benefactors in the Greek half of the Roman Empire because the decrees and other documents inscribed on his tomb allow us to trace the extent and sequence of his benefactions and the honours he received. Two inscriptions from the Letoon near Xanthos, recently published by A. Balland, seem to extend this picture of generosity, one of them virtually doubling the previous total of Opramoas' benefactions. The first, Balland no. 66, is a statue base recording that Opramoas gave to the Lycian League land to finance a distribution to the koinobouloi of the league; the second, Balland no. 67, is a stele listing a much longer series of benefactions, to the league, to Xanthos and to other Lycian cities, but it does not, and never did, include the benefactor's name. Balland argues that the second inscription also refers to Opramoas, and this has been generally accepted; but it is argued here that its subject is not Opramoas but an anonymous contemporary, so that Opramoas loses his unique position among Lycian benefactors, and we can compare the nature, extent and distribution of his gifts with those of the Anonymous Benefactor and others.

At Iliad xxiii 192—211, Iris carries Achilles' prayer to the banqueting winds, in a passage whose humour offers relief after the funeral of Patroclus. At the same time, both in its immediate context and in its relation to Iris' two missions in Book xxiv, the scene contributes to Homer's presentation of the relation between gods and men.

The passage describes divine aid testifying to that concern of the gods for men which is to be so important in Book xxiv; and it immediately follows the account of another manifestation of divine concern, one which looks forward more directly to the next book—the description, at 184—91, of the protection of Hector's body by Aphrodite and Apollo. The fact that Homer anticipated here the description at xxiv 18—21 of Apollo's protection of the body points to the importance of the concern thus emphasised. In its position preceding the episode of the winds—rather than, for instance, following Achilles' earlier threats of maltreatment at xxiii 21–5—the description seems designed also to underline the fact that the parallel between Hector and Patroclus, most obvious in their deaths, is maintained here: both are the objects of divine aid, which in both cases takes the same form, the warding off of a threat to the hero's corpse, whether it is that of maltreatment by Achilles or the lesser threat of the pyre's failure to burn.

A recent discovery on the island of Aegina by Professor H. Walter (University of Salzburg) throws a new light on the origins of the so-called Aegina Treasure in the British Museum.

In 1982 the Austrians were excavating the Bronze Age settlement on Cape Kolonna, to the north-west of Aegina town. Immediately to the east of the ruined Temple of Apollo, and close to the South Gate of the prehistoric Lower Town, they found an unrobbed shaft grave containing the burial of a warrior. The gravegoods (now exhibited in the splendid new Museum on the Kolonna site) included a bronze sword with a gold and ivory hilt, three bronze daggers, one with gold fittings, a bronze spear-head, arrowheads of obsidian, boar's tusks from a helmet, and fragments of a gold diadem (plate Va). The grave also contained Middle Minoan, Middle Cycladic, and Middle Helladic (Mattpainted) pottery. The pottery and the location of the grave in association with the ‘Ninth City’ combine to give a date for the burial of about 1700 BC; and the richness of the grave-goods would suggest that the dead man was a king.

In 1949 Jeffery wrote of the Proto attic stand from Aegina once in Berlin, A 42: ‘… the dialect and letter-forms used by the painter of the stand indicate that he was himself an Aeginetan.’ Her suggestion was taken up by scholars who favored the idea of an immigrant painter in Athens, and eventually led to the hypothesis that a group of vases in the Black and White style— namely the ones by hands represented in the treasuretrove bought by the Berlin Antiquarium in 1936—were made in a workshop on the island. Since it is the one apparently sound piece of evidence that at least one painter of the Black and White style was Aeginetan, the stand and its painted inscription deserve another look.

A recent discovery on the island of Aegina by Professor H. Walter (University of Salzburg) throws a new light on the origins of the so-called Aegina Treasure in the British Museum.

In 1982 the Austrians were excavating the Bronze Age settlement on Cape Kolonna, to the north-west of Aegina town. Immediately to the east of the ruined Temple of Apollo, and close to the South Gate of the prehistoric Lower Town, they found an unrobbed shaft grave containing the burial of a warrior. The gravegoods (now exhibited in the splendid new Museum on the Kolonna site) included a bronze sword with a gold and ivory hilt, three bronze daggers, one with gold fittings, a bronze spear-head, arrowheads of obsidian, boar's tusks from a helmet, and fragments of a gold diadem (plate Va). The grave also contained Middle Minoan, Middle Cycladic, and Middle Helladic (Mattpainted) pottery. The pottery and the location of the grave in association with the ‘Ninth City’ combine to give a date for the burial of about 1700 BC; and the richness of the grave-goods would suggest that the dead man was a king.

Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 3711 discusses Lesbian antiquities. In column ii lines 31 to 36 a quotation from Alkaios is followed by remarks upon Alopekonnesians who settled at Ainos. The passage quoted from Alkaios is already known (130 L.-P. 130 b 9–11 Voigt [P. Oxy. 2165, fr. 1 ii 17–19’), but the new evidence in the lemma has enabled the editor, M. W.

It may be desirable to draw attention to an item of some interest for the history of literary genres which has just appeared in a Greek periodical which is not, as yet, widely accessible.

Angelos Matthaiou (ΗΟΡΟΣ iv [1986] 31–4) publishes two grave stelai from Nikaia, between Athens and Piraeus. The script is unusual, in that the texts are written retrograde and from the bottom to the top of the stele. The obvious parallel for this is a funerary text discussed by Missjeffery in BSA lvii (1962) 136 no. 42 and dated by her around 540; one of her last scholarly observations was to confirm that the new texts appeared to be in the same hand.