I wish to reply to the attack on my book, The Composition of Plato's Apology, which you have seen fit to publish over the signature G. T. in the last issue of JHS. (liv, p. 225). The general purport of the review is that I have invented a non-existent problem, and that the solutions of it, in general and in particular, which I have offered are misconceived and can be lightly dismissed. The writer's view, I gather, is that the Apology is throughout a substantial reproduction of Socrates' actual speech, from which nothing has been subtracted and to which nothing has been added; this at least appears to be meant by the words ‘ When he wrote the Apology, his motive was—why not?—to tell the truth.’ Now it is perfectly legitimate to believe that: what is illegitimate is to represent it as a fact which no one but a fool could question. Any well-informed student of Plato must know that competent critics from the days of Dionysius of Halicarnassus to those of Wilamowitz, J. B. Bury and Gilbert Murray, have been unable to accept it; there have been, indeed, as I pointed out in my preface, all shades of opinion expressed on this question. To disregard this fact, which is surely a material fact for a reviewer, betrays either astonishing ignorance or an arrogant and impudent dogmatism.

In the present article I attempt briefly to survey the books and articles relating wholly or largely to Greek inscriptions which appeared in 1933 and 1934. I do not refer to all reviews, but only to those (including some published in 1935) which are of special value to the student, either as offering a useful conspectus of the works concerned or as making original contributions to the subjects under discussion. I mark with an asterisk those works which I have been unable to consult directly. Once again I tender my heartfelt thanks to all scholars who, by sending me copies of their contributions to epigraphical studies, have helped me in my pleasant but onerous task.

Death has not taken from us during these years any whose main interests and achievements lay in the field of Greek epigraphy, though E. Cuq, E. Pottier and F. Vulič had done work of real value in it.

With reference to the alabaster bowl published under this title in our last number (Delbrueck and Vollgraff, JHS. liv, 129), we are asked to state that Rev. Father Bernhard Kreutzberger has had in preparation for some years past a monograph on this object, discussing it in detail from the historico-religious standpoint. He would be grateful for any correspondence which would further his undertaking. Address—Benediktinerkloster, Beuron, Hohenzollern, Germany.

Fig. 1 is a fragment in a private collection in England. It is said to have been found on the Acropolis of Athens, and Mr. Payne points out to me that it joins a fragment in the Acropolis collection, Graef 1780, pls. 83 and 87, with the inscription χ]ειρον εποιε[σεν. The vase was a Siana cup with overlap decoration. Red is used for the helmet, the second and fifth sections of the crest, and the inside of the Boeotian shield; white for the fifth, fourth and last sections of the crest, spots and stripes on the cuirass, the arm-strap and the shield-device, a seated lion or sphinx with one paw raised. The contours are incised, except for the upper edge of the Boeotian shield. In front of the crest is the end of a black line; it is too close to be part of the other warrior's crest and is not incised; probably it is the beginning of an inscription, no doubt the warrior's name. The painter has carelessly transferred to the upper part of the rim of the Boeotian shield the pattern belonging to the round one.

Since the publication of ‘Boeotian Geometricising Vases’ in this Journal (49, p. 160 f.) four more vases of this series have come to light. All are in Athens, the first three in the collection of Mr. Michael P. Vlasto, to whom I am very much indebted for allowing me to study and publish the vases and for providing the photographs here reproduced. The fourth is in the National Museum. Though all are in their general appearance thoroughly characteristic of the style, each one of them presents some novel feature.

The photographs of Pl. XII. shew a cast which is now in the Acropolis Museum at Athens. The upper part of the figure (minus the two fragments of the left arm) is usually known as the Aphrodite of Lyons or of Marseilles: the lower part and the fragments of the left arm are in the Acropolis Museum (the lower part, Dickins no. 269). As the photographs shew, these fragments are all parts of a single statue: the lower part joins the upper over a small area on the right side, the arm-fragments join over the whole of the inner broken surfaces. The join on the right side is not visible in the photographs here reproduced, but the relation of the two pieces is sufficiently clear from the correspondence of the folds of the drapery. The Lyons fragment was first mentioned in a work published in 1719, and must have reached France at the end of the seventeenth or at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Cho. 581–2

τὰ δ᾿ ἄλλα τσύτῳ δεῦρ᾿ ἐποπτεῦσαι λέγω ξιφηφρους ἀγῶνας όρθώσοντί μοι

In a recent article {JHS Iv. 20-34) I have argued that this passage is based on an allusion to the Eleusinian hro-meiot, the second grade of the Mysteries. My purpose now is to explain more clearly the significance of that conception.

Plato likened the soul of man to a charioteer, who drove two horses, one good, the other bad, one docile, the other recalcitrant (Phaedr. 246—7) : ἔνθα δὴ πόνος τε καὶ ἀγὼν ἔσχατος ψυχῇ πρόκειται. And he saw human life as a struggle in which many of the chariots clashed and fell (248b): θόρυβος οῦν καί ἅμιλλα λαί ἱδρὼς ἔσχατος γίγνεται … πᾶσαι δὲ πολὺν ἔχουσαι πόδρον ἀτελεῖς τῆς τοῦ ὄντος θέας ἀπέρχονται.

Mr. A. D. Trendall 's welcome publication (JUS liv, 175) of a volute crater in the Taranto Museum brings to light the second of two very important early South Italian vases. The other was published two years ago by Wuilleumier in RA 1933. ii, 3, and now that they have both been revealed it is time for them to sever partnership. Theyhave long left a gap in the history of South Italian vase painting, and have not unnaturally been usually classed together as the two important unpublished Taranto craters. One began to think of them automatically as companion pieces, probably by the same hand. But this they are now shewn not to be. This conclusion, which I can base on a study of photographs only, is confirmed by Mr. Trendall. His vase, with the Birth of Dionysos on the obverse, and an Amazonomachy on the reverse, is so like the well-known volute crater Naples 2411 (Sacrifice to Dionysos and a Centauromachy), as he has already indicated,8 that I do not hesitate to say that they are by the same hand, and to suggest that a name must be found for this important artist, whom I still disassociate from the Sisyphus painter, though he follows closely in his tradition. He also painted the Brussels volute crater A1018 with the Apotheosis of Heracles.

Well known though the grylli are, we have still very little to say about their meaning and about their origin.Our knowledge of them, which has hardly increased since the days of Furtwangler, amounts to the following facts. Grylli were one of the most popular motives for the decoration of gems in Roman times; they remained in favour during more than three centuries. Several indications lead us to believe that some pro-phylactic value was ascribed to them; this may also account for their long popularity. In appearance they can as a rule be divided into two classes. Either they are a composition of various human and animal heads, sometimes with birds added to them, or else they consist of the body of a bird, generally a cock, to which heads and masks are attached in different ways. As the cock often is provided with a horse's head, we are reminded of the Attic hippalectryon; it is, however, impossible to trace their descent from Greek art, for we do not know of any more complicated Greek design that may have inspired Roman gem-cutters; the hippalectryon itself even does not seem to have lived down to the Hellenistic period. On the other hand, it is equally impossible to regard them as an original Roman fantasy. In the first place, their connexion with the hippalectryon, though distant, is unmistakable; secondly and chiefly, we know there were grylli before the days of Roman glyptic art. In the necropolis of Tharros in Sardinia have been found several scarabs decorated with motives closely resembling the Roman grylli. Now the necropolis seems to have been in use for a very long time, but Furtwangler believed, no doubt rightly, that the bulk of the objects found in it, and especially the grylli, must be dated rather early as they still show some of the traditions of archaic art. Our Fig. 3a is a good example.