Technicians at the J. Paul Getty Museum have kindly informed me that the ring turns out not to be of solid gold but rather a substantial gold-plate. Analysis has not yet been done, but the metal underneath is most probably bronze.

To put forward ideas on the name and nature of Helen may seem hazardous. As to her name, Chantraine's ‘il est vain de chercher une étymologic’ is fair warning, and as to her nature, the views of Wilamowitz and Martin Nilsson, diametrically opposed as they are, reveal the uncertainty of the evidence. Nevertheless an attempt to outline the problems shall be made, and if any solutions are proposed, it must be understood that they are meant to be tentative.

The broad context is a discussion of priority and posteriority, which runs from 1018b9–1019a14 (compare Categories 14a26–b24). A type of priority is described at 1019a2–4, and then further discussed at 1019a4–14. It is described as follows: ‘All those things are said to be prior in respect of nature and being, which can exist without other things, while those other things cannot exist without them.’ My concern in this note is with the parenthesis which immediately follows: ‘This is a distinction which Plato employed.’

All the commentators despair of locating this reference to Plato. Some, like Tredennick, (ad loc. in his Loeb edition), simply despair; others, like Ross (ad loc. in his edition), speak of ‘an oral utterance’, and are accordingly tempted towards finding yet another reference to the Unwritten Doctrines, either in the vague sense that anything not in the dialogues is by definition ‘unwritten’, or more specifically in the sense of some aspect of the doctrine of ideal numbers (e.g. Trendelenburg, cited by Ross).

Aristotle relates that during his second exile Pisistratus joined with others in the colonization of Rhaccelus on the Thermaic Gulf: πρῶτον μὲν συνῷκισε περὶ τὸν Θερμαῖον κόλπον χωρίον ὅ καλεῖται Ῥαίκηλος. The context of this foundation is very obscure. J. W. Cole nevertheless proposed to consider this enterprise as ‘a combined Peisistratus-Eretria settlement’: this is a very attractive hypothesis which I should like to explore, adding some further considerations.