The conventional interpretation of the name Anthesteria as festival of flowers, or of the wine-bloom, and the derivation from ἄνθος always insecure and unsatisfactory, will need to be reconsidered in the light of Miss Harrison's paper in the present volume of the Journal on the origin and nature of the festival itself. Even from the Dionysiac point of view, it does not appear that either flowers or the ἄνθος of wine were connected with the season or the ceremonies in such a way as naturally to give a name to the whole: and still more doubtful is the supposed formation of the word. Nouns in -τηριο- are normally formed from verb-stems, through the ‘noun of the agent’ in -τηρ and take their sense from the action described by the verb, as σωτήριος λυτήριος βουλευτήριον etc. The names of festivals ending in -τηρια are no exception to this rule. They describe the action in which the ceremony consisted, or with which it was chiefly connected. Thus ἀνακλητήρια is a feast or ceremony of ἀνακλησις ἀνακαλυπτήρια of ἀυακἀλυψις and so on.

These words are taken from a short choric dance-song addressed to Kybele. The verses are of singular interest: the epithets express the inner being of the Great Mother, as it was conceived by her Phrygian worshippers, and the local colouring is unexpectedly faithful; there can be no doubt for instance that Sophokles distinguished accurately between Kybele and Demeter. The chorus is thus of high historical value to the student of religions: we have very little evidence of such an early date from the country itself and we know even less of the relations, sentimental and other, then existing between Athens and Phrygia. The next Attic witness—Demosthenes—heaps ridicule upon the Phrygian mysteries. A century more of Persian rule may have been accompanied by a general deterioration of the Anatolian mysteries: in the time of Sophokles more visible relics of the glories of Lydia and Phrygia may have been standing, but this is a matter of speculation.

The object of this paper is to examine some of the arguments which have been used to support current reconstructions of the Homeric House, and in particular of the House of Odysseus, as it is described in the Odyssey; and to add a few points of interpretation and of criticism which I have not succeeded in finding already in print. In order to make these latter intelligible, it will be necessary to recapitulate much that has been stated by previous writers on a subject which is ‘always with us’; and not a little that has been established with some degree of certainty. It is perhaps necessary also to add, that the interpretation which I propose is intended to apply, almost without exception, to the Homeric poems in their present state; and to determine the domestic architecture and domestic habits which were familiar both to rhapsodists and to their audiences at the time when the poems, and the ‘Vengeance of Odysseus’ in particular, were being reduced to the form in which, with but slight aberrations, they have survived. It is difficult to believe that men who were endowed with so keen a visualizing faculty as the rhapsodists and their patrons really tolerated unintelligible archaism in the domestic topography of their ballads; and we may fairly assume that the movements of the personages implicated in the ‘Vengeance,’ into and out of the House of Odysseus, were still intelligible, and even familiar, to both singers and listeners. That this was so in the Homeric Age, and that anachronisms in the description were currently corrected, as one custom and another became obsolete in daily life, is made very probable, if not certain, by the analogous case of Homeric armour; where, as Dr. Reichel has argued in his Homerische Waffen, the introduction of the θώρηξ and the consequent changes of drill and fence, are reflected in the poems by interpolated passages, introduced by θώρηξwearing rhapsodists to meet the critisisms of a θώρηξwearing public.

About forty-five miles in an air-line west-south-west of Samsun (Amisos) lies the town of Vezir Keupru, situated at the eastern edge of a rolling plain bounded towards the west by the Halys, on the south by the long ridge of Tavshan Dagh, and on the north by the mountain-rim of the plateau through which the Halys forces its way to the sea. This undulating tract is the extreme westerly part of the ancient Phazemonitis, over which passed the one great ‘through route’ from Constantinople across Paphlagonia to the Euphrates, following throughout its course a line curiously parallel to the coast. Though this road is not described in any ancient document, its importance for the Roman period is amply proved by a remarkably complete series of milestones, erected or re-erected by successive emperors between Nerva and Constantine, which we discovered last summer between the Halys and Neocaesareia. In modern times it cannot claim any such importance.

The following Roman milestones were copied by Mr. J. G. C. Anderson and myself in August 1899 on the direct road between Niksar (Neo-Caesarea) and the ancient bridge on the Halys near Vezir Keupru (Neo-Claudiopolis). I arrange them from East to West.

1. At Zilkhor, a village near the right bank of the Lycus, about 22½ English miles from Niksar and 4½ from the bridge over the Iris at the site of Magnopolis, nearly opposite to Herek. The stone, which is of coarse marble and broken above, stands in an old cemetery outside and west of the village.

It is satisfactory to be able to begin this report by announcing important additions to the equipment of three of the Athenian Schools. The German Institute was able to inaugurate its spacious new library at a special meeting held on March 12 to celebrate the completion of its twenty-fifth year. The British School has received from Mr. W. H. Cooke, nephew and joint-heir of the late George Finlay, the library of some 5,000 volumes, together with the bookshelves and antiquities, which had remained untouched in the historian's house in the ῾Οδὸς ῾Αδριανοῦ since his death in 1875. And M. Homolle is drawing up the plans for an annexe which will enable the French School to extend its hospitality to students from Belgium, Russia and other countries which have no archaeological headquarters in Athens.

The excavations on the north side of the Acropolis have been suspended. The Archaeological Society is spending large sums each year upon the repairs to the Parthenon, and is also buying up houses, when opportunities occur, with a view to continuing the excavations on the site of the ancient Agora. One great undertaking, upon which the Society has been engaged at intervals for upwards of forty years, has been brought to a successful conclusion. The Stoa of Attalos is now completely cleared and from being one of the most bewildering it has become one of the most intelligible of Athenian monuments. Great credit is due to Mr. Mylonas, who has been in charge of the work for the last two years. The Archaeological Society has recently published a first instalment of the late Dr. Lolling's Catalogue of Inscriptions, and a volume on Epidaurus by Dr. Kavvadias. These are to be followed at intervals by other archaeological books. The third, which is in the press, is a history of the doings of the Society from its foundation to the year 1900. Its income and practical usefulness have increased immensely during the past five years. The Society has recently lost one of its best-known members in Stephanos Kumauudes, who was for thirty-six years its secretary and for many years keeper of its antiquities, now merged in the national museum. He was an honorary member of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, and author of a well-known volume of sepulchral inscriptions.