The three marble statue bases found in February 1922, incorporated as integral parts of the wall of Athens, are unique records of Attic art. While their supreme importance was recognised from the moment of their discovery, their exact contribution to our knowledge of Attic art is a matter upon which a variety of opinions has been expressed.

M. Philadelpheus, who as Ephor of antiquities of Attica was responsible for their custody at the time of discovery, was the first to publish them. He describes each briefly. No. I. he dates to the end of the sixth century B.C. No. II. he leaves undated, and No. III. he assigns either to the Peisistratid period or to the period of the Republic before 480. He makes no attempt to deal with the works in detail or to analyse their artistic significance.

M. Oikonomos has published a brief account of II. b, in which he suggests an interpretation of the so-called ‘hockey’ game. He disregards the problems of style and date.

Dr. della Seta of the Italian School at Athens is the only authority at present to discuss the artistic value and significance of Bases I. and II. and to attempt to place them chronologically in the Attic series. His exhaustive and attractive articles deserve the closest attention.

In my desire for compression in my article on ‘The Establishment of the Classical Type in Greek Art,’ I omitted to mention the influence of ‘costume’ in emancipating the Greek type of body from the dominant Eastern or tropical type with the fashion of the narrow or wasp-like waist. In a few words it may be stated: that, in tropical and in most savage life, the ‘loin-cloth’ is the common form of dress. In Oriental and Egyptian art this loin-cloth often takes a long, conventional and triangular form. The girdle, or belt, which fastens and upholds this loin-cloth, must be tightly drawn round the waist, and then marks a division between the upper and lower body. It thus habituates the eye to this subdivision between the upper and lower body, and has of itself the tendency to introduce the taste for the narrow waist.

The Greek shirt or chiton, supplemented or followed by the peplos or outer cloak, hides the waist. But, in most cases where the chiton only is worn, it is drawn over the belt or thong at the waist in graceful folds, and thus hides the waist-line. In athletic exercises and games, however, the figures were nude, and showed no compression or narrowing of the waist. Even when draped, Greek dress did not tend to produce the ‘narrow-waist fashion’ which the loin-cloth favoured. But the really efficient cause for the characteristic Hellenic type of the nude body is—as I stated—to be found in the establishment of Greek athletic games and the Ephebic order.

A careful reconsideration of the above document (see J.H.S. xliii. 1923, p. 194 sqq.) has led me to the conclusion that, in common with former editors, I had utterly missed its main point, and consequently gone astray on several details. I therefore lay before readers of this Journal a recantation of my errors, expressing at the same time my warm thanks to several scholars who have helped me to a truer interpretation, and above all to Dr. L. R. Farnell for a whole series of criticisms and suggestions.

I now regard the date of the inscription, for reasons presently to be stated, as being, not ‘about the third century,’ but the latter half of the fourth, or, to be specific, the year A.D. 361. Mr. M. N. Tod informs me that the shape and style of the letters are perfectly consistent with this supposition. ‘The letters,’ he writes, ‘are crowded close together and tend to become tall and narrow in a manner which indicates the triumph of the cursive influence over properly epigraphical or monumental script. … I think it would probably be found that the writing of I.G. xiv. 1018 (dated 370) and 1019 (dated 377) is not very far removed from that of the present text—and both of these relate to Eastern cults.’

[I.G. x.] Various potters' names on ancient lamps now preserved in the Museum at Preveza have been published by A. Philadelpheus. G. Seure devotes two articles to votive reliefs belonging to the Belgrade Museum which have remained unpublished or have disappeared; in the first of these no inscriptions are actually published, but notes are given on the history and provenance of the stones, the Thracian names and certain curious types of the ‘Dieu Cavalier,’ while the second contains a descriptive catalogue of twenty portrayals of various divinities and dedications to the hunter-god, of which, however, only two, both from Philippopolis, bear Greek inscriptions. M. N. Tod has completed his discussion of the Macedonian era, drawing up lists of (a) Macedonian inscriptions dated by the Augustan era only and of (b) those dated by one unspecified era, and concluding that almost all, if not all, of those in the latter category refer to the provincial era of 148 B.C. Ten inscriptions—one votive and the rest sepulchral—from Epidamnus, attributable apparently to the second or first century B.C., were published by S. Lambros, while C. Praschniker, in his account of his archaeological exploration of Middle Albania, gives a detailed description of various ancient sites, notably those of Apollonia, Nymphaeum and Byllis, and of the Via Egnatia and publishes thirteen epitaphs, six tile-stamps, a dedication to Asclepius, an honorary inscription and an interesting epigram of Justinian's reign, commemorating the work of the prefect Victorinus. To F. Bulič we owe our knowledge of an inscribed gem from Salona. G. I. Kazarov has collected in the districts of Mariovo and Prilep, in W. Macedonia, a Latin boundary-inscription of Hadrian's reign and thirteen Greek texts, several of which have since received needed correction. Three dedications, found near Kozani and now preserved there, have been copied and edited by A. D. Keramopoullos.

The Arguments In favour of the Babylonian origin of the zodiacal signs are even stronger than is stated by Dr. Fotheringham. He says: ‘In our zodiac the place of the Ear of Corn is taken by the Virgin holding the ear of corn. As the Babylonians connected this ear of corn with the goddess Ishtar, the process from the ear to the virgin holding the ear is not very great.’ But (kakkab) Eŝŝim (a word which means ‘ear of corn’ according to Landsberger, Der kultische Kalender der Babylonier und Assyrer, 9–10) is actually represented on a Babylonian tablet as a virgin holding the ear (see Thureau-Dangin in Revue d'Assyriologie, xvi. p. 135). There was not therefore any change in the conception.

The Metropolitan Museum has recently acquired a marble Neo-Attic krater of exceptional beauty in an excellent state of preservation. It has been briefly described in the Metropolitan Museum Bulletin for January 1924; but since its importance requires a fuller publication and its study brings up interesting stylistic considerations, I am glad of this opportunity for a fuller discussion.

The vase is of the bell-krater shape with overhanging lip and fluted bottom and two horizontal handles emerging from Satyr heads—evidently a favourite form with Neo-Attic sculptors of the first century, for we have a number of examples of it. The foot was worked in a separate piece and is missing; at the bottom of the vase is a marble tenon with a smoothed surface round it, indicating the width of the foot at the point of attachment. We have added a plaster foot, and restored the rim, which was much chipped.

This article attempts to summarise the results (1) of those excavations carried out in Greek lands in 1924 of which no report was available in time for my account printed in the last volume of the Journal, and (2) of the excavations of 1925 of which reports had come to hand before the end of September. This system will be followed in the accounts which I hope to contribute annually henceforward.

American School

The varied activities of the American School included excavations at the sites of Corinth, the Argive Heraeum, and Eutresis in Boeotia. At Nemea and Phlius, the opening campaigns at which sites were described in my report of a year ago, no further work was done in the summer of 1925. At Corinth, thanks to a generous subsidy by, and the personal enterprise of, Professor T. L. Shear, substantial progress was made with the Herculean task of clearing the theatre, where, on the south side of the orchestra, the depth of the deposit of earth proved to be 12 metres; before the season closed, over 5000 tons of debris had been removed to a dump a quarter of a mile away. In the west of the cavea the seats proved to be all destroyed, but a remarkable discovery was made, in the form of a wall, originally ca. 2·80 metres high, surrounding the orchestra. This where cleared was preserved to a height of 1·70 m., and was painted in fresco with scenes of life-sized figures engaged in combat with lions. One combatant, in action with a lion which charges him from the left, is clad in a long purple under-garment, with a white over-garment fastened at the knee; another wears a short garment which hangs down in front, leaving the legs bare to the hips, and white sandals; other figures, variously clad, and also fighting lions, appear in other scenes.

There are not many of the occupations of primitive man in Europe that have continued to the present day. The beasts that he hunted have, for the most part, disappeared: the elk and the mammoth are in the museum; the weapons which he employed in his pursuit of them must be sought for in the same quarter; if we were suddenly to come upon him in some unexplored area, his speech would be almost as unintelligible to us as the cry of a monkey, or the shriek of a sea-bird. But there is one primitive pursuit that is still being carried on almost unchanged. On the shores and in the shallows of the Eastern Baltic sea men are still searching and dredging for the exudations of the primeval forest which go under the name of amber. It was ornament and amulet in the beginning, it is a desirable decoration to-day; at one time almost an equivalent of the precious metals, and perhaps in earlier esteem than they, and not destitute of magical influences, as well as of commercial worth; it stands now, as then, with coral and with pearls, as a thing greatly to be desired.

I. Among the Attic inscriptions of the fifth century which require further study are two fragments with στοιχηδόν lettering of date 450–425 B.C. These were printed separately in the original Corpus Inscriptionum Atticarum, but were brought together in the second edition and partly closed up with restorations so as to form the nucleus of a running text. The fuller restoration of the more legible parts given below is highly problematical, for the left edge of the two stones has been broken off completely, so that the number of missing letters at the beginning of each line cannot be ascertained. Fortunately the key words of the text have survived in the extant portions, and these at least give the clue to its general sense, though the details may remain uncertain.

Suppose that you are writing a highly eulogistic obituary notice of a well-known statesman who has recently died, and suppose further that you wish to suppress all reference to one period in that statesman's life which lasted for six years, how are you going to proceed? It is clearly a ticklish matter. But if your hero left X at the beginning of that period of six years to go to Y, and then at its close returned from Y to X, it might be possible to telescope the two residences at X into a single visit, and to cover your suppression of the six years' absence by a discreet lack of definition in your chronological statements. If you are successful, others may follow your lead, and centuries later your evasions may escape the notice of the historical student.