The student of Theocritus who wishes to know what is the ῥόμβος plied by Simaetha at l. 30 of the second Idyll will find it identified in the scholia with the ἲυγξ of the refrain; and of all the modern commentators who express an opinion, Legrand is alone in questioning the identification. And yet to the attentive reader it should seem more than questionable. It will be well to begin with an examination of the passage.

The incantation of Simaetha, who might say, with Tibullus (1. 5. 16), uota nouem Triuiae nocte silente dedi, consists of nine terms, each of four verses, framed and articulated by the intercalary verse, ῖυγξ ἔλκε τύ τῆνον ἐμόν ποτὶ δῶμα τόν ἄνδρα of which there are therefore ten occurrences. The type to which the terms of the incantation in the main conform is given in the first two quatrains—(1) Strew barley-groats on the fire and say, ‘I strew the bones of Delphis.’ (2) I burn bay-leaves: so may Delphis burn. It consists, that is, of a magic act, accompanied by a prayer or by a statement equivalent to a prayer.

DR. Farnell's article on the Prometheus (JHS. liii, 40) demands serious attention, not only for the sake of the play and of Aeschylus himself, but also because it raises a question of fundamental importance to criticism.

Dr. Farnell divided the critics of the Prometheus into two groups. There are those who have surveyed the soul and mind, not to mention the language, of the poet to the last square yard, and have proved that Aeschylus never wrote the play at all. These heroes of scientific criticism, to whom Dr. Farnell has done curt justice, need not detain us; οὐ γὰρ φοβερὀν οὐδὲἐλεεινὸν τοῦτο, ἀλλὰ μιαρόν ἐστιν. Then there are the ordinary commentators on the play, who ‘through their lack of familiarity with Greek or Comparative Religion’ have missed its real significance. ‘Ο μεταξὺ ἄρα τούτων λοιπός, and he is Dr. Farnell, whose knowledge of Comparative Religion told him that Aeschylus could not have written this play, while his literary sense told him that Aeschylus did. The impasse is complete, and it is the signal merit of Dr. Farnell's article that it brings the dilemma into the open and states it with a fullness and a force almost worthy of the first play of an Aeschylean trilogy.

Of the children Echidna bore to Typhon the Chimaera was certainly the most illogical. She might even be considered as the very strangest among all the fantastical beings orientalising art in Greece liked to represent. For though she was called the goat, yet she stands before us as a lion, and the only thing there is of a goat about her is a head, that grows like a parasite out of the lion's back, and, in most cases, looks piteous rather than terrific. Even the later addition of a pair of forefeet cannot contribute to making her look formidable. We are told that she has a mighty weapon: the fiery flames she can eject from her mouth. Yet perched as she is, it is not easy for her to make use of this weapon; she will have to manœuvre very skilfully in order not to harm the lion, whose head will always come between her and the enemy they are confronting.

This war, in which Antigonus was faced by the triple alliance of Egypt, Athens, and Sparta with her allies, started with the decree moved by Chremonides in August–September of the year of the archon Peithidemos at Athens; the actual military operations began in the following spring. Peithidemos' year used to be put in 266/5; I gave my reasons in 1920 for putting it in 267/6, as had already been done by Professor A. C. Johnson. Recently Professor Dinsmoor has put Peithidemos in 270/69; the archon himself is a mere name and the tribe of his secretary unknown. Dinsmoor was trying to keep the tribal rotation undisturbed, and to effect this he shifted the archons Menekles and Nikias of Otryne (Nikias II) forward to 269/8 and 268/7; and as their years were war years he took these years to be part of the Chremonidean war and therefore put Peithidemos in 270/69. Subsequently Professor Ferguson followed Dinsmoor as to this; but he now puts Peithidemos in 267/6, for reasons different from mine, though he still retains Menekles and Nikias II in 269/8 and 268/7. Dinsmoor's proposal to antedate the beginning of the Chremonidean war by three years is so drastic that it needs careful examination; and before considering the archons in question I may briefly indicate some of the historical difficulties of the new view.

About fifty miles to the north-east of Baghdad, an irregular eminence known as Tell Asmar has covered till recently the town of Eshnunna, which was abandoned to the desert after its destruction by Hammurabi in the twentieth century before Christ. The excavations now being conducted there by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago have unearthed, among other important finds, a number of cylinder seals from early Dynastic and Akkadian levels, of which those reproduced in Fig. 1 and Plate II, 1, together with one seal (Plate II, 2) from the Southesk collection, form the basis of this article.

It will be observed that the designs shown in Fig. 1, a Sumerian impression pieced from fragments of clay, and Plate II, 1, an Akkadian stone cylinder of about 2500 B.C., both represent the conquest of a hydra-like monster. The impression has a serpent, two of whose seven heads have already been severed by a crudely-rendered man or god who holds a head in either hand, the stumps being visible above the living heads which still menace him. The scene is placed between friezes of scorpions, among whom is a single-headed snake, while a dragon with scorpion-tail stands behind the hydra, a participant, it may be, in the contest. An almost obliterated inscription in pre-Akkadian signs throws no light on the artist's intention.

The difficulty of transcribing words written in the Cypriote syllabary makes our acquaintance with the Cypriote dialect precarious and faulty, and in many cases leaves us uncertain about the exact form of a word, but in spite of this uncertainty it is clear that Cypriote, both in inscriptions and in glosses, shews in its vocabulary a notable similarity to the language of the Homeric poems. Inscriptions discovered since Hoffmann's day have enabled us to increase his already long list of such similarities (Die Griechischen Dialekte, I, pp. 278–283), and it is time to examine the evidence and see what bearing these have on the question of the nature of Homeric vocabulary. The problem presented by Homeric words in Cypriote is similar to that presented by their existence in Arcadian, but, though the meaning of Cypriote words is sometimes uncertain, Cyprus is richer in inscriptions than Arcadia and the ancient lexicographers and scholiasts have preserved a singularly large number of Cypriote glosses. The problem is simply stated: how far are we justified in believing that Homeric words in Cypriote are independent of the Homeric poems ? Are they indigenous words, naturally used, or are they ‘literary’ imitations of a well-known poetical style, used for effect in defiance of local dialect usage?

The third word of the guildtitle συμβίωσις τῶν συππινάλων, in a well-known inscription {CIG. 3304) presumably found at or near Smyrna, has remained a riddle ever since the publication of Marmora Oxoniensia (1763). The reason probably is that any suspicions felt as to the correctness of the text would have been completely lulled by its apparent legibility; even actual inspection might leave on a visitor to the Ashmolean Museum the impression that Chandler's copy, reproduced in CIG., contains no mistake.

According to Hesychius and Theophrastus the Dionysia κατ᾿ ἀγρούς were celebrated in Poseideon. This date is confirmed by an inscription from the deme of Myrrhinous. On this evidence the festival celebrated by Dicaeopolis in The Acharnians of Aristophanes is universally placed in this month, and the ritual performed by him and his family taken as a source for the reconstruction of the ritual programme of the winter Rural Dionysia.

It is now generally recognised that there were also spring rural festivals of Dionysus in the Attic demes, festivals closely related in ritual and conception to the Athenian Anthesteria. But it seems not to have been noticed that the Dionysia κατ᾿ ἀγρούς in The Acharnians may have been one of these spring festivals.

Heracles supports the sky, Athena helping him.' But was this—the description we hear so often—the sculptor's idea of the episode? Was he attempting to convey merely a general idea of the assistance rendered to Heracles by Athena, in a sculptural pattern designed for beauty only? The other metopes shew him to have been a man of literal mind: here too we should expect not only beauty of design but a logical care for the subsequent movements of the three figures. The logic is there, and should be clear to those who look at the metope with eyes not obscured by the common description of it. The Titan and the hero are at a deadlock. The one offers, the other cannot receive. It is Athena who takes the initiative, giving aid which only an Olympian can give. Her left hand is placed against the sky (fig. 1)—placed lightly, for it is lower than those of Heracles, and bears little of the weight at the moment. The next moment, and the next movement, are crucial; when the daughter of the sky god will herself lift up the sky. Then Heracles will be free to take the apples, and Atlas can resume his burden.