Although its origins are unknown, this small bronze statuette could well have come from Olympia, judging by its patina and by eight very similar figurines found in this sanctuary. These animals, which are distinguished by an exaggeratedly large head, and by the very noticeable contrast between the substantial body and the feet, which are considerably wider than they are thick, are typical products of the craftsmen of Olympia.

At the end of the Suppliant Women of Aeschylus, a lyrical argument develops which is without any exact parallel in Greek tragedy. Our single, badly corrupted, manuscript does not name the combatants; at the most crucial section it does not even indicate change of singer by the customary dash; it has no list of dramatis personae. The chorus of Danaids has long been arguing against a forced marriage, and it is generally accepted that they are one of the participants in the argument. But who are their antagonists? On the older view, the chorus is divided against itself; on the more recent one, another group of singers is disputing with them. Who these singers are is not generally agreed, though the majority vote is for a chorus of handmaidens. It will be my concern in this paper to argue that the antagonist is one person and that person is Hypermnestra, who, in the sequel, alone of the Danaids spared her husband, Lynceus, and thus founded the royal line of Argos, where the play is set. The exact way in which Aeschylus portrayed her action, and the fate of her sisters, are quite uncertain.

A great deal of modern scholarship has been expended on the subject of Plutarch’s sources and on the manner in which he composed his Lives. As a result of the painstaking analyses of the fifty or so cross-references in the Lives, a rough order in which they were probably written can now be descried and this has been a great boon for those who would use the information therein for historical purposes. As regards those Lives dealing with the luminaries of the late Republic, it can be said that the Lucullus and probably the Sertorius were among the first four sets to be written, that the Cicero appeared with the Demosthenes in the fifth set, then came the Sulla, the Brutus, the Caesar, the Pompeius, and subsequently the Crassus, Cato minor, Antony and Marius. (The order of the last four cannot be fixed, nor can the place of the Lives of the Gracchi.) A knowlege of this sequence explains the differences and occasional contradictions between individual Lives by exposing Plutarch’s earlier unfamiliarity with certain traditions and suggesting divergent source traditions which surfaced only when Plutarch was researching a particular character. (This, of course, makes the material even more valuable.)

The public career of M. Ulpius Appuleius Eurykles spanned most of the second half of the second century. He is recorded as a representative of his native city Aezani at the Panhellenion in Athens for the year 156/7. This was probably the last year of his four-year term. During that period Eurykles distinguished himself in the eyes of both his fellow Panhellenes and Athenian society for, after he left Athens and returned to Asia, four letters of commendation were sent on his behalf: two to Aezani and two to the koinon of Asia. A fifth letter was also directed by the Panhellenion to the emperor Antoninus Pius in which the virtues of Eurykles were drawn to his attention.

The garrison of Mesopotamia in the later second century is unknown. What follows, therefore, is inevitably somewhat speculative. Nevertheless, with little likelihood of any foreseeable accretions of much new epigraphic or archaeological evidence, it may not be unproductive to resume such evidence as is available and consider the probabilities by reference to other comparable regions.