The excavations between the Pnyx and the Areopagus made by the German School under the direction of Professor Dörpfeld, have been continued once more during the present season. In consequence of the great interest of the topographical problems involved, it was decided last year that the site should be expropriated by the Greek Government, and thus the excavators are no longer hampered by the necessity of piling up the earth near at hand, so that it could be put back again if required. The liberal subvention made by the German Government to its School was supplemented this year by private subscriptions, for the purpose of these excavations, and consequently it was possible to continue them for a considerable time, and to clear a large area.

By the death of Sir Charles Newton, England has lost the greatest of her archæologists. He possessed, indeed, in many respects, almost ideal qualifications for the career which he adopted; and I think it may be said, without exaggeration, that no man of our time has done more to recover the monuments of Greek art and history, and to make them accessible to the study and appreciation of our own day. In him, too, this School has lost a friend and a benefactor; indeed, but for the effect produced in England by his discoveries and his influence, it may be doubted whether the British School at Athens would ever have been founded.

Perhaps no passage in the whole of the Acts has suffered more from hazy and ill-considered interpretation than that dealing with the visit of St. Paul to Athens (Acts xvii. 16–34). This was due partly to a certain carelessness in defining the exact meaning of individual words, partly to the want of accurate historical knowledge. To Prof. Ernst Curtius belongs the credit of preparing the way for a sounder interpretation, and of prescribing the limits within which the interpreter must move. While critics and expositors before him had generally assumed that the appearance of St. Paul on the Areopagus (for so they interpreted ἤγαγον ἐπὶ τὸν Ἄρειον Πάγον) implied also his presence before the Council of the Areopagus, Curtius challenged this assumption and concluded, as the result of investigations into the history and procedure of the Council, that if St. Paul was led before the Council he stood not on the Areopagus, but in the Stoa Basileios in the Agora. We say nothing, at present, as to the soundness of Curtius' conclusion.

While in Greece during the past spring, I procured from Mr. G. B. Grundy his extremely able survey and account of the battle of Platæa, and after reading it I spent every minute of time that I could spare on the ground, with his map. This time unfortunately only amounted to two hours, 5 to 7 P.M., on the first day, and seven hours, 5 A.M. to 12 noon, on the second, including a visit to the site of Platæa itself, wherein I had the company of Dr. Merentites, of Kriekouki, who had most kindly given me hospitality for the night, and his son. Moreover, as the previous day had been a regular downpour, the ground was in its very heaviest condition, and locomotion was by no means rapid. I cannot, therefore, presume to offer any local criticism which is worth considering as against Mr. Grundy's opinion; but I made certain notes at the time, including a strategical criticism of a general character, and have been asked to publish them in this journal.

Of the four great battles of the Persian Wars, Marathon is the only one in which a visit to the scene suggests no new problem. It is simple to reconstruct Thermopylæ on paper, but a survey of the spot disconcerts all one's calculations, owing to the changes wrought by the advance of the land upon the sea. The view of the straits of Salamis insists upon questions of orientation which hardly arise in studying the descriptions of Æschylus and Herodotus.

The Annual Inselreise of the German Archæological Institute at Athens was this year extended to the coast of Asia Minor, so as to include Assos and the Troad. For the first time Dr. Döorpfeld had an opportunity of expounding to an audience of his colleagues the remarkable discoveries made during his two last seasons at Hissarlik.

The object of the Island Tour is to visit in the course of a few days a number of sites on the Greek coast or islands, which are otherwise difficult of access—Rhamnus, Eretria, Oropos, Delos, and others. The hospitality of the Institute finds room on board its steamer for scholars and travellers from all parts of Europe. The party of fifty on board the Ἔλπις spoke nine or ten different languages, and included representatives from the four Athenian Schools of Archæological, architects, artists, schoolmasters, and numerous professors.

Plate III. is intended to show the present appearance of the two temples at Rhamnus, after their complete excavation by the Greek Archaeological Society. The plans and architectural details of the temples were published in the Antiquities of Attica (plates to chapters vi. and vii.) by the Society of Dilettanti; but the excavations made by their expedition must have been of a very slight nature, as they did not discover the sculptures now placed in the National Museum at Athens, and published in the Ἐφημερίς Ἀρχαιολογική, 1891, Plates IV, IX.