It is a privilege to be allowed to take a part, however humble, in the chorus of heartfelt congratulation, sincere admiration and affectionate good wishes which will greet Professor Sir John Beazley on the occasion of his sixty-sixth birthday. Among my proudest memories is the fact that, during the tenure of my Readership in Greek Epigraphy, my duties were ‘to lecture or give instruction … under the direction of the Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art’, and I owe much to his inspiration, his example and his friendship. Nor will it, I hope, be inappropriate if I here offer to him notes on some inscriptions presented to the University of Oxford and housed and exhibited in the Ashmolean Museum, with which the thought of Beazley, the gracious genius loci, is for me, as for many others, inseparably associated. I shall say nothing of the interesting group of Greek inscriptions in Pusey House, nor of the large collection of Latin inscriptions in the Ashmolean, and shall, in the interests of brevity, confine myself in the present article to the Greek inscriptions which were in the possession of the University in 1763, leaving to a future occasion some remarks on the considerable accessions made since that date.

A growing interest in the study of archaeology has led in recent years to very substantial developments in the several collections of antiquities in Australia and New Zealand. Pottery has perhaps made the greatest contribution to this expansion, and the total amount of available material here has reached a point at which definitive publication in the Corpus Vasorum has become well worth while. Provision for this has already been made, but in the meantime it seemed to me that some account of the Attic vases in this part of the world might be of service and interest to scholars, since our collections by reason of their remoteness are not well known, although they contain several distinguished pieces, including a few which have been lost to sight for some time. For the sake of brevity, and because they are likely to be of wider interest, I confine myself here to Attic black-figure, red-figure and white-ground.

The main Australian collection of Greek vases is housed in the Nicholson Museum at the University of Sydney. The nucleus of this collection was acquired, some 90 years ago, by Sir Charles Nicholson, Chancellor of Sydney University from 1854 to 1862, during his travels in Italy and was catalogued by Miss Louisa Macdonald in 1898. Considerable additions have since been made by gift or purchase, as may be seen from a comparison between the vases listed by Miss Macdonald and those mentioned in the second edition of the Handbook to the Nicholson Museum, published fifty years later.

Among the fairly numerous Boeotian kantharoi with decoration in applied white on black there is a small class of mid-fifth century date, some painted with a garland only, others with figures. My husband drew attention to this small group nearly forty years ago when discussing the undecorated black kantharoi of this shape found at Rhitsona. He knew three vases with figures. The first was the well-known kantharos in Brussels published originally by Graindor and now appearing again in the third fascicule of the Belgian section of the Corpus Vasorum. On each side is a σκευοφόρος carrying on his shoulder a yoke from which two baskets are suspended. The painter has shown us the contents of one of the baskets. It is a consignment of pottery—two kantharoi, six kylikes, and two plates are visible. The vase thus provides an apt illustration of the φορτίον that the Boeotian in the Acharnians might have taken back from Athens and of the sycophant's uncomfortable mode of travel. The second, in the Römisch-Germanisches Museum in Cologne, shows a hoplite advancing.

The amphora here published (Plates XLIII–XLIV) was acquired for the Reading University collection on the London market in 1947. Nothing is known of its provenance. A detailed description with full illustrations will be given in the first Reading fascicule of the Corpus Vasorum, but so notable an addition to the Pontie series (to keep this convenient and generally used name for these vases which are now universally agreed to have been made in Etruria) calls for more comment than is desirable in a Corpus publication. The vase has a triple interest: it has unique pictures of scenes from the Troilus story, it affords new material for the study of the Pontic series, and it helps to connect Etruscan vase paintings with the wall paintings of Etruscan tombs. It thus provides a new item in a group of monuments which I have long believed to have been the source of a whole series of statements about the history of the Tarquin family which were dismissed by historians of the last century as obvious inventions, but which are in all probability the only statements about them which are in fact based on contemporary sources, that is to say, the archaeological material of which we can now speak with some assurance thanks to the work of Beazley and members of his school.

To begin with the pictures on our vase. When I first saw it the gaily coloured pictures at once recalled the painting of Achilles lurking behind the fountain on the wall of the Tomba dei Tori at Tarquinia. The interpretation of the actual scene I owe to Beazley, who has described it with his usual pregnant brevity in Etruscan Vase Painting2 as ‘a unique representation, in a furious style, of Achilles carrying Troilos to the altar of Apollo’ (Plates XLIII, b and XLIV, a). This final scene of the Troilus tragedy appears comparatively seldom on vase paintings, and, where it does occur, never, as far as I am aware, depicts this precise moment. Generally Achilles has reached the altar and Troilus is either being killed or has been killed already.

The critics and commentators who read these notes will probably object that I have not paid sufficient attention to the earlier literature on the subject. I must admit that I have not read Gerlach's paper, which is not accessible in Alexandria, but I have read at one time or another most of the recent papers on the Homeric house from Myres' paper in the Journal of Hellenic Studies to that of Palmer lately published in the Transactions of the Philological Society.* I think that practically all of what was written on the Homeric house before the excavations of Schliemann at Tiryns should now be disregarded. Further since most of that written since the excavation of Tiryns follows the erroneous or ‘traditional’ interpretation of the two megara at Tiryns as a men's and as a women's megaron, it also need not now be taken into account. Palmer's paper makes a great advance, but he did not have the opportunity of knowing the House of Columns at Mycenae. I have therefore as regards earlier literature confined myself to Homer himself and standard editions like those of Monro, Leaf, Merry, and Stanford, and have read the newer translations of the Odyssey, the Loeb version and those of T. E. Shaw and E. V. Rieu. If I have missed anything of importance I can only plead that Alexandria of to-day does not possess the same library facilities as Ptolemaic Alexandria.

The red-figure plate in the Ashmolean Museum bearing the inscription Μιλτιαδες καλος (Fig. 1) has been ascribed, by the scholar to whom these pages are dedicated, to the Cerberus Painter; and dated to 520–510 B.C.

We ask ourselves inevitably: is this the great Miltiades? and he who tries to answer is unusually incurious if he does not ask the second question: is the beardless mounted archer, here depicted, Miltiades himself? He looks to be under twenty, Marathon was fought twenty to thirty years later. What age was Miltiades at Marathon in 490? what age was he between 520 and 510 B.C.?

The following list contains all the masks on Gnathia vases which I have seen or know from illustrations or photographs. I have added (nos. 37–44) Gnathia pictures of actors wearing masks, but I have not included either the Würzburg fragment with a tragic scene or the Leningrad kalyx krater with the prologue of the Eumenides because in both, though the painter may be influenced by the masks worn, he is painting characters rather than actors. I have also excluded satyrs because here again the boundary between character and actor is not clear to me. The list is divided into hanging masks (1–36) and worn masks (37–44). All the actors except the tragic actors belong to the so-called ‘Phlyakes’ known from a large number of South Italian vases of different manufactures, which are decorated with scenes sometimes inspired by Attic Middle Comedy. There is a case for interpreting the hanging masks also as stage masks since the hanging tragic masks (3–5a) are certainly stage masks and the mask of the old man on the London krater (7) is very like a terracotta actor in Oxford; the mask on the Haileybury krater recurs on an Attic relief.

It is a pleasure to record this year that the promise of more substantial results held out in the previous slender reports from Greece has not been disappointed, and that the discoveries made in the latter part of 1949 and the year 1950 challenge comparison with any prewar years. The Archaeological Society has undertaken a number of new excavations in different parts of the country and has already achieved some remarkable successes. The foreign Schools have not lessened their endeavours; the Italian School has resumed its activity in the field, and the French have supplemented their achievements on land by commencing a systematic investigation of inshore waters. The Herákleion Museum is now open again. In Eleusis and Tegea the museums are being reconstituted, and that at Sparta has been reopened; the Hermes of Praxiteles has been brought above ground again at Olympia. A new wing comprising an exhibition gallery and workrooms has been added to the Corinth Museum. The museum in Thera is to be set in order, and the archaeological collection at Syra has been re-assembled in the Town Hall. In Athens, there are now six exhibition galleries open in the National Museum with a splendid selection which ranges from early Hellenic to the fourth century B.C.; a new gallery has been constructed in the Byzantine Museum to hold select exhibits, and a library and rooms for study are being fitted out in the cellars of the main building there. Under Prof. A. Orlandos' direction many Byzantine churches and monasteries which needed attention have been put in order in the last year.

In the summer of 1950 it proved possible to continue the British excavations at Mycenae which had been suspended in 1939 owing to the war. The Greek Government courteously granted the necessary permission and Dr. Papademetriou, Ephor of Antiquities for Argolis, and Mr. Petsas cooperated most cordially throughout. The work was carried out under the aegis of the British School at Athens which made a generous grant towards the funds and Mr. J. M. Cook, the Director, and Mr. Sinclair Hood, the Assistant-Director, who both took part in the excavations, afforded all possible assistance.

The excavations were especially concerned with the following points: the further exploration, within and without the Cyclopean walls, of the Prehistoric Cemetery to which belonged the royal Shaft Graves found by Schliemann; an attempt to trace the line of the Middle Bronze Age wall of the earliest citadel which preceded the Cyclopean fortress; the re-examination of Tsountas' House, an important building within the walls first excavated in 1886; the clearing of the Epano Phournos tholos tomb; the further exploration of the Cyclopean Terrace Building discovered in 1923; and the investigation of a newly discovered building, now known as the House of Stirrup Jars, near the so-called Tomb of Clytemnestra. The architect of the expedition, Mr. Charles Hobbis, R.I.B.A., also assisted the Greek authorities at their request in the conservation and repairs in progress at the Tomb of Clytemnestra and the Lion Gate.

The identification of more Neolithic sites, two on the North coast, six and seven miles east of Kyrenia, throws light on the distribution, and is suggestive of the origin, of the first known settlers on the island.

The publication of the results of the excavations in the Vounous cemetery sponsored by the British School at Athens (E. and J. Stewart, Vounous, 1937–1938. Lund, 1950) offers a wealth of material from the first stage of the Early Bronze Age, which is a valuable complement to that excavated by P. Dikaios and Dr. C. F. A. Schaeffer in the later section of the cemetery.

Several LCII tombs, accidentally discovered at Kalavassos (site Mavrovouni) were excavated by the Antiquities Department. Two of them produced white slip vases of fine quality, which with the other contents are in the Larnaca Museum.

Further campaigns by both Schaeffer and Dikaios carried forward the joint-excavation of the late Bronze Age town site at Enkomi. The grid plan of the street system is beginning to take shape and a new section of the town wall has been laid bare. But both excavators in their 1950 campaigns were mainly occupied with the further investigation of the two impressive buildings, mainly of ashlar construction, previously discovered. Schaeffer recovered evidence of re-use, after a fire, evidently in the twelfth century; and of this period found two seated bronze statuettes, one of them on a throne.