It is much to be regretted that the invaluable researches of Schliemann, which have done so much to illuminate many fields of Homeric archaeology, help us but little in our reconstruction of the houses of Homeric chiefs. Both at Hissarlik and at Mycenae that indefatigable explorer laid bare the foundations or substructions of houses, large in comparison with those which surrounded them, which must probably have belonged to chiefs or kings. But the dwelling at Hissarlik belonged to a far ruder city than that of Homer, and in the foundations of walls near the Agora of Mycenae no clear plan can be made out. So it is also at Ithaca. Gell's description of the plan of the palace of Odysseus, a plan which he professed to be based on still existing remains on Mount Aetos in Ithaca, rests, as is now well known, on nothing but invention and imagination. Schliemann found indeed on the summit of that hill a small level platform of triangular form, which he conjectures to have been originally in size some 166 feet by 127 feet, and surrounded by a massive circuit-wall. And within the circuit he found remnants of six or seven Cyclopean buildings, which may have been chambers of one house. But there is nothing to lead us to suppose that these buildings belonged to the Homeric age; therefore for a restoration of the palace of that age they afford little or no material.

The student of Greek religion and mythology who devoted his attention solely to the more striking figures of the Hellenic Pantheon would very imperfectly apprehend its true extent and character. No doubt the wide-spread cultus and the many-sided nature of its Dii Majores give them a pre-eminent claim upon our study, but at the same time we can never leave wholly out of sight those innumerable subordinate beings—whether divine or semi-human—who were created by the exuberant fancy of the Greek, and honoured by his worship. The presence of these lesser gods is felt at every turn: their images are set, as it were, upon every high hill, and under every green tree; and though their personality may often be less interesting than that of the greater deities, nay, though it be sometimes colourless or barely intelligible, our survey of the broad field of Hellenic worship and legend will always remain imperfect so long as we suffer these, its minuter, objects to escape our vision. Thus, for instance, in treating of the great Greek divinity of healing—Asklepios—we cannot afford to ignore those inferior personages who follow in his train and even share his powers. It is of one of these subordinate divinities—the god Telesphoros—that I propose to speak in the present paper.

The frieze of the Pergamene altar, on which the battle between the gods and giants is represented, however its artistic work may be judged, will always hold henceforth an important place in the history of Greek art. The main outlines of its subject, the broad marks of its style, have already been made known in England through descriptions and photographs. A slight knowledge of the frieze will show one at once a mass of elaborate detail, which finds its place there because the artists have endeavoured to express in their work the various traditions which have grown up around the myth. We have therefore to deal here with a learned and reflective art; and to search out its full meaning is to ask how it stands in relation to the earlier tradition. When one looks at the forms which these enemies of the gods are here made to assume, one remarks instantly the distinction between those who are rendered with full human shape, and those whose bodies are a combination—often motley enough—of animal forms appearing side by side with the human. Now it is with this distinction that the whole history of the development of the tradition is concerned—and it is my aim to show that the Pergamene work reproduces the elements which an analysis of the myth discloses. The earth-born giants may have been regarded under three different aspects—as autochthones, a primeval race of men, or a race anterior to men, (2) as daemones, or beings that belonged to the worship of a primitive people, (3) as allegorical figures, as personifications of certain physical forces, certain powers in the natural world hostile to man. It is obvious that these ideas need not be distinct, and that by a fusion of the last two the giant may appear as a daemon whose being is rooted in certain elementary operations of nature. But one may ask the question—and the answer intimately touches the Pergamene frieze—whether, whenever the giants appear either in literature or art, there is always one and the same original conception in the background, or whether the one and the other of the above-mentioned ideas is prominent at different times and in different places?

The chief authority for the life of this saint is the biography by Symeon Metaphrastes, written about 900–50 A.D. It quotes the epitaph on the saint's tomb, and the question whether this epitaph is an original document of the second century A.D., or a later forgery, is one of the utmost importance for the early history of the Christian church, and of many literary points connected with it. The document is not very easily accessible, so that it may be well to quote it as it is given in the Life by Metaphrastes; the criticism of the text has been to a certain extent advanced by the metrical restorations proposed by Pitra and others.

The central peninsula of the three that project from the south of the Peloponnese, which since the Middle Ages has been known as the district of Maina, is one of the wildest parts of Greece owing to its rugged mountains and rocky shores, and has always been the abode of independent and intractable races. The emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus speaks of the Mainotes as having retained their primitive heathenism until the latter half of the ninth century. At the present day they are notorious for their blood-feuds, which are the scourge of the country, and seriously interfere with its social life. On the western shore of this remote district, near a small harbour that runs in from the Messenian gulf, is the town of Vitylo, one of the comparatively few places in the Morea, though these are more numerous on the seaboard than in the interior, which have retained their classical name. It was formerly called and this appellation now appears in the form which accounts for its pronunciation as Vitylo. The modern form of the name is probably the original one, for Ptolemy calls the place Rather more than two centuries ago this town was the scene of a remarkable emigration. At that time the Turks, who had made themselves masters of Crete in 1669, proceeded to attempt the subjugation of Maina. Spon and Wheler, who sailed round cape Matapan on their way to Constantinople in the summer of 1675, were told that the invaders had succeeded in reducing most of the country by means of forts built on the coasts—they seem to have been aided by the treachery of some of the inhabitants—and that part of the population had escaped to Apulia. A few months after these travellers passed by, a number of the inhabitants of Vitylo and its neighbourhood, amounting to about 1000 souls, were persuaded by the Genoese to emigrate under their auspices to Western Europe. They ware led by one of their countrymen, John Stephanopoulos, and were established by their new protectors in Corsica, which was at that time a Genoese possession; and in that island their descendants remain at the present day.

It is, I believe, at least a tolerated doctrine within the precincts of the Society for Promoting Hellenic Studies that the Hellenic tongue is not dead. Nay, I trust that it may be also a tolerated doctrine if I hold that the Hellenic tongue is now alive, not in the sense of having come to life after ages of death, but in the sense of never having been dead at all. At the meeting which called our body into being, words were spoken, not casual words from the lips of any casual speaker, but words of authority spoken from the chair, which ruled, plainly enough at least for me, that our researches, whether into art or language or any other branch of the study of Greek history and Greek life, were not to be shut up within the bounds of a few arbitrarily chosen centuries. When, five years back, I stood on the plain of Olympia, the hills which looked down on, that plain looked down on a living summary of the life of the Greek people from the days of Iphitos to the days of Justinian. Among the buildings of which the foundations, and something more than the foundations, had been brought to light, there were representatives of at least four distinct epochs. There were two stages of purely native work, two stages of work in which other elements were added to those which were native.