For the historian of the ancient world there is nothing more necessary and nothing more difficult than the task of discriminating between fact and fiction, between accuracy and exaggeration, in his sources. The Bibliotheca Historica of Diodorus Siculus presents this problem in an acute form, and while certain passages, such as Iambulus's discovery of the Islands of the Sun, are quite evidently dominated by an uncritical acceptance of romantic tales, other sections of this extensive miscellany are less easily categorised. It is the purpose of this note to examine two short passages only, viz. iii. 12. 1–14. 5 and v. 36. 1–38. 4, which contain Diodorus's description of the mines in Egypt and Spain, in order to determine how far they may be accepted as a reliable record.

Among the inscriptions from Caunus published by Mr. G. E. Bean in JHS LXXIV (1954), 85–110 there is one, no. 21, pp. 85–7 with fig. 36, which requires further comment. This ‘first recorded response of Gryneian Apollo’ consists of a prescript in prose, eleven lines very well preserved, and the first two hexameters of the oracle, the second with two not so short lacunae. The prose text says that under the priesthood of Eunomus, son of Leonidas, Menodorus, son of Sosikles, an Imbrian, was sent to the Gryneion and brought back an oracle. Good luck!

In JHS LXXIV (1954), 85–7, Mr. G. E. Bean publishes a mutilated inscription from Caunus (no. 21 of his collection) which contains the response of the Gryneian Apollo to an inquiry of the Caunians as to which god they must propitiate to obtain good harvests. Mr. Bean seems not to have noticed that the text of the oracle (which begins at 1. 12) consists of two hexameters; if he had, I do not think he would have thought a new sentence must begin with ἀρσρίσκετε or worried about the sense of δεσμοῑς. I suggest that τιμῶσιν agrees with ὔμμι and that ἀραρίσκετε is imperative. The word after δεσμοῑς will be an adjective agreeing with δεσμοῑς. I can think of no suitable one beginning with Λ, but Α is very like Λ and άλύτοισ will suit the sense; it is an epithet of δεσμοί at Od. 8. 275, Aesch. P. V. 155. At the end of the line I would supply an adjective agreeing with κλέος (e.g. ἀγήρων) an adverbial phrase (e.g. ἐς αἰέί) or perhaps a vocative (e.g. λαοί).

The small group of white-ground votive plaques from the Athenian Acropolis which is listed below is distinguished both by the technique of the pieces which comprise it and by their decoration. For their size their thinness is unusual among the Acropolis plaques, some being as little as 0·4 cm. thick, and the thickest only 0·8 cm. Their surface is prepared with a thick and often glossy white ground, far heavier than that generally employed on plaques. All are bordered by two thin lines, no. 5 having a maeander upper border also, and the inscriptions on nos. 3, 4, 5, 8 all have the same small, neat, and well-spaced letters. From their technique they may then be assigned to a single workshop: for their decoration, several (nos. 1–5 below) have already been grouped together as the work of the Cerberus Painter by Roebuck (AJA XLIII 467 ff.), some of which Beazley assigns rather to the manner of that painter (nos. 3–5: ARV 56, nos. 1–3). There seems, however, to be little in the decoration of these plaques and of the fragments (nos. 6–8) which I have added below which is incompatible with their attribution to a single hand, and the technical considerations outlined above lend weight to the argument.

Soon after the publication (JHS LXXIII 138 ff.) by Mr. D. E. L. Haynes and myself of the portrait-herm of Rhoummas recently acquired by the British Museum I was informed by Mr. Michael R. E. Gough that he had found in his copy of LS some correspondence, dated 1910, relating to the herm. The dossier, which he kindly sent to me for examination, consists of three letters and two post-cards addressed by Arthur Sidgwick in March 1910 to the ‘Rev. A. S. Lamfrey, Grammar School, Ashford, Kent’, who had evidently written asking the meaning of the word μαρμαρόπαιστος. Sidgwick's provisional rendering was ‘struck with a stone’, but he asked for a copy of the whole inscription, and on receiving it sent it to Professor Percy Gardner, who replied that ‘the forms of the letters of the inscription seem to belong to the third or fourth century, not earlier.