Seven years ago I wrote: ‘to claim the Pelopids as “Hittites” is really to appeal too much to the imagination as an aid to the writing of history.’ But it is dangerous to be too unimaginative.

The name of Oinomaos' treacherous charioteer, whom Pelops afterwards cast into the Myrtoan sea, and to whom as the ταράξιππος Pelops thereafter made offering at his grave and cenotaph, was Myrtilos. The same word, in the form Myrsilos, was not uncommon as a personal name in Asia Minor. Herodotus mentions it as a name for Kandaules; and the tyrant of Mytilene is well known.

The recent discoveries of Dr. Winckler at Boghaz Kyöi have revealed to us an archive of cuneiform tablets, consisting of letters, despatches, and royal decrees of the well-known Hittite kings of the fourteenth century B.C. whose names have hitherto been known to us, on the authority of their Egyptian transcriptions, as ‘Seplel’ or ‘Saparuru,’ ‘Maurasar,’ ‘Mautenro,’ and ‘Khetasar.’

The inscription (Fig. 1) on block 1010 of the Amazon Frieze of the Mausoleum has hitherto been regarded as illegible. The letters are ·03 m. high and carefully cut in three lines across the shield of one of the combatants, but have been (perhaps wilfully) defaced. The block in question is one of the twelve acquired by the exertions of Stratford de Redcliffe in 1846 from the Knights Hospitallers' Castle of S. Peter at Budrum. Of the twelve blocks three were built into the seaward wall of the castle with the arms and inscription (1506) of the Captain Constantius de Opertis: the remaining nine, of which No. 1010 is one, were placed inside Newton's ‘third gate’ five in the seaward tower and four immediately opposite.

According to the above statement Athens had in 431 a field force of 13,000 and a garrison force of 16,000 ‘oldest and youngest and aliens,’ both apparently consisting solely of hoplites. Let us examine the different categories composing the garrison force. A roll was kept of all Athenians between the ages of 18 and 60, and these men were all liable to some sort of service (Arist. Resp. Ath. 53, Pollux 2. 11). For the first two years of their service the young Athenians were enrolled among the περίπολοι and after a preliminary training they were sent to guard the frontier forts (φρουροῦσιτὰ δύο ἔτη Arist. Resp. Ath. 42). The words ἐν τοῖς φρουρίους in the passage before us, leave little doubt that these are the men designated as νεώτατοι On the same principle we are entitled to look for the πρεσβύτατοι among the oldest men included on the roll, not among the citizens over 60 years of age. The normal age at which an Athenian was transferred from the field force to the reserve was apparently 50: thus Lycurgus (in Leocr. 39) speaks of Athens being defended by men over 50 after the battle of Chaeronea, and Socrates, who served at Amphipolis when in his forty-seventh year (Plato, Apol. 28 E), is not heard of on foreign expeditions after that date, though Plato was fond of referring to his exploits on active service (Symp. 219 E, Charm. 153 A, Laches 181 A).

Mr. Milne's article in the last volume of the Journal (xxviii. 121 ff.) calls attention to an interesting class of documents, the tablets or ostraka which served as school-books in Graeco-Roman Egypt. The British Museum has recently acquired two unusually good and complete specimens of this class. As they are, to the best of my belief, the most perfect that have yet come to light, it seems worth while to publish them in extenso.

The first (now Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 37516) is a single wooden tablet, 1 ft. 4½ in. in length, 5¼ in. high at the left-hand end, and 4¾ in. at the right-hand end. Projecting from the left-hand end is a small knob, nearly an inch in diameter, through which a hole is bored, by which means the tablet could be suspended from a nail in the wall of the school, as in the well-known kylix of Douris at Berlin. The corners at both ends are rounded.

The question of the genuineness of the fragments of Hecataeus has been much debated. To refer only to recent discussions, Cobet decides summarily that not only the geographical fragments but also those of the work on ‘Genealogies’ are forgeries; as, however, the great Dutch scholar devotes only seven pages to the discussion of the matter, his decision can hardly be accepted as final, although his great name is sufficient warrant for treating the question as one that may be fairly considered open. But since the article in Hermes of Professor Diels, the matter has, I think, generally been held to be settled the other way, and Hecataeus has not only been credited with the fragments in question as being really his own, but, on the strength of them, has been assigned a very important position in the development of Greek thought and especially of Greek geographical science.

By the generosity of Mr. S. Pepys Cockerell the British Museum has recently come into possession of three volumes of sketches, plans, etc., made by his father, C. R. Cockerell, R.A., during the seven years (1810–1817) in which he was travelling in S. Europe and the Levant.

The Collection contains about 500 sketches, a few in water-colour, sepia, and Indian-ink, the rest in pencil, and is of great interest both artistically and archaeologically. On its artistic interest I do not propose to dwell; Cockerell's merits as an artist have always been recognised, and these delicate water-colour and pencil notes, in which there is not an unnecessary or an unmeaning line, are quite up to the level of his finished work.

During a visit to Constantinople in July 1905 I spent some little time in studying the base of the obelisk of Theodosius in the Hippodrome (Fig. 1). An examination of the construction of the base and its sculpture led to the view that it was composed of material older than the reign of Theodosius. I subsequently read a paper on the subject at an open meeting of the British School at Rome. In the summer of 1906, Mr. Traquair, architectural student of the British School at Athens, made a detailed study of the construction of the base. His conclusions confirm the view which I had previously expressed. The present paper, which merely claims to put forward the reasons for assigning an earlier date to the base as briefly and clearly as possible, consists of two parts, Mr. Traquair's architectural report, and my own archaeological discussion of the questions raised. Both Mr. Traquair and myself owe much to the kind assistance of Dr. Van Millingen, for but for his aid this paper would never have been written.

In reading again the narrative of the Sicilian Expedition lately heretical ideas have occurred to me as to the puzzling question of the walls on Epipolae, which I have thought it might be worth while with apologies to throw out for criticism. To show these pictorially, Professor Bury's Plan and my own perhaps crude views are here set side by side. In these latter there are many details of position upon which no stress is laid, the general idea only being indicated. I am not going to touch upon any alteration of text, but to deal solely with Thucydides as we have him, and with Thucydides only.

Plutarch's treatise περὶ ᾿´Ισιδος καὶ ᾿Οσίριδος is a work of considerable importance not only to the student of later Platonism, but also to the Egyptologist; yet it is a somewhat remarkable fact that it has been much neglected by the latter, although he alone possesses the knowledge that would help to clear up many of the confused and contradictory statements made by Plutarch with regard to Egyptian mythology. The commentaries of Sayce and Wiedemann on the second Book of Herodotus have been invaluable to the historian and mythologist alike; nevertheless, Plutarch's excursus into the realms of Egyptian religious lore has never received the systematic attention of the Egyptologist. It can hardly be said that this is due to the want of importance attached to the subject. It is generally admitted that, whereas the eleventh chapter of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius is our principal source of knowledge concerning the Graeco-Roman cult of Isis, the treatise of Plutarch is almost our only account of the doctrine which the Alexandrian Platonists wove round that goddess and Osiris. There can be little doubt that Plutarch's theories were the same as those generally held by Greek and Roman worshippers of Isis, and the fact that the treatise is addressed to Klea, who appears to have been a professed devotee of the goddess, renders them additionally interesting.

During his visit to Thasos, of which an account, with a map of the island, and plans and drawings of the more important sites will appear in a subsequent number of this Journal, Mr. J. ff. Baker-Penoyre took copies and squeezes of a number of inscriptions both on the island itself and at Cavalla on the mainland opposite.

The inscriptions of Thasos are collected in I.G. xii. 8, which is now in the press and may be expected to appear shortly. Hitherto the most complete collection of them has been that in M. G. Dimitsas, ῾Η Μακεδονία i. (Athens, 1896), pp. 853–1000, consisting of 481 texts. A bibliography of Thasian epigraphy will be found in B.C.H. 1900, 263 f. together with 46 inscriptions previously unpublished.

Since the publication of Hartwig's epoch-making book there has been something of a lull in the study of Greek vase-painting of the best periods; at all events few further attempts have been made to deal with individual artists or schools, and their relation to the history of the subject in general. The time has perhaps come for a revival of our interest; and though it is not claimed for the present paper that it has such ambitious aims, it may yet serve to direct attention to a class of vases not treated by Hartwig, in fact hitherto largely neglected. In dealing with the work of the artist Hischylos, I cannot claim to rehabilitate him, as Hartwig has done with Phintias, Onesimos, and other artists, chiefly owing to the fact that, whatever the interest of the vases signed with his name, we have no certain ground for crediting him with the decoration of any single specimen.