Sir,—The article in your Journal by Mr. Roberts ‘On the Oracle Inscriptions discovered at Dodona’ (recently published at Paris in the magnificent work of Constantin Carapanos, entitled Dodone et ses ruines), has been read by me with great gratification, and has awakened in my mind some delightful reminiscences. May I be permitted to communicate them?

Fifty years ago, when at Naples, and preparing for a journey to Greece, I had the pleasure of friendly intercourse with Sir William Gell, who at that time had done more than any one in Europe for the elucidation of the geography and topography of Greece, except perhaps Mr. Dodwell and Colonel Leake. In one of our conversations at that time Sir William Gell said to me, ‘One of the most interesting and difficult questions in Greek geography is, “Where was Dodona?” When you go to Greece, mind and try to find it out.’

It must sometimes have occurred to readers of Byzantine literature, after they have perused a number of the occasionally valuable, but almost always dreary, works of which it is composed —lifeless chronicles, polemical and other theology, inflated panegyrics, and grammatical treatises—to ask the question, whether this was really all; whether a quick-witted and intelligent people, such as we know the inhabitants of Constantinople at certain periods to have been, were contented to subsist entirely on such dry mental food. No doubt, religious controversy often ran high, and this, when it fills men's thoughts, is apt to supply the place of intellectual interests; but such discussions did not last for ever, and could not have occupied the minds of the whole of the educated population. A certain source of relief was provided in the numerous poems, songs, and romances in the popular language—some of native growth and dealing with subjects of local or traditional interest, some imitated from the romances of Western Europe—which have been brought to light by the industry of such men as MM. Sathas and Legrand at Paris, Prof. Lambros of Athens, and the late Dr. W. Wagner of Hamburg. But even these do not furnish that element of liveliness, which we should expect to manifest itself in some shape or other in a great centre of activity.

Asia Minor, interposed like a bridge between Europe and Asia, has been from time immemorial a battlefield between the Eastern and Western races. Across this bridge the arts, civilisation, and religion of the East had passed into Greece; and back over the same bridge they strove to pass beautified and elevated from Greece into Asia. The progress of the world has had its centre and motive power in the never-ceasing collision of Eastern and Western thought, which was thus produced in Asia Minor. One episode in the long conflict has been chosen by Herodotus as the subject of his prose epic: but the struggle did not stop at the point he thought. It has not yet ended, though it has long ceased to be of central importance in the world's history. For centuries after he wrote Greek influence continued to spread, unhindered, further and further into Asia: but as the Roman empire decayed, the East again became the stronger, and Asia Minor has continued under its undisputed influence almost up to the present day. Now the tide has again turned, and one can trace along the western coast the gradual extinction of the Oriental element. It does not retreat, it is not driven back by war: it simply dies out by a slow yet sure decay. It is the aim of this set of papers to throw some light on one stage in this contest, a stage probably the least known of all, the first attempts of the Greek element to establish itself in the country round the Hermus. Tradition has preserved to us little information about the first Greek settlements. The customary division into Aeolic, Ionic, and Doric colonists is not a sufficient one. Strabo clearly implies that there was a double Aeolic immigration when he says (p. 622) that Cyme founded thirty cities, and that it was not the first Aeolic settlement; in another passage (p. 582) he makes the northern colonists proceed by land through Thrace, the southern direct by sea to Cyme. I hope by an examination of the country and the situations, never as yet determined, of the minor towns, to add a little to the history of this Southern Aeolic immigration, in its first burst of prosperity, through the time when it was almost overwhelmed in the Lydian and Persian empires and was barely maintained by the strength of the Athenian confederacy, till it was finally merged in the stronger tide of Greek influence that set in with the victory of Alexander. More is known of Myrina, and still more of Cyme, than of any of the other towns: but both are omitted here, because it may be expected that considerable light will be thrown on the history of both by the excavations conducted on their sites by the French School of Athens. Till their results are published, it would be a waste of time to write of either city.

Plate XIV. B represents an unpublished vase of the British Museum, which originally formed part of the Burgon Collection: it appears to have been found in Italy in 1835. It is an oinochoè with black figures on a red panel, and may be assigned to a period between about 500 and 450 B.C.

A representation upon an amphora published by Gerhard in his Trinkschalen, Pl. XXX. Figs. 1—3, so evidently relates to a similar subject, that it is here reproduced for comparison on the same plate (Fig. A). This picture shows us an auletes playing upon the double flutes in the presence of two grotesque-looking figures, apparently human, who are closely draped in long cloaks, himatia, and to whom his back is turned. That the heads of these two figures are intended to represent the heads of some sort of bird is evident from the beak-like conformation of the features, and by the purple crests which rise vertically from the crown. Gerhard, in publishing this vase, has for want of any better explanation described this scene as representing a parody or a mummery symbolical of a cock-fight. Viewed, however, in the light of the evidence afforded by the British Museum vase, this theory seems to me improbable: yet I am bound to say that I am unable to advance any explanation which seems entirely satisfactory.

In my paper on ‘Boat-races among the Greeks’ (above, pp. 90—8) I brought together a considerable number of testimonies to prove that boat-racing was a Hellenic sport. As I was to a great extent breaking new ground, it can scarcely arouse surprise if I failed to make my collection of authorities complete. Since the paper appeared friends have been good enough to point out to me two or three fresh passages of writers bearing on the subject of boat-races. Of these the most important is quoted by Mr. Ridgeway from Pausanias. That writer speaking of the town of Hermione, says, ‘Near by is the temple of Dionysus Melanaegis. In his honour is yearly held a musical festival, with swimming races, and boat-races (καὶ πλοίων τιθέασιν ἆθλα).’ Hermione is situate on a very sheltered bay at the extremity of Argolis, and so admirably adapted as a site for swimming races and for races of small boats.

A far more interesting reference than that I have mentioned I owe to the courtesy of Dr. Hirschfeld. He points out to me that in the valuable series of Ephebic inscriptions recently discovered, mention is more than once made of boat-races engaged in by the Attic Ephebi, as a regular part of their training. I could scarcely have missed these mentions had not Dumont misled me by calling the races joutes nautiques. To us they are specially interesting because the system of training of Ephebi at Athens, which we can trace upwards to the third century B.C., corresponds more closely to a modern English University education than anything else in antiquity.

Among the earliest drawings on Greek vases it is not rare to find a lion, for example, or a bird with apparently two bodies and only one head between them, as in Figs. 1–2. (Pl. XV.) After a long interval a similar rendering of animal form occurs no less frequently in Roman work, as in the sphinx, Fig. 4. So long as this curious proceeding in the art of design was thought to be the outcome of fancy, no explanation of it was sought for. Curtius, however, had found from many observations, that Assyrian, Phoenician, and early Greek designs, were largely influenced by a principle of dualism, displaying itself mostly in devices which consist of a group of two animals confronted, the one responding strictly to the other in form and action, much as the impression of a seal responds to the seal itself. In early times when seals were employed to an extent hardly to be realized now, it may seem to have been easy and natural for an engraver or other designer to have observed and utilised the peculiarly decorative effect obtained from the contrast of a seal with its impression.

The ornament here engraved is said to have been found at Athens in 1874, and to have come from a site then in course of excavation at the back of the Parthenon. Whatever the circumstances of its discovery—and they are confessedly somewhat obscure—the object is in itself not only very interesting from an archaeological point of view, but (I add this on the authority of Mr. C. T. Newton) it is also unique.

Wrought of pure gold very rich in colour, the earring measures, from the wire which passed through the lobe of the ear to the bottom of the pendant, two inches and a quarter. It consists of two parts; namely, the earring proper, which is shaped after an antique pattern much in favour for fibulæ, and an oblong plate, or pendant, on which is represented, side by side, a pair of female figures beaten out in relief.

Among the objects recently acquired by the British Museum is a beautiful terra-cotta from a grave at Salamis in the Island of Cyprus, of which I give a representation on Plate XVI. The figure is that of a goddess who wears a long chiton with diploïs, and a himation over her back and arms. Long tresses fall over her shoulders; on her head is apparently a stephane, though it may be intended rather for a taenia or band; in her ears are round earrings. Her right hand is passed into the interior of a crested Corinthian helmet, her left hand rests on the edge of a round shield. Her left foot is slightly drawn back, and the leg bent.

The figure is 7¼ inches in height, and stands on a square pedestal ¾ of an inch high. The back is quite unworked, and in the midst of it is the usual round hole, made to facilitate the baking. Slight traces of red colour appear on the hair of the goddess and the crest of the helmet, and we may observe on the lower part of the drapery some of the white ground-mixture with which terra-cotta figures were covered as a basis for colouring.

Since what I last wrote on the subject of Pythagoras of Rhegion in this Journal, much evidence has accumulated to verify what was then brought forward in a more or less hypothetical form. I was greatly encouraged to carry on this research by the sympathetic criticism of archaeologists both published and privately communicated, but all, with one slight exception, evidently written with the view of facilitating an increase of information, of advancing the common object—the study of classical archaeology. Among the published criticisms, I have received the greatest stimulus to continue my research from the reports of a lecture delivered by Professor C. T. Newton at University College, London, in January of this year; and, among the unpublished, a letter from Professor Michaelis with a full and detailed criticism; while the fact that in the Berlin Museum of Casts the ‘Apollo’ is now entirely severed from the ‘Omphalos,’ and that, in the new catalogue of the Museum of Casts at Munich the words ‘nicht zugehörigen,’ are inserted into the phrase ‘Apollo auf dem Omphalos’ is the most important of confirmations I have received from without: for, it was the possible, and formerly firmly maintained, association of the statue with the omphalos as its base that I felt to be the only positive evidence against my hypothetical assumption.

Annexed is a woodcut engraved after an impression from an intaglio formerly in the hands of Signor Castellani, and now in private possession in England. The original, which is half the size of the cut, is a plasma of somewhat rude Roman workmanship. Its subject is unmistakable. It represents a victorious athlete (expressly designated as such by the palm branch placed in a prize jar at his side) who stands at his ease, with the left leg free, and his weight thrown on the right, while he winds the taenia about his head with both hands.

So far as I am aware, this is the first representation of the subject on a gem of which an engraving has ever been published. Only one other is known to exist, and that is on a stone of similar substance (plasma di smeraldo), formerly in the collection of a Mr. Currie. A cast of this was issued in the Impronte gemmarie of the Archaeological Institute, cent. VI. no. 73 (see Bull. dell' Inst. 1839, p. 111). It lacks the emblems of the palm branch and jar.

I found this inscription in the ruins of a church called Agia Irenè, about a quarter of an hour's distance from the village of Apolakkia in Rhodes. This village is situated near the sea on the south-west side of the island (see my Travels and Discoveries, i., p. 198).

This inscription contains part of two decrees, of which the first was passed by the κοινόν of the Euthalidai. The upper part of the stone being wanting, we only know the latter part of this first decree, from which we learn that a crown had been voted by the κοινόν to Sosikrates, son of Kleonymos, a Netteian, and that this honour was to be publicly proclaimed in the usual manner. We learn further that it was necessary that this decree should be confirmed by a Boulè, ‘senate,’ and Demos, ‘popular assembly,’ to the control of which the Euthalidai were subject.

I copied this inscription in 1855 from a marble found in a garden near the Marina, called Blyko, in the island of Kalymnos, the ancient Kalymna. On this site formerly stood the Church of Panagia Kalymniotissa.

In the year 1854 I explored the site of the Temple of Apollo in that island and discovered there a number of inscriptions, most of which will appear in Part II. of the work on Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum, of which Part I. was published in 1874.

The inscription which I have here selected for publication, and which was not taken away by me from Kalymnos, is one of a well-known class which relate to the enfranchisement of slaves, and of which many examples have been found at Delphi and elsewhere. The forms and conditions of such enfranchisement varied in different places (See M. Foucart's article, Apeleutheroi, in Daremberg, Dictionnaire des Antiquités, where the subject is very fully treated).

In a paper read at the R. Accademia dei Lincei in Rome I communicated the result of my studies upon three of the bronze inscriptions (Nos. 362, 56, 363) found at Olympia, and published in the Archäologische Zeitung. Amongst other inscriptions from the same place recently published in the last number of the same periodical there are two (Nos. 382, 383) deserving the same attention, and demanding it all the more since Professor Kirchhoff in giving them to the public has declared himself unable to divine their meaning. Here I submit to the judgment of the readers of this journal my contribution to the question. My studies are only founded on the facsimile taken from a rubbing and published in the Archäologische Zeitung, together with Dr. Purgold's account of the material condition of the two monuments. I have thought it necessary to give my readers a phototypic copy of the facsimile itself, reduced to smaller proportions. Further particulars will be found in the Archäologische Zeitung, 1881, pp. 78 seq.

Military history proper must begin with the battle of Marathon; it is the first battle of which history preserves for us even a moderately detailed account in respect of the relative numbers and equipments of the contending armies, the precise situation and local peculiarities of the conflict, the positions of the armies before the battle, the circumstances of the actual collision, and the decisiveness of the result. There are uncertainties as to the maps which should illustrate the far later battles of Pharsalus and Philippi, that determined the fate of the empire of the world, but we have a perfectly satisfactory ground-plan, from the country as it still exists, of the first great collision of Hellenic and Asiatic power on the western coast of the Aegean. Herodotus, to whom we are chiefly indebted for an account of it, was not a contemporary, having been born about six years later, 484 B.C. His account, no doubt, is meagre where information would be most valuable, and he is anything but a skilful military critic, and, like many others of the most successful historians, he neglects details that might be dry to make room for others not rigidly authenticated that are pointed and picturesque. Still, even so he supplies us with many circumstances which he might value simply for the sake of sparkle, but that enable us by comparison with other stray notices to divine some very critical facts about the battle, which he himself either did not fully know, or, not duly appreciating, failed to set down. If after study of all subsidiary information duly compared and combined it seems possible to recover a very fairly authentic account of the battle, it will be no doubt at the cost of some reduction of what is most marvellous in the account of Herodotus; but the story will still be sufficiently romantic, no moderate remainder of marvel will be left, and there is full compensation for the sacrifice in certified credibility and historical instruction.