The colossal marble head from Melos, known as the Blacas head from the collector who later purchased it, was found in a shrine of Asklepios, and is large enough to have belonged to the cult-image (plate 1a). Its date cannot be before about 330 B.C. and may well be rather later. This paper, however, deals neither with the subject nor with the date, but with certain technical details which explain the way in which the head was made, and establish its poise upon the body.

The Attic red-figured cup reproduced in Plates 5, 7a and Fig. I was formerly in the Wyndham Cook collection at Richmond and was acquired by the Ashmolean Museum in 1947. My thanks are due to the Keeper of the Antiquarium, Mr. D. B. Harden, for permission to publish it. The photographs are by Mr. H. N. Newton. The inside picture has been figured already, in the Burlington Catalogue for 1903, pl. 92, G 17, and in the Ashmolean Report for 1947, pl. 3, a. The outside is unpublished, but was briefly described by Norman Gardiner in JHS XXIII 288–9. The date is about 480 B.C., the artist the Triptolemos Painter (VA 99 no. 18; AttV 154 no. 19; ARV 242 no. 35). Diameter 0.237, height 0.095. Some of the cups decorated by the Triptolemos Painter, as Bloesch has shown, were fashioned by Euphronios (FAS 73-8), and the shape of the Oxford cup is at least not far from the work of that potter.

Four score years have passed since archaeological research began to occupy itself with the preclassical age of Greek lands; and this is perhaps an appropriate moment to cast a brief appraising glance at what has been accomplished and what remains still to be done. It is an especially fitting subject in this volume of studies issued in honour of Professor Alan J. B. Wace, who has himself played so large a part in the task of uncovering and interpreting the early remains on the mainland of Greece. This long span of eight decades might be divided into two almost equal stages, that of pioneering exploration and discovery, and that of re-examination, more detailed research and synthesis.

In his admirable paper ‘Ravennatum Palatium Sacrum’ (Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. Archaeologisk-kunsthistoriske Meddelelser 3, 2. Copenhagen, 1941) Dr. Einar Dyggve has revealed to us the type of the emperors' reception halls—la basilica ipetrale per ceremonie—in the late Roman empire. Analysing in a masterly way the famous mosaic of S. Apollinare Nuovo showing the Palatium of Theoderic, the missorium of Theodosius, the literary evidence for the Magnaura of Constantine, and architectural material, such as the palace of Diocletian in Spalato, from the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries A.D., he defines a highly monumental tripartite architectural complex consisting of a tribunalium, also to be styled atrium or basilica discoperta, with a triumphal arch at its upper end, then a triclinium behind the atrium, and finally a most holy innermost absidal room, a choir.

Im Heiligtum der Hera von Samos kam eine etwa 30 cm hohe tönerne Kanne (Taf. 8) zutage, die an Nachlässigkeit der Ausführung wohl nur von wenigen dort gefundenen Geräten überboten wird und trotzdem zu den bemerkenswertesten keramischen Funden des Heiligtums gehört. Ich habe sie schon in ‘Satyrtänze und Frühes Drama’ (SB Bayer. Ak. d. Wiss. 1943 Heft 5, 10 ff.) kurz erwähnt und dem mittleren Drittel des siebenten Jahrhunderts zugewiesen; sie muss noch älter sein, wie sich aus den hier angestellten Vergleichen zeigen wird.

Es handelt sich um eine ‘Figurenvase’, um ein Gefäss, das weitgehend in eine plastische Gestalt verwandelt ist. Trotzdem können wir sie zunächst einmal als gewöhnliches Gefäss betrachten, wenn wir berücksichtigen, dass, dem figürlichen Gegenstand zuliebe, der Ausguss tiefer, in die untere Hälfte des Gefässes, gerückt ist und dass wohl auch die besondere Abrundung der Schultern im Zusammenhang mit der plastischen Gestalt steht.

L'une des formes les plus fréquentes—et la plus originale à coup sûr—de la première glyptique crétoise est celle du prisme à trois faces décorées de motifs ornementaux ou de signes hiéroglyphiques. Comme l'abondance des specimens de ce type correspond à une absence complète du type cylindrique, si familier aux civilisations de la Mésopotamie, on a pu penser que l'un se substituait à l'autre, dérivait de l'autre. ‘Le goût crétois’, a-t-on dit, ‘répugnait à la décoration des frises indéfiniment prolongées; sitôt que l'on eut transformé le cylindre en un corps à arêtes vives et morcelé sa surface latérale en une suite de facettes, l'artisan crétois fut libre de les orner comme des unités indépendantes les unes des autres.’

Among the most interesting discoveries of the post-war years in Attica are a Late Geometric amphora and an impressed gold head-band; they are reported to have been found, the band inside the amphora, near Koropi in the Mesogaia, and were acquired together by Mrs. Helen Stathatou, who has graciously consented to my making them more widely known in this tribute to the master of Greek archaeology for whom both she and I have so high a regard. Each is a first-rate piece in itself, and the discovery of the two in one burial gives an added interest to the pair.

There are several explanations current about the origin of the triglyph. First, that the frieze of triglyph and metope started from a decorative feature of Mycenaean art and survived—invisibly to us–until eventually Doric architecture emerged. Secondly, that triglyphs are the fossilised remains of barred wooden windows, which early Greeks needed but their successors did not. Thirdly, that triglyphs are the flattened vestiges of an upper row of columns, abandoned by the timid masons of the seventh century. Fourthly, that the triglyph represents the end or a facing of the end of a wooden beam, this though in all ascertainable early instances the beams run from the course above the triglyph. Fifthly, and liable to the same objection, that the metopes were originally the ends of beams and the triglyphs bars between them. To each of these explanations—and probably to any other that has been or can be devised—there are serious objections. But since the treatment and the prominence of the orthodox triglyph give it an appearance of being an important structural member and particularly one of wood, the most popular explanation is the fourth, which derives the triglyph from the wooden beam. If this is accepted, the argument may reasonably be pushed further.

For two reasons I feel justified in sending this small paper to the volume of the British School Annual to be dedicated to my friend Professor A. J. B. Wace. From his earliest visits to Greece, from the days before the First World War when he and I travelled together in the Greek Islands, Professor Wace, together with his learning as an archaeologist, has always shown the most sympathetic interest in the later and contemporary life of the Greek people. This is one reason; the other is that I find here an opportunity to bring before a number of readers, most of whom have travelled in Greece, a mass of freshly published material bearing very closely on the character and ways of thought of the Greeks as they are now and, I believe, have been even from the days of classical antiquity.

The only ancient topographer to mention the Heraion of Perachora calls it an oracle. Strabo's words are: ἐν δὲ τῷ μεταξὺ τοῦ Λεχαίου καὶ Παγῶν τὸτῆς ᾿Ακραίας μαντεῖον ῾῾Ηρας ὑπῆρχε τὸ παλαιόν Commenting on this passage Payne says: ‘No trace of this aspect of the cult has yet been found’. I suggest that it has been found, though not recognised, and may explain a puzzling feature of the site revealed by the excavation.

Professor Wace's brilliant services to archaeology have been diffused over so wide a field that it is not difficult to cite some notable work of his in connexion with almost anything that one may oneself offer to his Festschrift. As I wish to write of a famous fifth-century bronze statue, I may gratefully remember his illuminating article on the Chatsworth head, printed in JHS LVIII (1938), 90–95.

Professor Frankfort's article Ishtar at Troy suggests a new explanation for the Trojan face-urns, and a pedigree which connects them with Mesopotamian or north-Syrian prototypes. The series he discusses includes the winged vessels and covers from Thermi. These are also referred to by Professor Mallowan in his account of the idols from Brak. Professor Mallowan's interpretation differs from Professor Frankfort's, and to a student of Anatolian prehistory may seem more convincing.

The object of this paper is to attempt to trace the sources of the various architectural elements which compose the palaces of Crete. To a large extent these were derived from overseas, and the better knowledge of Asiatic architecture which has resulted from the publications of recent years calls for some revision of the views held by Evans and Pendlebury. This re-statement isolates and thereby facilitates investigation of the native share in the invention of the palace form, which has much in common with Cretan buildings of the Early Bronze Age. The difference between such buildings and the contemporary work in other regions of the Aegean demands explanation, and a theory which may account for it has at least the merit of offering a reason for the strangest feature of the Minoan palaces, their confused planning.

Heavenly bodies figure in the works of both Homer and Hesiod, but their functions in the two poems mainly concerned are very different, as accords with the contrasting character of the Iliad and of the Works and Days. For the moment it is enough to note that Hesiod's attention is directed mainly to constellations, Homer's (so to call the poet of the Iliad) to individual stars. The passages which establish the fact are few, but as the precise meaning of some of them is in doubt, it is necessary to begin with an examination of the most important.

We must bear in mind two fundamental facts, which are basic to the theme of this paper: first, that Egypt more than any other land has influenced the Minoan-Mycenaean civilisation, and second, that the free adaptation and fusion of Egyptian motives is a typical phenomenon of Aegean art and mentality.

Something has already been written about Egyptian influence in the art of the Shaft Graves of Mycenae. I hope to show, in a forthcoming paper, that this connection is even greater, extending its influence not only in art (in just that point the influence is not great), but also and especially in material matters and in deep religious and funerary ideas. Here we will discuss a very well known and ‘curious’ object of early Mycenaean art, the gold and silver pin from the Third Shaft Grave (Fig. 1).

The Elder Pliny quotes Varro's description of the Tomb of Porsena:

Sepultus sub urbe Clusio, in quo loco monumentum reliquit lapide quadrato quadratum: singula latera pedum lata tricenum, alta quinquagenum: in qua basi quadrata intus labyrinihum inextricabilem: quo si quis improperet (introire properet v.) sine glomere lini, exitum invenire nequeat. Supra id quadratum pyramides stant quinque, quattuor in angulis, et in medio una, imae latae pedum septuagenum quinum (latae pedum quinum; ita fastigatae ut in summo aeneus petasus omnibus sit impositus M), altae centenum quinquagenum, ut in summo orbis aeneus et petasus unus omnibus sit impositus, ex quo pendeant exapta catenis tintinnabula, quae vento agitata longe sonitus referant, ut Dodonae olim factum. Supra quem orbem (supraque orbem) quattuor pyramides insuper singulae stant altae pedum centenum. Supra quas uno solo quinque pyramides, quarum altitudinem Varronem puduit adicere; fabulae Hetruscae tradunt eandem fuisse, quam totius operis: adeo vesanam dementi quaesisse gloriam impendio, nulli profuturo. Praeterea fatigasse regni vires, ut tamen (tantum v.) laus maior artificis esset.

The sickle, as attribute of Kronos, was considered by certain scholars to be the sickle with which the corn is reaped, and this would be a reliable argument for the opinion that Kronos was from of old a god of the harvest. Recently W. Staudacher has advanced the opinion that the harpe, as the Greek word is, is a sickle-shaped sword of Oriental origin, and uses this as an argument for deriving the myth of the separation of Heaven and Earth from the Orient; but he has not succeeded in proving his thesis. I have expressed doubt that the harpe of Kronos was a sickle, and said that it may have been a sword, but I have also called attention to the fact that the harpe is said by Hesiod to be provided with sharp teeth, being reminded of certain implements from the Neolithic Age in which sharp chips of flint are inserted in a stick of bone or wood, as in e.g. harpoons.

With the knowledge we now possess of the Mycenaean civilisation, obtained not least through examination of the Mycenaean tombs and their rich contents, it seems to me that the present is the time to take note not only of those objects found in the tombs, but also of those which are missing and which one would expect to find. Because of the apparent absence of lamps, I was able to point out that an earthenware object which was earlier taken for a drinking vessel or a scoop was probably a clay lamp. In the relatively dark tomb chambers artificial light was undoubtedly needed, especially in secondary burials, when the whole wall blocking the doorway was not removed, but a small opening, made in the upper part of the filling, sufficed for the introduction of the corpse into the tomb. Careful examination of the dromos and the wall blocking the doorway have proved that in many cases such a procedure took place. In the larger and richer tombs excellent stone lamps have been found. The occurrence of such lamps in the more pretentious tombs gave me the idea of looking for clay ones in the ordinary tomb chambers.

Les remarques ici présentées ne touchent qu'indirectement aux domaines où M. A. J. B. Wace est spécialiste et maître; qu'il veuille bien, pourtant, les agréer, en souvenir de notre longue et amicale communauté de travail dans l'Orient héllénique: ἐν εἰρήνῃ καὶ ἐμ πολέμῳ

En suivant récemment les études consacrées aux problèmes des agoras grecques, études qui n'ont pas cessé d'être nombreuses et intéressantes—je pense ici, par exemple, aux observations faites encore en 1949–1950, par R. E. Wycherley, en Angleterre, par R. Martin, en France1—je n'ai pas pu éviter l'impression d'une part peut-être trop insuffisante accordée à certaines découvertes, qui ont montré, il y a peu, l'importance des primitives ἀγοραὶθεῶν celles-ci ont été le modèle divin offert, je crois, dès la période archaïque, aux futures agoras humaines; les agoras humaines ne se sont constituées et organisées indépendamment qu'à une date relativement plus basse.