Herodotus informs us at ii 159 that Pharaoh Necho II (610-595 B.C.) built and employed triremes on the Mediterranean and Red Seas. In a recent study I put the case for the traditional view that these triremes were Greek rather than Phoenician in origin. That case may be summarized as follows:

(1) Thucydides believed (i 13) that the trireme had been invented in Corinth during the Cypselid tyranny (c. 657-583 B.C.) and that it was almost immediately taken over by the Samians.

(2) The standard refutations of Thucydides’ statement are invalid.

II ne saurait ici être question de rencontrer, point par point, toutes les observations de M. Lloyd: ceci exigerait un nouveau tour d'horizon allant du fusil de Ferguson au pantheon adoré à Prw-Nfr et nous éloignerait sensiblement de ce qui me paraît être l‘essentiel de la controverse; l‘essentiel, à mon sens, est ceci.

Dans le JHS de 1975, M. Lloyd soutenait les quatre propositions suivantes:

(1) La trière phénicienne ne différait guère de la trière grecque: e‘était ‘essentially (souligné par moi) a Greek hull’, avec adjonction d‘un pont continu et de superstructures perfectionnées.

(2) La trière grecque a été inventée à Corinthe au je s., alors que les Phéniciens ne connaissaient pas encore ce type de navire.

(3) La construction des premières trières phéniciennes est due à une influence grecque.

(4) Parallèlement à l‘influence exercée, dans le domaine de l‘architecture des trières, de la Grèce vers la Phénicie, une mêne influence s‘est exercée sur l’Egypte qui, sous le règne de Nechao, a construit des trières de type grec.

An Athenian inscription, engraved with letters suggestive of the first sixty years of the first century B.C. and published by D. J. Geagan, Hesperia xl (1971) 101-8 with photograph, contains a decree proposed to the demos by Demeas son of Demeas to strengthen a revision of the city's constitution. On its publication it struck me that the revision was democratic and that Geagan's date 84/3 B.C., reached via the uncertainties of the secretary cycle, could not stand. Since repercussions from what was occurring at Rome to Sulla's arrangements might well have been felt in Athens, a different date,equally compatible with the assumed secretary cycle, 70/69 B.C., came to mind, but in the meanwhile the assumed secretary cycle itself has disappeared.

In some of these notes―v 1.7–8; 4.5; 5.4; 10.3 (1)―I defend readings of the codex unicus, F (Laurentianus conv. soppr. 627), in others―v 1.2; 7.3; 10.5; 12.3―I support previous conjectures whose merits seem to me not to have been fully appreciated, and in the rest―v 2.2; 2.7; 7.8; 8.2–3 (bis); 8.4; 9.6; 9.9; 9.10; 10. 3 (2); 10.8; cf. 6.2―I put forward new proposals of my own. The base-text and apparatus are those of A. D. Papanikolaou (Teubner, 1973), except for 1.7–8, 4.5, and 5.4, where the text of F is given.

In his magnificent report on the American excavations at Persepolis E. F. Schmidt published a fragment of a stone plaque found in the Treasury (frag. 2 on FIG. 2). This plaque bore a sketch of a human torso, which G. M. A. Richter considered to be Greek work of about 500 B.C. : she identified the figure as ‘Heracles wearing a chiton with a lion's skin over it which is knotted on the chest’. This fragment was lost when the ship in which the finds from Persepolis were being transported to America was sunk by submarine action during the Second World War. But recently Giuseppe Tilia discovered further fragments in a storeroom at Persepolis, which he recognised as probably belonging to the same plaque; and from these Prof. Boardman has been able to determine that the original scene was of a contest between Herakles and Apollo.(FIG. 1).

Choeroboscus preserves the following notice, which came down to him from Herodian (i 45. 14, ii 743. 24 Lentz):

Μεσόνυξ Μεσόνυχος εἶς τῶν ἐπτὰ πλανήτων παρὰ τοῖς Πυθαγορείοις ὀνομάζεται. μέμνηται Στησίχορος(PMG 259).

It has been almost entirely overlooked by historians of Greek astronomy. The only published discussion known to me is a short article by P. J. Bicknell in Apeiron (Monash University) ii 2 (1968) 10-12. He observes that it is a notice of considerable significance, and he makes some important inferences from it. The only planet mentioned in Hesiod and Homer, or in early poetry generally, is Venus, under the names ῾´ Εσπερος and ῾ Εωσφόρος. Bicknell notes that the name Mesonyx must have been chosen‘on analogy with ’ those names; I would prefer to say, by antithesis to them. Hesperos was the luminary that only appeared in the evening, Heosphoros always presaged the dawn: Mesonyx was the planet that could be seen in the middle of the night.

Through the kindness of D. M. Lewis I was recently able to study a photocopy of R. Loepcr, ‘The Thirty Tyrants ’, Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnago Prosveshcheniya (May 1896) 90–101―an examination, principally, of the list of the Thirty in Xen. Hell, ii 3.2.1 It seems worthwhile to publicise the outcome of this scrutiny, for four reasons: (a) Since its first appearance 80 years ago Loeper's main thesis―albeit in simplified form: see (c), and below―has exerted enormous influence upon students of prosopography, of the political organisation of post-Kleisthenic Attika, and of the regime of the Thirty.