I.—A. Wilhelm has recently republished the inscriptions on an altar at Side in Painphylia, originally published by Van Buren in JHS 1908, 190 sqq. Wilhelm's restorations and commentary, based solely on the photographs printed, without comment, by B. Pace in Annuario III , 33, have very greatly advanced the interpretation of these interesting inscriptions; but the disadvantage of working without seeing either the stone itself or a squeeze of it has led in several cases to readings which are not in fact on the stone. While assisting at the Turkish excavations at Side in September 1948, I had an opportunity of examining the stone in question, and with the kind permission of Prof. Arif Miifid Mansel, director of the excavations, I am able to offer the present note. My purpose is not so much to engage in the controversy concerning the altar and the significance of its inscriptions, as to help to establish the true text.

In the last volume of the Journal of Hellenic Studies (vi. pp. 378–380) Prof. Newton has commented at length on some remarks made by me in the same volume (vi. pp. 199—201) on the torso of an imperial statue found at Cyrene and now in the British Museum. Before considering Mr. Newton's paper in detail I may be permitted to say a few words on the subject of cuirass-ornamentation in general.

In his Winckelmanns-fest-program for 1868, Dr. Hübner referred to the want of a classified list of ornamented cuirasses of emperors. No one has, at present, attempted to compile such a list, which would, practically, have to take the form of a complete monograph on statuae thoracatae, in which the restorations, style, material, pose, and attribution of each figure would have to be carefully studied. To carry out this work it would be necessary to make a personal examination of a large number of statues which have not hitherto been critically described, and which have suffered greatly at the hands of restorers. A difficulty which specially complicates the study of this class of monuments would also have to be borne in mind— namely, that in many cases the body of imperial statues appears to have been originally made apart from the head.

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.

A very interesting symbolic picture of the battle of Lepanto executed in a miniature style has recently reached this country from Athens, and the owner, Sir Arthur Evans, has kindly allowed me to publish a reproduction and description of it.

The picture measures ·373 m. in height by ·275 m. in width, and is executed with a full range of colours on a sheet of vellum which has been at some time sharply folded across about half-way up the picture. Above and below and on the back there are inscriptions in Greek, but before we come to them it will be convenient to give some description of the picture itself. This is divided horizontally into two parts: above we see the saints and angels looking down upon the battle; below is the battle itself, and immediately above the centre of the fray, where the two fleets, Christian and Turkish, are in conflict, is a small medallion containing a throned figure of Christ.

The coin of Sicyon, of the obverse of which a drawing by Mr. F. Anderson (made over a photograph) is given here, has been twice published both times by Professor Percy Gardner.

The inscription on the obverse, which lends special interest to this piece, is unique among adscititious inscriptions upon Greek coins, not only in its elaborate character, but in the manner of its execution. Such inscriptions are in other cases graffiti, scratched with a point; this is pricked into the metal with a pointed instrument.

The controversy about Zeus in the Prometheus Vinctus started by the late Dr. L. R. Farnell (JHS liii, 40 ff.) is not settled. Answers are wanted to three sharp-sighted questions asked by Dr. R. H. Maiden (ibid. liv, 201). The first is whether any one has considered the relation of the Prometheus Vinctus to the Semitic (Babylonian) myth of the fall of man. Later Dr. Maiden writes: ‘In Genesis the myth is used as the vehicle of a mediation on the origin and nature of sin. … But what was the original form [of the myth] before it had undergone the moralising process? … It is not impossible that … the moral character of God was not beyond criticism … the idea of a deity hostile to mankind presented no difficulty to the Semitic mind.’ Thirdly, he questions the assumption made, in his answer to Dr. Farnell, by Mr. H. D. F. Kitto (ibid. liv, 14 ff.), that the High God must be all-powerful and immortal.

Lately M. Dmitri Merezhkovsky has compared the myth of Prometheus with Babylonian myths (The Secret of the West, translated by J. Cournos, London, 1933, 57 ff., citing Bab. Tab. B.M. VI. 5, Beros. Babyl. ap. Damascen. de prim. princ. 125, Cuneiform Texts, I. c). Similar comparisons had been made before, for example by the late Professor A. H. Sayce in 1884 (The Ancient Empires of the East, 157. Cf. my forthcoming remarks in TAPA, lxvii; and now E. O. Forrer, Mélanges Cumont, 686 ff.) In the Babylonian myths a god must be slain to create man.

Modern studies have emphasized the contradictory nature of the ancient traditions concerning the aftermath of the Battle of Sepeia (494 BC), in which the Argive army was destroyed by the Spartans. This article tackles the most significant point of agreement in these traditions: the theme of Argive ‘oligandry’, the demographic crisis caused by the battle. An analysis conducted on the basis of Ansley J. Coale and Paul Demeny’s Model Life Tables shows that the real impact of the demographic crisis was felt in the age structure of Argos’ population rather than in the sheer size of its citizen body. Consequently, this article argues that the political ramifications of the battle originated not from the demographic crisis alleged by the tradition, but from the state of powerlessness and regional isolation into which Argos was plunged by the defeat of 494. This argument, which supports a reappraisal of Plutarch’s (De mul. vir. 4) version of Argos’ response to Sepeia, also helps explain why Argos embraced a markedly aggressive foreign policy towards the towns of the plain in the following decades.

Many scholars who have studied Priscus' account (frg. 8, pp. 289 to 323 in L. Dindorf, Historici Graeci Minores, vol. 1, to the pages and lines of which reference will be made throughout) of his visit to the court of Attila in summer 449, have concluded that the Hun king's camp was on the North-eastern part of the Hungarian plain, between the Theiss and the Körös, and all whose works I have been able to consult have stated, or implied by their narrative, that it was somewhere in Hungary.

That Attila usually made his headquarters in the plain of Hungary is true and early became a commonplace. It is perhaps as a result of this that scholars have been so ready to assume that in 449 he was there, and have even ‘emended’ the text of our one and only eye-witness to accord with their views. Let us begin by a fresh examination of Priscus' narrative.

Did the Greeks, and in particular did the Homeric poets, associate Death with the Horse? The great importance, in the archaeology of art and religion, of all associations connected with the grave, will perhaps give interest to a somewhat full discussion of this question, or rather of the single piece of evidence, upon which, so far as concerns Homer, the question seems to turn. Did the poets describe Hades, lord of Death, as ‘lord of the goodly steeds’? Is this what they meant by κλυτόπωλος? It is the purpose of this paper to show that they did not, that this interpretation is involved in difficulties and impossibilities three-fold and four-fold, has for it neither reason nor authority, and must, with all that depends upon it, be given up.

The first and perhaps sufficient objection is this. Before the epithet κλυτόπωλος could be referred to the horse, πῶλος it is plain, must have signified a horse. Now it is quite certain, though apparently not recognized, that to the composers of the Iliad and Odyssey no such word as πῶλος horse was known. They used, it is true, the word to which, by a stretch of meaning and for convenience, that sense was given by their imitators and successors; but they knew it only and strictly in what seems to have been its primitive and etymological sense, a foal, a young horse under the mother.