I have been called upon to take the chair at this first meeting of the Society which professes to have for its object the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. Now by Hellenic Studies we do not mean merely the study of Greek texts, grammars, and lexicons. It is generally acknowledged that, besides the printed texts of the ancient Greek authors, and the commentaries of the scholiasts on these texts, many other sources of Hellenic Study are opening up every day. The monuments of the Greeks, their architecture, sculpture, and other material remains, deserve our study not less than the texts of the classics, and we must bear in mind that the history of the Hellenic language itself may be traced for at least twenty-five centuries, and that between the Greek speech of the present day, and the first utterances of the early Greek poets, there is a connection which, though not obvious to the common observer, may be as clearly demonstrated by science as the connection between the flora of the geologist and the living flora of the botanist of to-day. In order to trace out this connection, we must not regard the language of the ancient Greeks alone; we must study the Byzantine literature, as well as the Greek language still current in the mouths of the peasants, and we must also study their existing manners and customs. The space of time, therefore, over which our Hellenic Studies may range, may be computed as about twenty-five centuries, or perhaps something more. The province of this Society has next to be limited geographically. After much consideration I have come to the conclusion that our proper geographical limitation is that which has been followed in the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum of Böckh. In that great work he includes Greek inscriptions, wherever they may be found, not only in Hellas itself, but outside the Mediterranean, and beyond the Pillars of Hercules. And therefore I think that as we study Greek inscriptions wherever they are found, whether in Greece, Italy, Sicily, or elsewhere, so we may study the Greek monuments and language wherever these are to be met with. Now as to the chronological range of our subject, I have already said that it extends over at least twenty-five centuries. It will be convenient to consider this space of time as divided into three periods. There will be first the Ancient period, terminating with the downfall of paganism; then the Byzantine period down to the taking of Constantinople in 1453; and then what I will call the Neo-Hellenic period.

The island of Delos is rather less than four miles long from north to south, with a greatest breadth of about a mile and a half. In its midst the granite platform of Cynthus rises to a height of some 350 feet above the sea-level. From the summit of Cynthus, looking westward, there is a view of rare beauty and surpassing interest. The narrow plain which extends along the western shore of the island was once covered by the ancient town of Delos. Near its middle point, a little to our right, and not far from the principal harbour, stood the temple of Apollo, with a cluster of sacred buildings surrounding it, in the brightness of Parian marble. The larger island of Rheneia, separated from Delos by a channel with an average breadth of half a mile, lies parallel with it on the west, but projects beyond it on the north,—veiling it from those who approach in a straight course from Syra. The two islets in this strait between Delos and Rheneia are now called Rheumatiari (ῥευματιάρια), ‘the channel isles’; the largest and southernmost once bore the name of Hecate, being the place where the women of Delos made their offerings of cakes to that goddess.

No part of the Greek world is richer in tradition and in the memories of a prehistoric past than the district that lies within the limit of a day's excursion from Smyrna. In the small but fertile plain that surrounds the head of the gulf, a great power existed long before the Ionians emigrated from Greece to Asia Minor. The names of Niobe, Tantalus, Pelops, are all most intimately connected with Mount Sipylus. The mountain was one of the chief seats of the worship of the goddess called Cybele by the Greeks; and in that worship the connection between Greece and the East is more apparent than in almost any other. Any new traces of this old empire must therefore have some value; and though the following notes are the result only of a first preliminary survey, they may give some new information about a race that is as yet too little known.

A Turk, the trusty and intelligent servant of a very kind English friend, had accompanied us in several excursions; and he told me of some ruins near his village that had hitherto escaped notice. M. Weber, an archaeologist in Smyrna, went with us in our visit to the spot.

The Troad has been so thoroughly explored of late years that my only excuse for saying anything about my own travels in it during the autumn of 1879 is partly that they were undertaken in the cause of archaeology, partly that I enjoyed the advantage of having Mr. Frank Calvert as a guide. Mr. Calvert has lived so long in the country, and is so well acquainted with its archaeology, in the interest of which he has excavated on various historic and prehistoric sites, that I could not fail to obtain a better knowledge of the whole district than has hitherto fallen to the lot of most visitors. Dr. Schliemann, moreover, had kindly placed his foreman and servant, Nikóla, at the disposal of myself and my friend, Mr. F. W. Percival, and as Nikóla is a native of Ren Keui, I had additional opportunities of making myself acquainted with Trojan topography.

Since Dr. Schliemann, however, has entered fully into this subject in his work on ‘Ilios,’ I shall content myself with a few selections from the notes I made during my journey, and draw attention to one or two matters which have not been observed before. But I must first of all confess myself a convert to the theory which identifies the Ilium of Homer with Hissarlik. If Troy ever existed, it could have only been on the site of Hissarlik.

In the Compte rendu of the Russian Imperial Archaeological Commission for 1877, which has just made its appearance, Dr. Stephani, one of the most learned and experienced of archaeologists, has boldly attacked the antiquity of the graves discovered by Dr. Schliemann at Mycenae. The circumstances of that discovery will be fresh in the memory of our readers. As soon as English archaeologists had an opportunity of examining the various objects discovered by Dr. Schliemann in the graves, they at once gave their verdict, all but unanimously, that what was found belonged to the pre-historic times of Greece. And in this country it is now commonly assumed that the antiquities of Mycenae must form the subject of the first chapter of any account of Greek artistic production. But the reputation of Dr. Stephani is deservedly so great that his entry into the controversy compels us to a reconsideration of the whole problem, and a careful examination of the new light which he has to offer.

This task I have undertaken, not without reluctance. And whatever may be my inferiority to M. Stephani in the matter of learning and experience, I have over him the great advantage that whereas he judges of the Mycenaean treasures from engravings and photographs, I have seen them not once, but many times, have examined them with utmost care, and have for years been seeking in all quarters for anything to throw light on their date and origin.

Before coming to the discussion of the three unpublished vase-paintings which illustrate this article, and of the questions which they suggest (Plates I., II., III.), it will be proper to give some account of the Centaurs in general, as figured on the painted vases of the Greeks. The passages or episodes of the Centaur myth habitually illustrated in this form of art are five in number, viz.:—

1. The battle of the Centaurs and Lapithae at the wedding feast of Peirithoos and Hippodameia, or Deidameia, on Mount Pelion; when the Centaurs, being present as guests, maddened themselves with wine, and one of them seized the bride; whereupon a general conflict ensued, ending in the rout of the monsters and their expulsion from Thessaly.

This battle is said by Aelian to have been made the subject of a separate poem by an early epic writer, Melisandros of Miletus; but neither of Melisandros nor his work have we any other record. In our extant writings, allusion is made to the battle twice in the Iliad: once where Nestor extols the Lapith warriors, whom he had known in his youth, as having been the mightiest of earthly heroes, and having quelled the mightiest foes, to wit the Centaurs; and again in the catalogue of ships, where the Thessalian leader Polypoites is commemorated as the son begotten of Hippodameia by the Lapith king Peirithoos on the day when he chastised the monsters and drove them from Pelion.

The earliest works of Greek art manifest the inability of the artist to express all he desired by the inherent character of his work. The most striking characteristic of Greek art, and a trait which runs through the whole character of the ancient Greek race, is the simplicity with which it attains its great effects, the perfect harmony which obtains between the desire and conception and the realisation and execution. But it is only in the highest stage that we meet with this power: the genius of Pheidias is characterised by the perfect harmony that subsists between the idea and its realisation. Full proficiency in the technical handling of the material must precede the facile expression of inner conceptions by means of material form; and the study of the history of archaic art is the study of the struggle of the artistic spirit with the reluctant material and its final victory over it.

But the desire to give individual character to their statues was felt by the artists, though they had not the power to put it into the essential form of the work itself. This desire found an outlet in expression by means of more accidental and attributive characteristics.

The vase which forms the subject of this memoir has been thought worthy of publication, both because it belongs to a type of which we have as yet but few examples, and also on account of the peculiar interest attaching to the design painted upon it. Its probable age can only be a matter of conjecture, as some of the vases of the class to which it belongs have been considered by archaeologists to be late imitations of the archaic, while on the other hand the internal evidence of the painting would seem to assign it to a place among the earliest class of Greek vases. It is figured on Plate VII.

It is a circular dish with two handles, 3 inches high by 11¾ inches diameter, composed of a soft reddish clay of a yielding surface; the painting is laid on in a reddish brown, in some parts so thinly as to be transparent, and in other parts has rubbed away with the surface, so that it has acquired that patchy appearance generally characteristic of vase pictures of this type. The drawing, though crude and in parts almost grotesque, is executed with great spirit and freedom of style,—and thus could hardly have been the work of a late provincial artist—while in the shape of the column and of the wheel of the cart, in the prominent nose and chin which admit of no distinction between bearded and beardless faces, and in the angular contour of the human figures, we recognise features peculiar to an archaic period of art.

Tisamenus having been told by the priestess at Delphi that he should win five most illustrious contests, began at once, as Herodotus tells us, to train for the Olympian pentathlon, supposing that to that alone she could refer. From this we may judge that the pentathlon was in high favour among the Greeks. And not without reason, for whereas, as Socrates complained, ‘running long distances makes the legs thick and the shoulders meagre, and boxing makes the shoulders sturdy and the legs feeble,’ the practice of the pentathlon, on the contrary, developed all parts of the body in fair proportion. Hence it was in high honour among the Spartans, who set their faces against dishonouring and disfiguring contests, such as boxing and the pancration. Hence the pentathli were in all Greek states the models of physical beauty and vigour. And the great physician Galen remarks that the pentathlon is the most perfect of exercises, and also called κατασκευή, the training par excellence.

Among German archaeologists the pentathlon has aroused considerable interest. Böckh and Hermann devoted much attention to its explanation, and each of them, as well as Dissen and several other writers, drew up a scheme of the contest. In more recent times Dr. Pinder has published a work of more than a hundred pages in length on the subject.

Michaelis does not appear to me to be altogether right when he describes the Caryatid Porch at the south-west corner of The Erechtheum (B on the plan), as serving solely to cover the stair leading down from it to the western division of the temple (C). Further, I think he is wrong when he makes an entrance to the temple through the opening (A) in this porch. The mouldings at the sides show clearly that this opening was an original part of the construction; but they do not show that it was an entrance. For in the first place the step up to it from the outside—if it is a step—measures twenty inches; and in the second place, the delicate mouldings which run round the base ofthe building and are continued under this opening would be worn by almost every step that was taken up to it or down from it, as in fact they are now being worn by visitors who, with an effort, get up to the opening. Had there been an entrance at this point, these mouldings would have been discontinued, and a step placed to render the ascent fairly comfortable. Michaelis must then be wrong in making Pausanias first enter the temple at this opening. Perhaps it was here that the famous dog mentioned by Philochorus entered and descended into the Pandroseum!

Students of archaeology are now familiar with the splendid work in which Constantin Carapanos two years ago gave to the world the results of his discoveries at Dodona. The vexed question of the site of the ancient temple was finally set at rest, it will be remembered, by the discovery of a large number of inscriptions recording dedications to Zeus Naïos and Dione. The immense quantity of relics and works of art brought to light in the course of the excavations has been exhaustively catalogued in the work, Dodone et ses Ruines, and they have been illustrated and described by various scholars and reviewers. The inscriptions, too, have, at least on the Continent, come in for some share of notice and criticism. A detailed account of these inscriptions—their contributions to the lexicon, to dialectology, to local and general history, and to topography—is still a desideratum. For, as was only to be expected, the interpretations and criticisms of Carapanos himself are rather general than critical. His text, moreover, is frequently open to objection.

In a classification of these inscriptions our attention is at once drawn to an obviously new category; and it is with this alone that we propose to concern ourselves in the present article. The category comprises a quantity of more or less legible inscriptions engraved upon one or both sides of leaden plates often not exceeding a millimetre in thickness. These plates form a unique series of documents belonging to the archives of the famous oracle at Dodona, and contain the questions addressed, or prayers offered, to the deity by his votaries, who might be either communities or individuals.

In an interesting paper which appeared in the Zeitschrift für Numismatik, 1877, Dr. Friedländer has brought together some remarkable inscriptions on coins of some Pamphylian cities; but it cannot be said that he has added anything to their elucidation beyond what had been already done by the late J. Siegismund in Curtius' Studien, vol. ix. p. 87. During the last few weeks before I left England, my attention was drawn to these and to the long inscription from Assarkeui, the ancient Sillyon, which is given very inaccurately in Böckh, C. I. G., and more correctly by Hirschfeld in the Monatsber. d. Berl. Ak. 1874, p. 714; and the following notes are the result of the conversations and correspondence which I had with Professor Sayce on the subject. Throughout the paper, Professor Sayce's name will often recur, but it must be distinctly understood that even where his name is not mentioned, and where he might not agree with the views expressed, his suggestions have been used, and the whole might have been more justly, as it would doubtless have been better, written by him.

I put forth the paper with much diffidence, as I have been obliged to write it without access to a good library, and am therefore obliged to trust to memory for a great many facts, and to want the additional light which good authorities would supply. Hence throughout the paper few references are given, and these usually in general terms. Several times Ahrens's articles in Philologies, xxxv. xxxvi., on the Cyprian Dialect are quoted as Ahrens, Cypr., no clearer reference being possible.

Among the happy circumstances which in the fifth century B.C. favoured the development of Hellenic art must be reckoned as an important element the peculiar distinctions and relations of the Hellenic dialects. These relations were such as it would probably be difficult to parallel. The several idioms, most of them separately cultivated up to the standard of literature, differed from each other sufficiently to make their broad characters readily perceptible, and yet resembled each other sufficiently to be mutually intelligible. Each of the great branches of the cousinhood had its own characteristic product, and the total of these was the common inheritance of the nation. The language thus resembled an organ with several sets of stops; poetry was at once provincial and classic; and the literature enjoyed by a felicitous balance the conflicting advantages of fixed and fluctuating speech. That the great artists of Athens perceived their own strength is in a general way sufficiently obvious. The distinction between the Doric chorus and the Attic dialogue is alone a proof of the fact. But it seems not unlikely that closer examination may reveal to us more subtle applications of the same method, and that, besides the keener perception which we may thus gain of the tone and feeling of particular passages, we may even be able to employ our knowledge of such laws as an instrument of criticism and interpretation. This paper is an attempt to represent under this aspect the facts respecting the use by the three tragedians of the substantives and adjectives in -οσυνος and -οσυνη.

The following popular song was shown me by M. Fontrier, one of the directors of the museum belonging to the Evangelical School in Smyrna, who had heard it during a visit to Icaria in the year 1874. As the song is interesting from its reference to mediaeval history, I urged M. Fontrier to publish it, but he preferred to put it at my disposal. With his kind help, which is always most generously given in everything that concerns the study of Greek, the following pages have been written. A slight account of the historical circumstances to which the ballad refers would form a fitting commentary; but materials for this are not at hand. The account given by Ross (Reisen auf den griech. Inseln, ii. 6, 156 ff.) of his visit to the island forms an excellent geographical commentary. M. Fontrier visited most parts of the island, and from his notes I give some additions and corrections to Ross on points connected with the ballad.

[The event referred to in the ballad seems to belong to the occupation of Icaria by the Genoese in the middle of the fourteenth century, when the island of Chios was conquered by that people, and became the property of a Maona or trading company, who held it for 220 years, from 1346—1566.

Professor Bernays is among the few who possess the art of writing what can be read by men of culture as well as by professional scholars and historians; a monograph from his pen is sure to be at once a real contribution to knowledge, full of striking and original suggestions, and a work of literature, written with the attention to form and finish which we admire in some of the classic productions of a former age. The present work on Lucian and the Cynics is in every respect a worthy companion to the Theophrastus on Piety published in 1866. Though it is shorter and less elaborate in details than its predecessor, the subject is one which allows of a more consecutive mode of statement, and has perhaps in itself a more immediate interest for the general reader. Prof. Bernays now deals with an aspect of the civilization of the Roman empire, in which he demonstrates—what to many of us, I suppose, will be a sort of revelation—the existence of a popular religious movement, distinct from the established Paganism and from the philosophies of the schools. This new interpretation of Cynicism enables us to realize the fact that the Cynic of the first and second centuries was not a philosophical oddity, to be relegated to a chapter of a history of ancient philosophy, but a religious reformer at a moment when the Greek world seemed to have lost the power of religious initiative, and the spokesman of a kind of popular opposition when opposition to the existing political order of things was least to be expected.

The publication of Coray's correspondence with Chardon de la Rochette (Lettres inédites de Coray, Paris, 1877) and of the little autobiography prefixed to the volume makes us pretty familiar with the circumstances of Coray's life from 1790 to 1796. But, as there are still some obscure points in his history during this period, the following notes may perhaps some day be of interest, whenever a complete biography of the illustrious Hellene comes to be written.

(1) In 1800 Coray published an edition of Hippocrates περὶ ἀέρων, ὑδάτων, τόπων, his letters showing that he had been for years hard at work on this author. There are probably very few in this country who know that at the time of the Revolution Coray was in constant communication with two English scholars, Thomas Burgess, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, and Holmes, the editor of the Septuagint; and that he in 1792 contributed to an almost forgotten Oxford publication, the Musei Oxoniensis litterarii conspectus et specimina, edited by Burgess, a paper of Emendations on Hippocrates. The learned Greek is thus introduced by the editor to the English readers of the Museum:—‘Emendationes in Hippocratem nunc editas accepi cum duobus aliis fasciculis ab auctore eruditissimo sagacissimoque, hodie medico Parisiensi, V. Cl. Corayio, qui ad prelum Oxoniense parat Observationes in omnia Hippocratis opera.’

The study of mediaeval Greek literature has lately experienced a serious loss in the early death of Dr. W. Wagner, who by his Medieval Greek Texts, published for the English Philological Society, his Carmina Graeca Medii Aevi, and other works on the same subject, has deserved well of all who are interested in the writings of that period. Not the least important addition to our knowledge of this branch of literature is that which he made shortly before his death by publishing The Alphabet of Love (Ὁ ἀλφάβητος τῆς ἀγάπης, Leipzig: Teubner). The manuscript from which this is printed for the first time was discovered by him in the British Museum during the spring of 1878, and it contains a collection of love-poems in the usual Greek ballad-metre, which were partly arranged according to their initial letter; this system Dr. Wagner has introduced throughout, whence the name The Alphabet of Love. The place of their composition is shown by internal evidence to have been Rhodes, for in one of the poems the writer represents her lover, who has gone into foreign lands, as saying that he had left her in that island—