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ARCHAEOLOGY

Greek Vases in the British Museum, and White Athenian Vases; also the illustrated catalogues of vases in the British Museum, the Ashmolean and Fitzwilliam Museums, and the Louvre. Three small works in German by W. Klein, Euphronios, Vasen mit Meistersignaturen, and Vasen mit Lieblingsinschriften, are indispensable to the student. The best general collection of vasepaintings is still Gerhard’s Auserlesene Vasenbilder, 1840. (5) Terra-Cottas.—Two small works can be recommended: E. Bottler’s Statuettes de terre suite, and Miss C. A. Hutton’s Greek Terra-Cotta Statuettes, which is published with A. S. Murray’s Greek Bronzes. (6) Gems.—A recent work is J. H. Middleton’s Engraved Gems of Classical Times. But quite recently A. Furtwangler has published a large work on Greek gems, Antike Gemmen, which is the product of vast learning, and must needs form the basis of future study. (7) Coins.—Ho branch of archaeology has been more completely transformed in the last quarter of a century than numismatics. Previously, coins had been treated, much as gems are, as individual works of art, beautiful in themselves, and giving valuable information as to ancient mythology and geography. But in recent years the close and intimate relations which prevail between the coins of ancient cities and the history of those cities have been more closely regarded, from which point of view the exact dates and weights of the coins become most important. The strictly historic treatment of Roman coins was begun by Mommsen in his Geschichte des romischen Munzwesens. A similar treatment of Greek coins is attempted by Mr B. Y. Head in his Historia Numorum, a work in which an endeavour is made to arrange the coins of all Greek cities under periods, in close connexion with the history of those cities. The British Museum Catalogue of Greek Coins, which is dominated by the same purpose, is now approaching completion. The Historia Numorum is the most useful work to a collector of Greek coins. To a collector of Roman coins M. Babelon’s editions of Cohen’s Monnaies de la ripublique romaine, and Monnaies de Vempire romain are necessary. Mr G. F. Hill’s Handbook of Greek and Homan Coins is an excellent summary. Prof. Ridgeway has published a work on the Origin of Currency and WeightStandards. P. Gardner’s Types of Greek Coins deals mainly with the art of coins. (8) Corpuses.—The Academies of Berlin and Vienna have done much in recent years in the way of publishing vast collections and compendia of ancient monuments, each of which is a Corpus, that is, contains all known monuments of the class dealt with. It is impossible to overrate the value of these monumental publications, each of which, being complete up to the date of publication, relieves the student from the necessity of hunting through books of an earlier date. The Corpus of Greek Inscriptions by Boeckh, and the more recent Corpus of Roman Inscriptions and Corpus of Attic Inscriptions are well known. To these are now added, a Corpus of Attic Sepulchral Monuments (nearly complete), a Corpus of Sarcophagi, a Corpus of Terra-Cottas, a Corpus of Greek Coins, all in course of gradual publication. Other works of the same class are in preparation. The labour of producing these works is enormous, and for the most part it is unpaid, German archaeologists freely spending their lives in the effort to advance scientific knowledge. (9) Other Works.—Besides the works mentioned, we may set down a few books of a more general character: C. Diehl’s Excursions in Greece, P. Gardner’s New Chapters in Greek History, D. G. Hogarth’s Authority and Archaeology, Sacred and Profane, Lady Evans’s Greek Dress, and the dictionaries of classical antiquities. The valuable translation of and commentary on Pausanias’ Description of Greece, by J. G. Frazer, has enabled the English reader for the first time to grasp the results of the great intellectual activity of the archseologists at Athens. The edition .of Pliny’s Chapters on the History of Art, by Misses Jex-Blake and Sellers, is also important. In the matter of bringing ancient monuments into relation with Greek mythology, the books of C. O. Muller have been succeeded by far more elaborate and completer works. Most comprehensive of all these is Overbeck’s Kunstmythologie. The collection here made of monuments bearing on the cults of Zeus, Hera, Demeter, Poseidon, and Apollo is enormous; unfortunately, the completion of the work has been prevented by Prof. Overbeck’s death. For monuments relating to other deities, we have to go to the Lexicons of Baumeister and Roscher. Mr L. R. Farnell has published in English a work called Cults of the Greek States, which deals in detail with the art representations of some of the Greek deities. Research and Excavation.—Three sites of the first importance in Greece proper have been carefully excavated in the last quarter of a century, besides those like Troy, Tiryns, and Mycense, which have yielded mainly pre-

(CLASSICAL) historic monuments. These are Olympia, the Athenian Acropolis, and Delphi. The excavation at Olympia was carried out at great cost by the German Government; and the results are published in a series of vast and costly volumes, which are epoch-making in the development of archaeology. It must not be forgotten that in the thorough investigation of a great site like Olympia, which was for ages one of the chief centres of Greek life and art, the whole result is far greater than the sum of the separate discoveries. It is not merely that we have gained a knowledge of the plans of buildings and of their architectural details, a series of valuable works of sculpture and bronzes, and the text of a number of important documents recording treaties and decrees and public honours. We further discover the relations of these monuments among themselves. Their very situations and the level of their bases show us their respective dates and their comparative importance. We find ourselves in a museum, but in a museum not arranged on any arbitrary principle, but, so to speak, by the hands of history herself, affording us almost infinite opportunities for comparing, inferring, and connecting the remains which have come down to us with ancient belief and custom. Of Delphi it is too early to speak, as the excavators to whom the task of its exploration has been confided by the French Government have as yet published but few of their results. But enough is known to assure us that the harvest on this site also is very rich. The topography of the site and the position of the main buildings and the principal dedications can be determined with accuracy. In sculpture of the end of the 6 th and the early part of the 5th century, the site is certainly very rich, and the inscriptions are already known to be very numerous and of great historic value. (See Delphi.) The acropolis of Athens (q.v.) has been carefully and completely excavated by the Greek Archaeological Society. The great importance of the finds is mainly due to an. event which, at the time, must have seemed fatal to all record of the city’s beauty—the havoc wrought by the Persians, when they occupied the rock-fortress in 480 b.c. When the Athenians in the next year, after the victory of Plataea, returned to their citadel, they found it a mass of ruins, and nothing remained but to-bury out of sight the shattered fragments of their shrines and the works of art which had been dedicated to their goddess. But their loss has been our gain, for the wreck of the ruined Athens of the early 5th century has rested quietly in the ground from that day to this, and has only now been dragged forth and ranged in the Athenian museums. To the archaeologist, nothing seems more desirable than to secure a fixed date for a series of monuments. And on this site the year 480 is defined by the circumstances of the case as the time below which all the monuments to be found in certain strata cannot be brought. We are thus able to reconstruct in imagination, at all events in outline, the surface of the Acropolis as it existed in the days of Pisistratus and of Themistocles. The extensive precinct of the god Aesculapius in the neighbourhood of Epidaurus has also been cleared by the Greek archseologists under M. Kavvadias. Here the main interest, besides that which belongs to recovered fragments of buildings and series of sculptures, arises from the fact that Epidaurus was a sort of Baden of antiquity, a resort of those who were out of health and sought recovery either at the hands of the physician-god, or from the natural salubrity of the place and its healthful regimen. We find on the spot not only shrines of the deities, but covered seats shielded from all the winds, an abundant supply of water for baths, porticoes as a refuge from summer heat, and a theatre and a stadium for the refresh-