Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/286

 GREEK VOTIVE OFFERINGS.

Dr. Rouse 1 has done what in him lies to wipe out an old reproach. It used at one time to be said that in England classical archaeology was at the mercy of dabblers and dilettanti. Indeed there are still many college lecturers, and some university professors, who look askance at the subject on the ground that it is commonly taken up by second-rate or even third-rate scholars. Theoretically, and in the abstract, they would doubtless admit that an adequate knowledge of antiquity cannot be gained without studying its external as well as its internal aspect. But they object that, as a matter of fact, those who do devote their attention to the outward remains of ancient life are not sufficiently familiar with Greek and Latin literature — they do not know their authors — and in consequence they often fail to appre- ciate the true significance of their own discoveries. Now it may be at once conceded that in the past this charge has been not altogether unfounded. One obvious proof of this is that English books on classical archaeology, books, that is, of a really scholarly character, are scarce. Our dictionaries, even the latest of them, are meagre in comparison with the great work of Daremberg and Saglio, or the yet greater work of Pauly and Wissowa. And as to sectional and particular subjects, to mention three or four at random, we can quote no English equivalent for Collignon's Histoire de la Sculpture grecque, or Bliimner's Technologies or Furt- wangler's Steinschneidekiinst, or Babelon's Monnaies de la Republiqiie. This inferiority, everywhere manifest, is no- where more conspicuous than in the department of classical religion. To speak frankly, what English work can we put

' Greek Votive Offerings, an Essay in the History of Greek Religion, by W. H. D. Rouse, M.A. Cambridge University Press. 1902. pp. xvi. , 464. 15^. net.