IV. Final Aims of Classical Study.-In reading the various essays of those who defend or assail the study of classics, the thought is often suggested that the writers often argue on different assumptions. Each on occasion will allude to the aims of the study, but these aims are not always the same. It is fortunate therefore that this year the question has begun to be discussed. Mr J. L. Paton, in his paper on the German reformed schools, cited last year,1 explains that the German aim is: "on the basis of grammatical discipline to secure that a pupil understands the more important classical authors, and is thereby introduced to the intellectual life and civilisation of antiquity." A critic in the Athenaeum2 says of this aim: "A mental atmosphere is the aim; literature is subsidiary to that; and in its turn, grammar is subordinate to the reading of authors. This is something broader, and, to our mind, more inspiring than what we in England mean by 'scholarship'; it spells the possibility of culture, gained by means of a wide range of information acting on the imagination for the many, rather than a 'delicate sense of refinement in the use and appreciation of language' for a few. But at the same time the course allows opportunities for the development of aesthetic and linguistic powers to those who have them."

Amongst English teachers, this wider aim may often be present, but it is certainly obscured by others, among which two especially may be mentioned. The one is, that Latin and Greek are a "mental gymnastic," or a means of exercising the logical faculties, and that this is the chief reason for learning them; the other, that they are useful as an excuse for teaching English. The former aim is certainly more common than Englishmen are ready to admit; it is implied in the customary system of minute construing and parsing, and in the character of annotated schoolbooks and examina

tion questions. The understanding and enjoyment of literature are quite subordinate, often absent, and in any case

1 Year's Work, 1907, p. 2.

2 "The Aim in Classical Teaching," Athenaeum, 1908, No. 4186, p. 78, No. 4187, p. 101.

B

they are hard to test by written questions: while the imaginative understanding of the ancient world is tacitly allowed to be beyond the powers of the great majority of schoolboys. The second aim has been clearly expressed by Mr Nicklin1 in a recent paper, who, after criticising certain attempts to suggest a reform of method, says that with himself and a large body of teachers, "expression in English is the primary purpose of all classical translation lessons." On this assumption, if English, including expression in English and the reading of English authors, be directly studied in the scheme of work, the need for the classics would consequently disappear, unless it could be shown that English could be better taught by professing to teach Latin and Greek. To prove that it could be better taught so, it would be necessary to conduct an exhaustive investigation of the results of teaching English, Latin, and Greek separately, and of the results attained by a similar mode of teaching other languages. It is very desirable that such an investigation should be made. This paper does not seem to recognise the wider aim which we have spoken of; nor does it deal with the question of composition. Other papers dealing with the ultimate aim of classical study are mentioned below.2

W. H. D. ROUSE.

1 T. Nicklin, "Public School Classics," School, 1908, x. p. 77; W. H. D. Rouse, "Public School Classics: a Rejoinder," School, x. p. 98.

2 Classical Journal (University of Chicago Press), vol. ii. No. 1, 1906; "Our Problem and a Platform," vol. iii. No. 5, 1908; "Dead Classics or Living?" by T. D. Goodell, Yale, vol. iii. No. 6; "What is the object of the study of Latin in Secondary Schools?" E. C. Greene, vol. iii. No. 7; "On the teaching of Cicero," by G. Showerman; Cf. Modern Legend Teaching, July 1908, iv. p. 135.

II

EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE

THE twelvemonth which ended in September 1908 has seen the continuation of all the more important excavations in Greek lands, and the beginning of work at several new sites. The most striking discoveries are perhaps those from Rhodes, Miletus, and Sparta, with their rich stores of archaic pottery, and the evidence which it gives of the activity of these places in the earliest period of Greek history: the Greek paintings from Thessaly: and the fresh light thrown on the early Minoan period in Crete by the very remarkable finds of Mr Seager on the island of Moklós.

The neolithic and early Bronze Age culture of Northern Greece has been illustrated at several points. Mr Wace and Mr Droop have excavated a mound at Zerélia, near Almegró in Phthiotis, and found a neolithic deposit from six to eight metres thick, consisting of the débris of eight clearly separable successive settlements, with handmade pottery. In the latest stratum several fragments of late Mycenean pottery were found, thus dating it to about the twelfth century B.C., and the earliest deposits therefore to a very remote period.1

In the earlier strata at Zerélia was a painted ware resembling that found by Dr Sotiriadhis in a neolithic tumulus near the railway station at Chaeronea. The tumulus seems to be the grave of a chieftain. The excavator

1 The excavation was conducted in the name of the British School, with the aid of a grant from the Cambridge University Worts Fund. The above account is from the excavator's unpublished notes. An account will be given in B.S.A. xiv., to appear in 1909.

believes that he can trace a line of development from these fabrics to the Mycenean, and is thus led to suggest as a date the end of the third millenium B.C. This painted ware also occurred at Sesklo and Dhiminí in Thessaly, sites which yielded also samples of the Zerélia fabric, and therefore date to the same period.2 Mr Wace and Mr Droop have found this Chaeronea-Zerélia ware also in prehistoric sites near Lamia and Pharsala, so that this culture extends over a considerable area. The Zerélia excavation is especially important as giving clear evidence that the Bronze Age in Northern Greece began very much later than in the Southern Aegean region.

The German Archaeological Institute has continued its work at Olympia, and discovered an independent series of prehistoric walls below the Geometric stratum between the Pelopion, the Heraion, and the Metroon. Of six buildings discovered, four are sufficiently well preserved to give the ground-plan, which is characterised by a semicircular apsidal ending. Whatever may be thought of Doerpfeld's contention that some at least of the Geometric bronzes at Olympia are older than Mycenean, and that therefore the Geometric stratum can be called prehistoric, there is no doubt that these latest discoveries have proved that the earliest remains at Olympia are prehistoric. Doerpfeld's conclusion is: Olympia is of the greatest antiquity (uralt); in the middle of the Altis, the traditional site of the house of King Oenomaos, there was, in fact, a prehistoric settlement." No metal has been found in this early deposit.3

Much progress was made by Doerpfeld in the summer of 1907 in his work in Leukas, identified by him as the Homeric Ithaka. The whole of the southern part of the Nidri plain was explored by a large number of trial-pits. The two most

1 For this information I am indebted to the kindness of Dr Sotiriadhis. The excavation has now been published in the latest number of the Εφημερὶς ̓Αρχαιολογική.

2 Tsountas has now published these excavations in Al Пpoïoropikai ̓Ακροπόλεις Διμηνίου καὶ Σέσκλου, Athens, 1908 (50 fr.). 3 See Ath. Mitt. xxxiii. p. 185.

important discoveries were a grave-tumulus and a large building. The tumulus was deeply buried and its remains consist of eight cist-graves containing contracted bodies surrounded by a rectangular wall of slabs. At one corner a later grave has been added. The question whether any signs of cremation are to be found is at present undecided. The pottery and a bronze spear-head of peculiar form present parallels with the fourth shaft-grave of Mycenae, a Bronze Age tomb dug recently by Sotiriadhis at Drachmáni, near Chaeronea, and certain Bronze Age tombs at Sesklo and Dhimini in Thessaly dug by Tsountas. The Thessalian parallels seem to connect these objects with the early Bronze Age in Northern Greece, and make it likely that this is a later stage of the neolithic culture of that region, always some way behind the stage reached in the Aegean. The discovery of some isolated Mycenean sherds had already led Doerpfeld to suggest as a date the second millenium B.C., a date now confirmed by the parallelisms with the fourth shaft-grave. His own opinion is that all these objects belong to the old native Achaean culture, and that the settlement in the Nidri plain was the Achaean city of Homeric Ithaka, whose inhabitants were afterwards driven out by the Dorians and founded a new Ithaka, the classical and modern Ithaka in the neighbouring island to the south, which was called in Homeric times Same.1

The German institute has finished the excavation of the three Mycenean beehive tombs at Kakóvatos, near Samikón, a site identified with the Homeric Viglos. One was dug in 1907, and although pillaged, yielded many small objects in gold, bronze, ivory, amber, and glass, and especially a fine series of large vases, resembling those found by Evans in the royal tombs at Isópata, near Knossos (Late Minoan II.). The other two, being well preserved and more thoroughly robbed, have now been excavated. They belong to the same period as the beehive tombs of Mycenae.2

1 See Doerpfeld, Vierter Brief ueber Leukas-Ithaka: Die Ergebnisse der Ansgrabungen von 1907; Athens, 1908.

2 Ath. Mitt. 1908, p. 295.