selves be taken as proofs of race. One might take the distribution of Russian paraffin tins and contrast it with that of Huntley & Palmer's biscuit tins as an aid to determine the spheres of influence of Russia and England, or study the use of tea as compared with that of tobacco in the hope of arriving at the influence of East and West respectively. All four are to be found in Tibet, but the conclusions to be drawn would not be of any great value.

The fundamental difficulty with theories of identification is to be found in the assumption that the further one goes back the simpler the problems of race become. This seems to be postulated as an axiom in all such inquiries, but the truth is that the problems of early times are only simple so long as the evidence is scanty. Further knowledge brings perplexity. The search for the typical Homeric house is a case in point. There is no reason to assume that there was anything but a general similarity in structure. Scholars, however, take the palaces of Odysseus and Nestor and the tent of Achilles, and by comparison of different passages reconstruct them from the text. The remains at Troy, Tiryns, Mycenae, and on the Acropolis at Athens are then examined, and the plan of the palace at Tiryns selected as the nearest approach to the Homeric type. Even small details are identified with the aid of Homer, although it is plain that the stage of civilisation is not the same. As a matter of fact, the Homeric house might almost as well be illustrated by the fortress house and walled courtyard of a chief in the Albanian highlands, who, except that he has firearms, petroleum, and tobacco, lives very much the same life as that of Homeric Thessaly.

The first thing necessary is a trustworthy scheme of dating, and the standard history of private life awaits the slow progress of the spade and the collation of small fragments of evidence.

Pottery and inscriptions are at present our best guides, where coins are not found. They occur in a great variety of examples extending over long periods, and enable definite

dates to be assigned to a number of distinctive styles and fabrics. On a given site masonry often helps, but, apart from other evidence, does not tell much.

With the coming of scientific research literary evidence has been subjected to destructive criticism, and much that has been accepted without question is now rejected or suspected. The result is that the student's old guides are lost. The grammarians, lexicographers, and scholiasts on whose work the standard lexicons and dictionaries are based, have to be taken for what they are worth, and as far as private life is concerned many of the definitions and data derived from them are superseded. It will, however, be years before the books of general reference can be rewritten in the matter of private life.

The student is not only made a sceptic in the matter of definitions; he finds that the received texts of many classical authors have been so manipulated that without a good apparatus criticus it is difficult to trust literary evidence. His work leads him into the byways of classical learning, and he is lucky if he finds a decent text for the less-read authors. Even in the best edited it is not uncommon to find a difficult word or phrase emended on purely textual grounds and concealed from the searcher.

Summing up the present position, excavations are more careful, indications of date are better observed, museum collections are better classified and exhibited, publications are more accurately illustrated, and methods are becoming more scientific. Much awaits the scholar who can bring these methods to bear on the new material. Professor Blümner puts on record his opinion that histories of Greek dress, of agriculture, hunting, and travelling remain yet to be written, and that most of the present handbooks must be recast from start to finish.

Dealing with the last two years three subjects have attracted more attention than any others: first, the methods of transport in Greek and Roman times, leading incidentally to an attack on the evidence for the accepted view of the

trireme and other warships with multiple banks; secondly, athletics; and thirdly, education.

(1) Methods of transport were taken by the promoters of the Milan Exhibition (1906) as one of the departments of their show, and a most instructive collection of photographs of Roman roads, gates, etc., of originals and reproductions of carts, waggons, chariots, harness, boats, ships, etc., was brought together.

In England, Miss Lorimer's article on the "Country Cart in Ancient Greece" (1903) is the only contribution to the subject that I have noticed. The Greek warship is dealt with elsewhere.

(2) Athletics have become more real owing to the increased interest in scientific methods of development shown by numerous systems, such as Sandow's, and by the movement which has led the Board of Education to issue its new

syllabus of physical exercises. On the more combative side the popularity of Jujitsu and wrestling has thrown new light on problems which had been neglected for some decades.

The revival of the Olympic games at Athens during the present year came at just the right time. Some of the competitors were themselves archaeologists who took a keen interest in the reconstituting of the rules observed in ancient times.

The contests themselves, notably the discus-throwing, were more instructive, but it may be a year or more before the lessons learnt are put on paper.

Wrestling has been dealt with in a series of articles in The Journal of Hellenic Studies by Mr. Norman Gardiner (1903-6). These articles now present a full account of what is known as to jumping, wrestling, and pankration, are illustrated, and might well form the basis of a treatise on the subject.

Boxing is also the subject of an article by K. T. Frost in the J. H. S. Of the new evidence discussed in these articles the most important is the fragmentary list of

Olympic victors found among the Oxyrhynchus papyri (ii. 222), which has enabled Professor Robert to demonstrate that the order of contests at the Olympic games is correctly given in the fragment of Phlegon preserved by Photius. A good summary of Robert's conclusions is to be found in Daremberg-Saglio, s.v. Olympia, p. 184 foll.

Another Oxyrhynchus papyrus (iii. 466) containing instructions for a wrestling lesson is dealt with by Mr. Gardiner.

(3) Education has become one of the recognised subjects of instruction at the Universities, notably the newer provincial Universities, and Greek and Roman education naturally forms the basis of the earlier lectures on the history of education. So far, however, the books published have been exclusively literary, and do not add anything to our knowledge as they are written for students who know but little Latin and less Greek.

The pleasant scholarly little book on Roman Education (1905), by the late Professor A. S. Wilkins, deserves mention, and should be in every school library.

Mention should be made of the useful summary of Greek private antiquities in the Cambridge Companion to Greek Studies (1905), which has a bibliography under each head sufficient to enable the student to seek fuller information in any well-stocked library. The summary is not, however, full enough to enable him to dispense with the older books of reference.

Furniture is the subject of a sumptuously printed and illustrated monograph by Miss Caroline L. Ransom, Fellow of the University of Chicago, Couches and Beds of the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans (1905). This is a very thorough piece of work dealing with the subject from a practical as well as a a literary and monumental point of view. My own name appears in connection with the identification of the fulcrum as the "end rest" of the couch, and it is pleasant to find that Professor Mau does not obtain the credit for it which he has claimed elsewhere.

Lady Evans has written in The Numismatic Chronicle

(1906) on the "Hair-dressing of Roman Ladies as illustrated on Coins." Her short article has six plates of reproductions, chiefly from the wonderful collection of gold coins in her husband's possession, and is, it is to be hoped, the forerunner of a further work on a subject of great importance as an aid to dating portrait sculptures.

W. C. F. ANDERSON.