* Or the maps inside the covers of this book.

* Cf. the seated Chares from Miletus in the British Museum, or the Head of Cleobis by Polymedes in the museum at Delphi.

* “To write the history of Greece at almost any period without dissipating the interest is a task of immense difficulty . . . because there is no constant unity or fixed center to which the actions and aims of the numerous states can be subordinated or related.”—Bury, Ancient Greek Historians, p. 22.

† To avoid returning too often to the same scene, the architectural history of minor cities will be carried in these chapters (Book II) down to the death of Alexander (323).

* These figures, of course, are conjectural, being based upon a few hints and many assumptions.

* Alcman, Alcaeus, Sappho, Stesichorus, Ibycus, Anacreon, Simonides, Pindar, Bacchylides.

† How strangely similar this is—as if one feeling united two poets across twenty-five centuries—to Goethe’s “Wanderer’s Night-Song”:

Über alien Gipfeln

1st Ruh,

In allen Wipfeln

Spürest du

Kaum einen Hauch;

Die vögelein schweigen im Walde.

Warte nur, balde

Ruhest du auch.³¹

O’er all the hill-tops

Is quiet now,

In all the tree-tops

Hearest thou

Hardly a breath;

The birds are asleep in the trees.

Wait; soon like these

Thou, too, shalt rest.³²

* Lycurgus, however, was believed to have forbidden the writing of his laws.

* Gitiadas adorned a temple of Athena with excellently wrought bronze plates; Bathycles of Magnesia built the stately throne of Apollo at Amyclae; and Theodorus of Samos built for Sparta a famous town hall. After that Spartan art, even by imported artists, is hardly heard of any more.

* So in 1789 Camille Desmoulins, from his cafe rostra, urged the Gauls to overthrow their German (Frankish) aristocracy.

† The Diolcos was a grateful alternative to merchants who distrusted the rough waters off Cape Malea on the sea route to the western Mediterranean. The tramway was sturdy enough to carry the usual trading vessel of Greek times; indeed, Augustus transported his fleet over the Diolcos in pursuit of Antony and Cleopatra after the battle of Actium, and a Greek squadron was similarly carried over as late as A.D. 883.⁷⁸ Periander planned in his day to cut the canal that now joins the two gulfs, but his engineers found it too great a task.⁷⁹

* Cf. the periodical “purges” in Communist Russia, 1935-38.

* The ascription of this poem, and of those quoted below, to certain periods in Theognis’ life is hypothetical.