There is in the Ashmolean Museum (1968.777) a Hellenistic plaster relief with a festive scene of a most intriguing character (plate 1a). Its mood, I should like to think, is not alien to some of the lighter emotions which play round a celebratory volume; and perhaps this note, beginning from a re-interpretation of one detail of that scene, may end by adding a little to its claims on the manifold interests of the volume's distinguished recipient—not least if we find that it has some connection, of whatever kind, with the world of Greek drama.The relief is a cast, made in a mould taken from a metal cup. The class of artefacts to which it belongs has been illuminated by a discussion from Miss Gisela Richter; in 1964, while still in private hands, and not long after its acquisition by purchase in Egypt, this particular specimen achieved the distinction of publication in an extensive and very fine study by Mrs Dorothy Thompson; what I have to add here, it will be seen, is in the nature of a tentative excursus to that work.

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