A little to the south of Sparta and opposite the hamlet of Psychiko, at the point where the Magoula river runs into the Eurotas, the hills on the left or eastern bank of the latter approach quite close to the river. These hills, which stand high above the plain, have long been identified with those on which, according to Polybius, the Menelaion stood, and as the site of Therapnai. In fact the statements of this author and of Livy make it practically certain that these are the hills in question. They were first explored by Ross in 1833, and he claimed as the shrine of Helen and Menelaos the building that he began to excavate on the principal peak close to the modern chapel of Hagios Elias, and directly above the Eurotas. No other Greek building has yet been found on these heights, so that we may for the present assume with considerable probability that this one, discovered by Ross, is the shrine of Helen and Menelaos mentioned by Herodotus and Pausanias.

Amomum compactum Sol. ex Maton (Java cardamom) is widely cultivated across Southeast Asia as a spice and medicine. Confusion has surrounded this species both morphologically and nomenclaturally. The nomenclatural confusion between Elettaria cardamomum (L.) Maton and certain other names in Amomum is discussed, and the identity of A. compactum is clarified with respect to A. verum Blackw. More than one element of original material of A. compactum has been located and a lectotype is chosen. The identity of A. kepulaga Burkill & Sprague is discussed and a lectotype chosen.

Theotokou lies at the south-eastern corner of the Magnesian peninsula, a little to the north of the bay of Kato Georgi. The site itself is the seaward end of a narrow valley, where a small brook discharges into a little cove just to the north of a hill called Kastro (Fig. 1). Here there stands a small chapel built in 1807, and dedicated to the Virgin. In the walls of the chapel itself are several ancient blocks, and north and south of it traces of walls are visible. Immediately to the west is a large mass of ruins formerly covered with brushwood; round these stand six fragments of Doric columns, and a seventh lies in a cornfield some distance to the west: an eighth, which was seen here, has disappeared. This place, the traditional site of Sepias, was first visited by a local gentleman, Theódoros Zirghános.

In the course of the excavations carried on by the School from 1906 to 1910 at Sparta, a considerable quantity was found of the mediæval glazed pottery that is usually called Byzantine. As specimens of this fabric are not common in museums, and its date and general relations are still matters of some doubt, it seems desirable to publish all the pieces of any interest as material for further study, although the writers of this paper have no claim to speak as experts on the subject. The fragments were found in the numerous trial pits that were made on and around the Acropolis, and were especially abundant outside the east end of the Late Roman fortifications. The exactly similar ware from Pergamon and Constantinople now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin is there officially ascribed to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and other pieces from old Cairo in the same museum of very similar make, to the eleventh and twelfth. Two almost complete bowls from Pergamon, on the other hand, plainly of our classes I and III, are assigned by W. Altmann to ‘the first centuries of Byzantine art’ The position in which the sherds were found at Sparta gives some slight indication as to date in the form of a probable terminus ante quem, for the building of the fortress of Misithra, or Mistrá, by Guillaume de Villehardouin, in the middle of the thirteenth century, was quickly followed by the decay of the Byzantine city situated round the Acropolis of Sparta.

The three of the excavators of the Orthia Sanctuary most concerned confess to a feeling of discouragement on finding that in the case of one reader at least all their endeavours to tell a plain tale plainly have failed, and that their power of expression has not been equal to the task laid upon it. The reader in question is the writer of the very careful and painstaking review of ‘Artemis Orthia’ which has appeared in the J.H.S. for this year over the initials V. W.-G. It is plain that to the reviewer the grounds on which the latter periods of Laconian pottery, the periods of its decay, upon which so much depends, have been classified are neither clear nor convincing. And since, in fact, the evidence on which that classification was made was both clear and convincing, the failure must lie in the exposition. In the excavators' hands the spade has been mightier than the pen. Or does the fault lie in an historical training which has not been adequate to the appreciation of the minutiae of archaeological evidence? ‘The historian,’ we are told, ‘may differ from the excavator in his estimate of what is proved.’