Excursions in Greece. By Charles Diehl. Translated by Emma R.
Perkins. (Gravel and Co.)—During the last twenty years, the excavator's spade has made additions of quite incalculable value to our knowledge of classical antiquity. The results of these dis- coveries have been admirably summarised by Professor Diehl. His first chapter is given to the excavations at Mycenee,—excavations which gave results to the world which revolutionised our views about the beginnings of the Greek races, and, incidentally, about Homer and the Homeric age. Tiryns, where the discoveries were of an analogous kind, naturally follows Mycente. After these, we have the Acropolis of Athens, and then Delos. The researches at Delos are peculiarly interesting, on account of the long period which they cover. Delos had its prehistoric glories; it was famous, in the flourishing age of Greece, as the nominal centre of the Dalian Confederacy,—nominal because the seat of government was, of course, in Athens. Then, after the fall of Athens, it had a prosperous epoch of its own, becoming in the second century one of the wealthiest and busiest ports in the Mediterranean. Two of the chapters are given to Beeotia, the second, in which the very curious terra-cotta work of Tanagra is described and discussed, being peculiarly interesting. The other subjects are Olympia, Eleusis, and Epidaurus. The earliest explorations wore at Delos in 1873 ; the latest date to which Professor Diehrs narrative is carried on is 1889.
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