Mythological interpretation will no doubt attempt to bring these scenes into relation with the famous Homeric simile of the scales in connection with the fate of Hector. But that is highly unsatisfying. To my eyes the whole series bears reference to Death. The Winged God of Death reappears on Athenian funeral lecythi of a later date. The figure of Sorrow may be matched by a marble statue found at Eleusis. The musicians have the sad or pensive faces of dirge-players. The rising Persephone is the heroine of the Eleusinian myth of immortality. The old woman may be Fate, and her younger counterpart is surely trimming the lamp for the journey. In brief, I would hazard the opinion that the whole monument is Eleusinian and funereal in character, symbolical rather than mythological. Such a character is strange indeed for the period to which the art seems to belong, but the art itself is without any close parallel. More it would be unbecoming to say at present; the monument is _sub judice_, and until Professor Studniczka has spoken--“let no dog bark.” THE WEST Wheresoever the patron is there will the poets be gathered together. When tyrants like Polycrates and Peisistratus ceased to exist in the East, and when the Ionian cities had fallen under the Lydian and Persian despotisms, the courtly poets migrated with their lyres and other luggage to Sicily and South Italy, where there were aristocracies as elegant and tyrants as bountiful. The centres of commerce in this [Illustration: Plate 32.--Reliefs from the “Ludovisi” Throne, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, U.S.A.] period before Athens rose into prominence were Miletus, Corinth, Ægina, and Sybaris, but above all the first and the last. The West was then, as it is now, one of the greatest granaries of the world. Sicily in particular, with its fertile volcanic soil and its equable climate, was regarded as the original home of wheat. Milesian wool and Eastern wares found a ready market among the Etruscans, whose tastes were Greek, as their race originally was. Most of this traffic passed through the hands of Sybaris. As a result Sybaris, on her soft, warm gulf, became proverbial for wealth and effeminacy. In the early sixth century Sybaris seems to have been larger and richer than any other State at any period of Greek history. Her walls had a circumference of over six miles, her population was 100,000, she kept a standing force of 5000 horsemen, and in her last great battle is said to have put 300,000 men into the field. But in the midst of her opulence and luxury she fell--and was destroyed for ever, so that not a vestige was left to mark her site. It was her neighbour and rival Croton that destroyed her. Croton was not nearly so wealthy, but she was better organised for war. She prided herself on the number of prizes her athletes won at Delphi and Olympia, and she was led by the famous strong man Milo, he who “Could rend an oak And peg thee in his knotty entrails.”