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It is argued that the composition of part of an Indian miniature painting in a private collection in Los Angeles is ultimately based on a late Roman ivory diptych panel, although the mechanism of transmission is uncertain.

Every drug has the potential to affect the fetus but few are definitely teratogenic. The prescription or inadvertent use of drugs in pregnancy often causes considerable anxiety in parents because of their concerns about fetal harm. Accurate information and appropriate counselling are required to avoid unnecessary terminations and improve patient compliance with essential treatment. This article outlines the principles of teratogenicity and gives practical advice regarding prescribing in pregnancy. The importance of pre-pregnancy counselling and stabilizing medical disorders in pregnancy is emphasized. Changes in maternal physiology that can affect pharmacokinetics and factors influencing transplacental passage of drugs are also addressed.

Trevor Clark. Good Second Class: Memories of a Generalist Overseas Administrator. Stanhope, U.K.: The Memoir Club, 2004. xiv + 303 pp. Photographs. Map. £17:50. Cloth. Having recently reviewed for this journal Trevor Clark's excellent compendium, The Last Generation of Nigeria's Tarawa (Bristol, 2002), I was keen to cast an eye over his memoirs. I relaxed and dug in, expecting a bright and breezy romp. It turned out to be anything but. Indeed, it was hard and heavy going and required two attentive readings. Having been buffeted in the course of my first reading by a curious, heavily congested, quasi-telegraphic, almost shorthand style, albeit packed with informative detail, I was baffled. Then gradually the light dawned. Clark had produced what in fact he had been doing with great efficiency and economy all his working life as a colonial administrator: an extended, if in this instance somewhat randomly organized, "minute." Having deduced this, translated the vast assortment of acronyms and shorthand identities, and then pondered the meanings to be derived from the content, I had a second go. This time I fared better. What now was revealed was a fascinating tale that provides an honest and penetrating account detailing much more than the mere activities (exhaustive and exhausting as these were) of a skilled, dedicated, and loyal administrator who served in three of Britain's last-remaining colonial possessions: Northern Nigeria, Hong Kong, and the British Solomon Islands Protectorate. Clark is of that not-so-small band of "committed improvers" who sought to bring a glimmer of light into the darker reaches of colonial administration. That this was not always appreciated by his superiors in the field and in Whitehall, particularly during this downbeat period of colonial disengagement, is amply demonstrated. Still, distressing and depressing as, inevitably, Clark's tale is, his tenacious hold on practical, commonsense human values, his caring, his humor, and his determination to maintain these values and this outlook when confronted with bleak prospects and unrelenting pressure "from above" do credit not only to Clark, but indeed to the best of that common heritage left by Britain's colonial civil servants. Clark cared for "his people," and he worked skillfully and incredibly hard for them. The problem was that time had moved on. All too often what his superiors, under hasty, often ill-informed, and politically motivated orders from Whitehall, required of him was-not to put too fine a point on it-two-timing, misrepresentation, and betrayal. Clark had to swallow hard to comply with these orders. And before doing so he often spoke his mind to the superior concerned. This did not make him popular with the local colonial establishments. In Northern Nigeria, where he served for twelve years (1948-60), this apparently resulted in his banishment from the Kaduna secretariat after, among other things, he gave some frank, unprejudiced advice to the latter's Whitehall replacement, Gawain-Bell, whose job was to get the North to accept independence, by whatever means. …

MEMOIRS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY Colin Baker. A Fine Chest of Medals: The Life of Jack Archer. Cardiff: Mpemba Books, 2003. xvi + 273 pp. Photographs. Maps. £11.99. Paper. Colin Baker. Wild Goose: The Life and Death of Hugh van Oppen. Cardiff: Mpemba Books, 2002. xviii + 256 pp. Photographs. Maps. £10.50. Paper. These two military biographies, like most good studies of their type, are as much travelogues as accounts of the subjects themselves. Colin Baker has a wonderful gift for descriptive writing, and he keeps the chronological narratives moving at a brisk pace. he also possesses the rare ability to penetrate the minds of his protagonists, two very different men from very different worlds. No mean achievement. The detailed descriptions of various famous military engagements are riveting. From the words and thoughts of Jack Archer we get not only absorbing accounts of the battles themselves-as at Mashonaland (1896), Omdurman (1898), Ladysmith, (1899-1900), and Cambrai in the First World War (wounded and captured in August 1914, Archer remained a POW for the rest of the war)-but also eye-catching details of the various terrains. Hugh van Oppen, a young soldier in the post-World War II world, provides horrific, surreal perspectives on the Korean conflict (1952-53), which, he stresses, took on many of the attributes of World War I trench warfare. The sections on his role in the tragic Nkata Bay affair (1959) in Nyasaland, where twenty Africans were killed and another forty wounded in a tense riot-dispersion exercise led by van Oppen, along with his later activities in the Congo (1965-66) as a mercenary, take us inside actions that were both traumatic-indeed much more so for the British government than for van Oppen himself!-and totally challenging. Or just plain terrifying. Quite apart from recounting the lives and experiences of these two extraordinary soldiers, these books cause us to reflect on the nature of the British Army as it was in the 189Os during the height of Britain's imperial engagements, during World War I, during the 1950s, and indeed, now. What strikes one most forcefully is the brute, stubborn ignorance of those in highest command, their failure to recognize, use, promote, and reward those who possessed the rare combined qualities of natural warrior and natural leader, the vital bedrock of any army. Clearly, the British Army had two exceptional warrior-leaders in its ranks. It drove out one early in his career, and it drove out the other later. Of course, the army might take the view that it got what it wanted from Jack Archer, a superlative NCO who did what was needed, filling the traditional role of the experienced professional and able to provide guidance, assistance, and leadership to both men and, under pressing combat conditions, officers, too. As for van Oppen, the Army might well respond that in this modern day there is no place for the "high-spirited individualist." The discipline of line-of-command is imperative in all circumstances. Certainly these are issues to which this reviewer was moved to give some thought, as others may well be. The deduction to be taken from the tale of van Oppen is that if a soldier is naturally gifted as a warrior-leader, then the regular army, where often the most "deadly opponent" is prolonged periods of "enforced inactivity" (A Fine Chest of Medals, 154), is to be avoided. Archer endured more than twenty-five of his thirty soldiering years in this limbo. The path that will guide the enterprising warrior-leader most swiftly toward his goals of combat, promotion, and rewards is that of the mercenary. …

Although there is a long tradition, going back at least to the tenth century, that would see Aristophanes'Birds(performed in the spring of 414 B.C.) as somehow related to the exile in Lacedaemon of Alcibiades, and to the fortification of the Attic township of Decelea by his Spartan hosts (Arg. Av. 1 Coulon), current scholarship surroundingBirdsis firmly in the hands of those who are antipathetic to seeing the creation of Cloudcuckooland in terms of a political allegory. ‘The majority of scholars today…flatly reject a political reading’;Birdshas ‘no strong and obvious connection with a topical question of public interest’; ‘attempts to find inBirdsany extensive allegorical comment…are unconvincing’. Not only is it widely believed that ‘Birds… is strangely free of political concerns’. but also that ‘the theme of theBirdsis absurdity itself…it is about meaninglessness’ (ibid. 179). This is a tradition that descends from A. W. von Schlegel, for whomBirdswas ‘merely a “Lustspiel”, full of imagination and the marvellous, with amusing touches at everything, but with no particular object’. This approach was reinforced by the fact that by the second half of the nineteenth century, the allegorists had apparently spun out of control. By 1879, there were no fewer than 79 accounts of theTendenzof theBirds—some political, some ‘escapist fantasy’–on offer. The most influential allegorical interpretation ofBirdswas J. W. Suvern's study of 1826, but which is now generally dismissed, and only mentioned to be held up as a warning to those who might be tempted to take the allegorical route. This paper takes a different point of departure, namely Pierre Brumoy'sLe thétre des grecs(Paris, 1730), an allegorical treatment that is full of good sense, and which was too hastily dismissed by Suvern, and ignored by others.

The attitudes of the ancient Greeks towards their material culture—so far as we can discover from their writings—was rather different from that of most modern students of the remains of classical antiquity. The Greeks esteemed gold and silver vessels, while many archaeologists still believe that they preferred painted pottery. This reversal of classical values came about through the entry of Utopian ideals into the mainstream of classical scholarship in the 18th century. Laudable in themselves, these ideals have led to a serious misunderstanding of the role of ceramic in antiquity. Prices for painted pottery were extremely low and it can hardly have been the vehicle for what the Ancients would have considered to be ‘Art’. It is ironic that the classical tradition has been subverted by many of those charged with the scholarly interpretation of the classical past.

The Nabataeans were as famous in antiquity for their gold as they are today for their pottery. Their gold vessels have disappeared, but their red-on-red painted pottery survives in profusion. Both the forms and decoration of much of this pottery have analogies in extant Parthian silverware. Nabataean gold vessels may lie behind the pottery (which should no longer be called "luxury" ware). The same picture emerges from an examination of the sources relating to India: gold vessels were imported in quantity from the Roman world, but only red-gloss pottery survives to suggest what the range of imported and local goldware might have been. Judging from the evidence relating to Gaul and Carthage, the same model may have applied to Gaulish sigillata and African Red Slip ware, and by extension to red-gloss ceramics throughout the Mediterranean.*

‘Dear dead women, with such hair, too – what's become of all the gold’? ROBERT BROWNING, ‘A toccata of Galuppi's’ What became of most of the Classical gold and silver, argues Michael Vickers, is that it went into the melting pot, with exceptions like the Sevso treasure recently brought to public spectacle. Classical ceramics, more commonplace and with nil potential for recycling, have been luckier in their survival. Those accidents of later history need to be remembered as Classical Greece is envisaged; and it is perhaps even more important to bear in mind the reasons why many students of antiquity have until recently chosen to downplay the rôle of precious metal

‘[The Athenians] love him, they hate him, they cannot do without him’ (Aristophanes, Frogs 1425). This was a comment made about the fearless, fickle, and above all controversial figure of Alcibiades not long before he died in 404 BC in squalid circumstances (shot with arrows, running naked from a burning cabin in a village in Asia Minor where he had spent the night with two prostitutes). At the height of his power and influence his chariots had been placed first, second and fourth at the Olympic Games in 416 BC (he had entered an unprecedented seven teams), and he had been elected one of the Athenian generals on the Sicilian campaign in 415 BC. Having been recalled to Athens to face charges of impiety (accused of the equivalent of celebrating Black Masses in his home) and having been condemned to death in absentia, he fled to Sparta. Here, he not only seduced the wife of one of the kings and (some said) got her with child, but assisted the Spartans to attack Athens in the most effective ways possible. We hope to investigate elsewhere what Plutarch called ‘the strange inconsistencies and contradictions’ (Plutarch, Alcibiades 2.1) that Alcibiades displayed throughout his adult life. Here, we shall concentrate on his childhood, concerning which we have a rich fund of telling anecdotes. These have rarely received the attention they perhaps deserve, for reasons we shall discuss later.

• Antisthenes' conceit that Alcibiades "lay with his mother, his daughter and his sister" is examined for possible grains of truth. The "mother" may have been Aspasia, and the source of the imputation the anecdotal tradition which had its roots in Euripides Hippolytus where, it is argued, the character of Phaedra is modelled on that of Aspasia., • L'article recherche des parcelles de vérité dans le trait d'Antisthénès : "Alcibiade a couché avec sa mère, sa fille et sa sœur". La "mère" peut avoir été Aspasie, et la source de l'accusation la tradition anecdotique qui prend sa racine dans l'Hippolyte d'Euripide, où le personnage de Phèdre pourrait avoir été composé sur le modèle d'Aspasie., Vickers Michael. Alcibiades and Aspasia : Notes on the Hippolytus. In: Dialogues d'histoire ancienne, vol. 26, n°2, 2000. pp. 7-17.

Evidence relating to the prices of Greek pots in antiquity suggests that they can never have played the prominent artistic, economic or social role attributed to them and their makers in some current handbooks. Furthermore, the skeuomorphic role of ceramic (whereby both forms and decorative schemes were adopted from other, nobler, materials) suggests that the status of pottery can never have been high. In terms of ancient expenditure patterns, or of the expendable wealth of a rich Etruscan, pots can never have been objects of esteem. Their use in the tomb was as surrogates for vessels of precious metal, which were kept above ground for the living. Pottery played a context-specific role in providing the Etruscan elite with objects which evoked luxury and which at the same time provided images appropriate for the eternal banquet attended by the deceased., Les documents relatifs aux prix des poteries grecques dans l'Antiquité laissent supposer qu'elles peuvent ne jamais avoir joué le rôle artistique, économique ou social qu'on leur prête à elles-mêmes et à leurs fabricants dans quelques manuels bien connus. Par ailleurs, le rôle skeuomorphique de la céramique (en raison duquel les formes ainsi que les motifs décoratifs étaient adoptés d'autres matériaux plus nobles) suppose que la position de la poterie n'a jamais dû être élevée. Au regard d'exemples de dépenses dans l'Antiquité ou de fortune excessive d'un riche Étrusque, les poteries ne peuvent jamais avoir été des objets de valeur. Leur utilisation dans le tombeau était un substitut à la vaisselle en métal précieux, qui était conservée sur terre pour la vie quotidienne. La céramique sert à définir le contexte en procurant à l'élite étrusque des objets évocateurs du luxe et liés à l'imaginaire du banquet d'éternité auquel assistait le défunt., Gill David W.J., Vickers Michael. They were expendable : Greek vases in the Etruscan tomb. In: Revue des Études Anciennes. Tome 97, 1995, n°1-2. Vaisselle métallique, vaisselle céramique. Productions, usages et valeurs en Étrurie, sous la direction de Jean-René Jannot. pp. 225-249.

Trevor Clark, ed. Was It Only Yesterday? The Last Generation of Nigeria's "Turawa." Bristol: British Empire Commonwealth Museum Press, 2002. xi + 352 pp. Photographs. Maps. Appendixes. Bibliography. 5 £25:00. Cloth. 5 £15:00. Paper. This is a remarkable book. Yet it may discomfit many Americans, for it makes clear why the "boy scout" approach to imperialism may in the end be more successful than the bluntly commercial variety. Indeed it is possible that the subtleties of Indirect Rule, as demonstrated so brilliantly in Turawa ("White Men") may yet gain appreciative consideration in Washington as options are pondered in these increasingly difficult days of post-Saddam occupation in Iraq. Aside from compiling a masterly portrait from an enormous variety of highly individual, brightly colored creations on the Turawa canvas, Trevor Clark has edited a book with several strengths. First, from his selection of topics and arrangement of contributions, the reader gains a panoramic yet detailed "feel" for the country of the north, a land of astonishing variety, great power, and appeal. I was particularly captivated by descriptions of the well-forested and watered Cameroonian border territories: their wild, remote, mountainous terrain and their fiercely independent animist peoples, many of whom have managed to hold out over the centuries against the sword of Islam and dominance of the Fulani. To the consternation of the "politically correct," these same peoples voted against independence in the U.N.-monitored 9 199 59 plebiscite. Turawa's second major contribution is the picture it conveys of the north-south politics of colonial Nigeria, and more specifically, of Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, leader of the north's approximately 30 million people during the turbulent, politically intense 1950s and early '60s, who figures in nearly every section. What comes through is the extent to which Bello was a fiery autocrat of almost lethal force, with the result that successive governors had to handle all administrative matters-which perforce were almost always highly political-very carefully. Supported by most of the Muslim north and many fiercely loyal British officials, the Sardauna wanted nothing to do with the south, with democracy, or with Nigerian independence. To the Sardauna, opposition party leaders were enemies of the state. One British DO who spoke up for the opposition leader Joseph Tarka so enraged the Sardauna that he demanded his execution. Yet it was along the democratic path that Whitehall had decreed Nigeria must go, and quickly. How then to keep the Sardauna, supreme leader of the vast and numerically dominant north, "on board"? Comments made by many contributors offer compelling insights into the persistent efforts requiredingenious initiatives at which the British, under pressure, excelled. The concluding observations in chapter 30 add still another dimension. Rather surprisingly, the immediate public response of many northerners to the assassination of the Sardauna in the January 1966 coup was not one of shock and sadness, but rather "indifference, even suppressed elation, as though a great weight had been lifted" (312). Yet at a deeper level, other more powerful and dangerous feelings connected to regional pride and outrage at perceived religious sacrilege had been ignited. We are all-too-aware of the horrific results that came about when these burst forth. …

FEDERALISM AND ETHNIC CONFLICT IN NIGERIARotimi SuberuWashington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001, xxvi, 247pp, $14.95, ISBN 1-929223-28-5ETHNICITY AND SUB-NATIONALISM IN NIGERIAMichael VickersOxford: WorldView, 2000, xviii, 410pp, [Symbol Not Transcribed]49.95 cloth (ISBN 1-872142-43-5), [Symbol Not Transcribed]29.95 paper (ISBN 1-872142-44-3)These ambitious volumes address the development of Nigerian federalism and the complex internal challenges to it. Michael Vickers offers a comprehensive treatment of the pre- and immediate post-independence struggles by ethnic minorities for a restructuring of the then tri-regional arrangement into one that would give them statehood within the federation. Rotimi Suberu explores issues of revenue allocation, state creation, political representation, and population enumeration that have been at the centre of Nigerian federal design.Vickers provides a wealth of information concerning the evolution, development, and triumph of the Midwest State movement in an age when majority group elites held veto powers over political demands of minorities, and international norms were against self-determination for subnational groups. He makes the insightful observation that, apart from separate historical links with Benin, the various minority groups of the western region were not united. He provides a detailed account of how the Oba of Benin toured all the minority areas to try to forge a pan-midwest unity (pp 76-82).This invention project, Vickers shows, had limited success as the Itsekiri, the western Ijaw, and the western Ibo refused to be part of a new state in which they would be marginalized. Without a defined territory, the midwest movement could barely prove a case before the Minorities Commission of 1957-8. The same difficulty arose in the east and the north where there were separatist demands. What is missing from Vicker's rich narrative is the Commission's major justification for dismissing the state creation demands: the proposed states contained groups that preferred to opt out, and it was difficult to draw a definite boundary without creating fresh minorities with new demands.The fears of the Commission seem to have been justified. Although the Midwest state was constitutionally created in 1963, separatist movements emerged soon after, and it finally gave way in 1991 to Delta and Edo states. Still, there are ongoing pressures for Anioma and True Delta states. This is representative of the rest of the country where majority subgroups are continuously differentiating and receiving recognition in separate states. …

In recent articles the present writer has used the evidence of brickstamps in proposing new dates for the walls of Thessaloniki, for the mosaics of the second phase of the Rotunda (now dedicated to St. George), and for the Byzantine palace. In each case, reference was made to only two or three examples, and it is with a view to reinforcing and developing the arguments already expressed that all the published fifth-century brickstamps recognizable as such are assembled here (with the addition of some unpublished examples).

It is argued that the painting in the Stoa Poikile described by Pausanias as an engagement between Athenians and Spartans at Argive Oenoe in fact refers to Oenoe in Attica, and depicted the arrival of the Plataean contingent prior to the battle of Marathon. The dependence of Herodotus on the paintings in the Stoa Poikile for his account of Marathon is discussed.