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No antique symbol is miore familiar to us than the palm branch' carried in the hand in token of victory. Given to successful competitors in the athletic and other contests which abounded in the Greek and Roman world, it acquired, at least in metaphor, a universal significance and was one of the commonest attributes of the goddess Victory herself. References to it in the literature and representations of it in the art of the Roman imperial period are so numerous that it would be idle to attempt a list of them. It is enough to cite the dialogue of Plutarch which discusses the question why the palm was universally bestowed upon victors in the games.' No ancient writer who speaks of the palm of victory suggests that the symbol was not of high antiquity, while Plutarch in two passages3 and Pausanias in one' expressly connect it with the establishment of the Delian games by Theseus. Nevertheless it does not take much inquiry to discover that this symbol is conspicuously absent from the literature and the art of Greece down to about the end of the fifth century B. a.5 Various writers of this earlier time refer literally or figuratively to the crown of victory;6 Pindar and Bacchylides especially are constantly singing of the crown: but no one of these has a word to say of the

THE list given by Hartwig in 1893 (Griechische Meisterschalen, pp. 685 f.) of the vases, complete or fragmentary, signed by Duris as decorator (ASpt g'ypacfrev), includes twenty-six numbers, or, if we count the small bit from the Athenian Ac.ropolis and the three cylices which have disappeared and of which no drawings exist, thirty numbers. Of these thirty, twentyseven are cylices. In 1898 the Boston Museum of Fine Arts acquired a twenty-eighth cylix, belonging to Duris's earlier period (Twenty-Third Annual Report, pp. 65 f.). It is my privilege to make known a twenty-ninth cylix, which, if not ranking among the best works from that prolific master's hand, is by no means among the poorest. It belongs to his later period, i.e. about 480 B.c. This vase was for mahy years the property of Thomas Wilson, LL.D., Curator of the Division of Prehistoric Archaeology in the United States National Museum, Washington, D.C. It was found in 1886, between April 4 and 11, in the necropolis on the northwest slope of the rock on which Orvieto is situated. The discovery was made in the course of excavations conducted by Signor Riccardo Mancini, a well-known explorer of Orvieto, Dr. Wilson being himself present and assisting in the work. The tombs uncovered at this time had been disturbed

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