Couroi et courètes : essai sur l'éducation spartiate et sur les rites d'adolescence dans l'antiquité hellénique

pages, and every reader will miss one thing, and believe another one to be over-emphasised. Prof. Robinson, on the whole, has done very well. The main lines of history are clearly pointed out, while a great mass of details is dispersed over the whole account. No reader, however, will get the slightest idea of the complexity of some facts, and the difficulties of some problems. Everything looks simple and clear, much more so than can usually be justified, even in a book of this type. The worst seems to me that rather often matters are stated as ascertained facts which actually are quite uncertain or even wrong. Not many people would agree, I suppose, to the idea of a militaristic and extremely autocratic regime in Minoan Crete (28), or that Egypt was in part responsible for the great intellectual awakening of Greece (57). Even the strongest ' unitarian ' would not agree to a sentence such as this: ' Homer wrote at Chios, about 850 B.C.' And if you read: ' perhaps his greatest social interest was in woman' (135), you would not think this phrase concerns—Aeschylus! After all that has been written on the subject, it is surprising to read (247) that Alexander made his trip to the Ammoneion to convince the Egyptians that he was the true heir of the Pharaohs.