Themis . A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion. By Jane Ellen Harrison. Second edition, revised. Pp. xxxvi + 559. Cambridge: University Press. 21s.

The Twilight of History. By D. G. HOGARTH. Pp. 19. London, Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1926. is. THE author of this pamphlet with his customary eloquence suggests that we are doing our records an injustice when we believe that the fall of the Mycenean world was followed by a period of barbarism and decay of culture. Instead of the Dark Ages he would have us call this period a ' Twilight,' by which he means the half-light before the dawn. He elaborates the theory that the artist class fades and the artisan class flourishes in all periods of democratic revival that follow the expulsion or fall of dynasties and despots. His evidence is found in the improvement of technique but decay of artistic quality in vases of the period that follows the destruction .'of Knossos in the fifteenth century B.C. Applying this theory as a law to the period between 1000 and 800 he argues that the quality of the pottery then made indicates a strong democratic revival, continuous from the democracy that followed from the fall of Knossos, and he tries to diminish the catastrophic character of the Dorian invasion, repudiating the view often held that it was followed by a ' winter of discontent' and relative anarchy. He suggests that the Dorian invasion was as little catastrophic as the Cimmerian invasion of Asia or the inroad of the Galatians into Anatolia. ' Criticisms of such wide generalisations are as difficult as they are necessary. Ceramic evidence often gives a precarious foothold, particularly when it is used as a basis for politicalinference, and to elaborate a law about artisans and artists from such slender premises is risky, if attractive. Nor does the thesis about the Dorian invasion appear tenable, for there is no analogy between the Dorian inroad and those of the Galatians and Cimmerians. The Dorians, armed with the most efficient weapons hitherto produced, invaded a land that was virtually defenceless. That they brought about a catastrophe in nearly every Mycenean town is evident from the remains. Cimmerians and Galatians were merely roaming bands of warriors, not unlike the mediaeval Catalan bands, who created local disturbances but never aimed at or achieved the complete control of the countries they invaded. The spade-work has yet to be done on the ' Dark Ages' before we can be in a position to generalise and to say whether the glimmer in the sky was in the east or in the west. Perhaps twenty years hence we shall know more clearly. S. CASSON.