8 



DISCOVERY 



can be rotated about this point when it is desired to 

 make the propeller axis horizontal. 



In conclusion, the Oechmichen, another French 

 helicopter, may be mentioned. The chief feature of 

 this machine is the special form of screws used, which 

 are two-bladed, each blade being shaped after the man- 

 ner of a bird's wing. M. Oechmichen claims to have 

 discovered a secret of bird flight in that certain birds 

 or insects are capable of utilising in flight the suction 

 caused by the passage of their wings through the air 

 to give additional support, and it is to test his theory 

 that these screws are designed. A screw of this kind 

 is carried at each end of a light framework of box-girder 

 design, the drive from the Dutheil Chalmers engine (of 

 the remarkably low power of 25 h.p.) being by belting. 

 In trials that have so far taken place, a small balloon 

 was fitted above the machine, but the fact that this 

 was merely to relieve the inventor, in the early stages 

 of experiment, from having to worry over problems 

 of stability, is evidenced by the fact that the helicopter 

 rose from the ground with a total weight of 700 lb., 

 although the lifting force exerted by the balloon was 

 only 150 lb. 



The multiplicity of ideas and the wide variation of 

 design might lead one to suppose that the helicopter 

 is merely a " freak," were it not for the fact that quite 

 as much doubt regarding the correct line to adopt in 

 aeroplane experimentation existed so recently as ten 

 or eleven years ago. It would not be wise, therefore, 

 to be misled by present-day conflicting notions, but 

 to watch the trend of design as order arrives out of 

 chaos. The solution of the problem will come, the 

 present writer is inclined to believe, not through the 

 sudden appearance of an epoch-making discovery, but 

 from the steady development of known mechanical 

 principles. 



New Light on the Silver 

 Age of Hellas 



By J. U. Powell, M.A. 



Fellotv and Senior Tutor of St. John Baptist College, Oxford 



The Mediterranean lands arc slowlj^ giving up their 

 secrets. Several articles have appeared in Discovery 

 dealing with the new light cast upon early civilisation 

 in the Eastern Mediterranean by the discoveries in 

 Crete and on the mainland. These discoveries reveal 

 a civilisation which preceded the Greek age ; and, 

 although we cannot yet read the written records, we 

 can largely reconstruct the history from the remains 

 of the civilisation themselves. This paper deals with 

 a later age, with fresh evidence upon the close of the 



classical Greek period, when its brilliance, though not 

 its influence, had begun to wane. It is the period 

 between the Athenian and the Roman age in the 

 Eastern lands, roughly speaking from 350 to 150 B.C. 



In the fifth century B.C. the great Athenian states- 

 man Pericles is said to have proudly boasted that 

 Athens was " a hberal education to Greece." But in 

 these centuries we see, not Athens, but Greece be- 

 coming a liberal education to the nearer East through 

 the conquests of Alexander, and to the rising and 

 conquering power of Rome through the numerous centres 

 of Greek culture spread o\'er the shores of the 

 Mediterranean. 



The Greek literature which we possess is but a frag- 

 ment — a large fragment, no doubt — of all that was 

 written. But more is coming to light. Some of those 

 authors who were little more than names, and whose 

 works are only knowii to us by the briefest mention, 

 are becoming personalities to us through recent dis- 

 coveries, disinterred mainly from the sands of Egypt 

 and the lava of Herculaneum.* They are not by any 

 means all Athenian. The brilliance of Athenian genius 

 in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. has largely eclipsed 

 that of the writers in other parts of the Greek world ; 

 but when Athens came to be only the most distinguished 

 of many cultured cities after the middle of the fourth 

 century, we can see more clearly how widely diffused 

 and how prolific Greek culture was. Alter the death 

 of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. the kingdoms of 

 the Eastern Mediterranean were thrown into the melt- 

 ing-pot. But meanwhile, in the central Mediterranean, 

 another power, that of Rome, was rising and spreading 

 its influence, and its great Empire was taking shape ; 

 a political success in its own strength, but intellectually 

 inspired and infused by Greek thought. It was in 

 these less brilliant centuries that those writers flourished 

 who influenced Roman thought directly in the depart- 

 ments of philosophy and poetry, and it is the life of 

 these important centuries that is now being continually 

 brought to light from Papyri and inscriptions. 



Let us take first that side of Greek life which has 

 largely occupied the attention of scholars during recent 

 years, and which may almost be called a new depart- 

 ment of study — Greek Religion ; and first the cult of 

 Apollo. His oracle at Delphi was one of the most 

 famous institutions of antiquity ; and though the cult 

 gradually decayed and finally vanished, a certain 

 splendour surrounds it even in its later years. Two 

 out of the five Hymns inscribed on stone and discovered 

 at Delphi in the closing years of the last and the 

 opening of the present century are remarkable, one 

 for a vocal, the other for an instrumental, score which 



1 This was a Greek settlement on the shores of the Gulf of 

 Naples overwhelmed by the great eruption of Mount Vesuvius 

 in A.D. 79, and first rediscovered in the year 1738. 



