A Double Misfit

Fiction ~ short story
First published in Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly (US), August 1902¹
Approx. 4,100 words
(First read 17/03/2014)

A real-life archaeologist

One of those amazing EFB stories which somehow manages to be both leaden and featherlight at the same time.  This one tells the familiar tale of a love-rectangle, two women and two men, none of them especially likable or in any way real.  The bulk of it takes the form of a highly expository conversation between the two women involved, and is really only there to introduce the dull, predictable, visible-from-space 'climax' in which yet another poor sap² wanders off into the Cambridge sunset, guilty only of loving some heartless little bint ... moan moan whine whine ~ I've nothing good to say of it.  (Well, apart from this little quote, describing the sap's slavish devotion to his bint, which tickled me:

[After dinner] he had turned over the leaves of her music when she had sung, upsetting a candle, and [...] he had gleefully, at her request, engaged in cock-fighting with an under-graduate on the hearth-rug. 

The mind boggles.  Or at least it would if it wasn't fast asleep.)  The story's available online here.

¹ Subsequently published in the Windsor Magazine (UK), January 1903.
² Rossington is an archaeology professor at Cambridge University.  At one point EFB really and truly says this:

"But I do take it seriously," replied the agonized archaeologist.

You couldn't make it up.

Aegosthena

Non-fiction ~ research article
Published in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, November 1895
Available to buy online here

ABSTRACT:

Aegosthena, now more generally known as Porto Germano, lies on one of the easternmost bays of the Corinthian gulf, and on the northern frontier of the Megarid. Its remoteness from ordinary routes—for between it and Velia, itself an ultima Thule, rise 2,000 feet of pine-clad mountains—accounts for the fact that it is to this day practically unknown, and also perhaps for the very scanty mention of it in ancient literature. There was a shrine of Melampus there, the Spartans passed it in their retreat from Leuctra, and that is all. But the same remoteness has preserved for us a Greek fortified town in better condition and greater completeness than any other, not even excepting Messene.
The town was divided into two parts, the Acropolis defended on all sides by a line of walls and towers, and the lower town fortified on the north, from the Acropolis down to the sea, by a similar line, still remaining in good condition. We are, I think, both by the exigencies of its position and also by certain scanty remains bound to assume the existence of a corresponding south wall, of which mention will be made later. The style of building both in the Acropolis and the long wall is the same.

It sounds a hoot.

THE CRITICS
Josiah Ober, in Fortress Attica: Defense of the Athenian Land Frontier, 404-322 B.C. (1985) (which also sounds an absolute hoot), calls it 'still the basic work'.
 

The Thersilion at Megalopolis

This is it, apparently

Non-fiction ~ scholarly article
Published in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, November 1893
Available to buy here, if you're desperate for something to read or your sleeping tablets aren't working any more

ABSTRACT

The Thersilion, or assembly hall, built in close connexion with the theatre at Megalopolis, has now been completely cleared. Several plans of the building, including a conjectural restoration, have already appeared in the special Supplement to the Journal of Hellenic Studies, published this year. The latter was based on the small tentative diggings already made. The plan (Pl. XXI.) in this number shows the whole area, and includes many additions and corrections from the earlier plan.
The chief point of interest has been the arrangement of the columns behind the centre. It was evident at once, as soon as the clearing began, that the plan did not in all respects bear out Mr. Schultz's conjectural restoration (Supplementary paper, J.H.S., p. 19). This was due partly to the fact that in the previous small diggings on the site two columns in the outer row next the south wall had been missed, partly because it was found on remeasurement that the centre was incorrectly marked.