1978–1980

Athens, June 10, 1980

Dear Roger,

Many thanks for the new prints from George's Kourion basilica negatives. They are fine, and it is something to have my first eight plates in final shape.

Virginia has solved the problem of the "village" photograph that particularly interested me: a pilaster capital revetment plaque fragment of the same family as those from the basilica. It was not on a PUM roll and it was not taken at St Nicholas of the Cats near Akrotiri. It transpires that it was taken at Episkopi. It was taken at St Nicholas of the Cats near Akrotiri, where we took Virginia on an expromē in 1961! Her records are fortunately much better than my memory, and she hopes to find the relative roll. It is not impossible that it wandered to St Nicholas from Kourion, but, if not, it is good to know that there was a contemporary basilica there. I must have a hunt for it at the first opportunity.

I am glad to have Alfred Bellinger's comments on the coins found under the mosaic floor of the bath by Eustolios's building. I hope that Rupp (with the aid of Pete Daniel's and DecC Fales's notebooks) will be able to establish whether or not the floors of the two buildings are contemporary. On style alone those of Eustolios's building would be quite at home in the mid-fifth century. If I ever meet him, I shall ask him what he feels about the date of the earlier phase represented by the fragment on PUM neg. 48018 which seems unrelated to the surviving architecture. We found a comparable, but rather smarter "panel grid" floor in nice condition under one of the buildings to the west of the basilica.

All good wishes from Elektra

and

Handwritten: Peter