less entertaining’’ as a result. What she seems to be suggesting is that Mai is no longer bothering to perform for his English audience. This may have been because George III had at last agreed to his going home.37 So we see here a shift from a perception of Mai as the perfect gentleman that the ladies are ready to fall in love with to one of him as a clown. Back to the Pacific: Mai as a Cultural Mediator When he first encountered Mai in 1774, Cook had been unimpressed, describing him as ‘‘dark,

Rowe, of Architecture and Design in Europe and America, 1750–2000 (Blackwell, 2006). She has also published in Art History (2002) and has a chapter in Tracing Architecture: The Aesthetics of Antiquarianism (Blackwell, 2003), edited by Dana Arnold and Stephen Bending. She is currently researching the British furniture trade in the early twentieth century and working on a book on key concepts in museum studies. Robin Osborne is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Cambridge. He writes

Kleisthenes announced that he had just lost the bride, the response came: ‘‘Hippokleides doesn’t care!’’29 By failing to project the appropriate identity in the face of the challenges of that symposion Hippokleides had lost not only the most desirable bride but also one route to significant political influence. Whether at the court of a tyrant or in the democratic city, reputations were made and lost in the symposion. Hosts and guests indulged in a game of projecting and maintaining identities in

42–3 and fig. 43. The Forum-Basilica in Roman Britain 149 24 The key research on these distributions is presented in Raphael M. J. Isserlin, ‘‘A spirit of improvement? Marble and the culture of Roman Britain,’’ in Ray Laurence and Joanne Berry, Cultural Identity and the Roman Empire (London: Routledge, 1998), and Blagg, Roman Architectural Ornament. 25 For a full discussion of the basilica and the tribunal see Pierre Gros, L’Architecture romaine: du de´but du IIIe sie`cle av. J.-C. a` la fin du

the Tahitian pronunciation of the name. Mai was brought back to London by Captain Furneaux on the Adventure after Cook’s second voyage and arrived in London (ahead of Cook) on July 14, 1774.1 The stereotypical visual reading of Mai as noble savage is largely generated by Sir Joshua Reynolds’s famed and impressive grand-scale portrait titled Omai (figure 1.1) (1775–6, Private Collection, currently on loan to Tate Britain, London). Most interpretations of Mai as noble savage derive from scholars’