Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/134

 122 INSCRIPTIONS [GREEK. individuals, but also with decrees and other documents. All these forms were intended to stand by themselves in the open air. But it was also common to inscribe state documents upon the surface of the walls of a temple, or other public building. Thus the cella-walls of the temple of Athena Polias at Priene were covered with copies of the awards made concerning the lands disputed between Samos and Priene (G. I. G., 2905, and infra) ; similarly the walls of the Artemisium at Ephcsus contained a number of decrees (Wood s Ephesus, appendix), and the proscenium of the Odeum was lined with crustce, or &quot; marble-veneering,&quot; under 1 inch thick, inscribed with copies of letters from Hadrian, Antoninus, and other emperors to the Ephesian people (Wood, ibid., p. 44). The workmanship and appearance of inscriptions varied considerably according to the period of artistic development. The letters incised with the chisel upon the wall or the ar^Xr) were painted in with red or blue pigment, which is often traceable upon newly unearthed inscriptions. When Thucydides, in quoting the epigram of Pisistratus the younger (vi. 54), says, &quot; it may still be read a[j.vSpoi&amp;lt;s ypa/x/xacrt,&quot; he must refer to the fading of the colour ; for the inscription was brought to light in 1877 with the letters as fresh as when they were first chiselled (see Kumanudes in A$?jj/aiov, vi. p. 149; Corpus Inscr. Aft., suppl. to vol. i. p. 41). The Greeks found no inconvenience, as we should, in the bulkiness of inscriptions as a means of keeping public records. On the contrary they made every temple a muniment room ; and while the innumerable o-r^Aat, Hermse, bases, and altars served to adorn the city, it must also have encouraged and educated the sense of patriotism for the citizen to move continually among the records of the past. The history of a Greek city was literally written upon her stones. Value of The primary value of an inscription lay in its documen- inscrip- tary evidence (so Euripides, Suppl. 1202, foil). In this lons&amp;gt; way they are continually cited and put in evidence by the orators (e.g., see Demosth., Fals. Leg,, 428; ./Eschin., In Ctes., 75). But the Greek historians also were not slow to recognize their importance. Herodotus often cites them (iv. 88,90, 91; v. 58 sq.; vii. 228); and in his account of the victory of Plataea he had his eye upon the tripod-inscription (ix. 81 ; cf. Thuc. i. 132). Thucydides s use of inscriptions is illustrated by v. 18 foil., 23, 47, 77 ; vi. 54, 59. Polybius used them still more. In later Greece, when men s thoughts were thrown back upon the past, regular collections of inscriptions began to be made by such writers as Philochorus (300 B.C.), Polemo (2d century B.C., called rrnjAoKOTras for his devotion to inscriptions), Aristodemus, Craterus of Macedon, and rrxany others. Modern At the revival of learning, the study of inscriptions collec- revived with the renewed interest in Greek literature. rs and Qy r j ac o f Ancona, early in the 15th century, copied a vast number of inscriptions during his travels in Greece and Asia Minor ; his MSS. collections were deposited in the Barberini library at Rome, and have been used by other scholars. (See Bulletin of the French archaeological school at Athens, vol. i.) Succeeding generations of travellers and scholars continued to collect and edit, and Englishmen in both capacities did much for this study. Thus early in this century the store of known Greek in scriptions had so far accumulated that the time had come for a comprehensive survey of the whole subject. And it was the work of one great scholar, Augustus Boeckh, to raise Greek epigraphy into a science. At the request of the Academy of Berlin he undertook to arrange and edit all the known inscriptions in one systematic work, and vol. i. of the Corpus Inscriptionum Grsccarum was published in 1828, vol. ii. in 1833. He lived to see the work completed, al- editors. though other scholars were called in to help him to execute his great design; vol. iii., by Franz, appeared in 1853; vol. iv., by Kirclihoff, in 1856. 1 The work is a masterpiece of lucid arrangement, profound learning, untiring industry, and brilliant generalization. Out of the publication of the Corpus there grew up a new school of students, who devoted themselves to discovering and editing new texts, and working up epigraphical results into monographs upon the many-sided history of Greece. In the Corpus Boeckh had settled for ever the methods of Greek epigraphy ; and in his StaatsJxmshaltung der Athener (well known to English readers from Sir G. C. Lewis s translation, The Public Economy of Athens, 2d ed., 1842) he had given a palmary specimen of the application of epigraphy to historical studies. At the same time Franz drew up a valuable introduction to the study of inscriptions in his Elementa JEpigraphices Grsecoe, (1840). Meanwhile the liberation of Greece and increasing facilities for visiting the Levant combined to encourage the growth of the subject, which has been advanced by the labours of many scholars, and chiefly Ludwig Ross, Leake, Pittakys, Rangabe, Le Bas, and later by Meier, Sauppe, Kirchhoff, Kumanudes, Waddington. Together with the development of this school of writers, there has gone on a systematic exploration of some of the most famous sites of antiquity, with the result of exhuming vast numbers of inscriptions. Cyrene, Halicarnassus, Cnidus, Priene, Rhodes, and Ephesus have been explored by the English ; Athens, Eleusis, and Dodona by the English and the Greeks ; Olympia by the Greeks and Germans ; Cyprus by General Cesnola ; Delphi and Delos by the French ; and Pergamos by the Germans. A German and a French institute have been established at Athens, chiefly engaged in the study of inscriptions. And still the work proceeds at a rapid rate. For indeed the yield of inscriptions is practically inexhaustible : each island, every city, was a separate centre of corporate life, and it is significant to note that in the island of Calymnos alone Mr Newton collected over one hundred inscriptions, many of them of considerable interest. The result of this has been that Boeckh s great work, though it never can be superseded, yet has ceased to be what its name implies. The four volumes of the C. I. G. contain about 10,000 inscriptions. But the number of Greek inscriptions now known has been estimated at 20,000 or 30,000. Many of these are only to be found published in the scattered literature of dissertations, or in Greek, German, and other periodicals. But several comprehensive collec tions have been attempted, among which may be named Rangabe&quot;, Antiquites Helleniques, 2 vols., 1842-1855; Keil, Sylloge Inscriptionum Bceoticarum, 1847 ; Kumanudes, ATTI/OJ&amp;lt;; e7riy/)a&amp;lt;](&amp;gt;ai eTriTtyx/Jioi, 1871 ; Le Bas, Voyage Archeo- logique, vols. i.-iii., in course of continuation by M. Wad dington ; Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum, edited by C. T. Newton, pt. i., &quot; Attika,&quot; by E. L. Hicks, 1874; and above all the Corpus Inscriptionum Atticarum, under taken by the Berlin Academy, of which there have already appeared vol. i. by Kirchhoff, 1873 (with supplement, by the same, 1877) ; vol. ii. pt. 1, by Kohler, 1877 ; vol. iii. pt. 1, by Dittenberger, 1878. The oldest extant Greek inscriptions appear to date from the Oldi middle of the 7th century r,.c. During the recent excavations at Grei Olympia a number of fragments of very ancient inscriptions have insc been found, which have been published in the recent numbers of tion the ArcMologischc Zcitung (1878-1880). But what is wanted is a sufficient number of very early inscriptions of fixed date. One such exists upon the leg of a colossal Egyptian statue at Abu-Simbel on the upper Nile, where certain Greek mercenaries in the service of King Psammetichus recorded their names, as having explored the 1 An index to the four volumes was long wanting ; it was at length completed and appeared in 1877.