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 and instructive guidance. The task to be attempted in these pages is one which, so far as I am aware, has not yet been performed, but for which the materials already accumulated are sufficiently abundant. I shall endeavour to give a brief but systematic account of the results attained by the labours of the French explorers in Delos up to the present time.

These results may be classified under the heads of topography, sculpture, and epigraphy. But, as might have been expected from the special conditions, it is in the province of epigraphy that the harvest has been largest. And the principal value of the inscriptions consists in the light thrown on details in the history and administration of the island. It follows, however, from the complex