Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/282

 ["weighing"]. The sign ˓ (half ) is used for the half-obol; for the quarter-obol; the sign \ (perhaps from, initial of ) for 1/12 obol.

The Athenian age of Delos furnishes, first, an important bilingual inscription on which M. Ernest Renan has commented It is in Greek and Phoenician, and belongs to the fourth century B.C. The Greek text reads.... In the Phoenician text M. Renan deciphers the name of "the king Abdaschtoreth" ("servant of Astarte"). This name, he adds, corresponds with the Greek name "Straton," borne by several kings of Sidon; and may here indicate Straton the Philhellene (who reigned from about 374 to 362 B.C.), or else the Straton deposed by Alexander in 332 B.C. M. Renan regrets that the fragmentary inscription does not tell us how the name of Apollo was translated in Phoenician.

A puzzle is presented by the inscription which I have already mentioned as probable evidence for the fact that, soon after 404 B.C, Sparta made a convention with Delos regarding the administration of the Delian temples.

The Greek alphabets may, with Kirchhoff, be classed geographically as Eastern and Western. The alphabets of Asia Minor, of the Aegean isles, and of Attica, belonged to the eastern group; that