Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/285

 two inscriptions, 1. One was that on the base of the Naxian colossus of Apollo at Delos, first noticed by Spon, which Bentley read as an iambic trimeter (with hiatus),, "I am of one stone, the image and the pedestal." The first letters are, as if had been written , a phenomenon in which Kirchhoff could scarcely believe, but which M. Homolle's accurate transcript confirms. 2. The other early Naxian inscription is on a bas-relief at Rhomaïko, a village not far from Orchomenus, on the road to Chaeronea: it reads.

Both these inscriptions may be referred to the end of the sixth or beginning of the fifth century B.C., say to 520-490 B.C. Now the new inscription has a mark which at once distinguishes it, and affords a presumption that it is older. This is the presence of, with three horizontal bars, instead of. The form occurs in the inscription by the mercenaries of Psammitichus at Abu-Simbel (circ. 620 B.C.), in the older inscriptions of Thera, and in others of which the date may be placed before or about 540 B.C. The later form  occurs in texts of Melos and Paros, from about 540 B.C., and in the Rhomaïko inscription from Naxos. In both its shapes—the older and the later —this character is found serving a double purpose: (1) normally to denote