Page:On two Greek inscriptions, from Kamiros and Ialysos, in Rhodes, respectively (1878).djvu/3



[From the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. xi. Now Series.] I to submit to the Society two Greek inscriptions from Rhodes, both of which are in the British Museum. They have a special interest, not only on account of their subject-matter, as I shall hope to show, but also on account of their provenance, one being from Kamiros, the other from lalysos, two of the three ancient cities in Rhodes, which are mentioned by Homer in the catalogue of the Greek ships at Troy. The tombs on both sites have in recent years yielded a most remarkable series of fictile vases and other antiquities, the most archaic of which present a striking affinity to many of the objects discovered by Dr. Schliemann at Mykenæ. The two inscriptions I have to submit this evening have no claim to such remote antiquity. Their date, probably, falls somewhere in the interval between the building of the city of Rhodes, B.C. 404 and the accession of Alexander the Great.

The decree from Kamiros, which seems the later of the two, is as follows:—