Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/15

 INSCRIPTIONS XI Steps of the Parthenon, at the entrance of the Propylaea, in the Portico of Hadrian, on the banks of the Ihssus, built into the walls of a ruined church or the staircase of a monastery, here and there inserted in the pavement of a courtyard or the floor of a cottage, or forming the table of a Christian altar. Hardly any remain in their original position. From most of them there is a difficulty in extracting a continuous meaning ; the result partakes of the nature of the materials. But considering the chances of destruction to which they have been exposed we may wonder that so much has been preserved, and that so many institutions and historical events receive illustration from them. The process of deciphering Greek inscriptions may be roughly described as follows. First, the fragments must be copied and fitted into each other, allowance being made for missing portions : either they may belong to a single flat surface, or they may be the sides of a solid block. In some instances mistakes have occurred, and a further investigation or a fresh discovery has shown that pieces which at first appeared to belong to the same inscription were really parts of different ones ; or, if belonging to the same, that they had been arranged in a wrong order : e.g. C. I. A. 38 and Suppl. i. 38 a : C. I. A. 241-254: Suppl. i. page 26. In the attempt to restore words the measure of space is one of our chief guides. When a surface was written all over, the number of letters in a par- ticular line may be exactly known, though not a vestige of them remains. But whether the part of a marble slab or block which has been defaced or broken off contained writing or not may be uncertain. An indicator of time is the form of the letters, and this may sometimes vary in the same inscription (as in C. I. A. 40, 443). The Greek alphabet during the Peloponnesian war was in a process of transition, and the apparent variety or inconsistency in the use of some one or more letters may limit the date of an inscription to the period of the transition. Thus in b2