Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/25

 INSCRIPTIONS XXI grounds, is in reality certain (C. I. A. 37; a. b. c. 1. 4ff.): XEPO[TON EPI TA]£ POUES: AYO [MEN EPI TA2; EPI OPAIKE2:] AYO AE E[PI IONIAN AYO A]E EPI N[E2:0Y^ AYO AE EPI HEUUE^- P]ONTO[N. Here, out of the hint of HEUUE^PON- TON contained in ONTO, the occurrence of the word POAEI5I, the repetition of AYO, combined with our knowledge of the division of the tributary cities into four or five groups, an important part of an inscription is recovered. So much may be made out of so little. In this, as in other cases, the power of divination is relative to the nature of the materials, which create a method for themselves. If the matter of early Greek inscriptions were varied like literary compositions, much less progress could be made in the interpretation of them. They would be curious frag- ments from which nothing of importance could be elicited. It is this fragmentary character of Greek inscriptions which distinguishes the study of them from that of As- syrian or Egyptian. Before we can interpret them we have to restore them ; or rather the interpretation and the restoration of them go hand in hand. It is another peculiarity in the study of them that a large literature can be brought to bear upon them ; and that we do not, as in the case of most other inscriptions, derive our know- ledge of them from themselves only. Far greater than the temptation to emend is the tempta- tion to elicit a connected meaning from them. The inter- preter is apt to read into an inscription more than is really to be found in it. The record of the contemporary history is necessarily imperfect, and he exercises his ingenuity in making anything which he knows fit in with the fragmentary document which he has to decipher. If, for example, he finds in an inscription (C. I. A. 55, indicated by the occurrence of datives in ats, not -tju-i, to be later than 420 B. c.) a mention of sixty ships, he immedi- ately calls to mind the sixty ships which the Athenian