Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/69

 INSCRIPTIONS IxV There is no indication of a date in this inscription, except what can be gathered from the writing: cnV has taicen the place of ^w ; the later and shorter form of the dative plural, and also the longer form, both occur in it (ra^tat? as well as ra/Aiao-i), the later dative implying a year in or after 01. 90 (420-417). It is beautifully written on two sides of a stone slab, and was once the table of an altar. Boeckh places it in the year b.c. 418. This inscription has been made the subject of an elabo- rate discussion by Kirchhoflf (Urkunden der Schatzmeister der 'anderen Gotter,* Abhandl, der Berl. Acad. 1864, pp. 8-28, Athenischer Staatsschatz, pp. 21 flf., 43 ff., Berl. Acad. 1876', who refers it to a time before the Peloponnesian War, and draws various inferences from it. The precise year to which he assigns the inscription is the first of the Panathenaic period, 01. 86. 3-87. 2 (434-431), or the last year of the preceding period, when the accounts of the treasure were made up, and when changes in the regu- lation of it would most naturally take place. He arrives at this conclusion on grounds which will be hereafter examined. To reconcile this date with the character of the writing he has recourse to the supposition that, while the substance of the document belongs to the year 434, it was not written down until after 420. Here are two improba- bilities: (i) that a decree of the senate and people should not have been engraved during fifteen years ; and (2) that it should have been engraved at the end of the fifteen years. Such an hypothesis would only be justified on the ground that there was no later date to which the inscrip- tion could be assigned, as in the case of C. I. A. 283; or on such palacographical grounds as determine the date of C. I. A. 8. 93 ; or where, as in the case of C. I. A. 40, the interval is comparatively short and the arrangements made at the earlier date are still binding when they are recorded on the marble. But in the present case there is no necessity for any such hypothesis. The Athenians would have been quite as well able to repay a large sum to the