Inscriptions from Crete

Abstract

The inscriptions which follow were copied during a short tour in the west of Crete during July and August, 1893. So far as I know they are unpublished, but I trust I shall be pardoned if I have missed any previous notice of any of them. I saw and verified all those published in B.C.H. xiii. 68 ff. and that in the Syllogos at Retimo, id. 47. The type used below is selected so as to represent each individual letter as nearly as possible, without regard to the conventional printers' alphabets. The result is an apparent mixture of incongruous forms, which is however largely duo to the very irregular lettering actually in use in the remoter parts of Crete in the later Greek periods.1. On a block of fine-grained blue marble, the base of a stele: 31 cm. high, 40 broad, and 46 long: the back and left side broken: original length at least 70 cm., for the socket for the stele is 22 cm. distant from the perfect (right) side face, and is continued to the left beyond the break. The inscription consists of four elegiac couplets; the first line is cut close to the upper edge of the stone, and is consequently much effaced. The letters average 10 mm. in height and breadth, and are of the third or late fourth century.