HICKS' MANUAL OF GREEK INSCRIPTIONS.* Ma. HICKS, and the Delegates
of the Clarendon Press, are alike to be congratulated on the production of the first systematic collection of Greek Inscriptions that has appeared in English. Ground was broken as long ago as 1825, by Mr. H. J. Rose's admirable Inscriptiones Graecae Vetustissimae, a book of permanent value, on account of the fac-similes it contains, both of alphabets and of entire inscriptions. But this, in accord- ance with the habit of time, was written in Latin. Moreover, apart from the fact that many more inscriptions have come to light within the last fifty years, and that their interpretation has been reduced to something far more like scientific method than was possible in 1825, Mr. Rose confined himself in the main to inscriptions illustrative of language and dialect. Mr.
* A Manual of Greek Historical Insrriptions. By E. L. Hicks, ILA. Clarendon Press. 1882. Newton more recently, in the instructive and interesting papers which are now included in his Essays on Art and Archceology,- has shown bow inscriptions throw light on various details of Greek life, public and private. It was time that, in view of the present very satisfactory tendency in England to widen the range of classical study, some attempt should be made to pre- sent, in a handy and intelligible form, the inscriptions which bear on Greek history. As Mr. Hicks reminds us in his preface,. the subject of Greek inscriptions generally has been lately brought before the minds of the English public, by an essay which appeared in the second volume of Professor Jowett's translation of Thucydides. Of this essay, the sentence most often quoted, and quoted once more by Mr. Hicks,. certainly conveys the impression that the writer regards the study of inscriptions as interesting, no doubt, to the enthusiast,. but well-nigh barren of practical result. This sentiment, elo■. queutly expressed by a man of Professor Jowett's mark, has naturally attracted notice, and has possibly done some damage to a good cause. We may say at once that the best antidote% to its peroration is to be found in the essay itself, for it contains a singularly fair and well-informed statement a what is and what is not to be expected from inscriptions.. Indeed, there is no substantial difference of view between this essay, as a whole, and Mr. Hicks' introduction. Both warn as at the outset not to expect too much. Both point out the great interest and value that inscriptions possess as auth entic and contemporary records, while our MSS. have filtered through many hands. Both show that the restoration of the text of an inscription is, on the whole, far more certain than that of a literary work ; for whereas, in literature, it is impos- sible to say what words might or might not have been used,. there is in inscribed. monuments a recurrence of stereotyped forms, which enables gaps to be filled with something like certainty.
Mr. Hicks has aimed merely at giving the text of the most important historical inscriptions, with such commentary as is needed to explain them and to show their. bearing. His book is not a guide to the science of epigraphy, for the inscriptions are printed in cursive type, and only incidentally is anything- said of the peculiar forms of letters used on the original monu- ment. We could almost have wished for an alphabet such as was given in Rose's Inseriptiones Graecae, and for a short statement of the connection between the age of an inscription and the forms of the letters occurring in it. For, after all, no English book pre- sents such information, and it might fitly have come into such• a book as the present. Mr. Hicks, however, doubtless had good reasons for excluding this branch of his subject, and we must be thankful for what he has given us, for it is an excellent piece of workmanship, displaying alike the accuracy of the scholar and the sound judgment of the historian.
The book is divided into nine parts, corresponding to the main periods of Greek history. In Part I. (before the Persian War),. Part II. (between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars), and Part III. (Peloponnesian War), the inscriptions, though scanty, have a peculiar interest, as covering the most brilliant epoch. It must be admitted that the number of inscriptions referring to' events recorded by the Greek historians is disappointingly small ; but some, at least, there aie which directly confirm or supplement the statements of Thucydides and Herodotus. Thus, as late as 1877, an inscription was found at Athens which is actually cited by Thucydides. This is the dedication of an altar by Pisistratus, son of Hippias, somewhere between 527 and 510 B.C. Many of the inscriptions contain treaty engage- ments between various States, some known to history, but the majority of too little general importance to have deserved such notice. But their value to the student of Greek institutions need not be pointed out. No historian of Greece can now afford to neglect such evidence. Much light, again, is thrown upon the organisation and administration of the Athenian Confederacy, founded after the Persian War, by the lists of tributaries and the amounts due from each which have been found on the Acropolis, and of which Mr. Hicks gives several specimens, with full explanations of their import. These invaluable documents were first made use of by Boeckh, in his Public Economy of Athens, and, more recently, Kohler has founded upon them his exhaustive treatise on the Delo-Attic Confederacy. To students of archwology, again, what could be more interesting than the inventories of the treasure of Athena in the Parthenon, and the statements of its expenditure for public purposes ? These; in. scribed on slabs now at Athens, belong to the time of the Pelo-
ponnesiau War. In Part IV. (B.C. 403.338), we have various documents in connection with the formation of the new Athenian Confederacy, and records of the dealings of Athens with her neigh- bours, great and small. In this part especially, but in a more or less degree throughout the work, the preponderance of Attic inscriptions is very striking. Mr. Hicks explains this partly by their greater historical importance, partly by the fact that the Athenian Government was more careful than any other in in- scribing its public records, and that, moreover, no Greek city has been so thoroughly explored as Athens. Of the later in- scriptions, which all deserve study, but which space forbids us to refer to in detail, a large number record honours paid by States to individual benefactors. Others refer to the revolutions which took place in the chief islands of the lEgean after the decline of Athenian influence. Two short dedications from the temple of Athena Polias, at Priene, record Alexander's passage through Ionia, in the summer of 334 B.C. Alexander's successors and their struggles for supremacy form the subject of several other inscriptions, from Athens and elsewhere. Another inscrip- tion, found at Athens, commemorates the repulse of Brennus and the Gauls from Delphi, in B.C. 278, one of the most pic- turesque incidents in post-Alexandrian history. The conclud- ing sections of the volume are largely concerned with the gradual absorption of Greece into the Boman Empire, with occasional references to the Achaean League, to Pyrrhus, to Attalus of Pergamon, and to Hiero of Syracuse.
We have said enough in this brief survey to show that this is a book of unusual interest to all students of Greek history and antiquities, as bringing them face to face with original and con- temporary documents. We use the word advisedly, for the public documents of antiquity were inscribed, not on parchment, but either on metal, or more commonly on the wryPal krahn which is so constantly referred to in these inscriptions. To this fact we owe the preservation of so much valuable evidence, which must have been lost had it been committed to less durable material. That there is a marked absence from extant inscrip- tions of the names best known to us from written sources is to be regretted, but is not unaccountable, at least in the case of literary men. The single occurrence of the name of Sophocles, in the character of chairman of the He]lenotamiae, or administrators of the treasure of Athena, reminds us that only in some such public capacity would occasion arise for the mention of a name in any document of the class contained in this volume. Literary achievement would not be likely to be commemorated, or even referred to, on public monuments. On the funeral o-rsxsi, the pure taste of the best period of Athens forbad the insertion of more than the bare name of the dead, of his father, and of his deme. That not even such memorial as this has been found of any of the great- est of the Greeks is hardly to be wondered at, considering the enormous chances against the discovery of any one name. It is not too late to hope that the undoubted errooi of Pericles, or of Plato, or some other familiar figure in Greek history or literature may yet be found. Meanwhile, we must be thankful that what has been saved from the clutches of time and human violence does, at least, " add a few facts " to our knowledge, while indirectly explaining and supplementing many obscure points in literary record, and revealing many phenomena of national and social life of which literature has little or nothing to tell. We sincerely hope that the reception of the present volume may be such as to encourage Mr. Hicks to prepare another, which, dealing with various details of public and private life, would, as he says, be even more interesting than the present, " inasmuch as the subjects it would illustrate are less familiar to the readers of Greek literature."
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