The Rhoummas Herm: A Postscript

Extract

Soon after the publication (JHS LXXIII 138 ff.) by Mr. D. E. L. Haynes and myself of the portrait-herm of Rhoummas recently acquired by the British Museum I was informed by Mr. Michael R. E. Gough that he had found in his copy of LS some correspondence, dated 1910, relating to the herm. The dossier, which he kindly sent to me for examination, consists of three letters and two post-cards addressed by Arthur Sidgwick in March 1910 to the ‘Rev. A. S. Lamfrey, Grammar School, Ashford, Kent’, who had evidently written asking the meaning of the word μαρμαρόπαιστος. Sidgwick's provisional rendering was ‘struck with a stone’, but he asked for a copy of the whole inscription, and on receiving it sent it to Professor Percy Gardner, who replied that ‘the forms of the letters of the inscription seem to belong to the third or fourth century, not earlier.