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Epigraphical notes from the Ashmolean Museum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

It is a privilege to be allowed to take a part, however humble, in the chorus of heartfelt congratulation, sincere admiration and affectionate good wishes which will greet Professor Sir John Beazley on the occasion of his sixty-sixth birthday. Among my proudest memories is the fact that, during the tenure of my Readership in Greek Epigraphy, my duties were ‘to lecture or give instruction … under the direction of the Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art’, and I owe much to his inspiration, his example and his friendship. Nor will it, I hope, be inappropriate if I here offer to him notes on some inscriptions presented to the University of Oxford and housed and exhibited in the Ashmolean Museum, with which the thought of Beazley, the gracious genius loci, is for me, as for many others, inseparably associated. I shall say nothing of the interesting group of Greek inscriptions in Pusey House, nor of the large collection of Latin inscriptions in the Ashmolean, and shall, in the interests of brevity, confine myself in the present article to the Greek inscriptions which were in the possession of the University in 1763, leaving to a future occasion some remarks on the considerable accessions made since that date.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1951

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References

1 Published by Webster, T. B. L., JRS XIX. 150/2Google Scholar; cf. Robert, L., REJuives, CII. 121.Google Scholar

2 See, e.g., Michaelis, A., Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, 538/40Google Scholar, Larfeld, W., Griechische Epigraphik 3, 19Google Scholar, Chabert, S., Histoire sommaire des études d'épigraphie grecque, 33.Google Scholar

3 Marmora Arundelliana; sive saxa Graecè incisa, ex venerandis priscae Orientis gloriae ruderibus …. publicavit et commentariolos adjecit Joannes Seldenus J. C., London, 1628. Larfeld's description of the jurist and scholar John Selden (1584–1654) as Archbishop of Canterbury (Griech. Epigraphik 3, 19) is mistaken and probably rests upon a confusion with another eminent seventeenth-century benefactor of Oxford University, Gilbert Sheldon (1598–1677), who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1663 to 1677.

4 Marmora Oxoniensia, Ex Arundellianis, Seldenianis, aliisque conflata, Recensuit et Perpetuo Commentario explicavit, Humphridus Prideaux Aedis Christi Alumnus, Oxford, 1676. This work incorporates a number of comments by John Seiden and by Thomas Lydiat, the chronologer.

5 Marmorum, Arundellianorum, Seldenianorum, aliorumque, Academiae Oxoniensi donatorum; Cum Variis Commentariis & Indice, secunda editio, London, 1732.

6 Marmora Oxoniensia, Oxford, 1763.

7 Marmorum Oxoniensium Inscriptiones Graecae ad Chandleri exemplar editae, Oxford, 1791 (reissued without change, 1887).

8 For Vernon's diary, which contains a large amount of epigraphical material, see Meritt, B. D., Hesperia, XVI. 58/62Google Scholar, and Suppl. VIII. 213/27.

9 The donor of CIG 3288 was William Dennington, barrister-at-law, of CIG 3357 Sir Andrew Riccard, Alderman of London.

10 The lemma of CIG 6894 is misleading, for ‘inter marm. Oxon. II, xli’ would naturally be understood as referring to Chandler's Marmora Oxoniensia; the inscription is in fact found in Prideaux, p. 286, no. CL, in Maittaire, pp. 33, 89, no. XLI, and in Chandler, Pt. III, plate I, no. VII.

11 Davis was not quite accurate in describing it (p. 220) as ‘first published by August Boeckh as CIG 2266’. Prideaux remarked ‘Marmor in utroque latere inscriptiones habet, sed in neutro ob vetustatem legendas’ (p. 276 no. cxl; cf. Maittaire, p. 504 no. cxlviii); but S. Maffei while in Oxford attempted to read the inscription on the face of the stone and published the result in Museum Veronense, 441. Chandler, was more successful in Marm. Oxon., no. xlix.Google Scholar

12 See Roussel, op. cit., pp. 22, 29, 33, 36, 285 n. 6.

13 Welles notes (op. cit. 46 n. 1) ‘I have been unable to learn the date of this discovery or to identify ‘Mr. Wood’.’ I quote the relevant facts from The Concise Dictionary of National Biography. “WOOD, ROBERT (1717?–1771), traveller and politician; travelled in France, Italy, Western Europe, and Asia Minor, with John Bouverie and James Dawkins; published ‘Ruins of Palmyra’, 1753, and ‘Ruins of Balbec’, 1757; member of Society of Dilettanti, 1763.’ ‘Dawkins, James (1722–1757), archaeologist and Jacobite; born in Jamaica; educated at St. John's College, Oxford; D.C.L., 1749; travelled on continent; assisted James Stuart (1713–1788) and Nicholas Revett in taking measurements of Greek architecture at Athens; visited with Robert Wood ruins of Palmyra and Baalbec 1751.’

14 In CIG 3087.5 I cannot accept Böckh's for is quite clear and the preceding letter seems to be K, as read by Chandler. I suggest a double festival, (for at Teos see SIG 3 38.33).

15 On CIG 3333 Kaibel, (Epigrammata Graeca, 241)Google Scholar notes ‘II vel I a. Chr. n. saeculum produnt litterae unde falso tradita est ω forma’. But this form of omega is used throughout the inscription, for the script of which see Michaelas, loc. cit., where the monument is assigned to the first century B.C.

16 CIG 3642 = Ehrenberg-Jones, , Documents, 129.Google Scholar