Notes on Attic Inventories

Extract

The new edition of the Attic temple-inventories of the fourth and third centuries B.C. (IG ii. 1370–1552, with the addenda in IG ii., pars. 2, pp. 797–810), which we owe to Dr. J. Kirchner, is a remarkable achievement, which evokes the admiration and the gratitude of all philologists and historians who have occasion to deal with these documents. Only those who know the stones themselves, all of them broken and many of them barely legible, can realise the labour, the patience, the minute observation, the careful study of the suggestions of previous workers in this field, which the editor has brought to his task. That some gaps remain unfilled and some problems defy solution is in the circumstances inevitable, and we shall best prove our appreciation of what has been accomplished by making some contribution, however slight, to the furtherance of the task. Such must be my apology for these lines.