1. On June 3, 1882, while travelling from Apollonia to Antioch of Pisidia, we observed a long inscription in a cemetery by the roadside, about eleven or twelve miles west of the latter town, and close to the village of Gondáne. It was engraved on a pillar of peculiar shape, commonly used in Roman and Byzantine times: a horizontal section of the column would give the annexed figure.
A short inspection showed that the inscription was important, and Sir C. Wilson delayed the march for a day to allow me to copy it. I was exceedingly anxious to get an impression, but a strong and bitterly cold north wind, accompanied by frequent heavy showers, frustrated our attempts. At last, by laying my coat over the impression-paper on the stone, I got a squeeze of a small part. The inscription has been engraved by an unskilful workman: the lines are very uneven, the letters are unequal in size and various in form, sometimes deeply and clearly cut, sometimes merely scratched, ligatures are frequent, and often three, or even four, letters are united. In some cases it was impossible to tell, except from the meaning, whether a group of letters belonged to one line or another. In the heavy rain the only way of copying the inscription was to learn half a line by heart, and get into some shelter where I could write it out in my notebook. In this way I made a complete copy during the day: at night I wrote out lists of the proper names, compared the different forms together, and made a note of the places where difficulties struck me. Next morning the rest of the party went on to Antioch: I waited behind, revised the whole of the inscription, and carefully observed every difficulty that I had noted. A few other difficulties have occurred to me in subsequent study of the inscription; but in the great majority of cases where I remark on an uncertainty, the difficulty was distinctly present in my mind when comparing the copy with the stone.