Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/275

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haps of the 6th century B.C. M. Homolle makes a remark a propos of this Delian series which is a seasonable corrective to exaggerated estimates of Oriental influence on early Hellenic art. This gradual development of a plastic type which the Delian statues of Artemis present—from the rudest bretas to the comparatively finished statue—reminds us how essentially original, how patiently self-disciplined, Greek sculpture was[1].


From Delian topography and sculpture we return to epigraphy. The inscriptions have been surveyed in their historical aspect. But several of them demand particular notice, especially on philological grounds. Of these I will now speak,—beginning with the latest age, and thence remounting to the earlier.

Close as had been the relations between Rome and Delos, only two Latin inscriptions from the island had been known up to 1877, and these only through copies taken by Cyriac of Ancona (Corp. Inscr. Lat. iii. 484, 485). No. 484 runs thus:—

BRANDVTIVS·L·L·ARISTIPPVS
DESVOFECIT.

M. Homolle has found two fragments of this inscription, which show that on the stone it formed a single line, and that for fecit we should read refecit. He has also discovered three new Latin inscriptions. One was on the plinth of a statue dedicated by "the Italians and Greeks in Delos" to

  1. Bulletin de C. h. iii. 107; cp. Monuments grecs, No. 7, p. 61.