ATHENIAN BILINGUAL INSCRIPTION. THIS inscription was found 22 Feb. 1861, at Athens, near the church of 'Αγία Τριάς, and is now in the Theseum. Between the shorter Greek and the Phoenician inscriptions is a rude representation of a corpse stretched upon a bier, over which a lion and a man are contending; behind the latter is the prow of a ship. REFERENCES. Bulletino dell' Instituto di corrisp. archeol. di Roma, Tom. XXXIII. 1861, p. 321. Lenormant, Monographie de la voie sacrée Éleusinienne, Tom. I. p. 120-132. De Voguë, Mélanges d'Archéologie Orientale. Paris, 1868, p. 16. ΑΝΤΙΠΑΤΡΟΣΑΦΡΟΔΙΣΙΟΥΑΣΚΑ ΜΗΘΕΙΣΑΝΟΡΟΠΩΝ ΑΜΑΞΕΓΩΕΙΚΟΝΑΤΗΝΔΕ ΩΣΠΕΡΙΜΕΝΜΕΛΕΩΝΠΕΡΙΔΕΓΠΡΟΙΡΙΓΚΤΕΤΑΝΥΣΤΑΙ ΑΛΛΑ ΦΙΛΟΙΤΗ ΥΛΗΚΙΜΟ ΚΤΗΡΙΣΑΝΤΑΦΟΝΟΥΤ. ΦΟΙΝΙΚΗΝΔΕΛΙΤΟΝΤΕΙΑΙΧΟΟΝΙΣΟΜΑΚΕΚΡΥΜΜΑΙ Αντίπατρος 'Αφροδισίου Ασκαλωνίτης. אנך שמר בן עבד עשתרת אשקלני אש יטנאתי אנך דעם צלח בן דעם חנא צדני μηθεὶς ἀνθρώπων θαυμαζέτω εἰκόνα τήνδε, ὡς περὶ μέν με λέων, περὶ δ ̓ αὖ πρῷρ ̓ ἐκτετάνυσται Φοινίκην δὲ λιπὼν τῇδε χθονὶ σῶμα κέκρυμμαι. Ι. The last letter is partly obliterated. Lenormant proposes y, Prof. Gildermeister '; but neither of these readings is satisfactory, as they do not correspond to ΑΝΤΙΠΑΤΡΟΣ. 9 however is nearly the equivalent of this name, the root signifying defendit ab aliquo, conservavit. In reading no violence is done to the text. This emendation was suggested by Mr Sandys. ΠΟΥ ΤΟΥ The son of the servant of Ashtoreth. This exactly corresponds to 'Αφροδισίου. ps Ascalonian. The Biblical orthography of the word, but without the 9. EN which. hy I set up or dedicated. A causative form in Syn' of a verb, the kal form of which is found in Davis' Carthaginian inscriptions (British Mus.), No. 90. The final 9 in the first person is unusual in Phoenician. ( pcs) Blessed or prospered of Dom=ΔΟΜΣΑΛΩΣ. The root ry, Arab. d, is common to nearly all the Semitic idioms. M. le Comte de Vogüé, following Journal of Philology. VoL. IV. 4 the other commentators, makes the rather startling remark that "Ce nom Dom, by n'appartient même pas, comme racine, aux langues sémitiques." It is of common occurrence in Arabic in the sense of to "support or prop up," "and hence," as Lane tells us in his Arabic Lexicon, "les signifies also a lord." NIN DYT (lia pes) Dom hanná. Favoured of Dom=AOMANS. Cf. Hannibal, compounded with the same verb and the name of the god Baal. .Sidonian צדני The consecutive translation is: "I (am) Shomer, son of Abd Ashtoreth, of Ascalon, Which I Dom-sallah, son of Dom-hanna, of Sidon, set up." E. H. PALMER. At Mr Palmer's request, I have endeavoured to restore the Greek portions of the inscription recently copied by him in the Theseum, and the result of my endeavour is printed on page 49. A few details, however, demand a brief commentary, before commencing which I ought perhaps to explain that it was not until my restoration was almost completed that I was aware that others had made the same attempt. ̓Αντίπατρος] 'AVTITаTρos] It is impossible to identify the person, in whose memory the inscription is written, with any of the persons of that name with whom we are acquainted. Antipater of Sidon is one of the poets of the Greek Anthology, and is mentioned in Meleager's Garland: ἐν δ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ἀμάρακον ἧκε, Πολύστρατον, ἄνθος ἀοιδῶν, Anthologia Palatina, IV. 1. 42. But this cannot be the Antipater in question; indeed, there can be little doubt that 'AvTímarрos is meant for a translation of the Phoenician name of the Ascalonite here commemorated : and that name may very well have been, which in its sense of 'guardian and protector' may be approximately rendered by 'AvTiTатроs, 'one who stands in loco parentis.' I may add that 'Shomer' occurs as a proper name in 1 Chron. vii. 32, and also in 2 Kings xii. 22; also that several of the Bilingual inscriptions given in Böckh's Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum supply instances of similar attempts to translate Phoenician names into Greek equivalents; thus Abd-melcarth becomes Ηράκλειος; Abd-osir, Διονύσιος ; and Abd-Shemesh, Ηλιόδωρος. So also, in this very inscription, the father of 'Shomer', AbdAshtoreth, is translated 'Aopodioios, a name which gains additional significance when we remember that his home was Ascalon, the principal seat of the worship of Ashtoreth. In Herodotus, I. 105 we read: ἐπεί τε...ἐγένοντο ἐν ̓Ασκάλωνι πόλι... ἐσύλησαν τῆς οὐρανίης Αφροδίτης τὸ ἱρόν· ἔστι δὲ τοῦτο τὸ ἱρὸν πάντων ἀρχαιότατον ἱρῶν ὅσα ταύτης τῆς θεοῦ. ... 1. 2. Xéwv] M. Lenormant, after quoting the passage in Herodotus (vii. 126), where the habitat of lions in Europe is described as limited to the district bounded towards the West by the Achelous in Acarnania, and towards the East by the Macedonian river Nestus, makes a naïve suggestion that the deceased on landing at the Peiraeus was torn in pieces by a lion that had broken loose from a menagerie. It may be noticed in passing that the exhibition of lions and bears, as part of the spectacles of a πavnyuρis, is attested by a passage in Isocrates de permutatione, § 213. But as the inscription does not state that the death took place at Athens, M. Lenormant's ingenious hypothesis appears uncalled for. It would be safer, perhaps, to suggest that on the voyage from Phoenicia 'Shomer' and his comrades landed on the coast of Lycia or Caria; that he was there surprized by a lion, or more probably a panther; and although rescued by his friends, died before the vessel reached Athens. The panthers of Cibyra, the inland district, north of Lycia and east of Caria, are the subject of repeated importunities on the part of Cicero's correspondent Caelius, who was anxious to secure some specimens to give éclat to his aedileship. (Cicero, ad Att. v. 21, 5 and ad fam. viii. 2, 2. 4, 5. 6, 5. 9, 3.) The alleged early existence of lions, in Greece and Asia Minor, is carefully discussed, and decided in the affirmative, in a series of Articles in Notes and Queries (Second Series, Vol. XI.) written by Sir George Cornewall Lewis. с περὶ δ ̓ αὖ πρῷρ ̓ ἐκτετάνυσται] I find that M. Wachsmuth proposes πέρι δ ̓ ἡ πρώρη ̓κτετάνυσται, and M. Rhousopoulos Téρi dè πрúp' (sic) EKTEтávvoтaι (Lenormant, p. 128). Judicet lector. 1. 3. exopoλéwv] This word, which is apparently coined for the occasion, is of greater philological interest than any other in the inscription. It is evidently equivalent to exepòs λéwv, and may be added to the group of 'parathetic' compounds formed by an adjective followed by a substantive, and retaining the exact sense of their component parts, not a few of which have been collected by Lobeck in his Paralipomena Grammaticae Graecae, Dissert. v. § 10, p. 373. In the best and earliest poets, words of this formation are very rare. We have, however, Kakotλios in Homer (Od. 19. 260, 597, and 23. 19), also alvóπapıs in Alcman, 50 (=31) Δύσπαρις αἰνόπαρις, κακὸν Ελλάδι βωτιανείρῃ, and in Euripides, Hecuba, 944; lastly, πáτeρ alvóπateρ in Aeschylus, Choephoroe, 315. Later poets, following the hint, coined aivcλέων (Theocr. 25. 168), αἰνο γίγας (Nonnus, Dion. 4. 447), αἶνοTúpavvos (Anthol. Planud. 5. 350), and aivóλukos, in Anthol. Palat. 7. 550. Leonidas, the writer of the epigram last quoted, goes still further, and, l. c., 6. 221, invents μovvoλéwv; lastly, in Callimachus, in Cererem, 117, éμoì kaкoyeíтoves èx@poí, an instance which is not so certain as those previously quoted (v. Otto Schneider's Callimachea, I. p. 394). ταλαοελων. ταλαόν με θέλων σίνεσθαι] ταλαός = τλήμων occurs in Aristophanes, Au. 687, тaλaoì ẞpоToí. My conjecture assumes that the carver on finishing O in Taλaòv thought that he had reached in éλwv, and, leaving out the intervening portion, chiselled the letters Taλaoeλwv. It appears that M. Rhousopoulos suggested τἀμὰ θέλων σπαράσαι, making the line a pentameter, and assuming that σπαράσαι is bad Greek for σπαράξαι, while M. Wachsmuth proposed σTopáσai, from an unknown verb σTopalo, dissipare. I prefer making a spondaic hexameter of it; but I have no great confidence in my emendation. |