the Lexicographers, but occurs in the slightly modified form, λάρτιος, in two other Rhodian inscriptions; one from Rhodes published by Röhl, in the 'Mittheilungen d. Deutsch. Inst, in Athen,' 1877. p. 228, l. 7,ἐπὶ βάσιος λίθου λαρτίου not δ' ἀρτίου, as Rölh reads; the other from Hierapytna in Krete, published in Cauer, Delectus, p. 56, l. 99. ὅπως ἐργάσθῇ πέτρας λαρτίας. The epithet λάρτος or λάρτιος must denote either the kind of stone to be employed, or the locality whence it was to be obtained. Our only information as to this is furnished by an examination of the stone on which the lalysos decree is engraved, which is the blue limestone known as fœtid, from the smell which it emits when fractured. I have not been able to ascertain whether the other two inscriptions, in which the word Λάρτιος occurs, are on the same kind of stone.
l. 18, ἐξ Ἀχαΐας. This is the name of the strong fortress in the Ialysian territory, mentioned by Diodoros, v. 57, and in a fragment of the Rhodian writer, Ergeias, preserved in Athenæus, VIII. p. 360. It is probably the same fortress as that which Strabo calls Ὀχύρωμα, the citadal of lalysos, now called Phileremo.
l. 25. The prohibition of the wearing sandals within the temenos reminds us of the injunction to Moses, Ex. III. 5. "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."
In the Andania decree regulating the Mysteries of the Great Gods, it is ordered that those who celebrate the Mysteries shall be bare-footed, and in the procession no one is to wear shoes, unless they are made either of felt or of the skins of the victims offered in the festival.
