Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/35

INSCRIPTIONS XXXI to a monumental character than a MS. or printed book. Others erected by states or individuals may have been the expressions of some ancient tradition. Their character can only be determined by a familiar knowledge of the letters, words, and forms which occur in them and by their agreement with some other record of the events to which they refer. But owing to the deficiency of information, or the mutilation of the inscription itself, the diagnosis of the critic may often be at fault. The definition of forgery itself is not quite simple, for it admits of degrees ; fiction may easily mingle with truth ; and the deception may be more or less conscious to the inventor. In modern as well as in ancient times there have been a few instances of fraud. Cyriac of Ancona (1391 — about i45o who traversed Greece, Asia Minor," and Syria in search of MSS., inscrip- tions, and other antiquities, was accused by some among his contemporaries of dishonesty, though his credit has been maintained by later writers An archaeologist of the last century (Fourmont) destroyed some of his materials and invented others (Boeckh, C, I. G. p. 61 fif.). At the time the inventor escapes with impunity : there is no one to follow him in his travels through a country which can hardly be traversed with safety : the knowledge and ex- perience do not as yet exist which can detect his forgeries. But the time comes when some internal or external evidence rises up against him ; when the use of a letter or a mark, the anachronism of thought or of fact, un- expectedly betrays him. Forgery has been much more difficult in the nineteenth century than in the eighteenth, and in the later half than in the first half of the century. It should be remembered also that literary forgery easily arises out of error ; like many other kinds of dishonesty, it contains an admixture of inaccuracy. The careless enthu- siastic scholar makes an imperfect copy of a short fragment; ^ Otto Jahn, Aus der Alterthumswissenschaft, Cyriacus von Ancona und Albrecht Diirer: Boeckh, C. I. G. praef. p. ix; cp. Symonds, Renais- sance in Italy; Revival of Learning, pp. 156, 157.