Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/63

INSCRIPTIONS ll;c referred to in 38 /. 1. 10 is the ra^t? ^6pov of 425 or net. For the date of the inscription is uncertain, and there was a Tct^^is ^o'pou every four years. I. iii. Another class of inscriptions illustrating Thucy- dides are the accounts of the treasures of Athene. They are divided into three series : the first containing the treasures of the Pronaos, or eastern portico of the temple ; the second, the treasures of the Hecatompedon, or eastern chamber ; and the third, the treasures of the western chamber or Parthenon properly so called. The accounts, or, more correctly speaking, the inventories of these treasures, which were made up annuall}^, commence in the year 434, and extend over nearly the whole of the Peloponnesian War, the account of the treasure of the Parthenon lasting, with gaps, up to 411 ; that of the Pronaos up to 407; that of the Hecatompedon, with gaps, to 413 : there are a few later fragments of it. Pericles, in estimating the resources of the Athenians, includes among their treasures, besides the 6,000 talents of coined money in the state treasury (ii. 13), ' uncoined gold ' and silver in the form of private and public offerings, ' sacred vessels used in processions and games, the Per- ' sian spoil, and other things of the like nature, worth at ' least five hundred talents more. There were also at their ' disposal, besides what they had in the Acropolis, consider- ' able treasures in various temples. If they were reduced ' to the last extremity, they could even take oft' the plates ' of gold with which the image of the Goddess was over- ' laid : these, as he pointed out, weighed forty talents, and 'were of refined gold, wh^ch was all removable. They 'might use the gold taken from the Goddess in self- ' defence, but they were bound to replace all that they had ' taken.' These inventories are for the most part repetitions of each other. Each of them, except the last inventory of the treasures of the Pronaos (sec below), is headed by a regular form oi words, e.g. 'These things the stewards e 2