Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/99

INSCRIPTIONS XCV in this sense can be justified by expressions like e/x/JaXXciv Xpovov. e/j.(3dXXeiv in the sense 'intercalate' is fully justified by the word e/A/3oXi/i.o5, intercalary ; though, as Schmidt points out, it cannot be shown to have been the regular technical term (which was iTrcfji/SdXXeLv, lirdyeiv; Hdt. ii. 4, and commonly in later writers).] M. Foucart interprets the words as relating to the intercalation of a day or a few days in the month Heca- tombaeon. But surely, as Droysen says, they must refer to the whole month. III. Dedicatory inscriptions. Thuc. i. 132 mentions a tripod dedicated at Delphi after the victory over the Persians, and the erasure of Pausanias' inscription ; cp. Hdt. ix. 81, SeKaTrjv c^cAoVres tw iv AcXcjyotai ^€(3, aTT 7)5 o TptTTOVs o ^^pvcTcos dveTcdrj, 6 £7rt TOV TpLKaprjvov o^ios ToC ^aXKcou CTrecTTcw? ay^^icrra tov /Jw/aoi'. A bronze column 18 feet high, believed to be identical with that which supported the tripod, still stands in the Hippodrome at Constantinople : it is in the form of three serpents twisted together. Upon it is inscribed a list of Greek states similar to that recorded by Pausanias (v. 23. i) to have been in- scribed upon the pedestal of a votive statue of Zeus at Olympia, after the victory at Plataea. It should be observed that Thucydides speaks of the inscription as being on the tripod, while Herodotus distin- guishes the tripod from the serpents on which it stood. Nevertheless the evidence (for which see Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. xvii) seems satisfactorily to establish the identity of the monument now at Constantinople with that men- tioned by Herodotus and Thucydides. See Rohl, I. G. A., 70 ; Hicks, Manual of Greek Inscrip- tions, 11; Abbott, History of Greece, vol. ii.v. 16; Roberts, Greek Epigraphy, § 100. Thucydides in vi. 54 quotes the inscription of Pisistratus son of Hippias on an altar in the temple of the Pythian Apollo—