[6] Corp. Inscr. Att. 477 B.

[7] Ibid. 469.


IV

From the invention of writing onwards, the inscriptions on monuments
and dedicated offerings supplied one of the chief materials of
historical record. Their testimony was used by the earliest historians
to supplement and reinforce the oral traditions which they embodied in
their works. Herodotus and Thucydides quote early epigrams as
authority for the history of past times;[1] and when in the latter
part of the fourth century B.C. history became a serious study
throughout Greece, collections of inscribed records, whether in prose
or verse, began to be formed as historical material. The earliest
collection of which anything is certainly known was a work by
Philochorus,[2] a distinguished Athenian antiquary who flourished
about 300 B.C., entitled Epigramma Attica. It appears to have been a
transcript of all the ancient Attic inscriptions dealing with Athenian
history, and would include the verses engraved on the tombs of
celebrated citizens, or on objects dedicated in the temples on public
occasions. A century later, we hear of a work by Polemo, called
Periegetes, or the "Guidebook-maker," entitled {peri ton xata poleis
epigrammaton}.[3] This was an attempt to make a similar collection of
inscriptions throughout the cities of Greece. Athenaeus also speaks of
authors otherwise unknown, Alcetas and Menetor,[4] as having written
treatises {peri anathematon}, which would be collections of the same
nature confined to dedicatory inscriptions; and, these being as a rule