rned Selden in 1628. It makes no mention of Olympiads, and reckons
backwards from the time then present by years.

Particular attention should be paid, in the interpretation of Greek
inscriptions, to distinguish the numerous titles of magistrates of
every order, of public officers of different ranks, the names of gods
and of nations, those of towns, and the tribes of a city; the
prescribed formulas for different kinds of monuments; the text of
decrees, letters, etc., which are given or cited in analogous texts;
the names of monuments, such as stelae, tablets, cippi, etc., the
indication of places, or parts belonging to those places, where they
ought to be set up or deposited, such as a temple or vestibule, a
court or peristyle, public square, etc.; those at whose cost it was
set up, the entire city or a curia, the public treasure, or a private
fund, the names and surnames of public or private individuals;
prerogatives or favors granted, such as the right of asylum, of
hospitality, of citizenship; the punishments pronounced against those
who should destroy or mutilate the monument; the conditions of
treaties and alliances; the indications of weights, moneys and
measures.

Another early example of a commemorative inscription of which the date
can also be positively fixed is that lately discovered by Dr. Frick on
the bronze serpent with the three heads, now at Constantinople, which
supported the golden tripod which was dedicated, as Herodotus states,
to Apollo by the allied Greeks as a tenth of the Persian spoils at
Plataea, and which was placed near the altar at Delphi. On this
monument, as we learn from Thucydides, Pausanias, regent of Sparta,
inscribed an arrogant distich, in which he commemorates the victory in
his own name as general in chief, hardly mentioning the allied forces
who gained it. This epigram was subsequently erased by the
Lacedaemonians, who substituted it for an inscription enumerating the
various Hellenic states who had taken a part in repulsing the Persian
invaders. The inscription contains exactly what the statements of
Thucydides and Herodotus would lead us to expect; the names of those
Greek states which took an active part in the defeat of the Persians.
Thirty-one names have been deciphered, and there seem to be traces of
three more. The first three names in the list are the Lacedaemonians,
Athenians, Corinthians. The remainder are nearly identical with those
inscribed on the statue of Zeus at