ni xii THUCYDIDES C. I. A. Suppl. i. 22^, of which only three or four words are preserved, OI<UE54>l .... ME^^ Pf> (?) we are able from the double form of the letter 2^ (^ ST) and from the syllable ME 51 2! to infer with tolerable cer- tainty that the text falls in the period of transition from one form of the letter to the other, about 460-447 and relates to the establishment of the Messenians at Nau- pactus soon after 455 b.c. (Thuc. i. 103 init.) '^. But the period of transition ma}' likewise introduce a new element of uncertainty in determining the date from the forms of the letters ; and the matter of inscriptions may in a few instances be older than the time at which they were engraven, e.g. C. I. A. 8, 93, 283 and Suppl. ii. The country in which an inscription is found or the city to which it refers is also a criterion not to be neglected. The text itself may help to supply its own lacunae. A word, a line, several lines may be wanting, but different syllables of the imperfect word, or parts of the line, may be collected from another place in the same inscription. For example, the letters AX I in C. I. A. 10 are the vestiges of ZY MM AX I A, as may be easily inferred from the rest of the inscription; from the syllables l<0U04'0 and ONION in different parts of C. I. A. 13 the whole word KOAOcJ^ANiriN may legitimately be extracted ; in C. I. A. Suppl. i. 61 a (a treaty between the Selymbrians and Athenians), from KId . . . 2^, aided by a comparison of Xenophon, Hellenica, i. 3. 10, we can elicit without diffi- culty the name AAKIBIAAH^. In C. I. A. Suppl. i. 96 ' Roberts, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, pp. 106, 107. ' Or soon after 461 if we accept the conjecture Ttrapry for SewtiTy in Thuc. i. 103.
