INSCRIPTIONS xci The importance of these variations is reduced by the fact that wv apxova-Lv and eVi TTjv yrjv are apparently used as equivalents for Jlj/ av ap^wa-iv and es Wjv y^v in other parts of the treaty. In three lines out of the twenty-six there is room in the missing portion of the tablet for many more letters than those found in the text of Thucydides. Here there were probably blank spaces between different articles of the treaty. So far from the inscription tending to overthrow the text of Thucydides and (from this point of view Schone, ' Hermes 'xii. p. 476, thinks that 'its importance cannot be estimated highly enough'), no conclusion can be drawn either way from such a mere fragment. The verbal differ- ences are very slight, and most of them may have come from Thucydides himself ^ Nor do slight inaccuracies in the copying of a treaty afford any real ground of argument as to the text of other parts of the history. 49. The words occur Yttc'^/^oXos eT-Tre. If this be the demagogue Hyperbolus, ostracized about 419 b. c, the inscription would be of an earlier date. 50 is a treaty between the Athenians and Argives, not that given in v. 47, and therefore probably that referred to in V. 82 fin. 51 has important additions in Suppl. i. For a full dis- cussion of it see supra, p. xxiii. 52, 53, and Suppl. iii. p. 142, relate to a treaty and alli- ance between the Athenians and Bottiaeans. Spartolus, which as we learn from Thucydides (ii. 79) was a city of the Bottiaeans, was to have been given up by the Lace- daemonians to Athens, when peace was made in 421, on condition that the place should be independent, but might be received, if willing, into the Athenian alliance (v. 18 med.). [This appears from the inscription to have been ' [Or from his informant, or from a copy of the treaty as put up at Argos, Elis, or Mantinea.] cr 2
