154 Dr. Kennedy Bailie's Researches amongst the inscribed Monuments 



the inscriptions which you have collected original ? Have they never been seen, 

 or copied, by any one else ? And the answer which I have uniformly returned 

 has been, that the circumstance of their having been so is perfectly unimportant 

 to me : this, for two reasons, which will, I trust, be deemed as satisfactory by my 

 learned auditory, as they are by myself. The first is, that I have reported no do- 

 cuments of this kind which have not been copied either by myself, or under my 

 immediate superintendence, from the original monuments ; and the second, that 

 I have as yet seen but few, extremely few indeed, into the copies of which 

 errors have not found their way, whether from haste, or inattention, or the ab- 

 sence of requisite accomplishments on the part of travellers. These oversights 

 are, as is manifest, best and most satisfactorily eliminated by a careful collation 

 with the monuments themselves, just in the same way as the mistakes of editors 

 would be remedied by authors' manuscripts, and many an ingenious reading, 

 many a conjectural emendation, over which vanity stands elated, prove but an 

 impotent conclusion. This I state, at the same time that I believe I can with 

 perfect confidence assure the Academy, that many of the inscriptions which I 

 hope to have the honour to submit to its notice, have never before been seen, or 

 at least considered by others, so as to have become the property of the public. 



The greater number of the foregoing tituli is entitled to this distinction, as 

 also the remaining ones of the Smyrnjean series, which will be found arranged 

 from ftok in the copy, now before the President. 



All these, with the exception of two of the Byzantine age, are mere frag- 

 ments, from tlie existing contents of which it is impossible to pronounce any 

 thing with certainty. 



f. The first was copied from a piece of marble which has been built into the 

 wall of the Turkish barracks, adjacent to the Jewish cemetery, at the foot of 

 Mount Pagus. It contains the first and the last three letters of the Emperor 

 Trajan's name, and vestiges of the words ayaves and aycovoOiraiv. We may con- 

 clude, therefore, tliat the subject of it bore some reference to games instituted in 

 honour of that benefactor of his Asiatic provinces. 



g. The next was taken from a piece of mosaic pavement which had been dis- 

 covered at Chalka-bunar, the name given by the Turks to that extent of low and 

 swampy ground where the temple of iEsculapius formerly stood. It is also 



