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



Smyrna is styled, in the commencement of this inscription, The Neocore city 

 of the SmyrnceanSi rj vecoKopos (r/iypvalav ttoXis. This serves to fix the limits 

 of the date of the monument, namely, that it was subsequent to the reign of 

 Tiberius, in whose time the city became a Neocore, and prior to that of Hadrian, 

 when it was admitted a second time to the honour, and was accordingly intituled 

 twice Neocore (5iy vecoKopos.) 



Caracalla conferred subsequently a third Neocoria on this favoured town, as 

 he did also on Ephesus.* 



c. The third of my Smyrneean tltuli was copied from a column in the mosque 

 at Burnabat, a country retreat of the Frank merchants to the north-east of the 

 city, and is said to have been brought from the ancient temple of ^sculapius. 

 It was the votive offering of a convalescent, whose recovery is attributed to the 

 favour of the deity Meles. The word with which it commences, vp-va, implies 

 evidently, that it was intended as a metrical composition ; and in effect, by 

 merely retrenching the last word (7roTap.ov) of the second line, which was, in all 

 probability, the gratuitous addition of an ignorant engraver, it forms two trimeter 

 iambic lines. Superadded to this blunder, if I may be allowed to call it such, a 

 second has been committed by my predecessors in this department ; amongst the 

 number, by Mr. Arundell.f These gentlemen never seemed to have imagined 

 that the inscription was metrical ; much less was the true metre ascertained. 

 The consequence has been, that the learned public have been favoured with an 

 inscription, evidently in trimeters, with a spondee in the second seat of one of 

 the lines. 



The following is a translation of this titulus : 



" I hymn the god, 



(The river) Meles, 



My preserver; 



Now that from pestilence of all kinds, 



and distemper, 



1 have been set free." 



« See Vaillant. Numism. Imper. GroBC-Rom. pp, 266. ss. 

 •j^ Travels, &c. in Asia Minor, vol. ii. p. 406. 



