of the GrcBco- Roman Era in certain ancient Sites of Asia Minor. 151 



upper part of which the word Karaa-Kevacras gave some promise of a reward to 

 my perseverance ; but no sooner did I stop to copy it and examine the ground 

 adjacent in the hope of making a fresh discovery, than my guide made so preci- 

 pitate a retreat, as in a few moments to be out of sight. 



Thus began, and thus ended my search after tituli in the city of Antiochus : 

 but in other respects I was amply rewarded for my visit to it, for the Sipyline 

 Magnesia is, beyond all comparison, the most beautiful city I beheld in Asia 

 Minor. 



As I am not now writing a detail of my travels, I shall conduct my audience, 

 by a far speedier and less rugged path than I was forced to traverse, over the 

 heights and through the defiles of the giant Sipylus to the lovely Smyrna, the 

 place of my first sojourning and of my last, in those regions of the myrtle and the 

 zephyr. In Smyrna it was that I enjoyed the solace of refined society and 

 Christian fellowship after many an arduous wandering beyond the pale of Euro- 

 pean civilization. 



Of its ancient splendor Smyrna possesses now but scanty remains : of the 

 monuments, which I am at present discussing, still fewer. A fragment of a de- 

 cree or treaty, for it is impossible to decide which ; a custom-house regulation, a 

 votive thanksgiving, an epitaph, the name of the dedicator or of the architect of a 

 temple, with about a half dozen other tituli, and some of these of the age of the 

 lower empire, are all that I have been hitherto enabled to procure. 



a. I have already ventured a few observations on the first of these,* since I 

 penned which I have come to the conclusion, that it related to certain negoci- 

 ations between the Romans and the cities of the Ionian Confederacy which are 

 detailed by Polybius and Livy. Yet as I have mentioned before, the evidence 

 for this is extremely vague and uncertain, from the meagreness of the document. 



b. The next in order is a titulus which related to the department of the 

 customs of ancient Smyrna, and by the position of the marble from which I 

 copied it, I think myself justified in fixing the locality of the Telonium of the 

 port. It is now in the garden of an Armenian merchant, about five hundred 

 yards eastward from the sea shore. 



* Vid. page 119. 

 VOL. XIX. U 



