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



irregularly formed, oblong stone, to the best of my recollection, of granite, and 

 on which I thought that I could trace certain marks, or indentations. These, 

 however, may have been the effects of atmospheric influences : I could form no 

 certain conclusion respecting them : still less am I enabled to assert with any 

 degree of confidence tliat" the rude block which I then saw before me had been 

 also beheld by the Father of history : I wished, however, to believe the fact, and 

 having travelled so far to test the accuracy of Herodotus, I found it no difficult 

 matter to enlist my convictions under the banner of my imagination. 



Thyatira, to which I am now conducted, furnished me with nine inscriptions, 

 most of which were copied by me in a cemetery of the Armenians, lying a little 

 off the road to the right, as the modern town is entered from the south-east. 

 But by far the most perfect of the number is one which I had from a sarcopha- 

 gus in the upper part of Ak-Hissar, where it lies in a field belonging to the 

 Agha, who kindly granted me an escort thither, and his permission to examine 

 the monument. Scarcely a letter of this has sustained any injury ; and as the 

 soros itself exists in all probability in situ, we may infer with some degree of 

 confidence, that certain names which it supplies, designated of old the quarter in 

 which it is now seen by the traveller. 



I have already adverted to this titulus,* but in so general a way as to afford 

 room for a more particular specification of its contents. 



The erector of the soros was a person of the name of Fabius Zosimus. The 

 spot which he selected was an unoccupied one before the city, contiguous to the 

 Sambatheion, within the Peribolus, or precinct of the Chaldaron (perhaps Calda- 

 rium), and alongside of the public road. 



These are local designations which it would, of course, be impossible for us, 

 possessing as we do no notices whatever of the astygraphy of Thyatira, to ex- 

 plain satisfactorily. We know that Trepl^oXos means what I have stated above, 

 a precinct of any kind, whether wall, hedge, or rampart. We also know from 

 Seneca,t Vitruvius, % and the younger Pliny, § what the Romans termed Calda- 

 rium, or Caldaria Cella. The conclusion, therefore, to which we are conducted, 

 is, that this opulent citizen of Thyatira had chosen a place of public resort 

 wherein to erect this family monument ; perhaps, from circumstances of owner- 



' *Vid. p. 118. t Epistol. Ixxxvi. 9. 



X De Architect, v. 10, p. 152. § Epistol. v. 6. 26. 



