1897.] on Greek and Latin PalseograpJiy. 383 



multiplication table, a little exercise in words of two sjllables, and 

 the boy's copy of two iambic lines set by his master, who has written 

 them in very good uncial letters : — 



croffiov Trap" avSpo? 7rpocr8€)(ov (Tvixf^ovXiav, 

 fjLT] iradiv eiKT] tols <^tXots Trto-reuerat. 



The poor boy knew very little Greek and was certainly not a good 

 writer. The master has written the sigma of a-o^jiov rather lightly, 

 probably the wax was too thin, close to the edge, for the stilus to 

 make a good imj)ression : and the pupil leaves it out altogether. But 

 we may turn the laugh against the pedagogue. The word Trtcrrci^eTat 

 should have been Trto-revere. The master discovered his error, but he 

 claps in his epsilon at the end of the wrong line. 



The descent of the beautiful uncial writing of the vellum manu- 

 scripts from this earlier hand requires no further demonstration. The 

 three great codices of the Bible — the " Codex Vaticanus " of the 

 fourth century, tlie " Codex Sinaiticus " of the fourth or fifth century, 

 and the " Codex Alexandrinus " of the fifth century — are great palseo- 

 graphical monuments as well as all-important texts. 



For our earliest specimens of Latin handwriting we have recourse 

 to the excavations of Pompeii, and of Herculaneum, and of Rome. 

 From Pompeii we have a large collection of wall inscriptions which 

 have been carefully collected by the Germans and published by them 

 in the volumes of the ' Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum.' We have 

 also from the same source a very valuable set of waxen tablets which 

 were found a few years ago, and which have been partly published by 

 the Society of the Lincei of Rome. A complete edition has been long 

 since promised by Professor Zangemeister of Heidelberg. 



The wall inscriptions of Pompeii are of two kinds : first, those 

 traced with a brush in large letters, generally in capital letters, 

 consisting chiefly of advertisements, recommendations of candidates, 

 announcements of public games, losses, houses to let, &c. — in fact, 

 just such advertisements as we may see placarded in print on our 

 own walls at the present day. Some few of these are of early date, 

 but most of them lie between the years 63 and 79 of our era, the 

 latter year being the date of the destruction of the city. The second 

 kind of the wall inscriptions is composed of scrawls, a few in 

 charcoal or chalk, but most of them scratched with a sharp point, that 

 is, graffiti : they are in cursive letters, and consist of all kinds of idle 

 scribbiings, quotations from the poets, reckonings, salutations, love 

 addresses, pasquinades and satirical remarks. Here again, a few may 

 be ancient, but most of them are of a period little anterior to the 

 destruction of Pompeii. Similar graffiti have been found at Hercu- 

 laneum, on the walls of the Palatine, and in other places in Rome. 



The waxen tablets discovered at Pompeii are 127 in number. 



