of the Greco-Roman Era in certain ancient Sites of Asia Minor. 75 
I perceive that the fragment KATAZK commences his seventh line, that is, 
I conclude, karacxevnv, meaning either the wharf where the vessels were un- 
loaded, or the store-house in which their cargoes were deposited. But as xata- 
oKev7) means primarily construction, or a setting in order, &c., we may conjec- 
ture that the inscription refers to certain improvements contemplated in the port 
of Smyrna, for the effecting of which a number of public-spirited citizens had 
united, or perhaps been formed into a corporation, in which case the words 
brecxnpevor, &C., should be translated, who had engaged for and contributed 
towards the construction of the harbour. 
However this may be, it appears that the supplement which I proposed,* 
pvAakny, is to be replaced by karacxevnv. Of neither were there any vestiges 
in the marble at the time of my visiting it. It lay the undermost of the steps 
conducting to a store-house in the garden of an Armenian resident in the quar- 
ter Aya Katarina, and had originally been raised, with some other fragments of 
an ancient structure, from the bottom of a well sunk near the dwelling-house. 
The process of adaptation to its present position and use, had evidently been un- 
dergone since Van Egmont’s time, for a few of the apices only of the letters of 
the seventh line are now discernible. 
I expressed a strong desire of having excavations made in the quarter from 
which this marble had been taken, but the owner of the premises resisted every 
overture of the kind, notwithstanding my offer of indemnifying him for any in- 
jury his property might sustain. He took care, at the same time, to apprize me, 
that a considerable number of monuments of a similar kind were to be found 
there; rather a preposterous mode of damping an Antiquarian’s ardour ! 
With respect to the date of this inscription, Béckh remarks that it can hardly 
ascend above Trajan, in whose time Smyrna first appears as a Neocore. In this 
he follows Eckhel.f Vaillant,{ however, who is quoted by Eckhel as an autho- 
rity, asserts that Smyrna attained to this distinction in the reign of Tiberius. 
* * %* * * * * 
* Fascic. p. 105, tit. xxvii. b. t Doctr. Num. T. ii. p. 556. 
{ Numism. Impp. G-Rom. pp. 266, ss. 
K2 
