148 Translation of some Greek legends of the [No. 2. 



to whom it is applied to head or lead a tribe or people. It is in fact, 

 however irregularly, the philological equivalent of our common and 

 popular English word, header. 



The next difficulty in legend No. 1, is simplified by looking on the 

 word at once as composite : there is no such, nor the semblance of 

 such in Greek. It appears on the legends with different spellings, the 

 second syllable being at one time vowelised with o, at another ov. As 

 respects this difference, I refer the reader in the first instance to the 

 Greek dialectic differences which I have detected in the pure Grseco- 

 Bactrian period ; and then remind him of the Doric (which we have 

 already found in the coins), and iEolic permutations of ov for w ; and 

 in the latter dialect of even o for w ; sufficient, as critics too well know, 

 to warrant in pure Greek literature a wearisome variety of readings. 

 It is no stigma on our scholarship, if we explain the barbarized written 

 form of a rude spoken (?) dialect by a reference to these varieties. I 

 read the word as — kcli o£oAov, the kcu being abbreviated as in kov 

 for /cat av — kolXov KayaOov for kcu ayaOov : — * the adjective being 

 formed from o£o<s — a branch,f and metaphorically, a scion or offshoot 

 (o£os aprjos II. 2, 540.) : its meaning therefore is that of brancher, 

 branch-giver, or branch-leader. I read the legend No. 1, in English — 

 of the header and branch-leader Kadphises. 



Before quitting the subject of this legend, I may quote a very 

 curious passage in the elder Pliny (B. 17) which bears upon the Scythic 

 use of the word Chorsus or Chorsas, as descriptive of the heads or 



* As authority for the absorption of a: in a legend vowel, I cite from a fragment 

 of Archilochus (apud Ammonium) given as follows in De la Roviere's Greek Poets, 

 (Ed. Colon* Allobm. 1614)— 



cos 'ap' a\ctf7T7j| Te naerSs 

 £vu<t)v'n)u eOevro 

 M. Mure (Crit. Hist. Gr. Lit. v. III V 56,) quotes the line from Bergk's Poett. 

 Lyrr. 487, fig. 91, thus— 



us ap a\ct>Tn]£ Kaerbs 

 k. t. \. 

 As examples, both readings favour my hypothesis too plainly to need further 

 exposition. H. T. 



t Scholars who might assign a derivation less complimentary to Kadphises, are 

 requested to remember that that adjective is o^oAtjs. 



H. T. 



