564 



REMARKS ON THE THESAURI OF THE GREEKS. 



and construction ; we may infer that they were small buildings, for 

 no less than ten are enumerated by Pausanias as erected at Olympia ; 

 and as many, we learn from the same writer, and from Herodotus, 

 Strabo, and Xenophon, were seen at Delphi. * In describing one 

 raised by the people of Megara, at Olympia, Pausanias mentions a 

 circumstance which leads us in some degree to a knowledge of the 

 form of these buildings ; he says, " the war of the gods and giants 

 was worked in relief on the pediment of the Thesaurus ;" Tou 8vi<ra.vpov 

 $e tiF£i$y<x,<TToit tw deTu o yiyc&vTuv xu) Qtuv TTcXz^oq. We have no word in 

 English by which we can properly designate the Thesauri of this 

 second class, unless we adopt " sacred chambers or chapels." The 

 expression oTkoc, as well as va.og, is applied by the Greeks to them. 

 (Wytten. Anim. in Plut. ii. 990.) The French use the term, " espece 

 de chapelles ou settles ; Larcher, Herod, i. 200. Chapelles occurs in the 

 French translation of Strabo, lib. ix. 454., and in the Memoires de 

 l'Acad. des Inscrip. 47. 84. The Greek word is sometimes rendered 

 by Sacrariumf ; and Schweighaeuser, in his commentary on Athe- 

 naeus, lib. xiii. c. 84., says, " varias fuisse Delphis cellas quas Thesauros 

 vocabant a similar meaning is affixed to the word by JD'Orville. 

 We learn from different testimonies that religious anathemata or the 

 offerings of states and individuals of a sacred nature (Kocdie^w^eva,) were 

 preserved in them (Strabo, 607.) ; in one, at Delphi, called by 

 Polemo o wimftm fyo-ocupog, there were two statues of marble, and the 

 name implies that tablets were placed in it. (See Schwei. in 1. supra 

 citato.) 



* See Pausanias, lib. x. ; Herodotus, lib. i. and iii. ; Xenophon Anab. lib. v. ; Strabo, 

 pp.607. 301. 312., for the mention of the Thesauri of the Clazomenians, Corinthians, 

 Siphnians, Athenians, and of the people of Spina and Agylla. 



f See Wesseling ad Diod. Sic. t. i. 714. 



% Sicil. 74. Thesauri vocabantur cellae separatae et seclusae circa templa in quibus singulae 

 civitates donaria sua dedicabant, non aliter fere ac hodie Romanae Hierarchiae illustriores 

 saepe subditi suam quisque, quam vocant capellam, in ipsis templis habent. In an Oscan 

 inscription, we find TESAVR, which is Thesaurus, locus sacelli Herculis. — Sec Passeri 

 Pitt. Etrus. 3 vol. lxii. 



