RUINS OF TELMESSUS. 395 
while the Soros above answered the purpose of chap. 
VIII 
a cenotaph ; for wherever the ground had been ' ^ ' ' 
sufficiently cleared around them, there ap- 
peared, beneath the Soros, a vault". Almost all 
these tombs have been ransacked ; but perhaps 
the one to which reference is now made has 
not yet been opened. Gipsies, who were 
encamped in great numbers among the Ruins, 
had used some of the vaults, or lower recepta- 
cles, as sheds for their goats. A question is 
here suggested, which it may be possible to 
answer ; it is this : " Whence originated the 
distinction, observed in the Telmessensian sepul- 
chres, between the tombs having a Persepolitan 
character, and the cenotaphs exhibiting the 
most antient form of the Greek Soros T The 
first seem evidently to be Asiatic, as they cor- 
respond with the remains of customs still dis- 
cernible in many parts of India. The last are 
of European origin ; and their introduction may 
therefore be referred to periods in the history 
of the country, when the first colonies from 
Greece took possession of the coasts of Caria 
and Lycia. The Dorian dialect is yet retained 
(2) Such a mode of interment is still exhibited in all our English 
coemeteries. It is a practice that we derived from the i?o>«««5; and 
the form of their Sarcophagus may yet be noticed in almost every 
thurch-vard of our island. 
