Inscriptions [1] are characters engraved on marble or bronze, for perpetuating to posterity, the memory of some event. [2]

The most ordinary means for ancient peoples of the world to conserve the memory of facts that they viewed as memorable was to use material monuments. We have been content in coarser times to accomplish this by drawing up mounds of stones into colonnades. When Jacob and Laban are reconciled, according to Genesis chapter xxxi, verse 45, the former takes a stone he has set up as a column as a testimony to this reconciliation. Laban's brothers pray to their tower of stones, making such a mound. Jacob and Laban will each in their tongue give to this mass of stones the name mound of witness [3] , because this mound of stones must remain as a solemn witness to a treatise of friendship for which they together make a contract.

Xenophon relates, in the history of the famous retreat of ten thousand, that soldiers having reached Pontus on the Euxine Sea, after having wiped off much fatigue and danger, raise up a great mound of stones to mark their joy and to leave traces of their travels. [4]

Yet these stones have nothing at all which might show that they signify anything, except their position and situation. They very much suggest to the eye some event, but we need memory to recall this event.

As time has gone on, we have made these stones speak sensibly, first in giving them shapes that represent gods, men, battles, in producing bas-reliefs upon which these things might be represented; secondly, in engraving above them characters or letters which contain inscriptions of names.

This custom of engraving in stones was practiced across all antiquity by the Phoenicians, Egyptians [5], or when the Greeks might appropriate their use to perpetuate the memory of events of their nation. So we see in the citadel of Athens, as Thucydides relates in book VI, the injustice of tyrants who had usurped sovereign authority was marked on columns. [6] In book VII, Herodotus teaches us that, by the decree of the Amphictyons, a mass of stones was set up with an epitaph in honor of those killed by the Thermopylaeans. [7]

In time, we have gone even further: religious laws and civil ordinances have been written on columns and tablets. In the case of the Jews, the Decalogue and Deuteronomy were inscribed upon stone covered by chalk. [8] Theopompus claimed that the Corybants invented the art of setting up columns in order to write laws. Without examining its rhyme or reason, such a custom becomes favored by all of Greece, save the Lacedaemonians, for whom Lycurgus had not wanted to permit laws to be written, as we are obligated to know them ultimately by heart. [9]

In short, we've engraved in metal, bronze, leather and wood, the history of countries, cults of gods, principles of the sciences, treaties of peace, wars, alliances, eras, conquests, in a word, all memorable facts or directives. Porphyrus tells us of inscriptions possessed by the inhabitants of Crete in which were recognized the ceremony of Corybant sacrifices. [10] Euhemerus, as related by Lactantius, had drawn up his history of Jupiter and other gods from inscriptions found in temples, and principally from that of a Triphylian Jupiter. [11] Pliny tells of how Babylonian astronomers wrote their observations on bricks and utilized hard, solid materials in order to continue their operations of the arts. [12] Aremnestus, son of Pythagorus, according to the testimony of Porphyrus, dedicated to the Temple of Juno a bronze sheet on which he engraved principles of the sciences he had cultivated. [13] This monument, Malchus tells us, was three foot in diameter [14] and contains written on it, seven sciences. Pythagoras, according to the opinion of several savants, learned Philosophy from inscriptions in Egypt engraved on marble columns. [15] It is said in the dialogue of Plato entitled Hipparchus that the sons of Pisistratus had precepts useful to laborers engraved on columns of stone. [16]

Rome's second king, Numa, wrote the ceremonies of his religion on tablets of oak. [17] When Tarquin revoked the laws of Tullius, he had removed from the forum, all the tablets on which they had been written. [18] We've made engravings of treatises and alliances on similar tablets, sometimes on columns. The case of Romulus provided an example: he had engraved on a column the alliance treaty he had established with that of Véïès; Tullius, with that of the Sabines; Tarquin, what he had the goodness of negotiating with the Latin people. [19]

Under imperial rule, public monuments were formed from engraved lead surfaces from which portable volumes had been composed. The act of pacification concluded between Romans and Jews was written on copper surfaces, finally, Pliny tells us, as this people kept something which could help them remember the peace they had obtained. [20] Titus Livius relates that Hannibal dedicated an alter on which he engraved, in Punic and Greek tongues, a description of his victorious exploits. [21]

Thucydides speaks only of Greek columns found in the plains of Olynthus, on the Isthmus, in Attica, Athens, Laconia, Ampelia, and everywhere else upon which columns were engraved with treatises of peace and alliance. [22] The Messenians, in their contestations with the Lacedaemonians concerning the Temple of Diana in the Marsh, produced the ancient division of Peloponnese, stipulated for Hercules' descendants, and which proved by monuments still engraved in stone and bronze that the field within which the temple had been built had been left for their king. [23] Indeed I say, all history, all revolutions of Greece had been engraved in stone and on columns; one observes the marbles of Arundel, on which are marked the most ancient and most important eras of Greece, an incomparable monument, and of which nothing equals its prize. [24]

In short, the number of inscriptions of Greece and Rome, upon columns, stones, marbles, medals, currency, on tablets of wood or bronze, is almost infinite - we cannot doubt that these would be the most certain and most faithful monuments of their history. Additionally, among all the inscriptions which have survived until our time are those of the two peoples with greater interest for us, and who are the most dignified in our view. The Greeks, themselves looking for all different ways to shelter their inscriptions from the abuse of weather, sometimes wrote characters on the bottom surface of a piece of marble, and also utilized other blocks of marble set above to cover and conserve.

Other than the inscriptions of these two peoples making up so many monuments that spread the greatest light on their history, nobility of thoughts, purity of style, brevity, simplicity, reigning clarity, they contribute to their preciousness among us because it is within this same taste indeed that inscriptions must be made. Pomp and a multitude of words ( des paroles ) would be employed here ridiculously. It is absurd to pronounce upon a statue and medal when it is a matter of actions, which, being great in themselves, and with dignity to go on into posterity, have no need of being exaggerated.

When Alexander, after the battle of Granicus [25] had devoted a portion of spoils of his victory to the Temple of Minerva at Athens, an inscription was written there entirely in Greek: Alexander Philippi filius, and Graci, praeter Lacedemonios, de barbaris Asiaticus . [26]

Underneath the painting ( tableau ) of Polygnotus representing the city of Troy, only two verses of Simonides indicate, "Polygnotus of Thasos, son of Aglaophon, made this image ( tableau ), which represents the capture of Troy". [27] And so are these the inscriptions of the Greeks. We are not left wanting of allusions, nor play of words, nor brilliance of any type. The poet does not find amusement in praising here the work of Polygnotus. It may be recommended enough on its own. He is content to teach us the name of the painter, the name of the city in which he resided and that of his father, to give honor to this father for having had such a son, and to this city for having had such a citizen.

The Romans erected a bronze statue to Cornelia with the inscription "Cornelia, mother of the Greeks" [28]. The eulogy of Cornelia and the eulogy of the Greeks could not be done more nobly, nor in fewer terms.

This brevity of inscriptions applies equally to medals, on which one only puts the date of the action depicted, the archon, the consulate under which it had been cast, or the subject of the medal in two words.

Besides, Greek and Latin tongues have an energy that is difficult to capture in living languages, at least in French, despite what Monsieur Charpentier might say [29]. Latin seems made for inscriptions, due to ablative absolutes [30], instead of as in French, carrying on and languishing in inconvenient gerundives, and auxiliary verbs to which it is indispensably subject [31], and which are always the same. And you might add that, having a need to please, to be maintained, it does not admit the majestic simplicity of Greek and Latin.

Their epitaphs, as types of inscriptions, seem to be of this noble simplicity of thoughts and of expressions that we come to praise. After each great battle, Athens usually engraved a general epitaph for all those perished. [32] We know that Euripides put those killed in Sicily on tombs in Athens. "Here lie these brave soldiers who have built eight times as much as the Syracusans, for as long as the gods have remained neutral". [33]

Our funerary inscriptions are only burdened, in contrast, with an empty staging of words which paint pride or base flattery. In Vienna the following inscription is seen and shown on the tomb of the emperor Frederick III: "Here lies Frederich III, pious, august, sovereign of Christianity, king of Hungary, Dalmatia, Croatia, archduke of Austria" [34] - and yet this prince, Monsieur Voltaire tells us [35], was no less than all this. In Hungary, he always removed the precious stones of the crown, which he kept in his cabinet, without returning them either to his pupil Ladislas, their king, or to those the Hungarians would raise up next and who would then fight against the Turks. [36] He barely possessed half the province of Austria; his cousins had the rest. And as for the title of sovereign of Christianity, it is easy to judge whether he has merit.

Monks have been no less ridiculous in their inscriptions engraved in honor of their founders or their churches. Jean-Baptiste Thiers, born at Chartres in 1641, and dead in 1703, waged war on the inscription of the Franciscan convent at Reims, as is related by much common literature: "To God, and to St. Francis, both here crucified". [37] Besides Greek and Roman inscriptions being exempt from similar extravagances, they only tend to instruct us in the facts of which the fewest particularities prick our curiosity. Hence, from a renaissance of letters comes what savants have not ceased to collect together of all its parts. The collection they have produced already contains hundreds of prize volumes, providing one of the principal branches of profound erudition.

Indeed, inscriptions have been precious in all times to enlightened peoples. During the renewal of sciences in Greece, Acusilaus, native of Argos, before the Persian War, published a great work explaining the inscriptions on old tablets of bronze, found by excavating soil. [38] Our antiquarians imitate this famous Greek, and attempt to divine the meaning of inscriptions that they discover, and of which their authenticity is not suspect. I must indeed mention this, because all the inscriptions we read in many works are neither of the same title nor value.

Yet since many view them as historic monuments with an authority on par with that of medals we possess, it is important to discuss the extent to which this sentiment can be true.

One of our antiquarians, Monsieur Baron de Bastie [39], entering into this examination, has judiciously proven that one must see a very great difference between inscriptions that exist and those that we are able to find, among the inscriptions that enlightened authors have themselves faithfully copied from an original in marble and bronze, and those that have been extracted from several manuscript collections indicating neither the place nor the time where we found them, and finally, those which have only come to us from copy to copy, without our being able to say what has been taken from the original.

We know that toward the end of the XV century, at the beginning of the XVJ, there were savants who, in order to amuse themselves through the dependence of curieux on antiquities, entertained themselves by composing inscriptions in lapidary style, and having quickly made copies as if they had been drawn from ancient monuments then discovered still more frequently than today.

A little criticism would have soon revealed deception, because we see from one of the dialogues of Antonio Augustino and from an epigram of Sannazaro that not all savants were duped by them. [40] On the whole though, they were not on guard against this type of fraud, and a great number of these false inscriptions unfortunately have figured in different collections published since. [41]

Mazocchi and Smet have cited several of these fictive inscriptions without doubting their falsity. Fulvio Ursini, although otherwise capable, often furnished to Gruter what was entirely false, and that he gave to him as if it were discovered in this very same Rome. Antonio Augustino, whom I've just cited, a learned and able critic, has introduced them in good faith, and has had the honesty to warn the public. Yet, P. André Schott, an Antwerp Jesuit, without choice or discernment, amassed everything communicated to him from Spain, and he was the sole person responsible that Gruter had cited in his work on that country's inscriptions. [42]

On the matter of inscriptions absolutely false and made for pleasure, a great number are found in collections which have been disfigured by ignorance or by a precipitation of those who have copied them: second copies, as always happens, have multiplied the faults of the first, and three copies in turn will have topped all measures of the second.

These reflections do not however obligate us to reject lightly, and without good reason, the authority of inscriptions in general, but to only accept this authority after ripe examination, when it is a question of stating a fact of history on which these sentiments are shared. The rules of an exact and judicious critique must always furnish us the spark in literary discussions.

For anyone who follows the art of reading inscriptions , such can only be learned by study and usage, because each has their own particular characters. For example, we often find in Roman inscriptions, the characters ⅭⅼↃ and ∞ employed for a thousand. There is one I between two forward or reversed CCs and there is sometimes an X between two CCs, of which one is forward, and the other reversed in this way ⅭⅩↃ. The first shape, when it is closed at the top resembles an ancient M exactly, made thus as ⅭⅼↃ. The last shape, when it is completely closed, an 8 laying down as ∞. Yet if these types of characters may be easily read, other difficulties in deciphering are encountered, independently of abbreviations, susceptible to various meanings and given consequently all the detours by which our conjectures cast but weak light.

Notes

1. NOTE: All annotations and most translations of passages in languages other than French (except for those originally written in Greek and where noted) have been supplied by the translator.

2. Inscription (although largely taken from Louis Moreri's Grand Dictionnaire Historique , 1732) is published in the context of important, almost bread-and-butter 18th Century debates led by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Winckelmann, Jean-Baptiste Dubos and others concerning ut pictura poesis, or the pictorial representation of texts or words and related concerns over the linguistic representation of visual images (volume H-I of L'Encyclopédie is published in 1765 and Lessing's Laocoön , in 1766, for instance). These debates unfold under much constraint attempting to formalize rules by which artists might produce "valid" visual art, and poets "valid" literary work, while to some degree proscribing anything spontaneously confounding image and text for aesthetic effect. Still, these early debates may be seen also to partially enable Post Modernity's "mise en abîme" of texts within texts, whether visual, linguistic, or other kinds. In fact, Jaucourt's historicization of this engraving/marking onto or with "hard" media could present classical writing as one possible starting point for a Post-Structuralist de-prioritization of speech over writing, for conceptual frameworks of Science and Technology Studies (STS) to offer "non-humans" and scientific instruments as object-authors, and for New Media Studies - with its displacement of human and machine minds into public artifacts of generalized writing - to then render in media, all human interior states.

3. The ancient city of Gilead so named by Jacob becomes a commemorative locale for this covenant, as it means "mound of witness", although Laban initially marks this site with an Aramaic name, "Yegar-Sahadutha":

וַיִּקַּ֥ח יַעֲקֹ֖ב אָ֑בֶן וַיְרִימֶ֖הָ מַצֵּבָֽה

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר יַעֲקֹ֤ב לְאֶחָיו֙ לִקְט֣וּ אֲבָנִ֔ים וַיִּקְח֥וּ אֲבָנִ֖ים וַיַּֽעֲשׂוּ־גָ֑ל וַיֹּ֥אכְלוּ שָׁ֖ם עַל־הַגָּֽל

וַיִּקְרָא־ל֣וֹ לָבָ֔ן יְגַ֖ר שָׂהֲדוּתָ֑א וְיַֽעֲקֹ֔ב קָ֥רָא ל֖וֹ גַּלְעֵֽד

וַיֹּ֣אמֶר לָבָ֔ן הַגַּ֨ל הַזֶּ֥ה עֵ֛ד בֵּינִ֥י וּבֵינְךָ֖ הַיּ֑וֹם עַל־כֵּ֥ן קָרָֽא־_שְׁמ֖וֹ__ גַּלְעֵֽד

[And Jacob took a stone and set it as a pillar. And Jacob said to his brothers, "Gather stones", and so they gathered stones and made a mound and ate there upon this mound. Laban called it "Yegar-Sahadutha", but Jacob then, "Gilead". And Laban said, "Today, this heap stands as a witness between me and you". It therefore was called "Gilead".] Hebrew text found in Rudolf Kittel et al., [Torah, Neviʼim u-Khetuvim] = Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelstiftung, 1977), Genesis 31:45-48.

4. See Xenophon's Anabasis, for instance in Xenophon, and J. S. Watson, The Anabasis; or, Expedition of Cyrus (Boston: W. Small, 1893), bk. 4, ch. 7, v. 24-26. "Mounting his horse therefore, and taking with him Lysius and the calvary, he hastened forward to give aid, when presently, they heard the soldiers shouting, 'The sea, the sea!' and cheering on one another. They then all began to run, the rear-guard as well as the rest, and the baggage-cattle were put to their speed. And when they had all arrived on top, the men embraced one another, and their generals and captains, with tears in their eyes. Suddenly, whoever it was that suggested it, the soldiers brought stones, and raised a large mound, on which they laid a number of raw ox-hides, staves, and shields taken from the enemy."

5. The three civilizations mentioned here not only richly characterize early writing by the differences in their nationalities/ethnicities real or imagined, but in how each group is connected to significantly different paradigms of writing, demarcating how modern languages have arisen. As commonly known, Egyptian writing is associated with hieroglyphics, Phoenician with alphabetic writing derived from these hieroglyphics, and Greek with alphabetic writing possibly evolved from the Phoenician system.

6. Thucydides, Historia , bk. 4, bk 5, §18.

7. Herodotus, Historiae, bk. 7.

8. Jaucourt seems to suggest that even the transition from writing in chalk to writing in stone is grossly premodern or "primitive", but if the Torah/Pentateuch truly has origins much later than portrayed here, in the royal court of the tenth century BCE when Hebrew society and thus literature flourished (as argued by Moore Cross and von Rad), then the authorial position of the récit of the Hebrew god YHWH's delivery of the ten commandments and Jewish law could be much closer to Jaucourt than he may have realized, very much problematizing the ways in which very human cultural traditions could even be seen to have something like the authority of divine law. The irony of invisible, divine inspiration being displaced into the figure of a Pentateuch writer as a mere author-implement curiously matches the Enlightenment ascent toward natural law and beyond, as the philosophes and encyclopedists would largely push to have this implement remain only an implement and indeed an authorial surrogate for only its own human laws.

9. See for instance, Plutarchus, and Bernadotte Perrin."The Life of Lycurgus" in Plutarch's Lives: in eleven volumes I, Theseus and Romulus, Lycurgus and Numa, Solon and Publicola. Plutarch's Lives (London: Heinemann, 1914), §13 "None of his laws were put into writing by Lycurgus, indeed, one of the so-called 'rhetras' forbids it. For he thought that if the most important and binding principles which conduce to the prosperity and virtue of a city were implanted in the habits and training of its citizens, they would remain unchanged and secure, having a stronger bond than compulsion in the fixed purposes imparted to the young by education, which performs the office of a law-giver for every one of them."

10. See for instance, Taylor's translation of De abstinentia ab esu animalium , in Porphyry and Thomas Taylor, Select works of Porphyry (Frome, Somerset, UK: Prometheus Trust, 1994), 59, § 21, "These things, however, are testified not only by the pillars which are preserved in Cyrbe, and which contain, as it were, certain true descriptions of the Cretan sacred rites of the Corybantes...."

11. See for instance, Fletcher's translation in Lactantius, Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus, and William Fletcher, The works of Lactantius (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1871), 30. "Euhemerus, an ancient author, who was of the city of Messene, collected the actions of Jupiter, and of the others, who are esteemed gods, and composed a history from the titles and sacred inscriptions which were in the most ancient temples, and especially in the sanctuary of the Triphylian Jupiter, where an inscription indicated that a golden column had been placed by Jupiter himself, on which column he wrote an account of his exploits, that posterity might have a memorial of his actions."

12. C Plinius Secundus, Historiae naturalis bk. 7 § 56 v. 193. "E diverso Epigenes apud Babylonios DCCXX annorum observationes siderum coctilibus laterculis inscriptas docet, gravis auctor in primis, qui minimum Berosus & Critodemus CCCCXC annorum. Ex quo apparet aeternum litterarum usum." [In contrast, Epigenes taught that at the time of the Babylonians, astronomical observations were inscribed for 720 years on baked stones and were greatly expanded for at least 490 years, especially by Berosus and Critodemus, who made possible their continual use.]

13. See for instance, Iamblichus, Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie et al., The life of Pythagoras (Alpine, N.J.: Platonist Press, 1919), §3. "The Samian Duris, in the second book of his 'Hours', writes that his son was named Arimnestus, that he was the teacher of Democritus, and that on returning from banishment, he suspended a brazen tablet in the temple of Hera, a tablet two feet square, bearing this inscription: 'Me, Arimnestus, who much learning traced/Pythagoras's beloved son here placed.' This tablet was removed by Simus, a musician, who claimed the canon graven thereon, and published it as his own. Seven arts were engraved, but when Simus took away one, the others were destroyed."

14. The French here is «deux coudées». A coudée is about a foot and a half, according to the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française 1st Edition (1694) : «Certaine mesure, ou longueur prise sur l'estenduë qu'il y a depuis le coude jusqu'au bout du doigt du milieu, & qui est d'un pied & demi Cette muraille, cette colomne, &c. avoit tant de coudées de haut, estoit de tant de coudées, avoit tant de coudées en hauteur, en longueur .» [A certain measure or length taken of the extension from elbow to middle finger, about a foot and a half. This mural, this column, etc. had so many coudées in height, were so many coudées, had this many coudées of height, of length .] ARTFL: Dictionnaires d'autrefois , s.v. "COUDÉE, " accessed January 5, 2013, http://artflx.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/dicos/pubdico1look.pl?strippedhw=coudée.

15. Details on the path of Pythagoras from Egyptian inscriptions to a philosophy founded upon the larger symbol systems of these inscriptions can be found in André Dacier, La Vie de Pythagore, ses Symboles, ses Vers dorez, la Vie d'Hierocles. Par M. Dacier, (tom. 2. Les Commentaires d'Hierocles sur les Vers dorez de Pythagore. Rétablis sur les manuscrits, & traduits en françois avec des remarques. Par M. Dacier ) (1706), l. «J'ai déjà dit que les Egyptiens étoient fort réservés à découvrir les secrets de leur philosophie, il ne les découvroient qu'aux seuls Prêtes & à leurs Rois, encore falloit-il que ces Rois fussent auparavant reçus dans l'ordre de prêtrise...il y a Saïs, ville d'Egypte, une statue de Pallas, le même qu'Isis, avec cette inscription: Je suis tout ce qui est, qui a été & qui sera; et pas un mortel n'a encore ôté le voile qui me couvre... Dans le nécessité donc de ne pas divulguer leurs mystères, ils [Les Egyptiens] avoient trois sortes de style; le simple, l'hiéroglyphique, & le symbolique... Pythagore emprunta des Egyptiens ces trois manières....Voilà l'origine des symboles, par le moyen desquels Pythagore enseignoit sa doctrine sans divulguer et sans la cacher....» [I have already mentioned how careful the Egyptians were in discovering the secrets of their philosophy, it being discovered solely by priests, and being necessary that their Kings receive them through the priestly order...there is in Saïs, the Egyptian city, a statue of Pallas, or Isis, with this inscription: I am everything that is, that has been and will be. No mortal has yet removed the veil which covers me. ..So in the necessity of not divulging their mysteries, they (The Egyptians) had three types of style: simple, hieroglyphic, and symbolic... Pythagoras borrowed these three modes from the Egyptians...So this is the origin of symbols by which Pythagoras taught his doctrine without divulging it and without hiding it.]

16. See for instance, Plato, Plato in Twelve Volumes , vol. 8 trans. W.R.M. Lamb (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955), § 228. "I mean my and your fellow-citizen, Pisistratus's son Hipparchus, of Philaidae, who was the eldest and wisest of Pisistratus's sons, and who, among the many goodly proofs of wisdom that he showed, first brought the poems of Homer into this country of ours, and compelled the rhapsodes at the Panathenaea to recite them in relay, one man following on another, as they still do now... he proceeded next, with the design of educating those of the countryside, to set up figures of Hermes for them along the roads in the midst of the city and every district town; and then, after selecting from his own wise lore, both learnt from others and discovered for himself, the things that he considered the wisest, he threw these into elegiac form and inscribed them on the figures as verses of his own and testimonies of his wisdom...."

17. Livy, Ab urbe condita , bk. 1, § 20. See for instance, Livy and William Masfen Roberts, The history of Rome, v. 1(London: J.M. Dent, 1912), 24: "The next office to be filled was that of the Pontifex Maximus. Numa appointed the son of Marcus, one of the senators - Numa Marcius - and all the regulations bearing on religion, written out and sealed, were placed in his charge."

18. "Livy, Ab urbe condita, bk. 1, § 55. See again for example, Roberts, The history of Rome, 62-63 : "The first thing was the temple of Jupiter on the Tarpeian Mount, which he was anxious to leave behind as a memorial of his reign and name; both the Tarquins were concerned with it, the father had vowed it, the son completed it. That the whole of the area which the temple of Jupiter was to occupy might be wholly devoted to the deity, he decided to deconsecrate the fanes and chapels, some of which had been originally vowed by King Tatius at the crisis of his battle with Romulus, and subsequently consecrated and inaugurated."

19. The treaties these rulers made with the Veii, Sabines and Latins are respectively depicted in Livy, Ab urbe condita , bk. 1, § 15, § 45, § 52; Roberts The history of Rome , 18-19, 52-53, 60. Additionally, Lines 10-12 of book 4, § 3 present a rhetorical flourish to the reader concerning her familiarity with the reigns of Numa, Tarquin, and Tullius that allows us to imagine more substantially - though speculatively - writing processes of Jaucourt and to perceive an intertextuality between 4.3.10-12 and the above paragraph on the inscriptions of Numa, Tarquin, and Tullius rooted in the events of these earlier books.

20. Josephus also mentions this decree in his Antiquities of the Jews , bk. 14, ch. 10 §2, §3. See for instance, Josephus, Flavius, and William Whiston, The works of Flavius Josephus: the learned and authentic Jewish historian and celebrated warrior : to which are added, three dissertations concerning Jesus Christ, John the Baptist, James the Just, God's command to Abraham, etc., with a complete index to the whole (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1841), §2: "I have sent you a copy of that decree registered on the tables, which concerns Hyrcanus, son of Alexander, the high priest and ethnarch of the Jews that it might be laid up among public records; and I will that it be openly proposed in a table of brass, in both Greek and Latin letters" and §3, "and that ambassadors be sent to Hyrcanus, the son of Alexander the high priest of the Jews, that may discourse with him about a league of friendship and mutual assistance; and that a table of brass, containing the premises be openly proposed in the capitol, and at Sydon and Tyre, and at Askelon, and in the temple, engraven in Roman and Greek letters."

21. Livy, Ab urbe condita, bk. 28, §46 v.16: "Propter Iunonis Laciniae templum aestatem Hannibal egit, ibique aram condidit dedicavitque cum ingenti rerum ab se gestarum titulo Punicis Graecisque litteris insculpto." [So Hannibal spent the summer at the temple of Juno Lacinia, where he built an altar and dedicated it in Punic and Greek, engraving in large characters the great things he had done.]

22. See for instance, Thucydides, Robert B. Strassler, and Richard Crawley, The landmark Thucydides: a comprehensive guide to the Peloponnesian War, (New York: Free Press, 1996) bk. 5, §18: "...and the oath shall be renewed annually by both parties. Pillars shall be erected at Olympia, Pythia, the Isthmus, at Athens in the Acropolis, and at Sparta in the temple of Amyclae."

23. Tacitus, Annals bk. 4, § 43. "Auditae dehinc Lacedaemoniorum et Messeniorum legationes de iure templi Dianae Limnatidis, quod suis a maioribus suaque in terra dicatum Lacedaemonii firmabant annalium memoria vatumque carminibus, sed Macedonis Philippi cum quo bellassent armis ademptum ac post C. Caesaris et M. Antonii sententia redditum. contra Messenii veterem inter Herculis posteros divisionem Peloponnesi protulere, suoque regi Denthaliatem agrum in quo id delubrum cessisse; monimentaque eius rei sculpta saxis et aere prisco manere." [The Lacedaemonian and Messenian embassies under the jurisdiction of the temple of Diana of the Marshes were finally heard, since by her and her ancestors the Lacedaemonians fortified the memorial of the annals and song of the poetess, on hallowed ground. But Phillip of Macedonia, upon whom war may have been waged by an army he had swept away, and after C. Caesar and Mark Anthony had pronounced a sentence against the ancient Messenians, the division of Peloponnese was brought forth among the Heraclitians, and the shrine of the Denthaliatian field was given to the king, leaving its sculpted stone and ancient metal likely to remain.]

24. The collection of Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, now at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University. For a guide to many of the inscriptions, with annotations in Latin and transcriptions of the original Greek, see John Selden and Humphrey Prideaux, Marmora Arvndelliana: siue, Saxa graecè incisa, ex venerandis priscae orientis gloriae ruderibus, auspicijs & impensis herois illustriss. Thomæ comitis Arundelliæ (Londini: Apud I. Billium, 1629).

25. See for example, Arrian, P. A. Brunt, and E. Iliff Robson, Anabasis of Alexander (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1976).,1.16.45 - 50 and Diodorus, and Charles Henry Oldfather, Diodorus of Sicily in twelve volumes , vol. 8, (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1933-1967), 17.19.

26. Alexander, son of Philip and of the Greeks, Lacedaemonian praetor of Asiatic barbarians.

27. See for example, Pausanius, and W. H. S. Jones. Description of Greece: in four volumes with a companion volume containing maps, plans and indices (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), bk. 10, ch. 17.

28. Pliny, Naturalis Historiae bk. 34, §31: "Exstant Catonis in censura vociferationes mulieribus statuas Romanis in provinciis poni; nec tamen potuit inhibere, quo minus Romae quoque ponerentur, sicuti Corneliae Gracchorum matri, quae fuit Africani prioris filia. sedens huic posita soleisque sine ammento insignis in Metelli publica porticu, quae statua nunc est in Octavia operibus." [There are on record bold recommendations by Cato for censorship of statues of Roman women being placed in the provinces. But he could not prevent however, a few being placed in Rome, such as that of Cornelia mother of the Greeks, the first daughter of Africanus. It sits, posed in sandals without thongs in the portico of Metellius, and is now in the collections of Octavia.] Only the base of the statue remains known to the contemporary world, and the inscription has been covered over with "Cornelia, Africani f. / Gracchorum". For a discussion of whether or not this could actually be the original inscription especially as it relates to the significance of a publicly inscribed "Mother of the Greeks" in ancient Roman patriarchal society, see Petrocelli Corrado, "Cornelia the Matron," in Roman Women, ed. Augusto Fraschetti, trans. Linda Lappin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).

29. A treatment of the merits of French over Latin at the birth of "la querelle des anciens et des modernes" can be found in Francois Charpentier, L'Excellence de la langue francoise, 2 vols. (Paris: Veuve Bilaine, 1683). For the argument espousing French instead of Latin on inscriptions, see his Defense de la langue francoise, pour l'inscription de l'arc de triomphe (Paris: Claude Barbin, 1676).

30. Ablative absolutes can be seen to correspond to static images commemorating events, in the sense that they describe how actions are performed by auxiliary agents rendered nominally, enchained by explicit or implicit prepositions. They bring language to face single moments in time by presenting sequences completely in terms of objects, while static images are opened to multiple moments by the adverbial sense of these objects rendered in special linguistic cases. For an itemized list of characteristics of the ablative case, see also Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, etc ., eds. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D'Alembert, (University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project [Spring 2011 Edition], Robert Morrissey [ed]), s.v. "ABLATIF" by César Chesneau Dumarsais, http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/.

31. Auxiliary verbs in French, limited to être and avoir, doubly illustrate Jaucourt's claim that they "are always the same" in the way that "to have" and "to be" can each stand in for the other in certain linguistic constructions, i.e. "il y a", "est descendu", etc.

32. The prototypical instance of this practice is represented by an inscription supposedly written by Simonedes (556-468 B.C.E.), commemorated in the histories of Herodotus (according to John H.Molyneux and others) . See, for example, Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1920), bk. 7, §228, v. 1-2: "There is an inscription written over these men, who were buried where they fell, and over those who died before the others went away, dismissed by Leonidas. It reads as follows: 'Here four thousand from the Peloponnese once fought three million.' That inscription is for them all, but the Spartans have their own: 'Foreigner, go tell the Spartans that we lie here obedient to their commands.'"

33. See for instance, Plutarch, and Bernadotte Perrin. Plutarch's Nicias and Alcibiades (New York: C. Scribner's sons, 1912), 85 : "Euripides, after their defeat and destruction, composed an epitaph for them, in which he said: 'These men at Syracuse eight times were triumphant as victors; heroes they were while the gods favored both causes alike.'"

34. The tomb is located in St. Stephens Cathedral, in Vienna, Austria, built over nearly half a century, its lid carved by the Dutch artist, Nikolaus Gerhaert van Leyden, (1420-1473).

35. See "Frédéric D'Autriche" in Voltaire, Essai sur les moeurs . Annales de l'Empire, in Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, t. 13, vol. 3 (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1878).

36. Voltaire, Essai sur les moeurs , 455: «En Hongrie, il fallait avoir une certaine couronne d'or. Cet ornement était dans le trésor de l'empereur Frédéric, qui ne l'avait jamais voulu rendre, en rendant aux Hongrois Ladislas son pupille.» [In Hungary, it was necessary to have a certain crown of gold. This ornament was included in the treasure of Emperor Frederick, who never wished to give it up, in passing it to his pupil, the Hungarian Ladislas.]

37. An entry on Thiers describing the inscription at the convent of Reims may be found in the dictionary of the proto-encyclopedist, Louis Moreri, «En 1673, il donna une dissertation francoise contre l'inscription du grand portail des Cordeliers de Reims, 'Deo homini et B. Francisco utrique cruxifixo'.» [In 1673, he wrote a French essay against the inscription on the large gate of the Cordeliers at Reims, (which reads) "To God, a human being, and St. Francis, crucified on either side."] In Louis Moréri, et al., "Jean Baptiste Thiers", in Le grand dictionnaire historique, ou Le mêlange curieux de l'histoire sacrée et profane , t. 6 (A Paris: chez les libraires associés, 1759).

38. Moréri, et al., "Acusilaus" vol. 1, p. 120 : «Suidas dit qu'il écrivit les généalogies des temps fabuleux , que son pere avoit trouvées dans sa maison.» [Suidas says that he wrote genealogies of fabulous eras, that his father found in his house.] (Suidas, 10th century Greek lexicographer).

39. Joseph de Bimard-La Bastie (1703-1742) editor of La science des medailles, pour l'instruction de ceux qui commencent à s'appliquer à la connoissance des medailles antiques & modernes ( Paris: Chez J. Boudot, 1715).

40. Although Jaucourt speaks of "deception" ( la tromperie ) and "duping" ( être la dupe ) surrounding the practices that produced this "entertainment", there is a sense in which, in the re-translation of ancient Latin into then contemporary prose, the scholars of this period made less of a distinction between "authentic" and "false". According to Ralph Nash, scholars such as Jacopo Sannazaro saw this representation not simply as a mere transcription, but as a creative practice of imitatio stemming from the challenge of reintroducing the words of ancient authors. See Jacopo Sannazaro and Ralph Nash, The major Latin poems of Jacopo Sannazaro (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996).

41. That this practice continued into the 18th Century is shown by Louis Jobert devoting an entire chapter to the problem of faked antiquities in "Des médailles fausses. Des différents manières de les contrefaire & de la façon d'en découvrir aisément la fausseté", La science des medailles , 337-358.

42. For a more thorough presentation of these interconnected events, including numerical figures for "authentic" inscriptions in comparison to those "false" in the works of these humanists, see J. P. Waltzing, "État de l'épigraphie latine avant le Corpus", Le recueil général des inscriptions latines (corpus inscriptionum latinarum) et l' épigraphie latine depuis 50 ans (Louvain: C. Peeters, 1892), 18-31.