Abstract

The lettering of this inscription begins at the very top of the block, just below the straight edge, and stops half-way down the block, the lower part being smoothed but uninscribed. As the inscription is not set centrally on the block, it is probably the continuation of an inscription which ran on a block once superimposed upon it. Doubtful letters are those which are marked by the dot underneath; and W. Peek reported in Ath. Mitt. lxvi, 200 n. 2, that he had seen the top of the v which Vollgraff suggested in the restorationThe inscription is dated to the seventh century B.C. by epigraphists. The stone itself was seen in 1729 by Fourmont and rediscovered in 1928 by Vollgraff; it was in the wall of a Venetian tower on the Larissa or acropolis of Argos. No one knows whence the Venetians had taken it. Therefore Vollgraff's suggestion that it had originally been set up in porta arcis regiae is no more than an attractive speculation.