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HICEST POSITYS BITALSPISTO RANN
SHICESRS XIIOVIBICSITAN
NVS PL MINNSNX LYDER

SI TV SINPACINATALED
OMNESSITIRETISTERT
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Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand

eight hundred and sixty-nine, by W. C. CHEWETT & Co., of Toronto, in the Office of the Minister of Agriculture.

PREFACE.

The following selection of Epitaphs, with the expansions, translations, and notes, originally appeared as a series of articles in the Canadian Journal. The epitaphs have been both selected and treated without any controversial aim; my object has been to provide a manual suited to the wants of those, who may desire to enter on the study of the sepulchral inscriptions of the early ages of Christianity as a branch of Epigraphy.

I have limited myself to the first six centuries P.C., not merely because the Consular fasti extend to about this period, but also because there are scarcely any subsequent epitaphs worthy of being ranked with specimens of ancient Roman Epigraphy. By adopting this limitation, also, I have had the important advantage, throughout my examination of the Roman epitaphs, of the valuable aid supplied by the Cavaliere De Rossi's learned labors, in his "Inscriptiones urbis Roma Septimo Sæculo Antiquiores." In selecting only those inscriptions that bear dates, I have been influenced by the desire to leave as little ground as possible for questioning the age. No example has been given without *examination of competent evidence

* No one, but those conversant with epigraphy, can fully appreciate the necessity for such examination. There are whole classes of inscriptions so justly suspected, that no scholar would accept one of them without the greatest caution; such, for example, are the Spanish, given under the name of Cyriac of Ancona, or on the authority of Morales or Occo, or the Italian, vouched for by Ligorio, a name of itself sufficient to excite the strongest suspicion. Ligorio, a Neapolitan, was a practised forger of inscriptions, which he sold to collectors, and many of his impostures have been exposed by scholars. His work, however, was confined to imitation of the Heathen tituli. But there were others who took up the manufacture of Christian inscriptions. The celebrated epitaph on Daciana Diaconissa, who was "the daughter of Palmatus the Consul, and the sister of Victorinus the Presbyter, and prophesied many things," although it passed the ordeal of Maffei's fastidious scrutiny, is now known to have been forged, and has been traced to Ferrar». See De Rossi, p. xxx. And yet Ackner and Müller, in "Die Römischen Inscriften in Dacien," published at Vienna in

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