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TAPER.

The jus publicum of the Athenians , was engraved on trian-gular stones, named cyrbes. Numerous old inscriptions inthe Etruscan, Greek, and Latin languages, on sarcophagi, &c.are preserved in the Tuscan gallery at Florence . Wehave also, in the course of our inquiries, seen the ap-plication of impressing inscriptions upon humid bricks,witness those of Babylon in the British Museum .

Subsequent to these modes of record, leaden plates werechosen. Pausanias relates that Hesiod’s Opera et Dies was written upon this substance. Pliny assures us that leadwas used for writing, rolled up like a cylinder, llertiuswrote to Decius Brutus on leaden tables. In Italy werepreserved two documents of Pope Leo III. and Luitbrand,king of the Longobards ; and, according toKircher’s museum,tab. x. many more of such writings on lead are to be found.Montfaucon takes notice of a very ancient book of eightleaden leaves, the first and last serving for a cover, containingnumerous mysterious figures of the Basilidians, and wordspartly Greek and partly Etruscan characters; on the backwere rings, fastened to a small leaden rod, which held themtogether. In the British Museum there are two ingots, or,as called, pigs of lead ; one inscribed with the name of the“ Emperor Domitian” weighing 154 pounds, discovered inthe year 1731, under the ground, on Hayshaw Moor, inthe manor o t' Dacre, West Riding of Yorkshire; No. 4,room 7, Gallery of Antiquities. The other with the nameof “ L. Aruconius Verecundus," weighing 81 pounds,found near Matlock Bath, in Derbyshire ; No. 5, room 7,Gallery of Antiquities.

Bronze, however, it appears, was more frequently usedthan lead for records, as is certified in the history of theMaccabees, by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Cicero, Livy ,Pliny, Suetonius, and Julius Obsequens . Phoenician letterswere engraved on a kettle of bronze, devoted by Cadmus toMinerva, who was adored atLindus, in Rhodes. The kettlewith its letters, and those tripods with Cadmrean letters, men-tioned by Herodotus , are not to be now found. The famousScriptum de Bacclianalibus, in the Imperial Library; Trajan 'sTabula Alhnentaria ; and the helmet found at Canute , withPunic letters, described by Gori, now in the third room ofthe Tuscan Gallery. Eight bronze tables were found in thetown of Gubbio , in a subterranean cabinet, anno 1444, whenpart of an amphitheatre was removed: seven of thesebronze tables are in Latin, and one in the Etruscan language.Many bronze tables have, we understand, been dug up inTuscany. The seven former mentioned tables in Latin ,