Iranians and Greeks in South Russia - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian ...

6
INTRODUCTORY
The three works are still classics ; moreover, they are well known
outside Russia, thanks to the republication of the first and the translation
of the third by that distinguished scholar Mr. Salomon Reinach,
who, by these publications, and by a number of articles m the Revue
archeologique, has helped to maintain the interest of Western scholars
in the South Russian finds of the classical period.
These works were concerned with the figurative monuments :
task of publishing the written monuments, the inscriptions, was undertaken
and brilliantly accomplished by Vasili Latyshev in his wellknown
repertory, Inscriptiones antiquae orae septentrionalis PontiEuxtnt
(vols, i, ii, and iv ; a second edition of the first in 1912), which is a
complete collection of the Greek and Latin inscriptions found m
South Russia. The same author has compiled a repertory, almost
exhaustive, of the passages in Greek and Latin writers which refer
to South Russia {Scythica et Caucasica, vol.i, Auctores Graeci, vol. h,
Auctores Latini). In addition to these pubHcations the results of
current excavation were given year by year in the periodical organs of
the Archaeological Commission—its Reports (Otchety), its Materials
(Materialy), and its Bulletin (Izvestiya)—and these were supplemented
by the publication of the archaeological societies, especially the
societies of St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Odessa, and of enlightened
persons who were interested in Russian archaeology, for example,
Khanenko's Antiquities of the Dnieper Region and Count Bobrinskoy's
Sniila.
It would be difficult to say of other countries what can now be
said of Russia, that almost all the treasures found in the country have
been published, and most of them reproduced as well, and are at
present accessible to any one who will consult the works of native
scholars.
A vast quantity of material has been collected and published. But
that it has been studied and understood, that it has been utilized to
reconstruct the story of South Russia at the dawn of history, I should
hardly care to affirm. Apart from the French archaeologists whom I
have already mentioned, the Germans were the first who paid attention
to the antiquities of South Russia. Koehler, Koehne, Boeckh, Neumann,
and Stephani made the earliest attempts to explain them
scientifically : Stephani above all. He was Keeper of the Hermitage,
a regular contributor- to the Reports of the Archaeological Commission,
and the author of the great Antiquites du Bosphore Cimmirien :
year
after year he compiled for the reports long and learned articles,
in Russian and in German, on the antiquities of South Russia,
Stephani 's works are well known : his vast erudition, founded on
the