It is not often that lost works of two famous writers can be recovered simultaneously, and recognized without mention of the name of either on the monument they adorned. But in Hesperia, the Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (II.4, 1933, p. 480 ff.), Dr James H. Oliver has made out a good case for the identification of epigrams composed by Simonides and by Aeschylus to commemorate those Athenians who fell at Marathon.

As long ago as 1855 the Greek scholar A. R. Rhangabé published a fragmentary inscription found in a courtyard off Hadrian Street. There were four lines of verse, two at the top of the dressed front of the block, two engraved subsequently across the panel of pecked dressing, which had been smoothed away to receive them : the letters were however in the same style, though rather rougher, so the additional lines must have been cut very soon after the stone was erected. As the word ‘Persians’ occurred in the later inscription (and, as now seems possible, also in the earlier) the monument must have belonged to the period of the Persian Wars, and with this date the style of the letters agrees.