Laudator Temporis Acti

J. Irving Manatt, Aegean Days (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1914), pp. 22-23:

I went with the schoolmaster to look at the local antiquities; and the stroll was rewarded by the sight of one precious human document which might have something to say for the education of women in ancient Karystos. On the beach, amid the acres of ancient blocks already mentioned, lies one of pure white marble fresh from the bottom of the sea; and from it I have the joy of copying an inscription which no archaeologist had yet seen. The block is a statue-basis and it registers the fact that "Phrynis, Praxagoras' daughter and wife of Eurytides, priestess of Artemis and Apollo, out of her own [means], dedicated the agalma of Artemis in payment of a vow." Ah, Phrynis, it was immortal luck your giving the goddess that agalma 'out of your own' and the act has floated your fair name over twenty centuries of oblivion. And what store of biography your stone-cutter chiselled in this little space: of how many ancient worthies we shall forever seek in vain to learn as much. Lend me a poet for an hour up yonder in the glen and you shall see again fair Phrynis as she lived and the incense from the altar of Leto's Twins shall sweeten this air you breathe.

Inscriptiones Graecae XII,9 14:

Φρυνὶς Πραξαγόρου, γυνὴ δὲ Εὐρυτίδου, ἡ ἱέρεια τῆ̣ς Ἀρτέμιδος καὶ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος τὸ ἄγαλμα τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων ἀνέθηκεν εὐχήν.