"Darius rex dicit: si hanc tabulam, hasque effigies spectas, et iis injuriam facias, et quamdiu tibi proles sit non eas conserves, Oromasdes hostis fiat tibi, et tibi proles non sit, et quod facias id tibi Oromasdes frustretur." See Rawlinson's "Translation of the Great Persian Inscription at Behistun," par. 17. _Asiatic Society's Transactions_. The following is an extract from Maitland's _Dark Ages_, p. 270., notes 3 and 4: "Terrible imprecations were occasionally annexed by the donors or possessors of books; as in a sacramentary which Mastene found at St. Benoit sur Loire, and which he supposed to belong to the ninth century. 'Ut si quis eum de Monasterio aliquo ingenio non redditurus abstraxerit cum Juda proditore, Anna et Caipha, portionem æternæ damnationis accipiat. Amen, Amen, Fiat, Fiat.'" There is a curious instance of this in a manuscript of some of the works of Augustine and Ambrose in the Bodleian Library: "Liber S. Mariæ de Ponte Roberti, qui eum abstulerit, aut vendiderit, vel quolibet modo ab hâc domo absciderit, sit anathema maranatha. Amen." In another hand (alienâ manu),-- "Ego Johannes Exōn Epūs, nescio ubi est domus predicta, nec hunc librum abstuli, sed modo legitimo adquisivi." Also page 283.: "Liber B. Mariæ de Camberone: si quis eum abstulerit, anathema esto." In the preface to a late publication (1853), _Fragments of the Iliad of Homer from a Syrian Palimpsest_, edited by William Cureton, the editor tells us: