Arizona weekly enterprise., 1890-11-08
Wonderful Literary Forger.
New York srn

! Alciblades SlTmOnidc5 was q master or ! drawing 6 fine Photographer, and an eX- 1 cellent chemist He was an omnl7orous ! reader of history which he retained to the l smallest details in the iron grip of his memory. He had eloquenee, ingenuity, { and perseverance. All of these talents he 1 devoted to a single purpose. He made l profession of swindling the most learned ! of his contemporaries.
 ! Simonides made his debut at the age of 1 thirty-fve at Athens. He then laid be- | fore the King of Greece a mass of ap- parGntly priceless manuscripts. They i were seemingly of great antiquity, and l included works which had long been lost to civilization. SimOnides explained that he and bis uncle had discovered the nanu-
 scripts in the Cloister Chilandarim on Mount Athos He told just how and when the manuscripts were found.
 and fortified every sentence with cOplous references to literary history and classical authorities The King bought ol0,000
 worth of the treasures, and SlmOnlde5 dls- appeared.
 In a year he was back again with an
 other batch of mavellously valuable old manuscripts. Among them was an an-
 cient Homer. written on lotos leaves, and accompanied by q complete com mentary of Eustatins. The King wished to buy the whole lot, but could not sec 1 his way clear to raising money for more 1 than half of it. The rest of the manu l scripts he recommended for purchase to ! the University of Athens. The rector i of the university was not without mis- ] givings as to the smooth stories of 1 SimOnides, and at his suggestion a com
 mission of twelve scholars was appointed ! to test the genuineness of the documents. | After a long investigation eleven mem l bers of the commission reported that the
 manuscripts were authentic. The twelfth ! Professor Mavraki, called for a new in vestigatiOn. which was eventually made. ! The result was the discovery that Simon ] ide's Homer was verbatim copy, even to ! the typographical errors, of Woltf's edl- | ton. The commission summoned Simon 1 ides to appear before 1t and explain, but ! he had got wind of the state of affairs and ! had skipped away with the proceeds of ! his sales to the King.
 l For a few years he was completely lost | to view. His performance Tn Athens was almost forgotten. In the middle of the
 sixties he turned up, unrecognized and
 unsuspected. in Constantinople with an
 old Greek work concerning hieroglyphics i and Assyrian manuscript with an inter I
 deleetation of Armenian scholars he had
 also brought Greek history of Armenia. He found patrons enough and had soon
 transformed his manuscripts into cash to
 the amount Of about Si0000. When the
 introduction and the first chapter Of the Armenian history were published, 1t was remarked that tue names of the Armenian Generals were not Armenian. and simon ides was again missing when called upon
 for explanations.
 The slight historical error as to the Ar
 menian Generals and their names wound
 up the first period of Simonide5'5 career,
 and led him to vary somewhat his man
 nar of working in his future schemes.
 The fist evidence of this charge was his announcement to western European scholars some time later that Le possessed
 a roll dating from the days when the
 French and Venetians ruled COnstanti-
 nople. In this roll, he said, monk had
 recorded that there were buried manu-
 scripts of great and value at various spots
 on the Bosporus. The location of these
 spots was described accurately in the roll
 In q certain cloister, said Simonides might be found the Acts of the first Aposto
 hc Concilium of Antioch. Eventually Si
 monides sought the aid of the Patriarch ii unearthing these treasures. The !. E..sii5aTcll
 however, answered that these acts were
 superauous Either they confirmed ol
 contradicted the canOns of the Greet
 Church. In the first case they were use
 less; fn the second, they were worse thar useless, and finding of them would be { . criminal deed" Simonides then waiteJ ! on the Minister of Public Works, Ismai 3 Pasha. The Pasha was in his harem whel SimOnides called, and so the forge busted himself with a little exploration of the garden while waiting. h6 buried $ a small box under big fig tree there, an(
 when the Pasha appeared, remarked tha the garden seemed to be the location o buried manuscripts mentioned in this an, that classical work. After screwing tn - Pasha's interest up to,the necessary ardol
 he suggested that digging for the manu u scripts should begin at once. Hedirecte, il that the first excavation be made unde ' the fig tree. In few minutes the Pasha' 5 workmen struck curious old box, i which fay bit of discolored parchmen : bearing a poem ostensibly written b : Aristotle The Pasha was delighted, an : filled Simonides's hands with Turkis T money A few days later Ismail wa brought down from the clouds by the rf mark of his gardener that the fig tree i
 GuGSAlCn HUI BSSil tIdIS lJIdlbSli O4lL twenty years before and that all tn Il ground on and about the spot where tn y box was found had been dug up thorough $ ly at that time. The Pasha's chagrin ws Is so great that he made no effort to brin 5 Simonides to justice.
 T. The cunning old Greek derived er u couragement from the impunity wit y which he had executed his last manauvr IS He looked around for another Turkis 'o vic tim, and decided that he had foun -o him in Ibrahim Pasha ihrahirQ ha o just broken ground for the erection of
 building on the site of the auciel 10 Byzantine hippOdrome. Sim0nides tol Il him that few yards below the surfac u, at a certain spot, there must be q ie Arabian manuscript The Pashas worl y men dug there, but found nothing "L 7I me dig" exclaimed Simonides. He du 'B and in five minutes handed the Pasha ia curious bronze box. Within 1t was z ls Arabian poem on parchment The PasE ''l wished immediately to give Simonides or splendid reward. lie was stopped, ho' IT ever, by a laboreT, who said he had set U tfe Greek slip the little chest from L )h sleeve into the hole. There vas 9 di - pute of considerable violence, and ever CT ually the decision of the points
 duLuGltICily duO NcIECltl " eaz ilIot lOI1'-tA h. the next day. That was the last lbrahi IL Pasha saw of Simonides.
 pl Two months later Simopjdes appear 'A' at the British Museum with nlemora e. dun of the General Belisarius to t CT Emperor Justinian. lie sold it for S53,2 CT to the Duke of Sutherland, and also d ,m posed of beautiful letter from Alcibiad pc to Perio!es to the same purchaser 7Ss S1,000. When the fraud was discover
 Simonides was away of on the Contine 10 again. No trace of him could be found, a Ut the scholars of Europe hope and thoua ,as they were at last relieved of the traditiC pc Of antiquity One day, however, the he -he came from the Athos eioisteF that CT; indefatigable forger was loose again, I m der the assumed name of Barieourt. 'ne monks throughout that part of the wo 'ne were warned against him, and he V all eventually caught in the Iberian clois ma in the act of adding to an old manuscr 3he a little supplementary matter of his O le't composition. He was rushed out, 'as' warning against him was published
 and near, and he was made 50 nOtOriC
 that his profession ceased to be proftal
 One of the last meetings of the leau ins doctor with man of the world occur ing in Corfu few years ago. A corresp Los dent Qf the Vienna Iageblatt retGrnel