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A New Inscribed Kioniskos from Thebes1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Vassilis L. Aravantinos
Vassilis L. Aravantinos
Affiliation:
Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, Thebes
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Extract

A fragmentary inscription found at Thebes casts new light on the abortive invasion of Athens in 506 by Kleomenes, the Boiotians, and the Chalkidians. On the one hand, it provides valuable confirmation, soon after the event, of the general drift of Herodotos' account of events; on the other, even in its incomplete state, it adds one important detail lacking in Herodotos. And, of course, it tells the story from the Boiotian point of view.

The excavation took place in the winter of the year 2001–2 in the property of Evanghelia Madhis at Thebes following her application for the construction of a new house. The plot is situated in the suburb of Pyri, in the north-west periphery of Thebes, about 800 m from the city centre of Thebes, and just beyond the Athens–Thessaloniki railway line (FIG. 1). In it was unearthed a well-built tomb-like cist, made of three rows of large conglomerate stone blocks in regular masonry; similar blocks form its pavement. No traces of covering stones or other relevant materials have so far been discovered. However, since the contents of the cist—including objects such as the bronze inscribed sheets found at the bottom—were probably thrown there when it was abandoned, it may never have been properly covered: no trace of a superstructure or roofing system is preserved on the upper surface of the walls of the cist.

Type
Articles
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 101 , November 2006 , pp. 369 - 377
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 2006

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References

2 Dimensions: exterior 3.18 × 2.18 m; interior 1.82 × 0.93 m; depth 1.37 m.

3 The bronze sheets are to be studied in collaboration with A. Mathaiou.

4 Pausanias ix. 23.1, 2, 5.

5 Arrian, Anabasis i.7.7.

6 Xenophon, Hellenika v.2.25.

7 Possible restorations: ]οι ἀνέθ[ειαν, or ]ōι ἀνέθ[ειαν.

8 e.g. Raubitschek, A. E., Dedication from the Athenian Akropolis (Cambridge, Mass. 1949), 5–28Google Scholar, nos. 1–22. These are all private dedications. The number of flutes can be determined in 15 of the 22: 1 has 12, 1 has 26, 3 have 18, 3 have 20, 7 have 16 flutes. The fluted tripod columns at the sanctuary of the Hero Ptoios all have 16 flutes, and are much larger in diameter: Guillon, P., Les Trépieds du Ptoion, i (Paris, 1943), 48–52Google Scholar. The inscribed column fragments from the sanctuary of Apollo Ptoieus are too fragmentary to provide useful information other than that almost (if not) all are private dedications: Ducat, J., Les Kouroi du Ptoion (Paris, 1971), 391–401Google Scholar. See too Amandry, P., BCH III (1987), 79–131CrossRefGoogle Scholar (Delphi), and Hermann, K., AM 99 (1984), 121–43Google Scholar (Olympia).

9 See Guillon (n. 8), Schachter, A.. Cults of Boiotia, iii (London, 1994) 13Google Scholar n. 1 (bibliography).

10 Ducat (n. 8), 396–7 no. 250 and pl. CXXXVIII. The drum is uninscribed, and the surface is stuccoed, with traces of paint surviving. Cf. Schachter, A., Cults of Boeotia, i (London, 1981), 55Google Scholar n. 2.

11 The omission of the accent is deliberate: see below.

12 As 1.4 ἀνέθειαν shows: see e.g. Buck, C. D., The Greek Dialects (Chicago and London 1955), 22Google Scholar, §9.4 and 112, § 138.5.

13 Jeffery, L. H., Local Scripts of Archaic Greece2 (Oxford, 1990), 89–90Google Scholar.

14 Remains of the inscription commemorating this dedication, which Herodotus quotes, have been found in two versions: the original of c. 506 and a restoration from about the middle of the 5th c. Herodotos, followed by Diodoros x. 24.3 among others, read the later version, in which the first and third lines are exchanged. The original (as restored from Herodotus) read:

[δεσμο῀ι ἐν ἀχνύεντι σιδηρέοι ἔσβεσαν ηύβ]ριν παῖδε[ς ᾿ Αθεναίον ἔργμασιν ἐμ πολεμο] π[ἔθνεα Βοιοτο῀ν καὶ Χαλκιδέον δαμάσαντες ] το῀ν ιππος δ[εκάτεν Παλλάδι τάδι τάσδ᾿ ἔθεσαν]

The earlier text is IG i3. 501A, the later 501B. See too Meiggs–Lewis2 15, Page, D. L., Further Greek Epigrams (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar, no. 111, and Hansen, P. A., Carmina Epigraphka Graeca, i (Berlin and New York, 1983)Google Scholar, no. 179 (with references to other sources dealing with this incident).

15 Whitehead, D., The Demes of Attica 508/7–ca. 250 B.C. (Princeton, 1986), 48Google Scholar (‘“Dēmos” in Herodotus is virtually always best and most appropriately translated as “village”’) and n. 39, where he cites Hysiai, among other examples. See too Nenci, G. (ed. and comm.), Erodoto, Le Storie, v (Verona, 1994) 269Google Scholar (and on the whole incident pp. 268–74).

16 Hesiod, fr. 253 Merkelbach-West (Schol. Pindar, Pyth. 4.36c):

ἠ οἴη ῾Ψρίηι πυκινόφρων Μηκιονίκη, ἤ τέκεν Εὔφημον γαιηόχι ᾿Ευυοσιγαίωι μιχθεῖσ᾿ ἐν φιλότητι πολυχρύσου Αφροδίτης

17 Schol. Pindar, Pyth. 4.15b, 4,79b.

18 For the political situation at Thebes just after the end of the Peloponnesian War, see Cloché, P., Thèbes de Béotie (Namur, 1952), 96–9Google Scholar.