Greek History and Epigraphy: Essays in Honour of P.J. Rhodes. Edited by
LYNETTE MITCHELL and LENE RUBINSTEIN. Swansea: The Classical Press of
Wales, 2009. Pp. xxviii + 301. Cloth, $110.00. ISBN
978–1–905125–23–4.
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CJ Online 2010.04.02
This volume, an attractively produced tribute to the Greek historian P.J.
Rhodes, brings together contributors from Europe and North America. Most of
the papers included were first delivered at a conference in honor of Rhodes
on the island of Rhodes in 2005; as is natural in a volume of this kind,
some have undergone more revision since the original event than others. All
15 papers deal in some way with epigraphic evidence, though only one
publishes a new inscription. Seven of the fifteen concern Athens, and five
are responses or corrections to earlier scholarship by authors other than
the honorand. I will offer a brief comment on each paper, beginning with
the Athenian ones.
V. Gouschin, after a general discussion of the origins of ostracism, makes
a modest attempt to analyze the regional distribution of the individuals
named on published ostraka from the Athenian Agora and Kerameikos. He finds
higher than average concentrations of candidates from the Paralia and the
southern part of the Attic plain, which leads him to argue for the
significance of the geographical regions of Attica (rather than deme or
tribal affiliations).
A. Matthaiou’s goal is to reassess the evidence for the use of pure Ionic
and mixed Attic-Ionic script in Athenian public inscriptions specifically
between ca. 450–420 BCE, before the official adoption of the Ionic script
in 403/2 BCE. An unacknowledged problem here is that the dating of most of
the documents in question is insecure; Matthaiou follows D.M. Lewis’
dates, which tend to be early. In addition, a significant number of the
Athenian state documents in question concern foreign (though not Ionian)
individuals and polities, for whom letter cutters might have considered use
of the Ionic script appropriate. Matthaiou suggests that the shift from
Attic to Ionic script in Athens began in the demes and moved from there to
the city; no consideration is given to the role played by private
inscriptions from the city (and specifically the Acropolis), where the
Ionic and mixed scripts were already common in the 5th century.
A. Scafuro offers a substantial, well-documented and fascinating close
study of the honors awarded by the Athenians to the Atthidographer
Phanodemos in the late 330s and 320s BCE. Phanodemos’ chief honors were
crowns, and he in turn crowned the hero Amphiaraos. This paper represents
one of the best discussions available of the crowning of worthy individuals
or corporate bodies as a mainstay of 4th-century Athenian political
culture, delving into the motives behind Phanodemos’ reciprocal and
unusual (but not unique) crowning of a god or hero.
M.H. Hansen’s subject is the Athenian grain-tax law of 374/3 BCE
published by R. Stroud in 1998; the inscription is quoted in its entirety.
Hansen posits an earlier law (not extant) imposing the tax, emphasizing the
focus of the law we have on the transport of the grain collected to pay the
tax. I. Worthingon reconsiders the fragmentary Athenian inscription
(recently republished by Rhodes and R. Osborne, and again quoted in full)
identified as the common peace of 337 between the Athenians and Philip II.
He suggests that what we have may in fact be the text of a bilateral peace
treaty dating to 338, and that a second fragment listing the names of other
Greek states may not be pertinent.
S. Hornblower amplifies a point made in passing in his ongoing commentary
on Thucydides. As in much recent work on Thucydides, the issue is what
Thucydides did not tell us. In a straightforward and convincing
presentation, Hornblower shows how the near-absence of the Kleisthenic
boule of 500 from Thucydides’ history fits his literary aims,
particularly in his narrative of the Sicilian expedition. D. Whitehead
supplements his previous work on the virtues enumerated in Athenian
honorific decrees. Specifically, he argues that arete began to be
considered an acceptably democratic virtue at some point in the 4th
century, assuming some of the meaning previously described by andragathia,
itself a synonym preferred by the Athenians to andreia.
Two papers deal with the concept of “epigraphical habit.” J.
Sickinger’s contribution concerns so-called “formulae of disclosure”
in Athenian public inscriptions, e.g. “in order that all people may know
that the people and the boule know how to offer thanks to those who always
say and do what is best for the boule and the people.” Contrary to
connections previously drawn between such formulae and democratic concerns
with transparency, Sickinger finds that in only a few isolated examples do
they explicitly justify or rationalize publication on stone. Instead, most
such formulae address the action being taken, that is, the honor being
offered. R. Osborne comments on the Thasian use of inscriptions in the 6th
and 5th centuries BCE, in contrast mainly to the example of Athens. He
draws attention to inscribed Thasian laws that regulate behavior and
commerce with a general application to the public, including visitors to
the island; some almost fall under the heading “signage.” The typical
early sacred laws and decrees of other poleis are arguably more restricted
in scope and audience. Osborne’s essay means to be an impressionistic
rather than a systematic analysis of early Thasian epigraphy, and as such
it succeeds.
A. Makres publishes a very fragmentary inscribed stele (only the preamble
and part of a name list survive) that she identifies as a 2nd-century BCE
ephebic list from Asine in Messenia. The attribution hinges on the
possibility that the cult of Apollo Maleatas—not the previously attested
Apollo Pythios—alluded to in the inscription, was the principal Apollo
cult of Asine. A photograph of the stele would have been helpful, and
although no illustrations are given for any of the papers, only this one
can be said to suffer from their absence.
C. Tuplin offers a spirited defense of the authenticity of the Gadatas
letter found near Magnesia, which purports to be a letter of Darius I to a
local official, despite the fact that the text was not inscribed on stone
until the second half of the 2nd century CE. As Tuplin rightly notes, the
concept of “authenticity” in a case such as this one is rather elastic:
is the Greek text we have a translation from Old Persian or another
language? Was the translator a native speaker of Greek? Could the wording
of an original have been improved at one or more points before the text was
inscribed on stone? The oddities that abound in the document encourage
speculation, but make certainty impossible.
B. Dreyer provides an excellent summary of scholarship on local city elites
in Hellenistic Asia Minor. The example of Metropolis soon before and after
its transition from Attalid to Roman rule is offered, but is examined only
in passing.
L. Mitchell begins with a wide-ranging survey of attitudes toward
friendship and equality in the Archaic and Classical city-states, with
emphasis on the literary evidence of Xenophon and Aristotle. In the final
part of her essay, she shifts gears and considers the role played by
friendship and equality in the world of the Macedonian court and the
Successors. There, the formulaic language of honorific decrees shows Greek
poleis using the language of friendship and equality to their own
advantage, to undertake and manage bottom-up relationships with the kings
and their friends.
In an astute analysis of grants of tax exemption (ateleia) by Greek cities
to non-citizens, L. Rubinstein begins by asking the extent to which such
grants (often awarded within the context of honorific decrees) conflicted
with the legitimate interests of tax farmers. The question touches on the
efficacy and thoroughness of public record-keeping, as well as the apparent
expectation that written records will be consulted. As it turns out,
individual cities were inconsistent in their practices, and the inscribed
documents we have reveal logical gaps in the process of exempting and
claiming an exemption that would have needed to be filled by supplementary,
written documentation.
J.K. Davies concludes the volume with brief and refreshingly old-fashioned
reflections on the state of the discipline of Greek epigraphy, and
recommendations for future work. In short, he argues that we need more (and
more up-to-date) epigraphic corpora. The papers included in this volume
demonstrate that continual work is needed even on previously published
inscriptions, and that such work can and should be a mainstay of the
discipline of Greek history.
CATHERINE M. KEESLING
Georgetown University
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