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7 - Athenian Inscriptions

from Part I - The Urban Fabric

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2021

By
Elizabeth A. Meyer
Edited by
Jenifer Neils  and
Dylan K. Rogers
Jenifer Neils
Affiliation:
American School of Classical Studies, Athens
Dylan K. Rogers
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
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Summary

This chapter surveys the major Athenian inscriptional genres as well as their placement and distribution over time, and attempts to convey what it might have meant to a passerby to experience the ‘inscribed’ city.

Keywords

epigraphyinscriptionsdedicationsepitaphsdecrees
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Athens , pp. 98 - 109
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

The study of Athenian, and Attic, epigraphy is old. The great collection of (most) Greek inscriptions is Inscriptiones Graecae, where volume I3 covers Attic inscriptions down to the year 403/2 bc, and IG II/III2 the years thereafter. This latter set is being republished: IG II/III3 1.2, 1.4, and 1.5 (laws and decrees 352/–322/1, 300/299–230/29, and 229/8–168/7 BC), IG II/III3 4.1 (public and choregic dedications), and IG II/III3 5 (Late Antiquity). IG publishes in Greek with commentary in Latin, and with no translations in the printed versions; I have therefore chosen as specific examples here mostly inscriptions that can be found in Rhodes and Osborne 2003 (RO) and Osborne and Rhodes 2017 (OR), which constitute rich collections, with English translations and commentaries, of specific inscriptions, many of them Athenian. For ease of accessibility, excellent translations and brief commentaries, and a rapidly growing body of inscriptions (added to quarterly), see Lambert’s www.atticinscriptionsonline.com. The other major source of Athenian inscriptions is the Agora series, of which Agora 18 (Inscriptions: The Dedicatory Monuments [2011]), Agora 19 (Inscriptions: Horoi, Poletai Records, Leases of Public Lands [1991]), Agora 21 (Graffiti and Dipinti [1976]), and Agora 25 (Ostraka [1990]) are cited here. This essay is also much indebted to Lambert forthcoming, an excellent overview of Athenian epigraphy with greater attention to some other sub-genres of Athenian inscriptions (mortgage-horoi, cavalry tickets, etc.) and to some technical details (history of epigraphy, dating, letter forms, onomastics and prosopography, the science of epigraphy) than there was room for here.

For Athenian epitaphs, there is no good overview, but for an argument addressing the great increase of Athenian epitaphs in the fourth century, see Meyer 1993. For inscribed Akropolis dedications from the Archaic period, Keesling 2003; for Akropolis ‘inventories’ (paradoseis, kathareseis, exetasmoi), Harris 1995. For inscriptions as honors to the gods, Meyer 2013, which also investigates earlier theories of democratic functionality, as well as significant placement on both Akropolis and in the Agora; for the latter, see also Shear 2011, and (especially) Lambert 2018, who lays out the bigger (more long-term) picture and cites the (few) factors that ‘drive’ the erection of inscriptions away from the Akropolis. For format as conveyer of knowledge, Meyer 2017. For honorific inscriptions as a significant element of Athenian foreign policy, Liddel 2010. On the relationship of literacy and democracy, Missiou 2011 is optimistic; of Athenian Empire to Akropolis inscribing, Moroo 2016.

Bibliography

Austin, R.P. 1938/1973. The Stoichedon Style in Greek Inscriptions. Oxford.Google Scholar
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Harris, D.R. 1995. The Treasures of the Parthenon and the Erechtheion. Oxford.Google Scholar
Keesling, C. 2003. The Votive Statues of the Athenian Acropolis. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Lambert, S.D. 2018. “The Locations of Inscribed Athenian Laws and Decrees in the Age of Demosthenes.” In Inscribed Laws and Decrees in the Age of Demosthenes. Historical Essays, ed. Lambert, S.D., Leiden, 19–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lambert, S.D. Forthcoming. “Attic Epigraphy.” In The Oxford Handbook of Greek Epigraphy, ed. Papazarkadas, N., Oxford.Google Scholar
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Lawton, C.L. 1995. Attic Document Reliefs. Art and Politics in Ancient Athens. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liddel, P. 2010. “Epigraphy, Legislation, and Power within the Athenian Empire.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 53: 99–128.Google Scholar
Meyer, E.A. 1993. “Epitaphs and Citizenship in Classical Athens.” JHS 113: 99–121.Google Scholar
Meyer, E.A. 2013. “Inscriptions as Honors and the Athenian Epigraphic Habit.” Historia 62: 453–505.Google Scholar
Meyer, E.A. 2016. “Posts, Kurbeis, Metopes. The Origins of the Athenian ‘Documentary’ Stele.” Hesperia 85: 323–383.Google Scholar
Meyer, E.A. 2017. “Inscribing in Columns in Fifth-Century Athens.” In Writing Matters. Presenting and Perceiving Monumental Inscriptions in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Proceedings of the Symposium, 10–12 October 2013, eds. Berti, I., Bolle, K., Opdenhoff, F., and Stroth, F., Berlin, 205–261.Google Scholar
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Moroo, A. 2016. “The Origin and Development of the Acropolis as a Place for Erecting Public Decrees: The Periclean Building Project and its Effect on the Athenian Epigraphic Habit.” In The Parthenon Frieze. The Ritual Communication Between the Goddess and the Polis, ed. Osada, T., Vienna, 31–48.Google Scholar
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Tracy, S.V. 2016. Athenian Lettering of the Fifth Century bc: The Rise of the Professional Letter-Cutter. Berlin.Google Scholar
Van de Moortel, A., and Langdon, M.K.. 2017. “Archaic Ship Graffiti from Southern Attica, Greece. Typology and Preliminary Contextual Analysis.” International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 46: 382–405.Google Scholar

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