Part V. A Graffito from the Perseia Area

Extract

A visitor to Mycenae, perhaps in the middle or later part of the fourth century B.C., has left a record of his presence there in the form of a neatly-cut graffito written diagonally across a block of marble, probably a threshold found built into a wall near the Perseia fountain-house. The letters individually are well formed: they appear to diminish in size as the name progresses, but in fact do not do so: the deception may be due to a gradual rise from the horizontal line of the first three or four letters, plus a narrowing horizontal spacing. The cutting is broad and shallow, the name having, as it seems, been gouged out with some bluntish instrument measuring about 0·004 m. in width. Height of letters c. 0·03 m. Photograph (Fig.) from a squeeze now in the collection of the Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge.

The name is ordinary enough, For Athenian examples see Kirchner, PA 5900–11, Hesperia, Indices s.v. etc. The best-known holder of it, not there quoted, was the potter of the late sixth century (Beazley, ARV 16, 34, 38). From the Argolid only one instance is quoted (IG IV 616.17), and that uncertain.