Notes on the Second Decree of Kallias

Extract

H. T. Wade-Gery and B. D. Meritt have restored the first fifteen lines of the second decree of Kallias as follows:

Both scholars are obviously right when stating that Kallias provides for the completion of work on the pediments of the Parthenon, the Golden Nikai, and the Propylaia, that he limits the expenditure of money on the Acropolis to ten talents a year and exempts from the limitation the Parthenon, the Nikai, and the Propylaia by way of preamble.

I am, however, not convinced that the decree is also concerned with ‘the rehabilitation,’ ‘the general reorganisation of the Acropolis,’ and that the ταμίαι and the ἐπιστάται are ordered to ‘fix bounds on the Acropolis and make repairs, spending ten talents a year until the bounds have been fixed and the repairs made as well as possible.’