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A Sacrificial Calendar from Cos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

E. L. Hicks
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Extract

In the Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique for 1881 (vol. v. pp. 216 foll.) MM. Am. Hauvette-Besnault and Marcel Dubois published a number of inscriptions from Cos, among which are two fragments of a curious sacrificial calendar. These fragments they describe as existing in the house of M. Dim. Platanistis. One of the marbles is broken at the top and the left side, and is apparently inscribed on one surface only. Fifteen lines of the inscription can be fairly well deciphered. I will call this document HBD 1. The other marble was inscribed on both sides; but only the endings of some nineteen lines on the one side, and the beginnings of as many lines on the other, now remain: I shall call this document HBD 2a, b.

Mr. W. R. Paton, who has repeatedly visited Cos, has not only sent me corrections of some of the readings in HBD 1, but he has also had the good fortune to discover two other large portions of the same interesting calendar. Of these he has very kindly sent me copies, with a view to the publication of the inscription in this Journal. I propose to cite Mr. Paton's fragments as P1 and P2.

The marble P1 is on the floor in front of the altar of a very old church, and has been much worn by the feet of worshippers; so that in some places all trace of letters has disappeared

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 9 , November 1888 , pp. 323 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1888

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References

page 324 note 1 Perhaps this statement is too sweeping. The calendar may have been merely supplementary to an older inscribed calendar which it did not wholly supersede. It is just possible that we may recognise a relic of that old calendar in the fragment No. 471 of Röhl's Inscriptiones Antiq. (see Addenda, and Roberts, ' Introduction, No. 5, p. 29)Google Scholar. If so, this later calendar would only name such festivals as were now ordained for the first time, or were reorganised by this new ritual enactment. I imagine that in all the cities of the Graeco-Roman world there existed authoritative calendars of the public sacrifices, such as Livy describes (i. 20) when he says of Numa Pompilius: ‘Pontificem deinde Numam Marcium, Marci filium, ex patribus legit, eique sacra omnia exscripta exsignataque attribuit; quibus hostiis, quibus diebus, ad quae templa sacra fierent, atque unde in eos sumptus pecunia erogaretur.’ We must wait for fresh inscriptions to come to light before our materials will enable us to deal with this class of documents as a whole. The ritual calendar from Myconos (Dittenberger, Sylloge, No. 373) is at present the most complete and instructive example of the kind.

page 331 note 1 Here I would read ἔνδ[ο]ρα τὰ ἐνδερόμενα κ.τ.λ. The τὰ seems to have been doubled by error, and the ο in consequence omitted.