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Inscriptions from Dodona.-II Author(S): E Inscriptions from Dodona.-II Author(s): E. S. Roberts Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 2 (1881), pp. 102-121 Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/623559 . Accessed: 04/01/2015 15:17 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Hellenic Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sun, 4 Jan 2015 15:17:13 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 102 INSCRIPTIONS FROM DODONA. INSCRIPTIONS FROM DODONA.-II. IN the first number of this Journal I passed in review a rare survival of antiquity, the Oracle-inscriptions of Dodona. These, as was there stated, formed a part only of the collection of C. Carapanos. For the remainder, though many of the in- scriptions are of great interest, dialectically, archaeologically, and historically, I cannot claim the attraction of novelty which so conspicuously characterised the Oracle-inscriptions as relics sui generis. I have thought, however, that it may be not un- acceptable to English students to have before them in an accessible form the full tale of the Dodonaean texts, so far as they are legible and not absolutely fragmentary. As, then, in the former number I gave the Oracle-inscriptions seriatim with more or less of commentary, so I propose in the following pages to attempt an examination and explanation of the documents which complete the catalogue. It will be hardly necessary to say that, as before, my indebtedness to previous critics-Bursian (Sitzungsber. d. k-ns. Baier. Ges. d. Wiss. Ph.-Hist. C1. 1878), Blass, Frankel, Christ, Carapanos himself--is considerable. According to the enumeration given on p. 229 of the first number of the Journal, the inscriptions remaining to be noticed are (1) Ex voto inscriptions on bronze. (2) Inscriptions on bronze or copper: these comprise (a) decrees of citizenship; (b) deeds of manumission; (c) deeds of proxenia; (d) a deed concerning right of intermarriage; (e) donation of property; (f) purchase of a slave. (3) An inscription on an iron strigil. (4) Two or three inscriptions on terra cotta. (5) A proxenia-decree, the most complete in the collection, on a limestone tablet. I will take these classes, as far as possible, in order. With the exception of one addressed to Aphrodite, the ex voto inscriptions, 24 in number, are dedications to Zeus Nalos This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sun, 4 Jan 2015 15:17:13 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INSCRIPTIONS FROM DODONA. 103 and Dione, one or both. Only one of these is of any length (Carapanos). It is a dedication to the Dodonaean Zeus, and is engraved on a very thin plate of bronze 21 centimetres in height. The last three lines are interrupted in the middle by a phallic figure. Christ (Rhein. Mus. 1878, pp. 610-613) was the first to see that the inscription is partially if not altogether metrical; not, however, in the ordinary verse of inscriptions, but with a lyric rhythm. He gives the text as follows (the upright strokes here and throughout this article mark the lines of the original)- rv? 9teb" Xa. ZeiDAoA)V2,v? 4"6e&V, 7`8e Uol &8rpov7rEJl/4ok 7rwap'apO/, "'AWyOcwvI 'ExeoXov ical yeved , 7rpcevot MoXoo'o-i^v Ed 7Tjptdcov'a fyevea'; dEiTpCda9 Kao-uc~vlIpaq yeved I ZavcivOtot. In the first three lines at any rate we readily recognise Ana- paestic Dimeters, and in the next a Trochaic Ithyphallicus. The metres of the remaining lines are respectively Iambic, Trochaic (?), Anapaestic, Iambic. The whole is thus rendered by Christ- 'God; Fortune. Zeus, sovereign (or protector) of Dodona, I send thee this present from myself, I, Agathon, son of Eche- phylos, and my family, proxeni of the Molossians and their allies; we being a family derived from Trojan Kassandra during thirty generations, Zacynthians.' The invocation to Zedk as Awc8vq /eE&wovreminds us of the Iliad (xvi. 234). This poetical opening, the use of the first person in -r•ipwco7-ap' d~pooi,the position of co- and the order of the words generally, all mark deviations from the normal type of dedicatory inscriptions. Egger (in the Appendix to work) placing no comma after renders: Carapanos's ovp•pXov 'Proxeni of the Molossians and their allies for thirty generations from Cassandra the Trojan, we, Zacynthians by birth.' But this translation would certainly require or yevedv, not yeYea. He suggests further that there mayyeve, have existed among the Molossi lists of wrp6fevot,ascending in a manner more or less fictitious, to the times of the Trojan war. We have some- This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sun, 4 Jan 2015 15:17:13 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 104 INSCRIPTIONSFROM DODONA. thing of the same kind in the lists of ebepryera of the Greek cities. They were sometimes known by the abbreviation evepyeolat, and a collection of these appears to have been made by Plutarch (in the three lost books entitled II6XeovewepEyeo-laL; see Egger in the ComptesRendus de l'Acad. des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 1865, pp. 75-6). The punctuation given above leads to a different explanation. If we adopt the Herodotean definition of r/evEd (Herodot. ii. 142: y:eveat ryap Tpet avpwi^v eicaTov ere'a EroTv) we have Agathon apparently declaring himself to be living 1,000 years after Cassandra. Egger, however, reckoning the ryeved at 30 years, and the 30 yevEal consequently to be 900 years, and assuming as the 'classic' date for the taking of Troy the year 1270 B.C., arrives at 370 B.C.as the date of this inscription. But the dates assigned for the taking of Troy vary between very wide limits; and the date of this inscription (if we calculate 30 generations to be 1,000 years) might be anywhere between 334 and 184 B.c. Bursian thinks Egger's date too early by 100 years. That Pausanias represents both of the children, which Cassandra bore to Aga- memnon, to have been killed by Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus, and to have been buried at Mycenae, is of little moment. The present inscription only shows that there was another tradition of which genealogists and priests would not have been slow to avail themselves. It is remarkable that there was in Zacynthus a special worship of Apollo; thus the fiction of a priestly family deriving its origin from Cassandra was peculiarly ap- propriate there. In any case the inscription furnishes one more instance of the employment of genealogies as one of the instru- ments of Greek chronology.1 But I am not sure that a solution communicated to me by Mr. William Ridgeway is not better and simpler than those of Christ or Egger. He would 1 We may perhaps comparethe prac- 245). Still more precise is the copied tice observed by members of sacerdotal inscription of Halicarnassus, C.1.G. families in tracing their origin as well 2655, where are mentioned by name, as the titles of their priesthood to the with the duration of their office for a god whose priests they were. Thus we period of 504 years, successive priests of read in C.I.G. 1353: 'H irdAs M. Abpl- Poseidon,from the date of the monument ALov Aacyawlqovc Kcah itself back to Telamon, a supposed son of 'Apl'TroKpdTr" "ylEvvo iep&a rb 'HpaiAE'ovs q?, &7rbALo-oCopwv the god, the seventh in descent, Anthas, ,Us' .c.A. (cf. 1340, 1349, 1355, 1373, being possibly a historical personage. 1874, and Le Bas, Voyage Ardo., ii. n. This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sun, 4 Jan 2015 15:17:13 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INSCRIPTIONSFROM DODONA. 105 place a stop after ryevea~s and translates: ' The family are Zacynthians from the Trojan Cassandra'; or, 'The family is from the Trojan Cassandra; they are Zacynthians.' It is not natural to say 'derived from C. during (dv) thirty generations.' The character of the alphabet used points to a date anterior to the destruction of the ancient temple of Zeus by the Aetolians in B.C. 219 (Polyb. vi. 4, 67). The exterior neck of a small vase carries the following dedication- 6 Nakl, PFLXocXe[i]'a[9] Aap~ogbXovAevicaSlto At for so Bursian reads it. The e for eL in IetXoKXei8a9,the o for o in Nalp and the form of the letters generally, indicate a respectable antiquity, perhaps the fifth or sixth century B.C; though the character is certainly not as old as that of the inscription described by Kirchhoff (Stud.3 93) as the only archaic one found in Leucas. A tripod bears on its exterior rim the dedicatory formula Nat tveO'f0lce(P1. xxiii. 2 and 2 bis). Tept4rcXJS.AW3 At The character belongs to1Sa•w,8b the fifth century B.C.; the use of q and o probably show that Terpsicles was an Ionian. We may infer from this inscription that the musical contests, the existence of which at Dodona is proved by the presence of a theatre, in- cluded also contests of rhapsodists.
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