Phratries, demes, and registers: A supplementary note on IG II2 1237 l. 114-121

A New Solution to the 'Demotionidai' Inscription (IG II (2) 1237 = Rhodes, Osborne no. 5, 2021

Few inscribed Greek texts have provoked more widespread disagreement and controversy than a famous dossier of three enactments dating from the first half of the fourth century BCE, belonging to a religious body in Attica of unknown identity. Discovered in 1883 in the royal residence at Tatoi, near Dekeleia, the marble stele is inscribed on two sides (Faces A and B). Stephanos Koumanoudes produced the editio princeps of Face A (l.1-58), which Ulrich Köhler used as the transcript for the first edition in IG II 5 841b; Face B (l. 59-126) was published five years later, in 1888, by Ioannis Pandazidis and Habbo Lolling, in two independent editions. The first hundred and thirteen lines, which contain the decree of Hierokles (l. 13-68) and rider of Nikodemos (l. 68-113), are inscribed in the same hand, whereas the last twelve, which contain a third enactment of Menexenos (l. 114-126) in a different hand, were added some thirty years or so later, to judge by the letter shapes, after c. 360. The first two measures survive in completeness, but the last breaks off just at the point where instructions for publication were issued. Hierokles and the rider of Nikodemos are inscribed stoichedon (thirty per line). Menexenos is less regular, the letters varying between thirty-two and thirty-eight per line. Another feature of the stone is two large erasures, one at line 2, subsequently written over, and another at lines 69-73; lines 47 and 113 contain smaller erasures of eight and five letters, respectively 1. The relationship between phratry and polis has been the focus of a long and complex scholarly dispute originating in the nineteenth century. The old view was that the polis emerged out of prehistoric societal structures, such as tribes, phratries, and clans (if that is the meaning of the elusive word gene), which historically and chronologically predated the polis. According to that view, the rise of the Greek polis was a democratic counterstroke to the political ten-1 The inscription is housed in the National Epigraphical Museum in Athens (inv. 13529).

Philologia Classica

In her critical edition of the Passio Nazarii, Celsi, Geruasii et Protasii (BHL 6043), a text dated to the 6th or 7th century AD and probably translated from Greek, Cecile Lanéry introduces several conjectural changes aimed at language standardization. The author of the present article takes issue with several of her conjectures and suggests that in each case the transmitted text actually stands criticism and should probably be left unchanged. At 2.3, the transmitted alapas is not to be changed to alapis with percutio, since percutio with both the accusative of direct object and the accusative of a word meaning “blow” is several times reliably attested in the Vetus Latina, and in one of these instances the word used for “blow” is actually alapa. At 5.1, et in the expression uocans Nazarium et dixit ei should not be deleted, since there are numerous parallels for this syntax in Late Latin. At 8.2, in carcerem is to be retained as a possible way to describe position in Late Latin, whe...

Historiographia Linguistica, 2017

«Sentido de un empeño» Homenatge a Gregorio del Olmo Lete, 2021

2014

Diacronia, 2019