The Dating of Fifth-century Attic Inscriptions

Meiggs, Russell

doi:10.2307/628996

Cited by 41 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…1 noted that 'the form of the letters is archaic' and recorded a date in the 450s, but Lewis in IG i 3 suggests a date of c. 460. Meiggs (1966) included this inscription in his list of'undated inscriptions with early letter forms' (his table 2, no. 8), and the evidence he collects would indeed suggest a date of around 460 for this text.…”

Section: Dating the Origin Of Metic Status At Athensmentioning

confidence: 99%

The origin of metic status at Athens

Watson

2010

Camb. class. j.

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It is widely held as uncontroversial that throughout the classical period male inhabitants of Attica were divided between three distinct categories – Athenian citizens, metics (regularly translated as ‘resident aliens’) and slaves – and that Athenian society had, therefore, a tripartite structure. The opportunities available to and requirements demanded of a man depended on his category. Those foreigners permanently resident in Attica – those with the legal status of ‘metic’ – were, unlike slaves, free, but, unlike citizens, they could not own land, vote in the Assembly, or serve as adikastesor as a magistrate; in addition, metics were required to pay a poll tax (themetoikion) and to have a citizen sponsor (prostates). In this paper I seek to challenge not the nature of the distinction between citizens and metics but instead the assumption that the distinction was made throughout the classical period. I suggest that the growth of the Athenian citizen population after the Persian invasion of 480–479 demands that the origin of metic status be situated around the middle of the fifth century, and that the occasion on which the Athenianpolisfirst defined metic status is likely to have been the occasion on which it first took an interest in restricting who might become a citizen: in 451/0, with the passing of Perikles' citizenship law.

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Section: Dating the Origin Of Metic Status At Athensmentioning

confidence: 99%

The origin of metic status at Athens

Watson

2010

Camb. class. j.

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“…A History of the Athenian Empire which ignored this question should have no authority. 7 An important element in the debate has been the date of the Coinage, or (better) Standards, Decree which imposed the use of Athenian weights and measures on the tributary allies. One school has favoured c. 449 BC for this development, 8 while another would see it as having occurred in the 420s, 9 or even later (the decree seems to be alluded to at Aristophanes, Birds 1040 ff.…”

Section: Fifth Century Chronology and The Coinage Decree*mentioning

confidence: 99%

Fifth century chronology and the Coinage Decree

Vickers

1996

J. Hell. Stud.

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pigs less familiar or less important to most Greekspeakers. I suspect, however, that the blurring of the distinctiveness of the word 86X(|>ai; was driven by a broader semantic change.Homer had called a sheep 6t<; and a pig uq. Various phonetic developments, however, combined to erase the distinction between the two words. The first two vowels of 6tq coalesced into a diphthong; by the classical period, 6t<; had disappeared from Attic prose, replaced by the unambiguous Jip6(3aTOV. As time went on, the rough breathing dropped out of some dialects, and eventually all; the diphthong 01 and the vowel u became indistinguishable, so that the Byzantines called the u by its now familiar name upsilon (u \|/tX6v) to distinguish it from its diphthongal homonym. These developments are hard to date precisely, but the last of them seems to have taken place by the second century of this era. 20 Once this happened, iq was no longer a suitable general term for a pig. Even though the word 6t<; was not in use, it remained as a poetic term. Children still learned to read from Homer, and the term be, will have been inconvenient once the homonymy was complete.Its place was taken by %oipo<;, a s has long been recognized, and now for the first time the term %oipoq designated a pig of any age rather than a suckling. Atkfyat,, for its part, seems also to have ceased to carry the same implication of adolescence that it had once borne. Perhaps, as suggested above, it was foreign influence or a different life-style that had caused the change. Equally likely, however, is that it was only now that the change in X°ip°<; caused the change in 8£A.<))(xi;: once the former was not necessarily young, the loss of the semantic contrast meant that the latter was not necessarily older. It was in this situation that the diminutive 5eA.<|>6taov, freed of its adolescent connotation, came to denote a piglet.We can now follow the history of our words with more precision than we had previously offered. A d£.Xtyo£, in the classical period was a pig neither newborn nor old; its diminutive form 8eA.<|)6Kiov carried the usual meanings of diminutives, but did not reduce it to a piglet. This distinction may have been without parallel in the native Egyptian speech, if its appearance as a Demotic loan-word is significant. Eventually the term 8£ta|>(x£; and its diminutive lost their force as being specifically adolescent pigs. This may have occurred early as a result of foreign influence or increased urbanization, or later because of the loss of the opposition to x°ipo<;. It was thus either a cause or an effect of the change in 8£A.<| >ai; that when phonetic developments caused tiq to drop from use and xoipoq to take its place as the usual term for swine, the diminutive 8eA.<|)6iaov finally came to mean what we once thought it had always meant, a suckling-pig.The perceptive reader will note the significant variation of an apparently straightforward term over a relatively short period of linguistic time. I leave it to that perceptive reader to decide how sweeping will be...

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“…32 On the dating of inscriptions Mattingly has argued ingeniously and valiantly, but defenders of orthodoxy have succeeded in showing that the older forms of lettering do disappear from texts that are securely dated after c. 445, and that this criterion may properly be applied to texts that are not securely dated. 33 It will be assumed in ch. iv that the orthodox dates are correct.…”

Section: • * *mentioning

confidence: 99%

III. Chronology

1985

New Surveys in the Classics

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It is a notorious fact that Thucydides begins his excursus on the growth of Athenian power between the Persian and the Peloponnesian War with a complaint about the chronological inadequacy of Hellanicus (1.97.2) but then proceeds to give a narrative which is itself chronologically inadequate.For the foundation of the League one might guess a date of 478/7 from 1.94-5, and that is the date given by Ath. Pol. 23.5 (but Diod. Sic. 11.47 narrates it under 477/6). The next reasonably secure date is that of Athens’ war against Thasos (1.100.2–101): Thucydides associates with it an unsuccessful settlement on the Thracian mainland; 4.102.2–3 dates this 32 years after the failure of Aristagoras in Thrace (Her. 5.124–6), and the foundation of Amphipolis in the 29th year after this. A scholiast on Aeschines, 2. F.L. 31, mentions failures in that region in 476/5 (archon Phaedon) and 453/2 (archon Lysicrates) before the foundation of Amphipolis in 437/6 (this last date is found also in Diod. Sic. 12.32.3). By inclusive counting the 29th year before 437/6 is 465/4, the last of three successive years with archons whose names begin Lysi—, and a war dated 465/4–463/2 will fit before the reforms of Ephialtes and ostracism of Cimon in 462/1 (Ath. Pol. 25.2).

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The Dating of Fifth-century Attic Inscriptions

Cited by 41 publications

References 8 publications

The origin of metic status at Athens

The origin of metic status at Athens

Fifth century chronology and the Coinage Decree

III. Chronology

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