Year: 1987
Type: article
Abstract: ROM TIME TO TIME it has been suggested that the Athenian citizens voted according to tribes when they met in the assembly.Staveley, for example, has argued that the citizens were divided into tribal groups to facilitate the checking of credentials as well as the counting of votes. 1 But majority opinion has been against such a view.Thus M. H. Hansen hoped to have demonstrated that the Athenians were not seated in tribal divisions in the assembly.2Three notable contributions bearing on the issue appeared during 1982.One of the excavators of the Pnyx in the 1930's returned to the subject after fifty years and noted changes that were needed in earlier interpretations (Thompson 133-47).Hansen argued that one of the ten tribes, the 'presiding tribe', was stationed separately at the front of the arena during meetings in the third phase of the Pnyx. 3 And Siewert (10-16) concluded that not only on the Pnyx but also in the Agora and at the naval station in Piraeus the citizens were in the fifth century B.C. assembled in some way according to trittyes, at least for purposes of controlling entry to the assembly place.IE. S. Staveley, Greek and Roman Voting and Elections (London 1972) 81f.The following will be cited by authors' names: J. M. CROW and J. T. CLARKE, "The Athenian Pnyx," PapersASCA 4 (1885/6) 205-60; E. CURTIUS, "Pnyx und Stadtmauer," Attische Studien I (=AbhGottingen 11 [1862]) 1-57 (=Gesammelte Abhand-/ungen I [Berlin 1894] 289-338, omitting Tafel I); K. KOUROUNIOTES and H. A. THOMPSON, "The Pnyx in Athens," Hesperia 1 (1932) 90-217; W. A. McDoNALD, The Political Meeting Places of the Greeks (=The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Archaeology 34 [Baltimore 1943]); P. SIEWERT, Die Tritt yen Attikas und die Heeresreform des Kleisthenes (= Vestigia 33 [Munich 1982]); M. H. HANSEN, The Athenian Ecclesia: A Collection of Articles 1976-1983 (=Opuscula Graecolatina 26 [Copenhagen 1983]: hereafter AE); H. A. THOMPSON, "The Pnyx in Models," Studies in Attic Epigraphy, History and Topography Presented to Eugene Vanderpool (=Hesperia Suppl.19 [Princeton 1982]) 133-47; J. TRA VLOS, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens (London 1971). 2 GRBS 18 (1977) 123-37 (=AE 103-17; cf 29, 228), and Die athenische Volksversammlung im Zeitalter des Demosthenes (=Xenia 13 [Konstanz 1984]) 44-46.3 GRBS 23 (1982) 241-49, esp.244ff (=AE 25-33).51 9 Siewert 10-12.On the use ofretrograde script see M. Guarducci, Epigrafia greca I (Rome 1967) 408, and A. G. Woodhead, The Study of Greek Inscriptions 2 (Cambridge 1981) 28f.Siewert (11 n.52) pointed out the parallel of the three horoi on poros blocks from Corinth: R. S. Stroud, CSCA 1 (1968) 233-42 [SEG 25.331f].10 Siewert 12 with nn.59f.11 Kourouniotes/Thompson 104. 12 Pittakis (supra n.4) 1003 no.1798 inferred from the rough shaping of the lower part that the marble pillar once stood in a base and was used as a boundary marker.CI A. Kirchhoff ad IG I (1873) 500: in/eriore parte non laevigata.13 B. D. Meritt, Hesperia 9 (1940) 53f no.I [SEG 10.370], 30 (1961) 265 no.82 with PI. 49 [SEG 21.109].The former, found in Section n (south-east comer of the Agora), is only 22 cm.high and 9.5 wide, but the latter, found just outside the southeast comer of the Agora at the Church of the Holy Apostles, is complete at a height of 68 cm. and width of 24.For the location of Section n see T. L. Shear, Hesperia 4 (1935) 312 fig.I; for the location of the church see, for example, the plan included in The Athenian Agora: A Guide to the Excavation and Museum 3 (Athens 1976) or H. A. ThompsonlR.E. Wycherley, The Athenian Agora XIV (Princeton 1972) 216.14 Cj Siewert's comment (11) on the shape of the horoi predestining them for re-use as building material.The heaviest stone (SEG 21.109) of the three could be readily transported on a donkey from the Pnyx to the edge of the Agora.15 Because the combination was difficult to move-the lump oflimestone is roughly 100 cm.long, between 30 and 60 wide and 35 deep-it must have been buried as fill in both of the subsequent reconstructions of the Pnyx.Pnyx II and Pnyx III, because they reversed the natural slope of the hill, required enormous amounts of rock and earth fill.Here the combination of rock and stele remained until sufficient of the earth cover had been washed away over the centuries to reveal it.16 The westernmost of the series of six beddings for stelae in Pnyx III is not cut into bedrock, as are the other five, but is worked in the top of a large, roughly squared block of limestone that rested on earth filling 40 cm.above bedrock (Kourouniotesl Thompson 156 and fig.36).This, surely, is how the block of limestone that houses IG 12 884• was used in Pnyx I (recognised as a possibility by KourounioteslThompson 105 n.2).Hence it belongs to the front part of the auditorium where earth filling was used to provide a level section on which the speaker's platform stood.For the retaining wall used to buttress this earth fill see section III below.17 KourounioteslThompson 98 and PI.II (dressed rock surface), 104f (beddings); McDonald 68.18 See the report of J. McK.Camp and J. Binder quoted by Hansen, Volksversammlung (supra n.2) 132 n.211, and in GRlJS 26 (1985) 241-50 at 248f and n.23.We are most grateful to Professor Hansen for sending a copy of this article in draft and to the editors of GRlJS for providing advance copies of the page proofs.The letter heights
Authors: G. R. Stanton, P.J. Bicknell
Language: English
Topic: Classical Antiquity Studies
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1538118542