AIUK43A no. 1 Decrees of the deme Piraeus about the lease of the deme theatre, 324/3 BC

Decrees of the deme Piraeus about the lease of the deme theatre, 324/3 BC

AIUK 4.3A (BM, Decrees of Other Bodies) no. 1 Date: 324/3 BC

Fragments a, b, c . . . ^[1] . . . stage-building . . . if they wish for anything for the construction; and it shall be possible for them to use stones and earth from the precinct of Dionysos; and when they (5) depart, they shall [hand over] everything upright and standing; and if they – anything to or at the stage-building he shall depart, taking with him tiling and wood . . . ; and the term of the lease begins in the archonship of Hegesias (324/3 BC); and the demesmen (10) shall pay for theatre seats^[2] except those to whom the demesmen have given a seat of honour (proedrian); those who buy the lease of the theatre shall be notified of these; and there shall also be a seat of honour for the demarch and . . . and the herald (15) and anyone else to whom the demesmen have given a seat of honour;^[3] and as many . . . . . .

Ca. 10 lines missing

Fragment d . . . . . . provide the viewing area of the theatre fitted with wooden benches (20) in the traditional way;^[4] and if they do not adhere to the agreement concerning the theatre, the Piraeans shall carry out any necessary construction work, but the expenses shall be met by the buyers of the lease; and when they hand over the theatre the Piraeans shall choose three men from the Piraeans as inspectors (epitimētas); (25) and the demarch and the treasurers shall inscribe a copy of the agreement on a stone stele and stand it in the agora of the demesmen;^[5] and they shall add to it the name of the person with whom the agreement is deposited. Buyers: Aristophanes son of Smikythos: 600 dr.; Melesias son of Aristokrates: 1100 dr. (30) Arethousios son of Aristoleos of Pelekes: 500 dr.; Oinophon son of Euphiletos of Piraeus: 1100 dr.^[6] Kalliades proposed: the Piraeans shall decide: since Theaios displays honour-loving behaviour (philotimeitai) towards the demesmen both now and in time past and ensured that three hundred drachmas extra (35) was obtained for the theatre,^[7] to crown him with a foliage crown for his excellence and justice towards the demesmen; and to crown also the buyers of the theatre lease Aristophanes of Piraeus, Melesias of Lamptrai, Oinophon of Piraeus, Arethousios of Pelekes.^[8]

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Greek text

References:

AIUK 4.3A (BM, Decrees of Other Bodies) no. 1 (Translated text) (AIO) (AIUK)

IG II² 1176 (PHI)

SEG 33.143 (PHI)

SEG 21.521

SEG 19.117

SEG 64.98bis

GIBM I 12

Syll.³ 915

Schwenk, Athens 76 (PHI)

Agora XIX L13

Agora XVI 93 (PHI) (PHI) (PHI)

Csapo and Wilson II, 226-33

Russo, Ripartizioni, D72

Translation by: Stephen Lambert

AIO Images: 1

Images: Agora Excavations - (1, 2)
Aleshire - (1)
Krateros - (1)
Ohio - (1)

Monument type: Stele

Inscription type: Decrees (Deme Piraeus)

Fr. a - Findspot: Agora (EM 13447, formerly Ag. I 2440)
Fr. b - Findspot: Unknown (EM 7719)
Fr. c - Findspot: Agora (EM 13446, formerly Ag. I 6439)
Fr. d - Findspot: Athens (BM 1785,0527.8)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] Fragment d of this inscription was acquired in Athens by Richard Chandler in 1765-6 for the Society of Dilettanti, which in turn presented it to the British Museum in 1785, along with other inscriptions acquired by Chandler. It is from a decree of the deme Piraeus, making provisions for the lease of its theatre in 324/3 BC. Three other fragments, which are still in Athens (a, b, c), have been identified as belonging to the same inscription. Two other inscriptions of the deme of about the same period, acquired by Chandler on the same visit to Athens, are also in the BM's collection, AIUK 4.3A, no. 2, providing for the lease of properties of the deme in 321/0 or 318/7 BC, and no. 3, honouring a benefactor of the deme who was not a deme member, ca. 335-315 BC. In addition there are two other inscribed enactments of the deme Piraeus still in Athens, IG II² 1177 of the mid-4th cent. BC, relating to the Piraeus Thesmophorion, and Agora XVI 160, apparently providing for raising of funds for construction works by voluntary donations, ca. 330-280 BC (?). The only other inscription of the deme is AIO 2035, a boundary marker of property of the Piraeans (see also IG I³ 1078 with IG II² 2498, note 9). Piraeus was also a component "village" (kome) of the archaic association of the Tetrakomoi (with Phaleron, Thymaitadai, and Xypete, cf. IG II³ 4, 225). On the deme and its members, see Humphreys, Kinship, 1099-1108; on the port in general, R. Garland, The Piraeus from the Fifth to the First century BC (1987). The Piraeus experienced a great deal of upheaval during the nearly 100 years of Macedonian domination of Athens, 321-229 BC, including periods when it was under direct Macedonian control and effectively separated from the city (notably in the 280s BC). These disturbances are only tangentially or faintly apparent in the inscriptions produced by the deme, and it is unclear what impact they had on the deme and its administration. On demes and their inscriptions in general see RO 46, with notes. For more detailed discussion of this inscription see AIUK vol. 4.3A (BM, Decrees of Other Bodies), no. 1.

Of the five extant decrees of the deme Piraeus, only IG II² 1177 was found there. The other four were all found in central Athens in the area around the Agora. According to Chandler, AIUK vol. 4.3A no. 3, was found in a private house near the Agora, but had originally been dug up in the Piraeus. This raises the possibility that the other three found their way to the Agora in a similar manner.

Chief port of Athens in the Classical period and base of the Athenian fleet from the time of Themistokles, the Piraeus was also the largest deme in the city trittys of Hippothontis. Its bouleutic quota is not directly attested before 307/6 BC, but thereafter was ten. Traill, Demos and Trittys (1986), 17, estimates it as eight in the 4th cent. BC (see also Humphreys, 1099). The Piraeus, however, was an exceptional deme, its importance recognised among other things by the incorporation of the port with the city in a single defensive unit by the "Long Walls", and this was reflected administratively in the unusual status of the demarch, who, like other demarchs, was responsible for managing the local Dionysia, but unlike other demarchs, was appointed by the Athenian Assembly rather than by the deme, and had the power to impose summary fines, like a city official (Ath. Pol. 54.8, IG II² 1177, ll. 14-17; Whitehead, Demes of Attica, 1986, 394-6). The Piraeus was also exceptional in that, thanks to a large population of foreigners, metics and Athenian citizen migrants from elsewhere in Attica, the number of adult male demesmen implied by the 8 (?) men it sent to the Council, i.e. perhaps ca. 400 in the fourth century, will have been "a tiny minority in a town with a population estimated as equal to that of the city of Athens in ca. 432 BC" (Csapo and Wilson, 208, cf. Garland, 60).

The deme was not only relatively small in comparison with its resident population, it did not have very many wealthy members in relation to its size (its wealth index was 0.56, as compared with an average for all demes of 1.39, R. Osborne, Demos, 1985, 199). The profile of the deme is similar in many ways to that of its Hippothontid sister, Eleusis: a high proportion of non-member residents (including the second highest number of metics epigraphically attested as resident in any deme, 69, Whitehead, Demes of Attica, 83-4; Eleusis, with 10 metics, is the only deme outside the Piraeus and urban area of Athens, in the top 8 demes on this criterion); high level of interest of the city in the deme's affairs (because of the port in Piraeus, because of the Mysteries at, and the military importance of, Eleusis); a relatively low proportion of wealthy deme members (the wealth index of Eleusis was 1.27). It can be said of the deme Eleusis, that its inscribed decrees, and especially its honorific decrees show that it was "a deme endeavouring to harness these key features of Eleusis in the wider world to the benefit of the deme, while networking constructively with key agents of the Mysteries and the military, and also seeking to create and maintain a distinct civic space between them" (Lambert, forthcoming in paper on deme Eleusis in a conference proceedings on Eleusis edited by H. Beck and S. Scharff). A similar dynamic is observable in the Piraeus.

The special "public" status of the Piraeus was reflected in the involvement of the Assembly in its affairs to an unusual extent. On the Piraeus Asklepieion, for example, see the Assembly decree, AIO 1318, with IG II² 4962. Unlike in other demes, where the local Dionysia was wholly the responsibility of the deme (see IG II³ 4, 498), the Dionysia in the Piraeus was a "state" festival. This is reflected in the inscribed accounts of the sales of skins from sacrifices at major Athenian festivals, which imply that in 334/3 BC around fifty cattle were sacrificed at the festival and that in 331/0 BC sacrifices were conducted by the generals (IG II² 1496, 70-71, 136, 144-45). The Assembly might allocate seats at the Piraeus Dionysia to visiting dignitaries (e.g. to ambassadors from Kolophon in IG II² 456, of 307/6 BC), and in a decree of 320/19 BC proposed by Demades the Assembly introduced administrative reforms in the Piraeus designed among other things to improve the roads on the route of the procession for Dionysos (IG II² 380 = Csapo and Wilson, 221-23). As the theatre of Dionysos at Athens was used for occasional meetings of the Assembly, so too the Assembly seems occasionally to have met in the Piraeus theatre (see AIUK vol. 4.3A, no. 1, p. 15 n. 52) and while it was not, so far as we know, a location where deme decrees were erected, in 340-330 BC (in the aftermath of the battle of Chaironeia?) the Piraeus theatre seems to have been initially envisaged as the place of erection of an Assembly decree honouring four Piraeus priests, including the priest of Dionysos, and hieropoioi, IG II³ 1, 416, and it might perhaps also have been the place of erection of another measure taken in the same context, an inscribed law on repairing the walls in the Piraeus, IG II³ 1, 429. The "public" character of the deme theatre is also abundantly apparent in our inscription, making arrangements for the lease of the deme theatre and our richest source of information about the management of any local Attic theatre (see especially the recent discussion of Csapo and Wilson).

The theatre of Dionysos in the Piraeus was located about halfway up the northwest flank of Mounichia hill. Remains were visible in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but it was built over following a cursory "rescue excavation" in the 1880s. We are therefore dependent largely on this inscription for an understanding of the theatre's main features. One that is immediately apparent is that a (perhaps the) major fixed structure within the theatre is the stage-building (skene), on which, the opening lines of the surviving text seem to suggest, it is envisaged that the lessees of the theatre may undertake structural works, for which purpose (and others?) they are permitted to use stones and earth from the precinct (temenos) of Dionysos. At the end of the lease period they are to hand over the fixed structure in good repair (ll. 4-6), but are to take with them any "tiling and wood", i.e. roofing and other moveable components, perhaps of the stage building, or perhaps of other construction works they may have undertaken. [2] The provision that demesmen were to pay for their seats unless they had been awarded priority seating (proedria) should not be understood to imply that only demesmen attended the Piraeus theatre. That would have made for a rather small audience, and the anecdote at Aelian VH 2.13 that Socrates would go down to the Piraeus theatre whenever a play of Euripides was performed there, though of uncertain historicity, confirms what we should expect, i.e. that non-demesmen would also attend, whether Piraeus residents or from further afield (this is also implied in relation to proedria in the theatre by the wording of AIUK vol. 4.3A no. 3, especially l. 21). The provision was perhaps included to clarify that the lessees were permitted to levy charges on members of the body granting the lease. [3] Proedria, seats of honour, were commonly enjoyed, both in the city theatre and deme theatres, by leading priests and officials, as well as by individual benefactors. For proedria in the city theatre, see IG II³ 4, 1938. For proedria in demes, Search s.v. "proedria". In the Piraeus theatre the demarch and the herald and one other (Stroud suggested "priests", pointing to AIUK vol. 3A, no. 3, l. 23, but perhaps more likely "the priest" scil. of Dionysos), enjoyed the privilege ex officio, in addition to unspecified others to whom the privilege had been awarded. [4] On the "traditional" wooden benches for spectators see Csapo and Wilson, 232, who point to evidence that this type of seating was used in the theatre of Dionysos at Athens before the construction of the stone theatre at about this period. [5] In a procedure normal for private contracts, but here uniquely in the case of a public lease, a "master copy" of the lease is to be deposited with a named individual and his name is to be added to the inscribed copy of the lease "in the agora" [= the "Hippodamian" agora in the Piraeus, close to the theatre]. The fact that no such name survives on our (albeit fragmentary) inscription has generally been thought to support the theory of D. Behrend that the copy "in the agora" is not identical with our inscription, and that the latter is not the lease itself but a decree of the deme paving the way for the lease. Lambert, AIUK vol. 4.3A, no. 1, 12-13, however, expresses some hesitation on this point. [6] Note that, of the four lessees, two are demesmen of Piraeus, but two are not. Melesias son of Aristokrates of Lamptrai is an attested member of a liturgical family (Davies, APF, p. 59). Aristophanes of Piraeus heads a list of contributors to a statue and building work in an unknown sanctuary, IG II² 2329 (with the revised readings of N. Papazarkadas, Horos 17-21, 2004-2009, 104-5 = SEG 59.183, who dates the inscription to the Lykourgan period). Papazarkadas, Sacred and Public Land (2011), 154-55, notes that Aristole[os?] at l. 11 may be the father of our theatre lessee, Arethousios son of Aristoleos of Pelekes, and raises the possibility that the inscription relates to the sanctuary of Dionysos (in Piraeus? in Athens?). [7] Theaios had apparently extracted from the lessees 10% more than the expected lease price. Cf. I Eleusis 85, where Philokomos is honoured by the deme Eleusis for negotiating an extra 100 dr. on the price for the lease of a quarry. Philokomos was the proposer of the leasing scheme and it is commonly supposed that Theaios had a similar role in the Piraeus scheme (see Papazarkadas, 151). [8] It is not known how far leasing arrangements like this one were commonly used for managing theatres in the Attic demes. IG II² 1206 may imply that the deme Acharnai normally leased its theatre, though this interpretation depends crucially on the restored word "unsold" in l. 9.

Added: 15 Dec 2020
Updated: 17 Sep 2024
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