SEG 25.206 Statue of Demetrios [of Phaleron] dedicated by demesmen of Sphettos

Statue of Demetrios [of Phaleron] dedicated by demesmen of Sphettos

SEG 25.206 Date: ca. 315 BC ?

The Sphettians dedicated (this statue of) Demetrios son of Phanostratos. Antignotos made it.^[1]

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References:

SEG 25.206 (Translated text) (PHI)

Tracy, ADT 39 n. 19

DNO 3074

Humphreys, Kinship, 973

Russo, Ripartizioni, D116

Translation by: Stephen Lambert

Monument type: Base

Inscription type: Statue base (Deme)

Findspot: Kastro tou Christou hill, west of Koropi (= ancient Sphettos) (EM 13379)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] Textual Note 3 ἐποίε[σε] appears to be an (unusual) misprint in PHI. Kalogeropoulou's ed. princ. (reference below) and SEG have the correct reading, ἐποίη̣[σε] (kindly confirmed from autopsy by Kazuhiro Takeuchi).

On the deme Sphettos and its one extant decree see SEG 36.187.

These are the remains of a large inscribed base of a statue of Demetrios son of Phanostratos [of Phaleron] erected by the demesmen of Sphettos in the deme's territory. According to Diogenes Laertius 5.75–6 (= F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles. Demetrios von Phaleron², 1968, F 24.52 = W. Fortenbaugh and E. Schütrumpf, Demetrius of Phaleron, 2000, F 1), the Athenians erected 360 statues in honour of the Demetrios son of Phanostratos of Phaleron who controlled Athens between 317 and 307 BC (other sources give the number as 300, cf. R. von den Hoff, in O. Palagia and S. V. Tracy eds., The Macedonians in Athens, 2003, 175 n. 26), and this statue was taken by earlier editors to be one of these (see especially the first edition, A. G. Kalogeropoulou, BCH 93, 1969, 56-71 = SEG 25.206). IG II³ 4, 281, the base of a statue of a Demetrios son of Phanostratos of Phaleron from Eleusis erected by soldiers stationed at Eleusis, Panakton and Phyle, was long taken to be another, but in 1994 Tracy convincingly reascribed it and the associated decree (I Eleusis 194) to Demetrios' like-named grandson on the basis of its Cutter, dating them to ca. 245-240 BC. Since then most scholars have followed Tracy, ADT 39 n. 19, in leaving it open whether the statue erected by the Sphettians was of the Elder or the Younger Demetrios (the editors of DNO preferred the Younger, Humphreys has recently supported the Elder). The lettering, neat and elegant, is consistent with a late-fourth century date without necessarily implying it. It is an argument in favour of the Elder, however, that, generally speaking, apart from the garrison demes, Eleusis and Rhamnous, the demes in the Attic countryside no longer set up inscriptions in their territories by the mid-3rd century BC (for possible exceptions, albeit perhaps pre-dating the 240s BC, see SEG 38.124 and SEG 49.141). Moreover, IG II³ 4, 281 was not erected by the deme Eleusis, but by soldiers stationed there; after ca. 300 BC that deme only seems to have inscribed decrees and other monuments in collaboration with the soldiers stationed in it (see I Eleusis 95), whereas our statue was erected by the deme Sphettos alone. Demetrios of Phaleron the Younger was a military figure, appropriate to be honoured at Eleusis, which was a military headquarters, as Sphettos was not. We therefore follow Humphreys in identifying Demetrios the Elder as the honorand of the Sphettos statue; in inferring that the statue's maker, the Antignotos of Pliny NH 34. 86, worked in the late 4th cent. BC (cf. C. M. Keesling, in P. Schultz, R. von den Hoff (eds.), Early Hellenistic Portraiture. Image, Style, Context (2007), 141-60, = SEG 58.22, and in R. Krumeich and C. Witschel eds., Die Akropolis von Athen im Hellenismus und in der römischen Kaiserzeit, 2010, 303-27); and in supposing that the decree of the deme Aixone honouring Demetrios of Phaleron the Elder, IG II² 1201, may also have provided for a statue. It is also notable that Diog. Laert. records that most of the alleged 360 statues of Demetrios the Elder were equestrian or portrayed him driving a chariot; the remains of the Sphettos base are consistent with an equestrian statue (cf. Kalogeropoulou, 60, 68); and the statue provided for in the single extant substantially preserved inscribed Assembly decree of the regime of Demetrios of Phaleron was also equestrian (IG II² 450; for a discussion of public statues of honorands on horseback, eph' hippōi - a new development in Greece at this period, cf. AIUK 2 (BSA), 2018, pp. 8-11). Diog. Laert. 5.77 records that all the statues of Demetrios of Ph. were destroyed on his fall from power, except the one on the Acropolis, which was perhaps a votive statue erected by Demetrios himself or his family (von den Hoff 2003, 175, cf. R. Krumeich, in C. Frevel, H. von Hesberg eds., Kult und Kommunikation, 2007, 394; R. Krumeich and C. Witschel, in A. Matthei, M. Zimmermann eds., Stadtbilder im Hellenismus, 2009, 188 n. 56).

Added: 27 Apr 2023
Updated: 14 Sep 2024
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