IEleus 63 Honorific decree of Hippothontis

Honorific decree of Hippothontis

I Eleusis 63 Date: ca. 400-385 BC

Gods.^[1] Olive branch^[2] ca. 1 line erased The tribesmen decided, - proposed: to (5)crown -on son of Kalli- of -; and the managers (epimelētas)^[3] shall announce in the [Hippothontion]^[4] that for his justice and (10)manly virtue (andragathias) towards the tribe the tribesmen crown him; . . .

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References:

I Eleusis 63 (Translated text) (PHI)

IG II² 1149 (PHI)

SEG 40.62

Translation by: Stephen Lambert, Andrea Giannotti

Images: Cornell - (1)

Monument type: Stele

Inscription type: Decree (Tribe Hippothontis)

Findspot: Eleusis (Eleusis Museum E 113)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] A key element in the reforms of Cleisthenes (508 BC) was the introduction of a new system of 10 tribes (replacing for most purposes the four old "Ionian" tribes), which were widely used in the military and political organisation of the city. For some purposes (e.g. for rotating offices) there was an official order of tribes - in the Classical period Hippothontis was tribe VIII; on this and the effect of tribal reorganisations, the first of which to be documented took place in 307/6 BC, see AIUK 4.2 (BM, Decrees of the Council and Assembly), n. 49. Each tribe was made up of three trittyes, which grouped demes in city, coastal, and inland areas, thus ensuring that each tribe consisted of a mix of members from different regions of Attica. On the arrangement of demes into tribes see J. S. Traill, The Political Organization of Attica, Hesperia Supplement 14 (1975); and (updated, with a slightly different arrangement of demes into trittyes) Demos and Trittys (1986). Like the demes (but unlike the trittyes), the tribes had a strong collective identity and passed decrees which were commonly inscribed on stone, mostly datable to the fourth century BC. The tribes were based at sanctuaries of their eponymous heroes; mostly these were located in Athens (Erechtheis, Pandionis and Kekropis on the Acropolis), but the sanctuary of the Eleusinian hero, Hippothoon, was at Eleusis; mentioned, albeit uninformatively, by Paus. 1.38.4, its precise location is not known. On the tribal heroes see especially U. Kron, Die zehn attischen Phylenheroen (Athenische Mitteilungen Beiheft 5, 1976). Appropriately enough, Eleusis was the largest deme of the coastal trittys of Hippothontis (cf. I Eleusis 68, with notes). For other decrees of Hippothontis from the Hippothontion see I Eleusis 67, I Eleusis 69, I Eleusis 122. For decrees of Hippothontis discovered elsewhere in Attica see Bardani and Matthaiou, Horos, 22-25 (2010-2013), 79-84 = SEG 63.98; IG II² 1163. The latter was set up in two copies, at the Asklepieion in Athens and the Hippothontion (ll. 25-26); only the Asklepieion copy is extant. [2] This inscription is a work of the prolific "Cutter of IG II² 17" (Tracy, Athenian Lettering, 153), whose inscriptions range in date between 414/3 and 386/5 BC. As Tracy notes, that implies that this inscription, which is cut in the Ionic alphabet but has "early" orthographic features such as -ε- for -ει-, most likely dates to the beginning of the 4th cent. BC rather than, as previously thought, "before mid-iv BC". The laconic style of the text is consistent with this relatively early date. The olive branch alludes to the material from which crowns were commonly made (it was more usual to depict the crown itself). M.B. Walbank, ABSA 85 (1990) no. 3 (= SEG 40.62), notes that IG II² 44, IG II² 155 and IG II² 162 have the same decorative feature.

Tribes appear to have begun regularly inscribing decrees honouring Athenian citizens (usually their own members) before that became common practice in the demes (in the 350s BC, cf. RO 46; IG II² 1180, with notes) and the Council and Assembly (in the 340s, cf. IG II³ 1, 301). This is one of the earliest decrees in the tribal series. Compare IG II² 1138, by which the tribe Pandionis honoured its victorious choregos (in the boys' dithyramb for the City Dionysia and the men's dithyramb for the Thargelia), Nikias son of Epigenes of Kydathenaion, and provided that other victorious choregoi be added to the inscription, beginning in 403/2 BC (1139 is a second copy of the decree). [3] The "managers" (epimeletai), most likely three in number and serving for one year, were the most important officers of a tribe. Cf. N. F. Jones, Hesperia 64 (1995), 521-25, and more exhaustively (especially regarding tribal honours) N. F. Jones, The Associations of Classical Athens, 1999, 174-94. As demes quite frequently honoured their demarchs, so the tribes quite frequently honoured their epimeletai, e.g. IG II² 1151 (Aiantis, 3 epimeletai), 1152 (Pandionis, 3 epimeletai) and perhaps Agora XVI 80 (Pandionis). [4] On the Hippothontion, largely restored here, but very plausibly, see above n. 1; as well as the location of the announcement of the honour, it was presumably also where this inscription was set up. For further discussion of the location of the crowning and its announcement see Jones 1999, 163-64; Humphreys, Kinship, 754 n. 93.

Added: 15 Mar 2022
Updated: 15 Mar 2022
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