IGI3 546 Dedication to Athena by the bread-seller Phrygia

Dedication to Athena by the bread-seller Phrygia

IG I³ 546 Date: ca. 500 BC

On rim Phrygia dedicated me to Athena;^[1] On shield the bread-seller (sc. Phrygia).^[2]

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References:

IG I³ 546 (Translated text) (IG Online) (PHI)

Translation by: Edmund Stewart

Images: Acropolis Museum - (1)

Monument type: Shield

Inscription type: Dedication (private, Athena)

Original location: Acropolis

Findspot: Acropolis (Acropolis Museum X.6837)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] This dedication is part of a series of dedications made by artisans and other professionals that include the occupation of the dedicator in the dedicatory inscription. Nearly all date from the mid-sixth to early fifth centuries and come from the Acropolis. Athena is the divinity most commonly mentioned in these inscriptions. Although the evidence for Athena Ergane as a specific patroness of crafts dates to the fourth century, it is probable that the goddess already effectively had this attribute from the archaic period (see C.M. Keesling, The Votive Statues of the Athenian Acropolis 2003, 74-5; A.-C. Gillis, Des dieux dans le four, 2021, 44-56). Two exceptions are a dedication to Hermes from the Acropolis (IG I³ 776) and a fourth-century BC dedication from the Agora to the hero Kallistephanos (IG II³ 4, 1178). IG II³ 4, 635 and 650 are dedications by associations with names that suggest professional groups ('the launderers' and 'the workers' respectively), but are more likely to have performed specialised ritual roles than regular labour.

Professions range from market traders (as here); a fisherman (IG I³ 828); artisanal crafts, including a shipwright (IG I³ 589), carpenter (IG I³ 606), potters (IG I³ 620, 628, 633, 824), tanner (IG I³ 646) and shoemakers (IG II³ 4, 1178); and services, including fullers and launderers (IG I³ 554, 616, 794, 905, IG II³ 4, 635), a herald (IG I³ 776), musical performers (IG I³ 666, 754) and a secretary (IG I³ 841). This wide range, encompassing as it does both craft professions and other skilled or semi-skilled occupations, corresponds well with the set of practices the Greeks termed technai. On ideas of skill in antiquity, see E. Stewart, in E. Stewart, E. M. Harris and D. M. Lewis, Skilled Labour and Professionalism in Ancient Greece and Rome, 2020, 1-26. These individuals are for the most part otherwise unknown, but their offerings are significant in showing that the Acropolis was not restricted to a narrow economic or political elite. Offerings also vary widely in scale and value, ranging from this diminutive bronze shield, to large statues by significant artists, including Antenor, Kallon of Aegina and perhaps Nesiotes. Their clients were by no means impoverished, but were capable of generating surplus income. [2] This dedication is part of a series of similar fragments of bronze offerings that were discovered during nineteenth-century excavations of the Acropolis (see A. G. Bather, JHS 13, 1893, 124-130, for this dedication see p. 128, no. 60). The text is inscribed on a miniature bronze shield, approximately 10 cm in diameter, representing the Aegis of Athena, the recipient of the offering. In the centre is the gorgoneion: a representation of Medusa in place of the shield boss. Such shields, as well as miniature models like this one, were fairly common offerings to Athena, as is clear from the fourth-century inventories of the treasurers of Athena (IG II² 1476, ll. 44-47; 1489, ll. 25-28). Line 1 is inscribed on the shield rim; line 2 appears on the shield itself, starting just above the name of the dedicant. Women were relatively frequent dedicators to Athena, though the type of dedications and offerings do not differ markedly from those made by men. As many as 38 similar offerings are known from the Acropolis from this period, 16 of which are bronzes (see A. Avramidou, Cahiers mondes anciens 6 2015, 2-7, Table 1). Some of these may have been votives offered by working women as a tithe (aparche or dekate) of their earnings. Close parallels from the Acropolis are the washstand offered by the washerwoman (plyntria) Smikythe (IG I³ 794) and perhaps also the bronze cymbal dedicated as a tithe by Lysilla (IG I³ 547), who was conceivably a religious professional (on such individuals see Demosthenes 18.259-60). Many women, like Phrygia, worked as traders in the market selling specialist wares, where they gained a reputation among the comic poets for their fierce tempers (e.g. Aristophanes Frogs 858). Phrygia’s name suggests she was from Asia Minor and perhaps a slave, former slave, or descendent of slaves. A fourth-century parallel is Thraitta, a metic trader living near the Agora in the urban deme of Melite: she was very probably a manumitted slave of Thracian origin (Meyer, Metics 2-9A, 493-6). On dedications by working women in see T. Jim, Sharing with the Gods, 2014, 138-41 and on working women in general, see recently M.-L. Sronek, Archimède 5, 2018, 134-144.

Added: 19 Aug 2025
Updated: 19 Aug 2025
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