IGII2 1178 Decree of Ikarion honouring demarch and choregoi

Decree of Ikarion honouring demarch and choregoi

IG II² 1178 Date: ca. mid-iv BC

Painting? Kallippos proposed: that the Ikarians shall resolve^[1] to praise Nikon the demarch and crown him with an ivy crown, and the herald shall announce that the Ikarians crown (5)Nikon and the deme of the Ikarians their demarch,^[2] for his fine and just conduct of the festival for Dionysos and the competition;^[3] and to praise also the choral sponsors (chorēgos) Epikrates and Praxias and crown them with an ivy (10) crown and announce it as for the demarch.

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References:

IG II² 1178 (Translated text) (PHI)

Csapo and Wilson II, 166-9

Russo, Ripartizioni, D56

Translation by: Stephen Lambert

Monument type: Stele

Inscription type: Decree (Deme Ikarion)

Findspot: Ikarion, north of the church (NM 4880)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] On the deme Ikarion and its inscriptions see IG I³ 1015, with notes. This is one of three honorific decrees of the deme datable to the mid-late 4th cent. BC. Like the other two, IG II² 1179 and SEG 22.117, this one honours the demarch, but it differs in emphasising, in preserved wording, the demarch's management of the Ikarian Dionysia, and in also honouring the year's two choregoi. All three were probably set up originally in the Dionysion, though this is specified in the text only in SEG 22.117. This is perhaps the earliest of the three. Csapo and Wilson date it ca. 360 BC on the basis of letter forms and the use of -ο for -ου. The letter forms would be consistent with a slightly later date, and -ο for -ου is found in inscriptions of ca. 350-325 BC. On the other hand, the economy of drafting tends to pull towards an earlier date. It may well be one of the earliest in the regular series of honorific decrees of demes, which begins in ca. 350s BC; cf. RO 46, IG II² 1180, with notes. Epikrates the choregos in l. 9 is identifiable as the father of Epikrateia (of Ikarion) on the funerary monument of "after mid-iv BC" from the Piraeus, IG II² 6279 (IG). None of the other persons mentioned is identifiable. There is extensive uninscribed space above the text, which perhaps originally contained a painting (cf. IG I³ 253). Csapo and Wilson suspect the stele had been reused, displaying a close interest in economy consistent with the award of crowns of ivy (the plant is suitable for services to Dionysos); compare the 1,000 dr. gold crown awarded by SEG 22.117.

This decree confirms the continuing centrality of the local Dionysia in the annual programme of this deme and in the work of the demarch, implied ca. three generations earlier by IG I³ 253 and 254. As provided for in the latter, this decree shows that two choregoi were appointed for the festival. One of them, Epikrates, is attested as a deme member (see above); the absence of demotic or ethnic with the other, Praxias, probably implies that he too was an Ikarian. In other words, in this year it seems the deme did not appoint a choregos from non-Ikarians resident in the deme, a possibility implied by IG I³ 254. Just as the city held a special Assembly dealing with business arising from the City Dionysia, so demes might hold special meetings after their local Dionysia. It is possible that this decree was passed at such a meeting (which may be referred to at IG I³ 254, l. 39). [2] This apparently somewhat repetitive wording ("Ikarians ... deme of Ikarians") has excited discussion (see S. Milanezi, in J.-C. Couvenhes and S. Milanezi eds., Individus, groupes et politique à Athènes ..., 2007, 241-72, and more briefly Csapo and Wilson, 169). It is especially notable in what is otherwise a tightly worded decree. A common line of interpretation has been to draw a distinction between the two, taking "the Ikarians" as a pre-Cleisthenic group, whether part of the phratry system (IG compared the "House of the Dekeleans" of RO 5) or perhaps a komē ("village") or predecessor of the Cleisthenic deme. Like many demes, Ikarion was clearly a community of some kind before it was formalised as a deme by Cleisthenes (cf. IG I³ 1015); some such communities maintained an institutional existence for some purposes alongside their Cleisthenic successors (most notably the Tetrakomoi, cf. IG II³ 4, 225) and the (albeit uncertain) reference to a "komos of the Ikarians" in SEG 22.117 might be interpreted in this sense. N. Jones, The Associations of Classical Athens, 1999, 72-3, on the other hand took this text as evidence for his theory (not accepted by AIO) that a distinction was drawn between territorial ("the Ikarians") and hereditary ("the deme of the Ikarians") concepts of the deme. A third line of interpretation, suggested by Lambert, Phratries, 367, and R. Parker, Athenian Religion, 1996, 325, is that this is merely a rhetorical flourish by which the deme represents itself "with an air of ornate redundancy" (Csapo and Wilson) as "the Ikarians" honouring Nikon as an individual, and "the deme of the Ikarians" honouring him in his capacity as demarch (for this interpretation see also Russo, p. 105, and other works cited there). [3] The only "competition" (agon) for which there is evidence in Ikarion is for the performance of tragedies.

Added: 30 Sep 2022
Updated: 13 Mar 2024
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