AIUK43A no. 3 Decree of the deme Piraeus honouring Kallidamas of Cholleidai

Decree of the deme Piraeus honouring Kallidamas of Cholleidai

AIUK 4.3A (BM, Decrees of Other Bodies) no. 3 Date: ca. 335-315 BC ?

Diodoros of Piraeus proposed:^[1] since Kallidamas son of Kallimedon of Cholleidai^[2] is a good man towards the People of Athens and of the deme Piraeus, and does (5) what good he can and has demonstrated good will in critical times, the Piraeans shall decide to praise Kallidamas and crown him with a foliage crown for his excellence and justice towards the Athenian (10) People and the deme Piraeus, and whenever the Piraeans sacrifice in their common rites, they shall allocate Kallidamas a portion as to other Piraeans, and Kallidamas shall feast with (15) the Piraeans in all the rites, except those in which the Piraeans themselves customarily participate and no others; and to allocate him also to the Thirty (triakada) which he himself wishes;^[3] and he shall also have a seat of honour (proedrian) in the (20) theatre, whenever the Piraeans hold the Dionysia, where it is allocated to the Piraeans themselves, and the demarch shall lead him into the theatre like the priests and the others to whom a seat of honour has been awarded among the (25) Piraeans;^[4] and he shall pay the same taxes (telein ta auta telē) in the deme as the Piraeans also pay, and the demarch shall not levy on him the tax on non-demesmen owning property in the deme (enktētikon);^[5] and the herald shall announce in the theatre at the competition for tragedies that the Piraeans (30) crown Kallidamas son of Kallimedon of Cholleidai for his excellence and good will towards the People of Athens and of the deme Piraeus, so that everyone may know that the Piraeans know how to give worthy (35) thanks to those who display love of honour towards them.^[6] And to inscribe this decree on a stone stele and stand it in the sanctuary of Hestia.^[7]

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Greek text

References:

AIUK 4.3A (BM, Decrees of Other Bodies) no. 3 (Translated text) (AIO) (AIUK)

IG II² 1214 (PHI)

GIBM I 11

Syll.³ 912

Csapo and Wilson II, 223-26

Russo, Ripartizioni, D75

Translation by: Stephen Lambert

AIO Images: 1

Images: Krateros - (1)
Ohio - (1)

Monument type: Stele

Inscription type: Decree

Original location: Piraeus (sanctuary of Hestia)

Findspot: Piraeus? (BM 1785,0527.7)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] 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 collected by Chandler. Chandler acquired it from a house in Athens, but was informed that it had been dug up in the Piraeus. It is from a decree of the deme Piraeus, honouring a member of another deme, Kallidamas of Cholleidai, for unspecified services "in critical times" (l. 6). Two other inscriptions of the deme Piraeus, acquired by Chandler on the same visit to Athens, are also in the BM's collection, fr. d of AIUK 4.3A, no. 1, and AIUK 4.3A, no. 2; and in addition two other inscribed enactments of the deme are known, Agora XVI 160, IG II² 1177. On the deme Piraeus see AIUK 4.3A, no. 1; on demes in general and their inscriptions RO 46. For more detailed discussion of this inscription see AIUK vol. 4.3A (BM, Decrees of Other Bodies), no. 3.

Until recently this inscription was usually dated from its lettering to the early 3rd century BC, and this would be consistent with the reference to the honorand's services "in critical times" (epi tōn kairōn, 6, taken by P. Gauthier, REG 92, 1979, 394-6, to be a reference to the 280s BC). Lambert, however (in AIUK), notes that the lettering might as easily belong to the late 4th century, and that the Piraeus frequently experienced "critical times" in the years following the battle of Chaironeia in 338 BC, and especially after Athens' defeat in the Lamian War in 322 BC. He suggests that the failure to be explicit about the honorand's services would make a date ca. 322 BC (i.e. in the vicinity of the two firmly dated Piraeus decrees, AIUK 4.3A, no. 1 and no. 2) most comfortable. Especially in the case of financial benefactions, or benefactions of financial value, democratic reticence precluded open acknowledgement of them in public inscriptions, and it was only after the dissolution of the democracy in 322 BC that Athenian honorific decrees began to be explicit about such benefactions (see I Eleusis 95, of 321/0 or 318/7 BC, marks a turning point among deme decrees). The name of the proposer of the decree, Diodoros (1), is extremely common, and there may or may not be a family connection with the Diodoros who was a councillor for Piraeus in 281/0 BC, Agora XV 72, l. 140. [2] A Kallimedon of Cholleidai is known from a dedication of ca. 350-300 BC, perhaps by treasurers of Athena (IG II³ 4, 92). He might be our honorand's father or his son. If he was a treasurer of Athena, this might suggest a wealthy family. Treasurers of Athena were traditionally appointed from the highest of the Solonian property classes, the pentakosiomedimnoi (Ath. Pol. 8.1, cf. however, 47.1. Despite the fact that the Solonian classes had become obsolete by this time, there was still some tendency for treasurers to be from wealthy families). On the small deme, Cholleidai, location unknown, but perhaps in the area of Acharnai, see Rationes F6B. It was also the deme of the only known priest of Dionysos in the Piraeus, Meixigenes of Cholleidai, honoured by the Athenian Assembly together with other Piraeus priests in IG II³ 1, 416 in the 330s BC. Lambert (AIUK vol. 4.3A, p. 32, n. 123) raises the possibility of a connection between the two men (speculating that, if the priest of Dionysos in Piraeus was supplied by a genos, our honorand might have been a member of the same genos). [3] These actions are characteristic of the way a deme such as the Piraeus, with its large number of non-member residents, might recognise the benefaction of a non-member by incorporating him into the religious life of the deme, while also carefully maintaining the deme's own exclusive space by excluding the honorand from certain core rites reserved for demesmen alone. The triakades were apparently groups of thirty desmesmen for sacrificial purposes. Compare the pentekostyes (groups of 50?) of Aixone, SEG 54.214, and the merē ("sections") attested in other demes (see IG II² 2496, with notes). [4] Proedria in the local theatre of Dionysos is a common honour awarded to benefactors in the demes. On proedria in the Piraeus theatre see also AIUK 4.3A, no. 1. Ll. 19-25 is the only known specific grant of proedria made by the deme Piraeus, but we know of an award in 307/6 BC by the city itself of proedria in the Piraeus theatre to ambassadors from Kolophon, IG II² 456. The specification that Kallidamas be awarded proedria in the area reserved for Piraeans who hold the privilege emphasises that the award takes place against the background of a degree of conscious segregation of Piraeans and non-Piraeans of a kind similar to that which this decree implies in a sacrificial context. [5] Ll. 25-27 puts Kallidamas on an equal footing with demesmen as regards taxation. Especially notable is the implication that the deme normally levied a tax on non-deme members who owned property in the deme, the enktetikon, which would be a valuable source of income for a deme the majority of whose residents and in-deme property owners were not members. This tax in Piraeus may also be referred to in IG II² 2496. There is some evidence for it in other demes (Eleusis, I Eleusis 99, l. 16, I Eleusis 72, l. 29, and the provisions for Theban honorands, I Eleusis 70 and 71; and Lamptrai, IG II² 1204). We do not know, however, if it was ubiquitous. The logical connection between this clause and the immediately preceding one (ll. 25-26) is not quite clear (cf. Whitehead, Demes, 1986, 82 n. 64), but it seems from those lines that there may have been (or were potentially in the future) other "taxes/contributions" (telē) to which deme members were liable. Again, this was also the case in some other demes (E.g. Plotheia, IG I³ 258, ll. 28-33, with notes, cf. Whitehead, 151). For an agorastikon ("market tax") in the deme Rhamnous in 236/5 BC see I Rhamnous 7, ll. 10-12, with P. Fawcett, Hesperia 93, 2024, 56-7, and more broadly on "Local Taxes", 54-6. [6] The extensive hortatory intention clause is of considerable interest and importance in understanding the dynamic behind this decree, and indeed the epigraphical habit of the demes (in which honorific decrees predominate at this period) more broadly. It is relevant that Kallidamas was not a member of the deme, and that we are in the Piraeus, a deme whose members, as we have seen, were in a minority in their own deme, were not especially wealthy, and which depended, therefore, particularly starkly on benefactions by those outside the community of demesmen, narrowly defined. Hortatory intention clauses can be attached to the award of honours, or the inscribing of honours, or, as here, the announcement of honours. It is no coincidence that the announcement is to take place at the Piraeus Dionysia, the occasion of the year above all when the deme acted as host to the wider community (on this see AIUK 4.3A, no. 1, with notes) and ideally suited, at deme level, as its equivalent was at city level, for displaying gratitude to its external benefactors as an encouragement to others to follow their example. On this dynamic in the demes see further R. Osborne, in Z. Archibald and J. Haywood eds., The Power of Individual and Community ... Essays .... John K. Davies, 147-62; AIUK vol. 4.3A, no. 3, 30-31. As Lambert notes in a paper on the deme Eleusis in a conference proceedings on Eleusis edited by H. Beck and S. Scharff (forthcoming in 2024), a similar dynamic is observable in Eleusis in the apparent relationship between a decree such as I Eleusis 72 (decree honouring a prominent citizen non-member of the deme playing an important role in the Mysteries, ca. 340 BC, with explicit hortatory intention) and I Eleusis 95 (decree honouring a prominent citizen non-member of the deme playing an important role in the Mysteries, who has made substantial personal benefactions to the deme some twenty years later, as if suitably "encouraged" by the hortatory intention expressed in the earlier decree). [7] The location of the sanctuary of Hestia in Piraeus, stipulated in ll. 36-38 as place of erection of the decree, has not been identified, but is generally supposed to have been in or close to the Piraeus Agora. In Athens Hestia resided within the prytaneion, and it may be that there was a comparable arrangement in the Piraeus (cf. R. Garland, The Piraeus, 1987, 75, 141; Csapo and Wilson, 226). Deme decrees were not infrequently erected in sanctuaries, sometimes specifically relevant to the subject matter of the decree. IG II² 1177, for example, relating to the Thesmophorion in the Piraeus and rites conducted there was to be erected, "by the way up to the Thesmophorion". If Kallidamas' services had related specifically to Hestia, however, one might expect that to have been clearer from the text. More likely, this location was chosen as symbolising the hearth of the community to which Kallidamas' benefactions had related and into which he is being symbolically incorporated by this decree.

Added: 15 Dec 2020
Updated: 14 Sep 2024
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