AIUK2 no. 1 Honours for Asandros of Macedon, 314/3 BC

Honours for Asandros of Macedon, 314/3 BC

AIUK 2 (BSA) no. 1 Date: 314/3 BC

Fragment a

In the archonship of Nikodoros (314/3), in the sixth prytany, of Kekropis; on the eleventh of Gamelion, the twenty-sixth (5) of the prytany. Assembly. Of the presiding committe Aristokrates son of Aristodemos of Oinoe was putting to the vote and his fellow presiding committee members. Thrasykles son of Nausikrates (10) of Thria proposed:^[1] the People shall decide to praise Asandros son of Agathon of Macedon,^[2] because he is a good man individually towards Athenians who come to (15) his own country, and collectively towards the Athenian People, and on visiting the city he provided his own ships (20) and soldiers to the Athenians to meet their needs^[3] . . .

Uncertain number of lines missing^[4]

Fragment b

. . . returned them to their own land at his own expense; (25) and to grant him also dining rights in the city hall and a seat of honour in all the city’s competitions, and for his eldest descendant; and (30) he shall be permitted to set up a bronze likeness of himself^[5] on horseback^[6] in the Agora wherever he wishes except beside Harmodios and Aristogeiton.^[7]

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Greek text

References:

AIUK 2 (BSA) no. 1 (Translated text) (AIUK) (AIO)

IG II² 450 (PHI)

SEG 49.106

GIBM I 14

Syll.³ 320

Osborne, Naturalization, D42

Lambert, BSA Inscriptions E1

AIUK 4.2 (BM, Decrees of Council and Assembly) no. 11 (AIUK) (AIO)

Translation by: Stephen Lambert

AIO Images: 1 2 3

Images: Krateros - (1)

Monument type: Stele

Inscription type: Decree

Fragment a - Findspot: Acropolis (BM 1816,0610.187)
Fragment b - Findspot: Athens, near Kapnikarea (BSA E1)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] Both surviving fragments of this decree are in UK Collections. Fragment a is in the British School at Athens, fragment b in the British Museum. Fr. b was seen by Richard Chandler on his visit to Athens in 1765-6 built into the floor of a house on the Acropolis (cf. AIUK 4.1, no. 1; AIUK 4.2 (BM, Decrees of the Council and Assembly), sect. 1). It was later acquired by Lord Elgin and was among the objects purchased by the UK Parliament and transferred to the BM in 1816 (cf. AIUK 4.1, no. 2). Fr. a was first seen by K. Pittakis before 1835 in the lower city (near the Kapnikarea church). It is not clear whether the inscription was originally set up on the Acropolis or next to the statue of Asandros in the Agora.

This decree, passed in ca. January/February 313 BC, is the only substantially preserved Assembly decree firmly datable to the years when Athens was controlled by the Peripatetic Demetrios of Phaleron in the interests of Kassandros (317-307 BC; IG II² 453 preserves only a prescript, cf. SEG 32.100). The absence of a secretary in the prescript and of provision for payment for the inscription (or statue) from public funds suggests that, in contrast to normal practice before this, the decree was inscribed (and Asandros’ statue erected) at private initiative and expense. Clearly few, if any, decrees were inscribed at public expense at this period. This was not straightforwardly anti-democratic; decrees had continued to be inscribed under the previous, ostensibly more extreme, oligarchy, of 322-318 BC; but, aside from the public expenditure saving, the move is also consistent with the curtailment of other types of display under Demetrios, including figurative funerary monuments (cf. IG II² 6982 with note) and the increasingly extravagant forms of choregic commemoration that had appeared since the battle of Chaironeia in 338 BC, under both democratic and oligarchic regimes (cf. IG II³ 4, 460 with notes). Demetrios' regime was “moderately” oligarchic, with active citizenship limited to those possessing more than 1,000 dr. (Diod. 18.74.2-3), though on Demetrios’ own account he had “not only not destroyed the democracy, but even set it right” (Strabo 9.1.20, citing Demetrios’ Memoirs). The wording of this decree shows the democratic structure of the Assembly was retained under Demetrios, including apparently regular meetings (probably implied by the heading, “Assembly”, l. 5); and it is notable that the decree is non-probouleumatic (shown by the formula “the People shall decide” in ll. 10-11 rather than “the Council and People shall decide”), implying that its provisions were formulated in the Assembly and were not simply a rubber-stamping of a probouleuma formulated by the Council. The prohibition on erection of Asandros’ statue next to the Tyrannicides Harmodios and Aristogeiton (ll. 33-34) displays respect for Athens’ democratic heroes. A more strongly oligarchic aura surrounds the decree’s proposer, Thrasykles of Thria, who in 321/0 had held the office of anagrapheus (“recorder”), who supplanted the democratic secretary of the Council in the oligarchy imposed on Athens by Antipater after the Lamian War. For further discussion of Demetrios' regime see the decree of the deme Aixone honouring him, IG II² 1201 = Ackermann no. 6. [2] Asandros son of Agathon of Pydna had been appointed satrap of Caria by Perdikkas in 323, and confirmed in that role by Antipater at Triparadeisos in 321 (Diod. 18.3.1, 18.39.6, Arrian, Succ. Alex. 6, 37, etc.). At this time he was opposing Antigonos the One-Eyed in alliance with Seleukos, Ptolemy, and Kassandros. According to Diod. 19.62-75, in 315 Asandros came under pressure from Antigonos, and was supported by a force under Myrmidon of Athens and, in the following year, an expedition sent by Kassandros, under the command of Prepelaos and Asandros himself. Also in 314 Athens despatched twenty ships to recover its traditional Aegean possession, Lemnos, which had fallen under Antigonos’ control. None of these efforts was successful and in 313, after this decree was passed, Asandros was forced to come to terms with Antigonos. For a recently discovered inscription of the Carian city Pidasa, 321/0 BC, which enhances our understanding of Asandros' position in Caria, see P. Brun, K. Konuk et al., Revue des Études Anciennes 117, 2015, 371-409. [3] Asandros’ visit to Athens (ll. 17-18) perhaps took place in the previous winter (315/14 BC) while making arrangements for the expedition he and Prepelaos were to lead in the following campaigning season. It is plausible enough that some or all of the ships and soldiers supplied by him for Athenian use (18-22) were involved in the Lemnos venture; and that among the Athenians referred to at the start of fragment b, whose return home was assisted by Asandros, were men stranded by its failure. Their reports, as they arrived back in Athens in the winter of 314/13, would have contributed to support for the decree. On the suggestion that Asandros had supported an Athenian attack on Samos in these years see note to AIUK 2 (BSA) no. 1. [4] The wording in l. 25 implies that the awards made in fr. b supplemented an earlier accolade, presumably made in the now lost lines between the two fragments. Most likely this was a grant of Athenian citizenship (see next note). We can not tell whether fr. b belonged to the same decree as fr. a, or to a rider, perhaps passed at the same Assembly. [5] This decree is the earliest well-preserved inscribed example of an award of this trio of “highest honours” at Athens, though RO 11 are fragments of the decree or series of decrees that awarded a statue and other honours to Euagoras of Salamis in 394/3. The archetype for such awards was the tyrannicides Harmodios and Aristogeiton, awarded posthumous honorific statues in the Agora at some point between 510 and the 480s. Antenor’s originals were removed from Athens by the invading Persians in 480 and replaced with in 477/6 by the pair by Kritios and Nesiotes which are familiar from Roman copies (Plin. NH 34.17; Paus. 1.23.9; IG I³ 502). Their descendants were also awarded perpetual dining rights in the city hall (IG I³ 131), a seat of honour (proedria) and exemption from liturgies (Isai. 5.47; Dem. 20.127-130, 159). The first statues since Harmodios and Aristogeiton were awarded to the victors over the Spartans at Knidos in 394, Konon and Euagoras (see RO 11). Between then and the end of the classical democracy a handful of further such high awards is documented in the literary evidence, though the precise combination is generally uncertain; in some cases, for example, only a statue is explicitly attested, and we can not be certain what, if any, other honours accompanied it. Recipients included major Athenian military leaders, Chabrias, Iphikrates and Timotheos; major foreign leaders and benefactors, such as Philip II and Alexander (statues, Paus. 1.9.4, Hyp. Dem. 32, citizenship, Osborne, Nat. T68 and T69), and Pairisades, Satyros and Gorgippos of the Spartokid dynasty that ruled the Cimmerian Bosporos and played a crucial role in the Athenian grain supply (statues, Dein. 1.43; they were already citizens, cf. IG II³ 1, 298 and 870); and in the period after Athens' defeat at Chaironeia, civilian leaders, notably in his lifetime for Demades, probably in response to the remarkably favourable settlement he managed to negotiate with Alexander following the sack of Thebes in 335 (Dein. 1.101); for the wealthy benefactor, Neoptolemos of Melite, on Lykourgos' proposal, a remarkable early example of an award of a statue to a native-born Athenian for financial euergetism (cf. IG II³ 4, 1057, with n. 1); and next after Asandros posthumously for Lykourgos himself, on Stratokles’ proposal in 307/6 (IG II² 457 + 3207). Though not perhaps so obviously the case with statues alone, the perpetual dining rights and/or a seat of honour (proedria) which generally accompanied them entailed privileged symbolic integration into the community and the Athenian citizenship was a normal, perhaps at this time invariable, prerequisite. [6] Asandros’ is the earliest known public honorific statue in Athens to have been on horseback, and one of, if not the earliest, known in Greece. Equestrian statues were later almost exclusively restricted to hellenistic kings, and perhaps originally had specifically Macedonian connotations. [7] Asandros’ is the first known case of explicit prohibition on erection of an honorific statue near Harmodios and Aristogeiton, and reflects the archetypal status of the tyrannicides in Athenian honorific practice (above n. 5). For further discussion of the connotations of this prohibition, which occurs in similar terms in IG II³ 1, 853, ll. 40-42, and in IG II² 457 + 3207, and of the original location of this inscription (next to the statue?), see the note to AIUK 2 (BSA) no. 1.

Added: 30 Apr 2018
Updated: 8 Jan 2024
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