IGI3 8 Harbour fees and the cult of Poseidon at Sounion

Harbour fees and the cult of Poseidon at Sounion

IG I³ 8 Date: ca. 460-450 BC

Fragment a

. . . which . . . ^[1] concerning these things . . . People or deme. Antibios [proposed: in other respects as proposed by?] Kallimachos . . . concerning (5) the money . . . for Poseidon . . . [fee for the marines?] in the [following?] . . . on the first [days?] . . . concerning the . . . (10) . . . . . .

Fragment b

. . . [having inscribed] [this] decree on a [stone] stele . . . the Sounians shall set it down in [the place where?] (15) they register (engraphosi) (?) . . . ; and the ships . . . . . . Sounion or those that anchor . . . Sounion shall pay . . . . . . obols in the trieteris . . . . . . render from the other ships, if they carry (20) up to 1000 talents, seven obols, those over 1000, seven obols per 1000; those who pay the . . . concerning the purification (?) (echsagiseos), it shall be for them . . . as for the Sounians.^[2]

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References:

IG I³ 8 (Translated text) (IG Online) (PHI)

SEG 10.10

SEG 54.39

SEG 57.55

Koerner, Gesetzestexte 6 (ll. 15-24 only)

Translation by: Stephen Lambert, Julian Schneider

Monument type: Stele

Inscription type: Decree (Council and People)

Findspot: Sounion (EM 4215)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] Sounion, at the southern tip of Attica, was an important port (on the harbour to the west of the point, alluded to in this inscription, see H. R. Goette, Ὁ ἀξιόλογος δῆμος Σούνιον, 2000, 55, cf. M. C. McHugh, ABSA 114, 2019, 207-40, D. M. Lewis, Pnyx 1, 2022, 81-101, at 90-94) and religious centre, its ruined temple of Poseidon (cf. l. 6 of our inscription) still a famous landmark. It was a Cleisthenic deme which, in the fourth century, sent four councillors to sit on the Athenian Council of 500, and in the Hellenistic period is well-attested epigraphically as a military base (see IG II² 1260, with notes). For a recent discussion of the deme and its members see S. Humphreys, Kinship in Ancient Athens (2018), 950-59. For the only extant inscribed decree of the deme, IG II² 1180. It was already home to a quadrennial festival in the sixth century BC (Hdt. 6.87, recounting the seizure by Aegina of an Athenian vessel carrying the sacred embassy, theoria, to the festival), and later in the fifth century Poseidon at Sounion was one of the “Other Gods” whose property came to be managed by a central board of treasurers (see IG I³ 52, e.g. IG I³ 369, l. 62; cf. Parker, Polytheism, 59). Also in the fifth century, the demesmen of neighbouring Thorikos regularly sent an offering for Poseidon to Sounion (SEG 33.147, l. 19); and Lysias 21.5 mentions a ship race there. IG I³ 1024 shows the Sounians making a collective dedication at Sounion already in the (mid-?)6th century BC. This decree shows the Athenian Assembly regulating the cult of Poseidon, apparently raising funding for it by the collection of harbour dues (on the Assembly as the agent here, and not the deme Sounion, cf. the remarks of Goette, 43). [2] The text is inscribed orthograde (left to right) and in the stoichedon style, in letter forms characteristic of the period shortly before ca. 450 BC, on one side of two non-joining fragments of a stele (l. 13, this is one of, if not the earliest, Assembly decree to be inscribed on a “stele” (13), cf. Meyer, Origins, 363-64; for photographs see Ath. Mitt. 59, 1934, Beilage 4; Goette, pl. 120. They show a setting line below l. 24 of fr. b). Our translation follows the text of IG, with more speculative restorations marked “?” (for a suggested supplement for ll. 16-18 see SEG 57.55). Ll. 1-4: the top of the stone is not preserved and it is not clear that l. 1 was the first line of the text. There is a 6-dot interpunct before “Antibios”, suggesting a possible break in the sense at this point. Restoration in ll. 3-4 of the formula later attested for riders, introducing the subject of the decree in ll. 4-5, is uncertain. L. 6 τὸ ἐπιβατ]ικὸν, which might be a reference to fees payable by merchant ships for the services of marines (cf. LSJ), is a very uncertain restoration of the common ending -ikon. Ll. 7-8 seem to contain temporal specifications of some kind. Ll. 13-15 This translation assumes that editors have been right to take Σου]νιᾶς as accusative plural, “the Sounians”, a form that has 5th-cent. parallels in Attic inscriptions (see Threatte, Grammar II, 256). This is probably the earliest Assembly decree to preserve explicit instructions relating to its inscription and may be the only decree dating before the late 450s BC to preserve such instructions (cf. the notes on IG I³ 7). Interestingly, it seems to require the local deme to see to the erection of the stele. Though that is quite comprehensible in the context of a decree making locally specific provisions, it is not a stipulation that tends to occur in later Assembly decrees, even when they are not erected on the Acropolis; but we do not know whether a similar stipulation was included in other early Assembly decrees erected in the demes (as e.g. IG I³ 2, IG I³ 3, IG I³ 5). What “registration” is meant here is obscure. L. 18 A “trieteris” is a festival that occurs every other year (literally every third year, by inclusive reckoning), or the period of time between two such celebrations. Hdt. 6.87 speaks of a penteteric (i.e. quadrennial) festival at Sounion, but it was not uncommon for festivals to have elements that occurred at different frequencies (as e.g. the Panathenaia had annual sacrifices, but competitive games only every four years), and that may have been the case here. Ll. 19-22 are the only continuously intelligible lines of the inscription, and apparently attest to harbour fees of seven obols per 1000 talents of cargo (apparently ca. 26 metric tonnes), though details (for example timing/frequency of the payments, ships to which they are applicable) remain unclear. Ll. 22-24 The significance of this “purification” (?) (exagisis, a word attested only here, cf. LSJ Suppl.) is obscure. This decree belongs to the small group of inscribed Athenian Assembly decrees which pre-date ca. 454 BC and which were erected in locations relevant to the cults they regulated: IG I³ 2 and 3 (Herakleion at Marathon); IG I³ 4 (Acropolis of Athens, cf. IG I³ 7, which may, however, be later); IG I³ 5 (Eleusis); IG I³ 6 (City Eleusinion). Only IG I³ 1 foreshadows the later practice of erecting decrees of a generic, not specifically cult-related, character, on the Acropolis. Note that these other early decrees are mostly inscribed in more archaic formats than the stele, inscribed from left to right and normally on one side only, which became the normal format for decrees after ca. 450 BC (see the notes to each inscription).

Added: 2 Apr 2019
Updated: 23 Mar 2023
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ID: AIO_1742