IEleus 182 Athenian soldiers at Eleusis honour the secretary of the grain treasurers

Athenian soldiers at Eleusis honour the secretary of the grain treasurers

I Eleusis 182 Date: 267/6 BC

Lysias son of Thesbion of Eleusis proposed: since Dion^[1] both from earlier times when secretary to the treasurers of the grain fund and to the board of administrators continues 5 to be of good will to the Athenians stationed at Eleusis and is of service both collectively and individually, making clear the good will which he has towards them, and now as secretary to the treasurer of the grain 10 fund for the year of the archonship of Menekles (267/6) he has made every effort concerning the giving of grain and of the voucher tokens^[2] (?) given for the grain, for good fortune, the Athenians stationed 15 at Eleusis shall decide to praise Dion and to crown him with a foliage crown for his good will and love of honour towards them; and on showing love of honour in the future he shall obtain 20 whatever good it is decided he deserves; . . . shall inscribe this decree on a stone stele . . . . . .

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References:

I Eleusis 182 (Translated text) (PHI)

IG II² 1272 (PHI)

Syll.² 505

Syll.³ 947

Translation by: Stephen Lambert, Sean Byrne

Images: Krateros - (1)

Monument type: Stele

Inscription type: Decree (Athenian soldiers at Eleusis)

Findspot: Eleusis (Eleusis Museum E 408)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] This decree, which dates early in the Chremonidean War, is the earliest of a number inscriptions from Eleusis carrying decrees of military units alone; for the others see I Eleusis 207, with notes. For joint decrees of military units and the deme Eleusis (and other groups), see I Eleusis 95, with notes. The fact that the honorand lacks demotic or ethnic suggests that he was perhaps a public slave (Clinton, comparing the public slaves attested as performing secretarial duties for the Eleusinian epistatai in I Eleusis 177 and I Eleusis 159, ll. 60-62). For honours awarded to public slaves cf. Oliver, Honours for a Public Slave, 119-121. [2] Ta ekklesiastika here are usually understood to refer to voucher tokens for grain, the term deriving from the tokens issued to citizens attending the Assembly (Ekklesia), on the basis of which they would claim their daily allowance (Agora X, p. 78; Clinton, following IG editors). To ekklesiastikon usually refers, however, to the actual attendance allowance (e.g. schol. Ar. Knights 51 and I Iasos 20, ll. 2 and 6), rather than the tokens for its distribution, and on this basis U. Fantasia, in La mémoire perdue. Recherches sur l'administration romaine. Actes de la Table Ronde, 205-28 at 222-23 n. 72 raises the possibility that the term refers here not to tokens but to indemnities or expenses incurred in the distribution of grain to the soldiers: so a translation might run along the lines, "... concerning the giving of the grain and the granting of financial authorisation for the grain". In other words Dion would have handled the bureaucratic procedures necessary for obtaining financial cover (perhaps from the Assembly, though that would not necessarily be the case) for the cost of the grain distributed to the soldiers. This is to attribute a rather distant (abstract) sense to ekklesiastika from the (concrete) one attested for it, however, and especially at this period one would expect the Council rather than the Assembly to have overseen the day-to-day administrative and financial arrangements for the grain fund. It makes better sense in the context of this decree passed by soldiers to interpret both the grain and the ekklesiastika as physically "given" to the soldiers (dosin .... didomenōn): Dion had been involved in both obtaining the grain and in the arrangements for its distribution among the soldiers by use of tokens. While certainty is impossible in the absence of close parallels for this use of the term ekklesiastika, we prefer the traditional interpretation. [SDL]

Added: 12 Jul 2017
Updated: 16 Mar 2022
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