Sterling Dow

Demetrios of Phaleron and His Lawgiving

Demetrios of Phaleron was bred in the main tradition of Athenian ethical and political philosophy. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastos: that was his pedigree. Though not as great as his own teacher and friend Theophrastos, Demetrios was a worthy pupil, talented, extremely productive, and varied in his scholarly interests. Had he done nothing but write the books which he wrote, he would have reflected credit on the Peripatos. He did not, however, confine himself to a contemplative life; and in the world of action he surpassed his teachers. Their record in actual contemporary politics notoriously, and perhaps naturally, adds up to very little. Socrates set an example or two of rectitude in action, and otherwise abstained from politics. Plato ineffectually and Aristotle perhaps more importantly exerted some influence, outside Athens, through pupils and friends. Theophrastos, so far as we know, merely administered the school. These philosophers are remembered mostly for their philosophy. Demetrios ruled Athens. In all antiquity he was the most accomplished philosopher actually to rule a state. A second reason why Demetrios should be taken seriously as a ruling political philosopher is the resources behind him. Theophrastos had made a collection of laws

A Family of Sculptors from Tyre

The Athenian pancratiast Menodoros, son of Gnaios, has fared well. He won mlore athletic, victories than any other known Greek of his century; and he was awarded honorary crowns by a king and three cities. In the Athenian Agora a group of sculpture in his honor was set up on the largest inscribed base now known from that site. Of this base six scattered fragments were eventually collected, and they sufficed to prove that Menodoros was honored also in Delos by a second elaborate monument the pedestal of which, with its 36 crowns carved in relief, is preserved almost intact.2

The Statue of the Damaskenos at the American School at Athens

1 The photographs are by Miss Alison Frantz of the Agora Excavations and James McCredie of New York University. The drawings are by Miss Suzanne E. Chapman of the Department of Egyptian Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Figs. 1, 2; P1. 62), and Mrs. Lucy T. Shoe Meritt of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (originals for Figs. 1, 2). The present article owes most, surely, to these visual presentations. Other kind and learned help has come to us from M. B. Comstock, G. Daux, G. Dickerson, E. B. Harrison, E. L. Smithson, R. S. Stroud, H. A. Thompson, E. Vanderpool, and L. B. Urdahl. The collaborators have been together in Athens in three recent summers, and they are grateful to the School for the opportunities this study represents, and to its Director, H. S. Robinson, for facilitating the work in every way. The sections on sculpture and the recent find of a base block are the work of C. C. Vermeule; the rest is by S. Dow. The monumenlt is outdoors and accessible. The visitor to Loring Hall (opposite 54 Souidias Street, the imain School building) ascends (outside) stairs to the left, two short flights, then up one further flight to the right. (The Conze editors refer, text and index, to the Amerikan. Archaol. Institut, but this is an error; nothing with this title ever existed.) In the inventory (unpublished, 1940) of the Schools inscriptions, the Damaskenos monument is No. 9.

The Preambles of Athenian Decrees Containing Lists of Symproedroi

IN the developed Athenian constitution, the Boule of 500, and also the Ekklesia itself, if it met on that day, were presided over by a one-day committee known as the vpo78pot. Aristotle says that the Proedroi were chosen one each from all tribes except the tribe in prytany; the tribe in prytany was not represented on the committee (Ath. Pol., 44, 1-3). Thus in the period of ten tribes (i. e. through 308/7 B.C.), the committee would consist of nine men, viz. the Chairman and eight associates. In the period of twelve tribes (i. e. 307/6-224/3 B.C.) the committee would consist of eleven men, viz. the Chairman and ten associates. Inscriptions amply confirm and illustrate this.1 Twenty-two preambles are now known inwhich the whole committee was listed. The Chairman is always given first, the form being: rwGv wrpoE8pov EVEfIJr,Lt;Ev o 8Ecva. Then his eight or ten associates, never including a representative of the tribe in prytany, are listed consecutively: (Kait)

The List of Archontes, I.G. 2 II 1706

With reason Ferguson prompted a new examination of this inscription. Roussel, concluding one of the better reviews of Dinsmoors great Archons of Athens in the Ilellentstic Age, remarks, Attendons maintenant lapport des fouilles [de Iagora dAthenes] et rappelons que les fragments dui catalogue darchontes 1GG.2 II 1706 ont ete trouves dans la region de lantique agora. 2 Dinsrnoor had already called this archon list the keystone of [his] entire structure. 3 Six editions, and a long list of articles and notices, have made it known outside the circle of specialists. It is our earliest and fullest list of the nine archontes; it has long supported the Ferguson Law of Secretary Cycles; its internal order is the basis for another Law, that of Beloch. No one, however, had studied the stones themselves with quite that meticulous curiosity which such a document demands; and in the course of the present article, which attempts some such treatment, a new source of importance is, I think, added to the rest. For it appears that the stones bear evidence, not known hitherto, which militates against Dinsmoors arrangement of the cycles in this period, and in favor of the scheme of Ferguson.4