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Studies in Greek epigraphy and history in honor of Stefen V. Tracy

 | 
Gary Reger
, 
Francis X. Ryan
, 
Timothy Francis Winters

2. The Wider Greek Word

Chapter 27. The Dates Indicated by the two Deadlines in the Decree on the Stala of Athana Lindia

Francis X. Ryan

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  • 1 Blinkenberg 1912; the text was edited with a brief commentary twice more by the same hand Blinkenb (...)
  • 2 The 365th priest, whose tenure was conspicuous for peace and prosperity (ILindos 347.4), was place (...)
  • 3 The widespread belief that the language of the decree, which clearly orders the engraving of an ac (...)
  • 4 Vide Ryan 2007.

1The most famous Lindian inscription, discovered in 1904 and published for the first time in 19121, contains a selective list of the dedications to Athana Lindia (columns B-C) and one of the epiphanies of the goddess (column D). The top part of the stone, not divided into columns, is occupied by a decree (section A) passed on the 12th day of Artamitios under the priest Teisylos, the son of Sosikrates, who in all probability assumed office in 99 BC2; appended to the decree is the notice that the two men chosen for the preparation and engraving of the stala were Tharsagoras, the son of Stratos, and Timakhidas, the son of Hagesitimos (A12). This decree, which orders the engraving of itself and of the as yet unwritten account of the dedications and epiphanies3, contains two deadlines. One of these, in its expression of the time limit wholly extant, does mention a month by name, but gives no very readily comprehensible information about the day, and so has been variously interpreted, although no scholar discussing this provision has betrayed an awareness of a differing interpretation. The other deadline, in its expression of the time limit only partially extant, neither in the lost nor in the preserved part of the text mentioned any month by name, and in consequence the provision, not recognized for what it was, was wrongly restored4. The long recognized deadline uses a participle in conjunction with the name of the month, while the newly identified deadline makes the time available for the activity in question coincide with the term of a magistrate. The challenge, then, is to attempt to extract a day from the participle in the former case, and a month as well as a day from the magistracy in the latter case. On our way to providing tentative answers to these questions it will not only be necessary to familiarize ourselves with the Lindian calendar, but actually to contribute to our knowledge of it. The activities to which the deadlines apply are not our concern here; below we strive solely to make deadlines which undoubtedly were precise for the Lindians also seem so to us.

The Deadline for the Selection of the Location of the Stala

  • 5 On the restoration of dàe rather than kaài or dàe kaài in A10 and on the restoration of tàon there (...)

[ἀποδειξάντω δὲ τòν τόπον ἐν] τῶι ἰερῶι τᾶς ’Αθάνας τᾶς Λινδίας ἐν ὦι σταθησεῖ ἁ στάλα τοὶ ἐπιστάται | ἐν τῶι εἰσιόντι ’Αγριανίωι (A, 10-11)5.

  • 6 Wilhelm 1930, 91-93 (= Wilhelm 1974), discussed the provision in A, 10-11, but concentrated on the (...)
  • 7 Ziegler 1936, 1055.
  • 8 In addition, a peculiarity of the wording in this clause confirms the reinterpretation of Ziegler (...)
  • 9 Wiemer 2001, 31, is the only scholar in the meantime who was acquainted with it.
  • 10 The clause in question (A, 10-11) in fact furnishes the strongest positive evidence to that effect (...)
  • 11 When Reinach 1913, 99 n. 4, stated that the stala was ready “un mois après l’époque du décret”, he (...)
  • 12 Blinkenberg 1912, 29-30, combining A, 10-11 as understood by himself (a deadline for the erection (...)
  • 13 Jacoby 1955, 449, believed Timakhidas to have had “bestenfalls 1½ monate”; Chaniotis 1988, 127, wa (...)

2K. Ziegler was the first and very nearly the last to realize that the deadline in this clause, which Blinkenberg and all others had misunderstood as one for the erection of the stala6 and hence for both the composition and the engraving of the account, in fact applies merely to the designation of the spot on which the stala would be placed7. In the Greek text there is talk of the erection of the stala and mention of the deadline in close proximity, and those who came to the text under the impression of what Blinkenberg had written were prevented from seeing what the Greek actually says; clearly Ziegler was right to associate the imperative with the deadline8. Although the advance made by Ziegler has been all but completely forgotten9, so that the deadline in the secondary literature is still wrongly applied to the erection of the stala, the deadline itself has not been completely ignored. But no scholar has discussed the deadline thoroughly enough to note divergent views on the length of time allowed by the clause in A, 10-11 and hence to justify his own view. Since it is nearly certain that Agrianios was the month which succeeded Artamitios10, but the decree was passed toward the middle of Artamitios11, and since at first glance it seems likely that the deadline in Agrianios is to be equated either with the first or with the last day of that month, it seems necessary to believe that the deadline fell either one-half month12 or one and one-half months13 after the passage of the decree.

  • 14 Higbie 2003, 21.
  • 15 Reinach 1913, 99. Cf. the translation of Burstein 1985, 60: “in the next Agrianios”.
  • 16 So translated Wiemer 2001, 30.
  • 17 One cannot adduce sources which date a discrete event to the tenth of the month (cf. Andok., 1, 12 (...)
  • 18 In Lindos itself the first third of the month could be marked with ἱσταμενου (IG, XII, 1, 905, 2, (...)

3The difficulty arises, or is made even worse than it is, when one attempts to express ἐν τῶι εἰσιόντι Ἀγριανίωι (A, 11) colloquially in a modern language, as Higbie did with her translation “in the coming month of Agrianios”14, or as Reinach had done with his, “en Agrianios prochain”15. Literally εἰσιόντι does not mean “coming” or “next”, both of which leave one in doubt as to whether the first or the last day of the month is meant; literally it means “entering”. The meaning becomes clearer when one realizes that the term is not an isolated one (cf. Hom., Od., 14.162: τοῦ μὲν φθινοντος μηνός, τοῦ δ’ ἱσταμένοιο); to the month “going in” corresponds, notionally at least, the month “going away” (cf. the psephisma ap. Dem., Or., 18, 37: Μαιμακτηριῶνος δεκάτῃ ἀπιόντος). It is then flatly wrong that the deadline was 1½ months later than the decree. The deadline, which does not specify the day, could indeed mean the beginning of the month and hence its first day–“zu Beginn des (Monats) Agrianios”16, “at the beginning of Agrianios” or “in Agrianios as it begins”. But the view that the deadline was ½ month later is not established as correct simply because the alternative view presented in the secondary literature is clearly wrong. Another possibility has never been considered: the participle might be a technical, hardly translatable term which designates the first third of the month, up to μὴν μεσῶν 17; although this particular participle is not otherwise attested at Lindos in this context, it is no mere assumption that the Lindian month was divided into thirds18. In this case the deadline would seem to have been the tenth of Agrianios.

  • 19 Thus the dating νουμηνίᾳ κατὰ σελήνην (Thc. 2.28) to distinguish the true new moon from the so-cal (...)

4We are confronted with another instance in which a contemporary document does not explicitly state what all contemporaries knew. We cannot find a reason for preferring one of the alternatives if we ask ourselves which of the two days was more likely to have been elided. The tenth of the month, although it did end the first decade, was of course just one of ten days in it, so one might suppose that the absence of an ordinal and the presence of a participle meaning “entering” favor association with the first, especially since the first in Greek calendars was not designated by an ordinal. But neither was the first marked by a participle such as ἱσταμένου; instead it was called the “new moon” (cf. TCam., 148, 1: Δαλίου νευμη[νίαι], which might not be literally true19. So one might counter that the participle despite its literal meaning provides no strong reason to favor the first over the tenth. The choice between the first and the tenth then proves difficult: the evidence favoring the first was less real than apparent, whereas no evidence favoring the tenth was found.

5Since we have been unable to determine whether the deadline is to be equated with the first or the tenth, it comes as a relief to realize that the formulation of this alternative might well be wrong because the assumption that this clause indicates a single day is subject to doubt. It seems best to take the provision to mean that the Epistatai were to make their decision on the location of the stala known in the period 1-10 Agrianios. Neither day, then, was indicated in what seems to have been the usual way, the tenth by its ordinal or the first by its name, for the very simple reason that neither day is identical with the preserved deadline, so that it in turn cannot be considered an elliptical expression of either day; the absence of a reference to a specific day tips the balance in favor of understanding the prepositional phrase as denoting the first decade of days in the month. It might seem strange if the decree thus did not even permit a decision, or the publication of a decision, during the rest of Artamitios. Such a postponement might well have had parallels in Lindian decrees; it was perhaps not a measure aimed at avoiding precipitate or securing deliberate action, but a sort of classification of the urgency of the decision concerned. Such a combination of a slight postponement with a fast approaching deadline might have been applied to matters which were deemed important, but which did not affect the safety of the city and so did not require immediate action.

  • 20 Ziegler 1936, 1055, paraphrases the clause as follows: “zu diesem Zeitpunkt (vermutlich dem ihrer (...)

6Here however we may ask not only why a postponement was made, but why even then no specific day was selected in advance for the announcement of a decision which would have been of general interest. In one sense the tenth of Agrianios was the deadline, the final day for the announcement of the decision, but it was the terminal point of a shortened and postponed interval, not the terminal point of a longer interval which ran from the passage of the decree. The peculiarly postponed interval might be a secondary development. It is conceivable that such announcements once were routinely scheduled for the first of the following month, so that the first of the month became a day on which the leading board issued edicts20. The first of the month would then in origin have been less a “deadline”, which implies that the decision might have been announced in the preceding days, than an “appointed day”: the postponement then would have been originally the deferment of the decision, the postponement of the day of issuing edicts. The appointed time for the announcement might then in the course of history have been expanded from a single day, the first day in the month, to its first decade in order to introduce some flexibility into the process; the Epistatai, the chief magistrates in the state, then had some discretion as to the exact day on which they made the announcement(s). The peculiarly postponed interval, which is a sort of sliding deadline, would then not have arisen from a “deadline”, i.e., the final day in an interval, on each day of which the decision was admissible, but by turning an “appointed day” into an “appointed decade”.

The Deadline for the Act of Engraving

  • 21 On the restoration of ἐπὶ rather than μετὰ in A, 8, v. Ryan 2007.

τοὶ δὲ αἱρεθέντες κατασκευαξάντω στάλαν | [λί]θου Λαρτίου ...[καὶ ἀναγραψάντ]ω εἰς αὐτὰν τόδε τò ψάφισμα, ἀναγραψάντω δὲ ... |... ἅ κα ἦι ἁρμόζοντα περὶ τῶν ἀναθεμάτων καὶ τᾶς ἐπιφανείας | [τ]ᾶς θε<ο> ῦ ποιούμενοι τὰν ἀ[ναγραφὰν τᾶς στάλας ἐπὶ τοῦ γρ]αμματέως τῶν μαστρῶν τοῦ νῦν ἐν ἀρχᾶι ἐόντος (A, 5-8).21

  • 22 Ziegler 1936, 1055.

7After denying that the clause in A, 10-11 sets a deadline for the erection of the stala, Ziegler could maintain that the inscription reveals nothing about the time constraints under which the co-authors worked: “Die Zeitangabe der Inschrift hat eben mit der literarischen Arbeit... gar nichts zu tun”22. But the new restoration of ἐπὶ in A, 8 turns its clause into a deadline, one which applies to the act of engraving and is therefore roughly equivalent to the one which was wrongly understood as applying to the act of placement. So there is a deadline in the decree after all which reveals how much time Tharsagoras and Timakhidas were allowed for their work. Unfortunately, the deadline does not mention a month, but rather the term of office of a magistrate which is wholly unknown to us. It is not surprising to see a deadline formulated in this way in a Lindian decree; an injunction of the later fourth or third century reads τοὶ ἐπιστάται ἐπιμεληθέντω τοὶ ἐν ἀρχᾶι ἐόντες (IG, XII, 1, 761, 50). And since Tharsagoras and Timakhidas were not incumbents of a regular office with a set term and it was therefore not possible to extract a natural deadline from the position which they held, to that extent it is not surprising that the deadline for engraving was formulated by mentioning the term of office of a magistrate not responsible for it. But it is not at once clear why this particular magistrate was named.

8The very first question which obtrudes, however, is why any officeholder is named, since the other deadline given in the decree (A, 11) is expressed in terms of a month. The answer might be that the month in question determines the formulation of the deadline. The month concerned in that other case, Agrianios, was the eighth month in the civil calendar, and, so to speak, a quite ordinary month; one may suppose that deadlines which fell during a term of office were dated by month and day, or by month and days (A11), while those which coincided with the end of a term of office were indirectly dated by month and day through mention of the term of the officeholder(s).

  • 23 Not all succeeding scholars have seen in A8 a reference to the composition of the accounts, but Bl (...)
  • 24 Vide van Gelder 1900, 236.

9But it still remains to explain why this one official was named, lest the idea recrudesce that he did somehow serve as a safeguard against the supposed youthful exuberance of Tharsagoras and Timachidas23. If one were to ask why the deadline was not expressed as the end of the term of office of the Epistatai, who were after all the chief magistrates of the Lindian community, in which capacity they presided at the meetings of the μαστροί and of the Λίνδιοι24, including those which passed the decree, one might be tempted to look for a way in which the secretary was more closely involved with the co-authors than the Epistatai. It does stand to reason that the decree, even though it was proposed by one Hagesitimos, the son of Timakhidas, was nevertheless redacted by the secretary. But we do not see the secretary mentioned in A6 with μετά, where the chosen men are ordered to inscribe the decree. It seems an inescapable conclusion that the secretary redacted the decree, but he did so in accordance with a law or established practice; the fact that he was not ordered to do so in this decree proves that the Lindians distinguished between the redaction of the text of a decree and the engraving of the same. It should have been possible generally for a secretary on his last day in office to hand over the redacted text of a decree to a αἱρεθείς, since the responsibility of the former stopped with the redaction, and the latter had no fixed term of office. In short, the redaction of the text of section A by the secretary will not explain why the deadline for the engraving of the whole (A, 8) is his last day in office.

  • 25 An inscription (IG, XII, 1, 828, 5) was cited by van Gelder 1900, 238, as proof of the high esteem (...)
  • 26 Pyrgoteles admittedly is named only on the second occasion, for the cost estimate which he had giv (...)
  • 27 The fact that the secretary could be said to be ἐν ἀρχᾶι (A, 8) probably does not exclude the poss (...)

10One might attempt to explain the mention of the secretary in the formulation of the deadline through probouleusis. This solution has the advantage of plausibly explaining the mention of the secretary as due wholly to the procedure followed in the passage of the decree, so that it is not necessary to return to the view that he coauthored or edited the account in columns B-D. A confirmation that it would be wrong to do so is provided by the fact that the secretary remains anonymous, whereas the men responsible for composing the account and engraving everything are identified in A, 12; on occasion the secretary of the councillors was one of the most distinguished men in the community25, but the wording of the decree does not lead us to believe that this secretary was more important than the secretaryship: of the single individuals mentioned in the decree–the priest Teisylos (A, 1), the speaker Hagesitimos (A, 2), Pyrgoteles the architect (A, 9-10)–, he is the only one whose name is omitted26. On the assumption that the terms of the Epistatai and the secretary coincided, one might object that one would still expect the former to be mentioned, since they were more important than the secretary and involved in probouleusis themselves as presidents of the council. To this objection one might reply that this decree did not originate with the Epistatai. A deadline mentioning the term of the Epistatai could likewise be considered a reflection of probouleusis, but from the presidential perspective. Hagesitimos, however, apparently was a member of the council in 99 BC, and it might then be seen as natural for him to have formulated a deadline not by referring to the Epistatai, who were chosen by the people (IG, XII, 1, 761, 2), but by referring to the secretary of the council, regardless how the latter was chosen27: given the Lindian custom of dating with ἐπί plus the title of an officeholder rather than the name of an office, επί plus the title of the secretary of the councillors, who is further identified as the incumbent, can be seen as the normal Lindian way of saying “during the current conciliar year”. A councilman might then have formulated the deadline in such a way almost without thinking.

  • 28 Although we do meet a γραμματεὺς τῶν μαστρῶν καὶ τῶν ἐτπστατᾶν an in the decree of AD 22 (ILindos,(...)
  • 29 Cf. van Gelder 1900, 240, who, proceeding on the assumption that the Rhodian βυυλά was constituted (...)
  • 30 Cf. Hiller von Gaertringen 1931, 767.
  • 31 Van Gelder 1900, 236: “Dass das Amt ein jährliches war, wie allgemein behauptet wird, lässt sich n (...)

11It might however be the case that the deadline was formulated very deliberately indeed, because the terminal date would have been different if the Epistatai had been mentioned, and different again if the priest of Athana had been mentioned. We have to ask whether the day of entry into office was in each case the same, and also, to complicate matters further, whether there, where the day of entry into office was the same, also the length of the term was the same. Although the secretary of the councillors, as his title shows, was not formally attached to a magistracy, but instead to an institution28, the Epistatai did preside over the council, so it would be natural to suppose that the terms of the secretary and of the Epistatai began on the same day and continued through the same period29. It would also be natural to suppose that the term of office of regular magistrates at Lindos was one full year, even though in the city of Rhodos the Prytaneis, who as the chief magistrates of the federal government had the presidency of the βουλά and the ἐκκλησία, held office for just half the year30. Since van Gelder subscribed to the view that the Rhodian βουλά served for six months and inferred that the Prytaneis did the same, he for that reason must have refrained from stating as a fact that the Lindian Epistatai held office for an entire year31. The state of our knowledge was however changed by the publication of the decree of AD 22. This document revealed that the term of the sacred treasurers actually lasted three years (ILindos 419, 13-14), and confirmed that the Epistatai held office one year long: τοὶ ἐπιστάται τοὶ ἄρχοντε[ς τ]òν ἐπ’ ἰερέως Καλλ[ιστρ]άτου καὶ Ροδοπείθευς ἐνιαυ[τόν] (ILindos, 419, 18-19). It stands to reason that at that time the secretary, too, held office for one year. There is no way of proving that both offices were annual already in 99 BC, but for the present purpose that does not matter, since Artamitios is in the second half of the year, which means that the secretary could not have had seven or more months left in his term even if his office was annual; in all probability both offices were annual already in 99 BC, since the term of the Epistatai obviously had not been made annual by AD 22 in order to bring it into line with the Rhodian terms.

  • 32 Börker 1978b ordered the months, as had been done previously, on the basis of their frequency on s (...)
  • 33 In the old Rhodian calendar which was in effect until or after ca. 150, under which the priest of (...)
  • 34 The extant list of the eponymous priests of Halios, in two columns, covers only the years 408/7-36 (...)
  • 35 When Blinkenberg in a comment on ILindos 419, 17-19, without citing any source, asseverates that “ (...)
  • 36 If the Lindian year down to ca. 150 began on a different date than the Rhodian, then one of the ha (...)

12The mention of the secretary rather than the Epistatai then should not affect the deadline, but it is impossible to say with certainty when their terms ended. According to the reconstruction of the Rhodian calendar by Börker32, until after ca. 150 BC the Rhodian year began with Panamos and ended with Hyakinthios, from which point it began with Karneios and ended with Thesmophorios, yet even after this change, which did not affect the relative order of the months, but only the month considered the first month, the magisterial semesters perhaps until ca. 50 BC were unaffected, so that one Boula continued to take up its duties at the beginning of Panamos, and its successor continued to lay down its responsibilities at the end of Hyakinthios33. The line just quoted from the decree of AD 22 proves that the eponymous years of Lindos and Rhodos coincided then34. If that also held true earlier, then the eponymous year in Lindos until or after ca. 150 began with Panamos and ended with Hyakinthios35, and the same must hold true of the mastroic year, since in the normal state of things all one-year terms, whether of councillors or of magistrates, must have been coextensive with the term of the eponymous priest, which was necessarily one year. And if the eponymous year began in Panamos in Lindos when it began in Panamos in Rhodos36, then the Rhodian decision to begin the new year three months later in Karneios might have been followed rather immediately by a Lindian decision to do the same. If thereafter for quite some time the mastroic year remained unchanged in Lindos, just as the bouleutic semesters did in Rhodos, then the secretary of the Mastroi who was in office on the twelfth of Artamitios had taken office at the beginning of Panamos and would leave office at the end of Hyakinthios; in other words, Artamitios would still have been in the Lindian conciliar and magisterial year of 99 BC, as it had been in the old Rhodian calendar, the tenth month of the year, so that the deadline set in A8, the end of the conciliar year, was a little more than two and one-half months away on the day the decree was passed.

  • 37 Cf. Börker 1978b, 204-205, 218.
  • 38 What is fixed about the month Artamitios is its astronomical position: according to Börker 1978b, (...)
  • 39 Cf. Börker 1978b, 214-15.
  • 40 Vide Börker 1978b, 201.
  • 41 On the amount of time Tharsagoras and Timakhidas would have needed and wanted for their work, v. R (...)

13The decision not to mention the priest of Athana in the formulation of the deadline in A8, which would then have more than doubled the time available to the co-authors, would not have represented a judgment that the matter was urgent, but instead the conclusion that more time was simply not necessary. The line quoted from the decree of AD 22 shows that the magisterial year in Lindos at that time was in sync with the eponymous year, which is hardly surprising, since by ca. 50 BC the bouleutic semesters in Rhodos were beginning three months later, so that the Rhodian eponymous year was coextensive with two full semesters rather than with one full semester and half of two others37. It is certainly possible that the Lindians, even if they did not immediately move the start of their magisterial and conciliar year to keep them in sync with the eponymous year, were nevertheless quicker than the Rhodians to do so and had done so by 99 BC. In that case there would be no difference between a deadline formulated by mentioning the secretary and a deadline formulated by mentioning the priest of Athana, so that mention of the former may be seen as normal in a probouleutic decree which emanated rather from one of the Mastroi than from one of the Epistatai; the secretary mentioned in A8 would then have taken office only at the beginning of Karneios and would not have left office until the end of Thesmophorios, and Artamitios would have been the seventh month of the conciliar year just as it was the seventh month of the eponymous year38; Tharsagoras and Timakhidas would then have had 5½ months to complete their work. And since the intercalary month from ca. 150 was added after Thesmophorios as a thirteenth month39, if 99 BC was an intercalary year, as three in eight years were40, then Tharsagoras and Timakhidas would have had 6½ months to perform their duties. But if in fact the deadline was 5½ or 6½ months away, we should not infer from this that those assembled had judged that so much time was necessary; instead we should see it as a routine deadline, from which the Lindians deviated when decrees were passed very late in the year and the time allowed was less than enough, but from which they did not deviate when decrees were passed earlier in the year and the time allowed was more than enough41.

  • 42 One might be tempted to find a τεκμήριον in the list of eponymous priests. When discussing the enu (...)
  • 43 Börker 1978b, 215-216: “Freiwillig und absichtlich haben die Rhodier diese erste Umstellung wohl k (...)

14Ockham’s Razor should make us ask whether we have unnecessarily complicated our picture of the Lindian calendar by attributing to it reforms peculiar to the Rhodian federal calendar: the imperial evidence shows that the Lindian eponymous and magisterial years were in sync and began in Karneios, and we should ask whether any evidence indicates that that was once otherwise42. One might argue against the existence of a Lindian eponymous year beginning with Panamos by noting that Börker had no explanation for the Rhodian reform43: it was to bring the Rhodian calendar in sync with the Lindian, one might maintain, that the federal government changed the Antrittstag of the priest of Halios; yet to make this case credible one would have to explain why calendars which had been out of sync since the Synoikismos suddenly needed to be brought into sync some 250 years later.

15Very strong evidence that the Lindian calendar had in fact undergone changes similar to the Rhodian is provided by the deadline in A, 8 itself: we may doubt that the Amtsniederlegung of the secretary of the Mastroi would ever have been used as a deadline in Lindos if this day had always been the same as the day of the Amtsniederlegung of the priest of Athana. One might rejoin that A, 8 is very strong evidence only if we were right to restore ἐπί. Beyond the fact that it was impossible to justify the restoration of μετά, i.e., to explain why the secretary should have been involved in the composition and engraving of columns B-D or why he should have been the custodian of the records cited only in the dedications of the foreign kings, and beyond the fact that ἐπί gives the decree what it lacks, a deadline for the completion of the work, there is evidence extant which renders quite credible the possibility that the term of the secretary was used in a Lindian decree to express a deadline and makes probable the existence of a Lindian conciliar year distinct from the eponymous one.

  • 44 Börker 1978b, 215.
  • 45 The μὲν which Hiller restored with the priest of Athana (IG, XII, 1, 762, 2) to balance the δὲ wit (...)
  • 46 According to the transcription (p. 115), at the beginning of the name of the month an A was wrongl (...)

16The datings in Lindian decrees have never been thoroughly investigated. The two earliest decrees from the time after the Synoikismos are not relevant: one bears no date (IG, XII, 1, 761), and the upper part of the stone on which the other was inscribed is broken off (SEG, 39, 729). The five remaining decrees exhibit an intriguing pattern in the naming of the year: the decree of 129 BC (ILindos, 233) names both priests, Lindian and Rhodian; the decree of 101 or 66 BC (SGDI, 4156), just the Lindian; the decree of 99 BC (ILindos, 2), just the one; the decree of AD 22 (ILindos, 419), both priests anew; the decree of AD 23 (IG, XII, 1, 762), again both priests. Börker had expressed the opinion that the Rhodian eponymous year began with Panamos “bis weit ins 2. Jh. v. Chr. und wahrscheinlich noch ein gutes Stück über dessen Mitte hinaus“44. The correctness of this view seems to be confirmed by the five Lindian decrees, which prove ‘prima facie’ that the Rhodian eponymous year was not changed before 129 BC and that the Rhodian change did not precipitate a Lindian one: for an indeterminate, but perhaps quite long period of time, it would seem, the Rhodian and Lindian years were out of sync, which induced the Lindians to omit the priest of Halios from the dating in the decrees of 101/66 and 99 BC. Yet this conclusion is predicated upon the regularity of the datings in Lindian decrees, and as reasonable as the assumption sounds, the little that we know belies it. Only the two year datings in the decrees from consecutive years are exactly alike45. In the decree of 99 BC [ἐ]π’ ἰερέως (A, 1) stands alone, without the name of the divinity, which is not necessary in a Lindian decree in which only one priest is named; the other decree which names only one priest, perhaps because it was set up in Physkos in the Peraia, is however the only one which uses his full official title: [ἐ]π’ ἰερέως τ]ᾶς Ἀθάνας τᾶς Λινδίας καὶ | [τοῦ Διòς] τοῦ Πολιέως (SGDI, 4156.1-2). The decree of 129 B.C., as a comparison of line lengths ensures, added [τᾶς Λινδίας] (ILindos, 233, 1), while those of AD 22 and 23 used the minimum number of words necessary to distinguish the Lindian priest from the Rhodian, ἐπ’ ἰερέως τᾶς Ἀθάνας (ILindos, 419, 3). One may doubt, though, whether one is justified in speaking of a formula even for the decrees of AD 22-23, since they differ radically in the method of naming the month and day, the earlier decree, passed on 16 Panamos, abbreviating the month with two letters and indicating the day with a numeral of two digits (ILindos, 419, 4: Παις), the later one, carried on the eleventh of Diosthyos, writing out the month in the genitive and the ordinal number for the day in the dative (IG, XII, 1, 762, 4: [Δ]ιοσ[θύ]ου ἑνδεκάται46).

17But it is the decree of 129 BC which deserves special attention, for it is singular. Unfortunately the stone was not seen by Blinkenberg, for he writes: “Nous ne possédons de cette inscription qu’une copie de Kinch (en majuscules), sans indication des mesures ni de l’endroit de trouvaille”. He adds: “La restitution proposée ne peut être regardée comme certaine”. It is a probouleutic decree, brought clearly enough on the motion of the Epistatai (ILindos, 233, 7-8: [ἐπιστατᾶν] | γνώμα), perhaps to honor a recent Khoragos; the last five lines of the incomplete decree are heavily restored, with only five or six letters at the left edge of the stone preserved, beginning with the formulaic (ἔδoξε μ-(l. 7). The prescript which is of interest to us is a little better preserved. The first six lines of the decree, with the restorations proposed by Blinkenberg, read as follows:

  • 47 Blinkenberg, ILindos, coll. 519-20, explains the restoration thus: “peut-être fils de Μελάγγας Ἀρι (...)
  • 48 Judging by the index in ILindos the name in l. 6 might be Πολύαινος, Πολυάνωρ, Πολύαρχος or Πυλυάρ (...)

ἐπ’ ἰερέως τᾶς Ἀθάνας [τᾶς Λινδιας]
Ἀριστοκράτευς [τοῦ δὲ Ἁλίου]
Ἀγεστράτου [γραμματεύοντος μας]
τροῖς καὶ ἐπι[στάταις Ἀριστίωνος?]47
Μελάγγα [ἐπιστατεύντων (?) - - - ]
Πολυα[- - - - - - - - -]48
(ILindos 233.1-6)

  • 49 In the list of eponymous priests (ILindos, 1), where all that can be seen is -ριος in the patronym (...)
  • 50 Blinkenberg, ILindos, col. 518.
  • 51 Sherk 1990, 282, stated: “A double dating of interest is found in a decree of 129 BC (no. 233)”.
  • 52 Habicht 2005b, 72 w. n. 7, states that the names of 219 of the 433 priests on the list are preserv (...)
  • 53 Blinkenberg, ILindos, col. 95, discerned the “règle triennale” after noticing that one brother hel (...)
  • 54 Despite his adoption, we know that Aristokrates held office in the year open to him by birth, sinc (...)
  • 55 Blinkenberg, ILindos, col. 518. Of course, even if the Rhodian decree does date to 129, the Euphra (...)

18Only one man named Aristokrates is known to have held the eponymous priesthood in Lindos, Aristokrates Pasikharios (and by adoption) Sosiphilou, who took office in 12949. Blinkenberg not only treated the date of the Lindian decree as exact, but through it claimed for the date of a Rhodian inscription mentioning a Rhodian eponym of the same name (Syll.3, 931, 29) “une certitude parfaite”.50 Although the dating of Blinkenberg has been accepted unconcernedly51, one must feel a certain unease when one realizes that the date of the Rhodian eponym here has been made dependent upon the Lindian one, for only about half of the names in the Lindian list can be read52. The form Ἀριστοκράτευς, moreover, does occur in the list as the patronymic of the priest of 242 BC, one Poluxenos, so we know that the name Aristokrates was in use in at least one other family supplying eponymous priests: thanks to the triennial rule53, a relative of Aristokrates Pasikharios would not have obtained the priesthood for 242 BC, but already that for 243 BC.54 At first glance Blinkenberg thus seems to have made a remarkably unskillful attempt to date the decree through the eponymous list which he had so long studied and himself edited. But Blinkenberg was not a rank beginner when he published the inscriptions in 1941, and he found evidence which seemed to confirm his dating: in the fragmentary decree preceding the Rhodian decree in question (Syll.3, 931, 27-28) and in that short Rhodian decree (ll. 31-32) a certain Euphranor, the son of Dardanos, is reported to have been chosen by the Euthalidai to perform certain tasks or seen performing one of them; on an honorific base securely dated to 148 BC by mention of the eponymous priest, one Euphranor Dardanou is listed as priest of Sarapis (ILindos, 224, 6-7). Blinkenberg assumed the identity of the two men, a man who held a priesthood in 148 and discharged an extraordinary function in 12955. But strictly Euphranor, if he be the same man in both cases, only allows us to date approximately the Rhodian decree in which he appears and which mentions the priest Agestratos alone; he does not help us in dating the Lindian decree, in which he does not appear, unless we make the further assumption that the Agestratos named there as one of two priests is the same man who is named alone in the Rhodian decree.

  • 56 F. Hiller de Gaertringen, IG, XII, 1, 890 (Berlin 1895), p. 144: „ Litterae bonae, alterius fere a (...)
  • 57 Hiller, Syll.3, 931, vol. 3 (Leipzig 1920), p. 17, refined his dating of the decree to „ saec. II (...)
  • 58 Bleckmann 1912, 252; when summarizing the findings of his dissertation on the chronology of the ep (...)
  • 59 Nilsson 1909, 149-50, no. 9; none of the exemplars uses the title ἰερέως, but two of them bear the (...)
  • 60 Differences of format do not immediately prove different years of manufacture, since the design of (...)
  • 61 Grace 1953, 118. Bleckmann 1912, 249, who considered that he had found around 260 eponyms on both (...)
  • 62 Blinkenberg, ILindos, col. 518.
  • 63 The assumption was out of date when Sherk 1990, 282, citing Syll.3, 931 and placing it in 129, sta (...)
  • 64 Grace 1963, 328 n. 20, who observed that a time-lapse between two homonyms can result in differenc (...)
  • 65 Grace 1952, 528.
  • 66 Finkielsztejn 2001, 184, 188; 125, 192.

19Since the attempt to date the decree through the priest of Athana only takes us so far, it becomes necessary at this point to make the attempt through the priest of Halios. This is not an entirely new endeavor, since the Rhodian decree was dated through its eponym before Blinkenberg published the Lindian decree and the list of the eponymous priests of Lindos. The Rhodian decree had at first been dated by epigraphists on the basis of letter forms broadly to the second century56. Scholarly investigation of Rhodian amphora handles soon made it possible to date the decree in accordance with the date established for the handles bearing the same name57. At first the experts were prepared to believe that all the handles attest the same priest of Halios. Bleckmann had admittedly placed the notation “häufig” beside the name of Agestratos, but he himself was not disturbed by this, thinking only that it proved Agestratos to belong to a period well attested on account of excavations58. The uneasiness about the date of the decrees from the year of an Agestratos hardly dissipates when one learns that Nilsson in a study of around 3000 amphora handles discovered at Lindos found 13 exemplars dated with ἐπί to the term of an Agestratos59, which in the context of his study is neither a particularly low nor a particularly high number: this then is a hint that there might have been more than one priest of Halios named Agestratos60 alone during the period when Rhodian amphoras were being stamped with names, which according to Grace “seems to have been from about the last quarter of the fourth century to sometime in the first century BC”61. At the time Blinkenberg assumed that the Agestratos of both decrees was the one “connu par un nombre d’amphores rhodiennes”62, this position was still tenable63. But those specializing in this abstruse evidence have long since determined that the handles attest two different eponyms named Agestratos, one of whom belongs in Period I,64 and the other of whom belongs in Period III65. The problems only begin there, since it turns out that neither of these men can be identified with a priest of 129: according to the arrangement of Finkielsztejn, Agestratos I was in office ca. 247 and Agestratos II was in office ca. 16166.

  • 67 Habicht 2003, 565-567, lists altogether 12 eponyms, including Agestratos III, “whose names do not (...)
  • 68 Habicht 2003, 553 n. 74.
  • 69 Habicht 2003, 566.
  • 70 Habicht 2003, 553, objected to the assignment of Aristogenes to ca. 129 by Finkielsztejn: “Actuall (...)
  • 71 Finkielsztejn 2001, 195, for Period V (ca. 145-ca. 108), which contains 38 years, lists 37 eponyms (...)

20The stamps however could prove that Blinkenberg was wrong to date the Lindian decree to 129, thereby making an Agestratos the priest of Halios in that year, only if we had reason to suppose that every eponym is attested on them. But there are several undoubted priests of Halios who are attested only epigraphically, as Chr. Habicht has recently confirmed67. In the same place he followed Blinkenberg in dating the Lindian decree to 129 and criticized Finkielsztejn for casting doubt on the existence of Agestratos III: “Agestratos III is real, not an ‘éventuel éponyme’..., although stamps for his year are not yet recorded”68. Even though the same eminent historian and epigraphist states that Agestratos III “was priest of Helios in the year that Aristokrates was priest of Athena Lindia, i.e. 129 BC, and dates the two decrees I. Lindos, 233, 1-2, and Syll.3, 931, 29ff”69, we should henceforth refrain from stating as a fact that the Rhodian decree must date to 129: Agestratos II was after all dated ca. 161 by Finkielsztejn, the lettering of the decree is of no avail when choosing between ca. 161 and 129, and Euphranor, as far as we know, might as easily have been a αἱρεθείς about 13 years before the priesthood of Sarapis as 19 years afterward. But for our present purposes it is enough to realize that the Rhodian decree does not have to be kept in 129 in order to keep the Lindian decree in 129, and important to realize that an Agestratos III might indeed have been priest of Halios in 129 BC, although the experts on amphora stamps do not list him as such and have constructed chronologies which leave absolutely no room for him in 12970 and barely leave room for insertions71, thus seeming to exclude the possibility that Blinkenberg might have been right to place the Lindian decree in 129. What gives confidence in the correctness of the date assigned to the Lindian decree by Blinkenberg is the calendrical confusion or the calendrical complexity which it exhibits, for it was around this very time that the Rhodian calendar was complicated through the divergence of the eponymous year and the magisterial semesters.

  • 72 As the more obscure man, the secretary merited a patronymic. It is theoretically possible that Ἀρι (...)
  • 73 There is epigraphic evidence suggesting this, as we shall see presently.
  • 74 Accame 1938, 220-22.

21The decrees from the years of Teisylos and Aristokrates are similar in making the term of the secretary a chronological indicator. But there is a big difference between making the final day of the term of the secretary a deadline, without naming him personally, as in A8, and mentioning him by name alongside the two priests, and indeed more fully than them72, as in ll. 3-5 of the new decree. The secretary here strictly is not a co-eponym inasmuch as only the two priests are governed by the preposition ἐπ’; since the noun γραμματέως would have been followed by genitives of those assisted, the datives of those served confirm that Blinkenberg was right to restore a genitive absolute. But the secretary, the son of Melangas, is here nevertheless virtually a coeponym. If the restoration of Blinkenberg is correct, and the participle stood directly behind the name of the priest of Halios, then this point is assured, for the month and day otherwise stood there (ILindos, 419, 4, IG, XII, 1, 762, 4); since another individual was named after the secretary, it seems likeliest that the month and day were here given neither in l. 3 nor even in l. 5, but at the end of l. 6. As to the individual named after the secretary, there is really not room for more than one of the Epistatai, since they would have been named with patronymics, but since in all probability only one actually functioned as president at any one moment73, the insurmountable problem with the restoration of Blinkenberg lies elsewhere: it is inconceivable that an Epistatas was mentioned only after the secretary. The expected order is found in a Lindian decree which Accame dated by the use of o for the diphthong ou and by letter forms ca. 440-420 BC, and which is shown to antedate the Synoikismos since the opening formula still has dçamwi where Lindçioij later stood74. The prescript of the decree was read and restored by Accame as follows:

  • 75 The only Lindian name known to have begun with Οἰ - is Οἰκίνας (LGPN 1, 347), which is attested on (...)

[ἔδοξε τᾶι βωλᾶι καὶ]
[τῶ]ι δάμωι, Οι……75
[ἐ]πεστάτει, Σ……
[.]ἐγραμμάτευε, Ἀγ[ά]
[θ]αρχος εἶπε.
(Cl. Rh. IX, 1938, 211, ll. 0-4)

  • 76 There should still be room for month and day at the end of l. 6; whether there was room to write o (...)
  • 77 The first line, where the restoration seems secure, has 27 letters, and the second line, in which (...)
  • 78 Both work: with the participle restored by Blinkenberg l. 3 has 27 letters, whereas it would have (...)

22The only man likely to be subordinated to the secretary in the prescript of a Lindian decree is the undersecretary, who at any rate was important enough to be included in an inscription dated “vers 170”, where he is named between the secretary of the Mastroi and the secretary of the Logistai when dedicating a small statue to Athana Lindia and Zeus Polieus along with the three Epistatai of the year (ILindos, 190); one may then restore [ὑπογραμματεύοντος] in l. 5, which means that Πολυα-in l. 6 begins the name rather than the patronymic76. The patronymic of 7 letters which begins l. 5 and the restored participle with 17 letters result in a full line of 24 letters77; the restoration tends to confirm that Blinkenberg was right to restore a participle rather than a finite verb in l. 378, since ὑπεγραμμάτευε with its 13 letters would result in a line of just 20 letters, which is too short, unless l. 6 does begin with a patronymic.

  • 79 Segre 1948, 65.
  • 80 So Habicht 2005b, 72-76.
  • 81 Vide Criscuolo 1982, 30.
  • 82 As a glance at the charts of Finkielsztejn, 2001 196-197, reveals.
  • 83 See the chart in Finkielsztejn 2001, 192.
  • 84 Lawall 2002, 318, on archaeological grounds reached the confirmatory conclusion that for “the conc (...)
  • 85 Finkielsztejn 2001, 193: “Les éponymes de la sous-période iiie n’ont pas de position individuelle (...)
  • 86 See the chart in Finkielsztejn 2001, 188.
  • 87 Finkielsztejn 2001, 184, 196.
  • 88 Finkielsztejn 2001, 188.
  • 89 Finkielsztejn 2001, 193, does however in another chart apply a dating over two years both to two p (...)

23The decree from the year of Aristokrates and Agestratos would seem to be the one Lindian decree with a full prescript, however poorly preserved, since it is hard to imagine a fuller prescript than one which probably named the undersecretary. Certainly it would have been possible to include this information in the decrees of 99 BC and AD 22; if one regards the inclusion of it in the decree from the year of Aristokrates as volitional, then it is quite possible that the decree antedates 170. The eponymous list is preserved for the years 170 BC-AD 27 with few exceptions: for three years (135, 134, 128) the name is wholly restored, for one year (130) there is no restoration at all, and for several years, where only the last part of the patronymic(s) is preserved, the name might or might not be restored. If the new fragment containing the names of 24 priests, published posthumously by Mario Segre79, covers the years 216-193 BC80, then the last gaps in the list prior to 170 represent the years 237-217 and 192-171 BC. Upon consideration, however, one probably would not wish to place Aristokrates in either of these big gaps. Until recently Agestratos II was dated ca. 183-ca. 175 BC81; one might therefore have dated the decree broadly to the years 183-175 on the basis of the federal eponym, and then refined the date on the basis of the local eponym, putting Aristokrates in a year which would make him a descendant of the priest of 242 BC, Poluxenos Aristokrateus, i.e., 182, 179 or 176 BC. But here at the end of Period III the difference between the older and newer chronologies is at its greatest, and it now ends 14 years later, in ca. 16182, and this means that Subperiod IIIe, to which Agestratos II belongs, is now dated to ca. 169-ca. 16183 and thus lies wholly outside the second big gap84. Moreover, Finkielsztejn has affirmed his belief that Agestratos comes at the end of this sequence85, which effectively removes the possibility of getting him back into the gap by putting him earlier in the subperiod and raising its absolute chronology slightly. Agestratos I, on the other hand, is both according to the older chronologies and according to the newer one earlier than the first of the big gaps mentioned86. Finkielsztejn, while dating Subperiod Ib to ca. 270-ca. 247, speaks of “la fourchette c. 259-247 av. J.-C.”, and although he arranges the first 11 names here alphabetically, the development of the amphora makes him confident about the position of Agestratos I: “Comme Agestratos I et Timostratos datent des amphores récentes de Ieroteles..., ces deux éponymes sont situés en fin de séquence”87. If one consults the chart, where the name of Agestratos I, not followed by a date, precedes the name of Timostratos, which is followed by the date ca. 24788, one initially supposes that the former is to be regarded as serving in ca. 248, but when one compares the chart with the text one must wonder whether these two names as well are listed in alphabetical order, and whether each is to be regarded as dating to ca. 247 or to ca. 248-24789. This dating of Agestratos I, along with certain other circumstances, makes it possible to suggest an alternative date for the decree copied by Kinch. Between Fragment D of the Lindian list, which preserves at least part of the nomenclature of 24 priests (270-247 BC), and Fragment E, which preserves most of the nomenclature of 7 further priests (244-238 BC), there is a small gap of two years. One might then place Agestratos I here. It would barely disturb the absolute chronology of Finkielsztejn to remove Agestratos I from ca. 248-247 to 246 or 245. One would have to prefer 245, so that his counterpart Aristokrates would become, as Aristokrates (Aristokrateus), the older brother of Poluxenos Aristokrateus, the priest of 242.

  • 90 Morricone 1949-1951, 365, proceeding on the assumption that the list begins in 408/7, established (...)
  • 91 Morricone 1949-1951, 365, by beginning the list in 408/7 established that the year 380/79 was rese (...)
  • 92 LGPN 1, 6, list three instances for Ialysos, nine for Kamiros and three for Lindos.

24But if one regards the inclusion of the name of the secretary in the decree which already names both eponyms as necessary, then it must have been necessary to mention the secretary, whose term presumably was as long as that of the eponymous priest, because the initial day of that term was different. It might have been the provision on penalties which made it necessary to name the conciliar year, since the magistrates charged with a task by the decree would have left office at the same time as the secretary, and would not have been the last incumbents of the office during the priesthood of Aristokrates. The external evidence gives us little reason to prefer either of the alternative dates for the decree. If we leave the decree in 129, then the Lindian priest is otherwise attested, whereas the Rhodian is not–at any rate, not with certainty–, and if we move the decree to 245, then the Rhodian priest is otherwise attested, whereas the Lindian is not. As far as we know, Agestratos would have hailed from Ialysos if priest of Halios in 12990, and from Kamiros if priest of Halios in 24591; the name Agestratos itself, however, does not tip the balance, since it is attested for all three of the old cities92. The one piece of evidence which seems to us to be decisive is the one which we have restored, the title of the undersecretary. If this restoration be right, then we do have reason to prefer 129 BC to 245 BC: it is conceivable that the secretary would have been mentioned at a time when there was no separate conciliar year, but that the undersecretary would have been mentioned already at that time is hardly so. The latter must have substituted for the former frequently enough, and the undersecretaryship would then never have been a mean position, but it would have been upgraded in importance, or at least in prominence, through the existence of a separate conciliar year. It is a reasonable assumption that the undersecretary succeeded to the secretaryship upon the death or resignation of his superior; there were then grounds to name him personally in the prescript, since in the event of his succession magistrates and others assigned duties in the decree became liable only upon his exit from office. It then seems best to regard 129 BC not as the upper terminus for the change in the start date of the Rhodian eponymous year, but as the lower terminus for the change in the start date of the Lindian eponymous year, a change precipitated by the Rhodian; both priests would have taken office in 129 BC only on 1 Karneios. The prominence of the secretary will be due to the fact that the start of the magisterial year in Lindos, like those of the semesters in Rhodos, at first remained unchanged; the son of Melangas then would have become secretary already on 1 Panamos in 129 BC (i. e., on what would have been by the old reckoning the first month of the year 129/8 BC, but was now toward the end of the year 130/29 BC).

  • 93 Blinkenberg, ILindos, col. 210, considered this Lindian decree “un peu plus ancien” than a Rhodian (...)

25Perhaps the best evidence of all for the existence of a distinct conciliar year in Lindos is evidence which strictly does not attest one, but which makes the willingness of the Lindians to tolerate a conciliar year alongside the eponymous year perfectly comprehensible. In the old decree of Agatharkhos, where an Epistatas was named before the Grammateus, the mention of the latter seemed very ordinary, and the fact that the secretary was mentioned by name in this, the oldest extant Lindian decree, might seem to indicate that his mention by name in later decrees was always possible and never significant. But there is another decree dating from the time when Lindos was still an independent city-state and probably to the last years of its independence93. The stone of basalt, found at Naukratis, proclaims a denizen of Egypt an agent and benefactor of the Lindians. The prescript runs as follows:

  • 94 ILindos, 16 app(endice): unfortunately the decree, republished with corrections and a very good ph (...)

ἔδοξε τᾶι βωλᾶι κα
ὶ τῶι δάμωι, Δέσπω
ἐγραμμάτευε, Ἀρχε
άναξς εἶπε’
(ILindos 16 app., ll. 1-4)94

  • 95 Accame 1938, 225.

26This proxeny decree, too, might seem at first glance to indicate that mention of the secretary was ordinary and that too much should not be made of it. One notices first of all the similarities with the other decree antedating the Synoikismos: the secretary is mentioned by name, without patronymic, and made the subject of ἐγραμμάτευε. But there is a striking difference. If we had only the decree of Agatharkhos, in which the Grammateus is subordinated to the Epistatas, we would assume that in a shortened version of the prescript only the latter would have been mentioned. The decree of Arkheanaxs proves this assumption wrong. If the order in which the two magistrates are named in the one decree confirms that the Grammateus was less important than the Epistatas, the omission of the Epistatas from the other decree reveals that the mention of the Grammateus was nevertheless somehow more essential. The reason was descried by Accame: “Senza dubbio il prescritto deve contenere la datazione dell’anno. Poichè nel secondo decreto di Lindo manca l’ἐπιστάτης che è nel nostro e in entrambi compare il γραμματεύς, la datazione evidentemente è data dal γραμματεύς, il quale è dunque con ogni probabilità il segretario della bule e sta in carica quanto la bule”95.

  • 96 Recently doubt was cast on the view that the councils of the old Rhodian cities began to be called (...)
  • 97 Since the preserved list of the priests of Halios is generally considered to begin already in 408, (...)

27The full significance of this conclusion does not seem to have been recognized. That the secretary was chosen annually was up to this point supported only by the analogy of the Epistatai, for whom an annual term is not attested until the first century AD, but now an annual term for the secretary, if not explicitly attested, is at least strongly implied by a document of the fifth century BC96. But that is not the half of it. If the prescript in the decree of Arkheanaxs was correctly interpreted by Accame, then the secretaries ∑-(ca. 440-420 B.C.) and Δέσπων (ca. 415 BC?) are the earliest known eponyms in Lindian history. The Epistatai apparently were denied eponymity since they were three in number. The eponymity of the priest of Athana was therefore an innovation of the last decade of the fifth century BC; his Antrittstag must have been brought into line with that of the priest of Halios in 406, if necessary97, and was probably adjusted immediately when the Rhodian calendar was later reformed since the initial month of the term of the priest of Athana had never been different from the initial month in the term of the priest of Halios during the whole period in which both priesthoods were eponymous. If the magisterial year in the fifth century had not been beginning on 1 Panamos, it would have been moved so that it would begin on 1 Panamos from 406, since the Lindians would otherwise not have made the priestly year eponymous: if their intent had been to ignore the priestly year, they might have ignored the existing federal priestly year and so did not need to create a local priestly year in order to have one to ignore. Since the secretary was reduced from a national to a regional one by the Synoikismos, whereas the prestige of the priesthood of Athana was in no wise diminished thereby, the transfer of eponymity from the one office to the other at that time is understandable. It also becomes easier to understand why the Lindians more than 250 years later did not insist upon moving the start of the magisterial year to the first of Karneios when moving the start of the eponymous year to that date: they remembered that there had been a time when the secretary had been the eponymous official of Lindos, when the conciliar and the eponymous year had been one and had borne his name; to make him the eponym of the conciliar year alone was natural once they had decided to tolerate a separate conciliar year. Of course the reasons in any given year for opposing the alignment of the magisterial year with the sacerdotal eponymous year might have been personal or even petty: a dislike for one of the magistrates in office and hence a reluctance to let him be one of the few to serve a second time in Panamos, Dalios and Thesmophorios; the hope of a man to be himself in office in the conciliar year which was extended to 15 months.

  • 98 Börker 1987b, 200-201.
  • 99 Vide Schmidt 1938, 2224-2225.

28It seems necessary to conclude that for a time the eponymous and conciliar years at Lindos were out of sync. Since it is reasonable to assume that the years originally were coextensive, they ceased to be so through the introduction of a change in the initial date of one of them. It is extremely hard to believe that the conciliar year was changed rather than the eponymous: together with the position that the priestly year had always begun with Karneios, this would mean that the two years got out of sync when the start of the conciliar year was changed to some month other than Karneios, but were by AD 22 brought back into sync by changing the start of the conciliar year back to Karneios, where it had originally been. It is easier to believe that the eponymous year was changed first in Lindos as in Rhodos, and that the start of the conciliar year was changed only later. Thus by 42 BC the priest of Athana had been taking office for more or less one full century on the first of Karneios. According to the reconstruction of Börker98, who equated Badromios (V) with February, Karneios (I) would correspond to October, but began in September when the preceding month, the last month of the previous year, was not intercalary. And since the second and final battle at Philippoi took place on 23 October 42 BC99, we can now see that Philippos Philippou, the priest of 42/1, ushered in the reign of peace: he would have been in office perhaps less than a month, or at most very little more than a month, on the day of the second battle.

  • 100 Börker 1978b, 206.

29Once the practice of dating by the mastroic year had been introduced, it might have been continued, especially in probouleutic decrees proposed by Mastroi, even after the two years had been made to coincide once again. Since Börker has argued that one of the eponymous priests mentioned in a Rhodian document which proves that the Rhodian eponymous year and magisterial semesters were out of sync belongs “ins späte 2. oder frühe 1. Jh. v. Chr.”100, it is however tempting to take the use of the mastroic year as a deadline in the contemporary Lindian decree (99/8 BC) as proof that the same situation prevailed at the same time in Lindos. Although we cannot completely exclude the possibility that the deadline in A8 is a vestige from the time when the conciliar and eponymous years were different, and therefore cannot know with absolute certainty whether the secretary of the Mastroi of 99 BC took office on the old date, the first of Panamos, or on the new one, the first of Karneios, it seems probable that the cumbersome conciliar dating was abandoned before it could become fossilized. The decrees of the early imperial period no longer date by the secretary, and strictly not even the decree of Hagesitimos does so. It should have been possible, however, for the secretary to be named even in the imperial period, when the conciliar and eponymous years coincided, whenever a very full prescript was desired, and it should have been possible, to save space, to leave the secretary unnamed even in the period at which these years diverged. It is quite possible that the decree of 99/8 preserves the arrangement to which the Lindians had come during the period at which the two years were out of sync: for the sake of simplicity the eponymous priest was named alone in the prescript, or with the priest of Halios, to date the year, whereas deadlines, which affected magistrates or others specially selected or elected pursuant to the decree, were expressed by mentioning an incumbent magistrate or the incumbent board, but without naming them personally. This arrangement had been followed when the years had coincided, and so it masks rather than reveals the calendrical complexity in the case of regular magistrates, since one might otherwise assume that their exit from office was simultaneous with that of the priest, but obliquely indicates the existence of separate years in the case of extraordinary officials, at any rate in those instances where the deadline applicable to them was expressed as the terminal day of an annual officeholder other than the priest. Since the prescript in the decree of 99/8 is simplified at least to the extent that it leaves out the priest of Halios, whose term was coincident, it seems likely that simplification is the reason why the prescript passes over the secretary, whose term was divergent, and likely that the title of the secretary is mentioned in the deadline in part because the year in question, a conciliar one distinct from the eponymous one, would have been recorded in a fuller prescript by mentioning him personally.

Notes

1 Blinkenberg 1912; the text was edited with a brief commentary twice more by the same hand Blinkenberg 1915, and ILindos 2, in: Lindos, Fouilles de l’Acropole 1902-1914, II. 1: Inscriptions, Berlin 1941.

2 The 365th priest, whose tenure was conspicuous for peace and prosperity (ILindos 347.4), was placed by Blinkenberg in 42 BC, the peace in question being understood as that following the battle of Philippoi (ILindos, 1, coll. 90-91); Teisylos as the 308th man named in the list thus becomes placed in 99 BC. This reconstruction derives support from several Roman coin types, as newly interpreted, which show that the condition of the island was an issue of international importance in 42 BC: triumviral types of that year promise to liberate Rhodos and to punish the robbery of the temple of Halios; v. the section “Die Strahlenhäupter auf den Münztypen des Jahres 42 v. Chr.” in Ryan 2005, 84-86.

3 The widespread belief that the language of the decree, which clearly orders the engraving of an account which does not yet exist, is a pretense, is in fact based on premises–that the literary sources had already been consulted because the decree does not mention them; that a very short period of time was allowed to the co-authors–which are long since obsolete; the conclusion has remained thanks to inertia, but it is now entirely without foundation; v. Ryan 2007 and 2008.

4 Vide Ryan 2007.

5 On the restoration of dàe rather than kaài or dàe kaài in A10 and on the restoration of tàon there, v. Ryan 2007.

6 Wilhelm 1930, 91-93 (= Wilhelm 1974), discussed the provision in A, 10-11, but concentrated on the connectives and on the postponement of the subject, adverting neither to the length of the interval nor to the activity on which a time limit was imposed.

7 Ziegler 1936, 1055.

8 In addition, a peculiarity of the wording in this clause confirms the reinterpretation of Ziegler 1936; v. Ryan 2007.

9 Wiemer 2001, 31, is the only scholar in the meantime who was acquainted with it.

10 The clause in question (A, 10-11) in fact furnishes the strongest positive evidence to that effect which is still extant; v. Ryan 2007.

11 When Reinach 1913, 99 n. 4, stated that the stala was ready “un mois après l’époque du décret”, he probably was unmindful of the point in Artamitios at which the decree was passed or not attempting to be precise.

12 Blinkenberg 1912, 29-30, combining A, 10-11 as understood by himself (a deadline for the erection of the stala) with A8 as restored and explained by himself (a requirement that the incumbent secretary be present during the archival research of the co-authors), stated that “le secrétaire ne fonctionnait qu’un mois”, thus making the last day of Artamitios the end of the term of the incumbent secretary and the first day of Agrianios the deadline; cf. Ziegler 1936, 1055: the time allowed for the decision ran “bis zum Beginn des folgenden Monats Agrianios”.

13 Jacoby 1955, 449, believed Timakhidas to have had “bestenfalls 1½ monate”; Chaniotis 1988, 127, was under the impression that the stala had to be erected by the end of Agrianios: “Dem Antrag nach sollte die Stele innerhalb von zwei Monaten aufgestellt sein”.

14 Higbie 2003, 21.

15 Reinach 1913, 99. Cf. the translation of Burstein 1985, 60: “in the next Agrianios”.

16 So translated Wiemer 2001, 30.

17 One cannot adduce sources which date a discrete event to the tenth of the month (cf. Andok., 1, 121: τῇ δεκάτῃ ἱσταμένυυ) as proof that the day would have had to be mentioned in a deadline which treated the first decade in the month as a unit.

18 In Lindos itself the first third of the month could be marked with ἱσταμενου (IG, XII, 1, 905, 2, ILindos, 181, 2); while ἀπιóντος apparently is not attested for Rhodos, the last third of the month there was a separate unit with backward counting (cf. Samuel 1972, 110).

19 Thus the dating νουμηνίᾳ κατὰ σελήνην (Thc. 2.28) to distinguish the true new moon from the so-called new moon of the calendars.

20 Ziegler 1936, 1055, paraphrases the clause as follows: “zu diesem Zeitpunkt (vermutlich dem ihrer nächsten Sitzung) soll die dafür zuständige Behörde, die Epistaten, den Platz... bestimmen”. At first we assumed that he meant a session of the assembly, but perhaps he did mean a meeting of the board. It does not seem likely that the members of the latter would have announced to the assembly a decision on which it was not expected to take action.

21 On the restoration of ἐπὶ rather than μετὰ in A, 8, v. Ryan 2007.

22 Ziegler 1936, 1055.

23 Not all succeeding scholars have seen in A8 a reference to the composition of the accounts, but Blinkenberg 1912, 31, believed that “le travail... a été soumis... à la censure du secrétaire pour le cas où le jeune savant y exprimerait telle ou telle idée en désaccord avec l’opinion courante à Lindos”; Jacoby 1955, 446, called the accounts “so gut wie sicher anfängerarbeit”.

24 Vide van Gelder 1900, 236.

25 An inscription (IG, XII, 1, 828, 5) was cited by van Gelder 1900, 238, as proof of the high esteem in which the secretaryship was held: „ Denn ein gewesener Eponymos der lindischen Gemeinde wird dort gefeiert, der darauf zur Würde eines γραμματεὺς μάστρων emporgestiegen war“. The same text is preserved three other times (ILindos,. 311, 313, 314), not always wholly nor with the same line division; it is the inscription on the base of a statue honoring Zenodotos, the son of Diophantos, whom we know to have been priest of Athana in 64 B. C. The relevant part of the text reads: γραμματεὺς μάστρων | ἰερατεύσας Ἀθάνας Λινδίας | καὶ Διòς Πολιέως καὶ | Ἀρτάμιτυς Κεκοίας (IG, XII, 1, 828, 5-8). Since he was priest of Artamis Kekoia in 62, Blinkenberg (ILindos, II, col. 591) must have relied on the order in which the positions are named when concluding that he was secretary “peut-être avant” his tenure of the priesthood of Athana. The use of the noun νραμματεύς before the aorist participle speaks for the order which van Gelder took to be correct, a secretaryship following the priesthoods in or after 61, but it should be noted, firstly, that Zenodotos remains an exception, and secondly, that there is no warrant for believing that he was generally perceived to have capped his career thereby (“emporgestiegen”).

26 Pyrgoteles admittedly is named only on the second occasion, for the cost estimate which he had given (A, 9-10), not for the future communication on the exact measurements of the stala (A5-6). It must have been expected that it would be Pyrgoteles who would give the specifications on the stala a little later that same year; the position could hardly have had a term shorter than one year, since it was continuable: we find a certain Νικαίνετος as architect both in A.D. 22 (ILindos, 419, 141-142) and in A.D. 23 (ILindos, 420, b, 32).

27 The fact that the secretary could be said to be ἐν ἀρχᾶι (A, 8) probably does not exclude the possibility that he was appointed by the council.

28 Although we do meet a γραμματεὺς τῶν μαστρῶν καὶ τῶν ἐτπστατᾶν an in the decree of AD 22 (ILindos, 419, 100-101, directly after mention of the μαστρυί and ἐπιστάται), and a γραμματεύων μαστροῖς καὶ ἐπιστάταις in a decree of 129 BC (ILindos, 233,3-4, where the motion, ll. 7-8, is an [ἐτπστατᾶν] | γνώμα), as well as a ὑπογραμματεὺς μαστρῶν καὶ ἐπιστατᾶν an in an inscription on the base of a dedicatory statue (ILindos, 190, 7-9, where three Epistatai had been named), which implies the existence of a superior γραμματεύς, and although it seems likely enough that this is the expanded version of the title of the secretary of the councillors–the last inscription mentioned contains on one line the title γραμματεὺς μαστρῶν (ILindos, 190, 5), which perhaps is shortened so that the text fills 12 half-lines below the superscription–, one may infer that the secretary of the councillors assisted the Epistatai only when the latter functioned as presidents of the council.

29 Cf. van Gelder 1900, 240, who, proceeding on the assumption that the Rhodian βυυλά was constituted anew semiannually, concluded that also the πρύτανεις, the highest federal magistrates, were replaced twice each year: “Rath und Prytanen hangen in Rhodos sehr eng zusammen”. It is surprising then that van Gelder (1900, 245) cites with approval the conclusion of Bottermund 1882, 38, that the Rhodian γραμματεὺς Βουλᾶς (cf. IG, XII, 1, 49, 8) held office for one full year: for Bottermund that view was consistent, since he believed that the Prytaneis were in office the whole year (p. 28), but van Gelder should have halved the term of the secretary as he did that of the Prytaneis.

30 Cf. Hiller von Gaertringen 1931, 767.

31 Van Gelder 1900, 236: “Dass das Amt ein jährliches war, wie allgemein behauptet wird, lässt sich noch nicht ausmachen. Doch sprechen hierfür viele Analogien“.

32 Börker 1978b ordered the months, as had been done previously, on the basis of their frequency on stamped amphora handles, but took as a model not the ancient production of sun-dried rather than fired bricks in Italy, which goes back to Nilsson, but instead the modern production of pottery in Greece (Börker 1978b, 194, 196-97). Trümpy 1997, 170 n. 725, concerned herself, apart from the names and the seasons, solely with the order of the months and referred to Börker for discussion of the Jahresanfang.

33 In the old Rhodian calendar which was in effect until or after ca. 150, under which the priest of Halios and the Prytaneis of the first semester took office on the 1st of Panamos, the order of months as established by Börker (cf. 1978b, 218) was as follows: Panamos (I), Dalios (II), Thesmophorios (III), Karneios (IV), Theudaisios (V), Pedageitnyos (VI), Diosthyos (VII), Badromios (VIII), Sminthios (IX), Artamitios (X), Agrianios (XI), Hyakinthios (XII).

34 The extant list of the eponymous priests of Halios, in two columns, covers only the years 408/7-369/8 and 333/2-299/8 (or 327/6-293/2) BC; v. Morricone 1949-1951, 354-55 (= SEG, 12, 360). Nevertheless, enough is preserved of this list to date exactly the fire which destroyed the Lindian temple and to raise it by 50 years, from 342/1, the date favored by Blinkenberg, to 392/1; thereupon v. Habicht 2003, 542 n. 3.

35 When Blinkenberg in a comment on ILindos 419, 17-19, without citing any source, asseverates that “l’année de fonction du prêtre commençait par le mois de Θεσμοφόριας”, he apparently is relying on older reconstructions of the Rhodian calendar, such as at IG, XII, 1, 4 (ca. AD 100), which always made Thesmophorios the first month, and then on the basis of the coincidence attested by the inscription quite logically making Thesmophorios the first month of the Lindian year also; Blinkenberg himself, though, would not have wanted this statement of his to be generalized: it has long been recognized that the Rhodian calendar in the second century BC was different, since an Ehreninschrift (Syll.3, 644, ca. 172-170 BC?) shows that the priest of Halios in office in Dalios (later the eleventh month) was still in office in Badromios (later the fifth month of the succeeding year); cf. Börker 1978b, 208. The equation of Thesmophorios with September by Börker rendered it unsuitable as the first month of the eponymous year, since the preceding month shows no special “Mond-oder Sonnenstellung..., nach deren Beobachtung der Jahresanfang ständig hätte korrigiert werden können” (Börker 1978b, 212); the Rhodian eponymous year which began with Panamos, which Börker equated with July, began “astronomisch gesprochen mit der ersten Sichtbarkeit der zunehmenden Mondsichel nach dem Sommersolstitium, also mit derselben Mondphase, mit der auch in Athen der Jahresanfang bestimmt wurde” (Börker 1978b, 209-210).

36 If the Lindian year down to ca. 150 began on a different date than the Rhodian, then one of the harsh criticisms of Jacoby is largely deprived of its force: “Was Ti(makhidas) vor allem vorzuwerfen ist ist... eine vollkommene hilflosigkeit in dingen der chronologie, die zugleich zeigt dass er trotz aller Χρονικαὶ συντάξεις, die er gelesen haben will, auch keine wirkliche kenntnis der rhodischen geschichte besass. Er datiert die ersten beiden epiphanieen nach dem Heliospriester des rhodischen staates... und er hat sich nicht einmal die mühe gemacht sein fundamentaldatum, den lindischen tempelbrand, den eine seiner rhodischen quellen auf den Heliospriester datierte, auf den Athenapriester umzusetzen“(1955, 448-49). Plainly one would have to know, under the circumstances mentioned, the exact month of the Rhodian year in order to know which of the two partially coincident Lindian years corresponded to it; even with the same start date, an event in either the final or the initial month of a Rhodian year could not be equated with a Lindian year in the absence of information on the intercalations in both places. In all probability, however, the decision not to give the Lindian dates for the first two epiphanies, which should in each case have been stated in at least some of the chronographic sources consulted, so that no conversion would have been necessary, was probably a conscious one and due to the intended worldwide audience for the stala: the Lindians, being Rhodians, did not perceive the federal dating as a foreign one, and the Rhodian years were both elsewhere on the island and outside of it more familiar.

37 Cf. Börker 1978b, 204-205, 218.

38 What is fixed about the month Artamitios is its astronomical position: according to Börker 1978b, 200-201, Artamitios corresponds to April when the calendar had just been adjusted by intercalation. The decree passed on the twelfth of Artamitios under the priest Teisylos Sosikrateus was then passed in March or April of the Roman year 98 BC.

39 Cf. Börker 1978b, 214-15.

40 Vide Börker 1978b, 201.

41 On the amount of time Tharsagoras and Timakhidas would have needed and wanted for their work, v. Ryan 2008.

42 One might be tempted to find a τεκμήριον in the list of eponymous priests. When discussing the enumeration placed in that document in a column to the left of the names, a Δ before every tenth name and the exact figure before every hundredth name, Blinkenberg (ILindos, col. 90, n. 1) noted: “Devant le nom correspondant à l’an 150 est gravé un P difficile à expliquer”. In a comment s. a. to the priest in question, Arkhitimos Hagesipolios, he stated: “Je ne saurais expliquer le chiffre (?) P, gravé d’une manière peu soignée dans l’espace réservé ailleurs aux numéros d’ordre des prêtres” (col. 122). In any case it is clear that P, which represents the number 80, cannot here be a numeral, since the priest in question was in office 43 years before the one marked HHH and was therefore the 257th priest in the list. It then might seem that P marks Arkhitimos as the last priest to have taken office in Panamos. It perhaps is a less serious objection that P by itself as an abbreviation for a month could stand for Pedageitnyos and that there was room for the standard abbreviation PA (cf. ILindos, 419, 4), since in the context it would only have been necessary to distinguish Panamos from Karneios. But one might reasonably expect, if P stands for Panamos, to see a K before the name of the 258th priest, since this space was not occupied by a D, and one should give some weight to the careless execution of the letter.

43 Börker 1978b, 215-216: “Freiwillig und absichtlich haben die Rhodier diese erste Umstellung wohl kaum durchgeführt“; there must however have been some end in view.

44 Börker 1978b, 215.

45 The μὲν which Hiller restored with the priest of Athana (IG, XII, 1, 762, 2) to balance the δὲ with the priest of Halios has to go, as ILindos, 419, 3 now shows.

46 According to the transcription (p. 115), at the beginning of the name of the month an A was wrongly inscribed.

47 Blinkenberg, ILindos, coll. 519-20, explains the restoration thus: “peut-être fils de Μελάγγας Ἀριστίωνυς, qui fut pr. de Poseidon Hippios vers 149”.

48 Judging by the index in ILindos the name in l. 6 might be Πολύαινος, Πολυάνωρ, Πολύαρχος or Πυλυάρατυς.

49 In the list of eponymous priests (ILindos, 1), where all that can be seen is -ριος in the patronymic and -λoυ in the adoptive patronymic, his name is restored in accordance with the inscription on a statue base (ILindos, 232).

50 Blinkenberg, ILindos, col. 518.

51 Sherk 1990, 282, stated: “A double dating of interest is found in a decree of 129 BC (no. 233)”.

52 Habicht 2005b, 72 w. n. 7, states that the names of 219 of the 433 priests on the list are preserved, a figure which does not include certain partially preserved names nor priests attested only in other inscriptions.

53 Blinkenberg, ILindos, col. 95, discerned the “règle triennale” after noticing that one brother held office in the third year after the other and that other relatives are separated by a multiple of this interval. Cf. Fraser 1953, 24: “The existence of the triennial rule is a sure indication that the twelve Lindian demes were divided for purposes of election into three groups. It seems natural to conclude that these three divisions were the tribes, which otherwise played little part in the life of the city”.

54 Despite his adoption, we know that Aristokrates held office in the year open to him by birth, since the priest of 132, whose given name is lost, himself had the patronymic [Πασι]χάριυς, and he was not adopted; Blinkenberg, ILindos, 1, col. 124, stated that the priest of 132 “était sans doute frère du prêtre de l’an 129”. It changes nothing if Aristokrates took on the damos of his adoptive father, for then the latter clearly belonged to one of the three remaining damoi in the group.

55 Blinkenberg, ILindos, col. 518. Of course, even if the Rhodian decree does date to 129, the Euphranor Dardanou which it mentions, a αἱρεθείς who made a request to the Rhodian Boula and Damos and was responsible for the engraving and erection of an honorific stala in Netteia, might conceivably be the homonymous grandson of the man who was priest of Sarapis in 148 BC, since the priest might have been appreciably older in 148 than the a αἱρεθείς was in 129. The priest would however not have been elderly in 148, since his father, Dardanos Euphranoros, was alive then and serving as Epistatas without pay (ILindos, 224, 35-37, w. Blinkenberg, col. 502); if the latter was an elder statesman at that time, his son might have been on the threshold of middle age in 148.

56 F. Hiller de Gaertringen, IG, XII, 1, 890 (Berlin 1895), p. 144: „ Litterae bonae, alterius fere a. Chr. n. saeculi, apicibus parvis ornatae sunt“; H. van Gelder, SGDI, 4225, vol. 3.1 (Göttingen 1899), p. 564: „ Der Schrift nach etwa aus dem zweiten Jahrh. v. Chr.“; cf. Michel, Recueil, p. 322: „(IIe s. av. J.-C.)”.

57 Hiller, Syll.3, 931, vol. 3 (Leipzig 1920), p. 17, refined his dating of the decree to „ saec. II in.”, and for the line naming the priest of Halios reported the dating of Bleckmann 1912, 252, who had already identified the Agestratos of the Rhodian inscription with the Agestratos of the amphora handles and assigned him to the period “ca. 220-180 a. Chr.”

58 Bleckmann 1912, 252; when summarizing the findings of his dissertation on the chronology of the eponyms, he stated: “Die am häufigsten vorkommenden gehören in die Jahrzehnte von ca. 220-180 v. Chr. oder von ca. 180-150 v. Chr. Es sind die Eponymen, die in den für die Chronologie der rhodischen Eponymen besonders wichtigen Funden von Pergamon (ca. 220-180 v. Chr.) and Karthago (-ca. 150 v. Chr.) vorkommen“.

59 Nilsson 1909, 149-50, no. 9; none of the exemplars uses the title ἰερέως, but two of them bear the head of Halios.

60 Differences of format do not immediately prove different years of manufacture, since the design of the stamps “dépend du caprice du fabricant” (Nilsson 1909, 71); the stamps can therefore vary widely in one and the same year. Grace 1953, 122, duly recorded Agestratos in her list of 173 Rhodian eponyms occurring on handles. One must, however, be aware of the fact that Agestratos is here listed once because this is rather a list of eponymous names than of eponymous individuals; owing to the problem posed by chronology, she consciously “omitted all indications of repeated names” (p. 118).

61 Grace 1953, 118. Bleckmann 1912, 249, who considered that he had found around 260 eponyms on both inscriptions and handles, had already placed them in the period “von ca. 300 bis in die 2. Hälfte des 1. Jahrh. v. Chr.” The “chronologie basse” of Finkielsztejn 2001, 196-197, as a glance at the charts he provides shows, is not “low” because he sets the beginning of stamping later, or at any rate much later: he estimates the duration of stamping at ca. 274 years, from ca. 304 to ca. 31 BC; he and Grace in fact allow the stamping to extend over the same period. The new chronology is “low” inasmuch as the number of years in the fourth of the seven periods is reduced, with the result that the first three periods are slightly longer and extend somewhat later (cf. p. 186 and the English summary, p. 232). In both schemes Period IV ends ca. 146, but here it is necessary to offer a “chronologie haute” as against Grace. Cf. Börker 1978a, 36 n. 12: “V. Grace setzt als Grenze zwischen Periode IV und V das Jahr 146 – Zerstörung Karthagos und Korinths – an. Da aber mindestens in das seit 149 eingeschlossene Karthago keine nach 150 hergestellte rhodische Amphore mehr gelangt sein dürfte, können dort gefundene Stempel spätestens den Eponymen des Jahres 150 nennen”. Palaczyk 2001, 319, 328, accordingly begins his Period V with the year 149 BC. The ineluctability of the revision suggested by Börker becomes patent when one realizes that the year which he gives for the production of amphoras, 150 BC, is a Rhodian year, whereas the year which he gives for the start of the siege, 149 BC, is a Roman one; in the quotation above “keine nach 150 hergestellte rhodische Amphore” means “keine nach Juni 149 hergestellte rhodische Amphore”.

62 Blinkenberg, ILindos, col. 518.

63 The assumption was out of date when Sherk 1990, 282, citing Syll.3, 931 and placing it in 129, stated that “Agestratos is known to have been priest of the Sun in Rhodes”, and then observed (of this priest of 129) that “his name also appears on a number of Rhodian amphora handles”.

64 Grace 1963, 328 n. 20, who observed that a time-lapse between two homonyms can result in differences “in the styles of both jars and stamps”.

65 Grace 1952, 528.

66 Finkielsztejn 2001, 184, 188; 125, 192.

67 Habicht 2003, 565-567, lists altogether 12 eponyms, including Agestratos III, “whose names do not (so far) appear on amphora stamps, but only on an inscription or inscriptions”; he does not repeat here the name of Damainetos II, whom he had numbered initially among four priests, including Agestratos III, who “do not seem to be those of the stamps, but their namesakes” (p. 545); Damainetos II is named as eponym in an honorary decree of a Rhodian association which cannot be dated as narrowly as the amphora stamps (p. 558). In a later contribution Finkielsztejn (2004, 118) offered three reasons for the absence of eponyms from stamps: “a bad year for the production of wine, even a disease, or the sudden death of an eponym before the beginning of the production of amphorae”.

68 Habicht 2003, 553 n. 74.

69 Habicht 2003, 566.

70 Habicht 2003, 553, objected to the assignment of Aristogenes to ca. 129 by Finkielsztejn: “Actually it is Agestratos III who is firmly dated to 129 by I. Lindos 233, 1-3.... For Aristogenes another year close to that of Agestratos III must be found”.

71 Finkielsztejn 2001, 195, for Period V (ca. 145-ca. 108), which contains 38 years, lists 37 eponyms; his Subperiod Va, which ends with a priest dated “c. 134/133”, contains only 12 names for the thirteen years. Palaczyk 2001, 328-329, has already filled all 61 of the years from 149 to 89 BC. While Finkielsztejn dated Aristogenes “c. 129” (placed in 126 by Palaczyk 2001), Palaczyk assigned Kallikrates III to 129 (dated “c. 130” by Finkielsztejn). Finkielsztejn (2001, 171 n. 32) had taken brief notice of Agestratos III, referring to him as “un éventuel éponyme” and stating that the assignment of the date 129 BC “par Criscuolo” is not supported by the ceramic evidence, which leaves the impression that this dating is an aberrant view of the author concerned. In fact, Criscuolo 1982, 30, had simply written, when commenting upon a stamp she assigned to Agestratos II: “Il Blinkenberg ricorda un Agestratos sacerdote di Halios in carica nel 129 a.C.” Palaczyk did not overlook Agestratos III, but actually placed him in the year 143, although he accepted that he was priest of Halios in 129 (2001, 327-328), since he considered the eponyms “Beamte” and the stamps to show “die Namen der rhodischen Beamten” (2001, 326); when discussing two men whom he considered to be priests of Athana Lindia as well as Rhodian eponyms, he slipped, however, and stated that they “wahrscheinlich auch als Heliospriester” (2001, 326) served in the same order. Habicht 2003, 543-545, has now concluded on the basis of the high coincidence of eponyms–not of names only, but of individuals–on the ceramic and in the epigraphic evidence that “it will be no longer possible to doubt that the eponyms on the Rhodian amphora stamps are in fact the priests of Helios”.

72 As the more obscure man, the secretary merited a patronymic. It is theoretically possible that Ἀριστοκράτευς is a patronymic, and that Ἀγεστράτoυ either is one or stands before one, but ILindos 419, 3-4 and IG, XII, 1, 762, 3-4 predispose us to believe that the priests also here were named by their given names alone.

73 There is epigraphic evidence suggesting this, as we shall see presently.

74 Accame 1938, 220-22.

75 The only Lindian name known to have begun with Οἰ - is Οἰκίνας (LGPN 1, 347), which is attested only once, in the genitive form Οἰκίνα,, as the patronymic of an Εὐαγόρας who was priest of Halios in 319/8 or 313/2, a Lindian year; v. Morricone, “I sacerdoti di Halios” 355, 359, 365-66. It is more likely that what seemed to be I was the first vertical stroke in N. To judge by the index of Blinkenberg, the Epistatas was named Ὀνάσανδρος, Ὀνασιφῶν, Ὀνάσων, Ὀνομακλῆς, Ὀνόμαστος, Ὀνυμυκλῆς or Ὀνύμων. By itself Οἰκίνας is apparently too short for the space, and it seems likely on the basis of a contemporary decree to be examined presently that the Epistatas and the Grammateus here, like the proposer of the motion, were actually named without patronymics.

76 There should still be room for month and day at the end of l. 6; whether there was room to write out both depends on the lengths of the patronymic, the month and the ordinal. There is in any case not a choice between writing out everything and using an abbreviation with a numeral, since it was possible to write out the month while using a numeral for the day.

77 The first line, where the restoration seems secure, has 27 letters, and the second line, in which the restoration is certain, has 23 letters.

78 Both work: with the participle restored by Blinkenberg l. 3 has 27 letters, whereas it would have 24 if the finite verb were restored there.

79 Segre 1948, 65.

80 So Habicht 2005b, 72-76.

81 Vide Criscuolo 1982, 30.

82 As a glance at the charts of Finkielsztejn, 2001 196-197, reveals.

83 See the chart in Finkielsztejn 2001, 192.

84 Lawall 2002, 318, on archaeological grounds reached the confirmatory conclusion that for “the concentrated series of Rhodian stamps” in the Pergamon Deposit “the most likely closing date... is during the very late 160s or early 150s”.

85 Finkielsztejn 2001, 193: “Les éponymes de la sous-période iiie n’ont pas de position individuelle bien fixée, mais je pense qu’Agestratos II est bien le dernier et qu’il a probablement précédé de très peu Peisistratos, le premier de période IV. Ceci est indiqué par l’année 161 av. J.-C. fixe que je lui attribue”.

86 See the chart in Finkielsztejn 2001, 188.

87 Finkielsztejn 2001, 184, 196.

88 Finkielsztejn 2001, 188.

89 Finkielsztejn 2001, 193, does however in another chart apply a dating over two years both to two priests at once and to one alone.

90 Morricone 1949-1951, 365, proceeding on the assumption that the list begins in 408/7, established that the year 399/8 was reserved to Ialysos.

91 Morricone 1949-1951, 365, by beginning the list in 408/7 established that the year 380/79 was reserved to Kamiros.

92 LGPN 1, 6, list three instances for Ialysos, nine for Kamiros and three for Lindos.

93 Blinkenberg, ILindos, col. 210, considered this Lindian decree “un peu plus ancien” than a Rhodian decree dating to 411-408; Accame 1938, 218, 222, partly because the decree of Agatharkhos uses in place of ψάφισμα the apparently archaic form [ψ]άπιγμα (l. 53), considered it “più antico” than the other decree antedating the Synoikismos.

94 ILindos, 16 app(endice): unfortunately the decree, republished with corrections and a very good photograph by Blinkenberg, was not given a separate number by him.

95 Accame 1938, 225.

96 Recently doubt was cast on the view that the councils of the old Rhodian cities began to be called μαστροί in or very soon after the creation of the federal state; cf. SEG, 50, 733. As far as ILindos, 16 app. is concerned, we can see that we no longer have to rely on the forms βωλᾶι and δάμωι as proof that the decree antedates the unification of 411 or the Synoikismos of 408/7; that the decree belongs to the 5th century, and, to be more precise, that it antedates 406 BC, the initial year of the eponymous list, is shown by the fact that it dates itself without naming any priest. Thus the decree of Arkheanaxs, rather than being a doubtful case, actually shores up the old view of the terminology.

97 Since the preserved list of the priests of Halios is generally considered to begin already in 408, while that of the priests of Athana fairly clearly does not begin before 406, any initial adjustment which needed to be made would have been made to accommodate the Lindian eponymous year to the Rhodian rather than the reverse.

98 Börker 1987b, 200-201.

99 Vide Schmidt 1938, 2224-2225.

100 Börker 1978b, 206.

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