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Notes on lettering by some Attic masons in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2013

Ursula K. Duncan
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Extract

The Greeks used certain words for workmen's tools, apparently without any distinction as to whether they were employed by wood- or stone-carvers, stonemasons, metal-workers, jewellers, shoemakers, &c. It was sufficient for them that the words used described something that carved or chipped (σμίλη), something that bored (τρύπανον), something that hit (σφῦρα), or something that rounded off (τόρνος). There may, indeed, have been some distinction as regards the word κολαπτήρ, which is believed to have meant a stonemason's chisel (refs. in LSJ9 s.v.). But σμίλη seems to have been used also for a knife. For instance, σμίλης ὁλκοί is believed to mean ‘chiselled furrows cut into a wooden surface' (Aristophanes, Thesm. 779), as well as a sculptor's chisel (Anth. Pal. vii. 429), though perhaps too much reliance should not be placed on poetical usage. The word τρύπανον seems to have been originally applied to a bow-drill worked by a thong twisted round it, as in the Polyphemus story (Od. ix. 385), but later appears to have been used for any instrument that turned (τρέπειν). στάθμη was evidently a carpenter's rule (Od. v. 245, et al.), and κανών was also a rule used for making straight lines (Plato, Phil. 56b). σφῦρα was a mallet or hammer, whether smith's (Od. iii. 434, Hdt. i. 68), carpenter's, or mason's. These are the main tools used, we may presume, for the engraving of stone inscriptions. Of particular interest from the point of view of technique are the words apparently used for tools that rounded off, or perhaps carved circularly. In Homer men ‘rounded off the tomb’ (τορνώσαντο σῆμα) (Il. xxiii. 255), or a ship's hull (Od. v. 249). Compare another early allusion, in Herodotus' Scythian section (iv. 36): ‘they describe the ocean flowing round the earth which is made circular as if by a lathe’ (κυκλοτέρης ὡς ἀπὸ τόρνου).

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 56 , November 1961 , pp. 179 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1961

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References

I am greatly indebted to the Director of the American excavations in the Agora for permission to reproduce the photographs Plates 30a, c, d, 31a–c and Fig. 1, and to the staff of the Stoa Museum for much kind help and information; also to the Librarian of the Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge, for permission to photograph the squeezes shown in Plate 30b and Figs. 2–3.

1 Festschrift A. Rumpf (1950) 125.

2 Casson, , Technique of Early Greek Sculpture (1933) fig. 55.Google Scholar

3 Griechische Bildhauerarbeit (1927) 3 ff.

4 DAA = Raubitschek, , Dedications from the Athenian Acropolis (1949).Google Scholar Marathon base: Kirchner, , Imag. Inscr. Att. 2 (1935) pl. 9.Google Scholar

5 It is notable that, among the many ancient tools found in the Athenian Agora, there is no single recognizable chisel of the kind of which hundreds must have existed for use on the buildings, sculpture, and stelai on this site. One reason for their absence may be the necessity for constant resharpening, with resultant wearing-down of the chisels, the stumps of which may then have been melted down and recast.

6 Meritt, and West, , The Athenian Assessment of 425 (1934) 26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Kirchner, op. cit. 10, no. 12.

8 DAA no. 51.

9 Cf. Casson, op. cit. figs. 65–66.

10 Cf. Agora I 3701, Hesperia suppl. 9 (1951) 9, pl. 3. 7.

11 Op. cit. 48.

12 For details see Austin, , The Stoichedon Style (1938) 28, pl. 12Google Scholar, and DAA nos. 1 and 168.

13 Griechische Epigraphik (1957) 46.

14 Ibid.

15 Wade-Gery, H. T., CQ xl (1946) 101 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Austin, op. cit. 8, 29, 43, pl. 5; Kirchner, op. cit. 12, pl. 9.

17 Wilhelm, , AM xxiii (1898) 491Google Scholar; Austin, op. cit. 6 f., 10; Kirchner, op. cit. 18.

18 Austin, op. cit. 7, 12, pl. 2.

19 Hesperia xvii (1948) 95.

20 Casson, op. cit. 118, 205.

21 AJA xxxix (1935) 516.

22 Hesperia xvii (1948) 45, pl. 18. 36; Friedländer, , Epigrammata (1948) 32, no. 28A.Google Scholar

23 Meritt, , AJP lxix (1948) 312 ff.Google Scholar; Wilhelm, , Mnemosyne ii (1949) 286 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Loc. cit. (n. 1).

25 Casson, op. cit. fig. 85.

26 Ibid. 209 ff.; Raubitschek, loc. cit. (n. 1).