In this article, I re-examine a little-studied stele from Thebes on Mount Mykale in Asia Minor for the light which it sheds on the position this minor community occupied as a territorial possession of Miletus. Two texts were inscribed on this stele in the early fourth century BC, on its front and back. Both are exceptional: IPriene 363 in delineating the territorial boundaries of Thebes for an internal audience; IPriene 362 in setting out an onerous schedule of sacrificial offerings which those who pastured sheep or goats were obliged to observe. After identifying another inscription, IPriene 361, as an additional fragment of the same stele, and presenting photographs, texts, translations and commentaries, I argue that the stele functioned as a coherent monument regulating the activities of pastoral producers and that it was probably erected by the Thebans themselves in order to reinforce their territorial integrity. As such it represents a unique case study for exploring issues of territoriality and communal dependence in the Greek world.

In this paper, I address one characteristic of Classical Greek votive reliefs that has troubled scholars: the size of the gods. The reliefs depict mortal worshippers approaching gods and goddesses who are, almost invariably, larger in stature than the mortals. Scholars have generally explained the difference in scale to be art historical, rather than theological, in significance. Either the larger scale is a visual expression of the hierarchical superiority of the gods or the images of the gods represent over-life-size statues. In addition, it is widely accepted that votive reliefs are products of unsophisticated religious belief, ignorant of the conceptualization of an imperceptible, non-corporeal deity in Classical philosophy. In this paper, I accept the artistic proposition of votive reliefs at face value: in this genre, the gods are living, visible, material bodies, most often anthropomorphic in form and always larger in magnitude than mortals. I identify one significant parallel for this interpretation within Greek and Roman thought, namely, the conception of gods within the materialist theology developed by the late Classical writer Epicurus and, in part at least, by the fifth-century BC writer Demokritos. In the writings of the Epicureans and, it appears, the atomists, as in the votive reliefs, gods are human in form, very beautiful, self-sufficient, larger than humans in size and known by mortals through visual perception.

Two extreme views obtain as to the numbers of this fleet. Many modern writers have unaffectedly accepted, sometimes with conviction, the 1,207 (or 1,327) triremes of Herodotus. In sharpest contrast, we have Prof. Hans Delbrück's estimate of not over 300 triremes for Xerxes' fleet at the outset, or anyhow at Artemisium. Delbrück discards all Herodotus' numbers as equally worthless, and sets out to deduce the true figure from criticism of the naval battles and of probabilities; it leads to the result that at Salamis the Persians were actually outnumbered, which is the point that really matters. Several intermediate views have also been put forward; Dr. H. Welzhofer and Prof. J. Beloch have taken the figure as 1,207 ships, not warships, Welzhofer putting the warships at something over 400; Prof. J. B. Bury and Dr. J. A. R. Munro have suggested 800 triremes at the outset; while Dr. E. Meyer gives 600–800 to start with, not all triremes, and 400–500 at Salamis, the fleet being brought up by transports, etc. to the popular figure of 1,000. Naturally, most of these figures are guesses from the probabilities of the case; but Dr. Munro has recognised the crucial fact of the four divisions of the fleet.

In the last number of the Hellenic Journal Professor Burrows has once more attacked Pylos and Sphakteria, this time with the aid of certain allies from the Peloponnese and a whole battery of photographs. I am, I confess, loth to dye this ink-stained field a deeper hue, and I have certainly no intention of sending friends of mine to Pylos with a view to reviving a controversy which has gone far enough. At the same time I do not wish to appear to undervalue the evidence of Messrs. Carr Bosanquet, Crowfoot, and Lindsay, though it is not of a very decisive character. I should therefore like to point out, as briefly as possible, its true bearing, and in doing so I have the satisfaction of not having to treat it as hostile, though brought into court by the other side.

I should like to call attention to an attitude in some of the Attic stelai which has attraced little, if any, notice, while its meaning, so far as I know, has met with no consideration.

The best example of the attitude is to be found in the beautiful Plate XXIV. of Mr. Percy Gardner's ‘Sculptured Tombs of Hellas’ (Conze, Pl. LXXVIII). Mr. Gardner describes the sitting figure as ‘a lady stretching out both hands towards a matron who stands before her,’ certainly an inadequate description of a peculiar attitude. Conze, in his great work ‘Die Attischen Grabreliefs,’ says that the standing figure with the left hand takes hold of the right arm of the sitter on the under side (unterfasst). But this seems to me to miss the point. It is not the right arm but the right wrist of the sitter that is laid hold of. The forefingers of the standing figure are extended along the forearm and the thumb is raised at the wrist, so that the sitter's right hand lies softly in a sort of couch. From an artistic point of view the attitude is a remarkable one, being unlike that of any of the other best known stelai.

‘It is a tempting suggestion that it was the engravers of such texts—that is, either the sculptors themselves or the engravers employed by them—who were the pioneers of the new style’ (see below, Notes I, II and IV). This passage in Austin's book encourages me to say that every study of the early stoichedon documents of Attica must begin with the dedication of Nearchos signed by Antenor (see Note III). When considered in connexion with all known examples of the period, this inscription assumes a significance which is not apparent when it is studied in connexion with the list which Austin has recorded (p. 7), intentionally incomplete as that list is (see Note IV). The ‘lamentably fragmentary state’ of the greater part of these private dedicatory inscriptions (Austin, p. 64) cannot deter us from a careful examination which leads, as a rule, to the reconstruction of the monuments as well as to reasonable restorations of the inscriptions.

The clear distinction between dedicatory inscription and artist's signature is no peculiarity of the monument signed by Antenor, though the fact that both inscriptions are stoichedon, with the stoichoi independent of one another, shows the fully developed stoichedon style, as does the disregard of the syllabic division (see Note V).

In my quest for Aurai in Greek art, I have been surprised by the haste of commentators to label each and every running woman as a Nereid. Surely it should depend on the evidence. I begin with two Attic pyxides in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The first GR 1. 1933 was given and published by Miss Lamb in CVA Cambridge ii pl. 26. In Beazley, ARV 297, this vase was said to be in the Manner of Douris. In ARV 451 this vase has lost its own reference and acquired that of GR 10. 1934 (Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Reports xxvi [1934] 3, fig. 4; see the correction in Paralipomena p. 521 [Addenda II, to p. 376]).‘Nereids’ is an inadequate description of either vase; for both include different sexes.

The pyxis 1. 1933 is not in good condition. The central figure is surely not the male, as Miss Lamb says, but a running woman taking up twice as much room as anyone else. She holds one dolphin and has lost another, so she must be the heroine Thetis. On one side of her stands a man with a dark beard, but he holds an old man's crooked stick, so he must be Nereus in spite of his dark beard: and a frightened Nereid rushes by him to the left: on a third side a stationary woman has just frightened a woman with a sceptre off her chair; the sceptre holder must be Doris. Here then we have a Peleus and Thetis scene, but there is no room for Peleus.