The Pharos of Alexandria: At the Interface Between Non-Extant Inscription and Other Written Evidence
By Patricia A. Butz
The interface that occurs when an inscription, in some concrete form, survives in conjunction with a literary counterpoint (either transcription or some reference to it in the literary or historical tradition) has all the potential of a mixed-media discourse: rich and dynamic, but also a great luxury. Most extant inscriptions per se are not referred to in literary texts; yet when they are, there occurs a second validation, even if there are variants, attesting to the power of writing in any form and even begging the question whether or not there is a hierarchical scale involved.
Pride of Place: Remembering Herodotos in Late Hellenistic Halikarnassos
By Jeremy LaBuff
In the late second or early first century BC, the citizens of Halikarnassos commissioned a now unknown poet to compose a 60-line piece proclaiming the pride (τίμιον) of the city, and had it inscribed on stone. The poem consists of two major sections, the first recounting the different foundation moments of the city, which R. Gagné has shown also serve to represent the ritual space of the physical community. The second part lists the famous sons of the city, beginning with Herodotos, described as “the prose Homer,” and a subsequent series of poets native to the city.
Opinions About Honorific Statues: the Case of Dion vs. Rhodians
By Jelle Stoop
Why did Greek cities award life-like statues to individuals by civic decree? Focusing on two distinct types of discourse – the speeches of orators and the epigraphic vernacular of the city – I locate tensions between personalized opinion and civic discourse surrounding the award of statues. The statue habit was not the straightforward promotion of elites; rather, it marked the interplay of a civic institution with the ambition of individuals, both of whom had stories to tell quite of their own.
An Unlikely Muse: Temple Inventories, Their Readers, and Literary Epigram
By Elizabeth Kosmetatou
Archive inventories, published or not, detailing the votive holdings of temples, were almost certainly meticulously kept by all Greek sanctuaries, although it is debatable which outsiders, if any, had access to unpublished ones. A comparatively small number of sanctuaries, headed by Athens and Delos, commissioned their annual, or less frequent publication on stone.