the attic stelai - The American School of Classical Studies at Athens

THE ATTIC STELAI 285
In Insc. Delos, 366 A, lines 21 and 23, the keramides are purchased by the pair. The
word is here modified by E'1T4vyo&. This is the only occurrence in Greek of this adjective.24
Liddell-Scott-Jones, marking the word as " dub. sens.," offer no definition.
Since the tiles were purchased in pairs, it would seem natural to consider a pair as
consisting of two unlike tiles, the cover tile and flat tile. Epizygos might indicate that
they were joined together. This is the interpretation for epizygos offered by Lattermann,
who bases his argument in part on prices for tiles.2" But more recently Larsen
has stated that the original tiles, which have been recovered from the Delian stoa to
which the inscription refers, prove that the pairs were not combined.26 He therefore
interprets epizygos as synonymous with zeuge. In the majority of these passages,
keramides means 'roof tile ' without distinction of cover tile or pan tile. In Stele VII,
the entry states that 221 keramides were sold.
3. KE'pcioq (II, 122; VII, 94, 99). Tile or rain tile. Keramos sometimes means
'the potter's clay,' but usually the product, as 'pottery, earthen vessel, tile.' 27 In
Stele VII, the word occurs in a list of roof tiles. In both lines 94 and 97 keramos is in
the singular number and is modified by palcaios, ' old.' Unfortunately, the price, which
to judge by all parallels would certainly have been less than a drachma, is not preserved.
4. Kepauog CoTEyacrTi-p (II, 112-123). Lower tile. In Part I, the following text
was offered for lines 122-123 of Stele II:
KEpacXo -rTE'[p]aq !!
O-TEpOS 4EVK[T-E]pt( a)
The surface of the marble is very weathered, as can be seen from the photograph
on plate 70 of Hesperica, XXII, 1953. What I originally read with dots as faint signs
for two units in line 122, consisting of marks in vertical alignment with the numerals
in the line above, cannot be traces from the ancient text. The following reading must
be substituted:
KEpapo
CTE[y]a{od}-
O-rEpO 3EV H [** ] I
The Attic form KEpa'lo is not to be taken as a dual, but as the genitive singular.
The stonecutter doubled the sigma in the middle of the second word.28 As was reported
24
It is not clear why Buck and Petersen, Reverse Index, p. 631, list this word as 46rltryov, hence
presumably a substantive.
25
Op. cit., p. 298. Lattermann has been followed by Noack (op. cit., p. 60, note 3). Ebert
(R.E., s.v. Tegula, 122) takes both tivy and elrtgvyot to mean that flat and cover tile were combined
into one.
26 Class. Phil., XXXVI, 1941, p. 158, note 8.
27
See Buck, Dictionary, p. 618.
28
Cf. otller examples in K. Meisterhans, Grammatik der Attischen Inschriften3, Berlin 1900,
p. 98.