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

THE ATTIC STELAI 291
instrument, see Aeschylus, fragment 196 N. In Aristophanes, Pax, 566-570, the
dikellc is mentioned with the sphyra and thrinax as a tool of the farm. Its purpose was
to break up the soil.
The price of a dikella in Athens in 327/6 B.C. was two drachmas. This figure
comes from the accounts of the epistatai of Eleusis, who listed twelve dikellai of a
stater and a half each. The stater is given as 8 obols,"0 and the total payment, as
restored by Kirchner, was 24 drachmas. In the Edict of Diocletian, the maximum price
for a dikella is given as 12 denarii (Col. XV, 43: reading of the Geronthrean stone).
The reason for the occurrence of the word dikella in an inscription relating to
building and in particular to stone-quarrying (I.G., 112, 1673) is not entirely clear."'
A hoe is hardly suitable in this context. The two prongs of the dikella were not
always parallel. Like skapane, the word was used as well for an instrument with
transverse hoe-like blades.32 Since the meaning of *KEXXa is to ' cleave ' or ' split ' 3
our instrument may be the 'trimming-hammer' described in Casson, op. cit, pp. 171-
173, as the tool used in the earliest stages of stonework. There is no specific reference
to this tool, and its name is not known. One end was flat, the other pointed, not unlike
the modern geological hammer. Casson has reported the marks of such a tool at an
ancient quarry. Very similar to this tool are the miner's pickaxe, illustrated in Petrie,
op. cit., plate XIV, no. 74, which had a point to split the stone and an axe for trimming,
and the quarryman's pick, illustrated in Petrie, plate XIV, nos. 71-72, in the shape
of a modern stone-pick. The stonecutter's mallet,"4 rectangular in shape with flat
heads, which is illustrated in Richter, op. cit., fig. 439, and the similar instrument with
longer handle which is depicted in the quarrying scenes in the Vatican manuscript of
Vergil,35 are other quarrying instruments with transverse blades.
5. 8pE'itavov (II, 128). Pruning-hook. Drepcanon is followed in the next line by
the word a,u1rEXopyOv, so spelled in the Attic script. I have interpreted this latter word,
not as the genitive plural of the noun a4A4rEXovpyyos which means a vineyard worker
(vinitor)36 nor as the new name of a tool, but as an adjective, synonymous in meaning
with d/9EXovpylKV , ' of' or ' for culture of vines,' modifying drepcnon. In the records
of Brauronian Artemis, the two words seem to be similarly joined (I.G., 12, 1526).
For the formation of the adjective, cf. a'V0E'Oovpy0s, -ov and similar adjectives listed in
Buck and Petersen, Reverse Index, pp. 629-631. According to Hesiod, Scutum Her-
30 I.G., II2, 1673, line 50. Cf. Kirchner's note ad loc.
3' For bibliography on the tools of the stone worker, see Richter, op. cit., p. 143, note 55.
32 See Buck, loc. cit.
83 See Boisacq, Dictionnaire4, s.v.
84 For words for hammer, see Bliimner, Technologie, II, pp. 194 ff.
Illustrated in Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire, I, p. 381, fig. 465; and Bliimner, Technologie,
III, p. 83.
36 See Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire, s.v. Vinitor. The ampelourgos was usually a slave.