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

THE ATTIC STELAI 323
the Attic Stelai or from the records of some other confiscation; finally the Athenaeus
passage offers no hint whatsoever as to the epigraphical source which Pollux was
using in his Book X.
K6hler 15 assumed that Poiltlx found his text of the Attic Stelai in the Psephismata
of Krateros, and offered as 'proof ' the assertion that the description of the
Stelai in X, 96, contains echoes of the accusation of Alkibiades as we find it in
Plutarch (Alkibiades, 22). It is indeed quite certain that Plutarch made use of
Krateros when he wrote this section of the Life of Alkibiades,'6 but the only phrase
of his which might be heard as similar to Pollux occurs not in the text taken from
the Psephismctca, where the verb is a&8KEwV (Alkibicades, 22), but in the preliminary
summary of the charge (ao-LE/3,E&v EpL r Co OE: E Alkibiades, 19), which was Plutarch's
own.
If Pollux was using a full collection of texts, like the Psephismcata of Krateros, it
is very curious that he chose to cite only the Attic Stelai, and yet failed to use the
Stelai time and again in his treatment of terms which we know appeared in the Attic
Stelai lists.'7 The impression left by Boox X is that Pollux thought of the Demioprata
as listing only furniture and household equipment, and that he could forget that the
property listed had not all belonged to Alkibiades. Surely these misconceptions would
not have persisted in the mind of one who knew Krateros' extensive explanations and
commentaries. Altogether, it is hard to believe that a man who had not tried to use
such a source when dealing with the workings of the Athenian state would now think
of looking through a cumbersome corpus of public inscriptions to find information
about furniture and kitchen implements.'8 And there is no reason to assume anything
so uncharacteristic; as a matter of fact, Pollux tells us at the outset, though with
singular lack of grace, where his new material came from. Having heard, he says, of
Eratosthenes' KEVoypatKOiv, he made a great search for it, but when he finally got hold
of a copy it proved disappointing, and he was forced after all to find for himself the
solution to many problems (X, 1-2). We may doubt, however, that he found his
Dermioprata references for himself, since their appearance in Book X is exactly
simultaneous with Pollux's supposedly fruitless perusal of the Skeuogrcaphikon.
The Skeuographikon, which in Pollux's time was circulated as an independent
work, was actually an extract, made by some later writer, from Eratosthenes' essay
On Attic Comedy."9 It is certain that here, as in his historical investigations, Eratos-
15 Op. cit., p. 398.
16 Krech, op. cit., pp. 30 f.
17
In Book X Pollux cites the Demioprata for 42 items, but he treats 65 others which appear in
our text of the Stelai without referring to the Demioprata.
18 See Jacoby, R.E., s.v. Krrateros: " Die Zuriickfiuhrungen aus Pollux, der K. nur einmal
(VIII, 26) aus lexikographischer Tradition zitiert, namentlich die der yrtto'7rpara im 10. Buche
gerade auf K., sind sehr zweifelhaft."
'19 Knaack, R.E., s.v. Eratosthenes: Naechster, op. cit.