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

THE ATTIC STELAI 325
it is only coincidence which has caused all trace of the Eleusis inscription to disappear,
while a major part of that at Athens has been recovered. Surely it is much easier to
suppose that Krateros' original description of the Stelai as standing in the Eleusinion
('EXEvo-tviw) was misunderstood at one of the stages in the transmission of this information
to Pollux, and that Pollux, who seems to have had little curiosity about such
matters, never bothered to check the location of the inscription.
Three times Pollux uses the name Alkibiades when he mentions an item from the
Demioprata, and it is tempting to try, with his help, to assign specific pieces of property
in the lists to Alkibiades' household. In X, 38, while discussing rugs and blankets,
Pollux remarks that " a certain amphitapes of Alkibiades was sold," and here his
information about the owner of the rug is presumably based on an identification made
by Eratosthenes, who could consult a full text of the Stelai, where the confiscated
properties were listed in groups under headings naming the dispossessed owner, and
who consequently knew to whom each item had belonged. In the incomplete text which
we have of the inscription, the word amphitapes appears in just one place, near the end
of Stele I, where nine rugs of different sorts are listed. Since the rug noted by Eratosthenes
need not have been from this group at all but could instead have appeared in
some other section of the Stelai now unreadable, this one Pollux citation would not by
itself give sufficient ground for assuming that the last section of Stele I lists Alkibiades'
personal possessions. However, Pollux identifies as Alkibiades' two more items
which occur in the same part of Stele I; the inlaid couch and the bed with two headrests
of Onomasticon, X, 35-36, can be found listed at I, 231 and 233, and the appearance
in the lexicon of the special descriptive adjectives, parakollos and amphikephalos,
makes it quite certain that Pollux's terms derived from this exact location in the Stelai.
It is safe, then, to assume that somewhere between line 49 of Stele I, where the last
item which certainly belonged to Kephisodoros is listed, and line 157, where the group
containing the amphitapetes begins, came two lines stating that the property next
listed had belonged to Alkibiades (cf. I, 12-13). This means that the ample supply
of rugs, curtains, pillows and coverlets, the expensive beds, the chests, and the foppishly
long list of himatia may all be thought of as the personal possessions of
Alkibiades. Apparently the beginning of Stele II, which seems to follow immediately
upon Stele I, continues the same list of properties at least through line 60.
A second case where Pollux may help to identify certain items as the property of
Alkibiades is less clear. Meritt has supposed that the proskephalaia skutina of Stele
25
II, 216, were the originals of the leather pillow in Pollux X, 40, where the lexicographer
writes: ". . . clearly they (pillows) were also made of leather and wool,
since among the confiscated properties of Alkibiades were a proskephalaion skutinon,
one of linen, and one of wool." If Meritt is right, then somewhere between line 206
25 Hesperia, V, 1936, p. 384.