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

THE ATTIC STELAI 193
In addition, we know from Pollux that three pu46pputat of salt were sold in the
Demioprata.136
The liquid measures are:
Measure
xovg
dLp4OpEV'
a-Taptvog
Product
Wine
Wine, vinegar
Oil, olives, wine, vinegar
DRY MEASURES
n?7/OaKTLoV. There is insufficient evidence to determine the size of this measure, if
indeed it represented a fixed capacity. The word has hitherto been known only from
the reference in Pollux to the Demioprata. Pollux quotes an entry which may have
been copied from our Stele II, lines 136-137. Liddell-Scott-Jones gives no example
of uaKLO1
as a measure and but one of O-aKKO3,
in a papyrus dated in A.D. 185.1"7
uE'8t/tvo3. F. Hultsch has estimated the capacity of this dry measure in Athenian
standards as 52.53 liters,"38 which would make it approximately 1'2 bushels by United
States standards.'39 The U. S. Government, for customs purposes, assumes that 60
pounds of wheat or 48 pounds of barley comprise the equivalent of a bushel measure.
An Attic medimnos of wheat, then, would weigh 90 pounds; a medimnos of barley,
72 pounds.140
Sb8LaKV&ws. The Attic form is for =rnaKvts of other dialects. The word has hitherto
appeared only in Pollux, who knew it from the Demioprata,"4' although the diminutive
form pithcaknion is more common. Phidaknis occurs only once in our Stelai and then
in connection with barley.142 The alternative form phidakne (pithakne) is best known
from the picturesque language of the Equites of Aristophanes where the poet refers
to the influx of the country-folk into Athens, which was too small to contain them,
136 X, 169.
137
U. Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka aus Aegypten und Nubien, Leipzig and Berlin, 1899, no.
1096.
138 Op. cit., p. 703.
139
American excavations on the north slope of the Acropolis and in the Agora have brought to
light Athenian containers which had been used as official measures. Preliminary reports concerning
their capacities have clearly indicated that the older conclusions of Hultsch on Athenian metrology
are approximately correct. See, in particular, 0. Broneer, Hesperia, VII, 1938, p. 223; S. Young,
Hesperia, VIII, 1939, p. 280; M. Crosby, Hesperia, XVIII, 1949, p. 111; and H. A. Thompson,
Hesperia, XXIV, 1955, pp. 69-70. The estimates of Viedebantt, which had come to be regarded as
standard, are too low.
140 The ancients used measures, not weights, and this fact has misled some writers, including
Glotz, in their calculations; see N. Jasny, Amer. Hist. Rev., XLVII, 1941-42, p. 752, note 11; and
Johns Hopkins Univ. Stud. in Hist. and Pol. Sc., LXII, 1944, p. 80, note 34.
141 X, 74; cf. Pollux, X, 131.
142 V, 21.