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

194 W. KENDRICK PRITCHETT
and to their dwelling in phidaknai.'43 Hesychius and Suidas define them as small pithoi.
Athenaeus states that at symposia and the public mess the wine is mingled in
pithaknai.'44 Ion of Chios spoke of ladling wine with jugs (olpaei) from sacred
pithaknai.45 Liddell-Scott-Jones cites several examples in which the jar was used for
storing figs, etc. These references give a general idea of the size of the cask; its exact
capacity cannot be determined. 9
bopji6s. The phormos was much the most common dry measure used in our Stelai.
Unfortunately, it is a measure about which very little is known. C. D. Adams in his
commentary on Lysias has written, " The word means a basket; but as to how much
the standard grain basket held we have no knowledge whatever." 146 The word is not
discussed in Viedebantt's standard work on the subject of measures,147 nor in Tannery's
article Mensura in Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnacire; nor does it appear in the
index to Hultsch's Metrologicorum scriptorum reliquiae (2 vols., Leipzig, 1864 and
1866). But that it was an official measure referred to in a nomos is clear from Lysias,
XXII, 5.148 In the speech Against the Grain Dealers, it is stated that the provision of
the law was that no retailer, under penalty of death, should buy more than fifty
phormoi at a time. The oration was probably delivered in 386 B.C., at a time when the
Spartans had dislodged the Athenians from Aegina and were able to menace the
grain ships approaching the Peiraeus. B6ckh suggested that the phormos was a
' back-load,' similar to the cumera of the Italians, and that it could not have differed
much from the medimnos 149 which, being more than 52 liters, would probably have
held about 90 pounds in weight.150 There is a passage further on in the same oration
(XXII, 12) which states that the dealers sometimes sold grain " at a profit of a
drachma just as though they were buying a medimnos at a time." Shuckburgh states
that the profit of a drachma was per phormos,751 and if so, it is a not unreasonable
inference that the phormos and medimnos were identical. To judge from the prices
of wheat in our Stelai, we can say that there is no other Attic dry measure with which
143 Line 792.
144 XI, 483 d.
145 A. Nauck, T.G.F.2, 734.
146 Lysias, Selected Speeches, New York, 1905, p. 222. Cf. Gernet and Bizos, Lysias, II,
Paris, 1926, p. 82.
147 " Forschungen zur Metrologie des Altertums " in Abh. der konigl. sdchs. Gesellschaft der
Wissensch., Phil.-hist. Ki., XXXIV, no. 3, Leipzig, 1917.
148 In Aristophanes, Thesm., 813, there is reference to the wife who has stolen a phormos of
wheat from her husband. For an interpretation of the passage, see B. B. Rogers, ad loc.
149 A. Bockh, Staatshaushaltung der Athener3, I, p. 104. Cf. F. Hultsch, Metrologie2, pp. 106-
107.
150The standard U. S. bushel (35.2383 liters) holds 77.6274 pounds of distilled water at 39?
Fahr. The U. S. Government for customs purposes has established the equivalent of a bushel of
wheat as 60 pounds.
151 Lysiae Orationes, XVI, London, 1882, p. 318.