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

200 W. KENDRICK PRITCHETT
[ . ]AA/\ ot'vo alioop[E]s 'ATIt*[KO] VI, 64-65
Kacapo HIII E1[1 ]]Td Xo[es]
Before any computation can be made with regard to the price of the wine, the
meaning of the phrases ' three-choes ' and ' seven-choes ' must be determined. Are they
modifiers which indicate the capacity of jars called amphoras, or do they refer to the
quantity of the wine sold? It should be noted, as both Miss Mabel Lang and Miss
Virginia Grace have kindly informed me, that there seem to be preserved from this
period actual jars of the capacity of three choes and of seven choes, containers of
different standard sizes.177 Secondly, one might expect, a priori, that reference to three
and seven choes, as quantities of wine sold, would be in the form XoEs III and XOEs FI I,
just as the references to the amphoreis of wine were by numerical symbols. Thirdly,
it may seem significant that if we have in the second entry 104 ' seven-choes ' amphoras,
the price for the total sale can easily be completed as 520 drachmas, which
would give an even number of five drachmas for the price of each amphora of wine.
Furthermore, the price of the 590 'three-choes' amphoras of the first entry could be
completed as 1180 drachmas, which would yield a price of 2 drachmas for each ' threechoes
' amphora, a price which is very close to being three-sevenths of the price of 5
drachmas per ' seven-choes ' amphora in the second entry. The ratio for the prices
in the two entries, as restored, would be 2.46: 1, which is almost exactly the ratio of
the quantities.
Nonetheless, the writer believes that the syntax will not permit this interpretation:
the ' three-choes ' and ' seven-choes ' must refer to the quantity of the wine sold.
If the capacity of the jars were designated, one would expect either genitives of
measure or adjectival forms in -xoos, not the nominative case. Such adjectival compounds
(E'r6aXoogJ etc.) are collected in Buck and Petersen, Reverse Index, p. 178.
This point of syntax is in my opinion fundamental. As to the use of cardinal numerals,
it may be noted that they were several times used in this same inscription (lines 29,
68, 69, 70) in lines very near the passages under discussion. Furthermore, there are
epigraphical parallels to the practice of putting large numbers as signs following the
noun and smaller numbers as cardinal numerals usually preceding the noun; see I.G.,
112, 1672, line 267 (Kpt AAAFII EKTEVS TpEtS XOWVMKES), line 279 (E8ttvot XHPIll
VULEKTEMa rErrapa U3o XoWYKES). For numerous other examples, see lines 264, 268, 269,
270, 270-271, 279, etc. As far as the even prices go, the two batches of wine need not
have been of exactly the same quality, and so the achievement of the same price per
unit in both entries need not be truly significant.
In our former entry, then, 6963 choes, or 590.25 metretes of wine were sold; in
177Also, see V. Grace's article "Standard Pottery Containers" in Hesperia, Suppl. VIII:
"Ancient pointed amphoras available for measurement do actually show very considerable variations"
(p. 176).