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

THE ATTIC STELAI 217
squeeze has made it clear that the price in Stele II, 223, should be read either as
I or as F, since the angle of the break in the stone makes it impossible to determine
whether or not there was a horizontal stroke. The reading of one drachma is more
consistent with other furniture prices, and it is probable that the price in II, 227, was
1 drachma 2 obols.
4. Opavi8tov (I, 140).3 Bench. This form, with a suffix in -t&ov, has hitherto
been found only in Pollux, X, 47 (= Aristophanes, frag. 399) in a section which
lists various words for stools including diphroi, bathrca, and skolythra. The form is
listed as a diminutive in Liddell-Scott-Jones; it may more accurately be grouped with
instrument nouns and names of tools which are equivalent to their primitives.40 As
BIumner notes,41 the thranos is defined in the scholium to Aristophanes, Equites, 369,
as the tanning-bench or the form on which the tanner stretches the hide. From
Plutus, 545, it is clear that a thranos may be a wooden bench or seat. In Galen, 19,
104, it is explained as an excrement-stool. The word is defined by Saglio in Dictionnaire,
IV, 111 lb, as a stool or bench; 42 and is grouped by Hug in R.E., .v. Stuhl, 399
with other words for stools.
Price. The price of our thranidion is clearly given as five drachmas.
5. Opo'vog (II, 145, 236). Chair of honor. Like many of the other terms in our
list, the word thronos underwent a change and broadening of meaning in its ancient
usage. At the time of Homer it was the chair which belonged especially to gods and
to princes 4 (although, as Buck 44 has pointed out, it was not absolutely restricted to
use by such persons) ; yet in late Greek, thronos could mean any sort of seat or chair."
However, since most literary appearances of the word from the fifth and fourth
centuries continue the old idea that the thronos is the seat of authority,46 the obvious
method of finding out what a thronos was is to collect the chairs which we find pictured
as seats of gods and kings. This is what Richter has done,47 and what Hug 48 has also
So
See Buck, Dictionary, p. 481. For the derivation and cognates, see also Boisacq, Dict onnaire4,
s.v. 6pavo3. The Homeric form threnys is used for a 'footstool. Cf. Athenaeus, V, 192 e. In
her treatment of the footstool (Ancient Furniture, pp. 73-75), Richter has taken threnys as the title
word.
40 So W. Petersen, Gr. Dim. in -tOv, p. 226.
41
Technologie, I2, p. 266.
42
Cf. Hesychius, s.v.
43 Od., I, 130; VI, 308; VII, 95; X, 314; IT., XXIV, 515, 522.
44Op. cit. p. 481.
45 For instance, Pollux, VII, 182. Hug, R.E., s.v. Stuhl, assumes that this was true as early as
the period of our inscription.
46:For instance, Pindar, Pyth., 4, 271; Euripides, Heracl., 753; Aristophanes, Ranae, 765;
Theokritos, 7, 93.
47 Op. cit., pp. 3-29. It may be noted that Seltman (J.H.S., LXVII, 1947, pp. 22-30) in
publishing two Athenian marble thrones, one of Hellenistic date and one of Roman, has collected
examples of chairs represented on coins.