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

220 W. KENDRICK PRITCHETT
carved. One last problem is whether or not the item thronos included a footstool. Certainly
a low stool was a regular adjunct to the thronos; it is frequently mentioned 62
and pictured.63 Athenaeus (V, 192 e) describes the thronos as EXEVOEptOs KaOE'8paL o-vV
V?7TOr(8tLt), and Hug defines it as " Lehn-Stuhl mit zugehorigem Schemel, Op7jvvg.""
Since we have no Op'vvg in our list it might be tempting to suppose that a footstool
accompanied each thronos; however, when so much of the inscription is lost, it is
certainly unwise to argue from the absence of an item, and it is the practice of the list
to indicate each separate piece. Either these particular thronoi did not have footstools,
or the stools were mentioned on parts of the stone which can no longer be read.
Price. Neither price nor sales tax has been preserved for any of the thronoi.
An Egyptian price of 20 drachmas for a throne for a festival is noted by Johnson,
"Roman Egypt," Economic Survey, II, p. 473.
6. wp6crKAwrpov (VI, 169). Chair with a back. This word is otherwise known
only from the lexicons; we have found no examples of its usage at any time before
the Byzantine period. And the lexicons are neither consistent nor very clear in their
definitions. According to Et. Mag. the prosklintron is the same as the proskliton; then
it is added that a klinter is a thronos which has a prosklintron, which would give us
the meaning 'chair-back.' However, in the definition of KXAprog (519, 42) proskliton
and katakliton are equated and explained as parts of the house; this interpretation is
repeated under a-rod (728, 12), where the porch is defined as a proskliton.6" So from
Et. Mag. two meanings emerge: 'chair-back' and 'porch.' Suidas, however, contains
a definiton of proskliton as E' GO a'KOVfJK3t 0,UEV, and the Thesaurus Graeccae Linguae
follows this interpretation with: Id cui acclinare nos possumus.
Since a removable chair-back is by no means so easy to conceive of as a removable
epiklintron, probably we must see in our item some kind of chair having a back. How
it was different from the anaklisis cannot be decided without more evidence.
No price remains in our list.
CHESTS AND BOXES
1. Kt/3OTO%, Kl/3wrV (I, 215, 216, 227, 228; V, 16). Chest, box. There is a
chapter on the chest in Richter's Ancient Furniture, pp. 89-99, a brief article by
Reincke, R.E., s.v. Truhen, and another by Saglio in Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire,
s.v. Arca. G. Davidson, Corinth, XII, pp. 131-136, has a section on boxes and chests,
but the finds she reports are of hardware and not of chests themselves, which were
62 For example, Od., VIII, 422; XVII, 409; XIX, 57; II., XIV, 240; XVIII, 390.
Of 55 examples in Richter, op. cit., of types 1, 2, and 3 of the thronos only 15 are without
footstools, and these tend to be from the archaic period or the early fifth century.
64 op. cit., p. 415.
65 Cf. the English 'lean-to' for a shed attached to a major building.