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

228 W. KENDRICK PRITCHETT
B.C.), the price for making 50 klinai for the inn at Epidauros is given as 12 drachmas
apiece.
The evidence for the prices of klinai in our document is rather extensive. There
are two entries for Milesian-made klinai in I, 229 and II, 244. In the former, eleven
klinai were recorded as being sold at 90 drachmas, or 8-2/11 drachmas apiece. In the
latter, one kline sold at 7 drachmas 3 obols. The unmodified entry kline occurs in II,
241; the sales price was 6 drachmas 4 obols. The author now believes that KAtX[e]
is to be restored in III, 6, where the sales price was 8 drachmas 1 obol (see below,
p. 229). A broken kline, as recorded in II, 6-7, was sold for 3 drachmas 1 obol. There
remains for consideration the entry of seven klinai in II, 245. The sales-price has been
read as . AAIF-F. One would expect the price of each of these beds to be somewhat
less than that for Milesian-made klinai and roughly the same as the entry in II, 241.
The most likely restoration, then, would be the figures for 42 drachmas, or an average
of six drachmas per kline. The sales tax must then be restored as [li] 1. Reexamination
of this fragment shows that the one preserved obol of the sales tax was inscribed
beneath the third obol of line 244 above; so there is room for the restoration of two
obol signs to the left. The average price, then, of the Milesian-made bed is ca. 8
drachmas apiece; of the simple kline, ca. 6 drachmas.1"'
Milesican beds. The eleven klinai listed in Stele I, 229, and the one kline in I, 233,
are specified as MtLXqo-tovpyEZs. Athenaeus in cataloguing the special products of each
city cites a fragment of the fifth-century writer Kritias in which the lechoi (the
Homeric and poetic word for couch) of Miletos and of Chios are singled out for
mention.118 Elsewhere Athenaeus, in discussing etymologies in -ovpyeZst, quotes another
fragment from a prose work of Kritias which mentioned Milesian-made and Chianmade
klinai.79 In the Parthenon inventory records, Milesian-made klinai appear in
the accounts for the year 434/3 and occur regularly thereafter.120
Miss Ransom has examined the view of Rayet, concurred in by Benndorf and
Petersen, that the Milesian couch was a specific type having rectangular legs.121 This
view rests on the hypothesis that the couch with rectangular legs and incisions was
dedicated to Hera after the siege of Plataea, Thucydides (III, 68, 3) tells us that they were made
of bronze and iron. Similarly, beds inventoried in the Parthenon accounts contained feet overlaid
with silver (I.G., T2, 276, lines 16-17, etc.).
117 See Johnson, " Roman Egypt," Economic Survey, II, p. 473, where a triclinium and four
cushions are priced at 500 drachmas.
118 Athenaeus I, 28 b.
119 XI, 486 e.
120
I.G., I2, 276, line 14. In the accounts of the Treasurers of Athena for the year 368/7,
reference to the Milesian beds still appears (see I.G., II2, 1425, lines 217 and 277, and Kirchner's
commentary ad loc.).
121 Couches and Beds, p. 54, note 5. The bibliography on this subject is given by Rodenwaldt
(R.E., s.v. Kline, 848), who concludes that up to date no results have been certain. For the
application of the word milesiourges to metal work, see Deonna, La vie privee, p. 177.