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

THE ATTIC STELAI 245
197 b, purple amphitapoi were spread over the klinai (couches); 218 and in VI, 255 e,
a young man of princely rank was covered with an amphitapos as he lay upon his
couch spread with a psilotapis. In Homer, the uncompounded form tapes was used as
a carpet, but more frequently signified a covering for seats and beds. In Pollux, X,
38, it is grouped with furnishings for beds. Whereas tapes designates various woven
goods which are used for the furnishings of a house, all references to the compound
amphitapes seem to be to a sort of blanket; this is not surprising since the amphitapes
was reversible.219
The amphitapetes are qualified by two adjectives:
A. XEVKO6, white. For leukos, as applied to a color, see the numerous references
in the Thesaurus and in Liddell-Scott-Jones. For example, in Aristophanes, Acch.,
1024, the reference is to the white, or homespun, himation of the rustics from Phyle.220
In the Diocletian Edict, covers (stromata) were to be sold according to the dyeing
and embroidery.221
For poikilos as a descriptive adjective of bedding or carpets, see, e. g., Aeschylus,
Ag., 923; Plutarch, Them., 29.
B. 'OpXop Vtos. The preserved letters are as follows: OIX []MENIO. In the
left part of the fourth letter space there are probably traces of an omicron. The second
and third letters were cut very close together; no correction of the upright stroke was
possible without erasure. The original editor suggested 'Ox[o]pE'vto (),222 which
seems the only possible reading.
The R.E. lists four towns of this name,223 and we cannot be sure which one was
referred to here. Two of them, those in Thessaly and Euboea,224 seem unlikely because
of distance and size respectively. To distinguish the remaining two, the practice of a
second-century Delphic list referring to the Boeotian town as '?pX - - and the
Arcadian as 'EpX - - was unfortunately not otherwise adopted.225 No reference to
Orchomenian woollens is contained in Athenaeus' catalogue of special products of
218
For a detailed discussion of this passage, see Studniczka, loc. cit.
219
Liddell-Scott-Jones refers to tVAai ctmphitapetes in an inscription from Ionian Teos. The
text in C.I.G., II, 3071, is incomplete, and it is possible that in the phrase attTar[Tr-Tas] evvea nxaXSs,
v [v] -a a -, as punctuated by Boeckh, the qILaX is a substantive (i. e., modified by the second
evvea) as it frequently was in late Greek, meaning 'carpets.' See, e. g., Liddell-Scott-Jones, s.v.
qtxok, II, b and Gulick ad Athenaeus V, 197 b.
220
See schol. ad loc.
221 Col. XIX, 25.
222 Hesperia, XVII, 1948, p. 34.
223Discussion of the Boeotian city in the R.E. was reserved for Suppl. 8. In addition to
the cities of Arcadia, Boeotia, and Thessaly, the scholiast ad Apollonios Rhodios, II, 1186, refers to
a city of Pontus.
224 However, there are representations of Euboean tapides on the stone beds of two chambergraves;
see K. G. Vollmoeller, Ath. Mitt., XXVI, 1901, pp. 331 ff. and pls. XVI-XVII.
225B.C.H., XLV, 1921, pp. 1 ff.