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

THE ATTIC STELAI 263
2. y- titX'4 (VII, 72, 74). Cultivated land was divided into two types: rtX4 and
veorEv1tL7).13 Psile land was that which was without trees.14 The Et. Mag. contains
the definition: )tfX'v acpovpav T?1v a8EVOpOV Xwpav, T)1v v7pog TO crMTEtpeo-Oat Kat apovoGOat
Einrtre&av; 15 Liddell-Scott-Jones defines as follows: 'the tillage of land for corn
and the like, opp. y. 'WE4VrEV,UE'V7(the tillage of it for vines, olives, etc.).' The term
psile has generally been understood as applying solely to land cultivated for cereals, or
cornland.16 The text of Stele VII, 72 (y-g +trXE 'OAspa. a. TE'Xcov) shows, however,
that the tillage of land for vines was called ge psile; so current definitions must
be corrected to read 'the tillage of land for cereals and vines'; " whereas land
means the tillage of it for fruit and olive trees."8
wTE4VTEV1.tEV-7
3. yqpTE8ov (IV, 8; VII, 23, 25). Gepedon is not a common word. It does not
occur in the various indices of the Attic Orators. The Ionic form YEC0lTE8Ov occurs in
Herodotos, VII, 28, where Liddell-Scott-Jones gives it the meaning 'portion or plot
of ground, garden, esp. within a town.' The passage in Herodotos contains a speech of
Pythios wherein he explains his offer of wealth to Xerxes and concludes, "there is
sufficient livelihood to nme from my slaves and land (geopeda)." The geopeda were,
then, cultivated lands in Lydia; 19 there is no connotation of land within towns. The
definition in Liddell-Scott-Jones possibly arises from passages in Phrynichos and
Eustathius where Y7R'TE8a is defined as land, such as gardens, adjacent to city houses.20
But in our list, the word clearly refers to land in an inland trittys.21 Gepedon occurs
in one passage each in Plato and Aristotle.22 In the former 23 the word refers to the
home lot which one son of each of the 5,040 landholders of the state was to inherit.
13
Aristotle, Pol., 1258b, 18, and Demosthenes, XX, Against Leptines, 115. For yr), the root
meaning of which seems to have been 'earth's surface, ground,' see Buck, op. cit., pp. 15-17. Cf. also
Kent's note on the meaning of this word in Delian accounts (Hesperia, XVII, 1948, p. 257, note 38).
14
Herodotos, IV, 19 and 21.
15818, 38.
16 See Caillemer in Daremberg-Saglio, Diction aire, I, 720 b, and E. Barker, Politics of Aristotle,
Oxford, 1948, p. 30. We may note that in M. Fraenkel, Inschriften von Pergamon, I, Berlin, 1890,
no. 158, a vineyard and a designated number of plethra of ge psile are listed separately. For
similar examples, see A. Wilhelm, "Neue Beitrage III " in Sitzungsber. der k. Akad. der Wissenschaften
in Wien, Phil.-hist. KI., 175, 1 Abh., 1913, pp. 6-7. Such examples may have given rise to
the common definition of ge psile as ' grain land.' Ge psile would seem, however, to be a more
general term for land lacking trees, which might or might not be a vineyard.
17 The stone is uninscribed after aArE'Xwv. In the Delian accounts of the second and third
centuries B.C., the exact number of vines was recorded; see I.G., XI, 2, 287 A, lines 155, 157;
Insc. De'los, 356 bis, B, lines 27-29; etc.
18
See Lysias, VII, On the Sacred Olive, 7.
19 Cf. Powell, Lexicon to Herodotus, s.v.
20 Eustathius: roi Ev xro'Xe irpoKeqLEV oV daK otov
cVKq7rl8tOV. Cf. Bekker, I, p. 32, 1.
21
VII, 23-24.
2
See also I.G., IV, 823, line 58.
23 Lg., V, 741c.