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

268 W. KENDRICK PRITCHETT
10. CrV'OKtEa (IV, 11 ). The term indicates a tenement house occupied by several
persons. A. Jarde translates it as ' maisons de rapport '; 64 Liddell-Scott-Jones as
'house in which several families live.' The word has frequently been translated as
'apartment-house,' for which Finley has recently suggested the substitute term
'multiple-dwelling,' 65-a term which brings out the functional and, so to speak, nonarchitectural
connotation of the word. One of the key passages for the meaning is
Aischines (I. 124): " Where several people hire one house and occupy it, dividing it
between them, we call it a synoikia, but where one man dwells, a house." Clearly, the
synoikia was rented. In Aristophanes, Equites, 1001, the sausage-man boasts that he
had a two-storey house and two synoikiai.66 In Athenaeus, XII, 542 f, sudden
prosperity results f-rom owning synoikiai. The Thesaurus Graecae Linguae (s.v.)
reports a Latin gloss on the word as ' insula.' The synoikia, then, is not only a multiple-dwelling,
it is also a tenement; 67 so the translation ' tenement-house ' is adopted.68
11. Xcoptov (VI, 80, 94, 96, 98, 102, 133; X, 16, 17, 18). The word does not
occur in Homer or in Tragedy. It is found first in Herodotos. Schmidt, in his study
of Greek synonyms, defines chorion as follows: " Xcoptwov ist unser ' Ort ', bezeichnet
aber allgemeiner jedes bestimmte Grundstiick, z.B. in einer Stadt oder einen Lande,
ebenso eine in ihrer Eigentiimlichkeit hervorspringende Gegend; daher erscheint ein
Xcwptov oft als Teil einer Xcipa, aber auch eines anderen Xwpiov." " In Thucydides
alone, chorion is quaiified by the following adjectives: ajvwEo'v (I, 13, 5), a&iLEVov
(II, 25, 4), aXTE8ov (VII, 78, 4), aavE`s (IV, 29, 3), 8aoiv (IV, 29, 4), E'ITKWKaJOV (VI,
85, 2), E'pqpov (I, 52, 2), C0,u8Eq (VII, 26, 2), pelreT&pOV (IV, 32, 3), TErpWpC.8Eq (IV,
9, 2), vrp6cravrE (IV, 43, 3), cr'ro&ropov (VII, 73, 1), crrEVOV (VII, 79, 1), 4-qXo'v
(III, 97, 2), and XaXEmov (IV, 9, 2).
In epigraphical texts dealing with land, the word has been variously translated:
as ' field ' by Meritt,70 as ' ordinary farm land ' by John Day,7" as 'farm ' by Fine.72
Kent, in drawing a distinction between kepos and chorion in the Delian records, wrote
64 Cereales, p. 147.
65 Op. cit., pp. 64-65.
6 For what I believe is the correct interpretation of this line, see R. A. Neil, The Knights of
Aristophcanes, Cambridge, 1901, ad loc. Neil in effect corrects the common interpretation based on
the gloss of the scholiast that synoikia is an apostasis or phanoptes.
67 For a construction excavated at Delos, which M. Holleaux suggests was a synoikia, see the
report in Comptes rendus de l'Acad. des Inscr., 1904, p. 737.
68
Cf. W. S. Maguinness, Hermathena, LXIX, 1947, p. 69.
69
J. H. H. Schmidt, op. cit., II, p. 3. Examples are collected on pp. 9-13. Cf. also Liddell-
Scott-Jones, s.v.
70
Hesperia, V, 1936, pp. 393 ff.
7' Ec. Hist. of Athens, p. 231.
72 op. cit., pp. 72, 81, etc.