ISic001484: Epitaph of Philistidas, son of Euxenos
- ID
- ISic001484
- Language
- Ancient Greek
- Text type
- funerary
- Object type
- stele
- Status
- edited
- Links
- View in current site
Edition
Apparatus criticus
- Text from autopsy;
- 1: Trace of the cross bar of the Τ is visible
- 3: Dubois: [κ]αλο̄ποιό(ς)
Physical description
Support
- Description
- The upper part of a rectangular block of soft white/yellow limestone, intact top, right, left and to the rear, but broken unevenly across the lower edge. All the intact faces are squared off. Some chipping to the top front edge, and some loss to the face across the break on the lower edge. A pinkish vein runs across the upper part of the stone. The stone tapers very slightly in thickness towards the top.
- Object type
- stele
- Material
- limestone
- Object condition
- damaged
- Dimensions
- height: 10.8 cm, width: 23 cm, depth: 7-7.5 cm
Inscription
- Layout
- Three lines of Greek letters filling the width of the stone, and approximately justified left and right.
- Text condition
- deteriorated
- Technique
- chiselled
- Pigment
- No data
- Lettering
Deeply cut letters of a regular, fairly square module, without serifs. Alpha with straight bar, standard delta, straight epsilon with equal bars, heta rectangular closed top and bottom, standard lambda, nu slants to the right, xsi in form of X, omicron of standard size, pi with shorter right hasta, four bar sigma with equal open strokes, phi with large eye and vetical stroke of equal size not over-extended.
- Letter heights
- Line 1: 21-24mm
- Line 2: 20-22mm
- Line 3: 20-21mm
- Interlinear heights
- Interlineation line 1 to 2: 10-13mm
- Interlineation line 2 to 3: 8mm
Provenance
- Place of origin
- Gela
- Provenance found
- Found on Capo Soprano, recovered c.1894 (according to the inventory) from the foundations of the villa of Conte Panebianco, and gifted to Siracusa museum by Pietro Rizza of Terranova. Now in Storeroom B, cassette 33.
- Map
Current location
- Place
- Siracusa, Italy
- Repository
- Museo Archeologico Regionale Paolo Orsi , 19817
- Autopsy
- Prag 2016-10-10
- Map
Date
c. 500 BCE (525 BC - 475 BC)- Evidence
- lettering
Text type
commentary
An unusual example of an archaic funerary inscription with indication of the deceased's profession: the restoration of initial Κ and interpretation of καλωποιός as 'rope-maker' is due to Orsi. The stone was presumed lost by Dubois (and speculatively attributed to Palermo Museum in LSAG(2), but seems always to have been in the Syracuse museum since its deposit in 1900.
Bibliography
- Digital editions
- TM: 644992
- EDR: -
- EDH: -
- EDCS: -
- PHI: -
- Printed editions
- Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, Istituto nazionale di archeologia e storia dell’arte (Italy), e Reale Accademia d’Italia, «Notizie degli scavi di antichità», Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità, 1876, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1646037, at 281-282 fig.4
- Otto Hoffmann, ‘Die Inschriften von Sicilien und Abu-Simbel’, in Sammlung der Griechischen Dialekt-Inschriften, ed. F. Bechtel and H. Collitz, vol. 3.2.4 (Göttingen: Verlag von Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1904), at 5216
- Roehl (1907) at Tab.34 no.12
- L.H. Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece, 1st edn (Oxford, 1961), at 278 no.54
- Laurent Dubois, Inscriptions grecques dialectales de Sicile : contribution à l’étude du vocabulaire grec colonial, CEFR 119 (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1989), at 130
- L.H. Jeffery and A.W. Johnston, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), at 278 no.54
Citation and editorial status
- Editor
- Jonathan Prag
- Principal contributor
- Jonathan Prag
- Contributors
- Last revision
- 11/29/2025