ISic020585: ISic020585
- ID
- ISic020585
- Language
- Ancient Greek
- Text type
- commercial mark
- Object type
- pelike
- Status
- No data
- Links
- View in current site
Edition
Apparatus criticus
- Text after Arena (IGASM 2)
Physical description
Support
- Description
- Red-figure pelike (Attic).
- Object type
- pelike
- Material
- ceramic
- Condition
- complete
- Dimensions
- height: 19 cm, dim: cm, width: cm, depth: cm
Inscription
- Layout
- The text is placed on the underside of the vessel.
- Text condition
- complete
- Letter heights
- Line 1: mm
- Interlinear heights
Provenance
- Place of origin
- Motyon
- Provenance found
- Found in the necropolis of Vassallaggi (tomb 35).
- Map
Current location
- Place
- Gela, Italy
- Repository
- Museo Archeologico Regionale di Gela , 9240
- Autopsy
- No Autopsy
- Map
Date
450—420 BCE (450 BC – 420 BC)- Evidence
- lettering, archaeological-context
Text type
commentary
The inscription is spaced across the underside of the vessel and divided into four sections. The signs preceding and following the word in the first of them could be trade marks (referring to a quantity?). Dubois interprets them as interpuncts but it is quite clear that the first sign is a gamma, followed by a wedge-shaped sign that is repeated after τέτορες twice. The document can be categorised as a price marks (cf. Johnston 1978, p. 222). Why the same vase is marked with the prices of others has been explained by Johnston in several contributions (but see 1978, p. 222-224), assuming that a buyer/seller might be interested in buying/selling a whole set of vases similar in workmanship and/or decoration. The problem remains, however, that a set consisting of a lekythos and a stamnos is not easily explained: these are in fact vessels with very different uses (sets consisting, for example, of tableware are found elsewhere). Johnston does admit the possibility that 'mixed batches for export' also existed and that these 'graffiti' may refer to 'orders given by traders, along with agreed prices (not immedaitely paid?)' (Johnston 1978, p. 226). στάμνια is a diminutive, less common than στάμνοι, and may designate vessels similar to a pelike, as in this case. It is followed by another diminutive, λακύθιον (for λήκῠθος) which occurs here for the first time in its Doric form, followed by an also rare form, ἔνο, equivalent to ἔνεστι and known, as Dubois points out, from two passages of the Anecdota Oxoniensia I (p. 170 and 176), where it is said to be a Doric and Aeolic form, and in Epicharmus (Pseudepicharmea, ed. Austin, CGF in Pap. rep. 1973, p. 79, nr. 86, 1. 5). Johnston considers ἔνο according to the meaning of its equivalent ἔνεστι on a krater from Naples (I.Napoli II 182) and ἐνθήματα on a (unpublished?) red-figure bell-krater from Montesarchio (end of 5th c. BCE) as 'contents'. Also τριτᾱ́μορα is Doric form (for τριτήμορα). The singular form (τριτήμορον) occurs in a fragment of the poet Philemon from Syracuse (ed. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum fragmenta, vol. 2, fr. 74), quoted by Pollux (9.66). It means three quarters of an obolus (it is therefore not clear why it is in the plural).
Bibliography
- Digital editions
- TM: -
- EDR: -
- EDH: -
- EDCS: -
- PHI: -
- Printed editions
- A.W. Johnston, ‘A Graffito from Vassallaggi’, Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik 12 (1973): 265–69.
- A.W. Johnston, ‘Lists of Contents. Attic Vases’, American Journal of Archaeology 82 (1978): 222–26, at 224-225
- Laurent Dubois, Inscriptions grecques dialectales de Sicile : contribution à l’étude du vocabulaire grec colonial, CEFR 119 (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1989), at 169
- Renato Arena, Iscrizioni greche archaiche di Sicilia e Magna Grecia. Iscrizioni di Sicilia. II. Iscrizioni di Gela e di Agrigento, 2nd ed., vol. 2, 5 voll. (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2002), at 137
Citation and editorial status
- Editor
- Jonathan Prag
- Principal contributor
- Valentina Mignosa
- Contributors
- Jonathan Prag
- Valentina Mignosa
- James Chartrand
- Michael Metcalfe
- system
- Simona Stoyanova
- Last revision
- 6/2/2021