Argives in Athens. A new fragment of IG I3 1149
Fig.1 – The new fragment of IG I3 1149
On July 1, 2008, a fragmentary inscription (fig. 1), carved in a distinctive non-Attic script, came to light during repairs on an old house at 6, Kladou Street, in the area of Plaka. The fragment was identified as a casualty list, and this observation, along with the prompt identification of the script as Argive, led Nikolaos Papazarkadas and Dimitris Sourlas on the very day of the discovery to consider the possibility that it belonged to the famous funerary monument for the Argives who fell at Tanagra (IG I3 1149 = Meiggs-Lewis, GHI no. 35). A join with fragment k of IG I3 1149 in the Epigraphical Museum subsequently confirmed the identification.
The fragment preserves several personal names, including the previously unattested ΕΡΙΦΑΝΤΟΣ and ΚΑΣΣΑΒΟΣ. Beyond the self-evident importance of the new fragment for the study of Greek onomastics, its discovery prompted us to undertake a thorough re-examination of the whole monument and a fresh interpretation within the context of the so-called First Peloponnesian War. We had the privilege to present the results of our study at a series of epigraphical fora, most importantly at the symposium in honour of H. B. Matthingly ῾Η ΤΩΝ ΑΘΗΝΑΙΩΝ ΑΡΧΗ῾, which was organized in May 2010 by the Greek Epigraphic Society and the British School at Athens. The final results of our work were published in Hesperia [N.Papazarkadas & D.Sourlas, “The Funerary Monument for the Argives who Fell at Tanagra (IG I3 1149): A New Fragment”, Hesperia 82 (2012) pp. 585-617], the same journal where, more than 60 years earlier, the great Attic epigraphist B. J. Meritt had published the two authoritative treatments of the inscription.
N. Papazarkadas
D. Sourlas