Birthday presents should have an element of the unexpected about them, and, if I were to present Professor KlafFenbach with something Attic on this occasion, there would be more duty than pleasure about it, for both of us. I present him therefore with a holiday visit to Italian Locri, confident that the universality of his interests will induce him to overlook, at least in part, the dangers of the journey.

It is a tricky business to intervene with comments on a unified body of material, only half of which is as yet accessible, and which is being published with exemplary competence by A. De Franciscis, who is clearly and rightly reserving discussion of some major aspects of the documents until he has published them all. My excuse is that I think I see one substantial point about the state-organisation which they reveal which seems worth making now. My remaining notes are relatively tiny observations on points of detail, which may help to supplement the editor's patient and well-judged commentary.

The material which we are considering consists of 38 or 39 bronze tablets, of which 19 have been published. It forms a unified archive concerned with the financial relations of the city of Locri Epizephyrii with the treasury of Zeus Olympios. It seems reasonably certain that we should call it a templearchive, in the custody of the annually rotating board of three iɛρOμνάμOνɛςEπi θησα∪ρwι, recording the occasions on which the city borrowed (or on one published occasion only, in no. 9, repaid) sums from the temple-treasure.

No Greek had any doubt that the King of Persia was enormously wealthy. Twelve hundred camels brought him his money, says Demosthenes (xiv.27), in comparing his resources with what fourth–century Athens might produce. The majority of papers for this round–table are concerned with the details of this wealth. I shall be trying to explore some of the ways in which it was used in relation to Greek affairs.

In a famous passage (111.89.3), Herodotus tells us that before Darius there was no regular tribute in Persia; the subjects gave gifts. It was Darius' institution of regular tribute which earned him the designation kapelos. Even in the elaborate tribute–list which came to Herodotus (III.89–97), there is a section devoted to those nations, the Ethiopians, the Colchians and the Arabs, who remained on a nominal gift structure. I do not propose to discuss this in detail, and I shall not be asking whether there was really no tribute in some areas before Darius, whether Herodotus was right in asserting that Persis paid no tribute, whether Herodotus' list represents satrapies or financial districts, or whether it really belongs to the reign of Darius rather than that of, say, Artaxerxes I. My first point, rather, involves the exploration of gifts. ||

Although it did not attract the attention of Marcel Mauss, the master of the subject, the Achaemenid Empire in fact constitutes a textbook case of a gift–centred economy. Gifts were exchanged on a regular basis. Even after the introduction of tribute, it is fairly obvious that individuals and communities continued to make presents to the King of enormous quantity and variety.

Of all Greek coinages, it is perhaps the Athenian New Style which offers the greatest opportunities and the greatest potential rewards. A hundred–odd issues, mostly, if not all, annual, are lavish in information which should assist their arrangement and dating; once firmly dated, they will fertilise many various fields, mint–organisation, the Athenian calendar, prosopography, economic history. The attempt to arrange them has been frequently made since Beule. His work and Head's have been most influential; Svoronos and Kambanis rendered great services, but never reached the end of their task; finally Bellinger in 1949 broke away from the conventional starting–date of 229 BC and laid down the lines on which future study should proceed.

It is to Bellinger that Miss Thompson's enormously useful work is dedicated. Conceived in the belief that a new corpus of the coinage was needed if any firm chronological order was ever to be established, it has been carried through with a devotion and care for detail beyond praise. 6,888 coins are listed and ordered, numerous false readings have been removed, for the first time the essential evidence has been made fully available. Completeness is obviously a mirage in the pursuit of any coinage, and I found an unlisted reverse in the second dealer's stock I looked at with the catalogue, but I think that we can be confident that everything of importance is there for the time being.

Miss M. Thompson has now placed at our disposal a far greater body of evidence for studying the Athenian New Style coinage than was previously available. This is a service which cannot be underestimated. Nevertheless it is my belief that her evidence can be differently interpreted. She begins the coinage in 196/5 and ends it in 88/7.1 propose to argue here for a beginning c. 164 and an end towards the end of the Roman Republic.

For the purposes of this article I shall assume that her sequence of issues is sound and shall only question her absolute dating. I have indicated doubts about her sequence elsewhere, but do not feel myself qualified to pursue them. The most important single point in her new sequence is the discovery that the coins of BAΣIΛE MIΘPAΔATHΣ–APIΣTIΩN do not belong somewhere in the late two–magistrate issues, but are akin in style to the latest of the three–magistrate issues. I accept this absolutely, but question her deductions from it.

It will be convenient first to argue that my alternative dating is sound and then to deal with the apparent objections. The arguments for the alternative dating fall into four categories: major historical difficulties, the hoard evidence, the Attic prosopography, minor historical difficulties. In order to avoid misunderstanding, I wish to say that, despite my known interests and the length of the present section on Attic prosopography, this topic has been subsidiary in my thinking and that it was not until the hoard evidence forced on me the belief in a later date that I investigated the prosopography at all closely.

It would be pointless to deny that this paper is to some extent a salvo in an exchange of fire which I have been conducting on and off with George Cawkwell for fifteen years or more, but of which very little more than the opening shots have ever got into print. Very early in life I suggested dates for Dem. XXII and xxiv which diverged from those given in the Ad Ammaeum of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Some reply to my specific points was given in an article by Raphael Sealey, the last complete survey of the dates in that work, and Cawkwell also landed some well–aimed shots (I had in particular failed to read an apparatus criticus).

On the general point at issue Cawkwell warned us that the information available to us was scanty, and that, since we lack the means to test the accuracy of Dionysius' dates, we should resist the temptation to reject them as worthless. ‘Both the general histories and the Atthides and many lost speeches were available to Dionysius and his predecessors, and the dating of Demosthenes' speeches by means of internal evidence alone must have been far easier for him than for us.' He cites various specific cases of the kind of evidence which might have been available and concludes, ‘When such evidence was available to Dionysius, only for cogent reasons should his dating be rejected.’ Sealey had thrown the emphasis further back. Holding, in my belief, correctly, that the dates in Ad Amm. are not Dionysius' own, he reminds us that the dates had probably been determined by Alexandrian scholars and could command the respect of a lettered, if not a learned public.

There is a good deal of epigraphic evidence relevant to the end of the Thirty and to the restoration period which followed, but there is no single place in which it has been collected. I do not propose to discuss it all; some of the problems are very complex. That is the case, above all, with the documents relevant to the nomothetic process which started after the fall of the Four Hundred and rumbled on until the prosecution of the scribe Nikomachos; discussion of the fragments of the ‘walls’ and possible erasures on them is likely to be indefinitely prolonged. The notorious text, IGii210, concerning rewards for non–citizens, has, in my time, acquired the new fragments identified by Daphne Hereward. It has had a good deal of attention, and there is some measure of agreement about the size of the name–lists, though not about much else; what we perhaps needed even more was new fragments of the decree itself, without which there can be no certainty about the date or nature of the awards. The parallel text, the honours for citizens, the Heroes of Phyle, got off to a sensational start with its identification by || Raubitschek, but, perhaps rather surprisingly, no new fragments have been identified since, despite careful study of all fragmentary name–lists by Don Bradeen. Those who have studied the 390s will testify how important it would be to have a complete list of those with that particular claim to the eunola of the demos.

The battered stone which bears the bouleutic oath and a decree of the demos about the boule has the same width as and is universally agreed to be a companion piece to IGi2 115 = i3 114. That text begins with a decree of 409/8 ordering the anagrapheis to obtain Draco's law on homicide (from the basileus, as R. S. Stroud will show) and write it on the stone. On the face of it, they are merely to make a copy, and, though the stray voice has been raised to suggest that they altered the text, most discussion has been about the age of the text before them and the changes that it might have undergone before 409.

The bouleutic stone is unprotected by a decree, as it stands, and encouragement for those who might wish to suppose that it represents a revised text comes from Philochorus, 328F140, which suggests a change in legislation about the boule in 410/09. There has not, to my knowledge, been any very great enthusiasm for massive revision or new formulation. To put it at a minimum, Τάδɛ Eδoχσɛν Eλ Λ∪k[ɛ]io[ι] (line 34) and μE Eναι θóαν EπιβαλEν (line 41) do not sound like constitutional procedure or even formal language of 410, and there has been at least one attempt to carry the whole document back beyond the Persian War.

The organisers have marked the importance of the Athenian Coinage Decree for our subject by calling for two papers on it. I detect a suggestion that they hope for some degree of confrontation and that Lewis in 1986 is expected to hold the same views as Meiggs and Lewis in 1969.1 shall say at once that I have no confidence that I know the truth about the problems and am merely trying to look at those facts with which I think I have some competence as straightforwardly as I can. I intend, if I can, to pretend that I know nothing about the coins.

In the Birds of Aristophanes, produced in spring 414, a Decree-Seller offers the inhabitants of Cloud-Cuckooland a clause providing that they should use the same measures, weights and decrees as the Olophyxioi. What their relevance is no one knows, but the literal-minded, starting with Bergk, had long hankered after changing the decrees (ψηϕίσμασι) into coins (νoμίσμασι). Amending what may be a joke is never safe procedure, but the joke has to have some foundation, and Wilamowitz in 1877 suggested that there might have been an Athenian law enforcing uniformity of coinage, weights and measures in the empire. He tells us that he was laughed at for the idea, but, totally unrecognised by anybody, a substantial fragment of such a law was already known, copied at Smyrna in 1855; no one has seen it since, and doubtless it perished in the burning of Smyrna in 1922. It was not until 1894, when a second fragment turned up on Siphnos, that Adolf Wilhelm confirmed Wilamowitz's suggestion, and even then no full publication followed until 1903.

Tissaphernes' first set of instructions from Darius, to bring in or kill Amorges (Thuc. vni.5.5), were carried out by the end of the summer of 412 (vm.28). To do this, he had used Spartan help against Athens, Amorges' ally (vm.54.3; And. 111.29), and had committed the King by treaty to make war jointly with the Spartans (vni.18). All this was presumably covered by his instructions, but may not have been worked out in detail at Susa, since in early winter 412 he is still claiming that he will need to refer to the King before he pays the Spartans a full drachma a day (viii.29.1,45.6).

The results of his report to the King on the operations of 412 emerge next spring in the third treaty with the Spartans (vIII.58). This is made before the end of Thucydides' winter, but after 29 March 411, since it is in Darius' thirteenth year. The Spartans will only be paid for their operations until the arrival of the King's fleet; if they still want money after that, they will have to repay it at the end of the war. When the King's fleet arrives, it will fight the war at the side of the Spartans and their allies, in whatever way Tissaphernes, the Spartans and their allies think best. The fleet, therefore, has been mobilised in Phoenicia towards the end of the winter, on the King's instructions (see also VIII.87.5), and is on its way by the spring (VIII.59). There is no clear account of its arrival at Aspendos, but it maybe thought of as there by June, 147 in number (VIII.87.3).

Ruschenbusch attempts to strengthen the view of Smart that both prescripts were recut immediately by showing that the divergences between the earlier and later texts of both were both of thirty-six letters and caused by the same error. I cannot help believing that Smart was wiser to describe the error, if such it was, as irrecoverable. It is indeed certain that a full text of both the later prescripts would have included πρõΤOς between κριΤιάδɛς and EγραμμάΤɛ∪ɛ. However, the assumption, originally made by Meritt, that, because the Leontine delegation had three ambassadors and a secretary, the Rhegine delegation would have had the same and that γrgr;αμμαΤɛύς dropped out of the inscribed text, seems unwarranted in view of the very diverse composition of Greek embassies. Even this assumption does not bring the count right, and Ruschenbusch has to assume a lost three-letter vacat in Rhegion line 4, thus giving his supposed secretary the same unusually short length for a name-patronymic combination as the preceding Σιλɛνòς ϕόκo. The fifty-one name-patronymic combinations for foreigners in IGi3 show a median length of seventeen letters and only two combinations with as few as eleven letters. It seems statistically unlikely that a third eleven-letter combination should appear precisely here. Nor do I much care for Ruschenbusch's view that the mason (surely rather the Secretary of the Council) provided his assistants with the necessary separate texts for the ambassadors and the treaties, but only one (faulty) copy between them of the prescript which cannot have been more than a quarter of the whole text.

The task I have been given is to introduce you to some of the textual evidence for Greek metal–work. It is extremely copious and, particularly when it deals with gold and silver objects, it goes some way to making up for the loss of whole categories of objects which do not normally survive. With isolated exceptions, it has been neglected; my impression is that it has not really been explored by those interested in the development of metal–work, and that much remains to be done in correlating with real objects or representations of them.

My brief is to talk about inventories, that is, comprehensive documents drawn up by the responsible officials to list and publish the articles in their care. But, long before any text of this kind survives or is likely to have existed, one does get the odd text where individual donors commemorated their dedication with a separate inscription on stone or bronze. The practice is slightly different from writing the dedication on the object itself or, in the case, for example, of a statue, on its base. As the sixth century BC goes on, the text can become fairly explicit. The stele from Sigeion in the British Museum records the gift by Phanodikos of Prokonnesos to the citizens of Sigeion for use in the prytaneion, that is, for public entertainments, of a mixing–bowl, a stand and a strainer; the material is not specified. It has recently been suggested that the gift was thought so magnificent that Phanodikos was given the more than human status of a hero.

If we take an overall view, the drift of Xenophon's narrative seems fairly clear. After Leuctra it seems likely that Thebes will be preoccupied with Jason of Pherae and not in a position to interfere in the Peloponnese. The Athenians see that the Peloponnesians still think they ought to follow (sc. the Spartans) and that the Spartans are not yet in the position that they reduced the Athenians to (sc. in 404), and they therefore summon a conference (vi.5.1). This would lead us to expect that what follows will be aimed against Sparta and will provide guarantees for cities who wish to detach themselves from Sparta. This is confirmed by the appearance of the Eleans who are seeking a reversal of the terms of 400 (111.2.30) and the Mantineans who are seeking a reversal of their διoικισμòς. Whatever the arguments are which are employed in the debate of vi.5.33–48, and I shall return to them, it is this debate which produces the ϕιλία with Sparta which has to be institutionalised later (VII.I.I–2). If Xenophon has suppressed Sparta's willing participation in the Athens conference and her acceptance as a partner by that conference, he has been seriously misleading on a point on which we would expect him to be clearest.

The first result of the conference is that the Mantineans regard themselves wς nδδη αuΤόνoμoι πανΤάπσασιν OνΤɛς, and vote to rebuild. This will be a blow to the prestige of the Spartans, they send Agesilaus to prevent them from building, or at any rate from building without Sparta's permission, and he is unsuccessful; στραΤɛΎɛιν γɛ μένΤOι Eπ αΎΤOΎς OU δ∪ναΤòν EδóΚɛι ɛiναι Eπ αUΤOνOμίa Τnς ɛiρnνης γɛγɛνɛμημένης(VI.5.3–5).

Papademetriou, in publishing a new grave-inscription from Zographo (see Plate), has propounded a theory which, if true, has important consequences for our understanding of Attic comedy in general and of the Lysistrata of Aristophanes in particular. For convenience I reprint the text with two slight modifications.

In line 4 the stone has MYPPINEHKΛHθH. I prefer to assume that the stone-cutter, uncertain of the correct use of eta (cf. πρώΤɛ and Nίκɛς in line 5), has transposed the letters, rather than assume with Papademetriou an unnecessary and unparalleled lengthened form and an omitted augment. After EΤύμως the three dots of punctuation are clear. Even if they were not, metre and sense would suggest that EΤύμως went with the previous sentence. EΤύμως has nearly all its later meaning here. Papademetriou has illustrated the cult-significance of the name M∪ρρίνη.

His thesis is this. We know the first priestess of Athena Nike was appointed round about 450, perhaps after the Peace of Kallias. Here is her gravestone, which, from the style of its lettering and the transition to Ionic which it illustrates, ought to be close to 400. Therefore in 411, when the Lysistrata was performed, the Priestess of Athena Nike was called Myrrhine. In the Lysistrata a Myrrhine appears at the Propylaea, perhaps even on the Nike Bastion, and appears to have a bed and other equipment close at hand. We should therefore assume that Aristophanes' Myrrhine is meant as a portrait.

A venerated teacher, in whom the best of the Berlin tradition is still alive, once said firmly to me that he supposed that the essentials of the things that interested me had changed very little since Boeckh. I would not now endorse this view, and this morning I am neither fighting a campaign to encourage more reading of Boeckh as a source of information, even in Fränkel's third edition, nor advocating the sort of piety which led Fränkel to reprint all Boeckh's errors with warning footnotes. However, I do think that there are reasons to commemorate the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Staatshaushaltung, particularly before an epigraphical congress.

We see in it first the first great example of Alterthumswissenschaft, an attempt to grasp and describe essential elements in the life of a people where there were no classical forerunners to define the scope of the subject. The general impulse to see ancient life as a whole certainly came to Boeckh from his teacher Wolf. His early works however do not make straight for this goal. In Göttingen, Schleiermacher had given him Platonic interests, and student poverty in Berlin made him, in a strange collocation, the tutor of the fifteen–year–old Meyerbeer, who wanted to learn Greek and Latin for the sake of musical theory. Plato and musical theory produced an interest in Pythagoreanism, in itself and in Plato; and problems of authenticity, in Plato and the tragedians, also interested him in these early years. A nearer approach to universalism came as he started serious work on Pindar, though that also started from musical interests.

This seminar has rightly laid stress on the independence of oriental evidence and on the importance of freeing its interpretation from presuppositions based on Greek evidence. I must admit that much of my recent thinking has also gone in the other direction. Taking my start from what seemed to me to be the fact that Greeks were widely employed by Persians in a secretarial capacity, I have argued in general terms that Herodotus could have had good evidence for his more documentary material and, more specifically, that there is reason to believe that Xerxes' army–list contains sound prosopographical information. Despite the sweeping condemnation which fourth–century Greek writing about Persia has sometimes received, I think that there is some evidence to suggest that factual investigation of Persian institutions continued. I propose to discuss here the most substantial piece of evidence. Surprisingly, since it is preserved in medieval manuscripts, it has had virtually no discussion at all; if it had been a new discovery on papyrus, it would have had a lengthy bibliography.

Polyaenus, IV.3.32, gives us a list of commodities prepared for the King's dinner and supper read by Alexander in the Persian palace, written on a bronze pillar, where there are the other laws which Cyrus wrote. Three Teubner pages of straight document are then followed by a short anecdote, recounting how the other Macedonians regarded the list as a sign of the King's eudaimonia and Alexander treated it with contempt. The sources of Polyaenus are not always straightforward. As one might expect, the Alexander anecdotes show some affinity with the vulgate tradition about him, and an ultimate origin for them in Cleitarchus is at least a possibility.