Hostname: page-component-76d6cb85b7-xh428 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-07-14T12:55:54.766Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Philochorus, Pollux and the nomophulakes of Demetrius of Phalerum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2012

Lara O'sullivan
Lara O'sullivan
Affiliation:
The University of Western Australia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A board of ‘law-guardians’, or nomophulakes, has long been associated with the Athenian regime of Demetrius of Phalerum (317-307 BC). The duties of Demetrius' officials have been surmised from an entry on nomophulakes in the Atthis of Philochorus (FGrHist 328 F64), which lists their central functions as the supervision of magistrates and the prevention of illegal resolutions by the assembly and council. This understanding of the fourth-century nomophulakes stands in contradiction to the explicit testimony of Pollux (8.102), who asserts that Demetrius changed the name of the hendeka, the eleven Athenian gaolers, to nomophulakes. A case is made here for the acceptance of Pollux, a case based on textual grounds and on comparison with other reforms associated with Demetrius. It is further argued that Philochorus' description applies – as the sole excerpter of the Atthis to give a temporal context, the Lexicon Cantabrigiense, indeed states – to nomophulakes created in the aftermath of Areopagite reform in the mid-fifth century, and that Demetrius' officials were linked to these early nomophulakes through their inheritance of different aspects of nomophulakia associated with the early Areopagus.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 121 , November 2001 , pp. 51 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Bayer, E. (1942) Demetrios Phalereus der Athener (Tübinger Beiträge zur Altertumswissenschaft 36, Stuttgart)Google Scholar
Boeckh, A. (1871) ‘Über den Plan der Atthis des Philochoros’, Koeniglich–preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Historisch–philologische Klasse. Abhandlungen (1832) 1–30; reprinted in Kleine Schriften 5 (Leipzig 1871). (Page references above are to the more accessible Kleine Schriften).Google Scholar
Bosworth, A.B. (1988) Conquest and Empire (Cambridge)Google Scholar
Busolt, G. (1920) Griechische Staatskunde (Munich)Google Scholar
Cawkwell, G.L. (1988) ‘ΝΟΜΟΦΥΛΑΚΙΑ and the Areopagus’, JHS 108, 1–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christophilopoulos, A. (1968) ‘ΝΟΜΟΦΥΛΑΚΕΣ ΚΑΙ ΘΕΣΜΟΦΥΛΑΚΕΣ’, Platon 40, 134–43Google Scholar
Day, J. and Chambers, M. (1962) Aristotle's History of Athenian Democracy (Berkeley)Google Scholar
De Bruyn, O. (1995) La compétence de l'Aréopage en matière de procès publics (Stuttgart)Google Scholar
De Sanctis, G. (1913) ‘I nomophylakes d'Atene’, in Entaphia in memoria di Emilio Pozzi (Turin) 1–14Google Scholar
Errington, R.M. (1975) ‘Samos and the Lamian War’, Chiron 5, 51–7Google Scholar
Ferguson, W.S. (1911a) Hellenistic Athens (London)Google Scholar
Ferguson, W.S. (1911b) ‘The laws of Demetrius of Phalerum and their guardians’, Klio 11, 265–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garland, B.J. (1981) GYNAIKONOMOI: An Investigation of Greek Censors of Women (diss. Johns Hopkins)Google Scholar
Gehrke, H.-J. (1976) Phokion (Zetemata 64, Munich)Google Scholar
Gehrke, H.-J. (1978) ‘Das Verhältnis von Politik und Philosophie im Wirken des Demetrios von Phaleron’, Chiron 8, 149–93Google Scholar
Habicht, C. (1957) ‘Samische Volksbeschlusse der hellenistischen Zeit’, MDAI (A) 72, 152–274Google Scholar
Habicht, C. (1997) Athens from Alexander to Antony (Cambridge, MA)Google Scholar
Hansen, M.H. (1974) The Sovereignty of the People's Court in Athens in the Fourth Century BC and the Public Action against Unconstitutional Proposals (Odense)Google Scholar
Hansen, M.H. (1976) Apagoge, Endeixis and Ephegesis against Kakourgoi, Atimoi and Pheugontes (Odense)Google Scholar
Hansen, M.H. (1991) The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes (Oxford)Google Scholar
Harrison, A.R.W. (1968) The Laws of Athens (Oxford)Google Scholar
Hignett, C. (1958) A History of the Athenian Constitution to the End of the Fifth Century (Oxford)Google Scholar
Jacoby, F. (1923-) Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Berlin and Leiden) = FGrHistGoogle Scholar
Kirchner, J. (1901-1903) Prosopographia Attica (Berlin) = PAGoogle Scholar
Laqueur, R. (1908) ‘Die litterarische Stellung des Anonymus Argentinensis’, Hermes 43, 220–8Google Scholar
Laronde, A. (1987) Cyrène et la Libye hellénistique (Paris)Google Scholar
Lipsius, J. (1905) Das attische Recht und Rechtsverfahren (Leipzig)Google Scholar
MacDowell, D.M. (1978) The Law in Classical Athens (London)Google Scholar
Mikalson, J.D. (1998) Religion in Hellenistic Athens(Berkeley)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ostwald, M. (1969) Nomos and the Beginnings of the Athenian Democracy (Oxford)Google Scholar
Pomeroy, S. (1994) Xenophon Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary (Oxford)Google Scholar
Pouilloux, J. (1954) Recherches sur l'histoire et les cultes de Thasos (Paris)Google Scholar
Rhodes, P.J. (1972) The Athenian Boule (Oxford)Google Scholar
Rhodes, P.J. (1993) A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (2nd edn, Oxford)Google Scholar
Rihll, T. (1995) ‘Democracy denied: why Ephialtes attacked the Areiopagus’, JHS 115, 87–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruschenbusch, E. (1966) ‘Ephialtes’, Historia 15, 369–76Google Scholar
Sealey, R. (1964) ‘Ephialtes’, CPh 59, 11–22Google Scholar
Starker, J. (1875) De Nomophylacibus Atheniensium (diss. Berlin)Google Scholar
Sundwall, J. (1906) ‘De institutis reipublicae Atheniensium post Aristotelis aetatem commutatis’, Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicae 34, 1–26Google Scholar
Wallace, R.W. (1974) ‘Ephialtes and the Areopagus’, GRBS 15, 259–69Google Scholar
Wallace, R.W. (1989) The Areopagus Council to 307 BC (Baltimore)Google Scholar
Wehrli, C. (1962) ‘Contribution à l'étude des Onze (οἱ Ἕνδεκα)’, Historia 11, 383–4Google Scholar
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von (1893) Aristoteles und Athen (Berlin)Google Scholar
Wilcken, U. (1907) ‘Der Anonymus Argentinensis’, Hermes 42, 374–418Google Scholar
Williams, J.M. (1983) Athens without Democracy: The Oligarchy of Phocion and the Tyranny of Demetrius of Phalerum, 322-307 BC (diss. Yale)Google Scholar
Ziehen, L. (1896) Leges Graecorum Sacrae (Leipzig and Chicago)Google Scholar