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Deceleans and Demotionidae again
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
The dossier of decrees concerning the Deceleans and the Demotionidae of Athens (IG ii 1237) presents fascinating problems and has attracted plentiful discussion. For a long time there has been a division between the view of Wilamowitz and his followers, that the Demotionidae were a phratry and the Deceleans a privileged genos within it, and that of Wade–Gery refined by Andrewes, that the Deceleans were a phratry and the Demotionidae a privileged genos within it.3 Each of these interpretations gave rise to problems; and since the work of Bourriot and Roussel on the gene there has been a reluctance to believe in gene as aristocratic clans able to control their phratries. Recently Hedrick has argued that the Demotionidae were the phratry and the Deceleans the members of the deme of Decelea; and Lambert has argued that the Demotionidae were the phratry and the Deceleans a genos–like body (but not a genos, and not controlling the phratry) which formed a semi–independent group within the phratry and which in these decrees was extending its independence further. These interpretations also give rise to problems: in this paper I attempt to continue the debate and to show that an interpretation on Wade–Gery′s lines is after all the most likely to be right.
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References
1 I cite by author′s name: Andrewes, A., JHS 81 (1961), 1–15;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hedrick, C. W., Jr, The Decrees fafthe Demotionidai (American Classical Studies xxii) (Atlanta, 1990); S. Ito, J. Hist. 71 (1988), 677–713 (in Japanese, with English summary 828: his interpretation is on the lines of Vade–Gery as modified by Andrewes); S. D. Lambert, The Phratries of Attica (Ann Arbor, 1994); W. E. Thompson, SO 62 (1968), 51–68; H. T. Wade–Gery, CQ 25 (1931), 129–43 = his Essays hn Greek History (Oxford, 1958), pp. 116–34; U. von Wilamowitz–Moellendorff, Aristoteles und lithen (Berlin, 1893) (references are to vol. ii, where the chapter devoted to this inscription is on pp. 259–79).Google Scholar
2 Strictly, on Wilamowitz own version of this interpretation, the Deceleans are not a genos but the members of the phratry who live in the deme of Decelea, who in this particular phratry have taken over the privileges of a genos (273–4).
3 Wade–Gery saw the Demotionidae as a body of experts, Andrewes as a genos (cf. below, p. 114). This kind of interpretation was first advanced by Szanto, E., RM 40 (1885), 506–20; I accepted it, in Andrewes' version, in A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (Oxford, 1981), pp. 69,501.Google Scholar
4 Bourriot, F., Recherches sur la nature du genos (Paris, 1976); D. Roussel, Tribu et cite (Paris, 1976). Both regard the Demotionidae as a phratry.Google Scholar
5 The suggestion that the phratry of the Demotionidae had split into smaller phratries, of which the Deceleans were one, was first made by Schaefer, C., Altes und Neues uber die attischen Phratrie (Naumburg a. S., 1888).Google Scholar
6 But Hedrick, 38–42 cf. 15, argues that must mean not the one who has been rejected' but 'the one who has not been judged.
7 I.e. advocates to represent the Deceleans against them: cf. Ath. Pol. 42.1 on the procedures for admission to a deme (using the term kategorof); and for synegoroi as advocates for the authorities against an individual cf. Ath. Pol. 54.2. But Wade–Gery, 138–9 = 128–9, followed by Andrewes, 3 with n. 10, interpreted the synegoroi as assessors to sit with the Demotionidae.
8 But Hedrick, 62–3 cf. 15, thinking that this refers to the extraordinary adjudication (cf. below), interprets it to mean take a preliminary vote on whether they need to adjudicate about anybody rather than take the vote in the adjudication.
9 Hedrick, 13–14, reports that what has been inscribed in the erasure has (or would have had if two letters had not been omitted) forty more letters than the text which would have occupied that space if inscribed regularly.
10 It is not clear how this is to be reconciled with secret voting. It is usually assumed (e.g. Wilamowitz, 263), that there was a debate before the rest of the phratry voted, and the members of the thiasos could make their own position clear in that.
11 Hedrick, 11–12, 22–5.
12 But not Hedrick 82–3.
13 Hedrick, 56, 61–8, thinks that the whole decree is concerned with an extraordinary but on–going adjudication on claimants to membership of the phratry who have somehow evaded the regular adjudication, from which only lines 26–9 and 52–68 are digressions referring to the regular adjudication concerning the boys. His case depends on attributing more precision to the wording of the decree than I think an Athenian decree can bear: for instance, because 'in future' is used both in 27 and in 52, he assumes that what is stated before 52 is not to be done 'in future' but is to be done 'immediately' (cf. 16). Moreover, as Lambert, 126 n. 101, points out, the extraordinary adjudication should not need to be on–going.
14 E.g. IG ii2 140, a law amending a previous law.
15 In Athenian lawsuits, an anakrisis before the appropriate magistrate preceded the trial in a law court: see e.g. Harrison, A. R. W., The Law of Athens, ii (Oxford, 1971), 94–105.Google Scholar
16 I 16 The attempt of Lambert, 121–3, to show that 'while the priest was exclusively priest of the Dekeleiieis, the phratriarch represented a body that was to some extent external' does not seem to me to succeed.
17 IG xii. 5 528 (= Michel 403), 540 (= Michel 404), 541, 1061, cited in this connection by M. Guarducci, RFIC 63 (1936), 504–6; Ito, 609 n. 18; see also Jones, N. F., Public Organization in Ancient Greece (Philadelphia, 1987), p. 206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18 Wade–Gery, 136 = 124–5, thought that I and II, which are inscribed by the same hand, might have been enacted on the same day (cf. Wilamowitz, 259–60). Hedrick confirms that they were inscribed by the same hand (11), but he has shown (5, 55; cf. his observation on the three names of priests, n. 11, above) that II was not inscribed at the same time as I. It may also be noted that, whether orthography is to be attributed to the proposer, to the secretary, or to the cutter, I regularly uses such forms as TOVTOS (34) but II regularly uses such forms as TOTCOI 77.
19 However, as Andrewes in particular stressed (5 n. 15, 14), 'the law of the Demotionidae' is modified by these decrees of the phratry.
20 Lambert, 103. Wilamowitz, 261, had claimed that no one other than the plenum can decide appeals.
21 Lambert, 99–102. Wilamowitz, 260–1, had to reject that presumption and claim that the phrateres were the voters in 15–18, in the extraordinary adjudication, but the Deceleans were the voters in 26–9, in the regular adjudication. This seems an unnatural interpretation of the text.
22 Hedrick, 44–52.
23 Hedrick, 78–80, cf. 69–73 on the relationship between decrees I and II (discussed below).
24 Hedrick, 80–5.
25 Lambert, 119–20.
26 Lambert, 123. On 225 he cites IG ii21241 = his T 5 and Hesp. 51 (1982), 48–50 no. 7 = his T 12 as evidence for a plurality of phratriarchs in other phratries.
27 Lambert, 102, is perhaps too confident here. However, I cannot accept the argument of Hedrick, 56, 61–72, that Decree I is concerned (apart from digressions) with the extraordinary adjudication and Decree II with the regular adjudication, that Decree I is not among the decrees amended by II, and that the separate vote of the thiasos is not a new requirement in Decree II.
28 Wilamowitz, 264–5.
29 Cf. above, n. 18.
30 Lambert, 134–9.
31 Ath. Pol. 42. 1–2.
32 Cf. references to the whole demos, of Cos or Rhodes in decrees of subdivisions of that demos: e.g. Halasaraa, a deme of Cos, SIG* 569; Brycus, a deme of Rhodes, IGxii.l 1032.
33 Cf. Osborne, R., JHS 115 (1995), 219, in his review of Lambert (published after I had written this comment).Google Scholar
34 Summarized by Lambert, 59–64.
35 Lambert, 60 n. 5, 69–70.
36 Cf. e.g. the use of aristinden in Draco′s homicide law, IG i3104 = Meiggs –8.1, contr. 3.1, 6.
37 Wade–Gery, 139–42= 129–33.
38 Wade–Gery, 141 with n. 1 = 131 with n. 3, wrote: 'The Law of the Phratry perhaps still resides unwritten in their breasts; if not, it resides written in their keeping', and compared Lys. 6.10 and passages in Plato's Laws.
39 Andrewes, 5–9.
40 Since this paper was completed two books have been published which briefly and hesitantly support the view championed here, that the Deceleans were the phratry: Ogden, D., Greek Bastardy (Oxford, 1996), pp. 47–9; R. Parker, Athenian Religion: A History (Oxford, 1996), pp. 321–2 cf. 64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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