Support: Small rectangular block of marble, broken into two adjacent fragments, also broken off at left (dimensions unknown).

Layout: Inscribed on the face in four lines (one line of script for one line of verse), all aligned along the lost left edge.

Letters: Height unknown, carefully cut with very slight serifs; smaller round letters, slanting mu and sigma, slightly curved upper part of upsilon.

Date: Last third of third century BC (Rosamilia) (lettering).

Findspot: Found by Pernier in September 1930 at Cyrene ➚: Sanctuary of Apollo, in the area of the later Temple of Apollo Nymphagetes.

Place of origin: Cyrene ➚: on the Fountain Terrace, area of the Spring of Kyra (see commentary).

Last recorded location: Already lost when G. Pugliese Carratelli prepared the publication in 1960. Known only from a photograph. Not seen by GVCyr team.

Text constituted from: Transcription from previous editors and photograph (CDL).

Apparatus

French translation

Translation source: Chamoux 1991

Ce monument, Hermésandros fils de Philon l'a consacré au-dessus de la fontaine (ou source?), après avoir sacrifié à la déesse en faisant descendre (scil. au sanctuaire) pour la fête d'Artémis cent vingt boeufs. D'eux restent ces (scil. mots), qui sont à la fois un ornement, un souvenir et un noble titre de gloire.

English translation

This monument Hermesandros son of Philon dedicated above the fountain (or spring?), once he had sacrificed to the goddess, after leading down (scil. into the sanctuary) for Artemis' festival hundred and twenty oxes. Of them these (scil. words) remain as ornament and keepsake and glorious fame.

Italian translation

Translation source: Bonacasa – Ensoli 2000

Questo monumento Hermesandros figlio di Philon al di sopra della fonte (o sorgente?) pose dopo che, spinti giù (scil. nel santuario) cento e venti buoi, li ebbe sacrificati alla dea in occasione della festa di Artemis. Dei quali queste (scil. parole) rimangono per ornamento e per ricordo e per fama gloriosa.

Commentary

Thanks to a communication by Enzo Catani of Pernier's notebooks, we know more precisely than for the first edition the findspot of this inscription: it was found in a room of the Lower Terrace of the Sanctuary, together with IGCyr104300² and IGCyr137300². This shows that after having been replaced by GVCyr054², the stone was still kept in Apollo's sacred area.

Gasperini had shown that GVCyr054², which has the same text but a later lettering, should correspond to the repairing of Hermesandros' dedication. Chamoux 1975, pp. 272-273, who did not take the chronological span into account, thought that there were several monuments dedicated at the same time. Furthermore in 1991 he compared the two epigrams with some bronze images of oxes or cows known elsewhere and related them with τάδε at line 3 (translated 'ces offrandes'). On this point he was followed by Gasperini, who translated 'images'. Both related τῶν with τάδε. However this plural neuter more probably refers to the very words inscribed on the stone, like the common γράμματα of so many epigrams. τῶν should be related to the oxen mentioned at the end of the preceding sentence.

Laronde argued that ὑπὲρ κράνας, in accordance with the findspot, refers to places in the rock-wall along the rock-cut way leading down (κατάγων) from the upper city to the sanctuary and taken by the sacred processions.

One hundred and twenty oxen is even more than a hecatomb, thus a very prestigious sacrifice. S. Ensoli related this dedication to the series of drinking-troughs with a frieze in relief showing drinking oxen, formerly named 'Fountain of Eurypylos' oxen' by Stucchi, in relation with one episode of Cyrene's myth. Since then, the name 'Fountain of Hermesandros' has been used. This is an interesting theory, since both belong to the same area. However, one should remain cautious because no device has been found 'above' the drinking-troughs for fixing the inscribed block(s). The Greek word κράνα is in fact ambiguous, meaning both '(natural) spring' and '(built) fountain', but it is not clear whether this may extend on to animals' use. Yet all preceding commentators of the inscription thought of the spring and its basin known as 'Spring of Apollo'.

No sure prosopographical link can be established for this Hermesandros son of Philon. A priest of that name is mentioned at IGCyr081200², but without his father's name and the inscription seems earlier than the present dedication.

The poem interestingly keeps the typical features of the dialect, although line 4 has a purely traditional poetical clausura. As for the name of the goddess, this unique form is a mixture of dialectal Ἀρτάμιτος and common Ἀρτέμιδος.

Metrical analysis: we have here two elegiac couplets. At verse-line 3, for καὶ ἴκατι Gallavotti curiously mentions a shortening in hiatus of καί which does not happen, inasmuch as ἴκατι has lost an initial Ϝ: we have both a penthemimeric and a bucolic caesurae in a well constituted hexameter.

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Images

Fig. 1. Face of gvcyr023 Dedication of a hecatomb

Fig. 2. Drawing of gvcyr023 Dedication of a hecatomb by Hermesandros

Maps