Support: White marble stele with a plain moulding above and a feature on the face for which see commentary (total w: 0.45 × h: 0.63 × d: 0.21; without cymatium w: 0.43 × h: 0.58 × d: 0.19). A large part of the moulding is broken off in the middle.

Layout: Inscribed across both doors with a vacat in the interval.

Letters: 0.03; archaic alphabet.

Date: Perhaps sixth century BC (lettering).

Findspot: Found in 1925 in Cyrene ➚: Sanctuary of Apollo, reused in the substructions of the Temple of Apollo (3rd phase).

Place of origin: Cyrene ➚.

Last recorded location: Seen by C. Dobias-Lalou in 1983 at Cyrene ➚: in the pronaos of the Temple of Apollo. Seen by E. Rosamilia in 2012 at the same place.

Text constituted from: Transcription from stone (CDL).

Apparatus

French translation

Aiglanor, le fils d'Antipatros, m'a consacré comme dîme.

English translation

Aiglanor, the son of Antipatros, dedicated me as a tithe.

Italian translation

Aiglanor, il figlio di Antipatros, mi ha dedicato come decima.

Commentary

When found, the stele had still red and blue paint, now disappeared. Oliverio did not comment on the sculpted feature of the face. It has been interpreted as two slightly open doors like on stelae from Asia Minor said 'with false doors'.

Alice Bencivenni's additional commentary: On January 16th, 2009, at the Seminario Avanzato di Epigrafia Greca (Bologna), L. Gasperini delivered a paper entitled 'Per una rilettura integrale del donario cireneo S.E.G. IX 78', which has remained hitherto unpublished. Taking into account the inscription as a whole, he convincingly argued that the the v-shaped feature on the face was the recess into which a metal ὀβελός now lost was originally fixed. The tithe mentioned in the text would consist of this object and the idea of 'slightly open doors' should be dropped.

Metrical analysis. Although written on the stone, the final vowel of the verb at end of line 1 should be elided, so that the sentence fits exactly a pentameter. Marengo suggested a different analysis: preserving the hiatus, she proposed a feminine hemiepes, followed by a hemiepes. However, this view, relying on the inscription being cut on two lines, does not seem relevant in terms of phonetic use, even if isolated pentameters are rather rare. The verse-inscription enhances the high quality of the offering.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Deed Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

All citation, reuse or distribution of this work must contain a link back to DOI: https://doi.org/10.60760/unibo/igcyrgvcyr2 and the filename (IGCyr000000 or GVCyr000), as well as the year of consultation.

Images

Fig. 1. Face of gvcyr049 Tithe of Aiglanor

Fig. 2. Face of gvcyr049 Tithe of Aiglanor

Fig. 3. Drawing of gvcyr049 Tithe of Aiglanor

Maps