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67.
Found in 1898 near Gate of Athena Archegetis in Roman Agora. Part of right edge of relief and inscription preserved, back smooth. Relief bordered on right by anta, below by moulding now chipped away. Surface battered, corroded. White, medium-grained marble. p.h. 0.52, p.h. of relief 0.225, p.w. 0.475, p. th. 0.14, relief h. 0.01, h. of letters 0.02 5 (line 1), 0.01 (lines 2 ff.). The fragmentary decree concerns a sacrifice to Apollo in Athens. All that remains of the relief are the legs of two figures standing on either side of the Delphic omphalos set on a low base between its two golden eagles. Although only the lower part of the relief is preserved, Wolters demonstrated that it so closely resembles the corresponding section of a completely preserved Attic-style relief in Sparta that it can be restored with reasonable assurance by reference to it, assuming that the relief in Sparta is a copy of the Athenian relief or that both were modelled on the same source (Sparta Museum inv. 468: P. Wolters, AM 12 (1887) pl. 12; Hausmann, fig. 35). In the relief from Sparta the figure on the left is Apollo, turned toward the right, his weight on his right leg, his left leg advanced. In his left hand he holds his lyre, in his extended right hand a phiale. The slightly extended left leg and the bottom of his drapery are all that are preserved in the document relief. The figure opposite him in the Sparta relief is Artemis, turned in three-quarter view toward the left as she pours wine for Apollo's libation with her right hand. She wears a chiton and himation draped loosely across her abdomen. In the document relief, the crinkly folds of her chiton are visible at the bottom of the relief, and the lines of the himation, where they can be distinguished at all, appear to correspond to those in the other relief. Svoronos and Binneboeßel restored a third figure, Leto, on the far left of the document relief because the restoration of the inscription indicates that approximately one-third of the relief is missing. Athena, who appears in almost all fifth-century document reliefs, is another possibility. There is very little fresh surface remaining in the relief from which to judge the style, but the deeply cut, complex folds of the chiton of Artemis resemble the drapery of some figures of the Nike Temple frieze (Blümel, pl. I, figs. 1, 3) and the Nike Temple Parapet (Carpenter, pl. i). Sokolowski dated the decree ca. 430 on the grounds that mention of the oracle at Delphi called for a date before the Peloponnesian War and Spartan influence in Delphi; a date during the Peace of Nikias, as Hiller and others have proposed, is more likely. The proposer Philoxenos is usually identified as the son of Eruxis who was ridiculed in Attic comedy in the late 420S (Ar. Wasps 84). C. Daremberg and E. Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines (Paris 1875), 199 n. 16, s.v. omphalos (G. Karo); P. Wolters, AM 12 (1887) 378-83; A. Wilhelm, ÖJhBeibl I (1898) 43; AnzWien (1899) 3; Hiller, SBBerl (1919) 669-72; l. N. Svoronos, JIAN I3 (1911) 301-16, fig. 1; IG I2 78; W. Bannier, RhM 77 (1928) 284-85; Binneboeßel, 4 no. 7, 20, 31-32; Svoronos, 666 no. 436 (1), pl. 211.1; Picard 11.2, 838; W. Peek, AM 66 (1941) 214 n. 1; SEG 10.63; H. Bloch, AJP 74 (1953) 417; J. H. Oliver, AJP 75 (1954) 166-69; SEG 12.25; SEG 13.6; Wycherley, Agora III, 172 no. 568; SEG 16.6; Sokolowski, Lois sacrées des cités grecques, Suppl. 1 (1962) 25-26 no. 8; SEG 21.38; H. B. Mattingly, PACA 9 (1966) 63-64; A. Boegehold, Classical Studies Presented to Ben Edwin Perry (1969) 179, pl. 2; SEG 25.25; Mitropoulou, Corpus I, 172 no. 3, fig. 75; Zagdoun, FdD IV.6, 55 n. 9; LIMC II, 704 no. 1075, s.v. Artemis (L. Kahil); Meyer, 268 A 10, pl. 6.2.The Getty Grant program provided support for entering this text.
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