NUTTING, H. C., Horace, Ars Poetica 179 ff. OLDFATHER, W. A. AND TITCHENER, J. B., A Note on the Lexicon RITTER, C., Platon Symposion 212E. SHEWAN, A., IIon and Пóðos in Iliad and Odyssey . SHOREY, PAUL, Note on the Repeated Simile, Homer Iliad xi. 555 and 195 76 VOLUME XVI January 1921 NUMBER 1. ΤΑ ΓΕΡΡΑ ΕΝΕΠΙΜΠΡΑΣΑΝ, DEMOSTHENES xviii. 169 BY CHARLES D. ADAMS Demosthenes De Corona 169: Εσπέρα μὲν γὰρ ἦν, ἧκε δ' ἀγγέλ λων τις ὡς τοὺς πρυτάνεις ὡς Ἐλάτεια κατείληπται. καὶ μετὰ ταῦθ' οἱ μὲν εὐθὺς ἐξαναστάντες μεταξὺ δειπνοῦντες τούς τ ̓ ἐκ τῶν σκηνῶν τῶν κατὰ τὴν ἀγορὰν ἐξεῖργον καὶ τὰ γέρρ ̓ ἐνεπίμπρασαν, οἱ δὲ τοὺς στρατηγοὺς μετεπέμποντο καὶ τὸν σαλπικτὴν ἐκάλουν· καὶ θορύβου πλήρης ἦν ἡ Tóλs. "It was evening; one came to the prytanes with the news that Elateia had been seized. And then some of them instantly, arising in the midst of their supper, drove the men from the booths throughout the agora and set fire to the wicker-work, while others summoned the generals and called the trumpeter; and the city was full of tumult.” Reiske's comment is as follows: Tabernae erant in foro sitae, in quibus sedentes opifices sellularii scruta et supellectilem domesticam a se domi fabricatam vendebant. Hae σκηvaí appellabantur: die Buden. Constructae hae erant tribus e lateribus et desuper tectae cratibus vimineis, quae yeppa appellantur. Quoniam igitur illae tabernae cum suis quaeque craticulis tam cito auferri non poterant, necesse tamen erat, ut protinus populus in foro conveniret, utpote illa nocte ibi in armis excubaturus, imperarunt prytanes, ut tabernis ignes iniicerentur, qui tabernas momento citius absumerent et laborem crates auferendi baiulis compendifacerent. Reiske here asserts three things: first, that the yeppa which were burned were the mats of which the traders' booths were made; second, that the purpose in burning them was to hasten the clearing [CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY XVI, January, 1921] 1 of the agora; third; that the purpose in thus hastily clearing the agora was to make a clear space where the militia might camp that night under arms. That the yeppa of this passage were the materials of which the OKηvai, the stalls or booths, were made, is the unanimous testimony of the ancient scholiasts and lexicographers, but the reason for burning them has been variously conjectured both in ancient and modern times. My first purpose in this paper is to renew Reiske's supposition, neglected by later scholars, that the purpose of the prytanes was to secure a place for the instant assembling and encampment of the militia. This fits all the circumstances of the case: the messenger from the north had brought the news that Philip was at Elateia; that meant the road to Thebes, and that meant Attica. By this time the people of Athens knew enough of Philip's methods to be aware that he was not the man to linger on the road. Many assumed, as we know from Demosthenes' speech of the next morning, that the Thebans were on Philip's side; when the messenger left the north, Philip was already near the northern boundary of Boeotia; any hour now his advance cavalry might be expected on the plain of Attica. Can we conceive of any other thought than this as having been the first in the minds of the prytanes when they at their supper table received the news? And would not their first concern be to call the citizens instantly to arms? Demosthenes' account fits this supposition precisely: one group of the prytanes summons the generals and the trumpeter to issue the call to arms and to muster the troops as they come in from their homes; another group of the prytanes makes haste to get the assembly place ready for them; they order the hucksters out of the booths, and these hurry away with their baskets of wares; the wicker stuff that has served as booths is piled up and burned. Perhaps there is something more of haste than is absolutely necessary, perhaps some waste of good mats, but in such excitement is it not entirely credible? But what warrant have we for the assumption that the prytanes would take it for granted that the militia would encamp in the agora that night? Schaefer thought there was none. "Haec satis improbabilia sunt," he says, and that seems to be the view of his successors, for they do not even mention the possibility of such an explanation. But it seems to me that we have very clear light on the situation in another narrative, which has not, so far as I know, been used to illustrate the account given by Demosthenes. That is Andocides' account of the events of a day and night in the year 415 B.C., two generations earlier than the time of Demosthenes. The Hermae had been mutilated; the city was full of suspicion of an oligarchical plot; then all at once came the denunciation of a large group of citizens by an informer, and the alarming news that the Lacedaemonians were on the Isthmus, and the Boeotians mobilizing on the Attic frontier. Andocides describes the situation: On the Mysteries 45: ἡ δὲ βουλὴ ἐξελθοῦσα ἐν ἀπορρήτῳ συνέλαβεν ἡμᾶς καὶ ἔδησεν ἐν τοῖς ξύλοις. ἀνακαλέσαντες δὲ τοὺς στρατηγοὺς ἀνειπεῖν ἐκέλευσαν Αθηναίων τοὺς μὲν ἐν ἄστει οἰκοῦντας ἰέναι εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν τὰ ὅπλα λαβόντας, τοὺς δ' ἐν μακρῷ τείχει εἰς τὸ Θησεῖον, τοὺς δ' ἐν Πειραιεῖ εἰς τὴν Ἱπποδαμείαν ἀγοράν, τοὺς δὲ ἱππέας ἔτι < πρὸ> νυκτὸς σημῆναι τῇ σάλπιγγι ἥκειν εἰς τὸ ̓Ανάκιον, τὴν δὲ βουλὴν εἰς ἀκρόπολιν ἰέναι κἀκεῖ καθεύδειν, τοὺς δὲ πρυτάνεις ἐν τῇ θόλῳ. On this occasion, as on the later one, the senate (or their prytanes) call the generals and their trumpeter to issue and proclaim military orders. The hastily called militia of the city district is to use the agora as assembly place and camping-ground. As a matter of course on both occasions the agora must have been cleared of any tradingbooths and other obstructions. The interpretation of Demosthenes' account that I have revived may be criticized as assuming an unnecessary destruction of property—whether we assume the booths to have been the property of the individual shopkeepers or a part of the public property of the agora. Could not the wicker mats have been hustled out of the way? Why burn them? Doubtless that could have been done had the prytanes been less excited. But imagine the situation: the shopkeepers themselves were hurrying off with their wares, the people were pouring into the agora as the alarm spread-very soon θορύβου πλήρης ἦν ἡ πόλις. As the prytanes, jostled by the incoming crowds, are pulling down and piling up the mats, it is easy to imagine an excited and overzealous member picking up a brazier of coals from a shop floor and flinging them onto the pile-clearing the place once for all. The purpose was entirely rational, to make ready the camping-place for the militia; the means used was the result of excitement, and probably that of some one individual. We must remember, too, that the Athenians had nothing but contempt for the small shopkeepers, the κánηλо; many of them were foreigners; their name was synonymous for petty trickery; if their booths, encroaching on the open space of the agora, were in the way in a time like this, we can well believe that the question of their property rights did not enter the mind of the zealous prytanes. I turn now to an examination of other interpretations of this passage. The writer of the article yeppa in Harpocration's lexicon says the wicker coverings and curtains of the booths were burned ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ συνεστάναι περὶ τὰ ὤνια ἐπὶ τῆς ἀγορᾶς μηδὲ πρὸς ἄλλοις τισὶ τὰς διατριβὰς ἔχειν, “to prevent crowds gathering about the merchandise in the agora or loitering at anything else." But that was an evening when there was no danger of loitering about the shops. Fuhr, in his revision of Blass's Rede vom Kranze, conjectures that the purpose was to clear a place for the people, who were beginning to stream into the agora. The explanation is too trivial; the prytanes had more important matters on their minds at that moment than providing standing-room for a curious crowd. The favorite explanation is that the yeppa were burned to give a smoke or fire signal to the country people, some say to bring in their property for protection, others say to come to a special meeting of the ecclesia the next morning (Westermann, Schaefer, Weil, PickardCambridge). Goodwin, appreciating the absurdity of supposing that whenever the country people saw a smoke arising from the middle of the city they packed up and hurried into the walled town, suggests that it was understood that a fire on top of Lycabettus meant a call for a special meeting of the ecclesia on the following morning; that this afternoon therefore the prytanes seized the mats as the first material that came to hand, took them to the top of Lycabettus, and built their signal fire there. This is all mere conjecture and very improbable conjecture, for if there had been any such arrangement of Lycabettus signals for special meetings of the ecclesia, surely the proper supply of beacon material would have been kept on the spot. The whole theory of the burning of the mats as a signal, whether from the agora itself or from an eminence, is full of |