Epigraphy on Chios and the IG Corpus

Although George Forrest in a brilliant sketch (‘Epigraphy in
Chios – Cyriac of Ancona to Stephanou’, Chios. A Conference
at the Homereion in Chios 1984, ed., J. Boardman, C.E.
Vaphopoulou-Richardson (Oxford, 1986), 133-38) traced
epigraphical enquiries on Chios back to Cyriacus of Ancona’s
stay at the Giustiniani Palace in the winter of 1446 (the honorifi c
for Commodus’ wife Crispina Augusta which he recorded is
illustrated below), systematic work on a Corpus of Chian
inscriptions only began in the later nineteenth century. Alfred
Rehm received a formal commission from the Berlin Academy
to compile a Corpus of Chian inscriptions for a fascicle of
IG XII 6 in 1906, but in the ensuing century the project has
experienced a series of interruptions and setbacks.

Peter Derow, who died on 9 December 2006, at Emporio during the 2002

Chios Symposium in memory of George Forrest.

S.N. Koumanoudes, A.P. Matthaiou, ΗΟΡΟΣ 3, 1985, 105-11 (SEG XXXV

923): late fi ft h/early fourth century lex sacra for the priesthood of Eleithyia.

L.H. Jeff ery, Local Scripts of Archaic Greece (Oxford 1963) 343-4 no. 47

(Chios Archaeological Museum inv. 800): fi ft h-century funerary monument

for Heropythos the son of Philaios, who traced his family back over 14

generations to Kyprios

A.P. Stephanou, εἰς μνήμην Κ. Ἀμάντου (1960), 140-43 (SEG XIX 569,

with improved readings by George Forrest; Chios Archaeological Museum

inv. 1047); for George Forrest this inscription, which preserves a decree for

the Ptolemaic offi

cer and judge Apollophanes the son of Apollodoros, was a

perfect example of mid-3rd century BC formal Greek lettering.

Chios and Psara

Honorifi c base for Crispina Augusta, wife of Commodus (O. Riemann, BCH 1,

1877, 82-3 no. 5; Chios Archaeological Museum inv. 210): the only survivor of

the inscriptions recorded by Cyriac of Ancona during his visit to Chios in 1446.

A Corpus of the Inscriptions of Chios (IG XII .)

Th

e Fate of Chian Inscriptions: archaeology and context

Th

e ancient city of Chios lies largely under the modern town. Much of

the monumental existence of the polis was incorporated in the walls of
the Byzantine and Genoese Kastro and the houses built within it.

Some inscriptions remain in the walls of the Kastro or walls and buildings
within the town, as in the example below, but the majority have been
removed - fi rst to the gymnasium, then to a Museum in the former
mosque, and now to the splendid Archaeological Museum, with its
exemplary epigraphical gallery. Few inscriptions are now, in any obvious
sense, in situ or close by.

Zolotas, Ἀθηνᾶ 1908, 226 no. 32: dedication of an altar to the θεοὶ πάντες, now built into a

street wall in Chios town.

IGRR IV 954 (Chios Archaeological Museum inv. 1005): the inscription
records a donation of 15+ talents by Antiochos IV of Commagene to the

island, probably during his tenure of the eponymous stephanephorate; an

almost hidden note in SEG XVII 381, p. 107 off ers a new reading by George

Forrest of the damaged lines 5-6.

George Forrest himself took on the task in 1956 and made
substantial progress, cataloguing 600 texts and preparing
draft texts of 400, before his work was interrupted at a critical
stage by events in Greece between 1967-74, and thereaft er
lost impetus in the face of the other responsibilities and
commitments associated with the Wykeham Professorship
of Ancient History. Forrest’s work – in BSA publications, but
above all, almost anonymously in successive SEG issues, off ered
a series of careful re-readings and, oft en tacit, corrections of
previous publications (for example, of the Antiochus IV of
Commagene inscription illustrated below).

George Forrest’s work on the Corpus was immeasurably
aided by the scholarly activity of local historians on Chios
who recorded and published — oft en in local journals such
as Χιακὸς Λαός and Τὰ Νέα τοῦ Βροντάδου – epigraphical
fi nds as they occurred. Forrest acknowledged explicitly the
patronage and friendship of Antonios Stephanou, but George
Zolotas’ earlier role in establishing the island’s epigraphical
collection, the core of the modern Museum’s holdings, was
fundamental.

A New Team

Responsibility for the Corpus was handed on by George
Forrest to Angelos Matthaiou, who, in turn, formed a team
of Greek and Oxford epigraphists in 2002 to complete the
task. The team was made up of Angelos Matthaiou and
Georgia Malouchou from the Greek Epigraphical Society,
Charles Crowther, Peter Derow and Robert Parker from
Oxford, and Klaus Hallof representing Inscriptiones Graecae
in Berlin.

Responsibility for the inscriptions of the Classical and
Hellenistic periods belongs to Matthaiou and Malouchou, and
to Crowther and Derow for the Roman period. Klaus Hallof
has taken on a group of texts from the second century BC and
the tituli sacri, of which an example is illustrated below, have
been entrusted to Robert Parker. Although the new team was
robbed of its soul and inspiration by the untimely death of
Peter Derow on 9 December 2006, work on the Corpus has
now reached an advanced stage.

L. Robert, Études épigraphiques et philologiques, 128-35, A 17-23 and B (IGRR IV 946); the

diff erent letter heights of the two fragments indicate that fr. B belongs with a diff erent text,

Robert, Études 130-33 (IGRR IV 938).

A New Corpus

Th

e Corpus will include c. 750 texts, including a signifi cant number of

inedita. Recent epigraphical fi nds have been limited, but texts found
in the 1930s remain unpublished (for example, a decree recorded by J.
Vanseveren in 1937, illustrated opposite right). Th

e recent publication

of the Chian Symposium in Memory of George Forrest (Athens, 2006)
off ers some glimpses of this new material.

Inscriptions recorded in Chios town and throughout the island have
been revisited and checked wherever possible, but most of the work
has taken place in the Chios Archaeological Museum, where 450 of the
inscriptions are now held.

A comprehensive catalogue of the Museum has been established
by Matthaiou and Malouchou, and will be published separately in
preparation for the Corpus volume. Th

e inscriptions in the Museum

have been re-photographed by Crowther and Derow, and new collations
systematically undertaken. Earlier publications in many cases contain
errors of reading. Even the dossier of Claudia Metrodora (illustrated
below), subject of a characteristically incisive discussion by Louis Robert
in Études épigraphiques et philologiques in 1938, has needed revision in
detail.

Transcription from Jeanne Vanseveren’s 1937 epigraphical notebook (carnet

89 in Le Fonds Louis Robert), showing a still unpublished decree, now in

Chios Archaeological Museum) concerning relations between Chios and the

Aetolians; the text is to be published by Georgia Malouchou

Acknowledgments

Work on the Corpus has been aided by access, through the
kindness of Glen Bowersock and Denis Rousset, to the resources
of Le Fonds Louis Robert, including the squeezes of Haussoullier
and the notebooks of Jeanne Robert (Vanseveren), a page from
whose 1937 epigraphical carnet is illustrated above. At the same
time Jean-Louis Ferrary’s work on preparing for publication
the lists of delegates to the oracular shrine of Apollo at Claros
has enriched the prosopography of Chios.

Th

e family of Antonios Stephanou has made available material

from his Nachlass. Work on the Corpus has been partially
supported by a generous contribution from the Moschos
family.

Charles Crowther

Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents

Stelios Ioannou School for Research in Classical and Byzantine Studies

66 St. Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU, Oxford, UK

[e-mail]

J. Robert, REG 80, 1967, 282-91 (Chios Archaeological Museum inv. 1038): funerary

epigram for a Chian farmer (name lost) who died aged 77: ἐπ’ ἐμῷ τύμβωι χάλκειος

ἀλέκτ[ωρ | μάρτυ]ς ἐφέστηκεν σώφρονος ἀγρυπνίης

Inscriptions in Chios Archaeological Museum

Th

e photographs below and at the head of the right column opposite

illustrate examples of inscriptions in Chios Archaeological Museum
spanning the range of material in the Corpus, from Classical through
Hellenistic to Roman, from formal public to funerary, from prose to
poetry.

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