Abstract
Abstract This study makes a pair with the author’s “Framing the Gift: The Politics of the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi,” Classical Antiquity 20 (2001): 273–336. Like that essay, it argues that the function of a treasury is to provide a civic frame for ostentatious dedications by wealthy citizens: in effect, to “nationalize” votives. In this sense, the Athenian Treasury is a material trace, or fossil, of city politics in the 480s. The article tracks this function through the monument’s iconography; its use of marble from the medizing island of Paros; its relation to the “Alkmeonid” temple of Apollo; and the responses it evoked at Delphi and in Athens. Special attention is given to the methodological problem of finding meaning in non-iconic or non-representational features, such as building materials. The article concludes with a new reading of Pindar’s sixth Pythian, for Megakles of Athens, which neatly encapsulates what was at stake in this building project.
Journal Information
What happens when verse from Ovid, history as written by Herodotus, satyr plays, the works of Thucydides, an Attic red-figure kylix, and tracts describing medicinal practice of the ancient world are gathered in one place and analyzed with scholarly verve? You have none other than Classical Antiquity — a journal that combines the pleasures, politics, intellectualism, cultural production, sciences, and linguistics of European traditions, centuries past. Published biannually, Classical Antiquity explores interdisciplinary research and discussion of major issues throughout the field of classics, including Greek and Roman literature, history, archaeology, art, philosophy and philology — Bronze Age through Late Antiquity. From extant written materials to newly unearthed art-objects, Classical Antiquity’s coverage of the Greco-Roman ancient world is truly expansive.
Publisher Information
Founded in 1893, University of California Press, Journals and Digital Publishing Division, disseminates scholarship of enduring value. One of the largest, most distinguished, and innovative of the university presses today, its collection of print and online journals spans topics in the humanities and social sciences, with concentrations in sociology, musicology, history, religion, cultural and area studies, ornithology, law, and literature. In addition to publishing its own journals, the division also provides traditional and digital publishing services to many client scholarly societies and ᴀssociations.
