στε͂σε in IG I³ 617 ?

Specific Text Questions
1

Hi,

I am trying to understand what the form ‘στε͂σε’ means in the inscription of IG I³ 617 (=DAA 148; CEG 194):

[Παλ(λ)]άδι μ’ ἐγρεμάχαι Διονύσιο[ς][τό]δ’ ἄγαλμα.
στε͂σε Κολοίο παῖς [εὐχσ]άμενος δεκάτεν

(* There is also an alternative conjuncture: Διονύσιο[ς ἐνθά]δ’ ἄγαλμα)

But unfortunately I cannot find this form anywhere. An additional question is to whom to refer the word ‘ἐγρεμάχαι’ viz: ‘rousing the fight’. To Pallas as her epithet, or to Dionysus? There are two translations of this inscription where translators support both possibilities:

Pallas qui excite au combat le fils de Kolos, Dionysios, m’a dressé, agalma que voici, en ex-voto, comme dîme.

(Trans. Nicole Lanérès)

Dionysius, the son of Coloius, set me up here as a gift-offering for battle-rousing Pallas

(Trans. Enrico Emanuele Prodi)

My personal understanding is this:

To the battle-rousing Pallas, me this agalma,
Dionysus, son of Koloios offered in prayer as a tithe.

But what is στε͂σε?

2

To me anyway, it looks like ἐγρεμάχαι dative is the epithet of Athena.

You can see from the meter that the first vowel of στεσε is long (and so they’ve marked it with the circumflex). So it’s στῆσε, aorist of ἵστημι without an augment.

You can also see from the meter that Διονύσιο[ς ἐνθά]δ’ ἄγαλμα is right. (The other requires reading the iota of Διονύσιος as long in non-ictus position. Not as nice.)

3

Dear Joel,

Thank you for your help and in-depth explanation of the στε͂σε, ἐγρεμάχαι and conjecture case! It all seems clear to me now - although my Greek does not allow me to catch all the nuances you write about. Anyway, greetings!

4

There must be something missing in the French translation, which is nonsense as it stands. I think it should begin ”à Pallas”. After that, both translations mean the same.

The point with στε͂σε (=στῆσε, as Joel correctly pointed out) is that this must have been written with a local (non-Ionic) alphabet that doesn’t have η, so ε is used instead. Same thing with δεκάτε=δεκάτη.

5

And ξ for χσ.

But the meter still doesn’t quite work as restored. This would fix it though: πάϊς [θυσ]άμενος δεκάτεν

“Dionysios, the son of Kolos, set me up here, a monument to battle-rousing Pallas, having sacrificed a tithe.”

6

The meter, I think, is supposed to be an elegiac couplet. The first line is a hexameter, the second scans -uu-uu-|-uu-uu-.

Your θυειν is more like make burnt sacrifices, I’m not sure that can be correct. But the only way I can make the meter sort of work is with your πάϊς, which they don’t print. Maybe I’ve missed something. Maybe it’s just that in a private inscription like this where they had to incorporate non-traditional names and patronymics, they took more liberties with the meter than ”real” poets.

7

Right, it’s an elegiac couplet (or distich).

But θύω is not weird with δεκάτη, which would be its object (not the ἄγαλμα). Dio. of Halicarnassus θύσας τοῖς θεοῖς τὰς δεκάτας τῶν λαφύρων. Aristophanes: θύω τὴν δεκάτην ταύτης [τῆς πόλεως]. Xenophon ΤΟΝ ΕΧΟΝΤΑ ΚΑΙ ΚΑΡΠΟΥΜΕΝΟΝ ΤΗΝ ΜΕΝ ΔΕΚΑΤΗΝ ΚΑΤΑΘΥΕΙΝ ΕΚΑΣΤΟΥ ΕΤΟΥΣ.

The Παλλάς ἐγρεμάχη makes me think that the δεκάτη might have been war spoils (cf. τῶν λαφύρων above, or the Anabasis references to a δεκάτη of spoils in book 5, I think).

And yes it needs to be πάϊς, but the iota is short and so it also needs a consonant following.

8

Ok, you may be right about θύω then.

” And yes it needs to be πάϊς, but the iota is short and so it also needs a consonant following.”
That’s what I meant by ”sort of work”. Either the s should be duplicated or perhaps a short syllable may be accepted before the caesura, i.e. make it an anceps. West’s book about the Greek meter probably has all the answers…

9

Anceps, at least, isn’t allowed there in this meter.

The θ from θυσάμενος would work as that following consonant, of course. Keeping [εὐχσ]άμενος, I don’t know how it would be.

But I think it’s telling that the two metrical irregularities in this verse happen in the two restorations [σ το] and [ευχσ], and accepting [σ ενθα] and [θυσ] fixes both.

10

Well yes, I’d like to know what whovever restored the verses was thinking.

The only thing I’m hesitating about with your version is the exact meaning of the middle in θυσαμενος.
(Edit: corrected ευξαμενος to θυσαμενος. I’m quite sleep-deprived…)

11

Yes, that’s a difficulty. But first here are some transitive examples of θύεσθαι:

Plato: τὰ δὲ δὴ τοῦ Κρόνου ἔργα καὶ πάθη ὑπὸ τοῦ ὑέος, οὐδ’ ἂν εἰ ἦν ἀληθῆ ᾤμην δεῖν ῥᾳδίως οὕτω λέγεσθαι πρὸς ἄφρονάς τε καὶ νέους, ἀλλὰ μάλιστα μὲν σιγᾶσθαι, εἰ δὲ ἀνάγκη τις ἦν λέγειν, δι’ ἀπορρήτων ἀκούειν ὡς ὀλιγίστους, θυσαμένους οὐ χοῖρον ἀλλά τι μέγα καὶ ἄπορον θῦμα, ὅπως ὅτι ἐλαχίστοις συνέβη ἀκοῦσαι.

There Plato is saying that when the poets tell the secret stories about the gods, the stories not allowed in his Republic, that the listeners be made to θύσασθαι not a pig, but τι μέγα καὶ ἄπορον θῦμα, to reduce the number listeners.

2nd century inscription from PHI (IG II² 1327): … φιλοτιμούμενος τάς θυσίας τοῖς θεοῖς θύεσθαι τὰς καθηκούσας …

Luke: Ἦλθεν δὲ ἡ ἡμέρα τῶν ἀζύμων, ᾗ ἔδει θύεσθαι τὸ πάσχα…

My understanding of all this is that the middle gets used when priests and ceremony is involved, the “official” sort of sacrifice, including a μάντις as part of the standard ceremony, and that the intransitive use of the middle that you find all over Xenophon comes from this.

Another transitive example from Plato (Leges), but this time with the μάντις: θυσίας τε ἐθύσατό τινας ἃς ὁ θεὸς ἀνεῖλεν, καὶ δὴ καὶ φοβουμένων τὸν Περσικὸν Ἀθηναίων στόλον, εἶπεν ὅτι δέκα μὲν ἐτῶν οὐχ ἥξουσιν

So long story short, I think that if [θυσ]αμενος is to be understood, it refers to an official ceremonial sacrifice of the δεκάτη (presumably made in a form that could be so sacrificed).

On the other hand, some other middle verb that begins with a consonant and takes δεκάτην as an object might be better. θησάμενος could work:

Odyssey: ἐν δέ κε θεῖμεν ἀγάλματα πολλὰ καὶ ἐσθλά

Again that’s active, but τίθημι seems to take middle forms much more generally than θύω.

12

Reading Κολῷο, stretched to Κολώϊο, could also explain the original restoration, as in:

στῆσε Κολώϊο παῖς εὐξάμενος δεκάτην

I couldn’t find other examples of this happening anywhere in meter, but there’s Πετεῶο in Homer, and I found this in Herodianus, who postulates a similar genitive:

τὸ Πετεῶο (Β 552) ἢ ἀπὸ τοῦ Πετεώς Πετεώ γίνεται Ἀττικῶς ὡς λαγῶς λαγῶ, ταὧς ταὧ καὶ πλεονασμῷ τοῦ ο Πετεῶο κατὰ τὸν Ἡρωδιανὸν ἢ εὐθεῖά ἐστι κοινὴ κατὰ Ἀρίσταρχον Πετεός ὡς καλός, οὗ γενικὴ Πετεοῖο ὡς καλοῖο καὶ ἐκτάσει Πετεῷο.