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This paper explores the principles underlying decisions to inscribe Athenian laws and decrees on stone, finding (against a recent paper by Michael Osborne) that many laws and decrees were not inscribed, including those of ephemeral significance. The basis of the paper is a comparative analysis of the inscribed record of 352/1-322/1 BC and the literary record of decrees proposed by Demosthenes, which extends across the same time period. It finds that three main criteria were relevant to decisions to inscribe: durability of intention; the intention to deliver a message; and religious content. The effect of the establishment of the state archive of papyrus copies of laws and decrees at the end of the fifth century is explored, and the existence of the archive identified tentatively as a factor, alongside others, explaining the very small number of extant inscribed laws from the fourth-century democracy (ca. 12) in comparison with the number of decrees (ca. 550-600).
Attic Inscriptions in UK Collections
Attic Inscriptions in UK Collections 4.2 (British Museum, Decrees of the Council and Assembly)2020 •
This, the second part of our publication of the Attic inscriptions in the British Museum, contains new editions of the seventeen decrees of the Council and Assembly in the collection. All were acquired in Athens by UK aristocrats in the early 19th century and are published here in most cases together with other fragments of the same inscriptions still in Athens. The inscriptions offer a series of illuminating snapshots of the policy preoccupations of Athenian citizens across the entire span of Athenian decree-inscribing, from the early 5th century BC to the early 3rd century AD, and include important documents of the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Athenian Empire as well as characteristic inscriptions of the 4th century BC and Hellenistic and Roman Athens. Introductory sections discuss the history of the collection and locate the inscriptions in the context of Athenian decree-inscribing and Athenian history more broadly. In addition to significant new epigraphical findings this edition includes reassessments of several major inscriptions.
2016 •
AIO Papers 6
The Inscribed Version of the Decree Honouring Lykourgos of Boutadai (IG II 2 457 and 3207)2016 •
This paper reviews the relationship between IG II2 457, the upper part of an Athenian decree of 307/6 BC honouring posthumously the orator Lykourgos of Boutadai, and IG II2 3207, the lower part of a stele inscribed with crowns commemorating decrees honouring Lykourgos passed in his lifetime. It finds that 3207 either belonged to the same stele as 457, as the great epigraphist Adolf Wilhlem proposed, or to a separate, but associated stele. In section 2 it investigates the decrees commemorated on 3207, locating them in the context of Lykourgos’ career, his rivalry with Demades and his relations with other politicians of the period.
This is the handout for the Charles Gordon Mackay lecture, Edinburgh, Monday 25 February 2019. A film of the lecture, which was entitled, "The Democratization of Honour in Late Classical Athens and its De-democratization in early Hellenistic Athens", is available on the website of the "Honour in Classical Greece" ERC project based at Edinburgh: http://research.shca.ed.ac.uk/honour-in-greece/4-steven-lambert/
Introduction to my book, Inscribed Athenian Laws and Decrees in the Age of Demosthenes, published by Brill, November 2017.
This is the Introduction to this book, which has now been published.
This, the second volume of AIUK, publishes the Attic inscriptions in the British School at Athens.
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2012 •
ZPE 158, 115-158
Athenian State Laws and Decrees, 352/1-322/1: III Decrees Honouring Foreigners. A Citizenship, Proxeny and Euergesy.2006 •
Rivista di Filologia e Istruzione Classica
«For anyone who wishes to read up close...». A few thoughts revolving around the formula σκοπεῖν τῷ βουλομένῳ in Attic inscriptions, «RivFil» 146, 2018, pp. 334-3802018 •
S. D. Lambert (ed.), Sociable Man. Studies in Ancient Greek Social Behaviour in Honour of Nick Fisher (Swansea)
What was the Point of Inscribed Honorific Decrees in Classical Athens?2011 •
2008 •
2018 •