RATIONES RERUM 24: Articolo Maria Barbara Savo

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Rationes Rerum 24

MARIA BARBARA SAVO
Poikilia. Frammenti di una trasformazione irreversibile

The age of Lycurgus is rightly considered a key moment in the transformation process of Athenian history, and the Atthidographer Phanodemus seems to have contributed significantly to the creation of a “new” Athens. The earliest attestation of this historian, dated 343/2 BC, is offered by an epigraphic document (IG II3 306) in which some formulas, while tracing the courtly language of the fifth century, are radically resemanticized in a democratic key. Among the formularies of this inscription, there is one relating to the propitiatory dedications, ἐφ’ ὑγιείαι καὶ σωτηρίαι τοῦ δήμου τοῦ Ἀθηναίων καὶ παίδων γυναικῶν τῶν ἐν τῆι χώραι πάντων, which is a significant reprise of an expression already used by Aristophanes and could refer to the so-called Decree of Themistocles, which in those years was repeatedly cited in Athenian courtrooms.