425-446

The epigrams from the Ambracian Polyandrion

• Ανδρέου, Ιωάννα Η.

A public burial monument (cenotaph-polyandrion) from Ambracia was discovered in a rescue excavation in Kommenou Street at Arta. It had been erected on the east side of an ancient avenue, immediately after the south gate of the city wall, and has the shape of a Π-form burial precinct. Its facade, 12.40 m long and 2.50 m high, is formed in an unusual manner, its periphery being bordered by a convex moulding and the uppermost course bearing a monumental inscription with three lines of letters in the Archaic Corinthian alphabet, incised in the boustrophedon and stoechedon style. The inscription preserves the greater part of a decastich epigram (five elegaic couplets), which recounts the destruction of the Ambracian army and fleet, and also of the “beloved homeland”, in a military episode that occurred near the Arachthos river.Fragments of a grave stele that had been set up on top of the polyandrion preserved part of a second epigram, also in the Archaic Corinthian alphabet in honour of their dead compatriots, who had obviously been lost in the conflict. The same stele also preserves part of an engraved of a baetyl, the nonrepresentational symbol of Apollo Agyieus.The fact of Corinthians and Ambracians arrayed together against a common foe, and the correlation of the epigrams with the one known on the Archaic stele of Arniadas from Corcyra, place the military episode in question in about 600 BC and assign it to the cycle of the Corinthian-Corcyrean epic.

• History and Archaeology

• Αρχαιολογία
• Burial
• Excavations (Archaeology)
• Επιγραφές

Η συγγραφέας ευχαριστεί θερμά την κ. Ντίνα Πέππα-Δελμούζου, Διευθύντρια του Επιγραφικού Μουσείου, για το ιδιαίτερο ενδιαφέρον, τη συνεργασία και τις υποδείξεις της στην τελική διαμόρφωση του κειμένου., Περιέχει 7 σχέδια. Πίνακες 97-100 βλέπε τέλος τεύχους, Το άρθρο περιέχεται στο τεύχος: Μέρος Α'-Μελέτες