block
- Museum number
- 1805,0703.232
- Description
-
Marble shield inscribed with a text in Greek alphabetic characters. The inscription records a list of ephebes (young men enrolled in military training) at Athens.
- Production date
- AD194/195 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Diameter: 86.36 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
-
Cook 2011, nr 156:
‘A greek inscription upon a circular shield, three feet in diameter, containing the names of ye EHBOI of Athens under the Cosmetes Alcamenes, and of the Tribes to which they belonged. It was brought to England by the late Doctor Ant: Askew from Athens, where it was found’ (TY 12/2, dining room 2).
Bought from Lyde Browne, probably in July 1775, for £20 (TY 10/5-6; TY 10/3, fo. 13) or £10 (TY 12/1).
Drawings: B. F. Cook, `The Townley Marbles in Westminster and Bloomsbury', The British Museum Yearbook, 2 (1977), 42-43, figs. 24-25, no. 3.
Bibliography:
- Synopsis (1808), III.36;
- AMBM, II, pl. 36;
- GIBM 44; IG II2, 2191;
- Cook, Inscriptions, 24-5, fig. 16.
-
Bibliography:
- T. Combe, A description of the collection of ancient marbles in the British Museum, vol. II, London 1815.
- S. G. Byrne, Roman citizens of Athens, Leuven/Dudley, Mass., 2003.
- W. Peek, Eine Attische Epheben-Inschrift, Epigraphica 19 (1957), s. 87-92.
- P. Wilson, A Corpus of Ephebic Inscriptions from Roman Athens 31 B.C. – 267 A.D., 1992.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1805
- Acquisition notes
- Dr Anthony Askew discovered this fragment in the Church of Stauromenos in Athens in 1748-8, when he was told it had been removed from the Parthenon. (Another fragment, now in Athens, was found in the Church of St. Demetrios Katephores). Charles Towley later bought it from or through Lyde Browne around 1775 (Askew having died the previous year).
- Department
- Greek and Roman
- Registration number
- 1805,0703.232