IGI3 628 The Antenor Kore

The Antenor Kore

IG I³ 628 Date: ca. 520 BC

Nearchos the potter dedicated this work as first fruits (aparchen) to Athena.^[1] uninscribed space Antenor made the [statue (agalma)], (5) the son of Eumares.^[2]

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References:

IG I³ 628 (Translated text) (IG Online) (PHI)

Raubitschek, Dedications 197 (PHI)

CEG 1, 193

CEG 2, Add. p. 302

DNO 628

Translation by: Edmund Stewart

Images: Acropolis Museum - (1)
Wikimedia Commons - (1)

Monument type: Base

Inscription type: Dedication (private, Athena), Metrical (dactylic hexameter)

Original location: Acropolis

Findspot: Acropolis (Acropolis Museum 681)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] The base and upper part of an impressive kore (an Archaic statue of a female figure), the largest discovered on the Acropolis, were found at the north wall of the acropolis, west of the Erechtheum, in 1886. They were linked with fragments of the legs and left hand discovered east of the Parthenon three years earlier. United, the fragments form ‘one of the best preserved and most highly finished of the extant korai’ (G.M.A. Richter, Korai: Archaic Greek Maidens, 1968, 75). While the statue was initially described as a kore, it is in fact likely to have represented the goddess Athena, since a bronze spike at the top of the head probably supported a helmet (B.S. Ridgeway, The Archaic Style in Greek Sculpture, 1993, 149, 175).

The Acropolis korai statues date from around 560 to 480. This dedication by Nearchos shows that large marble korai statues of this kind should not be understood as an exclusively ‘aristocratic’ dedication. Korai were common as dedications on the Acropolis, but they were also by no means the only or prime statue type, nor can they be solely associated with any one social class (see C.M. Keesling, The Votive Statues of the Athenian Acropolis, 2003, 85-8). For a recent discussion of this type of dedication, see R. Osborne, The Oxford History of the Archaic Greek World (2023), 279-83.

The dedicator may be the Nearchos who signed five Attic black-figure vases c. 550 as both potter and vase painter. The letter forms of the inscription suggest a date closer to 520-510, however. Such a date would also fit the probable floruit of the sculptor Antenor who produced the first statue group of the Tyrannicides after 510 and possibly as late as the 480s (see n. 2). This has been thought to pose a problem since the term ‘first fruits’ (aparche) has been interpreted as an initial offering made by a potter. Some scholars have consequently supposed that this Nearchos was perhaps a grandson of the earlier Nearchos (e.g. B.S. Ridgeway, The Archaic Style in Greek Sculpture, 1993, 296). The term aparche need not, however, require such an interpretation, since it is regularly applied to offerings of goods acquired some time before the dedication (as argued by S. Kaczko, Archaic and Classical Attic Dedicatory Epigrams, 2016, 77-8). Aparche may also be used to describe the choicest part of an annual harvest or a windfall, such as a catch or inheritance (see T. Jim, Sharing with the Gods, 2014, 36-8). It is possible that the dedication was made near the end of Nearchos’s successful career as a potter, as indeed seems to have been the case for other dedications by artisans (see IG I³ 620). At this time his sons Ergoteles and Tleson were active and the dedication might perhaps be a monument erected by the family of Nearchos as a whole (for this suggestion, see A.C. Gillis, Des dieux dans le four, 2021, 49). On dedications including occupational titles, see IG I³ 546. [2] The sculptor's signature in ll. 3-5 is a single dactylic hexameter (unlike Nearchos' dedication in ll. 1-2, which is in prose). Antenor (DNO 382-90) is known as the sculptor of the first group of tyrannicide statues (Pausanias 1.8.5, cf. IG I³ 502 with note) and he may have worked on the pediment at the temple of Apollo at Delphi to which the Athenian Alcmaeonids contributed (see A. Stewart, Greek Sculpture: An Exploration, 1990, I 60, 86-7). His father Eumares may be identified with the artist who signed perhaps two other dedications of roughly the same date (IG I³ 627 and 629). If so, the careers of father and son overlapped in around 520. A “Eumarus of Athens” (Eumarus Atheniensis), whom Pliny (NH 35.56) suggested was the first painter to distinguish male and female figures, may be the same person. If so, Eumares and his son Antenor were both Athenian citizens.

Added: 19 Aug 2025
Updated: 19 Aug 2025
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