Sculptural and Epigraphical Restorations to Attic Documents

THE ATHENIAN PRACTICE of putting reliefs on large numbers of inscribed public documents of the Classical period has in five instances led epigraphists to propose sculptural solutions to epigraphical problems.' These problems consist of inscriptions apparently lacking part of their texts, in most cases a part of the prescript; the solutions call for the superimposition of another stone carrying a hypothetical relief and usually one or more lines of text missing from the inscription beneath. However satisfactory these restorations may be from an epigraphical point of view, in a number of respects they depart from the usual form for document reliefs, which are usually carved from the same stone as their inscriptions. This paper reexamines these restorations in light of the evidence for Attic document reliefs and the construction of Classical stelai made from more than one stone.2 Although the characteristics of the five stelai with proposed reliefs differ considerably, all have physical features in addition to their epigraphical peculiarities that have encouraged attempts to superimpose another stone.3 The treatment of the top surface of the stele inscribed with the alliance of 433/2 between Athens and Leontinoi (IG I3, 54) has been described as anathyrosis, standard preparation for a join, and it has been suggested that this inscription, with its erased and recarved prescript, was reused because it originally had a valuable relief.