Apollo and the Archaic temple at Corinth

Hesperia, Summer, 2004 by Nancy Bookidis, Ronald S. Stroud

EPIGRAPHIC EVIDENCE

Epigraphic evidence from the Corinth excavations can shed some light on the identification of the Archaic temple, although it is oblique and often without particular focus on the god Apollo himself. All of it comes from Temple Hill and helps to characterize the nature and function of the temple and its precinct. One of the earliest inscriptions from Corinth is a fragmentary sacred calendar inscribed in the epichoric alphabet, boustrophedon, on two adjacent faces of a corner block of poros that lists sacrifices in (at least) the month of [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.][---] and includes "four pigs." (28) Henry S. Robinson associated this fragment, which was found on Temple Hill in 1898, with a piece from his excavations on Temple Hill in 1970 (29) and suggested that these fragments belong to a block that formed part of the exterior wall of the Early Archaic temple, which was destroyed ca. 580-570 B.C. (30) No names of deities have survived in this fragmentary text and, as we shall see, attempts to infer the identity of the divine occupant of the Early Archaic temple on the basis of this inscription are methodologically unsound. The inscription does show, however, that the sanctuary on Temple Hill was important enough to have had an early and lengthy sacrificial calendar inscribed in large, prominent letters. Since most such sacred documents were erected by the polis, this sanctuary takes on added significance.

In the same excavations on Temple Hill, Robinson found a second example of a similar Archaic sacrificial calendar incised, boustrophedon, in the epichoric Corinthian alphabet, this time on a fragmentary lead tablet. On this tiny piece, nail holes are preserved for mounting it on a wood or stone backer. All that survives, in letters ca. 0.01 m in height, is the probable mention of an offering of an ox, possibly to Athena Polias, SEG XXXII 359. Again this inscription, as Robinson recognized, is "a public one," and may have been kept inside as part of a temple archive. (31) It helps to establish the sanctuary on Temple Hill as possibly the main repository for state religious documents. No other inscribed sacrificial calendars have been found elsewhere at Corinth. Parenthetically, it should be stressed that state sacrificial calendars do not necessarily provide evidence for the location of sanctuaries consecrated to the individual deities listed on them. (32)

Other epigraphic finds from Robinson's excavations on Temple Hill are relevant to our present inquiry. Against the background of a dearth of surviving inscriptions from Corinth before 146 B.C., aptly termed by Jean Pouilloux "la grande misere de l'epigraphie corinthienne," (33) it is striking that Robinson discovered in the northeast quarter of Temple Hill fragments of at least 11 decrees of the Greek city. This represents the largest concentration of official documents from any one place in the pre-Roman city. Clearly the sanctuary on Temple Hill was, like the Acropolis of Athens, a prominent and important location for the display of state documents. (34)