Author Description

A new and expanded text, with translation, of the best-known Spartan inscription (Meiggs & Lewis no. 67), together with detailed epigraphical, textual, historical and economic commentaries. The new text is based on a fresh examination of the stone, the diaries of early travellers (who saw the stone when it was better preserved than it is today), and a newly discovered fragment, which adds Aiginetan and Chian exiles, and individual Achaians and Spartans, to the list of Sparta's war supporters. This new text enables the date of the inscription, previously controversial, to be fixed in the early years of the Peloponnesian War, thereby shedding light on Spartan war-finance and Greek attitudes towards Athens in the 420s and providing a badly-needed fixed point for Laconian Epigraphy. The monograph also clarifies the meaning of the Greek words "pheugo", "phugas".