Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1940)

n8 The Tritopatores or Tritopatreis

level of the virgin soil discovered not only ashes and charcoal, but
also the bones of small cattle. Trial pits sunk outside the ring-wall
beneath the paving of the triangular place brought similar debris to
light. It was obvious that the cult here celebrated was older than
the construction of the circular edifice. And an inscription (fig. 40)
incised on the inner surface of one of the curved slabs, beneath the
cornice, reads as follows1:

The first two lines are engraved stoichedon in careful lettering of

c. 400 B.C. The third line is less well cut and appears to have been
crowded, as an afterthought, into the narrow margin left by the
other two. M. Holleaux notes that the Pyrrhakidai were an Attic
ge'nos, familiar to us from Delphic records of the Athenian Pythais2,
and P. Roussel points out that their archegetes Pyrrhakos is described
as a contemporary of Erysichthon3, who went from Athens to

1 M. Holleaux he. cit. p. 354: 'Des huit lettres qui la composent, on n'a pu jusqu'a
present dechiffrer surement que la premiere et les trois dernieres.' But P. Roussel ' Deux
families atheniennes a Delos' in the Bull. Con: Bell. 1929 liii. 166 ff. (167—179
Pyrrhakidai, 179—184 Erysichthonidai) gives fresh photographs of the monument
(figs. 1—4. of which 2 and 4 = my figs. 39 and 40) and makes it clear that the inscription
should be read as here printed. He rightly connects the ginos with the Attic deme
Ai'yiAia (v. Schoeffer in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. v. 39 f.). TpcTuwdrup In the Am.
Journ. Arch. 1931 xxxv. 179 is a mere blunder.

2 See Dittenberger Syll. inscr. Gr.'i no. 711 Dl, 30 f. n. 13.

3 Hesych. llvppaKor 17'pws Ka.T'"Epvalx6ova yeyovtis.

Tritopator

of the Pyrrhakidai

from Aigilia.'

Fig. 40.