Rhodian Readings

Abstract

My main purpose in this article is to present a corpus of graffiti and dipinti on pots found on Rhodes dating down to the end of the fifth century B.C. About one hundred such inscriptions have been overlooked in previous publications or remain unpublished. I discuss the problems of interpreting these short graffiti and the commercial aspects of some of them. In so doing I comment on certain aspects of the alphabet in use on the island, but I have to deal with the complicating factor, whether or not the several marks were inscribed by a Rhodian or, for instance, by an outside trader. I hope to avoid circularity of argument (‘this letter is not Rhodian, therefore the inscriber was a foreigner’ or ‘this inscription should have been cut on Rhodes, therefore the lettering must be Rhodian’) by the application of various independent criteria which I outline below.