The Athenian Treasury at Delphi and the Material of Politics

Abstract

AbstractThis study makes a pair with the author's ““Framing the Gift: The Politics of the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi,”” Classical Antiquity 20 (2001): 273––336. Like that essay, it argues that the function of a treasury is to provide a civic frame for ostentatious dedications by wealthy citizens: in effect, to ““nationalize”” votives. In this sense, the Athenian Treasury is a material trace, or fossil, of city politics in the 480s. The article tracks this function through the monument's iconography; its use of marble from the medizing island of Paros; its relation to the ““Alkmeonid”” temple of Apollo; and the responses it evoked at Delphi and in Athens. Special attention is given to the methodological problem of finding meaning in non-iconic or non-representational features, such as building materials. The article concludes with a new reading of Pindar's sixth Pythian, for Megakles of Athens, which neatly encapsulates what was at stake in this building project.