Sickles and Strigils

Abstract

At least fifty small iron sickles were found in the pit on Rheneia to which the Athenians removed the contents of the Delos graves during the purification of 425 B.C. Various scholars have attempted to associate these with Thucydides' (i 8.1) report of the identification of Carian graves by the armour found in them on the occasion of the purification, and Herodotus' remark (vii 93) that Carian soldiers carried daggers and sickles (drepana). Similar sickles were also found in fifth-century graves on Rheneia, so the practice was clearly not a particularly ancient one in Herodotus' and Thucydides' day, but it was equally not a normal practice in any other part of Greece. The pit yielded the usual assemblage of Classical grave furniture with one notable exception — strigils — and it is worth considering whether, on Delos and Rheneia, these simpler small iron blades, like sickles, were employed as strigils. The usual Classical strigil is an elaborate affair of bronze with a curved hollow blade and shaped handle. It was used to scrape oil and dirt from an athlete's skin, a regular piece of palaestra equipment, and regarded as a peculiarly personal possession, like a man's favourite pipe or razor. On several Archaic and a few Classical gravestones the dead is characterised as an athlete with strigil and oil bottle, and strigils are very common offerings in Classical graves all over Greece. We would expect them on Delos: we have the ‘sickles’ instead. Clearly, for the purpose of removing oil from the body they would have served just as well. They are small for agricultural use (blades 10 to 17 cm. long) and with only one hole for fastening they could hardly be considered very sturdy implements.