The Athenian Archons from Kreon to Hypsichides

Abstract

The Athenian Archon list can be divided into three periods: (1) from the institution of the annual archonship down to 481/0—a period for which the evidence available for restoration of the list is slight; the names of some sixty-five archons out of the total for the period of about 200 are known to us, and the dates of many of them are uncertain; (2) from 480/79 to 302/1, a period for which a complete list has been preserved for us in the extant portions of Diodoros, apart from abundant confirmatory evidence; and (3) the Hellenistic period, for which as far as 101/0 the list has been reconstructed as fully as possible by the labours of Dinsmoor, Pritchett and Meritt. The present paper lists the archons of period (1) whose names have survived, and assembles in the case of each name all the available evidence for the date. In this it resembles Beloch's excursus ‘Die attische Archonten’ but differs from it in arguing the chronological problems more fully, and in writing out the greater part of the evidencein extenso. Moreover, since Beloch not only have numerous articles on points of early Athenian chronology appeared, but what is probably a fragment of an early inscribed Athenian archon-list has been discovered; and it seemed worth while to discuss the significance of this, as well as to assemble, within the limits of a single article, all the evidence and as many as possible of the opinions expressed relevant to the restoration of the list.