1 The Athenian Treasure Inventories

Herodotus’ passage on the Persian spoils reflected historical reality at least in part. In fact, from various sources from classical Athens it appears that at least some of these items had arrived in that city and acquired local fame. Demosthenes, in passing, refers to the spoils and associates them with the Athenian temples (22.13):

those who built the Propylaea and the Parthenon and decorated the other temples with the Persian spoils (ἀπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων), in which we rightly pride ourselves.

We also possess a very informative passage by Thucydides, who indicates the state of Athens’ public treasury on the eve of the Peloponnesian war (2.13.3–5):

[Pericles] ordered [the people] to take courage with the 600 talents coming in to the city every year from the allies as tribute, without the rest of the revenue. And on the Acropolis, there were then still 6,000 talents of coined silver (the maximum was 9,700 talents, from which money was taken to pay for the Propylaea of the Acropolis and the other buildings and for Potidaea), not counting the uncoined gold and silver and the private and public votive offerings and so many holy objects for the processions and the games and the Persian spoils and similar items (ὅσα ἱερὰ σκεύη περί τε τὰς πομπὰς καὶ τοὺς ἀγῶνας καὶ σκῦλα Μηδικὰ καὶ εἴ τι τοιουτότροπον), worth no less than 500 talents. He added much money from the other sanctuaries that they could use. If they were absolutely forced to, also the gold laid on the goddess herself: he indicated that the statue had 40 talents of pure gold, all of it removable. And he said that they would need to repay everything that was used for their salvation.

The passage provides information on the function of the sanctuary of the Acropolis as a store of treasures which could be used to finance war in the Athenians’ hour of need – even the golden dress of Athena’s colossal statue in the Doric temple on the Acropolis that is usually known as the Parthenon (but which I will refer to as the Great Temple in this chapter to avoid confusion with a treasury that was called the Parthenon) could be melted down if necessary. Thucydides’ testimony also indicates that the Persian spoils were stored on the Acropolis and that it, along with various other treasures, constituted a special class of valuables, not counted among the 6,000 talents of silver in coins.

Athenian epigraphy offers a source of validation of the information given by Thucydides. From 434/3 BCE (i.e., approximately around the time when Herodotus’ work came into existence), until ca. 304 BCE, the treasurers (ταμίαι) of Athena and other gods produced annual inventory inscriptions which listed the valuable objects comprising Athens’ treasure. Though the objects themselves are all long gone, many of these inscriptions survive.⁴ In their time, they were presumably meant to provide insight into the wealth of Athenian divinities, which grew over the years with the practice of dedication. These riches ultimately belonged to the city of Athens and could be used in times of need, as Thucydides says. In addition, the inventories enabled the treasurers to examine whether any precious objects were stolen (which actually happened, as we will see below). In many cases, the weights of items were recorded, presumably to verify whether any precious metal was chiseled off and to be able to calculate Athena’s total wealth, as recorded by Thucydides. These documents provide fascinating insights into what was kept in the temples on the Acropolis. The arrival, relocation, and disappearance of treasures over the years can be observed by comparing inscriptions from different years. Items of lesser value, for example bronze ones, were presumably not always deemed worthy of recording in the inventory inscriptions.

Thucydides clearly mentions the Persian spoils as part of Athens’ calculable wealth. This prompts the question whether actual Persian items can be recognized in the surviving inscriptions. Dorothy Thompson, who was one of the first to address this question, eagerly identified Persian spoils in these lists.⁵ However, the inscriptions do not offer much descriptive detail and they do not contain captions such as ‘Persian spoils’. Diane Harris, the author of an authoritative study that catalogues the inventory inscriptions is more cautious than Thompson: though admitting that some items may perhaps be spoils (or bought with spoils), she argues that they are invisible to us because the inventories do not offer contextual information.⁶ Elizabeth Kosmetatou has compiled a catalogue of treasures from Athens and elsewhere that can probably be classified as of Persian origin, but notes that the identification of Persian items in these inventories presents a considerable challenge to scholars.⁷ Indeed, caution is needed because the brief entries in the inscriptions rarely offer absolute certainty. However, if we pay more attention to other evidence as well as to the modus operandi of the treasurers, we can perhaps try, as Dorothy Thompson did in her pioneering work, to identify Persian spoils in these inventories.

Of key relevance to the present investigation is the topography recorded in these inscriptions. The treasurers often grouped the treasures by their location. Initially, in the fifth century BCE, they recorded these groups on separate stones. Later, in the fourth century BCE, they published them on single stones. In many, but unfortunately not all cases, the name of the location was provided. The location names appearing over the years are ‘Hundred-foot Temple’ (Ἑκατόμπεδος Νεώς), ‘Fore-temple’ (Πρόνεως), ‘Backroom’ (Ὀπισθόδομος), ‘Old Temple’ (Ἀρχαῖος Νεώς), ‘Bronze Store’ (Χαλκοθήκη), and ‘Virgin Room’ (Παρθενών). The topography of the treasuries is of interest to us because it seems to relate to a qualitative categorization of the treasures.⁸

The Hekatompedos Neos contained mostly gold or gilded treasures, in the shape of Nikai statues and wreaths. This was certainly the main room of the Great Temple, the building originally known as the Hundredfooter (Ἑκατόμπεδον) and later and today, after Pausanias (1.1.2, 1.24.5, 8.41.9), called the Parthenon. The main room of this building occupies two thirds of the interior and is approximately 100 Attic feet long. Not only does the size of this room fit the name; among the inventoried treasures was the ‘gold wreath that the Nike on the hand of the golden statue has on her head’ (στέφανος χρυσοῦς ὃν ἡ Νίκη ἔχει ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς ἡ ἐπὶ τῆς χειρὸς τοῦ ἀγάλματος τοῦ χρυσοῦ). This is the colossal golden statue of Athena that certainly stood in the main room of the Great Temple, which is known to have held a Nike statue in her hand, and which Thucydides refers to in the passage cited above.⁹

Unlike the Hekatompedos Neos, both the Proneos and the Opisthodomos contained mostly silver vessels, including many phialai (libation bowls). The Proneos is usually identified with the eastern porch of the Great Temple leading into the Hekatompedos Neos. The Opisthodomos would have been the analogous western porch, leading into the western chamber of the Great Temple. Alternatively, it was the western chamber itself or even located elsewhere on the Acropolis. The Chalkotheke was not part of any temple, but probably a storage building west of the Great Temple. It contained various types of arms, possibly of lesser value.¹⁰

The Archaios Neos was probably a part of the Karyatid Temple (perhaps a humble ancient shrine standing inside of it), as the accoutrements (jewelry, figurines, and an aegis) of the small, old wooden statue of Athena that certainly stood in the Karyatid Temple are listed in the inventories.¹¹ These lists also include what appear to be small votive offerings (miniature weapons and vessels) affixed to the doorposts.

The most enigmatic of the treasuries was the one known to Classical Athenians as the Parthenon. The Parthenon has traditionally been sought inside the Great Temple, because the name Parthenon was later used for the entire building. Because the large temple room was called the Hekatompedos Neos, the Parthenon has usually been identified with the smaller western chamber, even if there is no conclusive evidence for this identification. Wherever it was, behind its doors a mass of extraordinary objects was stored. According to the first inventory of 434/3, the Parthenon contained the following items:

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Treasures in the Parthenon in 434/3 (IG I³ 343)

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This diverse assortment of musical instruments, jewelry, tableware, furniture, figurines, weapons, and armor is tantalizing. Unlike the Hekatompedos Neos, Proneos, and Opisthodomos, which contained only metallic items, the Parthenon also contained objects made of ivory and wood. Most of these items in the Parthenon were not weighed, as if their value in precious metals was not a concern for the treasurers. Another difference is that items from the Hekatompedos Neos, Proneos, and Opisthodomos frequently disappear from the lists, as if they were borrowed (i.e., sold or minted) to finance state activities. By contrast, the Parthenon collection remained intact until the very last inventory inscription. In fact, the collection only grew over the years as more dedications reached the Parthenon.¹²

How was this extraordinary collection created? There must have been something special about the treasures in the Parthenon – something that the Athenian inventories, succinct as they are, do not attest to. It is a reasonable hypothesis that these treasures included part of what Thucydides referred to as the ‘holy objects for the processions and the games and the Persian spoils and similar items’ (ἱερὰ σκεύη περί τε τὰς πομπὰς καὶ τοὺς ἀγῶνας καὶ σκῦλα Μηδικὰ καὶ εἴ τι τοιουτότροπον). Such singular treasures as the gilded mask and wheat field with twelve stalks are difficult to explain. It is possible, but unprovable, that they were heirlooms or accidental discoveries from more ancient times.

For our purposes, one entry in the inscription immediately stands out: the six gilded Persian swords (ἀκινάκαι). The non-Greek, Persian term ἀκινάκης is familiar to readers of Herodotus.¹³ It would seem likely that this entry describes real, Persian dagger-like swords, rather than Greek swords called by a foreign term. Were these the ones picked up from the battlefield of Plataea and described by Herodotus in 9.80? The lists do not indicate the provenance of the swords and, alternatively, they could come from any other battlefield or have arrived in Athens from the Achaemenid Empire by trade.¹⁴ Still, the idea that they are spoils from Plataea is not implausible.¹⁵ Centuries later, in the second century CE, the periegete Pausanias still saw alleged Persian spoils on the Acropolis inside the building that he calls the Temple of [Athena] Polias (ναὸς τῆς Πολιάδος, 1.27.1):

As regards the votive offerings (ἀναθήματα) worth mentioning, among the ancient ones there are a folding chair (δίφρος ὀκλαδίας), a work of Daedalus, and Persian spoils (λάφυρα ἀπὸ Μήδων): a cuirass (θώραξ) of Masistios, who had the leadership of the cavalry at Plataea, and an akinakes said to be of Mardonius. I know that Masistios was killed by the Athenian cavalry. But as Mardonius fought against Lacedaemonians and was killed by a Spartan, the Athenians could not have taken the akinakes in the first place, nor would the Lacedaemonians probably have allowed the Athenians to take it.

Pausanias’ recording of these treasures in the Temple of Athena Polias is significant, because the three types of items – folding chairs, cuirasses, and akinakai – are all attested in the classical inventory inscriptions of the Parthenon, and not in the other treasuries (with the exception of more akinakai in the Chalkotheke).¹⁶ It is not absolutely certain whether the objects mentioned by Pausanias featured among them. Each of these matches could certainly be coincidental. However, the items are rather specific: Persian swords, cuirasses, and folding chairs are not regular votive offerings to Greek gods. Moreover, in this case, the force of the correspondence concerns three matches. This diminishes the possibility of mere coincidence. Thus, Pausanias, in his time, plausibly encountered some of the same items that were earlier recorded in the inscriptions. With this ‘intertext’, we can with reasonable certainty infer that the Parthenon did accommodate objects of special value: not only a folding chair said to have belonged to Daedalus, but also a number of Persian spoils. These items were not necessarily owned by famous Persians, nor can it be assumed that they were authentically Persian. In fact, Pausanias himself appears skeptical when he suggests that the akinakes perhaps did not actually belong to Mardonius.¹⁷ Yet, what is relevant for the present investigation is that these treasures could be considered to be Persian spoils and thus invested with historical meaning.¹⁸

Whether the akinakes was truly Mardonius’ or not, it was famous, to go by its mention in other sources. Dio Chrysostomus mentions the sword as a grand dedication to the gods (2.36) and Demosthenes, in the speech In Timocratem (129), dated to 353 BCE, relates the following story:

[Was it not Glauketes] who, though you deemed him worthy as an ambassador, robbed the goddess here of her tithe from the enemies? Was it not he, who, when in office as treasurer at the Acropolis, stole from the Acropolis those prizes of the city (τἀριστεῖα τῆς πόλεως) taken from the Persians: the silver-footed seat and Mardonius’ akinakes (τόν τε δίφρον τὸν ἀργυρόποδα καὶ τὸν ἀκινάκην τὸν Μαρδονίου), which was worth 300 darics? This event is so notorious that everybody knows about it.

Demosthenes’ story is interesting not only because it testifies to the real danger of theft on the Acropolis, in this case by a treasurer, but also because it brings another Persian object on the Acropolis to our attention: a silver-footed δίφρος (‘stool’ or ‘seat’). The grammarian Harpocration, commenting on Demosthenes’ term ἀργυρόπους δίφρος, defines it as follows:

ἀργυρόπους δίφρος· ὁ Ξέρξου, ὃς αἰχμάλωτος ἐπεκαλεῖτο, ἐφ’ οὗ καθεζόμενος ἐθεώρει τὴν ναυμαχίαν. ἀνέκειτο δὲ εἰς τὸν παρθενῶνα τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς.

Silver-footed seat: that of Xerxes and nicknamed the ‘looted one’. Xerxes was seated on it as he watched the sea battle [of Salamis]. It was dedicated in Athena’s Parthenon.

Herodotus does not mention the seat in the relevant scene of the battle of Salamis (8.90), but Plutarch’s account does include it (Life of Themistocles 13.1; here, the object is golden rather than silver). As with the items seen by Pausanias, Xerxes’ ‘throne’ could be epigraphically attested as one of the several δίφροι listed in the inventories of – again – the Parthenon. In some later lists, one of these seats is in fact called ‘silver-footed’ (ἀργυρόπους).¹⁹ The appearance of a silver-footed seat in the Parthenon collection matches Harpocration’s indication that the item was dedicated in Athena’s Parthenon. Absolute certainty is never possible, but it is plausible that this object was believed to have belonged to Xerxes as he watched the battle of Salamis. Of course, as with Mardonius’ akinakes, the seat may not have been authentically Xerxes’, or even of Persian fabrication in the first place, but what matters to the present investigation is that it was believed that Xerxes’ furniture was stored on the Acropolis inside the Parthenon treasury.

It might perhaps not be the case that all seats in these lists are Persian spoils and they could also belong to the category of processional items.²⁰ However, these categories might not have been mutually exclusive: Dorothy Thompson suggested that the Persian spoils were actually paraded in the Panathenaic procession.²¹ While this suggestion cannot be proven, it would fit the importance bestowed upon these items as Athena’s most prized possessions. In fact, many objects of the types recorded in the inventories (vessels, musical instruments, incense burners, and furniture) are also carried in the ceremonial parade depicted in the frieze of the Great Temple, such as the seats in the ‘peplos scene’ (fig. 6.1).²²

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Peplos scene of the Great Temple frieze, with two diphrophoroi on the left. British Museum, London

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On the basis of these accumulating correspondences between the inventory inscriptions and literary passages, we can state with some plausibility that spoils understood to be of Persian provenance were kept on the Acropolis and that some of them are recognizable in the inventory lists of the Parthenon: the akinakai, cuirasses, and seats. This critical mass of reasonable correspondences makes it plausible that more ‘Persian’ spoils are recorded in the Acropolis inventories. For example, the helmets, shields, sabers, and swords in the Parthenon could easily represent war booty.²³ One wonders why a tantalizing group of τοξεύματα σαπρά ἄχρηστα (‘broken useless arrowheads’) was kept in the Parthenon unless it had some historical value.²⁴ The Chalkotheke with its weapons, including akinakai and armor, is another likely repository of Persian spoils.²⁵

There are more groups of items in the inventories that scholars have classified as Persian. Thompson considered as Persian the gem with a gold ring in a bronze cup (ὄνυξ χρυσο͂ν τὸν δακτύλιον ἔχων ἐν χαλκῆι κυλιχνίδι) which appears in some of the later Parthenon lists.²⁶ Elizabeth Kosmetatou adds several animal and monster figurines in the Parthenon.²⁷ A few other items are deliberately labeled ‘Persian’: a single Persian aulos-case (συβήνη Μηδική) in the Parthenon, silver Persian shekels (σίγλοι) in the Hekatompedos Neos, and several Persian bridles (χαλινοὶ Μηδικοί) in the Chalkotheke.²⁸ Although these items were classified as Persian, this does, of course, not necessarily make them spoils; we do not possess any text in which such items are classified as such.²⁹

Returning to the passage in Herodotus on the spoils of the battle of Plataea (9.80), we can perhaps find some further correspondences with the inventory inscriptions. Herodotus makes mention of tents (σκηναί), gold and silver cauldrons (λέβητες), gold mixing bowls (κρητῆρες), libation bowls (φιάλαι), cups (ἐκπῶματα), gilded and silvered beds (κλίναι), bracelets (ψέλια), and collars (στρεπτοί). Mardonios’ (or Xerxes’) tent did not stand on the Acropolis or appear in the inventories, but was a famous object in Athens: Pericles’ or Themistocles’ Odeion (music hall) at the foot of the Acropolis was said to be a replica of it and roofed with wood from Persian ships.³⁰ The various types of vessels as well as collars and bracelets are attested in the inventory lists of several treasuries.³¹ However, it is impossible to identify them as spoils because such items were rather common dedications. A slightly more plausible correspondence with Herodotus’ ‘catalogue’ are the beds in the Parthenon described as made in Miletus and Chios, which were part of the Persian empire during 480 and 479.³² The golden bit of Masistios’ horse, referred to by Herodotus in another passage (9.20), could perhaps be the gilded bridle (χαλινὸς κεχρυσωμένος) in the Hekatompedos Neos.³³ We will never know for sure whether any of these entries correspond to the passage in Herodotus, but for every category, correlates can be found.

In sum, it seems that a plausible case can be made that real or alleged Persian spoils were stored on the Acropolis. Persian spoils can potentially be found in most of the treasuries, but it seems that the most special items were kept in the Parthenon, which housed the most stable and eclectic collection of all the treasuries. In the continuation of this article, I suggest that the choice of the Athenians to store these spoils in the Parthenon is significant, as they were here incorporated in the symbolism of this part of the Acropolis.

2 The Incorporation of the Persian Spoils in the Symbolism of the Acropolis

We know from Pausanias that the spoils were, at least at the time of his visit, kept in a building called the ‘Temple of [Athena] Polias’ (ναὸς τῆς Πολιάδος). Today, most scholars would agree that this building must be identified with the Ionic temple with Karyatids (architectural sculptures of virgins) on the north side of the Acropolis, whose fuller title was ‘Ancient Temple of Athena Polias’ (Ἀρχαῖος Νεὼς τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς τῆς Πολιάδος).³⁴ Ever since the seventeenth century, this building has been known as the Erechtheion, the sanctuary of the mythical king Erechtheus and Poseidon, described by Pausanias (1.26.5). However, the Erechtheion was almost certainly located elsewhere on the Acropolis.³⁵

Although Pausanias saw the spoils in the Karyatid Temple, Harpocration and the inventory inscriptions place the spoils in the Parthenon. As discussed, according to the traditional opinion, the name Parthenon was originally restricted to the western chamber of the Great Temple. For sure, the spoils could have been moved from the Great Temple to the Karyatid Temple by the time of Pausanias’ visit. However, I have recently argued that the name Parthenon originally did not apply to the western chamber of the Great Temple; that space was rather called the Opisthodomos. Instead, I suggest that the name Parthenon may have originated with the western part of the Karyatid Temple.³⁶ The precise correspondence of the treasures mentioned by Pausanias and entries in the Parthenon inventories is an important argument for this proposal (even if this argument is not entirely conclusive because the treasures could have been moved at any point over the centuries). If this proposed identification of the Parthenon treasury is correct, the Persian spoils were always, i.e., not only in Pausanias’ time, but already in the Classical period of the inventory inscriptions, located inside the Karyatid Temple.

Why does the precise location of the spoils matter? Following the traditional opinion that the Parthenon was located in the western chamber of the Great Temple, the location of the spoils did not carry any particular meaning. It may be the case that many of the Great Temple’s sculptures glorified Athens’ triumph over mythical barbarian enemies – a symbolism which became especially pertinent after the Persian attack.³⁷ Yet, the west room of the Great Temple itself is not known to have had a cultic, historical, or symbolic function. By contrast, if the topographical location of the Persian spoils in the Karyatid Temple is accepted, we can arrive at a deeper understanding of the meaning invested in these objects. The Karyatid Temple was primarily the location of the Archaios Neos, the shrine of the small, shapeless, but all-important ancient statue of Athena made of olive wood that would have fallen from heaven (Paus. 1.26.7). In fact, the temple was called in a construction account ‘the temple on the Acropolis in which the ancient statue [stands]’ (ὁ νεὸς ὁ ἐμ πόλει ἐν ℎο͂ι τὸ ἀρχαῖον ἄγαλμα).³⁸ Though small, and not made of precious metal, the statue was the holiest object in Athens. This Athena was the goddess that protected the city and the recipient of the peplos, the sacred garment woven on the occasion of the annual Panathenaia festival. She was the ideal guardian of the Persian spoils.³⁹

The western annex of the Karyatid Temple, the part that can reasonably be identified as the Parthenon, had associations with the mythical virgin princesses of Athens (Pandrosos, Herse, and Aglauros, the daughters of the mythical serpent king Kekrops), who had been appointed as guardians of Athena’s foster son Erichthonios. The frieze of the building plausibly included depictions of this myth and the Karyatids themselves might represent these maidens, or alternatively the six daughters of the later king Erechtheus, known to have been sacrificed to save Athens from a foreign invasion.

Whoever they represent, the Karyatids seem to be leaving their virgin apartment to gaze over the remains of the enigmatic Dörpfeld foundation in the middle of the Acropolis (named after the archaeologist Wilhelm Dörpfeld who ordered its excavation in 1885). The Dörpfeld foundation is an ancient structure thought to have occupied the location of a palace-like structure in the late Bronze Age. It certainly supported one of the citadel’s Archaic temples. This temple cannot have been fully extant anymore at the time of the construction of the Karyatid Temple in the second half of the fifth century, even though substantial remains of the foundation survive until this day in situ.⁴⁰ From faithful copies of the Karyatids in Hadrian’s palace in Tivoli, it is known that they originally held offering plates in their hands, perhaps indicating their reverence of the ancient remains below them.⁴¹

Following its excavation, the Dörpfeld foundation is again a prominent feature of the Acropolis. Its irregularly shaped limestone blocks contrast, now as in antiquity, with the classical marble buildings surrounding it (fig. 6.2). It may have reminded ancient visitors of the city’s turbulent past; for, in all likelihood, the Archaic temple once carried by the foundation was among the buildings of the Acropolis violently destroyed by the Persian army in 480 BCE. Its ruins were not rebuilt, but preserved right in the middle of the citadel until the end of antiquity. They disappeared under the medieval and Ottoman town of the Acropolis, but are again visible today following their excavation in 1886.⁴²

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The Karyatid Temple from the west, with the northwest part of the Dörpfeld foundation in front

Photo by Walter Hege, 1928–1929. © Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, D-DAI-ATH-Hege-1818; Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports/Hellenic Organization of Cultural Resources Development (H.O.C.RE.D.) (L. 4858/2021)

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In the corner formed by the west façade of the Karyatid Temple and the north wall of the Dörpfeld foundation stood another relic of the Persian wars: Athena’s holy olive tree. It was allegedly planted by the goddess herself in her contest with Poseidon for the hegemony of the city. Herodotus recounts its fate during the invasion (8.55):⁴³

Now, this olive tree happened to be set on fire by the barbarians along with the rest of the sanctuary. But on the second day after the fire, when those Athenians who had been ordered to offer by the king went up to the temple, they saw a shoot from the stump, having gone up as much as a cubit. This they recounted to the king.

The survival of the olive tree was a sign of hope in these dark days. The tree was sacred not only because it testified to Athena’s power as the city’s patron divinity, but also because it connected the city’s past with its present: it had witnessed the hardship of the epoch-making war and, moreover, survived it. This particular part of the Acropolis, the north and central area with its contrasting architecture, was thus filled with memories of both Athens’ primeval history and the more recent Persian attack. The presence of the treasury with the Persian spoils (along with other ancient items, such as Daedalus’ folding chair) blended into this landscape of memory: these relics invested with memories of Athens’ greatest conflict to date were offered to the city’s guardian goddess, behind her miraculous olive tree and marble city heroines, as tokens of Athens’ martial prowess and self-preservation.

3 The Acropolis as a Museum?

If the Athenians dedicated Persian spoils in the Karyatid Temple, it was, I contend, because they appreciated the commemorative or even historical value of these objects. The storage of objects of perceived historical significance was not uncommon in ancient Greek sanctuaries. We possess a fascinating parallel from the city of Lindos on the island of Rhodes. As in Athens, an ancient temple of Athena stood on the Acropolis of Lindos. Here, two local historians recorded an inscription, the so-called ‘Lindos Chronicle’ dating to 99 BCE, which gives insight into the dynamics of treasure-storing in sanctuaries.⁴⁴ The document records the arrival of treasures to the sanctuary over the centuries. Unlike the Athenian inventories, the Lindos Chronicle also includes brief information on the purported origins of the objects. From this contextual information, it appears that the temple formerly possessed many ancient heirlooms, including a cuirass of the pharaoh Amasis, a krater of Daedalus, and an akinakes of the Persian general Datis. The antiquarian practice at Hellenistic Lindos does not necessarily need to apply to Classical Athens. However, in a more general sense, the Lindos chronicle can indicate that there is nothing inherently implausible about the investment of objects with ‘historical’ meaning in Greek sanctuaries. It also shows that the inclusion or omission of contextual information about the objects depended on the kind of document: the Lindos inscription was a unique project, whose purpose was to emphasize the glorious antiquity of this sanctuary belonging to a small polity. By contrast, in Athens with its renowned temples, such epigraphic bragging was not necessary, especially not in inscriptions that primarily had a rather bureaucratic purpose and were produced on an annual basis.

Any object can become a carrier of stories, but this seems even more likely when it is placed in a sacred context. The Lindos Chronicle illustrates this process for Greek temples. Even if we have no similar document from the Acropolis of Athens, the testimonies of Pausanias and other authors show that objects here were also invested with historical meaning. Demosthenes, in his 129th speech quoted above, aptly named them the ἀριστεῖα: the ‘best things’ or ‘prizes’ of the city, that led to great pride among the Athenian population as a whole. To Greek eyes, which were perhaps not always accustomed to seeing items in valuable metals,⁴⁵ these objects were small wonders testifying to the dazzling wealth of the eastern empire that continued to be a menacing superpower long after the battle of Plataea. Even though Persian spoils are likely to have reached other treasuries as well, the best ones were collected in the Parthenon which was, plausibly, part of the Karyatid Temple. They thus found a home, alongside many other items of historical value, at the ancient house of Athena Polias that was a showcase of the city’s ancient roots and resurrections.

The practice of collecting ancient treasures is (at least superficially) not too dissimilar from the collection and exposition of spoils and similar historical items in modern museums and church treasuries. Josephine Shaya, in her discussions of the Lindos Chronicle, has likened the Ancient Temple of Athena at Lindos to an ancient precursor of modern museums.⁴⁶ This comparison should perhaps not be pushed too far, as modern concepts cannot entirely capture the wide variety of ancient collecting practices.⁴⁷ Modern museums have various functions beyond the mere exhibition of objects, including storage, conservation, study, and education. These functions are not attested to the same degree for Greek temples, whose main purpose was serving the cult of the gods. Yet, the realization that both types of institution could share a practice of collecting ancient treasures is instructive, because it emphasizes the function of temples as repositories of real or constructed memories of historical events. This function can remain underappreciated if we regard temples primarily as places of cult.

We would be in a better position to assign a museal quality to Greek temples if it could be established that objects were actually on organized display and that information about them was provided to visitors. We do not possess outright confirmation of these ideas. However, the work of Pausanias indicates throughout that interested visitors could gain access to temple treasures. Much earlier, Herodotus is sometimes explicit about having personally seen objects in temples.⁴⁸ As regards the spoils in the Karyatid Temple, the precise circumstances of Pausanias’ viewing of the items remain unclear. We do not know where, exactly, in the building the treasures were located or on which walls they were affixed, especially as the temple also had various cultic functions that competed for space. Nor do we know whether any visitor to the Acropolis had free access to the building, or whether Pausanias, as an interested researcher, received a special tour. Yet, even if the spoils were not normally visible but kept behind locked doors, information about them may have been transmitted to visitors by comments from the priest on duty, and of course, from the omnipresent inscriptions. Even if the spoils were not on display, the mere sense that they were there may have enthralled many ancient visitors to Greek sanctuaries.

Herodotus does not explicitly say that he actually saw the Persian spoils, but as Irene de Jong has indicated in her chapter, his use of the definite article and the present tense do suggest autopsy. Such uncertainty is typical in discussions on Herodotus’ methodology; he was mostly interested in transmitting stories to posterity, but did not always account for their origins, which could vary between autopsy (ὄψις), hearsay (ἀκοή), or reflection (γνώμη). However, we know that in many cases, Herodotus retrieved stories directly or indirectly from ancient tangible remains. On the Acropolis, for example, he does report traces of the Persian invasion: in addition to Athena’s burnt olive tree at the Erechtheion, he says that he saw the fetters by which the Boeotians and Chalkidians had been captured ‘hanging from the wall that the Persians scorched by fire, opposite the west-facing temple hall’ (κρεμάμεναι ἐκ τειχέων <τῶν> περιπεφλευσμένων πυρὶ ὑπὸ τοῦ Μήδου, ἀντίον δὲ τοῦ μεγάρου τοῦ πρὸς ἑσπέρην τετραμμένου, 5.77). Elizabeth Kosmetatou observes that Herodotus, in the case of Croesus’ dedications in Delphi and Thebes (1.50–52), gives the information in the style of an inventory inscription.⁴⁹ On the Athenian Acropolis, too, epigraphical information could perhaps have been a source for his passage on the spoils.

4 Conclusion

It is time to try to answer our original question: how could Herodotus have known about the Persian spoils and described them in such detail? In combination with the many ‘intertexts’ on these items, it is reasonable that Herodotus, like Pausanias long after him, had seen or otherwise possessed indirect information about alleged Persian spoils on the Acropolis. With their incorporation in the sanctuary, Hahn’s stage three,⁵⁰ they were also incorporated into the great narrative of Athens’ history. This scenario, tentative though it must remain, would not only be the best explanation for the colorful effet de réel in his account of the spoils of Plataea; it would also provide a wonderful illustration of how tangible remains, as agents in their own right, could themselves transform the history of Ancient Greece.