Monday, May 30, 2022
Dexileos
Inscriptiones Graecae II² 6217, tr. Jeffrey M. Hurwit, "The Problem with Dexileos: Heroic and Other Nudities in Greek Art," American Journal of Archaeology 111.1 (January, 2007) 35-60 (at 38):
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Dexileos, son of Lysanias, of Thorikos.Grave stele of Dexileos (Athens, Kerameikos Museum, inv. no. P 1130): Hurwit, p. 35 (footnotes omitted):
He was born in the archonship of Teisandros [414/3 B.C.E.];
He died in that of Euboulides [394/3 B.C.E.],
at Corinth, one of the five horsemen.
Δεξίλεως Λυσανίο Θορίκιος.
ἐγένετο ἐπὶ Τεισάνδρο ἄρχοντος,
ἀπέθανε ἐπ’ Εὐβολίδο
ἐγ Κορίνθωι τῶν πέντε ἱππέων.
In its broad outlines, the story is well known. On a day in early summer, 394 B.C.E., on a coastal plain where the Nemea River flows into the Corinthian Gulf, the Spartans and their allies met a combined force of Boeotians and their allies (Athenians, Argives, Euboeans, and Corinthians), turned the Athenian flank, and routed them all by nightfall. Fought in the second campaign season of the Corinthian War (395-386), the Battle of the Nemea River was at the time the largest battle that had ever been fought between Greeks, with some 20,000 hoplites on each side. The Spartan alliance is said to have suffered 1,100 dead (the Spartans themselves only eight), while the opposing coalition lost 2,800. It is impossible to know how many of those 2,800 were Athenians, but among their number was, very likely, a 20-year-old horseman from the tribe of Akamantis named Dexileos.To Hurwit's bibliography (pp. 58-60) add Nic Fields, "Dexileos of Thorikos: A Brief Life," Ancient History Bulletin 17.3-4 (2003) 108-126.