The stoichedon style of
epigraphy (from στοιχηδόν, a
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
adverb meaning "in a row") was the practice of engraving ancient Greek inscriptions in capitals in such a way that the letters were aligned vertically as well as horizontally. Texts of this form give the appearance of being composed in a grid with the same number of letters in each line and each space in the grid filled with a single letter; hence, there are no spaces between words, and no spaces or punctuation between sentences. The majority are Attic, but it was widely used in the Greek world, and the earliest examples are from not later than the mid-6th century BCE; the first is perhaps the
Phrasikleia Kore
The Phrasikleia Kore is an Archaic Greek funerary statue by the artist Aristion of Paros, created between 550 and 540 BCE. It was found carefully buried in the ancient city of Myrrhinous (modern Merenta) in Attica and excavated in 1972. The except ...
or the
Salaminian Decree
Salamis ( grc, Σαλαμίς, el, Σαλαμίνα, tr, Salamis) is an ancient Greek city-state on the east coast of Cyprus, at the mouth of the river Pedieos, 6 km north of modern Famagusta. According to tradition, the founder of Salam ...
. It was the dominant style of inscription in Athens during the 5th and 4th centuries BCE and was the preferred style for official state proclamations. The last stoichedon text dates from the 3rd century CE and is the genealogical inscription from the
Heroon of
Oenoanda
Oenoanda or Oinoanda ( Hittite: 𒃾𒅀𒉌𒌓𒉿𒀭𒁕 ''Wiyanawanda'', el, τὰ Οἰνόανδα) was a Lycian city, in the upper valley of the River Xanthus. It is noted for the philosophical inscription by the Epicurean, Diogen ...
in
Lycia
Lycia ( Lycian: 𐊗𐊕𐊐𐊎𐊆𐊖 ''Trm̃mis''; el, Λυκία, ; tr, Likya) was a state or nationality that flourished in Anatolia from 15–14th centuries BC (as Lukka) to 546 BC. It bordered the Mediterranean Sea in what is ...
.
[ RP Austin, ''op cit.'' p.117.] The idiom was less common in Latin epigraphy, a rare exception is the
Sator square
The Sator Square (or the Rotas-Sator Square, or the Templar Magic Square) is a two-dimensional acrostic class of word square containing a five-word Latin palindrome. The earliest Sator squares were found at several Roman-era sites, all in ROT ...
.
This form of inscription is of particular interest to scholars of Greek epigraphy due to the chance it affords to reconstruct fragmentary texts. Few, if any, Greek tablets survive intact; however, the language and tenor of inscriptions are often formulaic and with a knowledge of the precise number of missing letters it is possible to make an informed guess about the lost text.
See also
*
Boustrophedon
Boustrophedon is a style of writing in which alternate lines of writing are reversed, with letters also written in reverse, mirror-style. This is in contrast to modern European languages, where lines always begin on the same side, usually the le ...
*
Monospaced font
A monospaced font, also called a fixed-pitch, fixed-width, or non-proportional font, is a font whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. This contrasts with variable-width fonts, where the letters and spac ...
Notes
{{reflist
Bibliography
*R. P Austin, ''The Stoichedon Style in Greek Inscriptions'', Oxford, 1938.
*M. J. Osborne, ZPE 10, 1973, 249-70.
*R. Thomas, ''Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece'', CUP, 1992, 88.
*A. G. Woodhead, ''The Study of Greek Inscriptions'', 1967.
Soichedon Styleweb-page on Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, Oxford University
Inscriptions by type