Around 400 BC, Xenokrateia, an Athenian woman, dedicated to Kephisos and other gods a beautiful relief with a dedicatory epigram on its base. It came to light near the mouth of the river Kephisos, in present-day Neo Phaliron, in 19081. With its detailed relief and poignant epigram, Xenokrateia’s dedication is a rare example of a public ego-document by a citizen woman. The archaeological, iconographical, epigraphical and religious aspects of the monument, and of a sacrificial list found close by, have elicited a wealth of scholarship2. In this article, I hope to contribute to the debate on women’s lives and agency in classical Athens by investigating this monument and its context as a document of an individual woman, in which she presented herself, her gift to the gods and her motives for it to the human and divine world. The dedication in its entirety reflects the competences she needed to create it, competences that she must have had in common with many Athenians, male and female, even if her gift to Kephisos is exceptional for its splendour, expressiveness and survival.

In the debate about women in Athens, scholars have often pointed out that our literary sources were all written by men, offering representations of women and values about them from a male perspective. Polis decrees likewise were written and decided by men; although these texts need additional evidence to appraise their effects in society, again they highlight legal constraints on women, in norms and conduct, in an androcentric society. Epigraphical and archaeological evidence occasionally offers access to women’s presence and actions in ways that seem less mediated by men, even if it is still difficult to attain insight in women’s own aims. Shifting the perspective away from legal, economic, social and political constraints that had to be circumvented or negotiated, we may try to find women’s agency in classical Athens by reconstructing the competences women needed to have to do the kind of things we see them doing in the evidence.

Such an approach requires reading between the lines, literally and figuratively, of our evidence, with an appropriate methodology. Many excellent publications have done so convincingly, but for my present purposes two in particular have been inspirational. In her study Literacy and democracy in fifth-century Athens (2011), Anna Missiou advocates the existence of widespread low literacy among Athenian men, because for the democracy to operate, writing, some of it simple and short, other more extensive, was simply indispensable. However, elementary schooling for all citizen boys is not clearly attested before the Hellenistic age3, and high literacy, with concomitant access to philosophy, science and rhetoric, was only available to those who could afford a qualified teacher within the household or visiting a private school. Given the limited access to formal schooling in classical Athens, Missiou argues that male citizens at large must have acquired some competence in reading and writing by picking up the principles from peers and at home, aided by the relative simplicity of alphabetic writing and the omnipresence of written texts on central spaces in the city. The same would apply, I will argue with some modifications, to Athenian women, as is relevant for retrieving Xenokrateia’s literacy. The second source of inspiration is the recent volume (2017) Women’s ritual competence in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean, edited by Matthew Dillon, Esther Eidinow and Lisa Maurizio. Behind the written and visual evidence, the contributors identify the skills, knowledge and agency of women in the religious domain, and they observe competences manifest at multiple levels, from nearly unconscious, automatic conventions to expressive, conspicuous actions. ‘Competence’, as used in this volume, is also what I intend to reconstruct here from reading Xenokrateia’s monument; some elucidation of this notion is therefore in place.

Competences

In everyday language, by competence we mean a mode of behaviour relying on adequate knowledge of the matter at hand, cognizance of the societal conditions in which one is to act, shaping self-awareness and identity, and the ability to communicate all of this effectively to others. It entails aligning internal capacities (cognitive, social and emotional skills) to external factors (formal and informal societal constraints; available styles of action) for a satisfactory performance. Competence thus also implies recognition by others.

Owing to present-day psychological research, we can be more precise on the development and effects of competence. Interest, in the sense of the wish and perseverance to attain a certain skill, knowledge or social position, is now found to be driven by intrinsic motivation more strongly and consistently than by external factors such as rewards or punishments (as behavioural psychologists used to suppose). But rewards do shape and sustain such interests, and verbal encouragement is often more effective than tangible rewards, especially in the long run4. Achieving cognitive and social competences, furthermore, is significantly influenced by how a person perceives herself, in terms of her own abilities, qualification and learning capacities. A visible effect of this process is the growing sense of autonomy in dealing with the matter at hand5. Vice versa, cognitive competences play an important role in identity formation, a process that depends on exploring the possibilities and making decisions to commit oneself (for some time) to certain roles and views. Problems in this process are solved by creating alternatives, temporarily adopting multiple perspectives to weigh the pros and cons of a certain position, and critical evaluation of alternatives to review and revise earlier positions. With these cognitive competences, coming to terms with social norms and finding viable alternatives are crucial to achieve a stable identity6. Researchers retrieve these processes by detailed questionnaires among a representative population, showing that cognitive and other competences are learned in formal education as well as by following role models, by observing others and by casual oral instructions and comments. Reflecting a diverse group of test persons, in terms of ethnicity, gender and class, such patterns presumably are at work in the development of competences in the human psyche generally.

For ancient Athens, the evidence on formal education, actual role models and informal guidance is scarce, especially for women. If we are to reconstruct women’s competences, we need to hypothesise that these qualities operated behind the scenes of our evidence that shows their outcome, and they can only be retrieved by reading between the lines. Following the psychological research just mentioned, we may suppose that for an Athenian woman, too, her own interest would be a strong drive to attain certain goals and acquire the necessary skills. To all likelihood, this process began in the areas where women traditionally played a major role, the household and religion. The skills and competences necessary in both domains were considerable, also depending of course on their material resources. Identifying different domains of women’s lives and charting their abilities and restrictions in each is not irrelevant, but if we allow more room for the effects of interaction between such domains, especially in terms of reinforcing competences, our views may change considerably. Beginning at a level of elementary, almost self-evident practice, they would be growing more extensive, conscious and mature over time. Acquiring competence in one area would generate confidence and a sense of learning capacities that would stimulate developing competences in other areas as well. All of these would be constitutive in the formation of her identity as an agent in the public and private spheres, in which handling legal and social norms was fully integrated. Instead of assuming a situation in which she and perhaps her male relatives were resourceful enough to circumvent or ignore formidable social barriers or the law, focusing on competences makes us project a situation in which a woman’s agency and performance were considered normal, and even laudable, by all concerned, enhancing a committed sense of herself in society.

Investigating all of this in full far exceeds the scope of this article, but the present case study hopefully will stimulate further work. One aspect, central to the case of Xenokrateia, may be illustrative. In the economic domain, the law allegedly restricted women’s transactions to a value up to ca. three drachmas7. In the sphere of religion, by contrast, women played a role largely symmetrical to that of men, also in public life8. Yet the numerous dedications by women are not only evidence of their piety, but also of their economic transactions9. From the sixth century to ca. 300 BC, the extant inscribed artefacts include some 150 women who dedicated gifts in stone or bronze to the gods in their own name, alone or together with others; many of these gifts were worth (far) more than three drachmas10. Costly textiles, now only known from inventories, were dedicated especially to goddesses; the women who consecrated them probably made themselves these garments, which represented also a high economic value11. Their sheer quantity must reflect the normality of these transactions and gives an idea of the scale on which women handled wealth for such purposes, inviting us to reconsider the economic competences of women more widely12. Xenokrateia’s dedication offers a rare possibility for an in-depth, qualitative analysis of the ritual, social and economic agency of one, individual woman. Discussing the monuments in some detail, with a few proposed revisions to the scholarship, I intend to elicit Xenokrateia’s identity as a woman and an Athenian citizen, her competences in the ritual sphere, her literacy and her economic capacities, all of which she combined to accomplish her gift to the gods.

Xenokrateia’s dedication

Xenokrateia’s dedication consists of a relief of white marble (Fig. 1) with its imposing poros base carrying the dedicatory inscription (Fig. 5)13. The finely carved relief, now soft-lined due to wear, shows in the centre a woman with a little boy stretching out his right arm, facing a larger male figure who bends over to her and seems to address her with a gesture of his hand. Behind them figures a large group of deities: ten figures in all, of which on the outer left Apollo Pythios, seated on a tripod with an eagle and the omphalos at his feet, and on the outer right Acheloös with his bull’s head may be identified at once.

The dedicatory epigram in (not highly accomplished) verse is preceded by the name of the dedicator14:

Ξενοκράτεια ΚηφισÕ ἱερὸν ἱδρύσατο καὶ ἀνέθηκεν
                    ξυμβώμοις τε θεοῖς(ι) διδασκαλίας τόδε δῶρον,
                    ΞενιάδÕ θυγάτηρ καὶ μήτηρ ἐκ Χολλειδῶν (vacat)
                    θύεν τῶι βουλομένωι ἐπὶ
                    τελεστῶν ἀγαθῶν (vacat).

Xenokrateia founded the sanctuary of Kephisos and dedicated
                    to the gods who share his altar this gift because of instruction
                    daughter and mother of Xeniades of Cholleidai;
                    for whoever wishes to sacrifice for
                    fulfilment of good things.

A low poros stone inscribed with a list of gods was found close by; with all names in the dative, it is clearly a sacrificial list (fig. 7)15:
 

The whole set raises several questions:

1. Who was Xenokrateia, what does she tell us about herself and her motives in her dedication?

2. What did her dedication consist of? This question involves the date of the monuments, their location, their various components, especially the relation between the sacrificial list and the divinities on the relief.

3. How did she get the resources for this dedication and which competences did she need to bring it about?

Furthermore, another dedication found close by may have been connected to Xenokrateia’s in some way. It consists of a marble double relief, showing on one side (A) Artemis with a male figure (god?), Kephisos and Nymphs (fig. 3), and on the other (B) Hermes with the hero Echelos abducting the nymph Iasile (fig. 4), and its base of poros stone with a dedicatory inscription (fig. 6)16^:
 

For this monument the same questions about the date, the identity of the divinities depicted, the location and resources, are relevant, in order to understand

1. What, if anything, had Xenokrateia’s dedication to do with that of Kephisodotos?

For the purposes of this article, questions a) and c) are the most important, but they can only be answered once questions b) and d) are, and all answers tend to be interdependent to some extent.

Beginning with b), some elements of Xenokrateia’s dedication can be identified straightaway: the relief with its base and epigram. Whether she also dedicated a sanctuary was called into question by epigraphist Margarita Guarducci, who held that ἱερόν, because it lacks an article, is an adjective to δῶρον, i.e. not ‘a sanctuary’ but ‘a hieros gift’18. This reading is unconvincing, however, due to the syntax of the sentence and to comparative cases of absence of articles meaning ‘this object’ nonetheless19. So, Xenokrateia also dedicated the sanctuary in which the relief was standing. Williams rightly observes that ‘the extent of the sanctuary cannot be established, since only a small area was explored during the brief salvage excavations’20. Previous speculations about the sanctuary being a grove or similar kind of cult place are therefore unfounded.

Whether the inscribed offering list also belonged to Xenokrateia’s dedication was doubted for a long time, because in earlier scholarship the list was dated one to two decades after the relief. The relief is dated on iconographical and sculptural arguments. In 1966, Jiří Frel ascribed the relief to the ‘Xenokrateia sculptor’, to whom he also ascribed side A of the double relief of Kephisodotos, and assigned it to c. 410-40021. Frel’s date was confirmed by Brunilde Ridgway and hence c. 410-400 became standard for a long time22. The sacrificial list was dated in IG (IG II² 4547) to the early fourth century due to Ionic features in its script, which in IG was taken to date after 403/2, and its letterforms. However, the arguments behind these divergent dates have been gradually revised. Charles Edwards has convincingly argued that the reliefs were made by two different sculptors, arriving at a date of c. 405-390 for the Xenokrateia relief23. For the sacrificial list, the use of Ionic is no longer taken to indicate a date after c. 400, because it appears sparingly from the mid-fifth century and increasingly from the 420s onward24. Nor do the letterforms necessarily point to the later date; on balance, a date c. 400 is more convincing25. In sum, precise dates being impossible for both monuments, with a margin they can be dated to the decade around 400 and could belong together on that account26.

Since according to her epigram Xenokrateia founded the sanctuary, she probably also set up the altar to Kephisos and the other gods she mentions, but this was not the stone with the offering list. The stone has neither the shape for nor traces of offerings (fig. 8) and in the list the deities are all set in the dative, instead of the genitive more commonly used for gods as owners of an altar (and hence recipients of its offerings)27.

Finally, some scholars have argued that on the base the invitation to other worshippers was added later to the dedicatory epigram by someone else, as the letters of the first three lines (dedication) would differ from those of the last two lines (invitation) and be separated from each other28. On autopsy I cannot confirm this. The base and the sacrificial list are made of poros stone, each of a different kind but both of an uneven, brittle quality that is difficult to inscribe; consequently, the letters are quite irregular throughout both inscriptions29. On the base, it is rather the irregular shape of the space for the inscription due to the uneven surface that has affected the shape and position of the lines (fig. 5). A few differences between the letters on the base and on the list suggest two different cutters for the two stones, whereas the similarities reflect the style of these decades30. It is notable, furthermore, that the inscription on the base is faded and worn, whereas the letters of the offering list are crisp, suggesting that this stone stood inside the sanctuary, whereas the base with its relief was more exposed. In sum, I regard the whole epigram including the invitation as Xenokrateia’s message, and the sacrificial list as also ordered by her from a different cutter or workshop.

We may conclude that Xenokrateia founded a sanctuary and dedicated a relief with an epigram, a stone with a sacrificial list and probably an altar. This combination of a cult or sanctuary with an inscription explaining the reason for the gift and a prescription for the cult or the offerings is a well-known, indeed typical feature of private foundations31.

The deities of Xenokrateia’s dedication

If we want to understand Xenokrateia’s self-presentation and her purposes in her gift to the gods, it is crucial to ascertain to whom she dedicated it. Obviously, the river god Kephisos was the primary recipient, as clearly stated in the epigram and enhanced by the location she chose for the sanctuary, at the mouth of the Kephisos, in an area known as the region of the Tetrakomoi of Herakles (see map)32. Her relief, base and offering list were found at the place of the north wall, the double relief and base of Kephisodotos at the south wall of the western Long Walls from Athens to Piraeus. Whether or not the Walls were standing when these dedications were made, cannot be ascertained, nor whether their destruction and rebuilding had an impact on the construction of the sanctuary33. Some scholars explain Xenokrateia’s choice of Kephisos as due to her familiarity with the river: the location of Xenokrateia’s deme Cholleidai is not certain but seems to have been to the north of the city and may have been at the Kephisos34. Boutadai, the deme of Kephisodotos, was certainly situated at the river. But the main motive for Kephisos as the central deity of her dedication was doubtless his role as kourotrophos, as will be discussed below.
 

But who were the other gods on the relief, whom she meant to share in the honours for Kephisos? Are they the gods mentioned on the sacrificial list? For answering this question, I refer to the drawing with numbered figures of the relief used by Andreas Linfert35.
 

At first sight, the most plausible inference is that the gods on the sacrificial list are the same as those on the relief, as both include beyond a doubt Apollo Pythios (fig. 1) and Acheloös (fig. 10). Kephisos, the primary recipient of the dedication, might be the youthful male figure (fig. c) engaging with Xenokrateia (fig. a); on the list, he is to receive offerings directly after Hestia, who always received the first sacrifices in Athens. He is depicted with his foot on a block, probably an altar; it seems a gesture of possession and would fit the dedication to him as the primary beneficiary of this altar.

However, many scholars have contested that the gods on the list match those on the relief. If that is so, we could no longer be sure the sacrificial list belonged to Xenokrateia’s dedication and there would be little reason to read the one monument as relevant to the other (although not all scholars seem to be aware of this implication)36. Ascertaining the identities of the gods on the relief, on comparison with the list, is therefore necessary at this point. Why has the correspondence between the gods on both monuments been called into question?

First of all, the identity of Kephisos as fig. c has been contested because the river god is frequently depicted as an adult male crowned with horns; in this shape he appears on side A of the double relief37. In fact, however, river gods could be rendered in various ways: the river god in the west pediment of the Parthenon, for instance, identified as either Ilissos, Eridanos or Kephisos, is a young male (the head is missing)38. Fig. c, then, can be accepted as Kephisos. Second, on the relief there are eleven deities; the list contains ten names, if Lochia is taken to be an epiklesis of Artemis and Ileithyia to be the goddess of birth, but as nymphs usually come in groups of three, all deities together would make twelve. Some scholars therefore suggested that in this case there are just two nymphs (fig. 7 and 8). Rhapso is mentioned only here, so beside speculations on her name nothing substantial can be said about her39. The third obstacle to identifying the gods on the relief with those on the list is uncertainty about the gender of some figures. Some scholars hold that the figures 3 and 4 are male (fig. 2), due to their features, more precisely Hermes wearing a chlamys over his shoulder and whose staff-like object would be the kerykeion, and the heros Echelos, because he figures also on the other relief40. Due to these discrepancies, the list has been dissociated from the relief.

Yet I think there are sufficient arguments to reconnect the list firmly to the relief, even if some questions cannot be answered unequivocally. Fig. 3 may seem to have masculine features, but several contemporary monuments show figures who are unambiguously female due to their breasts, but have the same muscular arms, cropped hair or straight profile41. Not only Hermes holds a staff; so does Artemis, also in her function as Lochia42. The clothing certainly resembles a chlamys, but also a Doric chiton, leaving the arms bare, topped with a mantle; its long folds are visible below the hands of the deity and below they merge with the chiton of Xenokrateia, whereas a male wearing a chlamys would have a bare torso here43. In sum, the gender of fig. 3 is not distinct, she might be female. What speaks against the identity of fig. 3 as Hermes, beside the clothing, is that (s)he is just standing, at best observing the figures on the right, but not in any way engaged with the nymphs, who should be among the female figures on the right44. Depictions of Hermes and the nymphs, however, always show the god either actively leading or in proximity to and contact with the nymphs. Uncertainty of gender is also the case with fig. 4, who seems masculine because the left shoulder seems to be bare and breasts are not visible (fig. 2). However, no convincing arguments have been advanced so far for the identity of fig. 4 as Echelos, nor for a connection of this hero with Xenokrateia’s dedication, in which he is not mentioned45. By contrast, the face and hair, and to a lesser extent the dress, of fig. 4 have strong parallels with female figures, notably nymphs, on other reliefs46. If underneath the folds of the mantle carved in the relief, clothing was indicated with paint, this could be a female figure.

Fig. 9 seems to represent a statue, rather than a goddess herself; her identity has been disputed47. Now, a recently found fragment of a fourth-century votive relief to Eileithyia, showing three female ‘herms’, combined with an inscribed base of a statue dedicated to her and many other gifts related to children and childbirth, is attractively interpreted by Dimitri Sourlas as connected to the sanctuary of this goddess in Athens and her representation there48. The herms represent Eileithyia as a frontal statue wearing a high polos; Pausanias (1.18.5) confirms the presence of three cult statues of the goddess in her sanctuary49. On this evidence, we can now confidently identify fig. 9 as Eileithyia.

Fig. 2 makes a gesture of anakalypsis, unveiling; it was a ritual moment, often performed by female helpers of the bride, in which a woman showed herself to her husband in her marriage ceremony50. This gesture also features in scenes of women whom John Oakley calls ‘pseudo-brides’: women who are abducted or otherwise partners of men in an irregular or involuntary manner51. This does not preclude them acting as mothers: especially Leto figures in visual arts as a bride with veil and crown (‘married’ to Zeus), representing her maternity of her twins, Apollo and Artemis52. On the relief, she is standing between Apollo and the androgynous deity fig. 3 with attributes of Artemis Lochia. It is appropriate to identify her as Leto, an identity that would reinforce the possibility that fig. 3 represents Artemis Lochia.

Of all the deities on the list, Kephisos, Apollo Pythios, Leto, Eileithya, Acheloös and (probably) Artemis Lochia have now been identified also on the relief. This justifies looking for the others as well, but now it is difficult, if not impossible, to decide among the remaining female figures who might be Hestia, Kallirhoë, the Geraistai Nymphai Genethliai (Venerable nymphs of birth) and Rhapso. I prefer three nymphs, since that is their regular number in Athenian votives; they might be the three veiled deities (fig. 5, 6, 8) standing with the youthful female (fig. 7; Kallirhoë?) close to Acheloös and Eileithyia, with whom they are associated. This leaves the ambiguous fig. 4 to be either Rhapso or Hestia. Without distinctive attributes, Hestia is difficult to identify, and I would hazard that she may not be depicted, because hers is to be the first sacrifice by convention; she may be ‘implied’ in the scene of the relief53. By this elimination, fig. 4 would be Rhapso, but perhaps one would not expect a relatively modest figure, mentioned at the very end of the list, on such a central place in the relief. However, if we take a visual clue by following the list with our eyes on the relief, we first read Hestia (not depicted), next we see Kephisos (central), then Apollo on the extreme left followed by Leto and Artemis Lochia. Now finding Eileithyia on the extreme right, we see below her Acheloös, next Kallirhoë (who on this viewing order must be the veiled goddess on the right), three nymphs and, finally, ending up in the middle, Rhapso. Although this identification of the remaining goddesses cannot be secured, I would conclude that the correspondence between the offering list and the relief is such that the two may be ‘read’ together as evidence for Xenokrateia’s self-presentation.

Xenokrateia’s self-presentation

Xenokrateia’s epigram fulfils the crucial functions that Andrea Purvis identified in such private dedications: to recognise and offer thanks for divine gifts, to declare her own role in creating the sanctuary, and to encourage others to worship these gods, giving thanks for favours received and for similar blessings in the future54. In some respects, the epigram is clear and outspoken, other phrases are more ambivalent, perhaps intentionally, but also due to the concision of the phrasing.

Beginning with her own name before the dedication in verse, she firmly draws attention to her agency as dedicator. For women to make dedications in their own name, without mentioning male relatives, was not at all unusual55, but Xenokrateia is singularly outspoken about her identity. Calling herself in the epigram ‘mother and daughter of Xeniades of Cholleidai’, Xenokrateia proclaims her pivotal role in continuing the patrilinear line of descent56, and by adding the demotic of her father she highlights her status as a citizen57. Her husband, Xeniades’ father, might have had the same demotic (Cholleidai), but his absence altogether, combined with the emphasis on the same name of her father and her son, rather suggests that Xeniades was strongly associated with his maternal grandfather and carried his demotic. All these signs point to Xenokrateia being an epikleros, whose child was adopted by her father, as well as a widow58. From the inscription, we cannot infer if her father was still alive. Considering naming traditions in Athens, by which the first son was called after the paternal grandfather, little Xeniades, called after his maternal grandfather, was probably not the eldest, but the second son59. Although loosing husband and child must always have been the fate of numerous women in Athens, we should recall here that Xenokrateia made her dedication at the very end of, or, more likely, shortly after the Peloponnesian War, when the death toll amongst the Athenians had been exceptionally high60. Beside her other motives discussed below, with her dedication Xenokrateia possibly expressed her gratitude to the gods for the survival of herself and her son, hoping they would continue to offer their protection.

In her invitation to other worshippers to sacrifice at the altar, Xenokrateia uses the phrase τῶι βουλομένωι (for anyone who wishes). It is an expression used frequently in the public discourse of the Athenian democracy, notably the right to speak in the assembly, but also in decrees relating to other institutions, underlining the equal access for all involved to share in the relevant benefits61. Xenokrateia uses it in her private dedication for any other who wishes to share in the agatha that the gods bestow on sacrifice, for her share of which she here demonstrates her gratitude. But with these words she also underlines again her status as a citizen, using a vocabulary of citizenship that all citizens recognised as such.

Presenting thus emphatically her identity as an Athenian citizen in terms of her descent and her discourse, Xenokrateia does so equally emphatically in the choice of the gods to whom she dedicated her gifts. Private founders and dedicators normally chose their own favourite deity or deities from among the polis’ gods for their worship, and we may safely assume that this group of Kephisos and the other divinities was Xenokrateia’s own choice. Leaving aside the visual order of the relief and the list, they may be clustered into meaningful groups:

1. gods of the Athenian polis: Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, of the polis in the prytaneion and in every single Athenian household62; Apollo Pythios, the ancestral god of the Athenian phratries; and Kephisos, Acheloös and Kallirhoë. The river Acheloös, which flowed in central Greece, not in Attica, was honoured at Athens as the father of the Nymphs, kourotrophoi par excellence63. In myth, the river Kephisos was the father of Praxithea, wife of the arch-king Erechtheus and the first priestess of Athena Polias, according to a tradition reflected in Euripides’ play Erechtheus. In daily life, he represented for the Athenians the wellspring of their polis; seventeen male names and two female names with the stem Kephisos are attested, among whom the dedicator of the double relief, with just one for the Acheloös and one for the Ilissos64. The spring Kallirhoë, finally, at the source of the Ilissos, fed the Enneakrounos, the ‘Fountain with nine spouts’, whose waters were used traditionally for prenuptial rituals and other hiera (Thuc. 2.15.5). Together, the divine waters formed a cultic landscape within and around Athens with which Xenokrateia and the viewers of the relief identified. Apollo Pythios forms the bridge to group

2. the triad of Apollo, Artemis and their mother Leto; as we just saw, Leto with her twin figures clearly as a mother, and the three of them together were kourotrophos, nurturing children65. Artemis appears here with the epiklesis Lochia as goddess of birth, forming the bridge to group

3. divinities of birth: Eileithyia and the Venerable Nymphs of Birth, and finally

4. the elusive nymph Rhapso.

All the deities of her dedication together represent the polis as social and ritual community and especially the kourotrophic powers supporting its offspring and wellbeing66.

Xenokrateia also offered the visitor of the sanctuary the reason for her gift in the epigram. But what exactly does the phrase διδασκαλίας τόδε δῶρον mean? Are we to read ‘this gift of instruction’, i.e. serving as instruction for the other worshippers, as some scholars have argued67? Surely her dedication and its invitation meant to stimulate others to act likewise, but for contemporary viewers, who knew that dedications usually were a counter-gift for a gift of the gods in gratitude and in hope of perpetuation, the most obvious reading would be ‘this gift because of instruction (received)’68. Given this meaning, who received the instruction, Xenokrateia or her son Xeniades? Most scholars see Xeniades as the recipient of the didaskalia and Kephisos’ benefits to him as the main purpose of the dedication69. But several clues suggest otherwise. First and foremost, the visual message of the relief, as Purvis rightly observes (see fig. 2):

[The god] stoops down to Xenocratia with his right arm bent and index finger raised, his palm turned toward himself [...]. The position of the divinity’s head makes it clear that Xenocratia rather than her son is the main recipient; the eyes of the woman and the god seem to meet, while the boy attempts but does not succeed in receiving the direct attention of the god [...]. the divinity is imparting from himself (hence palm toward himself) to Xenocratia some sort of knowledge which she receives and embraces as it is passed to her70.

Second, her epigram includes in her gift to Kephisos all the other the gods because of the instruction (ἀνέθηκεν ξυμβώμοις τε θεοῖς(ι) διδασκαλίας τόδε δῶρον). I would argue that in her text and in her relief Xenokrateia presented herself as the recipient of the didaskalia from Kephisos, but also of all the other gods, and that she therefore offered her gratitude to him and to them in her gift and the offer to share his altar. She did not disclose the contents of this instruction, but at least a large part of it may be inferred from her dedication. Presenting herself in image and word as sharing in the hiera and hosia of oikos and polis, she honoured Kephisos and all the gods and nymphs who made her what she was now: an Athenian citizen, proud of her lineage, aware of her place among humans and gods, and the mother of a healthy young son71. And perhaps she also felt that with their ‘instruction’ how to live, the gods had helped her to survive the perils of the Peloponnesian war with him. Her little son was both a divine gift himself and a beneficiary of such gifts, and she included him in her dedication. Finally, she invited anyone who so wished to likewise honour the gods in gratitude and in hope for the future.

Xenokrateia’s competences

For her dedication, Xenokrateia needed many competences: religious, economic, intellectual, social. Yet, as explained above, we need to argue the other way around, inferring from the evidence which competences must have been employed to bring it about, an argument to be checked against further, circumstantial evidence. Although the size and quality of her dedication are rather exceptional, I would argue that Xenokrateia’s competences and the ways in which she used them are not, but instead were capacities she shared with many of her fellow citizens. Expounding each aspect in full would take too far here; I shall briefly comment on her ritual and intellectual skills and next look more extensively into her material resources and how she could use them for this dedication.

First of all, her ritual competence. Ritual is defined in many ways and studied with many different methods, ranging from a focus on a pre-conscious level of learning, to attention to the performative meanings of ritual to the explicit instruction in certain rules72. Religious conduct in ancient Greece was based on a mixture of written and unwritten norms and rules. Reciprocal gift-giving with the gods in the polis was the ‘generative and primary system of communication’ with the gods, embedded in a ritual competence that was hardly conscious73. But offering an actual gift or addressing a prayer to the gods on a specific moment for a certain purpose was a conscious act of ritual performance. At this level, we may suppose what Saskia Peels has called the cultural knowledge of the unwritten norm to have steered the conduct at particular sanctuaries, festivals and cults74. Added to these unwritten rules were numerous written norms and regulations for particular cults and sanctuaries, preserved in the epigraphic record. The ritual exchange with the gods was integrated into many moments and actions, both within the house and beyond, in the public domain75. Sharing actively in the polis’ cultic life, in public festivals of polis and deme, and in semi-private rituals such as of the phratries and the private cults of the family, was the foremost way of men, women and occasionally also children to put one’s citizenship into practice76. In this way, by oral communication, practical example and written prescripts, one learned the main tenets of religious beliefs, of the most common rituals and their place in life.

Setting up a cult was a highly specific act of piety, which happened more often than we may be inclined to think. Xenokrateia, like other private founders, apparently knew how to go about doing so, in the first place by following the example of others. Private founders usually felt a strong personal bond with one god in particular whom they wanted to honour with more than common worship77. A dedicator would have made his or her own choice as to the deity and the regulations of the intended cult, such as who was to be invited to share in the worship and on which conditions, for instance offering specific sacrifices. Oracular consultation (Apollo at Delphi, Zeus at Dodona, or other shrines) inquiring whether all of this was right could be the first step, but not all dedicators did so, nor did they all mention this in their inscribed presentation – Xenokrateia, for instance, did not. Normally, such actions of private piety concerned deities who already enjoyed an established role in the polis pantheon; introducing new gods from elsewhere was a different matter that we can leave aside here. As we just saw, Xenokrateia was fully aware to whom of the deities and heroes of Athens she owed her benefits, reflecting her theological knowledge of her polytheistic polis world and a strong sense of contact with Kephisos in particular78. The eloquent way in which her own proximity and devotion to Kephisos are rendered on the relief, with little Xeniades close at her side, suggests she had clear views on how her piety was to be represented, which she may have discussed orally with the sculptor. Of her highly personal selection of deities as ‘her own’ from among the Athenian pantheon, she may have made a list for the sculptor and for the cutter of the sacrificial order.

Private worshippers and founders like Xenokrateia also had to comply with the regulations of the polis on the establishment of cults79. As Henk Versnel shows, people could set up such cults in their own private grounds, but the polis was not very keen on such private initiatives entering public sacred space80. The written record has left no (written) laws on the do’s and don’ts for founding a cult in general, but apparently those rules belonged to the kind of knowledge people imbued by reading specific decrees on newly founded cults, by oral communication and from the examples of earlier cults with their written dedications. At this point, we see the intersection between ritual competence and intellectual skills, notably literacy and numeracy. To Missiou’s evidence for the spread of literacy in classical Athens due to political procedures, we must add the immense record of written religious norms, issued by the polis, demes and caretakers of sanctuaries on the one hand, and of dedications, inscribed by individual worshippers or groups, on the other81. The numerous public accounts of finances involved in cult extends the argument to functional numeracy. Sums of money were written in acrophonic numerals, a system of notation supported by an abacus or counter board for actual calculations82. Anyone with low literacy could easily learn acrophonic numerals, which were also relatively efficient in cognitive terms compared to alphabetic numerals83. It was a system people used also at home for household purposes, and like alphabetic writing it was a skill many people could and might learn from parents, relatives and watching others. In sum, elementary literacy and numeracy would often begin at home and could further develop due to the wide exposure to written texts and numbers in the public sphere of Athens, not only in the political domain of men, but also in religion, which involved men and women equally.

Yet, beside these ways of acquiring some literacy and numeracy, wealth must have been an important factor in developing wider intellectual competences. For men, this is well known, but for the formal education of women in classical Athens the evidence is very scarce. Given that for ‘decent’ girls remaining indoors and quiet was valued, scholars often assumed that women received no formal education to speak of, and that the little evidence there is for educated, literate women must therefore refer to ‘indecent’ girls, read: hetaerae84. This circular argument has now been refuted: women did not always stay indoors, nor were they always silent; not all hetaerae were educated, nor all educated women hetaerae85. Sian Lewis concludes, on analysis of the iconographic evidence, that in the classical age ‘female literacy was normal among the elite’86. Non-elite girls and women may have picked up some reading and writing at home, as I argued above, just like non-elite men, but most women certainly had fewer opportunities than men to be directly engaged with written texts. On the other hand, Edward Cohen argues that their responsibility for their household economy and their valuable skills in textiles and other crafts enabled women to become practiced and successful businesswomen, while their husbands, restricted by (old-fashioned) ideals of andreia, were not expected to engage in crafts and trade87. Although I think we should beware taking the rhetorical and philosophical exhortations about andreia to be effective prescripts for men’s lives, just as we should beware to take the ideals voiced about women’s conduct to be strict regulations, the changes a monetised economy brought to traditional forms of labour and exchange were real enough. Both men and women had to engage with new forms of exchange and acquire the skills to do so.

Several aspects of Xenokrateia’s dedication suggest that she, too, was literate: she had made the polis’ regulations on founding cults sufficiently her own, she drew up a probably written list of her personal choice of gods for her dedication, and the base carried her epigram. As a Greek woman and citizen of Athens, Xenokrateia must have been familiar with poetry, oral and/or written, if it were only from participating in festivals, attending the theatre, listening to popular songs and reading epigrams88. If the modest quality of the verse indicates she composed the epigram herself, as most scholars suppose, she may have given a written text to the cutter to inscribe. In the expression ‘for whoever wishes’ she used vocabulary common in the assembly and courts, as well as in religious associations89. She could have acquired this vocabulary from oral communication, and her use of the term didaskalia points in that direction. It may refer to any kind of instruction, lesson and education, and often such teachings were oral. On her relief, Kephisos is depicted precisely in this way, instructing her orally. But that she chose this word, and no other, to express what she owed to Kephisos and the other gods, may be due to the visibility of the verb didasko in the public space of Athens, on choregic monuments attesting to the victories of the choruses in Dionysian festivals and the persons who instructed them90. For her, too, instruction had shaped her identity as citizen and mother that she now showed in her dedication.

Xenokrateia’s economic competences

To realise her gift, Xenokrateia needed material resources and economic competences, and reconstructing these needs answering again several questions. First, since her dedication obviously cost much more than c. three drachmas, we shall look into the law, briefly mentioned above, allegedly forbidding her to spend so much money on her own account, with the concomitant question how much a kyrios was really involved in a woman’s life and actions. Second, I should like to tease out the costs of her dedication, to get an idea of her economic status. And last but not least, we need to understand how using a plot of land for her dedication came within her purview – a difficult question to which several answers are possible, and which will engage the dedication by Kephisodotos more fully in the discussion.

Dedications were goods honouring the gods by being given to them. Once made divine property, the objects could not re-enter the human economic circuit, but, like many other gifts to the gods such as sacrifices and festivities, they represented a real economic value in human society. These goods had to be purchased on the market or kept aside from one’s property, and their economic value was an inherent feature of their religious value. Tithes were proudly presented as such, a tenth part of a property, harvest or windfall. For sacrifices, the costs in drachmas were listed in advance in sacrificial calendars or decrees, or were recorded after the sacrifice in inscribed accounts. Visibility and costliness contributed significantly to the gesture material dedications (in marble, bronze or more modest materials) made towards the divine recipients and human viewers. They showed the honour awarded to this deity as a tribute to his or her powers, and the debt the givers felt towards the deity for the benefits bestowed91. Xenokrateia, likewise, showed with her lavish gift and her epigram her indebtedness to Kephisos and the other gods, honouring his powers with a valuable gift for all to see. But how could she make the necessary economic transactions?

For a long time, the quote in Is.10.10 ‘The law states explicitly that it is not permitted to a child or to a woman to enter a legal transaction worth more than one medimnos of barley’92 was taken to mean that women were not allowed to make any financial transaction over the value of a medimnos barley, roughly three drachmas, without the consent of their kyrios. As quoted by Isaeus, the law does not mention a kyrios93, but scholars assumed his role was implied because women needed a kyrios in legal affairs. The law would fit the subordination of Athenian women to their male kinsmen, a position of legal minority commensurate with their exclusion from citizenship defined as holding political office, a privilege limited to adult male Athenians94. Hence, women whom the evidence showed to be handling sums (much) larger than three drachmas were classified either as exceptions or as metic women rather than citizens95. ^If they were clearly citizen women, the consent of their kyrios was supposed to have been involved.

Various kinds of evidence speak against this view. The number of citizen women engaged in substantial wealth transactions is too large to be considered exceptional: c. 80 women feature in the extant forensic speeches as involved in contested property (inheritances and dowries) at least worth going to court for, and they surely represent a much larger number of women of a more modest wealth96. We just saw Cohen’s view on women’s capacity for business, and Edward Harris has advanced extensive evidence for women’s economic contributions to their households; for many such activities, women needed to handle larger sums, and asking time and again for consent of their kyrios seems hardly plausible97. Several scholars therefore contend that the law at Is. 10.10 cannot have been what it has conventionally be taken to mean. Louise Kuenen-Janssens advanced (1941) the argument that a medimnos of barley could feed a modest family for five to six days and hence was not so small a sum in the first place, while for larger transactions by a woman her kyrios was expected to tacitly consent by default; the law was thus more flexible than it would seem98. According to Harris, resourceful women and their relatives found ways around the law99. Lin Foxhall makes the fundamental argument that the economy of the Athenian household cannot be understood by modern notions of ownership, but that instead husband and wife each contributed to the common wealth, of which the husband was the legal representative but within which the wife had an economic standing of her own100. She thinks not so much in terms of a gap between law and reality, but rather of shifting priorities between economic interests of households and the law: ‘social preference was frequently stronger than legal right’101. In view of the evidence for women’s economic activities, without a kyrios visibly involved, Virginia Hunter contends that in classical Athens the law of Is. 10.10 must have been a dead letter102. There are, finally, also legal objections to the conventional view. In the context of financial transactions, the verb συμβάλλειν means either to contribute a part to a larger sum, or to engage in an agreement with a security or loan103. In both cases, one makes a pledge for a sum to be paid; it would seem the law in Is. 10.10 is primarily concerned with securities. Assuming that for a woman making a contract with a security over three drachmas her kyrios was to be (tacitly) involved, is therefore justified, in so far as this concerned a legal transaction, but this does not mean women needed a kyrios for any financial transaction such as a sale.

For Xenokrateia, her father, if he was still alive, may have acted as her kyrios, but she does not mention anyone in this role; nor did the many other women making costly dedications on behalf of themselves and/ or others. A certain Mikythe dedicated a marble column with a statue (now lost) to Athena in the second quarter of the fifth century, with an inscription: ‘Mikythe dedicated me to Athena, this agalma, having vowed a tithe, both on behalf of her children and of herself. Euphron made it’104. No father, no husband, no other male relative mentioned – Mikythe dedicated for her children and herself; the gift represented a tenth of the value of an unknown kind she received or possessed, at all events a considerable economic asset. Lysistrate, priestess of Demeter and Kore, dedicated in the second half of the fifth century a marble base with an agalma to her own goddess. The surprise is in her epigram: ‘Attendant of your secret ceremony, Mistress Deo, and your daughter’s, Lysistrate, set up this pleasing gift, two crowns, an adornment for your porch, and she does not spare her possessions, but to the gods she is unstinting to the extent of her ability’105. The two crowns the council and demos had awarded her, she dedicated to the goddess, as was usual with such signs of honour, but she emphasised that she added substantially from her own property to pay for the column. No kyrios is mentioned anywhere. For the supposition that the transactions for these and all the other hundred and fifty dedications were silently mediated by their kyrioi, rather than by these women themselves, some clear evidence is necessary beyond the law quoted in Is. 10.10.

If the law was indeed concerned with legal agreements involving securities or loans, rather than any economic transaction by a woman, we may still wonder if it was still in force in the later fifth century. Expressing value in measures of grain, rather than in silver or coins, points to an agricultural, archaic origin of the law. Possibly, it was precisely because of its archaic appearance that Isaeus brought it up at this point in this speech: the speaker contends that at the time a man allegedly had made an adoption by will, there was still a minor legitimate son alive, who could neither have been bypassed nor, of course, could have made such a will himself. No one seriously considered the latter possibility, but a law setting economic values in medimnoi reminded listeners of Solon’s laws and hence gave some weight to the speaker’s contention, creating a rhetorical prop for a straw man. In classical Athens with its expanding, monetised markets, this archaic law was perhaps becoming an anomaly, and it may be no coincidence that we find no more references to it106. Yet, Athenian laws were seldom abolished, especially when they were held to be Solonian, but rather allowed to lapse into disuse. The social values the law embodied might still linger to some extent, potentially affecting the conduct both of women making transactions and of the people she had to deal with, especially when such transactions had to do with related values concerning property. As Foxhall notes, no law (that we know of) forbade women’s ownership of land or real property in Athens, but there are very few instances in the evidence of women owning such property; in most cases, women owned – and used – moveable wealth107.

Xenokrateia used hers in the first place for the relief, altar and sacrificial list. For the costs of the relief, we should note that it is an exceptionally fine and elaborate piece of work. Sculpture workshops usually had stones like this in stock, to be used as a grave relief or similar work. If that was the case here, too, she would have had no additional costs for getting it from the quarry108. Sculptors were paid on a daily basis for the carving and the much-demanding polishing of the stone. Rare examples of extant prices for the work on grave reliefs, decrees and occasionally monuments such as the Erechtheion friezes in the late fifth century, show a disparate picture: from 20-40 drachmas for a grave relief (usually no more than three figures, so far more limited than Xenokrateia’s votive relief) to 120 drachmas for a horse and his rider and 240 drachmas for a chariot, a young man and a horse on the Erechtheion (fewer figures but larger in size than Xenokrateia’s relief)109. An estimated price of 200 drachmas for her relief would not seem improbable. The base of simple poros stone and the short, not very sophisticated inscription cannot have been very expensive110. What the altar was like, we cannot tell, nor the construction of the sanctuary, but the stone with the offering list was inscribed and added to the whole. All these objects had to be transported to the sanctuary and set up there. Together, I hazard an estimation of 300-350 drachmas for these elements of the dedication.

But how did she get a plot of lands on which to erect her dedication? To explain how she might have done so despite the restrictions of the law in Is. 10.10, Williams proposes that the land was hers, but that with this dedication she did not really alienate it. Williams compares her foundation with the one Xenophon made to Artemis (An. 5.3.8-13). Acquiring a plot of land near his estate at Skillous, close to Olympia, following an oracle of Apollo, Xenophon built an altar and a temple for the goddess. He destined a tithe of the produce of the land to fund the annual festival for her and the remainder for the upkeep of the temple, laying all of this down in an inscription. A hunting expedition in which Xenophon’s sons and the sons of the other citizens and ‘those who wished’ (οἱ βουλομενοί) of the adult men participated, yielded game that were added to the festive sacrificial meals. Xenokrateia acted likewise, according to Williams:

because she did not alienate the land in the same way that she would have done in the case of a sale, it was not necessary for her to own the land in her own right... her dedication to Cephisus and the other gods still kept it within her family, destined to be maintained by Xeniades and his descendants111.

Although this is an ingenious solution, the situation is not exactly as Williams takes it to be. Xenophon bought the plot for the sanctuary with his part of the booty that was set aside for Artemis; in other words, the money he used to buy the property for the sanctuary was hieros when he received it and not human property112. Xenophon therefore never owned this property. Nothing of the proceeds went to humans either, but they were used entirely to honour the goddess and for the upkeep of her sanctuary. The person who held it in trust (Xenophon, his descendants or someone else) was responsible for the sanctuary and hence gained the goddess’ favour, but he did not reap any material profit from it, nor did he own it.

For Xenokrateia, there are, I think, two possibilities: either the plot of land was hers, on which she was in principle free to found a sanctuary to a deity of the Athenian pantheon; or it was already a sacred place, to which she added her dedication. These two options entail quite different scenarios.

Option a: the land was her property

It may have been a part of her inheritance, but considering that she dedicated it not just to Kephisos but also near the river, at some distance of her original deme, she could also have bought it for this purpose with money she owned. The problem with a sale is not so much the law at Is. 10.10, but rather the fact that the evidence on sales of land is so scarce, as selling (ancestral) land was rather frowned upon. Yet, land in Attica did change hands. In the Lykourgan era, sale of lands belonging to corporate groups provides some evidence for the value of such estates. Comparing it to properties sold in the area close to where Xenokrateia founded her sanctuary, in the range of 100 – 300 drachmas, I estimate its value at 150 drachmas113, a sum she spent either by buying it or setting it apart from her inheritance.

If thus the costs of the entire dedication, including the plot of land, are estimated at 450-500 drachmas, and if this amounted to a tithe of her property, Xenokrateia owned 4,500-5,000 drachmas worth of estate; without the plot, it might be 3,000-3,500 drachmas. In her comparative analysis of income and wealth at classical Athens, Claire Taylor finds that around half the Athenian citizen population lived below the median income of 450 drachmas a year, and around 20 % at or below half the median income of 3 obols a day; 77 % of the citizens owned less than the median wealth of 2,650 drachmas114. Her property would put Xenokrateia in the upper middle range of citizens in terms of wealth. Obviously, all of these figures are only educated guesses based on suppositions, but they need not be wide of the mark.

If the plot was indeed her property, Xenokrateia’s dedication of it to Kephisos did not entail the kind of alienation involved in a sale to another human being, but the property was alienated nonetheless: she made it hieros and it would never again be owned by Xenokrateia or her family. Whether the plot was large enough to yield crops that could be used to pay for sacrifice and maintenance, is unknown; she does not mention anything of the kind in her regulation, which instead only gives a sacrificial order but nothing about the kind or the costs of the offerings. We might indeed expect that responsibility for the sanctuary remained with Xenokrateia and next within her family, i.e. Xeniades and his descendants, but apparently without any provision for the costs involved (unless she had provided for them in a separate regulation), expecting no benefits other than divine favour. The evidence allows for the conclusion that Xenokrateia became the owner of a plot of land she disposed of by giving it to the gods: she made it into a hieron, with an altar, the relief and its base with the epigram, and the sacrificial regulation.

Option b: the land was not Xenokrateia’s property, but already sacred

Beside on their private estates, citizens founded private cults on places already dedicated to the gods. Although, as we just saw, the polis did not always welcome such foundations in polis sanctuaries, it was certainly allowed to add or join cults to existing sacred places, provided the consent of the gods and humans concerned. A conspicuous case is the cult of Asklepios, added to the domain of the Kerykes, literally to their estate on the south side of the Acropolis and in cultic terms to the program of the Eleusinia, on the initiative of a certain Telemachos and with the consent of the demos, in 420115. A certain Archedemos added his personal cult of Pan to an existing sanctuary of the god in the cave at Vari in c. 400116. Several shrines of Herakles were shared by different groups, among which was a shrine owned by the genos Praxiergidai and co-used by thiasotai of Herakles, and a shrine of Herakles Pankrates, used by a group of citizen orgeones, a koinon of thiasotai and a group of eranistai117.

For the possibility that the place where Xenokrateia founded her cult of Kephisos was already a sanctuary, we need to have a closer look at the double relief dedicated by Kephisodotos close by. The reliefs date to c. 400-390118; both sides were made by the same sculptor, a different artist from the Xenokrateia relief119. Side A seems to have been carved first, side B later120. The differences in wear of the reliefs and the base suggest that side A was more exposed to weather influences than side B121.

Side A of the relief shows on the left Artemis, facing a procession led by a bearded, adult male wearing a fillet or diadem in his hair, next Kephisos represented as a bearded, horned, male god, and three Nymphs122. Kephisos does not seem to be leading the Nymphs, as he does not hold the hand of the first Nymph; they rather seem to follow on their own accord. The inscription has largely faded: Ἑρμῆι καὶ Νύμφαις ἱνα ἀέξοιε̣ν̣ (to Hermes and the nymphs, to make grow); the rest is illegible123. Dedicating a relief to a god explicitly in the inscription but not depicting him, as is here the case with Hermes, is unusual124. Especially with the Nymphs we rather see the reverse, where on reliefs the inscription mentions only the Nymphs but the relief shows also Hermes and/or Pan125. Perhaps, the viewer of side A was expected to mentally include Hermes in the scene.

On side B, Hermes is present, but not as leader of the Nymphs. He faces on the right a hero abducting a woman in a chariot; all are identified in the inscription: ℎερμῆς Ἔχελος Ἰασίλη126. Echelos is known from a decree of his orgeones, found on the agora (Ag. XVI 161), dating to the early third century127. By then the group had two cult places, one in the city and one ‘of the hero Echelos’, a place identified by the find spot of this relief and known at least in the fourth century as Echelidai128. The orgeones consisted of two groups, one worshipping Echelos and one the Heroines, who at some point merged for joint worship; they seem to have been active already in the mid-fifth century129. Echelos appears to have been a chthonic hero, but little is known about him and his cult beyond the evidence mentioned here130. Iasile is even more obscure; her name has been explained etymologically as having to do with health131.

The two sides of the relief must be connected, but how is not obvious, nor why the two sides were carved with different themes. Hermes plays a role in both, but in neither he is the crucial figure. Edwards suggests that the bearded male figure on side A is Echelos at an advanced age, in contrast to his youthful adventures on side B. On A, he is greeting Artemis (Mounychia) as the local deity, bringing with him Kephisos and the Nymphs in their newly founded cult132. An aged Echelos is entirely speculative and this identification therefore unsatisfactory. On analogy with the representations of the Athenian Demos as an adult male with beard and fillet or diadem, figuring increasingly on reliefs from the last quarter of the fifth century onward, I would suggest that the bearded male might be a personification of the orgeones as cult group, included visually in the dedication133. For them, Kephisodotos instituted a new cult place of Echelos here, with the relief depicting the dedication on side A, and the core theme of Echelos’ myth on side B. In his epigram, Kephisodotos referred with ἱδρυσατο in the first place to the relief, but, by including the altar of the hero, to the foundation of Echelos’ cult of the orgeones in its entirety on this spot.

For doing so, he faced the same question as Xenokrateia of finding a place for the cult. He, too, may have had a private estate here, but the evidence rather suggests that he chose this place because here at the river he could align the cult of Echelos with that of Kephisos, the god after whom he was named. If that is correct, his motive for this spot was that it was sacred to deities with whom he had a personal tie and who would accept comparable cults. Some scholars suppose that the place itself was already sacred to Echelos134. This possibility cannot be ruled out, but it does not seem the most plausible: if it were, we would also expect Xenokrateia to somehow honour the hero in her dedication, but she did not (as I read it); nor had she anything demonstrably to do with Kephisodotos135. Instead, the two sides of the double relief and Xenokrateia’s dedication make more sense if we suppose that this place was sacred to Kephisos and to the Nymphs. Xenokrateia’s dedication honours Kephisos, several Nymphs and their father Acheloös. Kephisos and the Nymphs all appear on side A of the double relief, with (inscribed) the Nymphs’ conventional guide Hermes, accompanying the (representation of the) orgeones towards Artemis (Mounychia). This side of the relief, which was carved first, depicts the foundation of the cult of the orgeones on this spot. The other side shows Echelos abducting the Nymph Iasile, a scene in which Hermes plays a role unknown to us (does he protect Echelos? Or Iasile?). As side A was more exposed to the weather, it probably faced ‘outside’, showing to the visitor the acceptance by the Nymphs and Kephisos of the orgeones’ cult; side B, facing inside, focused on the cult of Echelos himself. This reading of the two reliefs may explain why the monument carried two reliefs with different actors and why they were carved in this order: the iconography carefully builds up the divine approval of the settlement of the cult of Echelos on this spot, which belonged to the Nymphs and was co-protected by Kephisos. If this reconstruction is valid, the name ‘Echelidai’ later came to be attached to this place.

In conclusion, on the available evidence it would seem that this place was sacred to Kephisos and the Nymphs, either because Xenokrateia made it so by dedicating it (option a) or because it was already sacred to these divinities (option b). There are no decisive indications for either option, but for b) there are more comparable cases. If that is what happened here, Xenokrateia and Kephisodotos added their own foundations for their own deities and heroes/ heroines to this sacred place, but with explicit honours for the original divine owners.

Conclusions

On close-reading Xenokrateia’s dedication to Kephisos and other gods of Athens, of c. 400 BC, I have attempted to reconstruct her agency in creating this foundation and the competences she and other Athenians must have had to act as the evidence shows them doing. Ritual competences, interacting with elementary literacy and numeracy, provided a basis which over the years could expand and solidify into a self-confident identity. Women’s opportunities for developing such competences were on average more limited than those of men, who could actively engage in the political and legal domain, but Xenokrateia’s dedication suggests that nonetheless such opportunities were widely available and more effective than has often been assumed. Building up from household skills and religious participation in the home to adult qualifications and social roles, a woman’s competences supported her identity as a citizen who knew how to act in public and private spaces. Her economic competences depended of course on her material resources, but her capacity to act appears to be less restrained than the law at Is.10.10 has been understood to imply. Xenokrateia’s dedication is rare in the aesthetic quality of its relief, its outspoken epigram and extensive sacrificial list, allowing a detailed, qualitative analysis of her identities as a pious woman, daughter, mother and citizen. But it is not exceptional in quantitative terms: numerous dedications by women show that Xenokrateia was far from alone in acquiring and using her competences. This approach to the evidence, initiated in recent scholarship, may open new windows on women’s agency in classical Athens.

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