The Judgment of Animals in Classical Greece: Animal Sculpture and ...

stone and zw~ia suggests a standard element of the stock language of the inscriptions
referring to the frieze. Additional evidence regarding this part of the Erechtheion is
witnessed in the use of the term a)ntiqema&twn, which, on the basis of its occurrence in
other inscriptions, is taken to mean the backing blocks of the frieze of a building. 564 Put
together, all this evidence confirms that the architectural part to which the inscription
refers is the frieze of the Erechtheion.
Like the zw~ia of the previous inscription, Caskey translates these zw~ia, which
were also to be placed against the Eleusinian stone of the background of the frieze, as
“figures.” 565 As was the case with the earlier zw~ia, the inscription employs again the
word in the plural form, and yields no information regarding their appearance. In this
way, the impression that zw~ia was a term of general description is once again reinforced.
In view of the association of zw~ia with the frieze of the Erechtheion as established in the
previous inscription, and also their meaning as sculptural representations of animate and
inanimate subjects taken, most likely, from the surrounding world, the current zw~ia
appear to carry the same meaning. In this way, the use of zw~ia in a context directly
connected with the visual arts and experienced in a religious setting is once again
confirmed.
The next two fragmentary inscriptions, which belong to the building accounts of
the Erechtheion that date to 408/7 B.C., attest to the use of the word zw&idia instead of
564 Caskey, “The Inscriptions,” in Paton, ed., The Erechtheum 343, n. 1, explains that the term refers to the
non-visible blocks of the frieze, that is the ones to which the slabs of Eleusinian stone were attached. In
support of his point, he provides a series of inscriptions from: 1) another fragment of the building accounts
of the Erechtheion (X, col. II, I. 9), 2) Troezen (IG IV, 823, l.69), and 3) Didyma (IG II, 834b, l. 21), all of
which point to the meaning of the term as the backing stones of the frieze of a building.
565 Caskey, “The Inscriptions,” in Paton, The Erechtheum 327.
287