the attic stelai - The American School of Classical Studies at Athens

242 W. KENDRICK PRITCHETT
and Aristophanes quoted by Athenaeus 200 are evidence that either term was used
simply as a generic for 'table,' and one might find himself calling a four-legged piece
tripous, or a three-legged one trapeza.201 One of the tables in the Attic Stelai is specified
as TETpaiTrovS (II, 242-243), which leads us to the conclusion that the others
mentioned had only three legs.
The second question which arises concerns the shape of the tables in our list.
Bliumner, in his early article on Greek tables,202 spoke of rectangular and round tables
as main-course and dessert pieces, without considering which was the older form, but
it is now customary to say that the round table so frequently seen on late pots and
reliefs was not introduced until the fourth century.203 I have seen no specific literary
reference to a round table earlier than the first century B.C.; Asklepiades of Myrlea
explains in a passage quoted by Athenaeus (XI, 489 c) that the ancients thought
the universe spherical and for this reason T'v TpaLTE;c KVKXOEL& KaTEOKEvao-aVrO.
Studniczka for some reason assumes that any table called a tripous was round and so
cites Xenophon, Anab., VII, 3, 21 and Antiphanes, frag. 287 (Kock, C.A.F., II,
p. 127), although there is nothing in either of these passages to suggest roundness.
On the contrary, we know that the term tripous did not necessarily mean a round
table, for in Athenaeus' (II, 49 a) anecdote of Ulpian it was applied to a rectangular
four-legged table. However, if Pollux (X, 81) is right, the Attic Stelai once contained
the term Tpa'rEZa /LOVoKVKXOS, which could only have been a circular table (the
top was presumably made of a single piece); thus the period of the introduction of
this style would have to be pushed back to the late fifth century. One would expect a
new style to appear first at Athens, and in the houses of rich and fashionable men; we
may suppose that this round table had the carved animal legs which characterized the
round pieces of the following century.
Probably the tables which were listed simply as trapeza were rectangular, threelegged,
and of the small size which might fit under a couch."04 Such tables were made
200 II, 49 a and c.
201
Pollux (X, 69) notes that there was a sort of drinking table called a TpawrEca 4Lovo7roVs.
202
Arch. Zeit., XLII, 1884, 179 if. and 285; XLIII, 1885, 287 if. He is followed by Kruse, R.E.,
s.v. Mensa.
203
Richter, op. cit., p. 87, where it is called " a Greek invention "; Reincke, R.E., Suppl. 6, s.v.
Mabel, p. 505, " Mit orientalischen Einfluisser zusammenzubringen ist wohl auch die im 4 Jhdt. neu
auftretende Form des runden Tisches mit drei Tierfiissen "; Studniczka, op. cit., pp. 123 ff.; Furtwangler,
op. cit., p. 38, of a round animal-legged table, " dergleichen niemals auf Vasen des fiinften
Jahrhunderts vorkommt." For other round tables, represented on the painted stelai of Demetrios
Pagasai and dated at least as early as the third century B.C., see A. S. Arvanitopoulos, rpapraL
YrTuat, 1928, pl. 10 (stele of Demetrios, son of Olympos) and pl. 7 (stele of Phila), both of which
have more or less 'naturalistic' animal legs, three in number. Cf. also the 'drum table' in pl. 5
(stele of Choirile).
204 A Delian inscription of 364 B.C. distinguishes small and large tables, but gives no real indication
of the size of either type; B.C.H., X, 1886, p. 467, line 145.