Syeris, Diokonos of the Priestess Lysimache on the Athenian Acropolis (IG II2 3464)

by Catherine M. Keesling

Hesperia, Volume 81, Issue 3
Page(s): 476-505
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2972/hesperia.81.3.0433
Year: 2012
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ABSTRACT:

Among the honorary monuments found in the 19th-century excavations on the Athenian Acropolis are an inscribed base for a portrait statue of Lysimache, the priestess of Athena Polias in the later 5th and the first half of the 4th centuries B.C. (IG II2 3453), and that of another female sacred official, a diakonos of Lysimache named Syeris (IG II2 3464), also mentioned by Pausanias (1.27.4). Although Syeris has been associated with a priestess of the early 3rd century B.C., the author redates her monument to the 4th century, explaining one of the inscriptions on the base as a later addition, and examining the broader questions of how, when, and why female cult personnel were commemorated in Athens.