Letter Forms and Distinctive Spellings

Abstract

As a contribution to further study of the remarkable 'New Festival Calendar from Arkadia' jointly published in Kernos 2016 by James Clackson and Jan-Mathieu Carbon, this chapter proposes a comparative analysis of the letter forms on this bronze and on the most ancient Arcadian inscriptions already known, in accordance with the method developed by Jeffery in Local Scripts of Archaic Greece. The aim is to clarify the dating of the new inscription. The study of a set of specific spellings (in particular for [ts]) allows their geographical distribution to be highlighted. Confrontation with other dialectal specificities then allows the origin of the inscription to be established more clearly, as well as the conditions of writing what may be seen as rules regulating animal sacrifices and the calendar of local religious festivals. A note discusses the interpretation of Κορυνίτιον‎, LL. 3, 7.