Votive Dedication of the Spartans for the Battle of Tanagra

Three fragments of a marble stele recomposed and integrated by K. Purgold in 1881 thanks to the Periegesis of Pausanias (5.10.4). It is an inscription of six lines. The first four lines, reported by Pausanias, form an epigram related to a gilded bronze shield placed on the eastern pediment of the temple of Olympian Zeus and dedicated by the Spartans for the victory in the battle of Tanagra (457 BC) over the Athenians and their allies. The last two lines, not recorded in the Periegesis, were to be in prose, and probably contained a list of Spartan allies. The inscription uses the archaic alphabet of Corinth that is evolving in the fifth century BC.