A Letter from Philip V to the Athenians of Hephaestia (Lemnos)

Abstract

The epigraphic document on which this paper is focused is a letter of the Macedonian king Philip V to the boule and the demos of the Athenians of Hephaestia, on the island of Lemnos, which was found in 1938 in the area of the late Roman Telesterion of the sanctuary of the Kabeiroi. A new edition of the inscription is here offered, along with a detailed epigraphic, historical and linguistic commentary. The text is not entirely preserved, and some points of it are quite difficult to interpret. However, the document is extremely interesting, less for its possible connection with specific events than for the information it provides on several historical issues of a more general kind: the relationship between the Antigonid kings and Lemnos; the inner organisation and institutions of the community of the Athenians on the island; Philip V’s ‘religious policy’ as described by the king himself and by literary sources, and so on.