The Divine Power of the Borders:

It is 13 July 1932. Europe is slowly but inexorably moving toward a period of severe political instability. A few days later, the German elections of July 31 would mark the rise of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler. On that day, Maurice Holleaux (1861–1932), professor at the Collège de France and member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, announced that he had received a highly interesting letter from his pupil Louis Robert (1904–1985), then a member of the École française d’Athènes. In this communication, Robert reported that he had succeeded in “copying and photographing” a fourth-century inscription containing both the authentic formula of the oath taken by the ephebes and that of the supposed oath sworn by the Athenians before Plataea.
A few years later, in 1938 – almost on the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War – Robert published the editio princeps of this inscription in a miscellaneous volume collecting various epigraphic and philological studies. In this work, he examined the ephebic oath word by word, offering a detailed comparison between the inscribed text and the previously known literary versions – namely, that preserved in the work of Julius Pollux and that transmitted by Stobaeus – highlighting both similarities and discrepancies.
The most striking feature distinguishing the text inscribed on the Acharnai stele is undoubtedly the list of powers invoked to guarantee the truthfulness of the ephebes’ declarations. Alongside a particularly complex list of deities, this includes the borders of the homeland, as well as barley, wheat, the vine, olive trees, and fig trees, which appear at the end.
This seminar will focus on the analysis of this peculiar Götterkreis invoked by the Athenian ephebes, with particular attention to the role played by the borders of the homeland, which are thus endowed with divine power. The central questions addressed are: which borders did the Athenian ephebes actually swear by, and in what sense can these borders be understood as divine powers?