Inscriptions Illuminating ancient Athens

Lecture by John S. Traill (Professor Emeritus, Department of Classics, University of Toronto) - 29 April 2026 “Inscriptions Illuminating ancient Athens” Ancient Athens and the area around Athens, Attica, were filled with inscriptions of which about fifty thousand have survived, a record unmatched elsewhere in antiquity. The study of this peculiar literacy has been my vocation for the past 60 years. These texts cover all imaginable topics, of which I have been especially interested in two: (1) the people, of whom we know 100,000, and (2) where they lived, the 140 "demes." With the support of my computer colleagues Philippa Matheson and Dan Derkach we have gathered this information into our online open-access database at the Attica website where one may request the names of the people, what they did and where they lived, their dates, who were their relatives, and much more information. Inscriptions have also illuminated my second interest, the Attic demes, where a large amount of data has been compressed into a 10-colour interactive map which shows how the demes were organized to form the first and longest-lasting democracy and how the same organization provided, by means of the wondrous invention of the trireme, the most versatile and powerful military force of the fifth century BCE. To illustrate my lecture I will pass around several squeezes, which are paper impressions of ancient inscriptions, and do several searches of the online database Attica, which has recently been enhanced with high-resolution IMAGES of ancient inscriptions that anyone may explore.