A Personification of Demos on a New Attic Document Relief

Abstract

This article presents a previously unpublished document relief discovered during excavations on the north slope of the Acropolis of Athens in 1937. Although fragmentary, this relief contributes to the corpus of 4th-century B.C. document reliefs by providing a well-preserved depiction of what is most likely “Demos,” the personification of the Athenian people, awarding a crown to a mortal man. The iconography of Demos is reviewed and an appendix presents a list and concordance of all extant representations of Demos on Attic document reliefs.