We are pleased to announce the publication of Hesperia 90.3! Topics in this issue include a reexamination of the dedicatory inscription for the first Doric temple in Sicily, a look at the work of shipwrights and naval architects in Classical Athens, the publication of the Classical-period pediments, metopes, and akroteria from the Temple of Ares (Temple of Athena Pallenis), and a review of the Athenian funerary reliefs that depict women in Isiac dress.

Subscribers can read the issue online at JSTOR, which now hosts all current issues of Hesperia as well as an archive of past volumes. Additionally, all issues of Hesperia from 2011 and earlier are available as Open Access on our website. Continued delays for the delivery of print issues may be experienced due to postal lags and global supply chain issues affecting the printing industry.

The First Doric Temple in Sicily, Its Builder, and IG XIV 1, by Philip Sapirstein, utilizes visualizations created from a new 3D model, this article reexamines IG XIV 1, the famous dedication carved on the topmost riser on the krepis of the temple of Apollo at Syracuse. The revised text presented describes a poietes, Kleosthenes or Kleosimenes, who created equipment for the installation of the columns that rose above it. The new reading presented here undermines the prevailing interpretation that IG XIV 1 primarily concerns financial oversight. A review of similar Archaic-period dedicatory inscriptions for buildings and sculpture, as well as the technological relationships between early Doric architecture and Aegean monumental sculpture, suggests that the text instead celebrates the construction of the gigantic colonnades around the temple.

Athenian Shipbuilders, by Mills McArthur, examines the recorded work of shipwrights (naupegoi) and their colleagues in Classical Athens. Recent suggestions that most Athenian triremes were constructed abroad are misguided. The city’s cohort of naupegoi grew dramatically amid the Themistoklean naval initiatives, and sources throughout the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. mention workers tied to the Attic shipbuilding industry. Particularly well attested is the role of naval architect, a unique facet of Athenian democratic culture. Naval architects were elected by the city; candidate architects delivered speeches before the Assembly; and, once elected, the architects were responsible for naming each ship they built.

Classical Sculpture from the Athenian Agora, Part 3: The Pediments, Metopes, and Akroteria of the Temple of Ares (Temple of Athena Pallenis), by Andrew Stewart, Erin Lawrence, Rebecca Levitan, and Kelsey Turbeville, discusses 22 marble sculptures from the Agora excavations of 1890–1891 and 1931 to the present. It attributes them to the Temple of Ares (originally the Temple of Athena Pallenis at Pallene) on the basis of their scales, findspots, subject matter, technique, and styles. Both pediments featured Athena, and on the east a young hero, probably Theseus. The metopes showed Theseus’s victory over the Pallantids (east) and an Amazonomachy (west). The akroteria comprised a descending wingless female, possibly Hebe, and two Nereids riding dolphins (east), and two Nikai flanking a central female figure, perhaps Iris (west). A coda announces a final, concluding article that will seek to draw the preceding three together.

Gender and Alterity in Provincial Portraiture:  Reconsidering the Isiac Grave Reliefs of Roman Athens, by Lindsey A. Mazurek, reexamines Athenian funerary reliefs depicting women in the dress of the Egyptian goddess Isis. Previous work has focused on their cultic and art-historical implications but has not considered their meaning in a colonial context. During the Roman Empire, provincial communities often depicted women in local, ethnic, or otherwise differentiated costumes, while men appeared in Graeco-Roman dress. In Athens several women wore Isis’s dress, while their male companions wore Greek dress. This article argues that this gendered pattern of dress negotiated competing yet complementary identity claims within a Roman colonial context. This analysis suggests that cult membership allowed some Greeks to employ empire-wide patterns of self-representation in their portraiture.

Click here to subscribe to Hesperia. In addition to receiving printed issues and online access to Hesperia, subscribers also receive complimentary online access to Hesperia Supplements, and Agora and Corinth volumes.

Hesperia welcomes submissions from scholars working on all aspects of Greek material culture, including archaeology, art, architecture, history, epigraphy, and related studies. Further information about the journal, including instructions for preparing manuscripts for submission, can be found on our website.

The Friends of Hesperia was founded in 2014 to help fund the journal's growth in all its manifestations. We invite you to become a member today and help support one of the most preeminent journals in the field of Mediterranean archaeology.