OMONOIA AREA - 2000

Omonoia area. A rescue excavation at 11 Virginias Benaki Street (Fig. 1) revealed part of a large wall, most likely from a funerary peribolos, traces of a fourth-century BC road and part of a building of the second to fourth century AD, probably related to previously discovered remains to the northeast at no. 13 (ADelt 23 [1968] Chr, 43−48) (Fig. 4). The peribolos wall (1.4m wide) preserved two courses of reddish and yellowish tufa blocks. To the south and in contact with it was a road, probably connected with the route to the Academy, contemporary with the Roman building 3.5m to the east. The peribolos foundations contained an inscribed funerary stele of Polykles, an unknown proxenos from Chalkidean Akanthos (Figs. 2-3). The letter forms suggest a date in the second half of the fifth century BC; the cession of Akanthos from the Delian League in 424 is a probable terminus ante quem.
From the walls of the Roman building came five funerary kioniskoi (Figs. 4-5) of Hymettian marble dating from the first century BC to the first century AD: (1) Μενοδώρα Φρ[υ]γία (complete, 0.54m high, 0.165m in diameter); (2) incomplete with an illegible inscription (preserved 0.225m high, 0.165m in diameter); (3) Βακχἰς Διονυσίου Ζμυρναία Ἀγαθ[α]ίου Ποταμ<ί>ου γυνή (complete, 1.05m high, 0.29m in diameter); (4) upper section of a kioniskos inscribed Εὺημερἰς [Εὺ]ημέρου Ὰντιόχισσα (preserved 0.46m high, 0.185m in diameter); (5) complete (0.56m high, 0.13m in diameter) with a depiction of a loutrophoros below: Ζωβία χρηστή.