Reading Two Inscriptions on the Same Dedication
A student is comparing two inscribed statue bases from the same sanctuary, both dated by letter forms to roughly 450–430 BCE. Base A names a dedicant, a deity, and an artisan, and adds a single clause: 'having vowed'. Base B is longer, names the dedicant's father and city, lists three magistrates, and closes with 'so that he might be well'. The student's draft claims both inscriptions 'show personal piety replacing civic religion'. The teacher points out that A has 11 legible words and B has 34, that B comes from a civic building while A was found in a bothros (votive pit), and that neither text mentions ritual performance. The student must revise before the assessment, which rewards explicit reasoning about what epigraphic evidence can and cannot support.
1. Identify the two strongest weaknesses in the student's draft claim and explain, using the details given, why each is a problem.
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Weakness 1: the claim outruns the sample. Two inscriptions, 11 and 34 legible words, cannot support a claim about a shift in religious practice across a whole community. The student is generalising from a tiny, non-random corpus. Inscription survival is biased: B survives because it was set in a civic building, A because it was deposited in a pit. Neither tells us what ordinary worshippers did.
Weakness 2: the categories are imposed, not evidenced. 'Personal piety' versus 'civic religion' is the student's modern framework. A's 'having vowed' shows a vow was fulfilled; B's 'so that he might be well' shows a health concern. Both could be civic acts financed by public office-holders. B's three magistrates actually point toward civic involvement, not away from it. The student should reframe as: 'These two texts show vow-fulfilment and health concerns expressed in dedicatory formulae; the sample is too small to track change.'
2. The teacher says the assessment rewards reasoning about what epigraphy cannot show. Write two sentences the student could add to the revision that make the limits of the evidence explicit.
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Model additions:
- 'Neither text records ritual performance, so no conclusion about changing ritual practice can be drawn from them.'
- 'Because both bases are dated only by letter forms, the apparent contemporaneity of the two dedications is an inference of perhaps a generation, not a fixed date.'
Why these work: the first names a specific absent category of evidence (performance) rather than vaguely saying 'more evidence is needed'. The second converts a methodological weakness (palaeographic dating) into a bounded claim. A strong answer also notes that the bothros findspot of A means its original display context is unknown, so arguments about public versus private setting rest on assumption.