STELE (Stela, Στήλη, Στήλις, Ἰδός, dim. Στήλιβιος, rad. Sta, cf. ἵστημι = erigo). - The term was used by the Greeks for any marker, burial sign, boundary marker, and also for those columns or stone slabs exposed to the public on which laws, notices, decrees, treaties, and records of notable events were inscribed.
More particularly, they were those slabs of stone or marble, thin and slender, slightly tapering from bottom to top, planted upright and secured on a base, which were erected on tombs with the name of the deceased. Generally they had an architectural crowning in the shape of a flower and leaves (ἀνθύμια) in relief or painted, or else a pediment with acroteria. The surface of the stele could contain relief figurations referring to the life of the deceased; a very popular subject was the farewell of the dead to their loved ones. Related to stelae were, especially in Attica, small marble funerary columns with an inscription, crowned by a capital with acanthus leaves; it was customary to wrap them with bands and crowns. A Greek funerary stele is in the Museum of the abbey of Grottaferrata, on which a nude youth is shown in profile, seated on a bench, in the act of reading a parchment; beneath the bench a panther is crouched. Famous is the stele of Rosetta, found by the Napoleonic expedition in Egypt, on which was incised the trilingual inscription that allowed Champollion to decipher the hieroglyphs (year 1821). The name of stele is also given to the very well-known rectangular tufa cippus, discovered in the Roman Forum in 1899, which bears incised on each of its sides and on one bevelled corner the archaic inscription with formulas of sacred ritual, from the 7th-6th centuries B.C.
STELE - A cippus or stele with an archaic Latin inscription, incised in boustrophedon fashion (ca. 500 B.C.) - Rome, Roman Forum.(phot. Anderson)Bibliography3 worksL. Conze, Die attischen Grabreliefs, 4 vols., Vienna 1893-1932; G. Perrot-Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'art. VIII, Paris 1903, passim; H. Diepo
BIBL.: L. Conze, Die attischen Grabreliefs, 4 vols., Vienna 1893-1932; G. Perrot-Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'art. VIII, Paris 1903, passim; H. Diepolder, Die attischen Grabreliefs des 5. und 4. Jahrh. v. Chr., Leipzig 1931.
Mancini, Gioacchino. “Stele (= Stela, στήλη, στήλις, ἰδος, dim. στήλιβιος, rad. sta, cf. ἰστήμι = erigo).” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. XI, coll. 1317–1318. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1953. https://azioneromana.com/article/stele-stela-stele-stelis-idos-dim-stelibios-rad-sta-cf-istemi-erigo.
MLA
Mancini, Gioacchino. “Stele (= Stela, στήλη, στήλις, ἰδος, dim. στήλιβιος, rad. sta, cf. ἰστήμι = erigo).” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. XI, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1953, coll. 1317–1318. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/stele-stela-stele-stelis-idos-dim-stelibios-rad-sta-cf-istemi-erigo.
BibTeX
@incollection{ec11_stele_stela_stele_stelis_idos,
author = {Mancini, Gioacchino},
title = {Stele (= Stela, στήλη, στήλις, ἰδος, dim. στήλιβιος, rad. sta, cf. ἰστήμι = erigo)},
booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
volume = {XI},
pages = {1317--1318},
note = {Cited by column},
publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
address = {Città del Vaticano},
year = {1953},
url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/stele-stela-stele-stelis-idos-dim-stelibios-rad-sta-cf-istemi-erigo}
}
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