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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
pausanias Preserves what we know about the Little and the Great Daidala, religious celebrations which took place in Plataia from the classical into the Roman period (Paus. 9.3.1–9). To his account can be added a fragment from Plutarch's work (Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelii 3.1.6 = Plutarch fr. 157), and a brief mention in Menander Rhetor (Peri Epideiktikon, ed. L. Spengel, Rhetores Graeci iii, p. 367.7). At the celebration of the Little Daidala, which occurred about every six years or so (Paus. 9.3.3), the Plataians made an image from the trunk of an oak tree (Paus. 9.3.4); they called the image a daidalon, because ‘the men of old’ called the wooden images, the xoana, daidala (Paus. 9.3.2). Every sixty years, the Plataians celebrated the Great Daidala, to which other Boiotian states sent representations (Paus. 9.3.5–6, Men. Rhet. iii, p. 367.7). At this Great Daidala, all the images which had been made at the Little Daidala were gathered together and burnt (Paus. 9.3.8). The process by which this was done was to allocate by lot to each of the important Boiotian towns one of the daidala, and to distribute the rest amongst the lesser Boiotian states, who would pool their resources so as to be able to participate in the ceremony (Paus. 9.3.6). Each large city, or a group of smaller cities, was thus responsible for one daidalon.
1 Modern bibliography on the Daidala is collected by Schachter, A.Cults of Boiotia, i (University of London: Institute of Classical Studies, Bulletin Supplement 38.1, 1981), p. 245 n. 3Google Scholar; to which add in particular Kerényi, C., Zeus and Hera (London, 1975), pp. 141–7Google Scholar; I have found Nilsson, M. P., Griechische Feste (Leipzig, 1906), pp. 50–6Google Scholar the most useful account.
2 All the manuscripts of Pausanias derive from a copy made by Niccolò Niccoli of Florence (1364–1437); this is now lost, but all the manuscripts read κοσμ⋯σαντες, so this must have been the reading in the manuscript which Niccolò copied. For the manuscript tree and the derivation of surviving manuscripts of Pausanias from Niccolò's text, see Rocha-Pereira, M. H., Pausaniae Graeciae Descriptio i (Leipzig, 1973), pp. vi–viiiGoogle Scholar.
3 Sylburg, F., Παυσαν⋯ον τ⋯ς 'Eλλ⋯δος Περι⋯γησις (Leipzig, 1696)Google Scholar; reading retained in Spiro, F., Pausanias: Graeciae Descriptio iii (Leipzig, 1903), p. 7Google Scholar, Jones, W. H. S., Pausanias: Description of Greece iv (London, 1935), p. 184Google Scholar, with p. 185 n. 2, Rocha-Pereira, M. H., Pausanias: Graeciae Descriptio iii (Leipzig, 1981), p. 6Google Scholar. Schubart, J. H. S., Pausaniae Descriptio Graeciae ii (Leipzig, 1883), p. 190Google Scholar, retains κοσμ⋯σαντες but prints a lacuna after it, implying that he thinks a verb of motion is required in the text at this point.
4 Schachter, , op. cit., p. 246 n. 1Google Scholar.
5 Ibid.