Xanthos Trilingual
Letoon Trilingual
The decree asserts, in three languages before three audiences, that the citizens of Xanthos and their governing council have permanently bound themselves to fund a new civic cult, financed by a tax levied whenever a slave is freed.
- a single decree recorded in three language versions for three audiences
- dating pinned to the satrapal career of Pixodarus
- a manumission tax used to permanently fund a civic cult
- Lycian civic government operating within the Persian satrapal system
A stone stele from the sanctuary of Leto near Xanthos in Lycia, inscribed with a civic decree in Lycian, Greek, and Aramaic, not word-for-word translations of each other but overlapping accounts of the same act. It is dated by its own text to the first regnal year of a Persian king under Pixodarus of Caria's satrapy; traditionally read as 358 BC under Artaxerxes III, but since Pixodarus is attested as satrap only from c. 341/340 BC, mainstream scholarship now places it in 337/336 BC, the first year of Artaxerxes IV Arses. The decree establishes a cult for a deity styled the King of Kaunos, names Simias as hereditary priest, fixes temple land and a priestly stipend, and funds an annual sacrifice through a tax on manumitted slaves. The trilingual also became a key source for the decipherment of Lycian.
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