In addition to thanking Prof. W. Slater for his very interesting review of my book Die Vereine der Dionysischen Techniten im Kontext der hellenistischen Gesellschaft. Untersuchung zur Geschichte, Organisation und Wirkung der hellenistischen Technitenvereine, Stuttgart 2003, I would like to indicate some points where the comments of the reviewer may be based on misunderstanding.
1) Prof. Slater writes that I do not discuss the term nemontes ten synodon and that I fail to cite the imperial decree SEG VI 59. In fact I offer an analysis of this complex matter in the chapter on the Egyptian association of artists, in whose title the phrase nemontes ten synodon appears (pp. 113-115). Here readers will also find a discussion of SEG VI 59 (the reference is included in the index). For convenience, p. 77 with the discussion of the metechontes tes synodou, pp. 113-115 on the nemontes ten synodon, and finally p. 218 with a general discussion of the Ehrenmitglieder, are cross-referenced. However, I deliberately avoided linking together the issues of the metechontes tes synodou in the Guild of Asia Minor on the one hand and the nemontes ten synodon in the Egyptian association on the other, because I consider that these expressions are not termini technici and thus may refer to different groups in the particular contexts. Metechontes tes synodou may refer to auxiliary staff in the case of the Guild of Asia Minor, but nemontes ten synodon stands for ‘non-performing hangers-on’ in the case of the Egyptian association.
2) With regard to the fact that the magistrates of Chalkis are to send a person to the artists to proclaim the job contracts, I don’t misread the inscription IG XII, 207 (early 3rd century). I merely formulate the theory (pp. 53-55, 284) that at this period, although the existence of a formal association is not yet attested, there was already an informal gathering of artists at Chalkis to whom the Chalkidian officials are to send their representative. Surely Chalkis is not the only case that city-magistrates send to artists in order to hire them. And of course in the majority of the relevant cases the artists were to be found in another place, outside the city (so in the examples that Slater refers). But he rightly accepts that “it is an easy deduction that this [place] is where the Artists had their headquarters”. This is exactly why I suppose there were already some artists at Chalkis: when the Guild of artists of the Isthmos and Nemea was later constituted as a formal association, it had a headquarter in this same city (IG XII 9, 910 = Aneziri p. 366, no. B10). The fact that the magistrates of Chalkis are to send a person to the artists (‘apostellein’), does not necessarily imply that the artists were in a different city: in another case, the Teians send ambassadors to the Guild of artists, which was based in their own city (Aneziri p. 375-376 no. D2, 28-30).
3) On p. 54 I refer not to a Nikostratos but to Nikokles (IG II2 3779). This man may be the kitharodos mentioned in Pausanias I 37, 2 and cannot generally be called a chorokitharistes, as Slater supposes. IG II2 3779 enumerates his victories at various contests and we hear that, at the Lenaia, he was victorious in the dithyramb (presumably as a chorokitharistes). But concerning the other contests, including the Isthmia, we are not told in which category he won, and the lack of any further specification allows us to suppose that he won in his main category (as a kitharodos ?).