Leiden conventions rendered as EpiDoc: restorations as supplied(reason=lost), gaps as gap, abbreviations as expan(abbr+ex), omitted letters as supplied(reason=omitted), surplus as surplus, corrections as corr. Critical apparatus as listApp. The facing translation is div type=translation; the historical commentary is div type=commentary.
King Theodorus and Amynander to the council and the people of Teos, greeting. Pythagoras and Clitus, the envoys sent to us by you, both delivered the decree and themselves spoke to us to secure our consent that your city and its land be sacred to Dionysus and inviolable and tax-exempt;
and we, having heard them through, have most readily conceded all your requests and consent that your city and its land be sacred and inviolable and tax-exempt.
This we do both because we happen to be on friendly terms with all the Greeks, and because we have kinship with Hellen himself, the founder of the common name of the Greek; and not least because we hold an affectionate disposition toward your city — and especially we were eager, at once, to grant the favour to you who ask it and, as we suppose, to win for ourselves the goodwill of the god.
Theodorus and Amynander, the joint kings of tiny Athamania, answer the Teian embassy in the formula of asylia diplomacy: city and territory are recognized 'sacred to Dionysus, inviolable and tax-free'. What is striking is the grounding. Where great kings invoke benefaction and alliance, these minor Pindus rulers reach for genealogy — they claim kinship (syngeneia) with Hellen himself, the archēgos of the common Greek name, asserting their place in the Hellenic family — alongside generic philhellenism, affection for Teos, and the hope of the god's favour. The letter belongs to the great wave of recognitions (c.204 BCE) that Teos collected on the wall of its Dionysus temple (Welles 1934, 152–156).