Syll 1182 : Translation of inscription (original) (raw)

Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum: 1182

LEASE OF LAND DURING CONSTRUCTION OF WALLS AT EPHESOS

Greek text: Ephesos_2052 ( I.Eph. 3 )
Date: c. 290 B.C.
Tags: walls+fortifications
Format: see key to translations

These regulations were issued while walls were being built around the new city of Ephesos, by order of king Lysimachos ( Strabo 14.640 ). For a description of the walls of Ephesos, see A. McNicoll & N.P. Milner, "Hellenistic Fortifications from the Aegean to the Euphrates", pp. 94-101 ( Google Books ).

In Sylloge³, part of the text was printed as a note to Syll_936. There is a German translation of the inscription by O. Benndorf in JÖAI 1899, p.27 ( archive.org ).

We are leasing out the public land, which belonged to the sons of Kleitophon, as far as they managed it. We exclude from this a route alongside the sea twenty feet wide, cutting off from the land a width of twenty feet up to the wall; and we exclude free space by the wall, forty feet from the the inside part and fifty feet from the outside part; and underneath the projections of the towers for fifty feet; and we exclude the whole of Astyagou Pagos, in a circle around the summit; and if we build a wall from the tower of Astyagou Pagos down to the Hermaion and bend the wall back up again, in the area of this land, the free space for the wall shall be the same as written above. We will make use of any quarries which are on this land, whether for hard stone or for pōros stone. We will also need to use a road for the works, to transport the stones to the works, and to use water. No-one shall prevent the contractors from camping on the land, until the works are completed.

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