An Ephebic Inscription from Egypt (original) (raw)

2011, Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies

T HE DUKE UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM possesses a Greek inscription of Roman imperial date (inv. DCC 75.12), which I publish here with the kind permission of the Curator of the Classical Collection, Professor Keith Stanley. The monument came to the museum in 1975 from an estate in England, with no record of its original provenience.! Above the inscribed text is represented in relief a standing male figure wearing a long chlamys, flanked by an amphora and a post entwined by a ribbon. The inscription, dated to the third year of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus (A.D. 162/3), is a list of the graduating ephebes of that year (oL xAafLv87]g,op~c[avTEc]), a kind of text known throughout the Greek world. 2 The list begins with the magistrates who supervised the ephebes, the first of whom, the kosmete, was also a member of the city council (,8ovAf[VT~C]). Then come those ephebes who were victorious in the several competitions of the ephebic games; the other ephebes follow. Names like Ammonius, Sarapammon, Anubias, Ptolemy, Didymus,3 taken together, guarantee that the monument derives from Egypt. Its form and vocabulary in fact find their closest parallel in an ephebic list from Leontopolis (Tell Moqdam), metropolis of the Leontopolite nome, dated to A.D. 220: this list opens with the words €ldv ot XAafLV8TJg,Op+ CaVT€C Kat eg,TJ,8€lJcavTEc, then names the presiding magistrate (the kosmete), then the ephebes who had won victories in the games, then the rest.4 The presence of a councilor in the Duke inscription further limits the possible provenience, for in second-century Egypt only Ptolemais and Antinoopolis were possessed of councils.o On the face of it, Antinoopolis would seem the more likely candidate simply from the