Three Epitaphs from the Vezirköprü Region (original) (raw)

Inscriptions from Neoklaudiopolis/Andrapa (Vezirköprü, Turkey)

Since 2010, a number of inscriptions, complete or fragmentary, have come to light in Vezirköprü, Samsun province (ancient Neapolis/Neoklaudiopolis/Andrapa). The inscriptions published here include four grave steles set up in memory of civilians as well as one inscription commemorating a beneficiarius. Though more than 1,000 beneficiarius inscriptions have been found so far, this is the first securely attested case where one soldier is identified both as a beneficiarius and a stationarius. A further important feature of this inscription is the use of the word Ἀνδραπηνῶν. While the place-name Andrapa for Neapolis/Neoklaudiopolis is known from Ptolemy’s Geography and Late Roman church records, it has not until now been documented epigraphically. Makalede, Samsun’a bağlı Vezirköprü (antik Neapolis veya Neoklaudiopolis veya Andrapa) yöresinde 2010 yılından sonra bütün ya da parçalar halinde ele geçen ve 4 tanesi bazı sivillere, biri de bir askere (beneficiarius) ait olan 5 adet yeni yazıt yayınlanmaktadır. Günümüze kadar beneficiarius olarak görev yapan askerlerden söz eden 1000’den fazla yazıt bulunmuş olup, bu makalede yayınlanan 3 No.’lu yazıtta ilk kez bir asker hem beneficiarius hem de stationarius olarak nitelendirilmektedir. Aynı yazıtın diğer bir önemli özelliği de, Andrapa şeklindeki yer adının genetivus hali olan Ἀνδραπηνῶν ifadesini kaydetmesidir. Ptolemaios’un (İ.S. 2. yüzyıl) Coğrafya adlı eserinden ve geç devir kilise kayıtlarından öğrendiğimize göre, Andrapa Antik devirde Neapolis/Neoklaudiopolis (Vezirköprü) kentine verilen diğer bir isimdi, ki bu isim bir yazıtta ilk kez görülmektedir.

A New Solution to the 'Demotionidai' Inscription (IG II (2) 1237

A New Solution to the 'Demotionidai' Inscription (IG II (2) 1237 = Rhodes, Osborne no. 5, 2021

Few inscribed Greek texts have provoked more widespread disagreement and controversy than a famous dossier of three enactments dating from the first half of the fourth century BCE, belonging to a religious body in Attica of unknown identity. Discovered in 1883 in the royal residence at Tatoi, near Dekeleia, the marble stele is inscribed on two sides (Faces A and B). Stephanos Koumanoudes produced the editio princeps of Face A (l.1-58), which Ulrich Köhler used as the transcript for the first edition in IG II 5 841b; Face B (l. 59-126) was published five years later, in 1888, by Ioannis Pandazidis and Habbo Lolling, in two independent editions. The first hundred and thirteen lines, which contain the decree of Hierokles (l. 13-68) and rider of Nikodemos (l. 68-113), are inscribed in the same hand, whereas the last twelve, which contain a third enactment of Menexenos (l. 114-126) in a different hand, were added some thirty years or so later, to judge by the letter shapes, after c. 360. The first two measures survive in completeness, but the last breaks off just at the point where instructions for publication were issued. Hierokles and the rider of Nikodemos are inscribed stoichedon (thirty per line). Menexenos is less regular, the letters varying between thirty-two and thirty-eight per line. Another feature of the stone is two large erasures, one at line 2, subsequently written over, and another at lines 69-73; lines 47 and 113 contain smaller erasures of eight and five letters, respectively 1. The relationship between phratry and polis has been the focus of a long and complex scholarly dispute originating in the nineteenth century. The old view was that the polis emerged out of prehistoric societal structures, such as tribes, phratries, and clans (if that is the meaning of the elusive word gene), which historically and chronologically predated the polis. According to that view, the rise of the Greek polis was a democratic counterstroke to the political ten-1 The inscription is housed in the National Epigraphical Museum in Athens (inv. 13529).