Current Epigraphy
ISSN: 1754-0909

This is post VIII on our “Virtual Seminar on Some Unpublished Inscriptions from Corinth.” The seven previous posts may be found by following the links from here. This installment features three joining fragments of a finely prepared revetment of white marble with slightly tan accretions on the face. Fragments A (top left) and B (bottom) were found 13 April, 1935 in Area 1 of the Agora Southeast in a wall. They were later rediscovered on 7 April, 1938 in Agora South Central. Fragment C (top right) was found 9 July, 1976 in West Road Trench IV of Temple Hill. Photo, squeeze, and autopsy of joined stones.

Fragments A & B:
Published: Kent, ICor VIII,3, 115.
Corinth Inventory I 1583 ; NB 147 p. 104 ; NB 176, p. 89 ; CECI III 1583.

Fragment C:
Unpublished.
Corinth Inventory I-76-17; NB 654, p. 10 ; NB(FI) 655, p. 65, Object 664.

Measurements of the joined fragments:
Height, 0.150 m. ; width 0.220 m. ; thickness, 0.023 m.
Height of letters, 0.165 m. ; interspace, 0.020 m.

238-244 p.                NON-STOIX

[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — Ἀντ]ώ̣νι̣ον [•] Οὐ̣α̣[λέριον? • officium?]     1
[τοῦ • Αὐτοκράτορος • Καίσαρος • Μάρκου • Ἀντω]νίου • Γορδιάν[ου • — — — —]
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —].Ο̣Ρ̣Ι̣Ν̣Ο̣Υ̣Α̣Ν̣[— — — —]
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]

Apparatus:

Line 1: At the beginning, only the bottom of a round letter with the rising of a round stroke on the right is visible followed by a nu, then the bottom quarter of a hasta followed by an omicron, followed by another nu. Then there is an empty space below a broken field that is suitable for an interpunct. After the putative interpunct there is an omicron, then the foot of a slightly bowed hasta that is compatible with the upsilon or rho in the line below, which we take to be an upsilon. At the beginning of the line before the new fragment was found, Kent read [—]ο̣ν̣τ̣ο̣λ̣[—], but with the new fragment we can see that the last letter before the supplied interpunct is a nu, not a lamba. The last name could also be restored Οὐ̣α̣[λερίανον] or Οὐ̣ᾶ̣[ρον].

Line 3: The reading is very difficult and not at all secure. At the beginning of the line only the broadening of the tip of a stroke, perhaps diagonal, is visible at the top of the inscribed line. It is followed by the tops of several letters, the space between which does not seem wide enough to accommodate an interpunct. We believe the traces favor the letters given above, which are the same that Kent read. Possibly Κ̣ο̣ρ̣ί̣ν̣⟨θ⟩ο̣υ̣?

Commentary:

The traces in the line above and below Gordian’s name do not appear to be consistent with any of the formulae that usually accompany inscriptions in his honor. The stone possibly honors an Antonius Valerius or an Antonius Valerianus, who may have been an official of Gordian III. For a portrait head of Gordian III found at Corinth, see BCH 99 (1975) 603-4, fig. 39.

This is posting VII of our “Virtual Seminar on Some Unpublished Inscriptions from Corinth.” The previous six may be found by following the links from here. This post features three fragments of grayish marble all broken on the backside, two of which have not been published. Fragment A was found in September, 1937 in Shop XXVII of the South Stoa and preserves the left edge of the inscription (margin of 0.027 m.) but is broken elsewhere. Fragment B was found 8 July, 1976 in Quarry Trench 9 of the Temple Hill and preserves the right edge (margin of 0.025 m.) but is broken on the other sides. Fragment C was found 12 August, 1974 in Quarry Trench 4 of the Temple Hill and while broken on all sides preserves an un-inscribed surface of 0.013 to 0.016 m. below and thus appears to be the last line, or at least near the very end. The planes of fracture produce thinner fragments to the right and below. The inscribed surface of all three fragments has been dressed with a multi-toothed chisel of at least three or four teeth. The pattern of chisel marks is regularly vertical on Fragment A, but becomes increasingly disorganized to the right. Fragments B and C show this greater irregularity. The letter forms and spacing are very similar, and the stone itself seems to be of identical quality leaving little doubt that these pieces belong together. Photos, squeezes, and autopsy of stones.

Fragment A:

Published: Kent, ICor VIII,3,40 ; cf. Bousquet, REG 80 (1967) 300, adn. 1 (= SEG 25.327); cf. Stroud, Hesperia 41 (1972) p. 203 ; cf. Gebhard and Dickie, Corinth XX.261-78 (= SEG 51.339).
Height, 0.145 m. ; width, 0.15 m. ; thickness, 0.035 m.
Height of letters, 0.006 to 0.010 m. ; interspace, 0.006 to 0.008 m.
Corinth inventory I 1885 ; NB 170, p. 82.

Fragment B:

Unpublished.
Height, 0.080 m. ; width, 0.073 m. ; thickness, 0.017 m.
Height of letters, 0.007 to 0.010 m. ; interspace, 0.006 to 0.009 m.
Corinth inventory I-76-12 ; NB 632, p. 76 ; NB 655, p. 7, Object 607.

Fragment C:

Unpublished.
Height, 0.112 m. ; width, 0.094 m. ; thickness, 0.023 m.
Corinth inventory I-74-12 ; NB 610, p. 111 ; NB 611, p. 58, Object 465.

HONORARY DECREE OF THE DIONYSIAN ARTISTS

128 a.?                  NON-STOIX

Fragment A:

[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]
τ̣εχνί̣τ̣ω̣[ν] ἀσφα[λεία— — — — — — ἀγαθῆι τύχηι δεδόχ]-      1
θα̣ι̣ τοῖς τεχνίτα̣[ις· ἐπαινέσαι μὲν — — — — — — — —]-
ν Ῥωμαίων καὶ ΑΠ[ — — — — — — — — — — φιλαγα]-
θίαν εἰς τὴν σύν[οδον — — — — — — — — — — — —]-
ων τοὺς μετέχ̣[οντας τῆς συνόδου — — —· εἶναι δὲ — —]-        5
οις τὰ τίμια ἂ κ̣[αὶ τοῖς — — — — — — — — — — — —]
. αυτων τ[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]
[.2-3.]τεχει̣[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]

Fragment B:

[— — — — — — — — — — — —]
[— — — — — — — — —].[—]                     1
[— — — — — — — — —]ΑΜΕΝ
[— — — — — — — — —]Α̣ΙΣΤΑΚ  vac.
[— — — — — — — — —]ΠΑΡΑΤ   vac.
[— — — — — — — — ἀργ]ύριον     vac.      5
[— — — — — — — — —]ΦΟΙ
[— — — — — — — — — — —]

Fragment C

[— — — — — — — — — — — — —]
[— — — — — —]ΝΚΟ[— — — — —]       1
[— — — — —]ΩΙΤΟΥΛ̣[— — — — —]
[— — — — ἐπίσ]τανται̣ [— — — — —]
[— — — — κ]αὶ τῶν λοιπ[ῶν — — —]
[— — — ἀ]πολογισάσθω[σαν — — —]        5
                          vacat

Apparatus:

Fragment A:

Line 1: The careful drawing in NoteBook 170, p. 82 reveals that damage occurred to the upper left-hand corner of the stone shortly after discovery, for it displays the two letters preceding the chi that are clearly the remains of the foot of the tau and the bottom half of the epsilon. NB 170 also records the full iota after the nu, but only the upper tip of the iota’s hasta is visible today. The next letter space after the iota preserves the foot of a hasta the spacing of which is consistent with a tau. Kent (link above) read the seventh letter trace as an alpha and supplied [τε]χνί̣τ̣[ας], failing to see the trace of another letter. The alpha is regularly one of the larger letters and never far from the foot of the line and this trace is 0.002 m. higher than the previous letter trace. We believe it is more consistent with the left corner of an omega, thus requiring τ̣εχνί̣τ̣ω̣[ν].

Line 2: At the beginning of the line Kent read ω̣ν̣ τ̣οῖς etc. Our doubts about this reading were dramatically resolved by the drawing in NB 170. On the stone and a squeeze we had read the two lower tips of a splayed lambda-shaped letter followed by the foot of an adjacent hasta that does not join the previous diagonal stroke. There is space for one letter in front of the lamda-shaped traces. In addition, an omega is never that low in this inscription. The drawing in the NB, which is very reliable, leaves no doubt that at the beginning of the line we have ΘΑΙ. The restoration [δεδόχ]|θαι is virtually assured and means that this was a decree passed by the τεχνῖται. In the gap that follows we should have either [δεδόχ]|θα̣ι̣ τοῖς τεχνίτα̣[ις· ἐπαινέσαι μὲν…or [δεδόχ]|θα̣ι̣ τοῖς τεχνίτα̣[ις τοῖς ἐξ Ἰσθμοῦ καὶ Νεμέας· ἐπαινέσαι μὲν…].

Line 3: At the end of line 2 and the beginning of line 3 Kent proferred […τῶν κοινῶν εὐεργετῶ]|ν Ῥωμαίων. It could also be [τὸν δῆμον τὸ]|ν Ῥωμαίων] or [στρατηγὸν ὕπατο]ν Ῥωμαίων, or [στρατηγὸν ἀνθύπατο]ν Ῥωμαίων or other choices mainly involving a genitive absolute. At the end of the preserved portion of line 3 he read ἀγ̣[—]. Since the horizontal stroke extends to the left of a hasta, as is the case in the pi at the end of line 4 of Fragment C, and it does not in the gamma in line 5 of the same fragment, a pi is assured. The word beginning with ΑΠ may be the beginning of another infinitive such as ἀπ[οδοῦναι] or the beginning of a person’s name. I also wonder whether it may be a participle such as ἀπ[οσταλέντα], which here may indicate a praetor (Polybius refers to a Roman praetor as a στρατηγὸς ἐξαπέλεκυς).

Line 4: At the end of line 3 and beginning of 4 we could also have [καλοκαγα]|θίαν.

Line 5: Only a diagonal stroke is preserved at the end of the line, but there is little doubt that it is anything other than a chi.

Line 6: At then end of the preserved portion is there is the top tip of a hasta visible. At the end of line 5 and beginning of line 6 we probably have [εἶναι δὲ αὐτῶι καὶ ἐγγόν]|oις or [εἶναι δὲ αὐτ]|οῖς. Kent suggested that τὰ τίμια could possibly refer to the fine of ten talants imposed by C. Cornelius Sisenna (see Commentary below), but the position and context suggest they refer to honors.

Line 7: The tip of what is probably one broad letter is visible in front of the alpha.

Line 8: Kent read [με]τεχο̣ν̣[τ—], Bousquet read [με]τέχε̣ι̣, and Stroud read [. .]τεχε̣ι̣[—]. We believe the epsilon is assured. The space in front could accommodate two wide or three narrow letters.

Fragment B:

Line 1: The lower tip of a stroke is just visible on the stone.

Line 3: The dotted letter is either a lambda or alpha, probably alpha.

Line 5: At the end of the line after the final nu on the squeeze there is a mark that might look like a stroke above a scar, but on the stone it is clearly just a part of the scar and out of the margin anyway. [κ]ύριον is also possible.

Line 6: It is tempting to restore [Δελ]φοι|, which suggests this decree might have something to do with the dispute between the Isthmian/Nemeian τεχνῖται and their counterparts in Athens that was waged between 134 and 112 BC and involved the Pythian games at Delphi. See more in the Commentary.

Fragment C:

Line 1: [τῶ]ν κο[ινῶν] is the most probable restoration.

Line 2: At the end of the line in the photo I believe I may see the lower left foot of a splayed letter that both Don and I failed to see on the stone and squeeze (I will double check a squeeze in a couple of weeks). It looks like it may be the left foot of a lambda or alpha.

Line 3: The final letter is a full hasta broken only at the top and could only have been the part of a gamma, iota, mu, or nu. The context favors iota. We have some formula like [εἰδότες ὅτι ἐπίσ]τανται̣ [χάριτας ἀποδιδόναι οἱ τεχνῖται] or [ὅπως πάντες εἰδῶσιν ὅτι οἱ τεχνῖται ἐπίσ]τανται̣ [τὰς χάριτας ἀποδιδόναι τοῖς εὐεργέταις εἰς αὐτούς…].

Line 4. This line may refer to some left over money, or is a catch-all phrase to cover any of the remaining items that need doing, or it may have something to do with the remaining τεχνῖται, or it may have something to do with those who live in the future.

Line 5: It could also be [ἀ]πολογισάσθω [— —]. The subject or subjects of this verb will be officials of the Association, probably ὁ ταμίας, and/or ὁ γραμματεύς, and/or οἱ ἄρχοντες. The two most likely restorations are [καὶ τὸ γενόμενον ἀνάλωμα ἀ]πολογισάσθω[σαν·] or [καὶ ἀ]πολογισάσθω[σαν τὸ ἀνάλωμα πρὸς τοὺς κατόπτας]. The vacat below means we have reached the end of the decree. There may have been the names of various officials written below.

Commentary:

In the Hellenistic period, actors, musicians and others associated with the dramatic arts of Dionysos (οἱ περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνῖται) banded together to form powerful associations (κοινά / σύνοδοι) that were involved in a wide range of activities, including decrees that honored individuals or cities who had furthered their interests. One of the largest and most important was τὸ κοινὸν τῶν περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνιτῶν τῶν ἐξ Ἰσθμοῦ καὶ Νεμέας or The Association of the Artists of Dionysos from the Isthmos and Nemea. Fragment A has long been known to involve this group, but with the aid of the new readings, it can now be said with virtual certainty that this text is a decree of theirs in honor of Rome or some Roman official. One appropriate context for such a decree has long been known; a dispute between the Isthmian-Nemean Technitai and the Athenian Technitai that was waged between 134 and 112 BC and involved the Pythian games at Delphi. The details of this rivalry are known mainly from a fragmentary senatus consultum found at Delphi (FD III,2 70) that dates to 112 BC. The inscription informs us that during the praetorship (128 BC) of Publius Cornelius Lentulus there was a ruling favorable to the interests of the Isthmian-Nemean Technitai, possibly requiring the Athenians to join with them under one association. It was undoubtedly in return for this favorable ruling that the Isthmian-Nemean Technitai set up a statue for Lentulus at Delphi, the base of which still survives (Syll. (3) 704B). The Athenians were dissatisfied with the ruling, so in 118 BC they sent a delegation to Caius Cornelius Sisenna, who was proconsul of Makedonia, asking for reddress. Sisenna convened a meeting of the rival parties at Pella and imposed a new agreement on them that apparently recognized the Athenians and required the Isthmian-Nemean Artists to pay back the Athenians 10 talants. The Isthmian-Nemean Artists refused to endorse the ruling with their delegates’ signatures, they refused to return the money, and a schism followed. The Artists belonging to the Isthmian-Nemean faction held an assembly of its members at Sikyon while those who belonged to the Athenians met at Thebes. The Athenians then appealed to the Roman Senate accusing the Isthmian-Nemean Technitai of ignoring Sisenna’s ruling and misappropriating some of the funds that in part belonged to them. The senatus consultum of 112 reaffirmed Sisenna’s finding, referred the matter of the funds to an arbitrator, and thus generally pleased the Athenians.

Kent did not believe that Fragment A of our text referred to this dispute, because he felt it unlikely that it would have been set up in Korinth between the destruction of Korinth in 146 BC and its restoration in 44, nor did he think it plausible that the inscription would have ever been moved to Korinth. He thus posited a similar incident before 146 B.C. It seems entirely possible to me that, in whatever way this text made its way to Korinth, it refers to the dispute of 134-112 BC. Below I offer a possible restoration, interpreting it as a decree in honor of Lentulus that includes an image of him to be set up in Delphi. For this provisional interpretation I would welcome any suggestions, comments, or criticisms.

Fragment A:

[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]
τ̣εχνί̣τ̣ω̣[ν] ἀσφα[λεία— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — ἀγαθῆι τύχηι δεδόχ]-                1
θα̣ι̣ τοῖς τεχνίτα̣[ις· ἐπαινέσαι μὲν Πόπλιον Κορνήλιον Ποπλίου Λέντολον στρατηγὸν ἀνθύπατο]-
ν Ῥωμαίων καὶ ΑΠ[ — — — — — — — — διά τε τὴν εἰς τὸν θεὸν εὐσέβειαν καὶ τὴν φιλαγα]-
θίαν εἰς τὴν σύν[οδον· — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]-
ων, τοὺς μετέχ̣[οντας τῆς συνόδου τῶν ἐξ Ἰσθμοῦ καὶ Νεμέας τεχνιτῶν· εἶναι δὲ αὐτῶι καὶ ἐγγόν]-      5
οις τὰ τίμια ἂ κ̣[αὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις εὐεργέταις τῶν ἐξ Ἰσθμοῦ καὶ Νεμέας τεχνιτῶν — — — — — —]
. αυτων τ[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]
[.2-3.]τεχει̣[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]

Unknown number of lines lost, part of which may have said something like:

[στῆσαι δὲ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰκόνα χαλκῆν ἔχουσαν τήνδε τὴν ἐπιγραφὴν· "τὸ κοινὸν τῶν περὶ τὸν Διό]-
[νυσον τεχνιτῶν τῶν ἐξ Ἰσθμοῦ καὶ Νεμέας Πόπλιον Κορνήλιον Ποπλίου Λέντολον τὸν ἑαυτοῦ]
[εὐεργέτην Ἀπόλλωνι Πυθίωι"· — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]

Fragments B and C:

[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —].[—]          1
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]ΑΜΕΝ
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]Α̣ΙΣΤΑΚ vac.
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]ΠΑΡΑΤ vac.
[— — — — — — — — — ἐπιμεληθῆναι δὲ τῆς ποήσεως τῆς εἰκόνος παραλαβόντας τὸ ἀργ]ύριον  vac.   5
[ἅπαν ἀπὸ τῶ]ν κο[ινῶν χρημάτων τοῖς τεχνίταις, στῆσαι δὲ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰκόνα χαλκῆν ἐν Δελ]φοῖ-
[ς ἐν τῶι ἱερ]ῶι τοῦ Ἀ̣[πόλλωνος ἐν τῶι ἐπιφανεστάτωι τόπωι, ὅπως πάντες εἰδῶσιν ὅτι οἱ τεχνῖ]-
[ται ἐπίσ]τανται̣ [χάριτας ἀποδιδόναι τοῖς εὐεργέταις εἰς αὐτούς. — — — — — — — — — — —]
[— — κ]αὶ τῶν λοιπ[ῶν χρημάτων — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]
[— καὶ ἀ]πολογισάσθω[σαν τὸ ἀνάλωμα πρὸς τοὺς κατόπτας.]                                                                    10
                    vacat

If the general sense is correct, it would mean that the Isthmian-Nemean Technitai had used the common funds to pay for the inscription and for Lentulus’ statue. Undoubtedly this would have irritated the Athenians, and the funds expended on this may have been part of those 10 talants that the Isthmian-Nemean Technitai were asked to pay back.

This is installment VI of our “Virtual Seminar on Some Unpublished Inscriptions from Corinth.” For the previous five postings, follow the links from here. In this post we have two joining fragments of bluish-gray marble (photos are here and here) that record another foreign decree honoring Korinthian dikasts. Fragment A was found 9 July 1929 on the North Slope of the Temple between the “parãrthma” and the old road bridge ca. 2.60 m. below the bridge’s parapet. Fragment B was found 16 August, 1977 in Quary Trench XV of Temple Hill and joins to Fragment A to form the bottom left corner of the inscription with part of a tenon. Both fragments have been worked with a tooth chisel on their faces, both have preserved left edges, and both have a slight taper toward the back. Each of the preserved lines observes syllabic/word division. The left side of the tenon has a rough-picked surface and is preserved to a length of 0.032 m. and a width of 0.075 m. The distance from the left edge of the stone to the left edge of the tenon is about 0.11 m. Photos, squeezes, and autopsy of stones.

Fragment A:
Published: Kent, ICor 8,3 46 fragment b (who associated it with ICor VIII,1 6 = I-764, but see N. Robertson, Hesp. 45 (1976) 257, n. 5 — JSTOR link here — and my commentary below) ; L. Robert, REG 79 (1966) p. 738.
Corinth inventory, I-943 ; drawing in CECI II 943.

Fragment B:
Unpublished, joining with Fragment B. Cf. H.S. Robinson, AD 32B (1977) 57; Touchais, BCH 102 (1978) 660.
Corinth inventory I-77-13 ; NB 652, p. 64 ; NB 687, p. 55, Object 846.

Measurements of Fragments A & B together:
Height, 0.228 m. ; width, 0.184 m. ; thickness, 0.10 m.
Height of letters, 0.005 to 0.011 m. ; interspace, 0.011 to 0.016 m.

DECREE OF A FOREIGN STATE HONORING KORINTHIAN ARBITRATORS

fin. III – med. II a.       NON-STOIX

Fragments A & B:
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]
μετὰ τὰ ἱε[ρ]ὰ̣ [— — — — — — — — — — — — —]        1
καὶ αἱ δεδομέναι̣ [— — — — — — — — — τοῖς δικασ]-
ταῖς καὶ γραμματε̣[ῖ — — — — — — — — — — — ἀ]-
ναγραφῆι εἶναι τό̣[δ]ε τὸ̣ [ψήφισμα· — — — — — — —]-
[.2.]ν ἀναθεῖναι ἐν τῶι ἐπ[ιφανεστάτωι τόπωι τῆς πόλεως·]      5
[.2-3.] ἐπιμεληθῆναι ΕΜΜΕ[— — — — — — — — —]
τοὺς προβούλους· καλέσαι δὲ α[ὐτοὺς καὶ ἐπὶ ξένια ἐπὶ τὴν]
κοινὴν ἑστίαν.      vacat
                 vacat

Apparatus:

Line 1: The lower tip of the alpha’s right diagonal is just visible.

Line 2: The inscriber has left out the crossbar of the second epsilon, as he does in the last epsilon of line five, but no other letter besides epsilon is possible. Only the lower half of the final iota’s hasta is visible.

Line 3: Under the right tip of the final tau’s horizontal there is an imperfection in the stone masquerading as an iota followed by the upper left corner of a triangular trace consistent with the upper left-hand corner of other epsilons.

Line 4: At the end of the line the upper part of a round letter follows the tau, then in the break between the fragments there is space for one letter followed by a lower horizontal on the new fragment, followed by a tau, and then the left edge of a round letter, thus necessitating τό̣[δ]ε τὸ̣ [ψήφισμα]. L. Robert called Kent’s restoration of lines 3 and 4 ([τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν ἐπὶ τῆι ἀ]/ναγραφῆι εἶναι·) a “un grand mystère” and, noting parallels at IG VII 271 line 20 and IG VII 272 line 105, suggested the restoration [ἐν ἀ]|ναγραφῆι εἶναι (we can add a third example at IG VII 273, line 56). It is usually a very bad idea to disagree with L. Robert, but it may be worth noting that all these examples are from Akraiphia and occur during the first century AD. In addition, the placement of the infinitive so far from the presumed conjunction in the previous line is rather odd. Now that we have the new fragment, one wonders whether the EINAI in line 4 may have been a dittography arising from the EINAI of ἀναθεῖναι below in line 5 so that one should read [ἀ]|ναγραφῆι {εἶναι}, where ἀναγραφῆι is the more usual aorist passive subjunctive. Alternatively, it could be the aorist passive infinitive and we should read [ἀ]|ναγραφῆ{ιει}ναι.

Line 5: At the beginning of the line there is space for two letters. Undoubtedly we have either [εἰς στή]|[λη]ν ἀναθεῖναι or [εἰς στήλην λιθί]|[νη]ν ἀναθεῖναι. The final epsilon once again lacks a medial crossbar, but no other letter is possible. This inscription was to be set up in front of a wall or some other structure in the most visible place of the city, which was probably Temple Hill where both fragments were found. As far as we know, there is no known location on Temple Hill where the tenon of this inscription would have fit. The Elean decree honoring Korinthian judges that was published by N. Robertson (Hesperia 45 (1976) 253-6, JSTOR link here) has a similar taper, and may have also employed a tenon.

Line 6: At the beginning of the line [συν]επιμεληθῆναι is also possible. It is highly unlikely that the ΜΕ[—] following the ΕΜ is the beginning of a city’s name (e.g., ἐμ Με[γάροις or ἐμ Με[γάληι πόλει]…). We could have the infinitive ἔμμεναι, or ἐμ μὲ[ν ludi, ἐν ludi δὲ…], or ἐμ μέ[σωι…], or possibly something like ἐμ με[γάλοις τραγωιδοῖς τῶν Διονυσίων], although admittedly this last suggestion would not be the usual formula and in any case would require more space than it appears this stone had. At Stroud, Hesperia 1972, no. 3, line 14 (JSTOR link here) we find a similarly enigmatic phrase [—]ως ἐν δὲ vv / [— —] occurring in roughly the same position of a very similar inscription.

Line 7: We have the first mention of Korinthian πρόβουλοι on an inscription found at Korinth or elsewhere as far as I know. See Commentary below.

Line 8: It appears that the inscriber began inscribing the epsilon in ἑστίαν as a sigma and then turned it into an epsilon. The eta in the phrase κοινὴν ἑστίαν is indicative of the koine and it completes a common formula found in a few different forms that helps us guess at the length. In addition, while the tenon is not fully preserved so that it is not known precisely how wide the inscription originally was, certainly at least half of it seems present. The epsilon in δὲ seems to be at about the half-way point of the presumed full tenon, which suggests an inscription circa 46 letters wide at the bottom. In my text above, the formula supplied is one of the most common, and it just so happens to fill the likely space perfectly and so seems secure. Given that the inscription tapers, that the letters vary considerably in size, and that the inscriber observes syllabification, the figure of 46 provides only a rough, yet important, estimate for the lines above.

Below is a possible restoration of 44-46 letters, exempli gratia:

[— — πρόσοδον πρὸς τὴν βουλὴν καὶ τὸν δῆμον πρώτοις]
μετὰ τὰ ἱε[ρ]ὰ̣ [καὶ προεδρίαν ἐν πᾶσιν τοῖς ἀγῶσιν· ὅπως δὲ]     1
καὶ αἱ δεδομέναι̣ [τιμαὶ τῶι τε δήμωι αὐτῶν καὶ τοῖς δικασ]-
ταῖς καὶ γραμματε̣[ῖ φανεραὶ καὶ Κορινθίοις ὦσιν, καὶ ἐν ἀ]-
ναγραφῆι εἶναι τό̣[δ]ε τὸ̣ [ψήφισμα· ἀναγράψαντας δὲ εἰς στή]-
[λη]ν, ἀναθεῖναι ἐν τῶι ἐπ[ιφανεστάτωι τόπωι τῆς πόλεως·]           5
[καὶ] ἐπιμεληθῆναι ΕΜΜΕ[— — — — — — — — — —]
τοὺς προβούλους· καλέσαι δὲ α[ὐτοὺς καὶ ἐπὶ ξένια ἐπὶ τὴν]
κοινὴν ἑστίαν.     vacat
        vacat

Commentary:

This inscription will be of great interest to historians of Korinth because for the first time Korinthian πρόβουλοι are attested on stone. It appears that part of their job involved making sure Korinthian honorandi received proper recognition. For πρόβουλοι in the Greek world and a summary of the views concerning their function at Korinth, see J. Tréheux, BCH 113 (1989) 241-247 (for Korinth see esp. pp. 245-7).

Note on dissassociating I-764 (photo here).

Here are my reasons for disassociating I-764 (Kent’s “fragment a” of ICor 8,3 46) from this text. First, as Roberston points out, the interlinear spacing of I-764 is different; it runs from 0.009 to 0.012 m, while on the other two joining fragments it varies from 0.011 to 0.016 m. (the variations are not progressively different on either inscription, rather on both there is variation in each line depending on the shape and size of the letters above and below). Second, while the letters are very similar and may be from the same workshop, the letters on I-764 are fairly consistent in height, measuring from 0.004 to 0.006 m., while those on I-943 (our Fragment A) and I-77-13 (our Fragment B) vary from 0.005 to 0.011 m. Third, the letters on I-764 are also more crowded, they are cut more deeply, their strokes are less precise in joining at the tips, and they do not follow an imagined register line as regularly as do our Fragments A and B. Fourth, the surface of I-764 is a darker blue. Fifth and last, the expected formulae suggest that I-764, even if it had smaller letters, belonged to a wider inscription than does our Fragments A and B.

Another epigraphic paper in the London seminar series:

Digital Classicist/Institute for Classical Studies
Work in Progress Seminar, Summer 2008

Friday 25th July at 16:30, in room NG16, Senate House, Malet Street, London

Charlotte Tupman (KCL)
‘Markup of the epigraphy and archaeology of Roman Libya’

1,500 Greek and Latin inscriptions survive from Roman Cyrenaica (modern Libya). A project to produce a digital publication of these texts is currently in progress at King’s College London, in association with colleagues in Libya, Italy and the U.S.A. (http://ircyr.kcl.ac.uk/). This paper discusses the issues surrounding the markup of these texts in EpiDoc XML and the possibilities of associating archaeological data with the epigraphic material.

ALL WELCOME

The seminar will be followed by wine and refreshments.

For more information please contact Gabriel.Bodard@kcl.ac.uk or
Simon.Mahony@kcl.ac.uk, or see the seminar website at
http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2008.html

This is the fifth installment of our “Virtual Seminar on Some Unpublished Inscriptions from Corinth.” Links to the first four posts may be found here. This post features a fragment of nicely finished white-veined, bluish-grey marble preserving the right side where the stone was cut (although this is not at the surface); one or two letter spaces are lost at the ends of some lines. It is broken elsewhere. A photo is here. It was found 8 July, 1976 in Quary Trench 9. H.S. Robinson apparently thought that this new fragment belonged to the same stele as that on which is inscribed ICor 8,3 46 fragments a and b, only it was a different text. It is clear, however, that this new text was not inscribed on the same stele as fragments a or b of ICor 8,3 46. Photo, squeeze, and autopsy of stone.

Unpublished. Cf. H.S. Robinson, AD 32B (1977) 57.
Height, 0.147 m. (preserved surface 0.065 m.) ; width, 0.022 m. (preserved surface 0.191 m.) ; thickness, 0.102 m.
Height of letters, 0.005 to 0.009 m. ; interspace, 0.007 to 0.010 m.
Corinth inventory I-76-15 ; NB 632, p. 76 ; NB(FI) 655, p. 22, Object 621.

DECREE OF A FOREIGN STATE HONORING KORINTHIAN ARBITRATORS

fin. III – med. II a.         NON-STOIX

[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]
[— — — — — — δὲ διέκριναν ἀκο]λούθως τῶι τε ὅρκωι κα[ὶ]           1
[— — — — — —, τήν τε ἐπιδημί]αν ἐποιήσαντο καλῶς καὶ ἐνδό-
[ξως — — — — — — — — —] τ[ῶ]ν Κοριν⟨θ⟩ίων καὶ τῆς πόλε- v
[ως — — — — — — — — — — —]Σ̣ΙΕΤ̣[. 2-3 . φ]α̣νεροὶ ὦσιν
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —κ]ατατιθ̣ε[.1-2.]         5
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]

Apparatus: The size of the letters of this text vary greatly and the interlinear spacing, though fairly regular, is not strictly followed. The inscriber probably observed syllabification, which would explain why he left a vacat after the epsilon in line three, but included an omicron in line two and a nu in line four (which would have originally allowed a right margin of 0.010 m.).

Line 1: No trace of the final iota is visible, but the surface here, while smooth, shows signs of wear. The formula [δὲ διέκριναν ἀκο]λούθως is paralleled on ICor 8,3 46 frg. a, l.2 (for more on this fragment see below). The oath may be significant; possibly it indicates that this arbitration was between members of the Akhaian league. Compare lines 14-15 of IvO 47, which dates to 164 BC.

Line 2: It looks as if the pi in line two was initially inscribed as a tau, but then turned into a pi. Part of the final omicron has been rubbed away. At the beginning we probably have [τοῖς νόμοις…] or [τοῖς ψηφίμασι…]. After that we could also have [παρεπιδημί]αν or [τήν τε ἀναστροφὴν καὶ ἐπιδημί]αν… The plural form ἐποιήσαντο means we have more than one honorandus.

Line 3: The inscriber left out the cross bar of the theta. After ἐνδό|[ξως] we could have numerous flowery phrases, at the end of which we find a form of ἀξίως followed by the extent genitives. In addition to the use of the koine, the order of the two cities strongly suggests that the decree was passed and inscribed by a foreign government and that the arbitrators came from Korinth.

Line 4: The break and then a scar of 0.050 m. obscure or obliterate parts of this line, which at the beginning contained a phrase such as τῆς πόλε|[ως ἡμῶν …] or τῆς πόλε|[ως τῶν ethnicum …]. When the text resumes, the first letter trace preserves only the tip of an upper horizontal of a gamma, epsilon, xi, sigma, or tau followed by the upper half of a hasta that must have been an iota. The following espilon is clear, followed by half of a hasta, the spacing of which strongly favors a tau. The traces do not allow the restoration of any obvious offices such as δικασταὶ, nor do they suggest the proper name of a city or of individuals. An ending in –σι (πᾶσι?) followed by ἔτ̣[ι τε] is possible (Cf. IG IV 853, l.14, which was found at Methana and grants proxeny status to a Korinthian man), although if we have a dative plural we would expect the nu-moveable before the initial vowel of the following word. The line resumes beyond the scar with the apex of a triangular letter, which from the context must be an alpha. The adjective φ]α̣νεροὶ probably is modifying an ethnicum in the nominative plural, or it modifies the two branches of that city’s government such as ἡ βουλὴ καὶ ὁ δῆμος.

Line 5: Only the top of the theta is visible. At the beginning of the line we have something such as [χάριτας ἀξίας ἀποδιδόντες τοῖς φιλοτιμουμένοις…] or [τιμῶντες τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς ἄνδρας…]. At the end of the line, whatever form of the verb or participle we have, it is likely that it should be divided across syllables, e.g., [—κ]ατατιθ̣έ|[ναι…] or [—κ]ατατίθ̣ε[σ]|[θαι…].

While the formulae of this species of text show considerable variation, the overall sense is clear: Korinthian men went to a foreign city, performed a service for them, probably adjudicating some dispute, for which that city now sends back an inscription to honor them and to record its gratitude. Below I give a restoration of 56-59 letters, exempli gratia:

[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — τάς τε δίκας τὰς — —]
[— — — τὰς μὲν διέλυσαν, τὰς δὲ διέκριναν ἀκο]λούθως τῶι τε ὅρκωι κα[ὶ]        1
[τοῖς νόμοις τοῖς τῶν Ἀχαίων, τήν τε ἐπιδημί]αν ἐποιήσαντο καλῶς καὶ ἐνδό-
[ξως καὶ καταξίως ἑαυτῶν τε καὶ τῆς πόλεως] τ[ῶ]ν Κοριν⟨θ⟩ίων καὶ τῆς πόλε- v
[ως ἡμῶν· ὅπως ἂν οὖν καὶ οἱ ethnicum — — —]Σ̣ΙΕΤ̣[. 2-3 . φ]α̣νεροὶ ὦσιν
[τιμῶντες τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς ἄνδρας — — — — — — — — — —κ]ατατιθ̣ε[.1-2.]      5
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]

Commentary:

Naturally, we would like to know the identity of the foreign government and the names of the Korinthians whom they honored, but alas the epigraphical gods of Korinth have once again fated those details to remain a mystery.

Several similar dikastic decrees have already been published at Korinth, one of which is ICor 8,1 4. While obviously not the same text, many of the characteristics of the letters and subject matter are similar to Stroud 1972, 201, no. 3 (I-70-40 – JSTOR link here). There is also another example of a decree honoring Korinthian dikasts that was inscribed by the Eleans and erected at Korinth; see N. Robertson, Hesperia 45 (1976) 253-6 (JSTOR link here). In addition, there is the famous example of the territorial dispute between Korinth and Epidauros that was adjudicated by the Megarians at the request of the Akhaian League, a copy of which has been found at Epidauros (IG IV(2),2 71). Whether our new fragment involved a similar dispute between members of the Akhaian League that was adjudicated by the Korinthians is not clear, but it remains a distinct possibility.

Finally, there are the examples of ICor 8,3 46 fragments a and b. In my next post we will add a new fragment that joins below ICor 8,3 46 fragment b. This new fragment naturally prompted us to take a look at Kent’s fragments a and b, and after examining them, I (P. Iversen) am of the same opinion as N. Robertson (1976, p. 257, n. 5; link given above) that fragment a of ICor 8,3 46 belongs to a separate inscription. After posting the new fragment, I will also go back and offer some new readings of ICor 8,3 46 fragment a.

This is the fourth installment of our “Virtual Seminar on Some Unpublished Inscriptions from Corinth” (for the previous three posts, see: Seminar I; Seminar II; and Seminar III).

This post features a grayish fragment of marble with the left edge preserved from lines 3-6 but broken elsewhere (photo here). It was found 11 August, 1972 in Trench III of the Quarry Area. There is a regular margin of 0.025 m. to the left and the mason habitually punched puncta with his inscribing tool at the tips of the letter strokes. The regular thickness of the stone and the shallow depth of the letters seem to indicate that this is a revetment. Photo, squeeze, and autopsy of stone.

Unpublished.
Height, 0.105 m. ; width, 0.094 m. ; thickness, 0.020 m.
Height of letters, 0.007 to 0.010 m. ; interspace, 0.009 m.
Corinth inventory I-72-8 ; NB 570, p. 7 ; NB(FI) 566, p. 69, Object 288

PROXENY DECREE?

fin. IV- med. II a. NON-STOIX

vac.             [θεός·]?
ἐπὶ γρ[αμματ— — — — — — Νι]-      1
κάρχο[υ — — — mensis, numerus]
ἐπὶ δέκ[α — — — — — — — —]
ἔδοξε τ̣[ᾶι ἐκκλησίαι?· — — — —]-
ανδρο[— — — — — — — — —]-      5
ρου Κυ[— — — — — — — — —]
[— — — — — — — — — — —]

Apparatus:

Line 0: Above the pi in the first preserved line there is an uninscribed letter space-and-a-half that extends to a maximum height of 0.014 m above line one, while in the other lines there is only an interlinear space of 0.009 m. This indicates that we have the upper left-hand corner of a decree. As such, it is the only decree of pre-Roman Korinth known to me with a preserved upper-left corner. If there was text on this line, it must have been an indented heading, the most probable of which are θεός οr the ubiquitous ἀγαθᾶι τύχαι. The inscriber may have also observed syllabic breaks between lines, but given the paucity of decrees at Korinth it is impossible to ascertain the length of any line.

Line 1: On other inscriptions from Korinth we find a form of γραμματεύς restored at ICor 8,1 4, l.9, ICor 8,1 7, l.1, and ICor 8,1 8, l.1 (for this last example, however, see Dow HSCPh 53 (1943) 111, no.8 — those who have access to JSTOR may find a stable link here). There is also another example published by Stroud (Hesperia 41 (1972), 198,1 — JSTOR article here). It has the koine spelling γραμματέως, which we may have here. For the evidence of the koine on pre-Roman decrees at Korinth as perhaps signifying foreign engraving, see Stroud’s comments. Stroud (p. 199, footnote 4) also mentions an example of a ὑπογραμματεύς in the first line of on an unpublished inscription from Korinth (I 2649).

N.F. Jones (TAPA 110 (1980) 165 ff. – JSTOR article here) argues that a proxeny decree honoring two Athenians that was found on Delos actually comes from Korinth (= SEG 30.990). If Jones is correct, and our inscription is similarly narrow, then we may have ἐπὶ γρ[αμματιστᾶ Νι]|κάρχο[υ]…

Another possibility is that we have a decree of the Akhaian League that began with the formula ἐπὶ γρ[αμματέος τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς nomen, στραταγοῦ δὲ Νι]|κάρχο[υ, μηνὶ nomen, numerus] vel sim. (cf. IG IV(2),1 60, l.1).

Lines 1-2: The restoration [Νι]|κάρχο[υ] seems highly probable. Far less likely are [Νει]|κάρχο[υ] or [Λευ]|κάρχο[υ]. The [Δι]|κάρχου restored at IG X,2 2 196, ll.7-8 is undoubtedly a ghost and instead should be restored as [Νι]|κάρχου.

Line 3: The final kappa is assured, so this appears to be part of the day of the month. As incredible as it may seem, there is no other published decree found at Korinth that preserves the day of the month on which a decree was passed, and only one other decree is extant that records the name of a month (ICor 8,1 2, l.1).

Line 4: Only the upper left tip of an upper horizontal is visible. The restoration of
ἐκκλησίαι is based on the probable restorations of ICor 8,1 2 line 7 and ICor 8,1, 3, line 5, but is by no means assured.

Line 5: Clearly part of a name. If the inscriber observed syllabification, as it appears, the final syllable in line 4 should have ended in a vowel or diphthong, such as [Κλε]|ανδρο[—] or [Εὐ]|ανδρο[—]. It could also be Ἀνδρο[—].

Line 6: If the inscriber observed syllabification, [—]|ρ οὐκ υ[—], [—]|ρ’ οὐκ υ[—], or [—]|ρ ου κυ[—]… should be excluded and it looks as if we have the end of a name followed by the beginning of a patronymic or ethnic. Names beginning in Κυ- are relatively rare, so we may have an ethnic such as Κυρηναῖος, Κύπριος, or Κυζικανός (the latter is already attested at Korinth at ICor 8,1 29). If so, this may be a proxeny decree. Alternatively, if this is the end of a Korinthian man’s name, the ΚΥ may refer to his tribal affiliation of Κυνόφαλος. For this Korinthian tribe, see S. Dow, HSCPh 53 (1943) 90 ff. and N. Jones, TAPA 110 (1980) 176-7 (links to JSTOR provided above).

Commentary:
Although Korinth was one of the most powerful city-states in the Greek world, we know precious little about how the government functioned there, primarily because of the paltry epigraphical remains. Each new inscription, no matter how small, has the potential to alter our understanding of this enormous puzzle. Such is the potential of the present inscription, but the fragmentary state of it once again cheats our hopes. It is, however, the first solid example of a decree found at Korinth beginning with the formula ἐπὶ γραμματ-. Even so, we cannot be sure whether this new inscription was passed by the government of Korinth, or some other city or governmental body such as the Akhaian League.

This is the third entry in our Virtual Seminar on some Unpublished Inscriptions from Corinth (see post I here and post II here). It will feature our first Latin inscription, which consists in four fragments of buff-colored micaceous marble. Fragment A was found beside the Lechaion Road in December, 1929 and has already been published, Fragment B was found 12 July, 1976 in Quarry Trench 9, Fragment C was found a day later 13 July, 1976 also in Quarry Trench 9, and Fragment D was found 6 August, 1974 in Quarry Trench 3. All the fragments are broken on all sides, except Fragment D, which seems to preserve part of the original right edge, although it is not at a right angle with the inscribed surface and therefore it may have been trimmed for reuse. The corner, however, is smoothly rounded here between the two adjacent faces and there are no partial letter traces at the edge. None of the four fragments join and it is not clear to us in what order they should be placed. Photos, squeezes, and autopsy of stones.

FASTI MAGISTRALES?

Date: 44 a. – 22/3 p.

Fragment A:

Published: Kent, ICor 8,3, 345.
Height, 0.0135 m. ; width, 0.127 m. ; thickness, 0.080 m.
Height of letters, 0.008 to 0.009 m. ; interspace, 0.004 to 0.006 m.
Corinth inventory, I-989 ; CECI II, I-989.

[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]
[— — —] • M(arcum) • Instle[ium Tectum — — —]      1
[— — — —] •̣ Corint[hu]m • C • Anṭ[— — — — —]
[— — — —]M • et • Q(uintum) • Cornelium [— —]
[— — — — —] p̣ṛobaruṇt • XX̣[— — — — — — —]
[— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —]

Apparatus:

Line 1: Kent read Instẹị[um Tectum], but the remnants of the last two preserved letters are clearly LE. For more on this reading, see the commentary below.
Line 2: There is some loss of the surface at the beginning of the line, but the traces of an interpunct may still be seen. Nothing of the H or V is visible. At the end of the line, Kent read Mịṇ[ucium], but this reading would require a space of 0.006 m. between the last stroke of the M and the I, which is three times greater than that found elsewhere on this stone and the new fragments. We believe that AN are clear, followed by the lower part of a hasta, the spacing and context of which suggest a T.
Line 4: The tops of the P and R are visible. The right hasta of the N is visible. After the first X, the trace of the upper left diagonal of another X is visible.

Fragment B:
Unpublished.
Height, 0.070 m. ; width, 0.110 m. ; thickness, 0.043 m.
Height of letters, 0.007 to 0.009 m. ; interspace, 0.004 to 0.007 m.
Corinth inventory I-76-14A ; NB 632, pp. 83 ; NB(FI) 655, pp. 20-21, Object 620A.

[— — — — — — — — — — — — —]
[— — — —] . . . ỊỊA • decuṛ[ion— —]      1
[— — —]s • apparitoruṃ [— — — —]
[— —]er LXII • M • C[— — — — —]
[— — — —]ṣp̣uṇ[— — — — — — —]
[— — — — — — — — — — — — —]

Apparatus:

There is a micaceous flaw in the surface running from the top line at the left of the A through the O in line two and the C in line three to the preserved end of line four that makes reading difficult.

Line 1: Traces of three letters followed by two hastae, the first of which leans slightly to the right. Then an A followd by an interpunct. The upper left corner with a piece of the rounded loop of the R is clear at the edge of the break.
Line 2: The upper left angle of the M is visible. [tribuniciu]s apparitoruṃ ?
Line 3: There is a generous space after the R, but no interpunct seems visible, rather a slight point of damage high in the line space.
Line 4: The first letter trace is most consistent with an S, but it could also be the top of a C or the rising tip of a T or F that is found elsewhere on these fragments. The second letter trace can be the top of a B, P or R. The final trace has a hasta and diagonal connected at the top left corner and to the right there is the tip of another hasta, most consistent with an N.

Fragment C:
Unpublished.
Height, 0.105 m. ; width, 0.115 m. ; thickness, 0.048 m.
Height of letters, 0.007 to 0.009 m. ; interspace, 0.006 to 0.007 m.
Corinth inventory, I-76-14B ; NB 632, p. 86 ; NB(FI) 655, pp. 20-21, Object 620B.

[— — — — — — — —]ỊḄṚỊ[— — —]      1
[— — — — — — — —]nus • IIỊ[— —]
[— — — — — — —]C• Fideḷ[— — —]
[— — — — —]Ị• Caesaris [— — — —]
[— — — — A]ntiochus •I• [— — —]      5
[— — — —]canus • I[I — — — — —]
[— — — — —]ṾỊ • [— — — — — —]

Apparatus:

Line 1: The bottom of a hasta, followed by a letter with a base that resembles a B or D, followed by two letter traces that conform well with the bottom part of an R or a crowded IC, followed by the faint trace of a hasta.
Line 2: At the end of the line, only a faint trace of the third hasta is visible. A fourth may have followed the break. The numeral is overlined.
Line 3: It is not clear if the C is the last letter of an abbreviation, such as PROC(urator) or C for C(uravit)/C(uraverunt) or a name such as C(aius). It is not clear to us whether Fideḷ[—] is part of a proper name or an adverb or adjective.
Line 4: At the beginning of the line the lower half of a hasta survives.
Line 6: The overline of the numeral seems to be preserved to its full length and so the restoration of another I seems assured.
Line 7: The upper left tip of a diagonal and to the right of it the tip of a hasta are visible and are consistent with a V. Then there follows the upper tip of another hasta slightly lower in the line followed by an interpunct. We seem to have the end of a large number without an overline (cf. the large number in line 3 of Fragment B, which is also not overlined).

Fragment D:

Unpublished.
Height, 0.080 m. ; width, 0.070 m. ; thickness, 0.035 m.
Height of letters, 0.006 to 0.008 m. ; interspace, 0.005 m. to 0.016 m.
Corinth inventory, I-74-11 ; NB 610, p. 82 ; NB(FI) 611, p. 57, Object 464

[— — — — — — — — — — — — — —]
[— — — —]aedes[. .]E[— — — — — —]         1
[— — — — Ma]ecius • A(uli) • f(ilius) • Co-
[rnelius — —(?)] vacat
[— — — — — — —]t •A• decu-
[— — — — — — — —]ṃ. vac. 0.016 m.        5

Apparatus:

Line 1: Only part of the lower horizontal of the last E is visible.
Line 2: Or [D]ecius. Maecius is more common at Korinth.
Line 3: It is unclear whether the beginning of this line was inscribed or the text at the end of our line 2 continued at the beginning of line 4. It seems more likely that it finished here and a new entry was begun at the beginning of line 4.
Line 5: The two apices of a letter characteristic of an M elsewhere seem clear. Since there is a vacat of 0.016 m. to the right of this, it appears that we have the end of the line.

Commentary:

H.S. Robinson originally thought that these fragments might belong to the Lex Coloniae Corinthiensis (he noted that the words CAESARIS, DECVR[ION—], and APPARITORVM all appeared in the Lex Coloniae Genetivae Ursonensis and deduced a parallel). However, Mary Hoskins-Walbank while working on her dissertation (non vidimus) took a look at the stones and in some correspondence with Robinson expressed the view that they were more consistent with a fasti document – a view we find more likely. She also thought this stone might have been damaged in the earthquake of AD 22/3 and then discarded rather than suffering a damnatio memoriae.

One of the more intriguing aspects of this inscription lies in the reference to a Marcus Instleius in Fragment A, line 1, heretofore read as Insteius, who was one of the earliest duoviri of the colony of Korinth (established 44 BC). The spelling Insteius has been preferred by previous studies rather than Instleius undoubtedly because Instleius is not attested elsewhere (we do, however, find an A(ulus) Instuleius Tenax attested at Egyptian Thebes = Colosse de Memnon 2), while the name Insteius is attested in both Greek and Latin epigraphical and literary sources. The reading Insteius, however, is epigraphically impossible on this stone. Furthermore, the reading Instleius is corroborated on another stone from Korinth (ICor 8,3 149, line 1, photo here). Kent read the first line of this stone as [M •] INSTỊ[E]Ọ • C • F • TECTO, but he went on to add that “the letter following T can only have been I or L, and clearly was not an E. As there is no join between fragments a and b, as there would have been if the E had simply been omitted, I have assumed that the letters EI were erroneously transposed.” However, a transposition on this carefully carved piece of revetment seems scarcely believable. In addition, an L is more likely than an I given that the hastae of the other two instances of I on this same stone are taller while the close proximity of this letter’s hasta to the T that precedes it makes more sense space-wise if it is the hasta of an L (compare how the E in TECTO tucks in under the first T). In line 1 of ICor 8,3 149 we therefore propose reading INSTḶ[ΕΙ]Ο̣.

The reading Instleius rather than Insteius is further corroborated by a series of coins struck at Korinth (see Amandry BCH Suppl. XV pp. 124-128) that, given the rarity of the name Instleius, undoubtedly refer to our same man. On the reverse of several of these coins we find IIVIR paired with INSTL • CAS (example here), and on the reverse of others we find II VIR paired with INTS CAS (example here – where the order INTS is probably a ligature for INST). Previous scholars have interpreted the two men’s names as Inst(eius) and L. Cas. (for the last Amandry suggested L. Cas(tricius Regulus), while Kent suggested L. Cas(ius […]), but the placement of the interpunct between the L and C argues against such a reading and when we add the evidence of the coins to the inscriptions we once again are lead to believe his name was spelled Instleius. Perhaps the form Instleius may have been an older, alternative form of Insteius much like stlis is an earlier form of lis (as in Decemviri Stlitibus Iudicandis). Amandry (p. 36) places Instleius’ office of duovir in 42 or 41 and his office of duovir quinquennalis in 35.

If we assume Instleius is an alternate form of Insteius, this Marcus Instleius, as others have already pointed out, may have been the same man who fought at the side of Antony at the siege of Mutina in 44 BC (Cicero, Philippic 13.26) as well as at Actium in 31 BC (Plut., Antony 65.1).

The Computers and the Humanities Users Group, Computing and Information Services, and The Center of Digital Epigraphy

present

Interoperability between Epigraphic and Papyrological Databases:
The Epidoc Scenario

Dr. Gabriel Bodard
Centre for Computing in the Humanities
King’s College London

12:30, Thursday, May 22
169 Angell St., Main Conference Room,

Crosswalking–the automated mapping of metadata from one schema to another–has emerged as a crucial tool in the digital landscape, and is particularly useful for integrating data from multiple sources or projects. This talk will focus on the use of crosswalks in epigraphical and papyrological research development. Within these domains, a number of corpora have been developed using different technologies and data structures, and driven by different user needs. There are collections that use the Epidoc XML schema, which is based on TEI, collections like the Electronic Archive of Greek and Latin Epigraphy that are served from SQL databases, and older projects which use specialized information structures. Dr. Gabriel Bodard will present some of the strategies that he and his colleagues, Tom Elliott and Hugh Cayless, have devised to perform such transforms. He will then describe in more detail the Integrating Digital Papyrology project, whose purpose is to dynamically transform and integrate the Duke Databank and Heidelberg Gesamtverzeichnis collections into a single EpiDoc collection, and some of the technical and theoretical lessons learned from this process.

The following titles from the Digital Classicist Work-in-Progress seminars are of potential interest to epigraphers:

6 June (NG16): Elaine Matthews and Sebastian Rahtz (Oxford), The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names and classical web services

13 June (NG16) Brent Seales (University of Kentucky), EDUCE: Non-invasive scanning for classical materials

20 June (STB3) Dot Porter (University of Kentucky), The Son of Suda On Line: a next generation collaborative editing tool

18 July (STB3) Ryan Bauman (University of Kentucky), Towards the Digital Squeeze: 3-D imaging of inscriptions and curse tablets

25 July (NG16) Charlotte Tupman (KCL), Markup of the epigraphy and archaeology of Roman Libya

8 Aug (NG16) Charlotte Roueché (KCL), From Stone to Byte

The Centre for Computing in the Humanties, Kings College London, is again offering an EpiDoc Summer School, on July 14th-18th, 2008. The training is designed for epigraphers or papyrologists (or related text editors such as numismatists, sigillographers, etc.) who would like to learn the skills and tools required to mark up ancient documents for publication (online or on paper), and interchange with international academic standards.

You can learn more about EpiDoc from the EpiDoc home page and the Introduction for Epigraphers; you wil find a recent and user-friendly article on the subject in the Digital Medievalist. (If you want to go further, you can learn about XML and about the principles of the TEI: Text Encoding Initiative.) The Summer School will not expect any technical expertise, and training in basic XML will be provided.
Attendees (who should be familiar with Greek/Latin and the Leiden Conventions) will need to bring a laptop on which has been installed the Oxygen XML editor (available at a reduced academic price, or for a free 30-day demo).

The EpiDoc Summer School is free to participants; we can try to help you find cheap (student) accommodation in London. If any students participating would like to stay on afterwards and acquire some hands-on experience marking up some texts for the Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica project, they would be most welcome!

All interested please contact both charlotte.roueche@kcl.ac.uk and gabriel.bodard@kcl.ac.uk as soon as possible. Please pass on this message to anyone who you think might benefit.

Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica (http://ircyr.kcl.ac.uk). First International Workshop. British School at Rome, 28-29 February 2008.

Charlotte Tupman and Gabriel Bodard: Epigraphic Interoperability

On the occasion of the Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica Workshop on geospacial data and interoperability, held in Rome on February 28-29, scholars, mainly archaeologists, involved in digs and studies in Libya presented their work with a particular focus on digital data capture and publication.

At 14:00 on Friday 29th, Charlotte Tupman and Gabriel Bodard gave an interesting joint paper on Epigraphic Interoperability. (Slideshow available to view.)

As an introduction, EpiDoc and its principles were briefly explained. The EpiDoc schema and guidelines offer guidance for the encoding of epigraphic texts and metadata in an XML system that abstracts structure and semantics on the one hand from the specifics of display on the other, so that the same underlying data can be used to generate various presentations (from traditional Leiden edition, diplomatic text, web page, printed page, dynamic indexes, or database-like tables).

However, the main focus of the paper was to demonstrate the possibility of collaboration between EpiDoc and the EAGLE databases through a sort of “crosswalk” of data from one schema to another. The EpiDoc guidance defines a level of compliance with the EAGLE database which means that all metadata required by the relevant databases is included and explicitly tagged in a compliant EpiDoc XML edition. Finally a simple tool was demonstrated that created tabular output compatible with the Epigraphic Database Roma from the IRCyr XML files).

At the end of the presentation Professor Silvio Panciera, chair of the AIEGL committee on IT and Epigraphy and director of the EAGLE federation of databases, expressed his support to the project and stressed the importance of digital applications to the study of epigraphy and the Classical world in general. He also expressed his gratitude for any sort of collaboration with the EAGLE endeavour and encouraged the audience to embrace the new opportunities offered by digitalization.

Yesterday afternoon’s (Friday 17th August) seminar in the Digital Classicist series was presented by Charles Crowther of the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents in Oxford, on the subject of ‘A Virtual Research Environment for the Study of Documents and Manuscripts’. The project on which Dr. Crowther was reporting (mentioned here back in May) is the successor to the BVREH (Building a VRE for the Humanities) and VWSAD (Virtual Workspace for the Study of Ancient Documents) projects, which ran during the last couple of years.

The new VRE, which recently won two years’ funding and is at an early stage of development, will be targeted explicitly at epigraphic and papyrological texts (although it could easily be repurposed for medieval or other manuscripts). The aim is to create a working environment to replicate for scholars at a distance the opportunities for collaborative research offered by bringing several experts into a room at the same time to look at high-quality images of a papyrus or inscription. In addition they intend to take advantage of the many online research tools that are available (e.g. PHI Greek Inscriptions, especially the new concordance tool; the Epigraphik Datenbank Clauss/Slaby; the more sophisticated Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg; the Photographic Archive of Papyri in the Cairo Museum; the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri, etc.), as well as more “deep” resources–scholarly publications such as Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity or Vindolanda Tablets Online.

It would also be valuable to integrate this system with the excavators who might be digging up new inscriptions and need an expert to look at them. The Silchester excavations, who use the VERA (VRE for Archaeology) environment and keep detailed electronic notes, would be an ideal candidate for such collaboration, except that they very rarely unearth inscribed objects. Vindolanda do not have such sophisticated electronic recording methods, or else their many and difficult texts would be ideal. A first pilot collaboration might be with the excavations at Zeugma, where the excavators are aware of the importance of calling upon specialists in particular fields (such as epigraphy) to work with the excavators on their finds.

This is a project that is worth watching. The VRE will be run on the Oxford servers in the first instance, and other collaborators will be very welcome to help test the environment as soon as there is something running. Ultimately the tools created by this project will be Open Source, and so can be used by anyone with an interest in working collaboratively on documents, inscriptions, papyri, or manuscripts in an environment that integrates multiple freely available resources to enrich the editor’s research experience.

Yesterday (Friday 3rd Aug) Melissa Terras, lecturer in Electronic Communication in the School of Library, Archive and Information Studies (UCL) gave a seminar in the Digital Classicist series at the Institute of Classical Studies entitled ‘Can Computers Ever Read Ancient Texts?’ In this excellent presentation, Dr. Terras’ answer to the question posed in the title was (pace a response on the Humanist list last week) basically ‘no’, or at least not yet and not in any significant sense as we understand “read”. A better question, she asserted, would be “Can computers assist in reading ancient texts?”, and to that question she gave (and demonstrated) a much more positive response.

In the course of this paper, which was in part a demonstration of past and ongoing work on the semi-papyrological/semi-epigraphical Vindolanda writing tablets, she made several important points that are worth repeating to an audience of epigraphists.

1. The expert who teaches the computer to read texts is not principally the programmer, analyst, or engineer, but principally and essentially the papyrologist (or epigrapher) who knows the art and works in a discipline that has decades (centuries) of methodologies and expertise behind it.
2. Based on Herbert Youtie’s now famous distinction between “public” (published, polished, perfect) and “private” (in progress, iterative, much-laboured) text scholarship, she points out the ability of computer-assisted readings to reveal and preserve the private processes of text editing and track methodologies and mistakes, a process known by engineers as “truth maintenance”. For example, it would be incredibly valuable to be able to document the process of making decisions as to dating and/or scribe based on letter-forms (see point 4 below), a process that seasoned papyrologists and epigraphers currently often perform based on instinct and therefore find very difficult to describe and teach.
3. The computer does not, in the prefered model, make firm decisions and statements of “fact” based on engineering principles and programmed algorithms; rather it offers a range of probabilistic results (number-crunching is what machines are good at), offering likely character-groups or words, for the text editor or historian to choose between based on her expertise (interpretation is what humans are good at).
4. One of the most impressive by-products of the Vindolanda text-analysis project has been the development of palaeographic markup, a system designed to record and predict average letter-forms as well as variants.
5. Perhaps the most striking point was that this project, although firmly in the humanities and concerned with Ancient History, provides a rare “real-world” application of theories and techniques in Artificial Intelligence. New use-cases lead to new solutions, and a project like this benefits the discipline of Engineering Science as a whole. We Classicists should not underestimate what we have to offer to the high-powered world of medical imaging, defense technologies, and forensic science, for example.

Joyce Reynolds and colleagues at King’s College London are beginning a three-year project to publish the Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica, along with supporting materials, images, and a detailed geographical gazeteer.

From the IRCyr project website (http://ircyr.kcl.ac.uk/):

In 1948 Joyce Reynolds, of Newnham College Cambridge, then based at the British School at Rome, started a series of regular visits to Libya, to study the inscriptions of the Roman period. She worked initially in Tripolitania: her epigraphic corpus, the Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania, written with John Ward-Perkins, was published in 1952, and remains the authoritative work. In 1951 she first visited Cyrenaica, and has worked since then on the inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica, working with local archaeologists and others from Italy, France, the U.K. and the U.S.A.. She has continued to visit Libya almost every year since then, and has assembled materials for a corpus of some 2500 inscriptions from Roman Cyrenaica. Nearly a third of these have never previously been published, while others have only appeared in versions which can be very much improved, and better understood, as a result of re-reading. The collection is made up of transcriptions, and illustrations for about half the texts; the bulk of the remainder are illustrated in photographs held only in the archives of the Libyan Department of Antiquities at Cyrene. The Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica project has been funded by the Leverhulme Trust, to publish this material as an online corpus; the team will be drawing on experience gained in publishing the online corpus of the Inscriptions of Aphrodisias. Images held in Cambridge, Rome and Cyrene will be scanned to illustrate the collection. The new corpus will be presented as a series of documents; but it will also link to an online map of Roman Cyrenaica, being prepared as part of the Pleiades project, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Material collected by Reynolds and her colleagues will be used to map ancient sites on that map, with a fullness which was not possible within the necessary limitations of its predecessor, the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World.

Over the last few years an international group of scholars has been developing a set of conventions for marking up ancient documents in XML for publication and interchange. The EpiDoc Guidelines started from the case of inscriptions, but the principles are also being applied to papyri and coins, and the aim has always been to produce standards consistent with those of the Text Encoding Initiative, used for all literary and linguistic texts.

Following on from the interest we have seen in EpiDoc training events (including recent sessions in Rome and San Diego) and the success of the London EpiDoc summer school over several years now, we shall be holding another week-long workshop here at King’s College London, from the 11th-15th June this year.

• The EpiDoc Guidelines provide a schema and associated tools and recommendations for the use of XML to publish epigraphic and papyrological texts in interchangeable format. For a fuller description of the project and links to tools and guidelines see http://epidoc.sf.net.
• The Summer School will offer an in-depth introduction to the use of XML and related technologies for publication and interchange of epigraphic and papyrological editions.
• The event will be hosted by the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London, which will provide the venue and tuition. The school is free of charge, but attendees will need to fund their own travel, accommodation, and subsistence. (There may be cheap accommodation available through KCL; please inquire.)
• The summer school is targeted at epigraphic and papyrological scholars (including professors, post-docs, and advanced graduate students) with an interest and willingness to learn some of the hands-on technical aspects necessary to run a digital project (even if they would not be marking-up texts by hand very much themselves). Knowledge of Greek/Latin, the Leiden Conventions and the distinctions expressed by them, and the kinds of data and metadata that need to be recorded by philologists and ancient historians, will be an advantage. Please enquire if you’re unsure. No particular technical expertise is required.
• Attendees will require the use of a relatively recent laptop computer (Win XP+ or Mac OSX 10.3+), with up-to-date Java installation, and should acquire a copy of the oXygen XML editor (educational discount and one-month free trial available); they should also have the means to enter Unicode Greek from the keyboard. Full technical specifications and advice are available on request. (CCH may be able to arrange the loan of a prepared laptop for the week; please inquire asap.)

Places on the workshop will be limited so if you are interested in attending the summer school, or have a colleague or student who might be interested, please contact gabriel.bodard@kcl.ac.uk as soon as possible with a brief statement of qualifications and interest.