Description of Monument

White marble statue base in three elements. Multi tiered upper plinth 0.95 × 0.35 × 0.85; shaft with moulding on all four sides (0.565 x 1.31 x 0.565; multi tiered lower plinth 0.92 × 0.35 × 0.90. The statue survives; see bibliography.

Description of Text

Inscribed on one fascia of the upper plinth (l.1) and on the shaft.

Letters

Standard II/III century forms0.035. Small circles for stops after each of the abbreviated names in ll. 2 and 13, and before the first name in l. 13.Ligature: ΜΕ in l. 15.

Date

Early third century A.D. (prosopography, lettering)

Edition ἡ πατρίς Λούκιον Ἀντώνιον Κλαύδιον Δομετεῖνον Διογένην τὸν νομοθέτην πατέρα καὶ πάππον συνκλητικῶν τῆς ἀναστάσεως τοῦ ἀνδριάντος προνοησαμένου Τιβερίου Κλαυδίου Κτησίου πρεσβυτέρου ποιησαμένου δὲ καὶ τὸν βωμὸν αὐτῷ καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ παρ' ἑαυτοῦ .

Translation

His fatherland (honoured) L(ucius) Ant(onius) Cl(audius) Dometeinos Diogenes, law-giver, father and grandfather of senatorials. Tib(erius) Cl(audius) Ktesias the elder, supervised the erection of the statue and himself had the altar made for him, and the other features beside himself.

Commentary

For Dometeinos Diogenes see PIR2 C, 853; for his ancestry, in a family already notable at Aphrodisias in the mid first century AD see 8.23, 9.25 (SEG 31 (1981) 901, 913, and for his senatorial descendents e.g. 397 (MAMA 502). The text here appears to be the latest that we have in his honour, since it alone describes him as a grandfather. Certainly belonging late in his life, it may even have been set up after his death in view of the epimelete's reference to an altar, which should indicate a post-mortem cult. Other inscriptions show him to have held the office of stephanephorus, perpetual gymnasiarch and high priest of Asia (indicated here by the crown on his statue, but not in the text), as well a that of nomothetes. The stress on the nomothesia here indicaets unusual impotance for it - it was,perhaps, a genuine lawgiving, perhaps a revision of the civic constituion and not a regular office. The absence of a reference to the high priesthood may indicate appointment to that office after the passage of the civic decree which underlies the production and erection of the statue.

As a high priest he will have needed the assistance of a high priestess and, presumably because he was a widower, can be supposed to have chosen his niece, Tatiane (2.13), although there is no specific evidence that she served with him. (For a rebuttal of the suggestion that she may have been his wife see on 2.13).

Tib. Claudius Ktesias is otherwsie known as a civic benefactor in the second to third centuries A.D., possibly also as a rhetor; see 12.28 (=MAMA 497)

Locations

Findspot Bouleuterion/Odeon: standing against the south face of the south portico wall, west of the entrance Findspot

Text Constituted From

Transcription (Reynolds)

History of Recording

Excavated by the NYU expedition in 1964 (64.277; SBI 110)

Bibliography

Described by Erim, 69, 1965, 145, and 20, 1967, 26, fig. 15; full text, by Reynolds, in 32, 1968, 21-23, no. 6, whence BE 1969.54, and in Inan-Rosenbaum , 212-213, no. 186, whence SEG 1982.1101, SEG 1985.1082, McCabe 233 . Published, with the statue, by Smith, , no. 48

Photographs

See Smith

KTE 62; 64.95.5