Description of Monument

A large white marble lintel block (0.87 × 4.20 × 0.50) broken in two diagonally across the face (as it probably was when Sherard saw it, and certainly when Bailie did) and broken away at the bottom (where no earlier visitor could read any more than we could).

Description of Text

Inscribed on the face.

Description of Letters

Letters: 0.075; elongated and decorated; square sigma and epsilon; diacritical dots over Υ in l. 2 (twice); scroll for abbreviation marks and for stops.

Date

A.D. 355-360, dependent on dating of Caesar (see commentary).

Edition Ἀγαθῇ Τύχῃ ὑπὲρ ὑγιείας καὶ σωτηρίας καὶ τύχης καὶ νίκης καὶ αἰωνίου διαμονῆς τῶν δεσποτῶν ἡμῶν Φλαουίου Ἰουλίου Κωνσταντίου εὐσεβοῦς ἀηττήτου Σεβαστοῦ καὶ Φλαουίου Κλαυδίου Ἰουλιανοῦ ἐπιφανεστάτου καὶ γενναιοτάτου Καίσαρος Φλάουιος Κυιντίλιος Ἔρως Μονάξιος ὁ διασημότατος ἡγεμὼν καὶ ἀπὸ Κρητάρχων τὸν π ἐκ θεμελίων τῇ λαμ πρᾷ καὶ συγγενεῖ Κρητῶν μητροπόλει τῶν Ἀφροδεισιέων κατεσκεύ ασεν

Apparatus

The words highlighted have been erased.

l.2. Sherard read ΤΗΜΗΣ. Waddington ΤΧΗΣ, but the tau was not copied by any other witnesses, or by us.

l.5. No earlier visitors copied anything in this rasura; we have (with some difficulty) examined it closely, and taken a squeeze.

l.6. After ἡγεμών Sherard read το, seen by no other witnesses, but reproduced as τε by Cormack.

l.7. At the end ΝΤΗΛΠΡΑ was read by most witnesses, but misleadingly set out in , whence it was misunderstood by Cormack (see Robert, loc.cit., 162). We took a squeeze of this line. After τόν there is a trace of a cross-bar. The restoration ἐκ θεμελίων, from the traces which we discerned, is that of Robert; the phrase appears again in the closely contemporary 8.405.

Translation

With Good Fortune. For the health and safety and fortune and victory and eternal endurance of our masters, Flavius Julius Constantius, pious unvanquished Augustus, and Flavius Claudius Iulianus. the most renowned and most noble Caesar, Flavius Quintilius Eros Monaxios, perfectissimus praeses and former Cretarch, built the gate from the foundations for the splendid metropolis of the Aphrodisians, kin to the Cretans

Commentary

See discussion at III.4

Locations

Walls, West Gate: found by us in the same position, and in virtually the same condition, as by the earlier visitors, cut on the large lintel over the west gate in the city wall, on the outer (west) face. The gate itself is decorated with a considerable amount of re-used relief sculpture. . Walls, West Gate Findspot (1991)..

History of Recording

This inscription, which confronted every traveller who arrived at Aphrodisias before the construction of the new road to Tavas in the late 1960s, is one of the most frequently published from the site. It was copied by Sherard in 1705 (BM Add 10101 f.9); by von Richter; by Fellows ; the first four lines were copied by Wood in 1750. Bailie copied the inscription and checked it later; from this he produced a new and inaccurate distribution of the lines, which he presented with pride as an improvement on the text of Boeckh (, 35-42); by Waddington. Recorded by Gaudin (180); by the MAMA expedition; recorded and restored by the NYU expedition.

Bibliography

Published by Francke, 73, from von Richter; by Boeckh, 2744, from Sherard and von Richter; by Fellows, no. 18, whence add. p. 1109; from these Texier, no. 1; by Bailie, 46; by Waddington, 1626; mentioned by Reinach, 137, from Gaudin; by Jacopi, p. 170; published by Cormack, from the records, 8, 426 ; by L. Robert, 13, 158-167 whence 1966.393, 1968.507; by Roueché, no. 19 whence McCabe 607.

Text Constituted From

Transcription (Roueché); Publications; Wood.

Photographs

Front face in situ (1973)

Front face in situ (1973)

Front face restored (1991)

Front face restored (1991)

Left end (1972)

Left end (1991)

Right end (1972)

Representations

Wood's notebook, page 46

Squeeze of erasure, line 6 (1981)

Squeeze of erasure, line 6 (1981)