Description of Monument

White marble garland sarcophagus; see Isik 162 for description.

Description of Text

The text must have begun on the lid. ll.1-12 within the tabella, ll.13-15 probably on its lower moulding, perhaps also on a prepared space below it (illegible on the xerox of the photograph), the remainder on the lower moulding of the chest. The text must have begun on the lid and/or the upper rim of the chest, and there may have been one more line below what survives, where the photograph suggests that the lower edge has been broken away.

Letters

Reasonably well designed, cut and aligned in the second-to-fourth-century style. Unconventional spelling in l.5.

Date

Perhaps first half of the third century (lettering, spelling, nomenclature).

Edition αὐ τοῦ καὶ Μᾶρκος Αὐρήλιος Μέναν δρος Ἀθηναγόρου τοῦ Ἀθηναγόρου τετράκι τοῦ Μεν άνδρου ὁ ἀνὴρ τῆς Ἀπφίου ἕτε ρος δὲ οὐδεὶς ἕ ξει ἐξουσίαν ἐν θάψαι τινὰ ἐν τῇ σορῷ ἢ ἐκθάψαι τοὺς προγεγραμ μένους οὐδὲ ἐπα λλοτριῶσαι αὐτὴν διὰ ψηφίσματος ἢ ἐντεύξεως ἡγεμονικῆς ἐπεὶ ὁ παρὰ ταῦτά τι ποιήσας ἔστω ἀσεβὴς καὶ ἐπάρατος καὶ τυμβωρύχος καὶ ἀποτεισάτω εἰς τὸ ἱερώτατον ταμεῖον ἀργυρίου δηνάρια ἑξακισχίλια ὧν τὸ τρίτον ἔσται τοῦ ἐγδικήσαντος

Translation

- - - ? in the sarcophagus there have been (or shall be) buried the owner ?and his wife and Apphion] his [daughter] and Marcus Aurelius Menandros, son of Athenagoras the son of Athenagoras who was fourth of the name from Menandros, the husband of Apphion; [but] no one else shall have the right to bury anyone in the sarcophagus or to remove the afore-named [or to alienate the tomb on the strength of either a civic decree] or of a Roman official's intervention, since whoever acts contrary to these provisions is to be (considered) [sacrilegious and] accursed and a tomb-breaker, and is to pay to the most sacred treasury (at Rome) six [thousand] silver denarii [of which] one third is to belong to the prosecutor.

Commentary

The only name to survive in full here is that of the owner's son-in-law (Apphion must surely have been his daughter) who is an Aurelius with a genealogy of names cited in the Greek manner - all of them names common among the Aphrodisian élite but also used outside it. The size of the fine, and the concern to prevent alienation of the tomb authorised by civic decree or Roman official intervention (which is paralleled in 12.1107 [=MAMA 554]) perhaps suggests that this is a family of local significance; although all funerary rights might be officially overruled when their stones were needed to build or repair a defensive city wall. This certainly happened at Aphrodisias in the fourth century; it may have seemed a more likely prospect in the third than we are aware.

Locations

Necropolis, North-east: '15 minutes east of Aphrodisias' (K&R) Unknown Findspot

Text Constituted From

Publication; notebook; photograph.

History of Recording

Copied by Kubitschek (K V.2; Abklatsch 60); recorded by Isik, but not seen by Reynolds.

Bibliography

The text published from K's notebook (v.2) by Cormack, ABSA 59, 1964, 24-25, no. 32, whence comment by L. Robert, AntClass 1966, 385-6, BE 1967:545; McCabe 455 ; monument published by Isik and Reynolds, no. 162, with photograph.

Representations

Kubitschek notebook V, 2