<rs type="textType">Funerary</rs> inscription for Marcus Aurelius Glykon and Alexandros

Joyce M. Reynolds1991

Creative Commons licence Attribution 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/)

All reuse or distribution of this work must contain somewhere a link back to the URL http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/

Originally published in Erim and Reynolds (1991).

 English French German Ancient Greek Transliterated Greek Modern Greek Italian Latin Spanish Turkish AsiaTurkeyAphrodisiasGeyre 2007-02-08Charlotte TupmanHand tidiedGBhand tidied 2005-12-13Elliott HallBatch converted Word2XML
Description of Monument

White marble sarcophagus 2.35 × 1.00 × 1.03 and lid 2.385 × 0.42 × 1.12. Decorated with victories and putti holding garlands, with a bust above each garland. In the centre, a tabella ansata; for a full description, see Isik 137.

Description of Text

Inscribed on the tabella.

Letters

Poorly designed, under the influence of cursive forms, 0.03; lunate epsilon, sigma, cursive omega

Date

Perhaps middle of the third century (lettering, formulae).

Edition ζῶσιν αὑτή ἐστιν ἡ σορὸς καὶ τὸ ὑποκάτω μνῆμα Μάρκου Αὐρηλίου Γλύκωνος ἀγαλματογλύφου καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου πιμενταρίου
Translation

They are (still) living. This is the sarcophagus, and the memorial monument below it, of Marcus Aurelius Glykon, sculptor, and Alexandros, dealer in paints (and/or unguents).

Commentary

The inscription, which was cut when the two owners were alive, concerns, as many do, a tomb consisting of a sarcophagus standing on a substructure, but omits the normal detailed provisions for its use and for protection against misuse. The combination of two craftsmen - one who made statues, with a pigmentarius, who perhaps dealt in paint, is of real interest, reminding us of the widespread use of paint on ancient sculptures. It suggests a moderate social - and no doubt artistic - level. The sculptor had Roman citizenship, probably as a result of the Edict of Caracalla, but does not cite any ancestors; the pigmentarius is not credited with citizenship, and was surely a dependent of the sculptor - fosterchild or perhaps freedman.

Locations

Necropolis, South: south of the south city wall, a little way east of the area excavated in 1975, south of 8.114 (=MAMA 424) Necropolis Fragments in the Museum.

Text Constituted From

Transcription (Reynolds); publications.

History of Recording

Recorded by Gaudin (153); by the NYU expedition; broken in the 1990s.

Bibliography

Published from Gaudin's squeeze, T. Reinach, REG 19 (1906), 264-265, no. 159, whence M.Squarciapino, La scuola di Afrodisia (Rome, 1943) 11, no. 3; from the MAMA records, J.M.R. Cormack, MAMA VIII. 574, whence BullEp 1961.666, McCabe PHI Aphrodisias 450 ; from the stone, K.T.Erim and J.M.Reynolds, 'Sculptors of Aphrodisias in the inscriptions of the city', Festschrift Jale Inan (Istanbul, 1989), 517-538, no. 24, whence SEG 1990.944; Reynolds and Isik 137.

Photographs

No photographs