ISic001394: A dedication to Apollo
- ID
- ISic001394
- Language
- Ancient Greek
- Text type
- dedication
- Object type
- plaque
- Status
- No data
- Links
- View in current site
Edition
Apparatus criticus
- Text from autopsy;
- line.2: ΗΡΑΚΕΙΟΣ is quite clear on the stone (so Ansaldi, correctly).
- line.3: Only a cross-bar is visible on the stone for the T, mid-line.
- line.5: Only a horizontal stroke is visible of the initial E.
Physical description
Support
- Description
- A thick square plaque of off-white limestone, intact top, left and right, but broken along the lower edge. The rear is worked but not finished.
- Object type
- plaque
- Material
- limestone
- Condition
- damaged
- Dimensions
- height: 19 cm, width: 25.5 cm, depth: 4.8-5.0 cm
Inscription
- Layout
- Five lines of Greek text, with a regular left margin, but uneven right margin; line 3 in particular shows signs of cramping in the second half. The lower half of the final line is lost through damage.
- Text condition
- incomplete
- Lettering
-
- Letter heights
- Line 1: 23-25mm
- Line 2: 21-24mm
- Line 3: 22-24mm
- Line 4: 22-24mm
- Line 5: incompletemm
- Interlinear heights
- Interlineation line 1 to 2: not measured
Provenance
- Place of origin
- Centuripae
- Provenance found
- Found in a vineyard below the road runing from the 'piccola chiesa dell'Addolorata' towards 'Acqua nova', according to Ansaldi, who reported it in the possession of Don Paolino Riolo; Kaibel subsequently could not find it; Orsi 1907 reported its presence in Siracusa museum.
Current location
- Place
- Siracusa, Italy
- Repository
- Museo Archeologico Regionale Paolo Orsi , 27720
- Autopsy
- Depositi, Mag B, cass. 5
- Map
Date
later Hellenistic (i.e. 2nd or early 1st century BCE) (200 BC – 50 BC)- Evidence
- lettering
Text type
commentary
Despite the damage to the bottom of the stone, the text is almost certainly complete, given the final line. The text presumably accompanied a dedication, whether a statue or other object. The name Herakleios is well attested in Sicily, including at Centuripe; the father's name, Aristophylos, however, is not otherwise known from Sicily and is more common in Rhodes and central Greece.
The text's principal interest lies in the unparalleled verb δεκυρεύσας in line 4, presumably calqued from the Latin term 'decurio' (although Kaibel reports that Mommsen suggested amending the word to δεκατεύσας). The noun occurs in Greek (οἱ δεκορίωνες) in a possibly Augustan text from Lilybaeum (ISic001097), which is a similarly unparalleled use of the term for 'bouleutes'. The exact significance of the term, inevitably depends upon the text's dating, and so as to whether (and when) Centuripe is thought to have municipal status (most recently considered by Korhonen and Soraci 2019: 107, who speculate that this is therefore the earliest attestation of the town's municipal status). However, it is at least as plausible, especially given the entirely standard Greek nomenclature of the dedicant, that this is an instance of linguistic romanisation within a Sicilian Greek civic arrangement, and simply references a member of the local, oligarchic boule on an increasingly Romanised model (cf. the problematic chronology of the financial inscriptions of Taormina, and Roman intervention in several cities' 'constitutions' in this period; general context for the oligarchisation of Republican Sicily and parallel considerations outlined in J.R.W. Prag, 'Cities and civic life in late Hellenistic Roman Sicily', Cahiers du Centre Gustave Glotz 25 (2014), 165-208 at 177).
It is not at all clear on what basis Korhonen and Soraci (2019: 107) suggest that the palaeography of this text is more plausibly C4 or C3 BCE (although they note that the content suggests a later date): there are no forms here diagnostic of the C3 (or earlier), and a date in the second (or even first) century is to be preferred purely on palaeographic grounds, without prejudging the political interpretation. Compare, e.g., the earlier ISic003334, or the certainly Hieronian ISic000823 with the later Halaesan texts ISic001175 or ISic001176.
Bibliography
- Digital editions
- TM: 493009
- EDR: -
- EDH: -
- EDCS: 39101521
- PHI: 140901
- Printed editions
- F. Ansaldi, I monumenti dell’antica Centuripi (Centuripae, 1851), http://arachne.uni-koeln.de/item/buch/3254, at 52 no. 16
- F. Bechtel et al., Sammlung der griechischen Dialekt-Inschriften, 4 vols (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1884), at 5249
- G. Kaibel, Inscriptiones Graecae Siciliae et Italiae, additis graecis Galliae Hispaniae, Britanniae, Germaniae inscriptionibus, Inscriptiones Graecae consilio et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Regiae Borussicae Editae. Volumen XIV., XIV (Berlin: Georgius Reimerus, 1890), at 14.0575
- R. Cagnat, J. Toutain, and P. Jouguet, Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes, 4 vols (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1906), at 490
- Guido Libertini, Centuripe (Catania, 1926).
- Kalle Korhonen e Cristina Soraci, «Forme amministrative e scelte linguistiche nelle epigrafi e nelle monete della Sicilia romana», Gerión. Revista de Historia Antigua 37, fasc. 1 (2019): 97–116, https://doi.org/10.5209/GERI.63870, at 107
- Discussion
Citation and editorial status
- Editor
- Jonathan Prag
- Principal contributor
- Jonathan Prag
- Contributors
- Jonathan Prag
- James Cummings
- James Chartrand
- Valeria Vitale
- Michael Metcalfe
- Simona Stoyanova
- system
- Last revision
- 2/15/2021