ISic001414: Apollonios, Philo and Ariston honour Ariston, amphipolos

Apparatus criticus

• Text from autopsy;
• 1: Tusa: ἐπὶ ὶεροθύτα Φίλω[νος] Ἀρίστωνος
  
• 4: Tusa: ἀμφιπολήσαντα Διὶ Ὀλυμπίωι καὶ θεοῖς πᾶσι

Physical description

Support

Description

A large rectangular 'shelf' set at the base of a niche in the rear wall of an exedra at the rear right hand end of the agora portico. The shelf is made up of 3 stones, projecting slightly out from the wall below, with mouldings to the top and bottom of the front face, and a flat surface above with three distinct circular impressions in the upper surface (two to the right end as you face the stone, above the right-hand text (this text), the rightmost towards the front and the left hand one set further back; and the third to left of centre, above the left hand text). The face of the shelf, between the two mouldings, is approximately 18 cm high. On the same support as

Object type

base

Material

limestone

Condition

No data

Dimensions

height: 40 cm, width: 2.45 cm, depth: 65 (visible) cm

Inscription

Layout

The texts are not symmetrically laid out, with the left-hand text on the right half of the left hand block, set some way in from the left margin, and continuing in lines 2 an 3 onto the middle bloc; the right hand text (this one) instead starts half-way along the middle block and runs to the right end of the shelf. Both texts maintain a consistent left margin, with the first line starting one letter to the left. This text has occasional spaces between words (but not in the final line, unlike the left hand text), and some uneven spacing.

Text condition

No data

Lettering

Letter heights

Line 1-4: 20-30mm

Interlinear heights

Interlineation line 1 to 2: mm

Provenance

Place of origin

Soluntum

Provenance found

Uncovered in excavation of the agora portico (1952-1954) in situ, in the rear wall of the 9th (final) exedra at the rear of the portico at the NW end

Map

Current location

Place

Solunto, Italy

Repository

Area Archeologica e Antiquarium di Solunto

Autopsy

Prag, 2000-04-01

Map

Date

Evidence

archaeological-context

Text type

honorific

commentary

The only formal publication of this inscription and its partner (ISic001413) remains that by Tusa (1963), which was never picked up in SEG and Tusa's text has simply been reproduced in subsequent discussions and presentations (e.g. Dimartino or in EDR). The text is however far from perfectly preserved, and Tusa's reading, particularly of ISic001413, should not go unchallenged. Most fundamentally, Tusa's reading of the patronym Ἀπ[ολλωνίου] in line 1 of ISic001413 cannot stand: I read Ἀρίστ[ωνος] (the traces of the first five letters are reasonably secure), and this would therefore mean that the eponymous priest in that text is the same man as in this text, confirming the general assumption that this is a contemporary double dedication. However, it requires that the family relationships identified by Tusa in his original publication be reconsidered. Consequently, applying Occam's razor, to keep the number of individuals to a minimum, it would appear that (a) the eponymous hierothytes (Philon, son of Ariston) is identical in line 1 of both this text and ISic001413; (b) in this text, it is the eponymous priest Philon and his two brothers who honour their father, Ariston son of Apollonios; (c) the honorand and amphipolos in this text (Ariston, son of Apollonios) is in turn the dedicant of ISic001413, there honouring his own father (Apollonios son of Ariston), the grandfather of the eponymous priest Philon. Although this does entail that three generations appear to be active simultaneously (although it is perhaps not strictly necessary that the grandfather, honoured in ISic001413, had held the position of amphipolos particularly recently, only that the father, honoured in this text had done so?), it appears the most logical resolution of the relationships described, and implies a strong grip on the local honours over several generations by one family, not dissimilar to the position of the family of Antallos which appears in several other Soluntum inscriptions of the same period (e.g. ISic001130).

The chronology has been much debated, but the inscription itself can hardly serve to resolve debates about the date of the monumentalisation of the agora or the city more broadly, and any date for the inscription should almost certainly be subordinated to the archaeological dating of the structures - for which the current consensus leans to the second century BCE (Wolf) or more specifically the later second century (Portale). The form of the inscription, including adscript iota, would perhaps suggest a date no later than the second century BCE, but given the coarse nature of the stone, and the strong likelihood that the stone was finished with a layer of plaster and paint, the simple nature of the letter forms (especially the lack of serifs) is not particularly instructive and can only point to a later Hellenistic date.

Bibliography

Digital editions

• TM: 644965
• EDR: 136726
• EDH: -
• EDCS: -
• PHI: -

Printed editions

• ‘Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum’, Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, 1923, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1607583, at 46.1242c
• Vincenzo Tusa, «L’anfipolia a Solunto», Kokalos 9 (1963): 185–94, at no.2
• Alessia Dimartino, «Epigrafia greca e pratiche onorarie in Sicilia durante l’età ellenistica e romana», in Cityscapes of Hellensitic Sicily, a c. di Monika Truemper, Gianfranco Adornato, e Thomas Lappi, Analysis Archaeologica. Monograph Series. 4 (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2019), 197–217, at 207 and fig.11

Discussion

• P. Di Veroli, «Nuovi eponimi della Sicilia ellenistica», Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 110 (1996): 309–10, at 310 no.226a n.2
• Elisa Chiara Portale, «Problemi dell’archeologia della Sicilia ellenistico-romana: il caso di Solunto», Archeologia Classica 57 (2006): 49–114, at 71-73 figs.13-14
• M. Wolf, «Nuove ricerche nell’agora di Solunto», in Agora greca e agorai di Sicilia, a c. di C. Ampolo (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2012), 223–28, at 224, 226, figs. 222-223
• Loredana Cappelletti, «Sacerdozi eponimi di Sicilia: il caso Siracusano», Athenaeum 108, fasc. 2 (2020): 357–74, at 359 n.6

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

4/18/2024