Tituli Asiae Minoris IV. I. Paeninsula Bithynica Praeter Calchedonem by F. C. Drner; M.-B.

von Stritzky; Nouvelles Inscriptions de Phrygie by T. Drew-Bear

Review by: Stephen Mitchell
The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 70 (1980), pp. 222-224
Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/299590 .
Accessed: 15/10/2013 09:20
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to The Journal of Roman Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 212.128.129.100 on Tue, 15 Oct 2013 09:20:27 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

222

REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF PUBLICATIONS

Not herself a native, Sabina appearsto have marrieda brotherof the previous senator,put to death
under Commodus(cf. 4634, commentary). The Vettia Saturninain no. 4662 may be the first wife of
Didius Julianus. No. 4636 shows an equesRomanussurnamedMarcellinuswho held the flaminateand
duumvirateat Thibilis, and the fragmentarytext no. 4694 an equestrianjuror (to be added to the
list of African equestriansin Duncan-Jones,PBSR xxxv (I967), I47 ff.).
This long awaitedcontinuationof the Inscriptionslatinesdel'Algerieshows the very high standards
of epigraphic expertise that we have come to expect of its author, and is greatly to be welcomed.
Gonvilleand Caius College,Cambridge

R. P.

DUNCAN-JONES

TITULI ASIAE MINORIS irv. z. PAENINSULA

BITHYNICA
PRAETER CALCHEDONEM.
Ed.
F. C. Dorner and M.-B. von Stritzky. Vienna: Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, I978.
Pp. X + 109, 2 pIs., i map.
T. DREW-BEAR, NOUVELLES INSCRIPTIONS DE PHR YGIE (Studia Amstelodamensia ad epigraphicam,
ius antiquum et papyrologicam pertinentia xvi). Zutphen: Terra, 1978. Pp. Xii + I28, 40 pIs. (incl. maps).

It is gratifyingto note that in recent years a number of attempts have been made to bring some
order to that bewilderinglydiverse field of study, the inscriptions of Asia Minor. There appearsto
be an unspokenconsensus among scholarsthat the greatestneed is for individualcorporaof cities and
regions, and plans to produce them have emanated from Cologne, Vienna and Ankara. Moreover,
some of the plans have even borne fruit, and the past decade has given considerableencouragement
to those who would like to see the mysteries of the subject revealedto more than an inner circle of
devotees (see S. Mitchell and A. W. McNicoll, in ArchaeologicalReports1978-9, 62 for details). The
two volumes considered here both take their place at the centre of this activity, one a fascicule of
TituliAsiae Minoris,the first to appearsince I954, the other a volume of Phrygianinscriptionswhich
is intended as a Vorarbeitto an ambitious full corpusof the Greek and Latin inscriptions of that
region.
Both raise the question of what is expected from an editor of such a corpus. All would agree on
a full collection of the texts relatingto a particularcity or region, a thorough attemptto establish and
justify the correctreadings,and good indexes. Beyondthis there is ampleroomfor argument. Perhaps
the most crucial question concerns the amount and type of commentarythat should be supplied.
This problem is much more acute in Greekthan in Latin epigraphy. All the inscriptionsof the Latin
West ultimately reflect the influence of one city, Rome; by contrast, the hundreds of cities of the
GreekEast each had their distinctivelocal traditionsand institutions,faithfullyreflectedin the almost
infinite variety of the epigraphy. It goes without saying that such variety demands more elaborate
exposition than the relative uniformity of Latin inscriptions. This makes the brevity and clarity of
much of the commentaryin CIL or ILS an unattainableideal. On the other hand, if no commentary
at all is offered,a Greekinscriptiontends to hide its significancemuch more successfullythan its Latin
equivalent. For this reason,if not for others, some commentaryis surely desirablein a corpus. Limits
need to be set, to keep the task within bounds, and common sense suggests that the commentary
should be brief, clear and well-documented, drawing attention to problems, but not necessarily
resolving them. In particularit would seem appropriateto stress the features of a text which are
unique or peculiarto the place or institution which gives the corpusits unifying principle.
Judged in this light, TAM iv. I is a grave disappointment. The editor has taken a very restricted
view of his task. The aim of the volume is apparentlylimited to providing a text of all the known
inscriptionsof Nicomedia and its territory,a very incomplete selection of testimoniareferringto the
city, and severalindexes. There is no introductionon the history and geographicalsetting of the city,
nothing, except the briefest descriptionin Latin, about the physical form of the inscriptions,a defect
aggravatedby the absenceof illustrationsof all but a very few stones, no accountof letter forms, or of
the overallchronologyof the collection. The commentaries,where they exist, are far from generous.
Mattersrelatingto the establishmentof the text are usually considered,althoughthey are not set out
in a criticalapparatus. Otherwise,parallelsfor individualwords or phrasesare occasionallycited, and
there aresporadicand unsystematicreferencesto points of wider interest. There is little here to excite
the curiosityor the imagination. A city as importantas Nicomedia deserves better than this: one
would have thought it impossible to produce a local corpuswhich has no discussionof the extremely
interesting onomastic material,the institutions of local government,the developmentof the city to
become the capital of the province of Bithynia and its long-standing rivalry with Nicaea, its
significanceas a key point in the road system linkingthe Danubianprovinceswith the easternfrontier,
and its eventualdevelopmentinto an imperial residence in the time of Diocletian. There is much in
the inscriptionswhich bears on all these topics, and if a corpusis not the place for a fully extended
treatment,there can be no justificationfor total silence.

This content downloaded from 212.128.129.100 on Tue, 15 Oct 2013 09:20:27 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF PUBLICATIONS

223

One example can serve to illustratethe drawbacksof failing to provide adequate commentary.
The only guidance given to the interpretationof the fragmentaryinscription no. 3 is the Latin
headingDecretuminfeneratores.Eventhis maybequestioned,sincethe rareverbin 1.2 FAi1la-rp[iacovTras]
need denote no more than makingan excessive profit,not necessarilyby usury. There is no indication
in 1. 6 that it belongs
of date, and the readermust infer for himself from the mention of a'v0vrrarous
to the period when Bithynia was regularly governed by proconsuls, before A.D. 145. The editor
identifies the form of the text as a decretum,but there is no attempt to justify this. In fact, the use
1.7) suggests a letter. Since it appears
of the second person in referringto the addressees(cosvoui.E-TE,
to prescribeor advise an appealprocedureinvolving proconsuls,it probablyemanatesfrom a higher
in 1.3 may be to a delegationwhich
authority,the emperor. If this is so, the referenceto oi Trapov[TESj
appearedbeforethe emperorand broughtthe matterto his notice. In 11.7-9 the words OopUPoVflrT[cov],
are useful evidence for the civil dissension which so frequentlyplagued
aTr,[rEs?] and [eO]pUfv'T
the cities of Bithyniain the late first and early second centuriesA.D. None of them finds a place in the
indexes, and there is no hint from the commentaryof the parallelswhich can so readily be found in
Pliny's Bithynianletters or the speeches of Dio of Prusa. In fact, it is symptomaticthat there is no
mention of either authoranywherein the whole volume. No doubt the discussionand interpretation
of this inscriptioncould be taken much further, but this would seem to be a bare minimum of initial
guidance owed to the user of a corpus.
T. Drew-Bear's Nouvelles inscriptionsde Phrygie is another matter altogether. It contains a
hundred inscriptions recorded in various parts of Phrygia since I968, and for the most part
unpublished. Texts and commentarieshave been preparedwith great care and attention to detail.
To judge from the photographswhich illustrateeach stone there can be little dispute over the readings
proposed, and the commentsare alwaysjudicious, with meticulous documentation. If anything,they
err on the side of caution, and sometimes tend to pass over largerissues by concentratingon detail.
Chapter i, containing fifteen texts documenting the official Roman presence in Phrygia, provides
examples. Nos. i and 2 are from Arlzll, south of Synnada,the first containinga fragmentof the SC
Popillianumof I33 B.C., the second part of the same SC, and also a fragmentof the SC Licinianum
of II9 B.C., included in a letter addressed to the community by a Roman official of the imperial
period. It seems regrettablethat the author reserves for future discussion important information
which should surely have been included here, namely the publication of fragmentaryletters from
Eumenes II belonging to the same archive,and the identificationof the ancient settlement at Arlzll,
at first sight an unexpectedplace to find such a collectionof documents.Nos. 5 and 6 are dedications
to Tiberius from Aemonia and Sebaste. The commentariesare full of interest, but there is not even
brief comment on the importantrole played by Augustus and Tiberius in the development of this
region. Something needs to be said here, even though the author announceshis intention of giving a
detailed discussion in a promised new edition of the verse inscription concerningthe foundation of
Sebaste by Augustus (W. M. Ramsay, Cities and Bishopricsof Phrygia ii, 6o6 no. 495). No. ii
preserves the beginning of a letter of P. (?) Ranius Castus, legate of Asia in I26/7, to the city of
Metropolis, the first inscription of its kind. Maddeningly, the main content of the letter is not
preserved,but it is noteworthythat the legate is only takingaction on a matterwhich has alreadybeen
the subject of several proconsularrulings (11.I I-I2, I.ET&TOOa&Tra1'yE?Io'VcoVyp6aiwaTa). Notwithstanding these slight criticisms, both texts and commentaries are clearly of interest to Roman
historians,rangingas they do from the SC acknowledgingthe bequest of Asia to Rome, to a boundary
stone of Apamea set up on the authority of Fl. Menander, vicariusof Asia, already attested in the
province on 8 May 385 by CTh Ix 39. 2 (no. I5).
Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted to dedications, mostly from the territory of Nacolea. Again
individual difficulties and points of interest are scrupulously considered, but a broader view of
Phrygianpaganismin the imperialperiod is missing. While a full treatmentof so large a topic would
clearlygo beyond the bounds of commentarieson individualtexts, some generalremarksto introduce
the collection, and to give some idea of their culturalsignificancewould be very welcome. The final
chapter contains fifty inscriptions from Eumeneia, accompanied by discussions of the historical
geographyof the city, and of the site and countrysidearoundit (the two topics oddly separatedfrom
one another). There is also an analysisof the monetarycirculationin the areabased on observations
made on the spot. Here the author breaks away from the simple format of inscription with
commentary,as one nmightwish that he had done elsewhere.
A work so full of detail naturallyprovokessome detailed remarks. iII no. 4: Drew-Bear reads
the female name as ('A)ouia (Latin Avia). But Aouia,which is on the stone, should be retained. The
name also occurs at Baglica, a village near Orcistus, which was in the territoryof Nacolea at this
time (MAMA i, no. 420). CompareDrew-Bear's own remarkson the rare name KavKapos(p. 92).
III no. I7: 41 M?Ar1
[v4] seems an ambitious restorationof the traces on the stone, even though the
in 1. 2#. Would a
adjectiveis attested on coins of D)orylaeum.III no. zz2: perhapssimply read [M]inv1
dedication to Men be impossible in this context? III no. 2#5: a dedication from north of Nacolea

This content downloaded from 212.128.129.100 on Tue, 15 Oct 2013 09:20:27 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF PUBLICATIONS

224

Ail UepYcOVKai ppov,6vTr, the first evidence for Persian settlement in this region. One would have
liked a description of the features of the countryside that had attractedthem to the place. For a
comparablededicationin the plain of Themisonium (NW Pisidia), see now L. Robert, CRAI I978,
28o. Iv no. 3: the inscriptionappearsto honour an emperor,who is described as qlXavepcwTrr6TaTov.
There follows the name of the man responsible,a new archiereusAsiae Cl. ValeriusTertullianus,with
details of the public offices he held. But the fragmentaryreferencesto ac6Tbpand e0epyf'rns
at the
end (as Drew-Bear himself points out in ChironIX (I979), 275, n. i) should be construed in the
accusative and referredto the honorand, perhaps with e0ppyi'ri1v
centrally placed at the bottom of
the text. One did not declareoneself to be a saviour and benefactor.iv no. 8: although the phrase
rv'acaai?ia&v
may have been inspired by Hesiod, Theogony71, it has a special significance
eeosoup&vca
in second- or third-centuryPhrygia,with its widespreadcults of ee6sor Ze*5 lyparT6s,
and the increasing
tendency towards monotheism in contemporarypaganism. iv no. i8: two brothers honour their
father who was O'T.rE-]. Not, surely, pAOTr[Kvov],a motherlyquality as Drew-Bear acknowledges,
but piX6Tr[1P0v]velsim.,whichis muchmoresuitablefor a Phrygiangentleman.IV. no. 2o: thistext,
which is argued to have come from Acmonia not Eumeneia, would have been better discussed
alongside I no. 6, which is certainly from Acmonia and raises a related topographical problem.
Iv no. 33: the rareterm caryi<pouvara
used to describea tomb enclosuremade from a series of plaques
(acw, crusta) may also be restored in an inscription of Pessinus (Arch.-Epigr. Mitteilungenaus
Osterreichvii (i883), i82 no. 4; wrongly treated as a possible Celtic name by J. Strubbe, Beitr. fur
XIII (I978), 372).
Namenforschung
Nouvelles inscriptionsde Phrygie is not a corpus.but the detailed commentarieson the texts it
containsmakeit perfectlyclearthat the projectedPhrygiancorpuswill be a very much more substantial
offering than TAM iv. i.

UniversityCollegeof Swansea

STEPHEN MITCHELL

D. and F. R. RIDGWAY (EDS.). ITALYBEFORE THE ROMANS: THE IRONAGE, ORIENTALISING

AND ETRUSCAN

PERIODS.

London: Academic Press, 1979. Pp. xxxi + 5I I, io maps and 54 figs.

Of the sixteen essays in this book, six are translationsof articles already published elsewhere:
Peroni's stimulating discussion of the Bronze Age-Iron Age transition (which appeared in I969);
Close-Brooks(Not. Scav. I965, not I963 as in the contents and in the heading to the article) and
Ridgway (I967) on Iron Age Veii; Buchner (I975) on Pithekoussaiand the Euboeans; Pallottino
(I972)
on early Rome; Colonna (I964 but with additions) on late-OrientalizingRome; and Dehn
and Frey (i962 and supplement)on the chronologyof Hallstattand La Tene. To these basic studies,
Ridgway introduces early Rome and Latium (mainly a conflation of his authoritativereviews that
have appearedin JRS since I967) and FrancescaRidgwayprovides a concise distillationof the main
typological and chronologicalfeatures of the Este and Golasecca cultures (an ' illustrated abstract'
of Studi sulla cronologiadelle civilta'di Este e Golasecca,published in I975). Newly commissioned
works include Fugazzola Delpino on the Proto-Villanovan-a useful survey (completed, however,
in I975) of a controversialarea; de la Greniereon the Iron Age of southern Italy; Annette Rathje
on Orientalimports into Etruria; a study of Vulci by Giuliana Riccioni; an exemplarydiscussion
by Martin Frederiksenon the Etruscans in Campania; and an interesting appraisalby J. and L.
Jehasse of Etruscan involvement in Corsica. In addition, there is a particularlylucid consideration
of the interpretationof the Etruscanlanguageby Cristofani,while Mansuelli discusses the Etruscan
city, an overview based mainly upon Marzabotto(a subject now best set in context by J. B. WardPerkins, Cities of Ancient Greeceand Rome: planning in ClassicalAntiquity (I974), although this
volume is not cited by Mansuelli).
This, then, is a stimulating and varied collection of essays, which conveniently assembles
authoritativecommentaryupon many of the currentpreoccupationsof Italian Iron-Age archaeology.
This, the editors state (p. ix), should help to rectify what they regard as a ' state of intolerable
unawarenessof the Italian scene' (in Britain). Later, however, the readeris counselled against the
' misdirected missionary zeal ... (of) ... British " ideas archaeology" ' and the ' print-gathering
vagaries characteristicof the radio-activebreakdownof a certain carbon isotope', leaving no doubt
of the editors'standpoint: their approachis firmlytraditional,concentratingmainly upon typologies,
phase-schemesand chronologies,particularlyas related to the archaeologyof cemeteries.
Few would argue against the importance of this work-the studies of cemeteries such as
Pithekoussaiand Quattro Fontanili are outstanding landmarksby any reckoning-but, at the same
time, it is a pity that other aspects of current researchare not reflected in this volume. Whatever
one's views of 'new archaeology', the evidence of settlements, settlement-patternsand economic
systems is as fundamentallyimportant as the classificationof artifacts and is now receiving much

This content downloaded from 212.128.129.100 on Tue, 15 Oct 2013 09:20:27 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions