The Christians of Phrygia from Rome to the Turkish Conquest 9004546375, 9789004546370

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Figures and Maps
Abbreviations
Chapter 1 Second-Century Prelude
1.1 Smyrna 157
1.2 Lyon 177
1.3 The New Prophecy
Chapter 2 Phrygia – The Land and Its Peoples
2.1 The Phrygian Circle: A Land-locked Geography (Map 1)
2.2 In and Out of Phrygia: Roads and Routes
2.3 People and Settlements (Maps 2–3)
Chapter 3 Phrygia’s Pagan Sanctuaries
3.1 A Religious Land
3.2 Zeus Cults in Northern Phrygia
3.3 The Pantheon and Other Phrygian Divinities
3.4 Major Sanctuaries of Southern Phrygia
Chapter 4 Christianity in Phrygia in the Long Third Century (180–330)
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Avircius Marcellus and the Phrygian Pentapolis (Map 13)
4.3 Reckoning with God: The Eumeneian Formula
4.4 Apamea, Eumeneia and Acmonia (Maps 12 and 13)
4.5 The Lawyer, the Preacher and a Guardian Angel: A Tale from Eumeneia
4.6 Western Phrygia and The Myso-Lydian Borderland (Maps 8 and 12)
4.7 Aezani and North-West Phrygia (Maps 4, 5, 8 and 9)
4.8 The Upper Tembris Valley (Maps 5, 9 and 10)
4.9 Cotiaeum and the Adjuration ‘Do No Wrong’ (Map 5)
4.10 Contextualising the Christians of the Upper Tembris Valley (Maps 9 and 10)
4.11 The Phrygian Highlands, Nacolea and Dorylaeum (Maps 6 and 10)
4.12 Central and Eastern Phrygia from Synnada to Amorium (Maps 10 and 11)
4.13 Phrygia Paroreius: Philomelium, Pisidian Antioch and Apollonia (Maps 14 and 15)
4.14 Overview
Maps
Chapter 5 Established Christianity from the Fourth to the Eleventh Century
5.1 Ekklesia
5.2 Early Church Building in Central Anatolia
5.3 Church Building in the Aezanitis (Maps 5 and 9)
5.4 North-West Phrygia (Maps 4 and 5)
5.5 Cotiaeum and Its Territory (Maps 5 and 6)
5.6 The Upper Tembris Valley (Maps 9 and 10)
5.7 Meiros and the Phrygian Highlands (Maps 6 and 10)
5.8 Dorylaeum (Map 6)
5.9 Nacolea and Orcistus (Maps 6 and 7)
5.10 Amorium and Phytea (Map. 11)
5.11 Docimium, Akroinos, Prymnessus and Polybotus (Map 10)
5.12 The Reckoning with Paganism in Northern Phrygia
5.13 Sebaste, Acmonia, and Dioclea (Maps 12 and 13)
5.14 Kidyessos (Map 10)
5.15 Western Phrygia: Temenothyrae to Dionysupolis (Maps 8 and 12)
5.16 Choma, Eumeneia and Apamea (Maps 12 and 13)
5.17 Sozopolis (Apollonia) and Antioch (Maps 14 and 15)
5.18 Philomelium and Hadrianopolis (Map 15)
5.19 The Phrygian Pentapolis
5.20 Metropolis and Synnada
5.21 Chronology and Continuity in Phrygia’s Byzantine Inscriptions
Chapter 6 Phrygian Saints
6.1 Phrygian Hagiography
6.2 Trophimos and Marina: Metropolitan Martyrs
6.3 Aberkios and Ariadne: Small-town Entertainers
6.4 Tryphon and Menas: Invention and Plagiarism
6.5 Agapetos of Synaus, a Priest in a Dark-age Parish
6.6 Hagiographic Credibility
6.7 St Michael: Beyond Description
Chapter 7 Heretics, Schisms and Dissenters
7.1 The Montanists in Later Antiquity
7.2 The Novatians
7.3 Sabbatianoi, Tessareskaidekatitai and the Date of Easter
Chapter 8 The Development of Christianity in Phrygia
8.1 How and When did Christianity Reach Phrygia?
8.2 The Early Growth in Christian Numbers
8.3 Jews and Christians
8.4 Coming Out Christian
8.5 From the Third Century to Byzantium
8.6 Constantinople and Phrygia
Bibliography
List of Inscriptions Cited from the Database Inscriptiones Christianae Graecae (https://icg.uni-kiel.de)
Index
1. Sources
2. Ancient Places
3. Modern Place Names
4. Persons
5. Topics

Citation preview

Stephen Mitchell - 978-90-04-54638-7 Downloaded from Brill.com07/15/2023 01:26:04AM via Western University

The Christians of Phrygia from Rome to the Turkish Conquest

Early Christianity in Asia Minor (ECAM) The subseries “Early Christianity in Asia Minor”, of which this is the fourth volume to be published, is part of the series AJEC. It stands in the tradition of the work of Adolf von Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten (4th ed., Leipzig, 1924). This volume of ECAM focuses on the rise and expansion of Christianity in Phrygia in Asia Minor up to the Turkish conquest. It endeavours to take into account all relevant literary and non-literary evidence, paying special attention to epigraphical and archaeological material, and to document the current state of research. The next volume by Ulrich Huttner on Early Christianity along the Lower Meander is in production and volumes on early Christianity in Galatia, in Bithynia and on the Hellespont, and in Ionia are in preparation. Cilliers Breytenbach and Martin Goodman

Early Christianity in Asia Minor (ECAM) Editors Cilliers Breytenbach (Berlin), Martin Goodman (Oxford), Christoph Markschies (Berlin), Stephen Mitchell (Exeter) Peter Thonemann (Oxford)

VOLUME 4

Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums

Founding Editor Martin Hengel † (Tübingen) Executive Editors Cilliers Breytenbach (Berlin) Martin Goodman (Oxford) Editorial Board Lutz Doering (Münster) – Tal Ilan (Berlin) – Judith Lieu (Cambridge) AnneMarie Luijendijk (Princeton) ‒ Tessa Rajak (Reading/Oxford) Daniel R. Schwartz ( Jerusalem) ‒ Sacha Stern (London) Amram Tropper (Jerusalem) ‒ Christiane Zimmermann (Kiel)

VOLUME 117

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ajec

The Christians of Phrygia from Rome to the Turkish Conquest By

Stephen Mitchell

LEIDEN | BOSTON

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at https://catalog.loc.gov LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023016289

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1871-6636 isbn 978-90-04-54637-0 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-54638-7 (e-book) Copyright 2023 by Stephen Mitchell. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau, V&R unipress and Wageningen Academic. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Magistris optimis Oxoniensibus D. L. L. Clarke (1916–92), P. Needham (1934–2021), D. A. F. M. Russell (1921–2021), C. W. Macleod (1943–1981), A. N. Sherwin-White (1911–1993), E. W. Gray (1910–1990), and E. L. Bowie

∵

Contents Preface and Acknowledgments xiii List of Figures and Maps xviii Abbreviations xxiii 1 Second-Century Prelude 1 1.1 Smyrna 157 1 1.2 Lyon 177 8 1.3 The New Prophecy 12 2 Phrygia – The Land and Its Peoples 25 2.1 The Phrygian Circle: A Land-locked Geography 25 2.2 In and Out of Phrygia: Roads and Routes 37 2.3 People and Settlements 42 3 Phrygia’s Pagan Sanctuaries 59 3.1 A Religious Land 59 3.2 Zeus Cults in Northern Phrygia 62 3.3 The Pantheon and Other Phrygian Divinities 71 3.4 Major Sanctuaries of Southern Phrygia 75 4 Christianity in Phrygia in the Long Third Century (180–330) 84 4.1 Introduction 84 4.2 Avircius Marcellus and the Phrygian Pentapolis 87 4.3 Reckoning with God: The Eumeneian Formula 110 4.4 Apamea, Eumeneia and Acmonia 115 4.5 The Lawyer, the Preacher and a Guardian Angel: A Tale from Eumeneia 157 4.6 Western Phrygia and The Myso-Lydian Borderland 176 4.7 Aezani and North-West Phrygia 192 4.8 The Upper Tembris Valley 198 4.9 Cotiaeum and the Adjuration ‘Do No Wrong’ 265 4.10 Contextualising the Christians of the Upper Tembris Valley 274 4.11 The Phrygian Highlands, Nacolea and Dorylaeum 294 4.12 Central and Eastern Phrygia from Synnada to Amorium 303 4.13 Phrygia Paroreius: Philomelium, Pisidian Antioch and Apollonia 315 4.14 Overview 326

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Contents

Maps 330 5 Established Christianity from the Fourth to the Eleventh Century 346 5.1 Ekklesia 346 5.2 Early Church Building in Central Anatolia 347 5.3 Church Building in the Aezanitis 354 5.4 North-West Phrygia 358 5.5 Cotiaeum and Its Territory 361 5.6 The Upper Tembris Valley 367 5.7 Meiros and the Phrygian Highlands 370 5.8 Dorylaeum 376 5.9 Nacolea and Orcistus 380 5.10 Amorium and Phytea 384 5.11 Docimium, Akroinos, Prymnessus and Polybotus 392 5.12 The Reckoning with Paganism in Northern Phrygia 400 5.13 Sebaste, Acmonia, and Dioclea 407 5.14 Kidyessos 416 5.15 Western Phrygia: Temenothyrae to Dionysupolis 419 5.16 Choma, Eumeneia and Apamea 426 5.17 Sozopolis (Apollonia) and Antioch 438 5.18 Philomelium and Hadrianopolis 452 5.19 The Phrygian Pentapolis 456 5.20 Metropolis and Synnada 459 5.21 Chronology and Continuity in Phrygia’s Byzantine Inscriptions 468 6 Phrygian Saints 479 6.1 Phrygian Hagiography 479 6.2 Trophimos and Marina: Metropolitan Martyrs 480 6.3 Aberkios and Ariadne: Small-town Entertainers 488 6.4 Tryphon and Menas: Invention and Plagiarism 506 6.5 Agapetos of Synaos, a Priest in a Dark-age Parish 511 6.6 Hagiographic Credibility 517 6.7 St Michael: Beyond Description 521 7 Heretics, Schisms and Dissenters 530 7.1 The Montanists in Later Antiquity 530 7.2 The Novatians 544 7.3 Sabbatianoi, Tessareskaidekatitai and the Date of Easter 560

Contents

8 The Development of Christianity in Phrygia 567 8.1 How and When did Christianity Reach Phrygia? 567 8.2 The Early Growth in Christian Numbers 573 8.3 Jews and Christians 577 8.4 Coming Out Christian 585 8.5 From the Third Century to Byzantium 594 8.6 Constantinople and Phrygia 607 Bibliography 611 List of Inscriptions Cited from the Database Inscriptiones Christianae Graecae (https://icg.uni-kiel.de) 650 Index 674 1. Sources 674 2. Ancient Places 676 3. Modern Places 682 4. Persons 687 5. Topics 691

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Preface and Acknowledgments This book is a contribution to the series Early Christianity in Asia Minor, initiated by Professors C. Breytenbach and C. Markschies in the Theology Faculty of the Humboldt University. This was part of the Topoi Research Network in Berlin, funded by the German Federal Government as one of its Excellence Initiatives from 2007–2019. I joined the group working on Early Christianity in Asia Minor in 2008 and the bonds have been tighter since my own move to Berlin in 2015. I have enjoyed the friendship and intellectual support of a valued group of close colleagues: Cilliers Breytenbach has been the organising genius, ably supported by Professor Klaus Hallof, director of Inscriptiones Graecae in the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and Professor Christiane Zimmermann, who has now provided a new base for the project at the University of Kiel. Cilliers Breytenbach and Christiane Zimmermann led the team by example, publishing their volume on Lycaonia, the region of Asia Minor that has produced the greatest number of early Christian inscriptions. Since then Professor Breytenbach has joined forces with Dr Elli Tzavella to complete the first volume of the parallel series on early Christianity in Greece, devoted to Athens, Attica and adjacent areas. The initial foundations of the entire programme were laid by Professor Ulrich Huttner (Siegen), who created most of the Asia Minor entries for the Inscriptiones Christianae Graecae data base between 2008 and 2013, while writing the first volume in the Asia Minor series to appear, on early Christianity in the Lycos valley. Dr Julien Ogereau, his successor, currently at the University of Vienna, managed and developed ICG, while preparing a volume on Macedonia. Dr Philipp Pilhofer, Maya Prodanova and Patrick Hommel have worked respectively on Cilicia and Isauria, Thrace and Galatia, and been invaluable discussion partners, and the last two have played important parts in creating the data base. Dr Pilhofer and I coedited a volume of studies devoted to parts of Asia Minor which are not due to receive monograph treatment in the foreseeable future. This study is largely founded on the Christian inscriptions of Phrygia, a rich archive of more than 500 texts, which have played an ever-growing part in our understanding of the first thousand years of Christian history in Asia Minor. All students of Roman and Byzantine Phrygia are indebted to the intrepid and tireless epigraphic explorers of the region, who have literally created this entire field of study by their discoveries, and then illuminated it by their analyses and debates. The sequence begins with the greatest figure of all, Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, who explored every facet of Phrygia’s topography and history in the early part of his career, which culminated in the two volumes of

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The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia (1895, 1897), a work that most judges today would consider to be his masterpiece. His example inspired a distinguished series of followers, many from his native Scotland, including J.G.C. Anderson, W.M. Calder, W.H. Buckler, and C.W.M. Cox. The last three were responsible for publishing newly discovered material during the 1920s in articles that appeared in the Journal of Roman Studies, and were then the architects of the classic series Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua, which presents the abundant fruits of their continuing exploration of Phrygia. Calder resumed work in Asia Minor during the 1950s and directed another generation of explorers, notably M.H. Ballance, whose discoveries In Phrygia and Lycaonia have supplied the material for a further volume of MAMA, edited by P. Thonemann. Since the late 1960s Phrygia has been the domain par excellence of Thomas Drew-Bear, who made finds on a scale that matches that of any of the early pioneers, which have been published with great expertise by himself or the scholars with whom he has collaborated. His regretted death in 2022 has deprived this book of what would have been its most expert and critical reader. Since 2000 there has been a steady growth in the number of publications by Turkish scholars, notably Eda Akyürek-Şahin, although this has been more concerned with pagan than with Christian religious monuments. The archaeology of Phrygia has now become much better known and understood. Marc Waelkens in the 1970s and 1980s and Tomas Lochman in the 1990s and early 2000s made fundamental contributions to the understanding of Phrygian monuments of the Roman period from an archaeological perspective. These have contributed directly to a better grasp of the documentary epigraphic record, and stimulated new research on Phrygia’s art and culture. The excavations directed by F. D’Andria at Hierapolis, Celal Şimşek at Laodiceia, and Chris Lightfoot at Amorium have created a new knowledge base for the settlement history of Byzantine Phrygia until the Turkish conquest, and the detailed excavation results from these sites complement the masterly and detailed synthesis of regional history, archaeology and topography by Klaus Belke and Norbert Mersich which they presented in Tabula Imperii Byzantini 7. Philip Niewöhner’s field work and study of ecclesiastical architectural decoration has brought order and new insights into the material history of Phrygia in late antiquity and the Middle Byzantine period. Work on early Phrygian Christianity was given a new impetus by Elsa Gibson’s 1978 monograph on the ‘Christians for Christians’ inscriptions, which contained both known material and new texts found by herself and Thomas Drew-Bear. Most but not all subsequent work has dealt with the Montanists, and led theological scholars, including August Strobel and Peter Lampe, to visit and conduct research in the region themselves. Pride of place among the

Preface and Acknowledgments

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new investigators of the ‘Phrygian Heresy’ must be assigned to the Australian scholar William Tabbernee, whose collection of Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia established a bench mark in the collation of epigraphic evidence from the region. He and Peter Lampe can also claim credit for identifying the location of the Montanist centres Pepuza and Tymion. Other Australasian scholars, inspired by the example of Edwin Judge, have carried the torch for the history of early Christianity in Asia Minor. Greg Horsley in the New Documents series was an important pioneer in bringing epigraphic and papyrological evidence to bear on the study of the New Testament, Paul Trebilco has written fundamental studies of Jews and Christians in the first two centuries, and Paul McKechnie’s more recent synthesis on Asia Minor’s Christians places strong emphasis on the epigraphic evidence. Peter Thonemann’s monograph on the Maeander river has led to an important breakthrough in our knowledge of south-west Phrygia. The abundance of Anglo-Saxon and German scholarship on these themes has tended to overshadow the outstanding work of a French scholar, François Blanchetierre, on second- and third-century Asiatic Christianity and on the Montanists. The inscriptions of the later centuries are now much better understood and appreciated thanks to the extraordinary work of the doyen of Byzantine epigraphic studies, Denis Feissel, a true successor to Louis Robert. Burgeoning research world-wide on all aspects of the history of late antiquity and Byzantium has vastly enriched our understanding of the contexts in which the epigraphy of Phrygia belongs. A word is necessary on the presentation of the inscriptions, which are quoted in whole or in part throughout this study, especially in chapters 4 and 5. Many inscriptions survive in fragments or are only legible with difficulty. Letters, words or whole phrases that have to be supplied by their editors are printed within square brackets: []. Conventional brackets () mark text that was never inscribed but could be understood, i.e. abbreviated words. Diamond brackets < > indicate letters omitted in error by the stone-cutter. Curled brackets {} are used for superfluous letters introduced in error by the stone-cutter. A large part of the craft of the epigraphist lies in supplying missing text. Convincing restoration is dependent on an accurate reading of what survives, a precise estimate of how much is missing, a correct understanding of the preserved sections, and a good knowledge of the vocabulary and phraseology that are to be found in comparable inscriptions. Simple, formulaic epitaphs are relatively easy to emend, elaborate literary compositions in a fragmentary condition are usually beyond definitive restoration, although their general sense may be clear. Another epigraphic convention is to place a dot under uncertain letters. When the surface of the stone is damaged or the engraving is careless, it is often very hard to be sure, for example, whether a letter is an Α, Λ or Δ. The correct

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reading is usually resolved by the context. In most epigraphic publications and on the ICG Web-site and Repertorium, uncertain letters are indicated by this convention, but I have not adopted it for this book, as its use is subject to a variety of interpretations, and I have preferred simply to state verbally if I consider a reading to be doubtful. It will become quickly obvious that the grammatical features and orthography of many of the inscriptions diverge considerably from the norms of Classical or Koine Greek. These features mostly reflect the dialectal variations and phonology of Phrygian Greek and the development of the language in the Byzantine period and should usually not be taken as an indication of sub-literate incompetence. It is also essential to recall that all inscriptions are both texts and monuments. Understanding of the wording of the texts needs in all cases to be combined with an evaluation of the object – tombstone, part of a building, mosaic, or an entire structure – to which it is attached. The illustrations have been selected not so much to guarantee the reading of the inscriptions as to illustrate their materiality as part of the built environment of Christian Phrygia. Another introductory word should be said about chronology. Since this book deals with the emergence and development of Christianity over nearly a thousand years, establishing a chronology for the evidence  – inscriptions, buildings, saints’ lives and other literary testimonia – is self-evidently of paramount importance. The dating of individual monuments is always a matter for discussion, but it is worth stressing as a general principle that most of the inscriptions of all periods can be grouped with others that resemble them, and clusters of related texts can be dated with more confidence than individual items. Chapter 4, by far the longest in the book, collects all the inscriptions that I would place between c.180 and 330, that is the period of the high Roman empire. Chapter 5 assembles the inscriptions of the Byzantine period up to c.1100. The terms late Roman or early Byzantine are conventionally applied to the centuries from 300 to 600, and I use both in this book. Very few Christian texts and monuments from Phrygia can be dated between 600 and 900. It is no longer common to refer to a ‘Byzantine dark age’, but this was unquestionably the obscurest period in the history of Christian Phrygia, illuminated by only a few shafts of light from the excavations at Amorium and Hierapolis and scanty allusions in historical sources. This obscurity was followed by resurgence and renewal in many of the Phrygian settlements, and I have adopted the term Middle Byzantine to describe texts and monuments which should be assigned to the period 900–1100. This study barely touches the Late Byzantine period, as Byzantine control over Phrygia passed to Seljuk Turks and the Ottoman Beyliks. Most of its Christian population converted to Islam in the centuries between 1100 and 1400.

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xvii

Acknowledgements and thanks are due to critical support and help that I have received in completing this project. With thanks to Richard Talbert, maps 2 and 3 have been prepared by Rachel Sarvey of the Ancient World Mapping Centre, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. I have created the other maps myself using the facilities of the excellent Stepmap web-site. Apart from my own photographs, the illustrations come from diverse sources. I am very grateful to the University Aberdeen, where the W. M. Calder archive is kept, for granting permission to the Inscriptiones Christianae Graecae project to publish Calder’s excellent photographs, to the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents at Oxford University for providing records from the archives of C. W. M. Cox and Michael Ballance, to the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara for squeeze photographs, and to the Asia Minor archive at the University of Vienna for access to records made by J. Keil. Other photographs have been provided by Çivril Belediye, Leu Numismatik (thanks to the assistance of Johannes Nollé), and by colleagues: Alain Bresson, Margaret Mitchell, Anthony Sheppard, Peter Thonemann and the late Marc Waelkens. I have illustrated only a small proportion of the monuments, since most of the photos and facsimiles of inscriptions currently available in print can be consulted on the ICG repertorium or data-base. My manuscript has benefitted from corrections and critical remarks by two reviewers for the publisher, and I am above all grateful to Ulrich Huttner, my colleague in the project, for many detailed and helpful observations. This book has largely been written during the first two years of the Covid-19 Pandemic. During a period when access to academic libraries was often heavily restricted even in major centres, I would like to extend my thanks and acknowledgements beyond my excellent colleagues, the dedicated and courageous explorers of Phrygia, and my scholarly predecessors who have worked in this field, to an extraordinary institution. The Berlin Staatsbibliothek not only possesses bibliographic resources which have supplied almost every need, but by enabling remote electronic access to digital collections and through its policy of lending books from its precious stores to readers, it has quite simply made this research possible for a home-based scholar. Stephen Mitchell Berlin, February 2023

Figures and Maps Figures 1

Phrygian Pentapolis, Hierapolis. Funerary Altar of Abercius. ICG 1597. Reconstruction in the Vatican Museum of the original fragment found at Hudai Kaplıcaları. Wikimedia Commons, Giovanni dall’Orto 89 2 Phrygian Pentapolis, Kılandıras / Karadirek. Funerary Altar of Alexander. ICG 1598. Now in Istanbul Museum. Professor Margaret Mitchell and Betul Avcı 100 3 Phrygian Pentapolis, Brouzos (Karasandıklı). Funerary altar of Eutropius. ICG 1445. Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, Oxford University. Michael Ballance archive 108 4 Apamea. Bronze medallion of Apamea issued under the emperor Philip (244–9), depicting the story of Noah. Obv. ΑΥΤ. Κ. ΙΟΥΛ. ΦΙΛΙΠΠΟΣ Κ. Rev. ΕΠΙ Μ. ΑΥΡ. ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΥ ΑΡΧΙ. ΑΠΑΜΕΩΝ. Leu Numismatik 120 5 Apamea. View of Dinar and the upper Maeander valley, with blocks from the ‘Noah’s Ark’ church in the foreground. Peter Thonemann 123 6 Apamea. Funerary inscription set up by Frugillianus Auxanon. ICG 963. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 125 7 Apamea. Funerary stele of Hermes and Lucilla. ICG 964. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 127 8 Apamea. Funerary inscription set up by Aur. Auxanon, with a greeting to the ‘philotheoi’ and the ‘neotheroi’. ICG 965. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 129 9 Apamea. Funerary inscription of bishop Valens. ICG 972. Alain Bresson 131 10 Eumeneia (Yakasımak). Funerary altar of Mikkalos. ICG 1052. W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen 137 11 Eumeneia (Sarıhisarlı). Funerary altar of Aurelius Antonius. ICG 1032. W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen 138 12 Eumeneia (Sarıhisarlı), Funerary Altar of Aur. Akylas. ICG 1035. Çivril Belediye 140 13 Eumeneia. Funerary altar of bishop Aurelius Glykon. ICG 1049. W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen 142 14 Eumeneia (Emircik). Funerary altar of Gaius, front face. ICG 1031. Anthony Sheppard 158 15 Squeeze of Gaius inscription. ICG 1031, front lines 2–4. British Institute at Ankara, Digital Repsitory 162

Figures and Maps 16

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Squeeze of Gaius inscription. ICG 1031, front lines 5–14. British Institute at Ankara, Digital Repsitory 162 17 Squeeze of Gaius inscription. ICG 1031, right, lines 15–36. British Institute at Ankara, Digital Repsitory 163 18 Squeeze of Gaius inscription. ICG 1031, right, bottom right, lines 35–42. British Institute at Ankara, Digital Repsitory 164 19 Squeeze of Gaius inscription. ICG 1031, left, lines 43–56 (?). British Institute at Ankara, Digital Repsitory 164 20 ICG 1031 detail of line 15: Roubes servant of Θ(εο)ῦ Χ(ριστο)ῦ. Anthony Sheppard 172 21 Eumeneia (Haydan). Funerary altar of Aur. Zotikos Lykidas, front face. ICG 1028. Anthony Sheppard 172 22 Squeeze of the right-hand side of ICG 1028, mentioning the angel of Roubes. British Institute at Ankara, Digital Repsitory 175 23 Sebaste (Selçikler). Stele of Aur. Trophimos. ICG 1022. W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen 177 24 Temenothyrae. Funerary doorstone for bishop Artemidorus. ICG 1371. Marc Waelkens 181 25 Temenothyrae. Funerary doorstone of bishop Diogas. ICG 1373. Marc Waelkens 182 26 Temenothyrae. Inscribed doorstone set up by Eutyches and Phellinas in 232/3. ICG 1288. Asia Minor Archive, University of Vienna, courtesy of Thomas Corsten 187 27 Cadi neighbourhood. Grave Stele of Tryphon and Auxanousa. ICG 1225. W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen 194 28 Cadi (Çeltikçi). Grave stele of Eutyches. ICG 1224. In Kütahya Museum. Stephen Mitchell 196 29 a Upper Tembris valley (Zemme). ICG 1195. MAMA X 198. C. W. M. Cox archive 208 29 b Upper Tembris valley (Zemme). ICG 1195. MAMA X 198. C. W. M. Cox archive 209 30 Upper Tembris Valley. Stele for a priest of Zeus. Stephen Mitchell 210 31 Upper Tembris valley (Gecek). Gable of Stele set up by Aur. Glykon. ICG 1263. W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen 214 32 Upper Tembris Valley (Zemme). Funerary inscription of Aur. Ammia. ICG 1979. W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen 216 33 Upper Tembris valley (Altıntaş). Stephen Mitchell 217 34 Cotiaeum territory (Çömlekçi). Grave stele dated 304/5. ICG 1283. Kütahya Museum,. Stephen Mitchell 220

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Figures and Maps

Upper Tembris Valley (Üçhüyük). Christians for Christians grave stele set up by Aur. Kyrila from Deukome. ICG 1257. Now in Kütahya Museum. Stephen Mitchell 225 36 Upper Tembris Valley. Christians for Christians grave stele of Aurelia Tation. ICG 1259. Now in Kütahya Museum. Stephen Mitchell 227 37 Upper Tembris Valley (Aslanapa). Christian grave stele. ICG 1205. Kütahya Museum. Stephen Mitchell 229 38 Upper Tembris Valley (Doğanlar). Funerary stele for Genadios, now in Kütahya Museum. Stephen Mitchell 232 39 Upper Tembris Valley (Appia, Pınarcık). Funerary stele for Chariton son of Montanos from Appia. ICG 4525. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 235 40 Upper Tembris Valley (Çakırsaz). Funerary stele for Trophimos and his family, made by Aur. Athenodotus. ICG 1159. W. M. Calder Archive. University of Aberdeen 245 41 Upper Tembris Valley. Funerary stele of Akakios, made by Aur. Athenodotus. Now in Kütahya Museum. ICG 1360. Stephen Mitchell 248 42 Upper Tembris Valley (Akçaköy). Funerary altar set up by Aur. Menandros, front side. ICG 1192. Stephen Mitchell 252 43 ICG 1192, right side. Stephen Mitchell 253 44 ICG 1192, left side. British Institute at Ankara, Digital Repository 254 45 Cotiaeum territory (Yaylababa). Votive to Hosios and Dikaios. Now in Kütahya Museum. Stephen Mitchell 275 46 Afyon region. Funerary doorstone naming Onesimos, ‘slave of God’. ICG 1087. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 306 47 Çepni, territory of Dioclea. Funerary stele set up by Aurelia Nana. ICG 1362. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 309 48 Prymnessus. Funerary stele set up by Abirkios the deacon. ICG 1365. Lady Ramsay (CB 1.2, 736–7 no. 672) 310 49 Afyon district, Sülümenli. Funerary stele set up by Papias. ICG 4503. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 312 50 Philomelium. Funerary stele for Aurelia Curtia Macrina; ICG 616. Now in Akşehir Taş Medrese. Stephen Mitchell 318 51 Antioch. Funerary altar set up by L. Rupilius Theophilus of Prymnessus. ICG 1347. Now in Yalvaç Museum. Stephen Mitchell 321 52 Apollonia (Uluborlu). Funerary stele set up by Aur. Asclepiades. ICG 1136. Stephen Mitchell 323 53 Upper Tembris Valley (Altıntaş). Middle Byzantine templon inscription. ICG 1176. W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen 372

Figures and Maps 54

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Phrygian Highlands, Kümbet. The Islamic tekke containing many pieces of Middle Byzantine templon screens. Stephen Mitchell 374 55 Orcistus. Middle Byzantine donor inscription and other architectural pieces in Seljuk building. ICG 1293. Stephen Mitchell 384 56 Amorium. Middle Byzantine sarcophagus, side. ICG 1012. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 387 57 Amorium. Middle Byzantine sarcophagus, top. ICG 1012. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 388 58 Amorium territory; Kemerkaya, formerly Çoğu. Boundary marker of the Phyteanoi. ICG 1696. W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen 393 59 Akroinos. Funerary sarcophagus of Thomas, left side of lid. ICG 1550. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 397 60 Akroinos. Funerary sarcophagus of Thomas, right side of lid. ICG 1550. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 397 61 Akroinos. Middle Byzantine door lintel, referring to Thomas. ICG 1088. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 398 62 Prymnessus. Donor inscription of the scriniarius Theodosius. ICG 1011. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 400 63 Sebaste. Military gravestone set up by Ursinianus, ICG 1476. W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen 409 64 Payamalanı (Eibeos), territory of Sebaste. Burial inscription of Paulinos. ICG 1363. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 411 65 Dioclea, Hocalar. Architrave fragment of a Middle Byzantine templon screen. ICG 999. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 416 66 Apamea. Burial inscription of the orthodox psalm-singers. ICG 975. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 433 67 Apamea. Plan of Noah’s Ark Church by M. Ballance, 1995. Ballance added a note to his plan that the reconstruction of the basilica should have seven bays. Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, Oxford University. Michael Ballance archive 435 68 Apamea. Noah’s Ark Church, NE corner and the apse. Peter Thonemann 436 69 Pisidian Antioch territory, Pidron. Sixth-century ciborium from Ileği. ICG 4487. Yalvaç Museum. Stephen Mitchell 441 70 Pisidian Antioch. Middle Byzantine font; inscription citing Ps. 28. ICG 1322. Yalvaç Museum. Stephen Mitchell 445 71 Pisidian Antioch. Middle Byzantine font; inscription referring to St Paul. ICG 1322. Yalvaç Museum. Stephen Mitchell 446

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Figures and Maps

72

Pisidian Antioch. Re-used architrave with inscription of 5th or 6th century for Paulus also called Dios, the founder of the church of the archangels. ICG 4523. Yalvaç Museum. Stephen Mitchell 447 73 Pisidian Antioch. Inscription of Auxibios. ICG 1336. Yalvaç Museum. Stephen Mitchell 449 74 Philomelium. Grave stele of the deacon Besoulas. ICG 619. Akşehir, Taş Medrese. Stephen Mitchell 453 75 Hadrianopolis. Templon architrave of Church restored by Theodore Karandenos. ICG 632. W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen 456 76 Synnada, Bedeş. Funerary inscription for Kyrilla, wife of Artemon Botaniates. ICG 1099. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 463 77 Synnada. Templon architrave from a church dedicated by Apphe to St Trophimos. ICG 4493. Now in Afyon Museum. Stephen Mitchell 467

Maps 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Western Turkey, ancient Phrygia 331 Western Phrygia (Ancient World Mapping Centre) 332 Eastern Phrygia (Ancient World Mapping Centre) 333 Northern Phrygia 1. Ancyra Sidera and Tiberiopolis 334 Northern Phrygia 2. Aezani and Cotiaeum 335 Northern Phrygia 3. Dorylaeum, Nacolea and Meirus 336 Northern Phrygia 4. Orcistus and Pessinus 337 Central Phrygia 1. Synaus, Cadi and Temenothyrae 338 Central Phrygia 2. The Aezanitis, the Upper Tembris Valley and Acmonia 339 Central Phrygia 3. The Upper Tembris Valley, the Phrygian Highlands, Akroinos and Synnada 340 Central Phrygia 4. Amorium 341 Southern Phrygia 1. Temenothyrae, Sebaste, Motella, Eumeneia and Choma 342 Southern Phrygia 2. Dioclea, the Phrygian Pentapolis, and Apamea 343 Southern Phrygia 3. Synnada, Metropolis, and Apollonia/Sozopolis 344 Southern Phrygia 4. Antiochia and Philomelium 345

Abbreviations ACO AEMO ALA

Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum. Archäologisch-epigraphische Mitteilungen aus Österreich. Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity (C. Roueché, https://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/ala2004). AS Anatolian Studies. AST Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı. BCC, JRS W. H. Buckler, W. M. Calder and C.W.M. Cox, Asia Minor 1924. I. Iconium, Lycaonia and Isauria, JRS 14 (1924), 24–84. II. Cotiaeum, JRS 15 (1925), 21–40. III. Central Phrygia, JRS 16 (1926), 53–94. IV. A monument from the Upper Tembris Valley, JRS 17 (1927), 49–58. V. Upper Tembris Valley, JRS 18 (1928), 21–40. Bull. ép. Bulletin épigraphique, appearing in Revue des études grecques. CB W. M. Ramsay, The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia (see bibliography). CMRDM Corpus Monumentorum Religionis Die Menis (4 vols, ed. E. Lane) Comtes-rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. CRAI GRBS Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies. EA Epigraphica Anatolica. Feissel, Chron. D. Feissel, Chroniques d’épigraphie byzantine 1987–2004 (Paris 2006). ICG Inscriptiones Christianae Graecae. ICUR Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae (10 vols. 1922–92). IGBulg. Inscriptiones Graecae in Bulgaria Repertae. IGR Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes IJO Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis. II. Kleinasien (W. Ameling, Tübingen 2004). IK Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien. 10.1–3 Nikaia (S. Şahin). 20. Chalcedon (R. Merkelbach). 33 Hadrianoi und Hadrianeia (E. Schwertheim). 49 Laodikeia (T. Corsten). 53 Alexandria Troas (M. Ricl). 54 Perge I (S. Şahin). 67 Antiochia ad Pisidiam (M. Byrne and G. Labarre, after W. M. Ramsay) 70 Sagalassos I (A. Eich, P. Eich, W. Eck). JbAC Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum. JHS Journal of Hellenic studies. JRS Journal of Roman Studies. KST Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı.

xxiv

Abbreviations

Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (Oxford). LGPN Vc. (ed. J.-S. Balzat et al.), Inland Asia Minor (2018). LSJ Liddell – Scott – Jones, Greek English Lexicon. ΜΑΜΑ Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua I (Monuments from East Phrygia and West Galatia), ed. W. M. Calder (1928). IV Monuments and documents from Eastern Asia and Western Galatia, eds. W. H. Bucker, W. M. Calder, W.K. C Guthrie V Monuments from Dorylaeum and Nacolea, eds. C. W. M. Cox and A. Cameron (1933). VI Monuments and documents from Phrygia and Caria, eds. W. H. Bucker and W. M. Calder. (1939). VII Monuments from Eastern Phrygia, ed. W. M. Calder (1956). VIII Monuments from Lycaonia, the Pisido-Phrygian borderland, Aphrodisias, eds. W. M. Calder and J. M. R. Cormack (1962). IX Monuments from Aezani and the Aezanitis, eds. B. M. Levick, S. Mitchell, J. Potter and M. Waelkens (1989). X Monuments from the Upper Tembris Valley, Cotiaeum, Cadi, Synaus, Ancyra, and Tiberiopolis, eds. B. M. Levick, S. Mitchell, J. Potter and M. Waelkens (1992). XI Monuments from Phrygia and Lykaonia, ed P. Thonemann (2011). OMS L. Robert, Opera Minor Selecta (Amsterdam 7 vols). PBSR Papers of the British School at Rome. RE Paulys Real-Enzyklopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft. RECAM Regional Epigraphic Catalogues of Asia Minor. II. North Galatia (S. Mitchell). III. Cibyratis (N. Milner). IV. Konya Museum (B. Maclean). V. Burdur Museum (G. H. R. Horsley). Rev. phil. Revue de philologie. RRMAM D. H. French, Roman Roads and Milestones of Asia Minor. III.1. Republican Milestones (2012). III.5 Asia (2014). III.9 Album of Maps (2016). SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum. SGO Steinepigramme aus dem Griechischen Orient (ed. R. Merkelbach and J. Stauber). III. Der „Ferne Osten“ und das Landesinnere bis zum Tauros (2001). TAD Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi. TIB Tabula Imperii Byzantini. 7. K. Belke and N. Mersich, Phrygien und Pisidien. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. ZPE

Chapter 1

Second-Century Prelude 1.1

Smyrna 157

One of the iconic and most discussed documents of early Church history is the letter which was sent by the Christians of Smyrna, the historic Ionian harbour city of Turkey’s Aegean coast,1 to their brothers in Philomelium, a city of more recent origin, located in central Anatolia, and to members of all the neighbouring communities that were part of the holy and universal Church: ἡ ἐκκλησία τοῦ Θεοῦ ἡ παροικοῦσα Σμύρναν τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῇ παροικούσῃ ἐν Φιλομηλίῳ καὶ πάσαις ταῖς κατὰ πάντα τόπον τῆς ἁγίας καὶ καθολικῆς ἐκκλησίας παροικίαις, ἔλεος καὶ εἰρήνη καὶ ἀγάπη Θεοῦ πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ πληθυνθείη. Mart. Polycarp. 1

God’s Church abiding in Smyrna to God’s Church abiding in Philomelium and to all the communities of the holy and universal Church in the whole region, may mercy, peace and the love of God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ multiply. The letter told the story of the martyrdom of the bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp, who had been arrested during a persecution of Christians carried out by Statius Quadratus, the Roman proconsul of Asia, and burnt to death in the stadium in the company of eleven other Christians from the Lydian city of Philadelphia. A few days earlier, other Christians had been thrown to the beasts in the arena. One of these was Quintus, a Phrygian newly arrived in Smyrna, who had zealously encouraged others to court martyrdom, but whose nerve now failed and who saved himself by swearing an oath and making an offering of incense to the Roman Emperor.

1 The best survey of the background to Christian Smyrna, is W. Ameling, Smyrna von der Offenbarung bis zum Martyrium des Pionios – Marktplatz oder Kampfplatz der Religionen, in S. Alkier and H. Leppin (eds), Juden – Heiden – Christen. Religiöse Inklusion und Exklusion in Kleinasien bis Decius (Tübingen 2018), 391–432.

©  Stephen Mitchell, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004546387_002

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Chapter 1: Second-Century Prelude

Εἷς δὲ ὀνόματι Κόϊντος, Φρὺξ προσφάτως ἐληλυθὼς ἀπὸ Φρυγίας, ἰδὼν τὰ θηρία ἐδειλίασεν. Οὗτος δὲ ἦν ὁ παραβιασάμενος ἑαυτόν τε καί τινας προσελθεῖν ἑκόντας. Τοῦτον ὁ ανθύπατος πολλὰ ἐκλιπαρήσας ἔπεισεν ὀμόσαι καὶ ἐπιθῦσαι. Διὰ τοῦτο οὖν, ἀδελφοί, οὐκ ἐπαινοῦμεν τοὺς προδίδοντας ἑαυτούς, ἐπειδὴ οὐχ οὗτως διδάσκει τὸ εὐαγγέλιον. Mart. Polycarp. 5

One of them called Quintus, a Phrygian who had recently come from Phrygia, showed cowardice when he saw the beasts. This was the man who had forcefully volunteered himself and others to come forward. The proconsul used many soothing words and persuaded him to swear and to make a sacrificial libation. Therefore, for this reason, brothers, we do not approve of those who surrender themselves, since the gospel does not teach this. This passage is one of the sparse literary attestations to Phrygian Christianity in the period before Constantine. It contrasts with the overwhelming bulk of other evidence, to be examined in this book, which is derived from inscriptions that have been found in Phrygia itself. It does, however, prove a starting point for the investigation and it is important to unpack some of its implications, before we move to a closer detailed study of the region itself. Philomelium itself was the forerunner of the Turkish town of Akşehir, in the ancient district of Phrygia Paroreius and the modern province of Konya.2 In the mid-second century it was part of the Roman province of Asia, under the jurisdiction of the same governor as Smyrna.3 The provincial boundary 2 Strabo XII.8.14, 577: ἡ μὲν οὖν παρώρεια ὀρεινήν τινα ἔχει ῥάχιν ἀπὸ τῆς ἀνατολῆς ἐκτεινομένην ἐπὶ δύσιν. ταύτῃ δ᾽ ἑκατέρωθεν ὑποπέπτωκέ τι πεδίον μέγα, καὶ πόλεις πλησίον αὐτῆς πρὸς ἄρκτον μὲν Φιλομήλιον, ἐκ θατέρου δὲ μέρους Ἀντιόχεια ἡ πρὸς Πισιδίᾳ καλουμένη, ἡ μὲν ἐν πεδίῳ κειμένη πᾶσα ἡ δ᾽ ἐπὶ λόφου ἔχουσα ἀποικίαν Ῥωμαίων. ‘Now Phrygia Paroreia has a kind of mountainous ridge extending from the east towards the west; and below it on either side lies a large plain. And there are cities near it: towards the north, Philomelium, and, on the other side, Antiocheia near Pisidia, as it is called, the former lying wholly in a plain, whereas the latter is on a hill and has a colony of Romans.’ A 6th cent. inscription from the nearby village of Gölçayır names Philomelium: SEG 35, 1397; IK 62, 23–4 no. 50; ICG 624 (see chapter 5.18; W. Ruge, RE XIX.2 (1938), 2520–23 s.v. Philomelion; G. M. Cohen, The Hellenistic Settlements in Europe, the Islands and Asia Minor (Berkeley 1995), 320–21. 3 Philomelium’s place in the Roman provincial system changed throughout its history. Cicero held an assize there in 51/50 BC as governor of Cilicia: Cicero, ad fam. 3.8.4; 15.4.2 (three days); ad Att.5.20.1 (five days). Under Vespasian, it was part of Asia but in the assize district known as Lycaonia: Pliny, NH V, 95: Hos includit Lycaonia, in Asiaticam iurisdictionem versa, cum qua conveniunt Philomelienses, Tymbriani, Leucolithi, Pelteni, Tyrienses. At the beginning of the

section 1.1: Smyrna 157

3

between Asia and the central Anatolian province of Galatia lay a few miles further east. Although remote from the coastal regions, it lay on one of the main Roman roads across Asia Minor, and an earlier and more famous Roman governor, Marcus Tullius Cicero, had held assizes there in 50 BC. Bishops from Philomelium attended the councils of Constantinople in 381 (Theosebius) and Chalcedon in 451 (Paulus). Another bishop, Gregorius, is named on an inscription, the epitaph of Besoulas, deacon of God’s catholic and apostolic holy church, διάκων τῆς καθολεικῆς κὴ ἀποστολεικῆς ἁγείας τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐκλησίας. This text ended with the imprecation that anyone who damaged the grave would have to reckon with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.4 The similarity between the title of the church on this inscription and in the address of the letter to the churches around Philomelium is not a coincidence. Both emphasized that this was the holy and universal Church, belonging to the entire community of Christians. Since the text of the letter was in all probability written by the Smyrniote priest Pionius in the mid-third century (see below), it is highly relevant to note that in the account of his own martyrdom in AD 250, Pionius is said to have identified himself as a priest τῆς καθολικῆς ἐκκλησιας, and there is a reference in another chapter of his passio to Λίμνος πρεσβύτερος τῆς καθολικῆς ἐκκλησίας.5 The gravestone for the deacon Besoulas from Philomelium adds the adjective ‘apostolic’, an indication that it should be dated after the Council of Nicaea of 325, where the Creed committed Christians to belief εἰς μίαν ἁγίαν καθολικὴν καὶ ἀποστολικὴν ἐκκλησίαν. This inference is reinforced by the inscription’s reference to the Trinity, one of the central articles of faith determined at Nicaea. In marked contrast to the region around Smyrna, Christian funerary texts of the third and fourth centuries are frequent in the environs of Philomelium. Other inscriptions from the Lycaonian city of Iconium used the expression ‘universal and apostolic’ to describe the Church,6 but the shorter version of the formula also occurred locally, for instance on the third- or early fourth-century epitaph from Philomelium’s neighbour, Laodicea Catacecaumene, of Ἀφθόνιος πρεσβύτερ[ος | κα]θολικῆς ἐκλησίας Αὐρ. [-]| κριτίῃ fourth century it became part of the newly formed province of Pisidia: Hierocles, Synecd. 672.12. Ptolemy 5.2.25 classified it as a city of Great Phrygia. 4 ICG 619; IK 62, 23–24 no. 50; SEG 52, 1355; see chapter 5.18 n. 210. For the bishops of Philomelium, see S. Destephen, Prosopographie du Diocèse d’ Asie (325–641). Paris 2008. 5 Mart. Pionii (ed. Seeliger and Wischmeyer, Märtyrerliteratur (Texte und Untersuchungen 172, Berlin 2015), 134–79) c.19 (Pionius), c.2 (Limnus). 6 Two examples from Iconium, SEG 34, 1341 = ICG 316 for the priest Stephanus, A ⳨ Ш Σέλευκος πρεσβίτερος τῆς καθολικῆς καὶ ἀποστολικῆς ἁγίας τοῦ θ̣̣εοῦ ἐκλησίας, and the collective priests’ tomb, SEG 53, 2100 = ICG 327: μνήμη (constantinianum) εἱερέων τῆς κατολικῆς κὲ ἀποστολικῆς τοῦ Χ(ριστο)ῦ ἐκλησίας which also ends with an adjuration to the Trinity to see that clergy cared for the tomb in future.

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Chapter 1: Second-Century Prelude

μητρὶ γλυκυτάτῃ [-]|ΤΩΝ ζῶν καὶ Ἀ[φθό]νιος ϹΑΙ[-] | μονάζων μνήμης χά[ριν].7 A somewhat later gravestone from eastern Lycaonia was put up by Longus for his father Germanus, πρεσβύτερος τῆς ἁγίας ἐκλησίας τῶν Ὀρτοδόξων.8 It seems that both the earlier and the later formulas deliberately distinguished the Universal Church from the churches of schismatics and other Christians who were deemed to be heretics. These examples come from Northern Lycaonia, adjacent to Phrygia Paroreius, and a well-documented hot-spot for schismatics. During the fourth century the Novatians, also known as the Cathari, were especially influential and had many followers in Laodicea Catacecaumene, Iconium and the villages of north-west Lycaonia and south-east Phrygia.9 The letter to the community at Philomelium recognized that it was part of the established Universal Church, and thereby implicitly distinguished it from alternative Christian groups. The paragraph from the Martyrium of Polycarp, which described the conduct of Quintus the Phrygian, supports this inference. The Christian Quintus had travelled from Phrygia to Smyrna intending to offer himself up to the Roman governor for punishment and had encouraged others to do the same, but his courage failed him when he agreed to comply with the demand that he make an offering to the emperor, thereby denying his Christianity. This prominent reminder that Quintus had faint-heartedly retracted his initial bravado provided a deliberate contrast with the account of Polycarp’s martyrdom. Polycarp, the aged bishop of Smyrna, had initially been persuaded by his followers to leave the city and escape arrest, although he came quietly when he was apprehended on his farm nearby. During an apparently impromptu trial in the stadium, crowded with jeering and hostile spectators, he, unlike Quintus, refused to swear by the Fortune of the Emperor and denounce Christ, and was condemned and burnt to death. His bones were recovered to become objects of cult. This exemplary fortitude earned him the crown of martyrdom, according to the pattern of Christ’s final days recorded in 7 Unpublished inscription recorded by David French at Kurşunlu near Ladik in 1977 (ICG 1271). In this region, the use of the ps.-praenomen Aurelius indicates a date after 212 and probably not later than 350. 8 ΜΑΜΑ Ι, 290 = ICG 115; cf also SEG 34, 1355 = ICG 267 (Salarama, east of Iconium). 9 W. M. Calder, The epigraphy of the Anatolian heresies, Anatolian Studies presented to Sir W. M. Ramsay (Manchester 1923), 59–91; Mitchell, Anatolia II, 100–108; P. Thonemann, ‘Amphilochius of Iconium and Lycaonian asceticism, JRS 101 (2011), 185–205; D. Hofmann, ‘The hot-bed of heresies’. Häretische und schismatische Bewegungen in Kleinasien und ihre Bedeutung für Christianisierung nach 325 n. Chr., in W. Ameling (ed.), Die Christianisierung Kleinasiens in der Spätantike (AMS 87, Bonn 2017), 393–411; A. Filippini, Il movimento enkratita nell’ Anatolia tardoantica, ibid., 413–72; V. Hirschmann, Die Kirche der Reinen. Kirchenund Sozialhistorische Studien zu den Novatianern im 3. bis 5. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart 2017); Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 724–87, esp. 770–72. See chapter 7.2.

section 1.1: Smyrna 157

5

the Gospels. It would have been a clumsy and tactless way for the writer from Smyrna to begin the letter, if Quintus were a member of the same Church as the brethren at Philomelium. While Polycarp had first avoided arrest, but then faced his trial with true Christian fortitude, his Phrygian counterpart had defiantly courted prosecution, but under interrogation was persuaded with little difficulty to abandon his faith. He belonged to another group, who chose to react to Roman persecution with provocative defiance, rather than adopt the example of the martyr-hero Polycarp. The episode has often been interpreted as an allusion to the behaviour of the Montanists, adherents of the so-called ‘Phrygian Heresy’, who supposedly urged their followers to an uncompromising rejection of Roman authority, and even actively to seek martyrdom in the face of persecution. However, the evidence that Montanists were more enthusiastic martyrs than other Christians in the late second and third centuries is far from conclusive, and the trial of Polycarp predates the generally accepted date for the start of the Montanist movement by about fifteen years.10 The moral stance of voluntary martyrs, who ostentatiously drew attention to themselves during periods of persecution, was a matter for serious controversy both among Christians in antiquity and in modern scholarship, and was certainly not confined to this single heretical group. The conviction, courage and temperament of individuals was more likely the factor which determined the conduct of martyrs in extremis. Since Quintus may well have been an imaginary figure, sketched to represent a whole category of Christians, the argument about whether he was a Montanist is largely otiose.11 Most of the story of Polycarp is told as though by an eye-witness who had been present at the scene, and the letter is usually interpreted as a

10 See chapter 1.3. 11 Birley, A. R., Die freiwilligen Märtyrer. Zum Problem der Selbst-Auslieferer, in R. von Haehling (ed.), Rom und das himmlische Jerusalem. Die frühen Christen zwischen Anpassung und Ablehnung (Darmstadt, 2000), 97–123, and the English version, Voluntary Martyrs in the Early Christian Church: Heroes or Heretics? Cristianesimo nella Storia 27/1 (2006), 99–127; G. E. M De Ste. Croix, Voluntary Martyrdom in the Early Church, in Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy (eds Michael Whitby, Joseph Streeter; New York and Oxford, 2006), 156. C. R. Moss, The discourse of voluntary martyrdom: ancient and modern, Church History 81 (2012), 531–51, argues that the distinction between voluntary martyrdom (as intended by Quintus) and victim martyrdom (as of Polycarp) was not made in Christian literature before the mid-third century. R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth 1986), 406–8 suggests that much voluntary martyrdom was secondary, provoked by the sight or report of fellow Christians being tried, abused or sentenced.

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Chapter 1: Second-Century Prelude

near-contemporary account of the martyrdom.12 This cannot be the case. The narrative has been crafted with numerous miraculous touches and deliberate allusions to the gospel accounts of Christ’s passion, and the drama and pathos of Polycarp’s death are told in a literary style which has been compared with the sophisticated prose of the Asian sophists of the second and third centuries and was specifically influenced by the self-presentation of the great sophist Polemo of Smyrna.13 The handling of the content is mirrored in other martyr acts written in the third and particularly the fourth century.14 This is consistent with the final paragraph of the letter, which survives in two versions and makes clear that its account of Polycarp’s trial and death derived from a sequence of earlier narratives: first by a certain Gaius, who had written an account that he had heard from Polycarp’s disciple Irenaeus, later bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul, then by a person called Socrates (or Isocrates), who wrote a version in Corinth that was based on the copies of Gaius, and finally by Pionius, who stated that he had written his account after a personal vision of Polycarp had inspired him to find the worn-out old documentation.15 Pionius is the name of the famous Smyrniote priest, who himself suffered a martyr’s death during 12

This view follows the influential lead of J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers I (2nd ed. 1889), 605–25, who argued, mostly tendentiously, for a date close to the martyrdom in the AD 160s. W. Ameling, Smyrna von der Offenbarung bis zum Martyrium des Pionios, in S. Alkier and H. Leppin (eds.), Juden  – Heiden  – Christen (Tübingen 2018), 391–432 at 408, refers to datings in the 160s as ‘die üblichen Datierungen’ of most subsequent scholars. J. Bremmer, God and Christ in the early martyr acts, in M. V. Movenson (ed.), Monotheism and Christology in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Leiden 2020), 222–48 at 225–30, places the text in the later second century. For the literature on Polycarp until 2007, see B. Dehandschütter, Polycarpiana. Collected Essays (Leuven 2007), 43–92. 13 M. den Dulk and A. Langford, Polycarp and Polemo: Christianity at the center of the Scond Sophistic, in T. R. Blanton IV, R. M. Calhoun, C. K. Rothschild (eds), The History of Religions School Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts (FS H-D. Betz, Tübingen 2014), 211–40. At p. 216 n. 32 they also incline to a mid-third century date for MPol. 14 In the 19th century there was a scholarly consensus represented by Schürer, Lipsius and Theodore Keim, that the MPol was composed in the mid- or late-3rd century. The case for 3rd century composition has been powerfully re-argued by Candida R. Moss, On the dating of Polycarp: rethinking the place of the Martyrdom of Polycarp in the history of Christianity, Early Christianity 1 (2010), 539–74. There is little foundation to the arguments of O. Zwierlein, Die Urfassungen der Martyria Polycarpi et Pionii und das Corpus Polycarpianum (2 vols. Berlin 2014) that all the short works relating to Polycarp and Pionius were edited in their present form in the fourth century. 15 MPol. 22. There are two versions of the colophon to MPol, which have been the subject of much discussion, most of it very speculative; see J. Hoover, False “lives”, false martyrs, “Pseudo-Pionius”, and the redating of the “Martyrdom of Polycarp”, Vigiliae Christianae 67 (2013), 471–98.

section 1.1: Smyrna 157

7

the persecution of the emperor Decius in 250.16 He was a passionate follower of Smyrna’s martyred second-century bishop. The account of his own trial contains examples of his own highly sophisticated speeches, one delivered at his trial, and the other addressed to his fellow Christians in prison.17 There is no reason to disbelieve the straightforward assertion of MPol. 22 that he was the work’s author.18 Whether the letter from the Church of Smyrna to the Church at Philomelium was written in the later second, or, as is far more likely, in the middle of the third century, the reality of the bishop’s martyrdom is not in doubt. He and up to a dozen other Christians were arrested tried and cruelly punished as part of a public spectacle in Smyrna, before the eyes of the Roman proconsul and a feverish crowd of spectators. Both the description itself, which singled out the Phrygian Quintus, and the letter’s address attests the existence of a divided Christian community in Phrygia. The Universal Holy Church was part of an organization that extended to all Christians, wherever they lived, but their name pointedly distinguished them from regionally based forms of Christianity. Doctrinal or institutional divisions between Christians in provincial contexts are anything but a surprising phenomenon, and well attested elsewhere. The best documented early Christian split occurred in Africa, where Christians in the fourth and early fifth centuries were systematically divided between the Catholic Church, which was favoured and supported by Roman authorities from the reign of Constantine onwards, and the Donatists (albeit their members also claimed the title of a Universal Church) who represented a Christianity which drew its support from the region, especially the province 16

The name Pionios itself is uncommon, and was derived from the obscure town of Pioniae, a settlement in northern Mysia. The account in the Martyrium Pionii is reliable in many of its historical details and was indeed probably written soon after 250: see R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth 1986), 460–92; L. Robert, Le martyre de Pionios. Prêtre de Smyrne (edited posthumously by G. W. Bowersock and C. P. Jones, Washington 1994). 17 G. W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge, Mass. 1995), 46–7 compares the language, culture and learning manifested in the Pionius speeches with that of the great Asian sophists of the second century; see further the commentary of L. Robert, Le martyre de Pionios (ed. G. W. Bowersock and C. P. Jones, Washington 1994), and R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 465–79. 18 Although this attribution is discounted by most modern scholars, their scepticism mostly derives from the false assumption that the Martyrium Polycarpi had been composed almost a century earlier. The Life of Polycarp, also claimed as a work of Pionius, does indeed seem to be pseudonymous; see Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers III (2nd ed. 1889), 423–68.

8

Chapter 1: Second-Century Prelude

of Numidia, not from empire at large.19 There were, however, many differences between the divided Christianities of inner Asia Minor and North Africa. The struggle for supremacy between Donatists and Catholics in Africa, which is known almost exclusively from literary sources produced by the Catholic side, was marked by episodes of violent conflict, and it took place in the time of the Christian empire, with the state embracing the Catholic cause. The best-known division in Phrygian Christianity, the break-away movement of the Montanists, attested by inscriptions as well as by an extremely complicated literary tradition, emerged before the end of the second century, but the movement was much weaker in late antiquity.20 1.2

Lyon 177

About twenty years after the execution of Polycarp, another harrowing scene of violence and judicial murder took place at the opposite end of the Roman empire, at Lugdunum (Lyon), the capital of the western province of the Three Gauls. The source of this information is the Church History of Eusebius. Book V begins by quoting lengthy extracts from a long letter of anonymous authorship addressed to the churches of Asia and Phrygia. For Eusebius, this was not simply a matter of memory and record, but of instruction and teaching, recording struggles, as he put it, in which the crown of victory and eternal fame were awarded to the most peaceful contestants for their sufferings in the name of truth, not to warriors whose feats of bravery on the battlefield on behalf of their country were rewarded with victory trophies. The address ran: ‘The servants of Christ who live in Vienna and Lugdunum in Gaul to their brothers in Asia and Phrygia who share their faith and hope in redemption’.21 The emphasis on the peaceful conduct and intentions of the martyred Christians was a leitmotif of the narrative that followed. The letter reproduced by Eusebius, which despite some abbreviations seems to have been largely complete, contained an account of the martyrdoms sent by the two main Christian communities of the Rhone valley to

19 W. H. C. Frend, The Donatist Church: a movement of protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford 1985); Frend’s analysis of the Donatists as a regional Christian movement is supported by Neil McLynn in forthcoming study. For a different approach, see Brent Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and sectarian hatred in the age of Augustine (Cambridge 2011) with the important review of C. Ando, http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/2012-08-30.html. 20 See chapter 7. 1. 21 Eusebius, HE V praef. 2–4; V.1.3.

section 1.2: Lyon 177

9

their fellows in Asia Minor.22 It can be dated between 175 and 180,23 the last years of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, and is traditionally assigned to 177. The final execution of the four most prominent Christians, from a supposed total of forty-eight victims of persecution,24 probably took place during the annual festivities of the imperial cult in August of that year, when representatives of all the Gallic communities assembled at Lyon and witnessed their trial, torture and deaths during the gladiatorial games and wild-beast hunts which formed the centre-piece of these celebrations. The recipients of the letter were the Christian communities of Asia and Phrygia. Although Phrygia in the Roman empire was part of the large proconsular province of Asia, the titulature of Roman officials between the first and third centuries, especially the office of procurator Augusti provinciae Phrygiae, a position held by imperial freedmen, clearly distinguished Phrygia as an administrative unit within the wider province. This subsidiary jurisdiction under the remit of the procurator seems to have included all the communities within the Phrygian dioeceses of Apamea, Cibyra (whose centre was in fact Laodicea), and Synnada, and the dioecese of Philomelium, the Phrygian district which bordered on Lycaonia. This is the entire inland region of west-central Asia Minor covered by this book.25 The letter which told the story of Polycarp’s martyrdom was sent precisely from Smyrna in Asia to Phrygian Philomelium. The two martyrs at Lyon who were explicitly of Asia Minor origin were respectively Attalus from Pergamum in Asia, and Alexander the Phrygian doctor. It is very likely that other Lyon martyrs came originally from Asia Minor.26 The letter was not a translation from the Latin but an original document drafted by a member of the community in Greek. The author drew attention to the use of Latin at several points of his account which emphasized the moments when 22 P. Keresztes, The massacre at Lugdunum in 177 AD, Historia 16 (1966), 75–86. 23 T.D. Barnes, Eusebius and the Date of Martyrdoms, in M.J. Rougé and M.R. Turcan (eds), Les Martyrs de Lyon (177), (Colloque international du centre national de la recherche scientifique, Lyon, 20–23 Septembre 1977; Paris, 1978), 137–143. 24 S. Ohtani, Martyrs and confessors of Lugdunum, a validation of Eusebius’ documentation, Scrinium 11 (2015), 122–34. Forty-eight was the traditional figure. However, the list of names appears to contain several individuals who were Roman citizens, possessing two or three names, and the total is probably around forty. 25 P. Thonemann, Maeander, 110–7, refining G. W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (1995), 85–98; at length, M. Vitale, Eparchie und Koinon in Kleinasien von der ausgehenden republic bis ins 3. Jh. n. Chr. (Bonn 2012), 70–77, and Imperial Phrygia. A ‘procuratorial province’ governed by liberti Augusti? Philia 1 (2016), 33–45. 26 W.H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford 1965), 1–31; in all but the named instances, the case is not proven; G. W. Bowersock, Les églises de Lyon et de Vienne: relations avec l’Asie, in Les Martyrs de Lyon 177 (Paris 1978), 249–55, is sceptical.

10

Chapter 1: Second-Century Prelude

the martyrs communicated directly and intelligibly either with their interrogators or with the spectators at their ordeal. Attalus, the Roman citizen from Pergamum, was paraded in the amphitheatre with a placard round his neck, written in Latin, reading οὗτός ἐστιν Ἄτταλος ὁ Χριστιανός (presumably hic est Attalus Christianus; HE V.1.44), and spoke to the crowd in Latin when he was being roasted alive on an iron chair in the amphitheatre (HE V.1.52). Sanctus, the deacon from neighbouring Vienna, replied in Latin, sum Christianus, to the governor’s interrogation (HE V.1.20). Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyon who succeeded the martyred Pothinus, was a native of Smyrna who recalled that as a boy he had himself attended theological discussions and teaching in the house of Polycarp ‘in lower Asia’.27 The roots of this Christian community were tapped into Asian and Phrygian soil. The overall course of the persecution, the dynamic unfolding of events, resembled those that led to the martyrdom of Polycarp. The numbers of the Christians condemned in both cases may have been very similar, since Eusebius’s report named only ten individuals who died, a close match for Polycarp and the eleven Philadelphian Christians who were martyred with him at Smyrna.28 At Lyon, the victims included the church’s aged bishop, Pothinus, and Sanctus, a deacon from the neighbouring city of Vienna. The trials themselves were preceded by the denunciation, harrassment and humiliation of Christians by crowds of opponents. Local magistrates, and the tribune in command of Roman troops stationed in Lugdunum,29 played a preliminary role in interrogation, but referred the prisoners, and especially the Roman citizens among them, to be dealt with by the unnamed provincial governor. Some denied their devotion to Christ, but it is a notable feature of the account that these lapsi were not repudiated by their fellows. Martyrdom was not the only way to display Christian virtue, and the community was tolerant of 27 Eusebius, HE V. 20.4–6; ἐν τῇ κάτω Ασίᾳ παρὰ Πολυκάρπῳ. It would be an easy guess that the author of the letter about the martyrs of Lyon was the city’s subsequent bishop, Irenaeus, who may have witnessed the event and had provided a similar account of the martyrdom of Polycarp (see n.14), but it is surprising that Eusebius did not say so. 28 Vettius Epagathus (V.1.9), Sanctus the deacon from Vienna and Maturus who was newly baptised (V.1.17), Attalus a Roman citizen from Pergamum, Blandina the only woman (V.1.17), Biblis who first denied Christ and then preferred to die than face the punishment of eternal damnation (V.1.25), Pothinus the bishop (V.1.29), Alexander a doctor from Phrygia (V.1.49), Ponticus a 15-year-old boy (V.1.53), and the ascetic Alcibiades, mentioned in an adjunct to the main report (V.3.2). The other names are recorded in later sources, none earlier than the sixth century, which may depend on the Collection of Ancient Martyrs another Eusebian work, no longer preserved, referred to at HE 5.4.3. Their authenticity is at least questionable. 29 Eusebius, HE V.1.8.

section 1.2: Lyon 177

11

back-sliders.30 Household slaves (evidently of those who were better-off) were tortured and supplied evidence that their masters and mistresses were guilty of the crimes of cannibalism and incest, charges which had been the stuff of anti-Christian hatred for more than a century,31 but the crime for which they were condemned was the simple one of being Christian, as had been established at least since the famous correspondence between Pliny and Trajan regarding Christians in Pontus and Bithynia, two generations earlier.32 Τhe victims of the persecution ranged from Roman citizens to slaves, and from the ninety-year old bishop Pothinus, who died in prison after his interrogation, to the fifteen-year-old Ponticus. While the accused were held in prison, the emperor was consulted about how to deal with Roman citizens; Marcus Aurelius confirmed the death penalty for those who stuck to confessing Christianity, while those who recanted could be released.33 Ten of those arrested had lapsed, but significantly remained in prison to provide support for the martyrs. The conduct of all the victims of persecution was remarkably measured. Under interrogation they confined themselves to brief answers and short, unprovocative statements. The governor simply refused to let Vettius Epagathus, the first defendant to be examined, make a statement on behalf of the whole group (V.1.9). Blandina, a slave woman, acknowledged that she was Christian and affirmed briefly that Christians committed no despicable actions (V.1.19), Sanctus admitted only to being a Christian (V.1.20), Biblis repudiated the charge of cannibalism by pointing out that Christians did not even eat the meat of (sacrificial) animals (V.1.26), and Pothinus, asked who the Christian God was, simply told his accuser that he would find out if he were worthy of this knowledge (V.1.31). Exactly these questions were also put to Attalus as he was subject to torture by fire on the rack, and led to similar answers.34 30 31

32 33 34

See Origen, Contra Celsum 8.44: ‘if a Christian flees it is not from cowardice but because he is following the command of his teacher and keeping himself free from harm for the sake of others still to be helped to salvation’. Eusebius HE V.1.14: κατεψεύσαντο ἡμῶν Θυέστεια δεῖπνα καὶ Οἰδιποδείους μίξεις καὶ ὅσα μήτε λαλεῖν μήτε νοεῖν θέμις ἡμῖν; see B. Wagemakers, Incest, infanticide and cannibalism. Anti-Christian imputations in the Roman Empire, Greece and Rome 57 (2011), 337–54; Candida Moss, Infant exposure and the rhetoric of cannibalism, incest and martyrdom in the early Church, Jounal of Early Christian Studies 29 (2021), 341–69, argues that by repudiating the practice of infant exposure, Christians claimed the moral high ground in refuting the grotesque accusations against them. Eusebius, HE V.1.33, συνεκλείοντο ὡς Χριστιανοί, μηδεμιᾶς ἄλλης αἰτίας αὐτοῖς ἐπιφερομένης. Eusebius, HE V.1.47. Eusebius, HE V.1.52. Attalus replied that the torture to which he was subjected amounted to devouring human flesh, and that God, unlike men, had no name.

12

Chapter 1: Second-Century Prelude

Eusebius concluded his presentation with extracts from the letter which did not form part of the main narrative of the events. These highlighted a striking series of judgements about the martyrs’ behaviour: that they were inspired by Christ’s example; that they did not proclaim themselves to be martyrs; and that they did not hold themselves to be superior to their fellow Christians. In his recent studies of Eusebius, J. Corke-Webster rightly emphasises that the Lyon martys, confronted by the anger and fury of their accusers and the wider community, were notable for their quiet endurance and mutual support.35 Peace, Eirene, was the repeated watchword of their conduct. They preached absolution for those who had proven to be weak and even for their accusers: εἰρήνην ἀγαπήσαντες ἀεὶ καὶ εἰρήνην ἡμῖν παρεγγυήσαντες, μετ᾽ εἰρήνην ἐχώρησαν πρὸς θεόν, μὴ καταλιπόντες πόνον τῇ μητρί, μηδὲ στάσιν καὶ πόλεμον τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς ἀλλὰ χαρὰν καὶ εἰρήνην καὶ ὁμόνοιαν καὶ ἀγάπην, ‘loving peace without ceasing and commending peace to us, they went to God in peace, leaving behind no toil for the mother (church) and no strife and warfare for their brothers, but only grace and peace and harmony and love’.36 The lesson to be drawn from the account of the martyrs of Lyon was one of reconciliation within the Christian community and between Christians and non-believers. Corke-Webster has highlighted the paramount importance of this aspect of Christian history for Eusebius, who completed his Church History after persecution had ceased; the martyrs of Lyon provided exemplary material for the view that they were the heroes of an irenic, not a triumphalist Church.37 A similar message of peace and reconciliation was proclaimed by the earliest group of Christians that can be identified by their inscriptions in the villages and small towns of Phrygia.38 1.3

The New Prophecy

Eusebius’s account of the Lyon martyrs dealt with two subsidiary matters. The first concerned Alcibiades, a Christian ascetic, whose behavior had led 35 J. Corke-Webster, Eusebius and Empire. Constructing Church and Rome in the Ecclesiastical History (Cambridge 2019), 192, draws the parallel with Polycarp’s behaviour at Smyrna, as related by Eusebius, HE IV.15. 1–46 at 9. 36 Eusebius, HE V.2.1–8, quotation from 7. 37 Corke-Webster, Eusebius and Empire, 175–211; this modifies the more extreme position of his earlier paper, J. Corke-Webster, A literary historian: Eusebius of Caesarea and the martyrs of Lyon and Palestine, Studia Patristica 66 (Leuven 2013), 191–202, which argues that Eusebius made extensive editorial interventions in the source material, to bring the account into line with his own views. 38 See chapter 4.2.

section 1.3: The New Prophecy

13

to conflict with his fellow prisoners, but the matter had been resolved by Attalus.39 The second recorded a more widespread disagreement between the Christian brotherhood in Gaul and the followers of Montanus, Alcibiades and Theodotus in Phrygia, regarding prophecy.40 This was the second explicit reference in the Church History to ‘those around Montanus’, τῶν δ᾽ ἀμφὶ Μόντανον, the founder and leader of the best-documented dissident Christian movement in Phrygia.41 Eusebius subsequently provided a very complex account of the origins of this heresy, but did not clarify the connection between Montanus, Alcibiades and Theodotus and the Lyon church. The juxtaposition of the two persons named Alcibiades in adjacent chapters by Eusebius is a puzzle that can be resolved if we assume that the Alcibiades who was martyred at Lyon was a Montanist. Until he was reconciled by Attalus, Alcibiades was a disruptive and controversial figure, whose contentions conflicted with the beliefs of the rest of the group. This behaviour and his ascetic choice to eat only bread and water were consistent with well-attested Montanist conduct. Since there is no subsequent reference to Alcibiades as a Montanist leader in Phrygia, we should assume that these two short sections referred to the same person, in dispute with his fellow prisoners in Lyon as they together awaited martyrdom.42 Eusebius’s next chapter showed that Montanist claims about prophecy were discussed by the martyrs. The imprisoned Christians, serving as ambassadors for the peace of the Church, may have reached a compromise in extremis which was conveyed by letters to their confrères in Asia and Phrygia, and to Eleutherus, bishop of Rome. These letters are likely to have been personal affidavits relating to the controversy, commending a reconciliation.43 39 Eusebius, HE V.3.2: Ἀττάλῳ … ἀπεκαλύφθη ὅτι μὴ καλῶς ποιοίη ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης μὴ χρώμενος τοις κτίσμασι τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ἄλλοις τύπον σκανδάλου ὑπολειπόμενος, ‘it was revealed to Attalus that Alcibiades was not doing any good as he did not make use of God’s ‘foundations’ and was leaving behind a sort of trap for others’. 40 Eusebius, HE V.3.4. 41 Eusebius, HE IV.27.1 had already referred to the anti-Montanist works of Apolinarius, bishop of Hierapolis, κατὰ τῆς τῶν Φρυγῶν αἱρέσεως. 42 The identification is proposed by P. Carrington, The Early Christian Church I, 249. 43 Eusebius, HR V.3.4: αὖθις οἱ κατὰ τὴν Γαλλίαν ἀδελφοὶ τὴν ἰδίαν κρίσιν καὶ περὶ τούτων εὐλαβῆ καὶ ὀρθοδοξοτάτην ὑποτάττουσιν, ἐκθέμενοι καὶ τῶν παρ᾽ αὐτοῖς τελειωθέντων μαρτύρων διαφόρους ἐπιστόλας, ἃς ἐν δεσμοῖς ἔτι ὑπάρχοντες τοῖς ἐπ᾽ Ἄσίας καὶ Φρυγίας ἀδελφοῖς διεχάραξαν, οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ Ἐλευθέρῳ τῷ τότε Ῥωμαίων ἐπισκόπῳ, τῆς τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν εἰρήνης ἕνεκα πρεσβεύοντες. R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 374–5, follows the note of McGiffert, in his translation of Eusebius, Church History (The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers vol. 1, 512–3 n. 1411), which suggests that the martyrs’ final letters condemned Montanism. The remark that the letters were written ‘in the cause of peace’ points rather to a short-lived reconciliation.

14

Chapter 1: Second-Century Prelude

By the time of the Lyon martyrdom, traditionally dated to 177, the Montanist controversy which had originated in Phrygia around 172, was already one of the most heated disputes in the early Christian movement. The peaceful resolution which may have been achieved among the martyrs of Lyon did not find a comparable resonance in the world-wide community, and Montanism remained an object of fascination and revulsion to the mainstream church for almost four centuries until the extinction of its followers in the mid-sixth century.44 Most of the information about them was provided by heresiologists, ecclesiastical opponents who repudiated heretical theology, a distinctive genre of patristic literature.45 They are, of course, a thoroughly unreliable guide to the nature and history of the movement. The origins of Montanism in Phrygia are problematic owing to the nature of the sources. Extracts from second- and early third-century witnesses are only preserved in the citations of fourth-century or later writers, principally Eusebius in the Church History, and Epiphanios in the Panarion, the ‘medicine chest’, which he completed around 378 to protect the orthodox from heresies. The relevant chapters of Eusebius contain quotations from named and unnamed authors, who themselves cited other sources, including the main actors in the controversy. The presentation is highly confusing and the outcome resembles a hall of mirrors, in which it is genuinely hard to be certain which writers supported and which were opposed to Montanism.46 Eusebius’s method of referring to authorities, if it can be dignified with that description, is consistently obscure and leads to repeated ambiguities, some of them probably unclear to Eusebius himself. Eusebius’s main source was a writer, not identified by name, in a work addressed to Avircius Marcellus, who had urged him to write a treatise εἰς τὴν τῶν κατὰ Μιλτιάδην λεγομένων αἵρεσιν.47 This phrase is ambiguous. The most natural translation would be ‘against the heresy of those who are called after Miltiades’. However, this cannot be reconciled with the fact that three other passages in this section of Eusebius’s work refer to an anti-Montanist Miltiades, who had written an apologia to the 44

The first generations of Montanism are the subject of an excellent essay by F. Blanchetère, Le montanisme originel, Revue des sciences réligieuses 52 (1978), 118–34; and Le montanisme original (suite), Revue des sciences réligieuses 53 (1979), 1–23, and discussed in his Le Christianisme asiate aux IIe et IIIe siècles (Dissertation, Strasbourg 1977, published Lille 1981), 136–51; W. Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy and Polluted Sacraments. Ecclesiastical and imperial reactions to Montanism (Leiden 2007) is a long survey with detailed discussion of all the sources; C. Markschies, Montanismus, Reallexicon für Christentum und Antike 24 (2012), 1997–1220 is a succinct modern résumée. 45 See chapter 7.1. 46 Eusebius, HE V.16–18. 47 Eusebius, HE V.16.3.

section 1.3: The New Prophecy

15

emperors, and treatises against the Greeks and the Jews, as well as a critique of the Montanists. A Montanist called Miltiades, attested by no other source, appears to be a figment created by a misunderstanding of Eusebius’s admittedly ambiguous Greek.48 In an excellent study, Heidrun Elisabeth Mader has argued that the expression εἰς τὴν τῶν κατὰ Μιλτιάδην λεγομένων αἵρεσιν must be understood ad sensum as referring to ‘a sect which had been called heretical according to Miltiades’, and made a powerful case to support the proposal that Miltiades was the main source used by Epiphanios in his lengthy account of the heresy, which cited and refuted many of their prophecies.49 Jerome in the de viris illustribus dated Miltiades’s activity to the period of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus between 177 and 180, and this dating is consistent with the fact that his apologia for Christianity was addressed to plural rulers, πρὸς κοσμικοὺς ἄρχοντας.50 This work was one of the earliest anti-Montanist treatises known to us, written at about the same time as the tractate written by bishop Claudius Apollinarius of Hierapolis, the most prominent opponent of the movement in its early years. Miltiades was later praised by Tertullian, writing before his own turn to Montanism, as ecclesiarum sophista, an intellectual champion of the churches.51 It might have been this publication which caused the anonymous writer used by Eusebius to hesitate before writing another refutation of Montanist doctrines. In the dedication to Avircius Marcellus he excused himself for the delay which occurred before he fulfilled the commission to do so. However, he had now been engaged for many days during a visit to Ancyra in Galatia in dispute about the prophecy, or rather false prophecy, and had additionally 48 Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 12 n. 39, following most earlier scholarship including Labriolle, La crise montaniste, 31–33 and Blanchetière, Le Christianisme asiate, 141, assumes that there was a Montanist Miltiades (see his index s.v.). Some manuscripts and translations of Eusebius in HE V.16.3 and V. 17.1 confused the names Alcibiades and Miltiades, familiar as two of the most famous Athenians of the classical period, and this has exacerbated the interpretation of these passages. McKechnie, Christianizing Asia Minor, 126–7 hesitantly suggests that the Alcibiades of Eusebius, HE V.3.4 may be a slip of the pen for Miltiades. Pace Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 13, the LGPN indexes show that the name Miltiades occurs only three times in imperial or late Roman inscriptions of Asia Minor, and was very uncommon outside Attica. It remained an unusual name in late antiquity, see D. Feissel, Études d’épigraphie et d’histoire des premiers siècles de Byzance (2020), 156–7. 49 H. E. Mader, Montanistische Orakel und kirchliche Opposition. Der frühe Streit zwischen den phrygischen „neuen Propheten“ und dem Autor der vorepiphanischen Quelle als biblische Wirkungsgeschichte des 2. Jht. n. Chr. (Göttingen 2012), 115–30, revives and develops a proposal which had first been made by R. A. Lipsius. 50 Hieronymus, de viris illustribus, 39; supported by Eusebius, HE V.17.5. 51 Eusebius, HE V.28.4; V.17.1 and 5; Tertullian, adv. Val. 5, discussed by Mader, Montanistische Orakel, 124–9. For Claudius Apollinarius, bishop of Hierapolis, see below nn. 81–9.

16

Chapter 1: Second-Century Prelude

been asked by the Ancyran clergy and by his fellow-priest Zoticus of Otrous, to set out the arguments he had used in written form.52 All these events took place within twenty years of the appearance of the movement. Miltiades seems to have written against the Montanists in the late 170s or early 180s. The anonymous writer of the work dedicated to Avircius Marcellus noted in two passages that the prophecies of impending war and disturbances uttered by Maximilla, one of the movement’s three founding prophets, had not been fulfilled, respectively thirteen and fourteen years after her death.53 These words could not have been written after the civil war that broke out following the death of Commodus in 192. This would date the publication of the anonymous work and his visit to Ancyra around 192 and the prophecies of Maximilla to about 178/9.54 The first phase of Montanist history ended with the deaths Maximilla, her fellow-prophetess Priscilla and the founder Montanus in the years around 180.55 There followed a short period of peace within the Christian community of Asia as well as in the world at large until c.192. The revived disputes at Ancyra between a new generation of Montanists and the mainstream church were then an additional factor which led the anonymous writer to complete his work. The reconciliatory undertones of his report suggest that Avircius Marcellus, the leader of the Christian community in the small city of Hierapolis in the Phrygian Pentapolis, had commissioned it in the hope of creating harmony in the Christian community.56 Eusebius quoted nine extracts from this anonymous work, which was organized in three books, beginning with a description of how the movement had started with the ecstatic prophecies of Montanus in the village of Ardabau, located in the Phrygian part of Mysia, when a certain Gratus was proconsul

52 Eusebius, HE V. 16.2–6: Παροιμιάζεται γοῦν τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον, ‘ἐκ πλείστου ὅσου καὶ ἱκανωτάτου χρόνου, ἀγαπητὲ Ἀυίρκιε Μάρκελλε, ἐπιταχθεὶς ὑπὸ σου συγγράψαι τινὰ λόγον εἰς τὴν τῶν κατὰ Μιλτιάδην λεγομένων αἵρεσιν, ἐφεκτικώτερον πως μέχρι νῦν διεκείμην κτλ.’ Avircius Marcellus was certainly the Aberkios of the famous inscription from Hierapolis in the Phrygian Pentapolis (see c.4.2), and Zoticus, who accompanied the anonymous writer to Ancyra, was a fellow-priest from neighbouring Otrous. The anonymous writer was presumably another cleric from the Pentapolis. 53 Eusebius, HE V.16.18–19 and V.17.4; the variation between 13 and 14 may indicate that book 3 of the anonymous writer was finished a year after book 2. 54 So Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 6–7. 55 This also seems to be confirmed by a corrupt passage in Epiphanios; see 22 n. 92 and 533 n. 25. 56 His famous epitaph, composed about ten years later around 200, contains no recognisable allusion to the Montanists or other heretical groups, but can be read as a plaidoyer for Christian peace and unity; see chapter 4.2.

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of Asia.57 In another work, his Chronographia, Eusebius dates this event to AD 171/2.58 Epiphanios at the start of his account suggested an earlier date, AD 156/7, the nineteenth year of Antoninus Pius, for the origin of the movement, but this coheres less well with the reports of the earliest Montanist activities and opposition to it in the later 170s, and most scholars are probably right to follow Eusebius.59 The anonymous writer reported that ‘one of the new converts called Montanus … in his soul’s desire … was carried up by the spirit and suddenly, gripped by a sort of rapture and possession, began to be inspired, to babble and to speak strange words, uttering prophecies against the custom of the church which had been passed down in the inherited tradition’.60 These utterances divided the Christians who heard them into those who treated them as false prophecies, and those who regarded them as inspired by the Holy Spirit. Montanus was joined by two prophetic women, identified elsewhere by name as Priscilla (or Prisca) and Maximilla.61 They claimed to be part of a tradition that could be traced to forebears in the Old and New Testament, the prophetic daughters of Philip, two of whom had resided in Hierapolis (Pamukkale, the large Phrygian city), and two obscure second-century regional figures called Ammia and Quadratus.62 The aspects of Montanist prophecy which distinguished them from this earlier tradition were the novelty of their revelations, and the fact that these were produced in a state of ecstasy, or spirit possession.63

57 Eusebius, HE V.16.7. For the topography see S. Mitchell, An epigraphic probe into the origins of Montanism, in Thonemann (ed.), Roman Phrygia (2013), 168–71. 58 Eusebius, HE V.3.4; the Latin translation by Jerome of Eusebius, Chron. 288 f has: Pseudoprofetia quae Cata Frygas nominatur, accepit exordium auctore Montano et Priscilla Maximillaque insanis vatibus, dated to year 3 of the 137th Olympiad and the eleventh year of Marcus Aurelius (= AD 171). The Armenian version states year 12 of Marcus. 59 Epiphanios, Pan. 48.1: Ἀπὸ τούτων ἑτέρα πάλιν αἵρεσις ἀνακύπτει τῶν Φρυγῶν καλουμένη, σύγχρονος γενομένη τούτοις καὶ αὐτοὺς διαδεχομένη. οὗτοι γὰρ γεγόνασι περὶ τὸ ἐννεακαιδέκατον ἔτος Ἀντωνίνου τοῦ εὐσεβοῦς τοῦ μετὰ Ἀδριανόν, καὶ ὁ Μαρκίων δὲ καὶ οἱ περὶ Τατιανὸν καὶ οἱ ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ διαδεξάμενοι Ἐγκρατῖται ἐν χρόνοις Ἀδριανοῦ καὶ μετὰ Ἀδριανόν; see T. D. Barnes, The Chronology of Montanism, Journal of Theological Studies 21 (1970), 403–8. 60 Eusebius, HE V.16.7: ἔνθα (in Ardabau) … τινα τῶν νεοπίστων πρώτως Μόντανον τοὔνομα … ἐν ἐπιθυμίᾳ ψυχῆς … πνευματοφορηθῆναι τε καὶ αἰφνιδίως ἐν κατοχῇ τινι καὶ παρεκστάσει γενόμενον ἐνθουσιᾶν ἄρξασθαι τε λαλεῖν καὶ ξενοφωνεῖν, παρὰ τὸ κατὰ παράδοσιν καὶ κατὰ διαδοχὴν ἄνωθεν τῆς ἐκκλησίας ἔθος δῆθεν προφητεύοντα. 61 Eusebius, HE V.16. 8–9; the women had been named in the heading to Eusebius’s overall account of Montanism, HE V.14. 62 Eusebius, HE V.17.4. See F. Blanchetière, Revue des sciences religieuses 52 (1978), 127–34 on these early stages in Asia. 63 Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 195–208.

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These contentious matters were then repeatedly discussed in many places in Asia, and the Montanists debarred from communion, but an attempt by orthodox bishops to refute Maximilla was blocked by her supporters.64 A report by a Montanist writer called Asterius Urbanus explained that the bishops in question were Zoticus of Coumane and Julian of Apamea,65 but they were prevented from testing the prophetess by the followers of a Montanist called Themison. One of the authentic Montanist utterances was Maximilla’s exclamation, διώκομαι ὡς λύκος ἐκ προβάτων· οὐκ εἰμὶ λύκος, ῤῆμά εἰμι καὶ πνεῦμα καὶ δύναμις, ‘I am being hounded like a wolf from the sheep, but I am no wolf, but the word and the spirit and the force’.66 Another source used by Eusebius, Apollonius, clarified that the attempted interrogation of Maximilla took place at the Montanist centre, Pepuza, and that Themison was subsequently martyred.67 Although the anonymous writer was sceptical about it, he also knew of a report that Montanus and Maximilla had hanged themselves in an ecstatic frenzy, and their associate (ἐπίτροπόν τινα), Theodotus, was hurled like a discus to his death.68 Martyrdom and the question of voluntary martyrdom had become a pressing issue for Christians during the half century before the start of the New Prophecy.69 There were several well-publicised trials of Christians during the

64 Eusebius, HE V.16.16–17; Eusebius HE V.19.4 also noted a thwarted attempt to discredit Priscilla, an attempt at exorcism by Sotas of Anchialus in Thrace, which was reported much later under oath by the bishop of neighbouring Deultum. 65 Ζωτικὸν ἀπὸ Κουμάνης κώμης is a puzzle, because bishops were usually linked to towns or cities. Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy and Polluted Sacraments (Leiden 2007), 8 equates Coumana with the north Pisidian city of Conana. 66 Eusebius, HE V. 16.17; Maximilla alluded to Matt. 7.15, Jesus’s warning against false prophets who came in sheep’s clothing but were nothing but ravenous wolves. 67 Eusebius, HE V.17.13 (Pepuza episode) and 5 (martyrdom). 68 Eusebius, HE V.16.13–15. Theodotus was presumably the man associated with the Lyon martyrs at HE V.3.4. The alleged suicides might be linked with the report of Tertullian, Scap. 5.1, that Christians in an Asian city presented themselves to the proconsul Arrius Antoninus (probably in the mid 180s) as ‘voluntary martyrs’. He is said to have had a few of them executed and told the rest to leap from cliffs or hang themselves, if they wanted to: Arrius Antoninus in Asia cum persequeretur instanter, omnes illius ciuitatis Christiani ante tribunalia eius se manu facta obtulerunt. Tum ille, paucis duci iussis, reliquis ait: Ὦ δεῖλοι, εἰ θέλετε ἀποθνήσκειν, κρημνοὺς ἢ βρόχους ἔχετε. This could have been a mocking challenge to these volunteers to emulate the report that circulated about the sect’s founders. 69 A. R. Birley, Die freiwilligen Märtyrer. Zum Problem der Selbst-Auslieferer, in R. von Haehling (ed.), Rom und das himmlische Jerusalem. Die frühen Christen zwischen Anpassung und Ablehnung (Darmstadt, 2000), 97–123; English version: ‘Voluntary Martyrs in the Early Christian Church: heroes or heretics’? Cristianesimo nella Storia 27/1 (2006), 99–127.

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reign of Marcus Aurelius (161–180),70 and the anonymous writer referred to the Montanist claim that the truth of their prophecy was demonstrated by the fact that they had suffered many martyrs. Alcibiades had been condemned at Lyon, and there may have been other victims in contemporary trials of Christians in Phrygia. Around the time of the inquisition of Maximilla, Thraseas, the bishop of Phrygian Eumeneia, had been martyred at Smyrna, and his fellow citizen Alexander and a man named Gaius suffered this fate after a trial at Phrygian Apamea.71 During their incarceration before this trial orthodox Christians and the followers of Montanus had not consorted with one another.72 Evidently the conflict among the Christians was not resolved here, as it may have been in Lyon. However, the anonymous writer against Montanism cited the example of the Marcionites to reject the argument that martyrdom was proof of correct belief,73 and there is no indication either at Lyon or at Apamea that Montanists were readier to sacrifice their lives than other Christians. Eusebius turned for further information to another source, Apollonius, writing forty years after the first Montanist prophecies, around 212.74 Apollonius confirmed the details mentioned by the anonymous writer about Thraseas and the inquisition of Maximilla, but added important material information. Montanus advocated that marriages should be dissolved, laid down the law about fasting, and gave the name Jerusalem to Pepuza and neighbouring Tymion.75 Apollonius also attacked the venal character of the Montanists. The church collected funds not only from wealthy followers but also from the poor, orphans and widows.76 The leading women, Prisca and Maximilla, had been married, but had abandoned their husbands.77 So far from being ascetic, they 70 Eusebius, HE IV.26.5 mentioned ‘new decrees’ which were hounding the Christians. These were not imperial edicts, but might have been decisions issued during Marcus Aurelius’s journey across Asia Minor in 176; cf. Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus valley, 241. 71 Eusebius, HE V.17.13; Thraseas was also mentioned in the letter of Polycrates bishop of Ephesus to Victor bishop of Rome, HE V.24.4. 72 Eusebius, HE V.16.20; this is consistent with the refusal of communion reported in HE V.16.10. It is not clear whether the persecution at Apamea preceded or followed the more famous persecution at Lyon. 73 Eusebius, HE V.16.20–21. 74 Eusebius, HE V.18.12. In an article published in Studia Classica Israelica 25 (2004), 209–10, I erroneously conflated Apollonius with (Claudius) Apollinarius the bishop of Hierapolis, and repeatedly stated that Eusebius’s second source was Apollinarius, not Apollonius. I should apologise for any confusion that this careless mistake may have caused. 75 Eusebius V. 18.2: οὖτος ἐστιν ὁ διδάξας λύσεις γαμῶν, ὁ νηστείας νομοθετήσας, ὁ Πέπουζαν καὶ Τύμιον Ἱερουσαλὴμ ὀνομάσας. 76 HE V.18.2 (money collection) and 7 (from all classes). Note the epitropos Theodotus, already mentioned in the anonymous work, HE V.16.14. 77 HE V.18.3.

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Chapter 1: Second-Century Prelude

came from moneyed backgrounds and did not abandon worldly ways in the new movement. He charged them, on whatever grounds, with greed, gluttony, wearing fine clothes and make-up, and indulging in gambling.78 Even one of their supposed martyrs, who had been executed after a trial at Ephesus, was condemned not for his Christian beliefs but for robbery.79 The tone of Apollonius’s tirade was notably more extreme than that of the anonymous writer, whose measured report to Avircius Marcellus had been written when reconciliation may still have seemed possible; Apollonius, writing twenty-eight years later, chose all-out attack.80 Eusebius’s third witness relating to the Montanists was Apollinarius, that is Claudius Apollinarius, bishop of the larger Hierapolis (Pamukkale), a peer of the better-known Christian leader Melito of Sardis and the author of several works of Christian teaching, concluding with two books against the Montanists.81 This citation described the New Prophecy as ‘having been reconfigured not long ago, but was then (at the time of Apollinarius’ composition) at the beginning of its begetting, when Montanus with his two false prophetesses was still making a start to his ecstatic behavior.’ Apollinarius is now known to us not only from Eusebius but, sensationally, from an inscription, carved on the front of an early imperial Roman built tomb which was incorporated into the fabric of the later church of St Philip at Hierapolis. His name, [Ἀ]πολλεινάριος, was prominently shown in well-cut letters not on the mouldings below the pediment, where there are illegible traces of the tomb’s original text, but to the left of the tomb entrance, and surely implies that the bishop, probably at the height of his influence in the 170s, took responsibility for promoting the cult of the apostle, who had died a generation earlier. The tomb became a place of veneration, the core around which a church and the entire extra-urban sanctuary of Philip developed in the sixth century.82 78 HE V.18.2 (gluttony), 4 (greed), 11 (fine clothes, make-up, gambling and usury). 79 HE V.18.6, 9–10. 80 Apollonius may have been writing at Ephesus, as he relates details of the trial of Alexander and preserved otherwise unrecorded traditions about John the Evangelist, HE V.18.13. 81 HE IV.27.1: An apology addressed to the Emperor, five books ‘to the Greeks’, two books ‘on Truth’, two books ‘to the Jews’, καὶ ἃ μετὰ ταῦτα συνέγραψε κατὰ τῆς τῶν Φρυγῶν αἱρέσεως, μετ᾽οὐ πολὺν καινoτομηθείσης χρόνον, τότε γε μὴν ὥσπερ ἐκφύειν ἀρχομένης, έτι τοῦ Μοντανοῦ ἅμα ταῖς αὐτοῦ ψευδοπροφήτισιν, ἄρχας τῆς παρεκτροπῆς ποιουμένου. His oeuvre, discussed by Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus valley, 237–66, resembled that of Miltiades (HE V.17.5) and his better-known peer, Meliton of Sardis. The Christian apologists of the 170s and 180s followed the same play book as one another. 82 ICG 1827; F. D’Andria, Il santuario e la tomba dell’ apostolo Filippo a Hierapolis di Frigia, Rendiconti dell’ pontificia academia romana di archeologia 84 (2011–12), 1–75; F. D’Andria, The sanctuary of St Philip in Hierapolis and the tombs of saint in Anatolian cities, in

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Eusebius did not cite Apollinarius directly but mentioned him in the context of a letter of Serapion, bishop of Syrian Antioch, addressed to persons called Caricus and Ponticus: ‘So that you may know that the activities of this deceitful organisation, the so-called New Prophecy, are abominated by the entire brotherhood, I have sent you the letter (γράμματα) of the most blessed Claudius Apollinarius, bishop of Hierapolis in Asia’.83 Serapion’s letter had a number of co-signatories, including Αὐρήλιος Κυρίνιος μάρτυς and Aelius Publius Iulius (sic) bishop of Deultum, a Roman colony on the Black Sea in the province of Thrace.84 Rufinus, in his Latin version of Church History, thought that Apollinarius was Eusebius’s anonymous first source on the Montanists,85 and he has been followed by some modern scholars.86 There are several arguments against this: Eusebius himself distinguished his anonymous source from Apollinarius; Apollinarius’s work was in two books, but Eusebius cited from three books by the anonymous source; the document attached to Serapion’s letter was not two books, which would have been too cumbersome to be sent in multiple hand copies, but a letter written by Claudius Apollinarius, for which the term γράμματα would be the normal terminology.87 So it seems that the bishop of Hierapolis had written two books about the Montanists while the movement was getting started in the 170s, and a letter about the situation, no doubt containing guidance to contemporary fellow bishops, which was then recirculated by Serapion forty years later.88 According to a much later tradition, J. R. Brandt et al., Life and Death in Asia Minor in Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Times. Studies in archaeology and bioarchaeology (Oxford /Philadelphia 2017), 3–18. 83 HE V.19.2: ὅπως δὲ καὶ τοῦτο εἴδητε ὅτι τῆς ψευδοῦς ταύτης τάξεως τῆς ἐπικαλουμένης νέας προφητείας ἐβδελυκται ἡ ἐνέργεια παρὰ πάσῃ τῇ ἀδελφότητι. 84 The letter of Serapion is undated. He is believed to have died around 211 (Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 256–7), but the letter may belong after 212, if Aurelius Quirinius had acquired Roman citizenship thanks to the constitutio Antoniniana. At any rate, the cited letter of Apollinarius must be a much earlier document. 85 Rufinus’s free Latin adaptation of Eusebius, in Griechische Christliche Schriftsteller n.F.6.1, 459.25–463.3: Sed adversum haeresim Catafrygarum scutum validissimum protulit Apollinaris Hierapolites … alii quam plurimi ad id locorum eruditissimi viri … Interim, ut diximus, Apollinaris scribens adversum hanc haeresim et designans in praefatione, quod per ecclesias Galatiae etc. 86 M. Willing, Eusebius von Cäsarea als Häresiograph (Berlin 2008), 29 ff. 87 Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 16–18, correctly translates γράμματα. 88 The dating is broadly confirmed by Euesbius’s Chronographia, which placed the high-point of Apollinarius’s episcopacy in the tenth year of Marcus Aurelius, AD 170 (Jerome trans. Eus. Chron., GCS 7, 206.4), his Christian interpretation of the famous rain-miracle (early 170s) which saved legio XII Fulminata during the northern campaigns (Eusebius, HE V.5.1–4), and the Apologia presented or delivered to Marcus, perhaps in 176; see Huttner,

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Apollinarius had summoned a synod in Hierapolis, attended by twenty-six bishops, which anathematised Montanus, Maximilla and Theodotus, here designated the shoemaker (σκυτεύς).89 The Montanist movement was defined from its beginnings by ecstatic prophecy which claimed direct revelation of God’s will, millenarian expectations, and stricter forms of asceticism than were practised among Christians at large. The eschatological message of the Apocalypse of the Evangelist John, surely compounded by the actual effacement of the earthly Jerusalem by the emperor Hadrian at the end of the Jewish War of 132–35,90 were major impulses that led Montanus and the woman prophets literally to create a new Jerusalem at Pepuza and Tymion forty years later.91 Maximilla had uttered the oracle that she was the last of the prophets, μετ᾽ ἐμὲ προφήτης οὐκέτι ἔσται, ἀλλὰ συντελεία.92 The first Montanists were convinced that the end of time was upon them.93 Since expectations of the second coming were widespread among Christians of all types, their belief in continuous divine revelation through prophecy was contagious, especially amid the experiences of the Christian movement of the late-second century. The idea that God could still speak directly to his followers through inspired oracles found important followers outside Phrygia. The most eloquent and influential third-century convert to the movement was Tertullian in Carthage, and it is through his later works, in Latin, that Montanist beliefs about martyrdom, asceticism and the revealed will of the holy spirit were articulated in

89

90 91 92

93

Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 232–42. Further discussion in T. D. Barnes, Tertullian (2nd ed. 1985), 253–4. Synodicon Vetus 5; the information about Theodotus’s profession was already in Eusebius, HE V.28.6 and he is doubtless identical with Theodotus the epitropos of HE V. 16.14. The historicity of this synod is uncertain, see Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 256–60. T. Witulski, Die Johannes Offenbarung und Kaiser Hadrian: Studien zur Datierung der neutestamentlichen Apokalypse (Göttingen, 2007) has argued that the Apocalypse was composed at the time of the fall of Jerusalem. Epiphanios, Pan. 48.10 (John the Evangelist); 48.14 (the new Jerusalem); W. Tabbernee, Portals of the Montanist New Jerusalem: the discovery of Pepuza and Tymion, Journal of Early Christian Studies 11 (2003), 87–93. Epiphanios, Pan. 48.2. Her claim to inspiration was refuted both by the anonymous anti-Montanist work cited by Eusebius, HE V. 16.18–19 and V.17.4, which pointed out that this had not come to pass thirteen years after her death, and by Epiphanios, Pan. 48.2, a corrupt sentence which drew attention to the long passage of time between Maximilla’s pronouncement and the composition of his own work in the twelfth year of the emperors Valentinian and Valens, 378; see 533 n. 25. K. Aland, Bemerkungen zum Montanismus und zur frühchristlichen Eschatologie, Kirchengeschichtliche Entwürfe I (Gütersloh 1960), 105–48.

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a form that continued to appeal to Christian fundamentalists beyond their inconspicuous Phrygian origins.94 How much of the doctrines and practices of Tertullian can be read back into the beliefs and actions of Montanists in their Asia Minor heartlands is open to dispute. It remains hard to define the underlying context in which Montanism emerged in Phrygia with more precision. In his stimulating treatment of the origins of the movement, Francois Blanchetière concludes that the differences between the heresy and its opponents lay not so much in dogma as in discipline.95 Even their opponents granted that the core of Montanist religious ideas and practices did not differ from those of other Christian groups in Asia.96 The anti-Montanist sources used by Eusebius and Epiphanios provide apparently reliable evidence that the Montanists and other heretical groups fasted more rigorously and led more ascetic lives than other Christians,97 and a charge of grossly excessive Lenten fasting was made later by Jerome.98 External pressures certainly aggravated Christian divisions. Christianity in the mid- and later second century came into increasing conflict with the Roman state, as is highlighted by the high-profile episodes of martyrdom which occurred during this period. As the numbers of its followers grew, the Christian religion caused anxiety and alarm among educated pagans and faced growing pressure from Roman authorities. Christian leaders and intellectuals responded by writing apologias for their beliefs. Eusebius confessed that it was beyond his powers to grasp the names and personalities of all the writers who wrote on aspects of Christian doctrine and practice in the later second century.99 Fears were doubtless exacerbated by secular circumstances, including the outbreak of plague and the wars waged by Marcus Aurelius against the Parthians and the Germans in the 160s and 170s. Montanism thus came 94 See the perceptive pages of R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 370–6. 95 F. Blanchetière, Le montanisme original (suite), Revue des sciences religieuses 53 (1979), 1–22. 96 Epiphanios, Pan. 48.1: οὗτοι γὰρ οἱ κατὰ Φρύγας καλούμενοι δέχονται καὶ αὐτοὶ πᾶσαν γραφὴν παλαιᾶς καὶ νέας διαθήκης καὶ νεκρῶν ἀνάστασιν ὁμοίως λέγουσι; cf 49.2 (on the Quintilliani), κέχρηνται δὲ οὗτοι παλαιᾷ καὶ καινῇ διαθήκῃ καὶ ἀνάστασιν νεκρῶν ὁμοίως φάσκουσι. 97 Eusebius, HE V.18. 2: διὰ τῆς γαστριμαργίας ἡ διδασκαλία τοῦ λόγου κρατύνεται; Epiphanios, Pan. 48.8: αἱ γὰρ πλείους τῶν αἱρέσεων τούτων τὸ γαμεῖν κωλύουσιν, ἀπέχεσθαι βρωμάτων παραγγέλλουσιν, οὐχ ἕνεκεν πολιτείας προτρεπόμενοι, οὐχ ἕνεκεν ἀρετῆς μείζονος καὶ βραβείων καὶ στεφάνων, ἀλλὰ βδελυκτὰ ταῦτα ὑπὸ τοῦ κυρίου γεγενημένα ἡγούμενοι. Note the strict diet of Alcibades imprisoned at Lyon. Tertullian, De Ieiunio, later explained and defended Montanist fasting practices; see Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 110–3 and 147–50. 98 Jerome, ep. 41.3 and other passages discussed by Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 345–6. 99 Eusebius, HE V.27, frankly stated his bewilderment when faced by the copious abundance of Christian writing in the late second century.

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into being during a period of intensified Roman pressure and persecution of Christian communities, and an increase in doctrinal controversy. The fall of Jerusalem and the abolition of the province of Judaea surely sent waves of Jews into exile and swelled the numbers of potential converts, especially in Asia where Jewish and Christian communities were close to one another. This is likely to have increased the readiness of some Christians to accept the implicit message of the Apocalypse and potentially of the New Prophecy. Conversely, there were those who wished to deny any place in the New Testament canon for the Apocalypse, the Montanists’ foundational text.100 The growing pressure to establish a definitive Biblical canon was endorsed by the anonymous anti-Montanist source used by Eusebius who was anxious not to allow any supplements to the New Testament: δεδιὼς καὶ ἐξευλαβούμενος μὴ πῃ δόξω τισιν ἐπισυγγράφειν ἢ ἐπιδιατάσσεσθαι τῷ τῆς τοῦ εὐαγγελίου καινῆς διαθήκης λόγῳ.101 The divisions between the Montanists and the rest of the church in Asia were not bridged. The core of the community remained in place in the heartland around Pepuza. A synod at Iconium in Lycaonia around 235 dealt with the question of baptising Montanists who had returned to the orthodox fold.102 The history of the heresy can be pursued through late antiquity until Pepuza was destroyed in the mid-sixth century, but its strength was severely attenuated after this dramatic prologue in the final decades of the second century.103 100 Epiphanios, Pan. 51. 101 Eusebius, HE V.16.3. 102 Firmilian, bishop of Cappadocian Caesarea, cited in Cyprian, ep. 75.7; cf. 75.10 for a Montanist prophetess in Cappadocia; C. Trevett, Spiritual authority and the ‘heretical’ woman: Firmilian’s word to the church in Carthage, in J. W. Drijvers and J. Watt, Portraits of Spiritual Authority (Leiden 1999), 45–62. 103 See chapter 7.1.

Chapter 2

Phrygia – The Land and Its Peoples 2.1

The Phrygian Circle: A Land-locked Geography (Map 1)

A prominent landmark of west central Anatolia, familiar to road travellers across modern Turkey, is the massif of black volcanic rock, topped by the walls of a late Byzantine and Turkish castle, which towers 200 metres above the city of Afyon. Afyonkarahisar, ‘Opium Black Castle’, is at the hub of Roman Phrygia. To put this region on the map we can hardly do better than describe a slightly flattened circle around this central point. This is a deliberately arbitrary way of defining Phrygia geographically, for it was a region which merged with its neighbours, and was never sharply separated from them. The circumference of the circle was a blurred, not a sharp dividing line, and naturally does not correspond with the precise political, cultural or even natural boundaries of Phrygia at any time in its history.1 The northern rim of the Phrygian circle corresponded with the long lofty ridge of the Boz Dağları, which stretched for about 150 kilometres east from the modern town of Bozüyük, reaching peaks at Türkmenbaba Tepe (1534m), Taştepe (1675m), Sündiken Dağ (1768m) and Yağarslan Dağ (1540m) until it was cut off by the valley of the river Sangarius, the modern Sakarya nehri. The Sangarius ran through a deep valley along the northern side of the mountain range, forming a natural border between Phrygia and ancient Bithynia.2 The 1 Strabo 12.8.18, 579; 13.4.12, 628; Eustathius, Dion. Per. 809; expressed a contrario in the proverb πόρρω τὰ Μυσῶν καὶ Φρυγῶν ὁρίσματα, which Strabo cited twice at 12.4.4, 564, and 12.8.2, 571. Strabo emphasized the lack of clear regional divisions in the interior of western Asia Minor, repeatedly citing the example of Phrygia; see Broughton, Roman Asia Minor, 628. This has been echoed by all modern commentators. See W. Ruge, RE XX.2,790 (publ. 1941): Wenn auch der Umfang Phrygias im Großen und Ganzen feststeht, so ist doch die Angabe der Grenzen im Einzelnen meist nicht möglich. Denn das Material dazu ist zu lückenhaft und stammt aus verschiedenen Zeiten; cf. Strubbe, IK 52, p. xv; M. Waelkens, Die kleinasiatischen Türsteine (Mainz 1986), 43; TIB 7, 45–7; S. Mitchell, Anatolia. Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor I. The Celts and the impact of Roman rule (1993), 175 n. 94, B. M. Levick, In the Phrygian mode: a region seen from without, in Thonemann (ed.), Roman Phrygia (Oxford 2013), 41–54 at p. 46. For an evocative description which does not try to fix exact boundaries, see Thonemann, Anarchy, in Roman Phrygia (2013), 4–8. 2 The administrative frontier between the Roman provinces of Asia and Bithynia lay south of the river, as is shown by the late Hadrianic boundary stone which demarcated the territories of Dorylaeum and Nicaea, copied at Mutalip but probably brought there from Boz Dağ, MAMA V. 60. For the ethnic and cultural overlap between Phrygia and Bithynia, see L. Robert,

© Stephen Mitchell, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004546387_003

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Boz Dağları could be crossed at the west end by a steep road running from Bilecik up the valley of the Karasu, a southern tributary of the Sangarius, and by a gentler ascent from Söğüt, respectively west and east of Bozüyük. A much easier ascent from the north-west connected Bursa with Bozüyük.3 After crossing the mountain range, these routes gave access to the extensive and largely treeless plain of Eskişehir, which stretched either side of the river Tembris, the modern Porsuk Çay. Eskişehir, ancient Dorylaeum, was Phrygia’s northernmost city, 110 kilometres due north of the circle’s hub at Afyon. The north-east quadrant of the Phrygian circle reached out towards Ankara. This is predominantly steppic country in the sprawling valleys of the upper Sangarius and the Tembris, its longest tributary. The Tembris rose far to the south-west of Dorylaeum in the heart of Phrygia, ran south of the Boz Dağları and joined the Sangarius near Gordium, the most important early Phrygian settlement. Two Roman towns, whose names suggest much older Phrygian origins, were sited in the Tembris valley east of Dorylaeum: Midaeum, at Karahüyük west of Alpu, and Accilaeum, which has not been located. Gordium, at the eastern rim of Roman Phrygia, was the legendary home of King Midas, the centre of political authority between the tenth and sixth centuries BC, when Phrygia’s influence as an independent power extended much further east. Since c.275 BC Gordium and this part of north-central Anatolia had been controlled by the invading Galatians; Celtic chieftains and their followers became the dominant land-owning caste and after 25 BC became part of the Roman province of Galatia.4 In the imperial period Gordium was the location of a Roman garrison fort.5 Pre-Constantinian Christian inscriptions are rare in this northern region. The flat and relatively featureless valley basins of the Tembris west of Eskişehir and the upper Sangarius valley give the entire region the feel of an Asiatic steppe. They are divided from one another by another important Inscriptions de Bithynie copiées par Georges Radet, Revue des études anciennes 42 (1940), 302–22 at 320–1; T. Drew-Bear and C. Naour, Divinités de Phrygie, ANRW II.18.3, 1953–4. 3 K. Belke, Roads and Routes in Northwestern and Adjoining Parts of Central Asia Minor: From the Romans to Byzantium, with Some Remarks on their Fate during the Ottoman Period up to the 17th Century, Gephyra 20 (2020), 79–98, esp. 87–9 and fig. 6. 4 For Galatia, see Mitchell, Anatolia I (1993); K. Strobel, Die Galater. Geschichte und Eigenartder keltischen Staatenbildung (Berlin 1996); S. Mitchell, The Galatians: representation and reality, in A. Erskine, Blackwell Companion to the Hellenistic World (2003), 280–93. 5 J. Bennett / A. Goldman, A preliminary report on the Roman military presence at Gordon, Galatia, Gladius 13 (2009), 35–45; G. Darbyshire, K. Harl and A. Goldman, To the victory of Caracalla. New Roman altars at Gordium, Expedition (Univ. of Pennsylvania) 51.2 (2009), 32–8; and A. Goldman, A Pannonian auxiliary veteran’s epitaph at Gordion, Anatolian Studies 60 (2010), 129–42.

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mountain range with peaks at Karaçam Dağ (1510 m), Yediler Tepe (1581 m), Çal Dağ (1690 m), Arayit Dağ (1820 m) and Boz tepe (1400 m), which ran from north-west to south-east on either side of the modern town of Sivrihisar. Sivrihisar was not a significant settlement before the middle and later Byzantine period, but its earlier counterpart was Pessinus, sited on the western flank of Mount Dindymus astride the river Gallus, a tributary which flowed south to join the Sangarius. Dindymus, a term that should probably be applied to the whole ridge between Çal Dağ and Arayit Dağ, was the home of the Phrygian Mother Goddess (or, rather, one of the homes of one of the Phrygian mother goddesses), and Pessinus was one of Phrygia’s most important religious sanctuaries.6 Strabo reports that by the early Roman principate its significance was much diminished, but it remained an emporium, or trading centre.7 In the Roman period Pessinus regained importance as the urban centre of the Galatian Tolistobogii. Under Augustus, a Roman colony was founded on the east side of Mount Dindymus at Germa, which must have controlled most of the territory as far as the Sangarius crossing at Gordium. This region contained important hot springs and settlements in the late Roman period, notably a great pilgrimage church of St Michael located at Germia, an early Byzantine population centre to be distinguished from the earlier Roman imperial colony.8 Another range of hilly and mountainous country filled the inner part of the north-east quadrant of Phrygia. This can be traced from the Türkmen Dağları (1829 m at Zirve Tepesi), which is almost due south of Dorylaeum, south-eastwards across the Phrygian Highlands to Oluk Dağ (1713 m), Şaphane and Eyerli Dağ (1710 m), down to Adaçal near the modern town of Emirdağ (1259 m), and up again to the Emir Dağları (2066 and 2295 m), the highest peaks of eastern Phrygia. These Phrygian Highlands were an important region 6 The bibliography about Pessinus is critically reviewed by A. Coşkun, The temple-state of Cybele in Phrygian and early Hellenistic Pessinus: a phantom? in G.R. Tsetskhladze (ed.), Pessinus and Its Regional Setting vol.1 (Colloquia Antiqua 21, Peeters, Leuven), 205–45. He claims that there is no reliable evidence for the mother goddess sanctuary before the Attalid period, but provides no compelling argument to dismiss the early fourth century BC testimony of Theopompus (FGH 115 F 260, cited in Ammianus Marcellinus 22.9.6–7), that Pessinus was named after an image of the goddess which had fallen from the sky by Midas, King of Phrygia. The foundation story may be a legend, but Theopompus attests the sanctuary’s existence in his time. 7 Strabo 12.5.3, 567–68. 8 P. Niewöhner et al., Bronze age hüyüks …, Anatolian Studies 63 (2013), 97–136; P. Niewöhner, Healing springs of Anatolia: St Michael and the problem of the pagan legacy, in B. Pitarakis and G. Tanman (eds.), The Art of Healing in Byzantium: new perspectives (Istanbul 2018), 97–124.

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of settlement in the seventh and sixth centuries BC, notable for their monumental rock sanctuaries with reliefs and Old Phrygian inscriptions, including the large fortified mountain site of Midas Şehri (‘Midas city’), beside the village of Yazılıkaya, which became known as Metropolis, city of the Mother Goddess, in the late fifth century BC, and the lion monument at Kümbet.9 The ancient town of Nacolea, forty kilometres south-south-east of Dorylaeum, was situated at the northern edge of the Phrygian Highlands on the south side of the Seyit Su, another tributary of the upper Sangarius. During the second and third centuries Nacolea was the administrative centre for extensive imperial estates in and east of the Phrygian Highlands.10 Meirus, south of Nacolea and east of the Upper Tembris Valley, acquired the status of a city in the late third century and became an important regional settlement in late antiquity. Docimium, a small city twenty-two kilometres north-east of Afyon, which had been founded by a Macedonian follower of Alexander the Great in the late fourth century BC, lay south of the Phrygian highlands. It was at the heart of the most important centre of marble production in Roman Asia Minor, and the Docimian quarries with their large skilled and unskilled labour force were a driving force in the region’s economy from the early first to the mid-third centuries, and remained active on a smaller scale throughout late antiquity. Many of the tomb-stones and votive monuments which will be studied in later sections of this book were products of workshops attached to these quarries. Most of the fine white marble decoration of Phrygian churches in the fifth and sixth centuries and the Middle Byzantine period came from the Docimian quarries and was the work of Docimian sculptors.11 The most important settlement of eastern Phrygia was Amorium, located at the village of Hisar, about twelve kilometres east of modern Emirdağ, whose name (and that of the mountain range) are derived from it. Amorium, another Macedonian settlement which probably claimed Alexander the Great as its founder,12 played a major role in Byzantine history. The territory of the Roman city included the heights of the Emir Dağları to the south and a large part of the 9

S. Berndt-Ersöz, Phrygian Rock-Cut Shrines: structure, function and cult (Leiden 2006); L. Robert, A travers l’Asie Mineure (Paris 1982) 266–99, identified the large hill-top site above Yazılıkaya as Metropolis, where the fugitive Athenian general Alcibiades met his death in 403 BC; for the region, see chapter 5.7. 10 Mitchell, Anatolia I, 159–60. 11 P. Niewöhner, Aizanoi, Dokimeion und Anatolien. Stadt und Land, Siedlung und Steinmetzwesen vom späteren 4. Bis ins 6. Jht. n. Chr. (Wiesbaden 2007). 12 J. Nollé, Beiträge zur kleinasiatischen Münzkunde und Geschichte 11. Adleromina: Stadtund Kultgründungen auf Geheiß des Zeus, Gephyra 12 (2015), 1–89 at 16–26; S. Mitchell, Makedonen überall! Panegyrikos Logos. Festschrift Nollé (2019), 331–52 at 338–39.

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upper Sangarius basin to the north.13 On the south slope of the Emir Dağları, due east of Afyon, was the town of Polybotus, modern Bolvadın. One further settlement needs to be introduced in this region of eastern Phrygia, the town of Orcistus, which claimed in a petition to the emperor Constantine in the late 320s that all its population was Christian. Orcistus was located south of the Sangarius on the road from Pessinus to Docimium at Ortaköy near Umraniye. Its inhabitants complained, however, that they were administratively treated as a community dependent on Nacolea, more than fifty kilometres distant to the north-west.14 East of Afyon, the rim of the Phrgyian circle cut across the central Anatolian steppe, referred to by Livy as the axylon or woodless country.15 Part of the south-east segment of the Phrygian circle was also occupied by upland mountain territory. Beyond the Emir Dağları there were lower summits at Çatalağıl (1590 m), Çileközü (1667 m), Tokat (1649 m.) and Armutbaşı Tepe (1630 m), forming the range of Gavurdağı. This formed the north-east margin of a large basin containing the shallow lakes of Eber Göl and Akşehir Göl, which until late antiquity had formed a single body of water, the Lake of the Forty Martyrs. The lake basin was fed from the north-west by the water of river Caystrus (modern Akar Çay), whose valley ran south of Docimium and Polybotus. This was the one substantial Phrygian river which drained internally into the central Anatolia, and did not eventually reach the Aegean, the Propontis or the Black Sea. The major ancient and modern route between Afyon and Konya in Lycaonia ran through this region, past Çay, which may have been the ancient town of Lysias, Akşehir (ancient Philomelium), Ilgın, Kadınhan and Laodicea Catacecaumene. Here there are no outstanding geographical features to distinguish Phrygia from Lycaonia, but Greek funerary inscriptions which end with protective curse formulae in the neo-Phrygian language, are one of several markers of the spread of Phrygian ethnic and cultural influence.16 The south-west side of the Akşehir lake basin was defined by the steep slopes of the Sultandağları, which maintained a height of more than two thousand metres for most of their length from Toprak Tepe (2531 m) south of Çay to Kafa Dağ (2115 m) near the north end of lake Beyşehir. The territory 13

For the territory and inscriptions of Amorium, see C. S. Lightfoot, Amorium Reports 5 – A Catalogue of Roman and Byzantine Stone Inscriptions from Amorium and Its Territory, together with Graffiti, Stamps, and Miscellanea (Istanbul 2017). 14 MAMA VII, 305. For Orcistus, see chapters 4.12 and 5.9. 15 Livy 38.18.4. 16 See Mitchell, Anatolia I, 174. Maps in Ruge, RE XX.1, 797 and U. Kelp, Grabdenkmal und Lokale Identität. Ein Bild der Landschaft Phrygien in der römischen Kaiserzeit. Asia Minor Studien 74 (Bonn 2015).

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on both sides of the mountains was referred to as Phrygia Paroreius.17 On the west side of the range opposite Philomelium was the most important Roman colony of central Anatolia, Antiochia (near modern Yalvaç), whose large territory extended to the twin lakes of Hoyran and Eğridir, and which included two important rural sanctuaries, respectively for Mên Askaênos, the Anatolian god who was adopted as the patron divinity of the Roman colony,18 and for Artemis at Sağır, the meeting point of a large and wealthy association called the Xenoi Tekmoreioi, a magnet for pilgrims from dozens of villages in Phrygia Paroreius and beyond.19 The southern part of the Phrygian circle encroached on Pisidia, the region of mountains, lakes, and upland passes which led through the Taurus mountains to the Mediterranean coast. The transitional region between Phrygia and Pisidia included Antioch itself, sometimes called ‘ad Pisidiam’ (towards or next to Pisidia), Apollonia, renamed Sozopolis in the late fourth century (modern Uluborlu), which lay west of lake Hoyran, and its smaller neighbour Tymandus, which was raised to city status around 300.20 Antioch and Apollonia were connected by the via Sebaste, the major Roman road which had been built in 6/5 BC. For our purposes, it is convenient to treat the territory north of the road, marked by the occurrence of neo-Phrygian inscriptions,21 rock monuments of the Phrygian type,22 and the use of doorstones as grave monuments,23 as part of Phrygia. The territory between Antiochia and Afyon was unequivocally Phrygian. The most important settlement was Synnada, modern Şuhut, at the head of a large upland plain remarkable in Strabo’s time for growing olives, one of the clearest 17 Strabo XII.8.13; cf. XII.6.4; H. Bru, La Phrygie Parorée et la Pisidie septentrionale aux époques hellénistique et romaine. Géographie historique et sociologie culturelle (Leiden 2017) for detailed discussion; S. Mitchell and M. Waelkens, Pisidian Antioch. The sites and its monuments (Swansea 1998), 2 fig. 2 for a map. 18 A. Blanco-Perez, Mên Askaenos and the native cults of Antioch by Pisidia, in Maria Paz de Hoz et al., Between Tarhuntas and Zeus Polieus. Cultural cross roads in the temples and cults of Graeco-Roman Anatolia (Leuven 2016), 117–50 at 141. 19 W. Ruge, Xenoi tekmoreioi, RE Va (1934), 158–69; G. Arena, Communità di villagio nell’ Anatolia romana. Il dossier epigraphico degli Xenoi Tekmoreioi (Analecta Humanitatis 33; Rome 2017); see below chapter 3.4. 20 See H. Bru, G. Labarre and M. Özsait, La constitution civique de Tymandos, Anatolia Antiqua 17 (2009) 187–207. 21 W. M. Calder, Corpus Inscriptionum Neo-Phrygiarum II, JHS 33 (1913), 97–104 (101 no. 71); C. Brixhe and T. Drew-Bear, Un nouveau document néo-phrygien, Kadmos 17 (1978), 50–54. 22 G. Fiedler and M. Taşlıalan, Un monument rupestre phrygien au bord du lac Hoyran, Anatolia Antiqua 10 (2002), 97–112. 23 M. Waelkens, Die kleinasiatischen Türsteine (1986), 271–2.

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markers of Greek cultural influence in the environment of inner Anatolia.24 Synnada became an important administrative centre of Roman Phrygia, the main residence of the procurator who amid other duties supervised the exploitation of the imperial marble quarries at Docimium.25 Synnada’s smaller northern neighbour, Prymnessus, modern Suğlun, was barely seven kilometres from the centre of Afyon. Summits along the mountain range at Koca Tepe (1903 m) and Kükürt Dağ (2250 m) divided the south-east from the south-west Phrygian quadrants, with Synnada lying to the east, and a group of five small Phrygian cities (Brouzos, Stectorium, Eucarpia, Otrous and Hierapolis) in the plain of Sandıklı to the west of this range. The south-west quadrant looked towards the Maeander valley, the main artery of lateral communication that connected central Anatolia with the Aegean.26 The five inconspicuous but apparently prosperous small towns in the Sandıklı plain were overshadowed by Apamea (Apamea Cibotus, also known as Kelainai, modern Dinar), whose four rivers with their attendant springs created the headwaters of the Maeander. The Roman city at Metropolis, to be distinguished from its namesake in the Phrygian highlands, was relatively isolated in the upland plain of the Çölovası, on a road that ran from Dinar to Çay. Apamea was at a mid-point along what Strabo called the common highway, which ran from the Aegean up the Maeander and Lycus valleys, across southern Phrygia to central Anatolia and Cappadocia,27 and was recognised as one of the most important trading entrepôts of inner Anatolia.28 A Roman military garrison was stationed east of the city at Eldere/Pınarbaşı, controlling movement along major roads both from east to west and from north to south through its territory.29 Apamea’s north-west neighbour was Eumeneia, a Hellenistic foundation of the second century BC located at the north edge of the fertile 24 S. Mitchell, Olive Cultivation in the Economy of Roman Asia Minor, in S. Mitchell and C. Katsari (eds.), Patterns in the Economy of Roman Asia Minor (Swansea, 2005), 83–113, at 88–91. 25 See T. Drew-Bear, Nouvelles inscriptions de Phrygie (Amsterdam 1978); M. Christol and T. Drew-Bear, Documents latins de Phrygie, Tyche I (1986), 55–87 and Inscriptions de Dokimeion, Anatolia Antiqua 1 (1987), 83–117; M. Vitale, Imperial Phrygia. A ‘procuratorial province’ governed by liberti Augusti? Philia 1 (2016), 33–45. 26 P. Thonemann, The Maeander Valley. A historical geography from antiquity to Byzantium (Cambridge 2011). 27 Strabo XIV.2.29, 663. 28 Thonemann, Maeander, 99–129. 29 M. Christol, and T. Drew-Bear, T. Un castellum romain près d’Apamée de Phrygie (Vienna 1987); ‘Inscriptions militaires d’Aulutrene et d’Apamée de Phrygie’, in Y. le Bohec (ed.), La hiérarchie (Rangordnung) de l’armée romaine sous le Haut-Empire (Paris 1995), 57–92;

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but marshy valley around Işıklı Göl, which also later housed a Roman garrison. The city was strategically located to control access to the narrow valley of the Hamam Çay, which ran from the Phrygian Pentapolis to the upper Maeander.30 There were important Christian communities both at Apamea and in the territory of Eumeneia in the third century. The south-west quadrant of the Phrygian circle extends further west to the massif of Çökeles Dağ and the right bank of the upper Maeander valley, the ancient Hyrgaletici campi and the territory of Dionysopolis.31 After passing through the plain of the Hyrgaleis, the Maeander itself entered a deep canyon, which was overlooked by the mountain-top temple of Apollo Lairbenos, the most important pre-Christian religious centre of south-west Phrygia. The sanctuary was on the territory of the small Phrygian town of Motella (modern Medele), which was on the right bank of the Maeander, but seems increasingly to have been influenced if not controlled by its much larger south-western neighbour, Hierapolis (Pamukkale). Motella’s northern neighbour, on the margin of Phrygia and Lydia, was the small city of Blaundus (modern Sülümenli köy), one of the few sites of the region to have received detailed archaeological attention.32 The villages in the hilly country upstream of the Maeander gorge, west of modern Çivril, have produced Christian inscriptions and were identified as a likely location for the Montanist centres of Pepuza and Tymium, before more recent discoveries indicated more northerly sites in the valley of the river Senarus.33 The south-west quadrant of the Phrygian circle does not reach as far as the cities of the Lycus Valley, Hierapolis and Laodicea, major centres of population which were dominated economically by textile production. During the Roman and late Roman periods, these cities were culturally more closely linked to the Aegean region and the Mediterranean than to the interior of Phrygia, although the traditions concerning the apostle Philip at Hierapolis and the conflicts over Montanism and other heresies at both Hierapolis and Laodicea, indicate that they had intimate connections to the Christian communities of the Phrygian

30 31 32 33

M. Christol, ‘Au confins de l’Asie et de Galatie à l’époque impériale romaine entre Apamée de Phrygie et Apollonie de Pisidie, Revue des études anciennes 120 (2018), 439–64. P. Thonemann, The Maeander, 130–77. C. P. Jones, A Petition to Hadrian of 129 CE, Chiron 39 (2009), 445–461 at 458–59. A. Filges, Blaundos. Berichte zur Erforschung einer Kleinstadt im lydisch-phrygischen Grenzgebiet (Istanbuler Forschungen Band 48); see P. Thonemann, Phrygia: an anarchist history, 32–5. A. Strobel, Das Heilige Land der Montanisten (Berlin 1980) for the earlier view; P. Lampe and W. Tabbernee, Pepuza and Tymion. The Discovery and Archaeological Exploration of a Lost Ancient City and an Imperial Estate, 2008; see below chapter 5.15.

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interior. The history of Christianity in the Lycus valley has been discussed in detail by Ulrich Huttner in another volume of this series.34 Eumeneia’s northern neighbour was the city of Sebaste, which had been created under Augustus from a synoecism of rural Phrygian communities,35 and included the katoikiai of Eibeos and Dioskome. Beyond these were the westernmost towns of Roman Phrygia, Traianopolis and its larger neighbour, Temenothyrae (modern Uşak), located east of the Hermus river, the Gediz Çay, which flowed from the Mysian-Phrygian borderland into eastern Lydia.36 Before the reign of Domitian, Temenothyrae was one of three communities belonging to the tribe of the Mocadeni, whose other main settlements, Silandus and Bagis, were both reckoned to belong to Lydia.37 There was an important Christian community at Temenothyrae before the end of the second century, and the geographical centre of the Montanist movement, which emerged at this period, has been located on the imperial estate of Tymium and at Pepuza, the so-called New Jerusalem, in the thinly populated area between Temenothyrae and the Senarus river, the modern Banaz Çay, which flows south-west to join the Maeander in the canyon close to the sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenus. Acmonia, the best-documented city of western Phrygia, lay north-east of Sebaste in the upper valley of the Senarus. Acmonia was one of Phrygia’s gateways to western Asia Minor and attracted a large settlement of Italian émigrés in the first century BC, after Phrygia became part of the Roman province of Asia. They grew wealthy on commerce, especially the slave trade, and many of them became large land-owners. Acmonia also contained a Jewish community whose origins probably went back to the settlement of Jews in western and central Asia Minor by the Seleucid king Antiochus III in the late third century BC. Higher up the valley was the small town of Alia, near modern Islamköy.38 East of Acmonia on the west slopes of the mountain range which ran from Ahır Dağ (1898 m) in the north-east, and Kızıl Dağ (1732 m) to Çatmalı 34 Thonemann, Phrygia: an anarchist history, 8 and 23: ‘By the Roman imperial period the lower Lykos valley was culturally indistinguishable from the Hellenized regions of lowland western Asia Minor.’ For early Christianity in these cities, see Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus, Valley. 35 See the verse inscription SGO 3, 16/01.01; SEG 47, 1749. 36 T. Drew-Bear, ‘The city of Temenouthyrai in Phrygia’, Chiron 9 (1979), 275–302; S. Mitchell. An epigraphic probe into the origins of Montanism, in Thonemann (ed.), Roman Phrygia (2013), 168–97. 37 C. Habicht, New evidence on the province of Asia, JRS 65 (1975), 64–91 at 66 and 72. 38 T. Drew-Bear, Problèmes de la géographie historique en Phrygie: L’example d’Alia, ANRW II.7.2 (1980) 932–952; P. Weiß, Alioi: Zum Namen eines kleinasiatischen Städtchens und byzantinischen Suffraganbistums in Phrygien, Chiron 23 (1993), 415–28.

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Dağ (1754 m), there was another tribal region, belonging to the Moxeani. Two small towns emerged here in the Roman empire at Siocharax and Dioclea.39 The north-western quadrant of the Phrygian circle extended from Temenothyrae back to Dorylaeum. It is a matter of modern debate whether this western part of the Phrygian circle should be reckoned as belonging to Lydia or to Phrygia,40 but the regional culture had many Phrygian characteristics.41 The inhabitants of the region identified themselves as the Mysoi Abbaitai in the late Hellenistic period. Decrees of the Abbaitan Mysians have been recorded at Iulia Gordus and Silandus, both cities that later lay within the boundaries of Lydia.42 Eusebius reported that the first prophecies of the heretic Montanus were pronounced in the village of Artabau, ‘in the Mysian part of Phrygia’.43 Mysian Phrygia included the city of Cadi, modern Gediz,44 in the upper valley of the Hermus river, at the south-east corner of one of the remotest highland areas of western Turkey, which included the peaks of Şaphane Dağ (2121 m), Simav Dağ (ancient Mount Temnus, 1801 m), Akdağ (2089 m) and Eğrigöz Dağ (2131 m). The main settlements here included Synaus (Simav), Ancyra Sidera (Kilise Köy) and Tiberiopolis (Eğrigöz), as well as the outlying 39 See MAMA XI, 157 with comm. by P. Thonemann. 40 Peter Herrmann included the inscriptions of the upper Hermus valley as far as Bagis and the katoikia of Lyendos as part of north-east Lydia, arguing for this view in Theoi Pereudenoi, Ep. Anat. 3 (1984), 1–17 = Kleinasien im Spiegel epigraphischer Zeugnisse (Berlin 2016), 81–101 at 81 n.1. C. Naour, Inscriptions du Moyen Hermos, ZPE 44 (1981), 11–44; Nouvelles inscriptions du moyen Hermos, EA 2 (1983), 107–41; Nouveaux documents du moyen Hermos, EA 5 (1985), 37–76; Documents du moyen Hermos, Travaux et Recherches en Turquie 2 (1984), 21–78 insisted on the Phrygian characteristics found in many inscriptions from this region. See T. Drew-Bear, Introduction to map 62 of the Barrington Atlas (1996): ‘During the period which produced Greek and Latin documents in the region covered by Herrmann’s partial corpus of “North-East Lydia” (TAM V.1), this area did not in fact form part of Lydia, but constituted the southern part of Mysia Abbaeitis and was culturally linked to Phrygia, not to the Lydian plain’. 41 T. Lochman, Phrygien, 204 with nn. 28–29, who suggests that the whole region as far west as the ‘Burnt Land’, the Catacecaumene around Kula (ancient Maeonia) was ‘vielmehr mit Phrygien als mit Lydien in Verbindung’. 42 Decree of Mysioi Abbaitai from Silandus (T. Drew-Bear, Géographie administrative, 119 n. 109); C. Naour, ZPE 44 (1981), 12 n. 5; H. Malay and G. Petzl, A posthumous decree for Philomelos, Epigr. Anatol. 36 (2003), 19–23; from Iulia Gordus, Petzl and Malay, Epigr. Anatol. 3 (1984), 157–165 (SEG 34, 1198). A decree of the Abbaitan Mysians and the Epicteteis of 74/73 BC was set up at Rome, OGIS 445 = IG XIV 112. For their coinage see F. Imhof-Blumer, Die Prägeorte der Abbaiter, Epikteter, Grimenothyriten und Temenothyriten Festschrift Benndorf (Lepizig 1898), 201–8. 43 Eusebius, HE 5.16.7: ἐν τῇ κατὰ Φρυγίαν Μυσίᾳ. 44 The Turkish town of Gediz, on the ancient site, was relocated seven kilometres south to Yeni Gediz following an earthquake in 1970.

section 2.1: The Phrygian Circle: A Land-locked Geography

35

valley of Tavşanlı, where the ancient toponymy is not recorded.45 The mountains were separated by the valleys of major rivers, the Rhyndacus (Koca Su) and the Macestus (Simav Çay), which flowed into the Propontis (the sea of Marmara), and the Hermus (Gediz Çay), which reached the Aegean north of Smyrna. The lowland country south of the Propontis which lies outside the geographical scope of this study, was known to Strabo and other ancient writers as Hellespontine Phrygia, and at least some of the indigenous population of the region were described as Phrygians at the time of the Macedonian conquest of Asia Minor.46 The major cities of the north-west quadrant were Aezani (Çavdarhisar), located in the middle of a high plain astride the river Penkalas, a tributary of the upper Rhyndacus, and its north-east neighbour Cotiaeum, in a side valley of the Tembris, which was separated from Aezani by the high ridge of Gümüş Dağ and Yellice Dağ (1773 m). Aezani, a hellenistic military settlement from the second century BC, is the only Phrygian city outside Laodicea and Hierapolis in the Lycus valley which demonstrably acquired the full range of public buildings typical of a Graeco-Roman city. Urbanization had begun in the hellenistic period and was sustained until the third century.47 Aezani’s most prestigious building, the temple of Zeus, was dedicated in the reign of Domitian, perhaps in 92, while the construction of the large bath-house, the stadium and the theatre began in the middle years of the second century.48 The plain of Aezani and the headwaters of the river Rhyndacus were overlooked from the south by the highest mountain of western Phrygia, Murat Dağ (2234 m), which in antiquity was known as Dindymus, like its homonym at Pessinus.49 A low ridge at the east edge separated the Aezani plain from the rich agricultural land of the Upper Tembris Valley, a region of prosperous settlements in the river valley south of Cotiaeum, some attached to imperial estates, including the small towns of Appia (Turkish Abye, renamed Pınarcık), which originated in the first century BC,50 and Soa (Altıntaş), which became 45 See MAMA IX, xviii–xxii. 46 SIG3 279. 47 K. Rheidt, Aizanoi in hellenistischer Zeit, in E. Schwertheim and E. Winter (eds.), Neue Funde und Forschungen in Phrygien (Asia Minor Studien 61; Bonn 2008), 107–22; Thonemann, Anarchist history, 25–26. 48 K. Rheidt (ed.), Aizanoi und Anatolien. Neue Entdeckungen zur Geschichte und Archäologie im Hochland des westlichen Kleinasiens (Mainz 2010). 49 For Murat Dağ, see L. Robert, Nonnos et les monnaies d’Akmonia de Phrygie, Journal des Savants 1975, 153–92 at 175–80, citing the descriptions of the German geographer-explorers Philippson and Von Diest. 50 C. P. Jones, Appia in Phrygia and Appius Claudius Pulcher, cos. 54 BCE, Studi ellenistici 13 (2001), 233–41.

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a city at the end of the third century.51 This part of north central Phrygia has produced an extraordinary abundance of elaborate gravestones and votive monuments of the later second, third and early fourth centuries, including the famous series of ‘Christians for Christians’ inscriptions.52 Strabo considered that six cities of northern Phrygia – Cadi, Aezani, Cotiaeum, Dorylaeum, Nacolea and Midaeum  – belonged to Phrygia Epictetus, a term given to the parts of Phrygia which came under Attalid control after the treaty of Apamea (188 BC) in the reign of Eumenes II.53 Phrygia was a highland zone. Afyon itself is 1021 metres above sea level. The larger Phrygian settlements near the rim of the circle were sited at altitudes between 700 and 900 metres,54 while the ones in central Phrygia were higher, up to 1150 metres.55 The highest peaks, ranging between 2250 and 2550 m are lower than the northern Anatolian massif of Olgassys in Paphlagonia (2587 m.), or Barla Dağ (2734 m.) in northern Pisidia but constituted a formidable knot of mountainous territory in central Asia Minor, markedly different in climate and terrain from the broad river valleys and hilly areas towards the Aegean. The rivers of Phrygia flowed out from the centre of the knot. Afyon’s own river, the Akar Çay (ancient Caystrus), which was fed by a network of small tributaries, runs southeast towards the internal lakes of the central plateau, Eber Göl and Aksehir Göl.56 The streams north of here, in the north-east quadrant, feed the upper waters of the Sangarius, which threads its way eastwards towards Galatia and back through eastern Bithynia to the Black Sea. The Sangarius’s large western tributary, the Tembris (Porsuk), originated in the upland valley south of Altıntaş and ran past Cotiaeum and through Dorylaeum before joining the Sangarius near Gordium. The Rhyndacus (Koca Çay) flows north from the foothills of Murat Dağ to Tavşanlı, and then cuts through the Mysian forests north-westward to reach the sea of Marmara. The sources of another Propontic river, the Macestus, were on the north-west rim of the Phrygian circle near Simav/Synaus. The springs of the Macestus were separated by a 51 For the remains at Soa, see K. Belke, TIB 7, 385. 52 See Lochman, Phrygien. 53 Strabo XII.8.12, 576; M. Ricl, Cults of Phrygia Epiktetos in the Roman Imperial period, EA 50 (2017), 133–48, esp. 133 n. 1; S. Şahin, Studien über die Probleme der historischen Geographie des nordwestlichen Kleinasiens, EA 7 (1986), 129–42. 54 Gediz 738; Eskişehir 790; Akşehir 816; Tavşanlı 849; Dinar 880, Uşak 890. 55 Kütahya 930; Emirdağ 982; Bolvadın 997; Çavdarhisar 1006; Sivrihisar 1070; Uluborlu 1100; Şuhut 1138; Yalvaç 1150. 56 In distant antiquity, and perhaps even up to Byzantine times, these two lakes may have been joined in a single unit, known as the Lake of the Forty Martyrs; TIB 7, Phrygien und Pisidien, s.v. Tessarakonta Martyron; Wenzel, H. Sultan-Dagh und Akschehir-Ova. Eine landeskundliche Untersuchung in Inneranatolien (Kiel 1932), 29 ff.

section 2.2: In and Out of Phrygia: Roads and Routes

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watershed from the headwaters of the Hermus near Gediz, which flowed first south-west and then due west to the Aegean. The major river in the south-west quadrant was the Senarus, which rose on the south slopes of Murat Dağ near Acmonia, and ran, often through deep canyons, to join the Maeander (Büyük Menderes) west of Çal near Dionysopolis. The source of the Maeander itself lay east of Apamea and was fed by three other local rivers before it ran north towards Eumeneia and then turned west, cutting its way through a long deep canyon before it joined its southern affluent, the Lycus, near Lydian Tripolis.57 2.2

In and Out of Phrygia: Roads and Routes

The major trans-Anatolian routes of the Roman and Byzantine periods skirted or avoided Phrygia. Manius Aquillius, the first proconsul of Roman Asia from 129–126 BC, created a road system in western Asia Minor based on a long-distance route across Anatolia, which began at Lampsacus on the Hellespont, and ended on the south coast of Asia Minor at Side in Pamphylia. Branches running westwards linked Pergamum, Sardis and Laodicea on the Lycus, which were on this transanatolian route, with the coastal metropoleis of Smyrna and Ephesus, but the original Roman road system in Asia hardly impinged on Phrygia at all.58 Meanwhile, the major highway from Byzantium/Constantinople to Syrian Antioch ran through Ancyra to the Cilician Gates, passing east of Phrygia. Only a single Phrygian route appears in the Itinerarium Antonini, the road from Dorylaeum through Pessinus to Ancyra.59 The west-east route from the Aegean to Cappadocia, Strabo’s koine hodos, which followed the Maeander and Lycus valleys, reached the south- west Phrygian quadrant at Apamea, and then curved north-east along the northern slopes of Sultan Dağ to Çay, where it joined the route which came in from Afyon and headed south-east to Philomelium, Lycaonia and eventually Cappadocia.60 A more difficult alternative, partly indicated in the Peutinger table, tracked the southern slopes of

57 Thonemann, Maeander, 67–75 is a recent account of the complex hydrography of Apamea; for the upper course of the river as far as Tripolis, see a modern traveller’s account, Patrick Seal, Meander. East to west along a Turkish river (London 2012), chapters 1–12. 58 D. H. French, Roman Roads and Milestones of Asia Minor III.1. Republican Milestones (https://biaa.ac.uk/ckeditor/filemanager/userfiles/electronic_publications/previews/3.1 _Republican_summary.pdf 2012). 59 It. Ant. 202.6–203.2; compare Peutinger Table Route 29: Pesinunte  – Tricomia  – Mideo – Dorileo. 60 See B. M. Levick, Roman Colonies in Southern Asia Minor (Oxford 1967), 7–21.

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Sultan Dağ and followed the course of the Augustan via Sebaste to Apollonia, Antioch and eventually Iconium.61 The internal road system of Roman Phrygia has not been comprehensively explored,62 and is only partially reflected in the most detailed ancient itinerary, the Peutinger Table. The main lines of communication with other regions were clearly defined, often by unavoidable geographical parameters. From the north-west the only well-used and practicable routes were those that reached the Eskişehir plain east and west of Bozüyük, one coming over the mountains from Söğüt in the north,63 the other from the direction of Bithynian Prusa (Bursa) to the north-west. The latter connected to the harbours of the Propontis, including Nicomedia, Apamea-Myrleia, Panormus (Bandırma) and Cyzicus. This was Phrygia’s shortest road to a sea coast and a window to the Mediterranean and Black Sea worlds. It was commercially important at all periods, notably for the Phrygian slave trade.64 When the first groups of Phryges migrated into Anatolia from Thrace in the late second or early first millennium BC (see below), they surely followed this approach to the interior highlands. There were other much longer routes from north-west Phrygia to the Propontine plain, running west from Cotiaeum and Tavşanlı, or from Cadi and Synaus following the Macestus valley, but these were less intensively used in antiquity.65 The routes from the Aegean region (Ephesus, Smyrna) into northern and central Phrygia ran along the Hermus valley through the Lydian plain and passed Sardis. Near Bagis in eastern Lydia, a branch cut north-eastwards towards Cadi and Aezani, thus accessing Mysian territory and northern Phrygia. A valuable sidelight on its use under the Roman empire comes from a letter sent by the emperor Pertinax to the east Lydian city of Tabala, which refers to soldiers in transit to Aezani.66 After Aezani, a relatively easy continuation ran 61 Peutinger Table route 55: Apamea Ciboton – Apollonia – Antiochia Pisidia [– Sidi]). 62 A. Külzer, Roads and routes in western Phrygia in late antiquity, in T. Kaçar and C. Şimşek (eds.) The Lykos Valley and Neighbourhood in Late Antiquity (Istanbul 2018), 55–63. 63 Corresponding to Peutinger table Route 30: Dorileo – Agrillio – Nicea; see 26 n. 3. 64 David M. Lewis, Greek Slave Systems in their Eastern Mediterranean Context (Oxford 2018), 277–86; see also 44 nn. 95, 97–8. 65 A railway line to Smyrna follows the northern route from Cotiaeum. R. Talbert et al. Map of Asia Minor (Princeton 2015) misleadingly marks a major road from Cotiaeum to Hadriani in Mysia, and another from Cadi to Ancyra Sidera and beyond, without showing the much more important highway along the Hermus valley, south-west from Cadi. For connections in the middle Byzantine period between Synaus and the Propontis see the Life of St Agapetus, discussed in chapter 6.5. 66 SEG 38, 1244 (Tabala); MAMA IX, xx n. 73; Mitchell, Anatolia I, 228–29, with references to further literature.

section 2.2: In and Out of Phrygia: Roads and Routes

39

across a spur of Yellice Dağ to Cotiaeum and then east of the river Tembris to Dorylaeum. Aezani, despite being the most sophisticated city in northern Phrygia, was relatively isolated from other centres, and perhaps for this reason briefly acquired the status of a Roman assize centre in the second century, presumably serving the other communities of the north-west quadrant of the Phrygian circle. Its importance diminished in late antiquity.67 The main highway out of Lydia continued east from Bagis to Temenothyrae, bypassed Acmonia, which was placed in a side valley of the Banaz Ova, and crossed the watershed to Appia and to Soa in the Tembris valley. From here it ran north-east to Meirus, at the east edge of the Phrygian Highlands, Nacolea and Dorylaeum.68 There were important junctions near Dumlupınar, which not coincidentally was the location of the decisive battle in Turkey’s independence war in August 1923, when the invading Greek forces were repelled from central Anatolia.69 An important branch from the road between Temenothyrae and Dorylaeum took travellers east towards Afyon and the communities of the Akar Çay, including the quarry town of Docimium. Although there was no major city in this stretch, the road between the upper valley of the Banaz Çay (territory of Acmonia) across the watershed near Dumlupınar to Afyon was a critical axis of communication throughout Phrygia’s history and one of the reasons for the growing importance of Afyon itself in the Middle Byzantine period. The southern highway from the Aegean coast avoided the difficult canyon of the upper Maeander by veering ESE along its tributary, the Lycus, and connected the cities of Hierapolis, Laodicea and Colossae. A side road ran north-east from Hierapolis to Sebaste, crossing the northern part of the Hyrgalian plain, north of Dionysopolis.70 A little to the east of Colossae another road branched north from near Kaklık to Çal and then into the high plains and

67 68

See chapter 5.3. Corresponding to Peutinger Table Route 48: Philadelphia – Clanudda – Aludda – Agmonia – coclea – Dorileo. This partially followed the course of the Persian royal road linking Sardis with Gordium. For the western sections of these routes that linked Lydia with Phrygia, see A. Külzer, Byzantine Lydia: some remarks on communication routes and settlement places, in P. Magdalino and N. Necipoğlu, Trade in Byzantium (Papers from the Third International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Studies Symposium, Istanbul 2016), 279–95, esp. 286–91. 69 See L. Robert, Nonnos et les monnaies d’Akmonie de Phrygie, Journal des Savants 1975, 175 n. 100: ‘de tout temps un lieu de passage essentiel et inévitable’. 70 See A. Külzer, Roads in western Phrygia, 60: a minor route over the mountainous territory north of Hierapolis, which provided access to the marble quarries near Thiounta, modern Gözler.

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hills around the Karbasan,71 and eastwards towards Çivril. From Çivril, which was close to Byzantine Siblia/Choma,72 this connected to Eumeneia at Işıklı. A road from Eumeneia ran north-east through the narrow valley of the Hamam Çay to the plain of the Phrygian Pentapolis, thus forming a south-western gateway to central Phrygia. However, the main road from the Lycus valley continued past lake Anava, modern Acıgöl, to the key intersection of Apamea. Three main roads headed into central Phrygia from Apamea. One ran almost due north, merged in the Sandıklı plain with the road coming from Eumeneia, and joined the east-west routes which led to Afyon near Dumlupınar.73 A second road ran north-east from Apamea past Metropolis in the Çöl Ovası, and then through the Şuhut Ovası to Synnada and Prymnessus. The third road, protected by the Roman fort at Aulutrene, crossed the high ridge between the territory of Apamea and Apollonia, and continued to Antioch.74 Access to Phrygia from the East was more straightforward. The main road from Ancyra in Galatia crossed the Sangarius at Gordium and ran south-west through the small Roman colony of Germa and the old town of Pessinus. South of Pessinus it re-crossed the Sangarius at the Çandır bridge and continued to Docimium. The route between Docimium and Synnada,75 which continues south-west towards Metropolis and Apamea, was particularly important because it sustained the transport of marble from the Docimian quarries towards the great Roman cities of southern and western Asia Minor. An inscription found at Sülümenli, ancient Antimacheia, which lay directly on this road, recorded the complaints in 237 of the villagers, that they were responsible for supplying mounts for all the long-distance official traffic from Ancyra which passed through their community.76 Conversely, the petition of the inhabitants of Orcistus to Constantine in the 320s made much of the fact that their town, which contained a government road station, was ideally located at a cross-roads.77 The Orcistus mansio may have been at the intersection of the Pessinus-Docimium road with one that ran from Nacolea south-west to Amorium.78 Amorium itself was the starting point for routes that ran east and 71 A. Strobel, Das heilige Land der Montanisten (Berlin 1980), 140; see chapter 5.15 n. 108. 72 See chapter 5.16 n. 128. 73 Compare Peutinger Table Route 60: Dorileo – Nacolea – Corni – Eucarpia – Eumenia – Pella – ad vicum – Apamea Ciboton. 74 See 31 n. 29 and chapter 5.17. 75 Cf Peutinger Table route 61: Synnada – Docymeo – [-] – Dorileo. 76 SEG 9, xxx; for the road through Synnada, see below chapter 5.20. 77 MAMA VII, 305. 78 Compare Peutinger table route 30: Pesinunte  – Abrostola  – Amurio. A Seljuk or early Ottoman building on the site of Orcistus at Ortaköy, which incorporates Middle Byzantine

section 2.2: In and Out of Phrygia: Roads and Routes

41

south-east into the central Anatolian steppic country of southern Galatia and Lycaonia.79 The route from Lycaonia to central Phrygia followed the modern highway from Konya to Afyon, past ancient Philomelium and Lysias, north-east of the Sultandağları. This was joined by two branches coming in from the west: one crossed the Sultandağları between Philomelium and Antioch, the other skirted the north end of the range, running from Çay (? ancient Lysias) to Metropolis in the Çöl Ova and Apamea.80 The main road from Philomelium continued towards Prymnessus, its Byzantine successor Afyon, and Docimium. Only a handful of inscribed milestones predating the Severan period have been found in Phrygia. They include three from the reign of Domitian, two of them found at the villages of Ismail and Ağzıkara, which were located on the route from Docimium through Synnada towards Apamea. In addition, a milestone of the reign of Trajan in AD 101 has been recorded at Philomelium.81 It may not be a coincidence that two of these milestones come from the critical road that served the marble quarries of Docimium, imperial properties which had been intensively worked since the reign of Tiberius. The transport of marble overland, whether in the form of large architectural pieces, unfinished sarcophagi, or even relatively modest products, would have made extraordinary demands of the transport system. The heavy loads required special road construction, large labour forces, the provision of numerous draft animals especially oxen, and special carts and sledges.82 No other milestones were set up along Phrygian roads in the second century before the Severan period, and the overwhelming majority of inscribed milestones from the region dates to the third and fourth centuries.83 They mark fragments including ICG 1293, seems to have been a han and may be a replacement for the late Roman mansio. 79 Peutinger Table route 31: Laudicia catacecaumeno  – Amurio; route 33: Amurio  – Abrostola – Toloscorio – Bagrum – Vetisso etc. 80 Peutinger table route 62: Synnada – Euforbio (unlocated) – Apamea Ciboton. 81 French, RRMAM 3.5, 45B (Ağzıkara, AD 94/95; between Docimium and Synnada); RRMAM 3.5, 91 (Ismail, AD 90–91); RRMAM 3.5, 71B (Hierapolis AD 84/85, with a supplementary text for Nerva in AD 97); RRMAM 3.5, 93A (Philomelium AD 101, set up by the governor of Galatia-Cappadocia). 82 The logistic problems of moving marble from the Phrygian quarries have been acknowledged but not comprehensively studied. J. Ward-Perkins, Nicomedia and the marble trade, PBSR 48 (1980), 23–69 at 28–31 argued that marble was taken from Docimium to the Sangarius, and then by river and canal to Nicomedia. 83 Many examples are dated to the period 198–209, the combined rule of Septimius Severus, Caracalla and Geta, with the name of the last invariably erased; several texts were inscribed around the mid-third century (RRMAM 3.5, 1; 2; 85A; 88A; 88B; 93B; 158) and in the 270s (RRMAM 3.5, 74A; 78C; 93B). There was a big up-swing in the tetrarchic period

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Chapter 2: Phrygia – The Land and Its Peoples

the presence of Roman imperial power, honour the reigning emperors, and show that the Roman communication network was well maintained through the third and fourth centuries, but the roads themselves must have existed and been heavily used before this period. There is little doubt that all the substantial settlements of Roman Phrygia were served by the regional road network, and that access by road from other regions of Anatolia was unproblematic. However, it is worth noting that none of the major routes into Phrygia from outside led directly to the most important cities of central and northern Phrygia, including Acmonia, Aezani and Synnada, thus re-inforcing the impression that in important respects Roman Phrygia was a world to itself. 2.3

People and Settlements (Maps 2–3)

Phrygia was named after its inhabitants, the Phryges, who were first mentioned in the classical sources by Homer, as allies of the Trojans.84 According to Herodotus, they had originally occupied land in European Thrace between the river Strymon and Mount Athos, and were known to the Macedonians, their neighbours, as Bryges or Brygoi.85 They had adopted the form Phryges after they emigrated to Asia.86 Xenophon referred to a legend about Midas and Silenus in Phrygia, which Herodotus had located in Macedonia.87 Strabo also believed that the Phryges were originally inhabitants of Thrace, where they were known as Bryges. He followed the view that they acquired their new name after leaving their homeland shortly before the Trojan war,88 although he also cited the opinion of another writer, Xanthos of Sardis, who dated the

84 85 86 87 88

and throughout the whole reign of Constantine, with new inscriptions faithfully reflecting the changing composition of the imperial college. The texts become infrequent after 337 and taper to a single outlier in 423–425 (RRMAM 3.5, 66). Homer, Il. 2, 862–4: Φόρκυς αὖ Φρύγας ἦγε καὶ Ἀσκάνιος θεοειδὴς / τῆλ᾽ ἐξ Ἀσκανίης· μέμασαν δ᾽ ὑσμῖνι μάχεσθαι. Homer names Phrygian leaders at Il. 3, 184 and 16, 717. Herod. 7.73: Φρύγες δὲ ἀγχοτάτω τῆς Παφλαγονικῆς σκευὴν εἶχον, ὀλίγον παραλλάσσοντες. οἱ δὲ Φρύγες, ὡς Μακεδόνες λέγουσι, ἐκαλέοντο Βρίγες χρόνον ὅσον Εὐρωπήιοι ἐόντες σύνοικοι ἦσαν Μακεδόσι, μεταβάντες δὲ ἐς τὴν Ἀσίην ἅμα τῇ χώρῃ καὶ τὸ οὔνομα μετέβαλον ἐς Φρύγας. Herod. 6. 45 (Βρύγοι Θρήικες); 7. 185 (Βρύγοι). Xenophon, Anab. 1.2.13; Herodotus 8. 138. Strabo 10.3.22; καὶ οἱ μὲν ἐπιχωρίους τῆς Ἴδης οἱ δὲ ἐποίκους, πάντες δὲ σίδηρον εἰργάσθαι ὑπὸ τούτων ἐν Ἴδῃ πρῶτόν φασι, πάντες δὲ καὶ γόητας ὑπειλήφασι καὶ περὶ τὴν μητέρα τῶν θεῶν καὶ ἐν Φρυγίᾳ ᾠκηκότας περὶ τὴν Ἴδην, Φρυγίαν τὴν Τρῳάδα καλοῦντες διὰ τὸ τοὺς Φρύγας ἐπικρατῆσαι πλησιοχώρους ὄντας τῆς Τροίας ἐκπεπορθημένης. cf. Pliny NH 5. 145.

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migration after the Trojan war.89 There are sufficient similarities between the archaeological cultures of Thrace and north-west Anatolia, in particular the practice of tumulus burials, to suggest that the traditions preserved by these later Greek writers had some historical foundation, but it is impossible to tell whether the migrations took place over a short or a long time period, and whether the affinities between the regions were the result of conquest or of peaceful assimilation. During the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, and in later periods, the waters of the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara and the Bosporos were as much a bridge as a barrier between the peoples of the south-east Balkans and north-west Anatolia. Between the tenth and the seventh centuries BC the Phrygians of Anatolia emerged as a complex, stratified society, which is best known from the excavation of the fortified citadel of Gordium. This included a palatial residence, workshops equipped with looms for textile production, and extensive provision for food storage. Gordium remained a regional power centre until about 700 BC. A form of the alphabet was introduced and inscriptions in Old Phrygian have been found far beyond the boundaries of Roman Phrygia, at Dascylium near the Propontis, at Tyana at the foot of the Taurus Mountains, and beyond the river Halys at the site of Kerkenes Dağ in Cappadocia.90 According to Greek writers the Phrygians were ruled by the dynasty of king Midas, based at Gordium, but the historical basis of this tradition is obscure and disputable. The rulers of Gordium may only have been one of several Phrygian dynasties, each with its own power base.91 Phrygian settlements and monuments were also established in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BC in the Phrygian Highlands north-east of Afyon, including the monumental rock sanctuaries at Yazılıkaya (the so-called ‘Midas Monument’) and Arslankaya.92 The settlements in the Phrygian Highlands, squeezed between Lydian power to the west and that of the Persian Empire, collapsed around the middle of the sixth century BC. Gordium underwent radical change in the 89 Fr. Gr. Hist 765 F14. 90 Cl. Brixhe and M. Lejeune, Corpus des inscriptions paléo-phrygiennes (2 volumes, Paris: 1984). Old Phrygian language from 8th–6th cent. BC. The Paleo-Phrygian corpus is divided geographically into inscriptions of Midasşehri (Yazılıkaya), Gordion, Bithynia, Pteria (Kerkenes Dağ), Tyana, Dascylium, and Bayındır (northern Lycia). For a map see U. Kelp, Grabdenkmal und Lokale Identität. Ein Bild der Landschaft Phrygien in der römischen Kaiserzeit. 91 H. Grenz, The Iron Age in Central Anatolia, in G.R. Tsetskhladze (ed.), The Black Sea, Greece, Anatolia and Europe in the First Millennium BC (Colloquia Antiqua 1. Peeters: Leuven. 2011), 331–368, at 360–61. 92 S. Berndt-Ersöz, Phrygian Rock-Cut Shrines: structure, function and cult practice (Leiden 2006), 111–77.

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Achaemenid period. The large megarons, which reflect the economic role of Phrygian Gordium as a hub of storage and redistribution, were replaced by different types of building, which may have had either administrative or ritual functions. Population levels were sustained in the lower town and the area west of the fortified mound, but the houses themselves were modest pit dwellings. The economy of Gordium at this period seems to have depended heavily on raising sheep and goats. The changes were surely a direct or indirect consequence of the Persian conquest of Asia Minor.93 Phrygian dynasts had ceased to be a major political force, economic activity was at a lower level, and material remains are modest or entirely absent from the archaeological sites.94 Phrygian as a written language almost disappeared, at least from monumental contexts. Before the end of the Old Phrygian kingdom, the region was already known as an important source of slaves who were traded with the Greek world and throughout the Near East.95 A fragment of the Greek poet Hipponax implies the sale of Phrygian slaves at Miletus in Ionia. Sources of the fifth and fourth centuries BC for Phrygian slaves in Greek cities throw an indirect light on this otherwise poorly documented ‘middle Phrygian’ period. The fifth-century comic dramatist, Hermippus of Smyrna, listed slaves as Phrygia’s typical export to Athens,96 and other literary and epigraphic sources indicate that Phrygia was among the most important sources of Athenian slaves in the classical period.97 It is likely that much of the commerce was initiated by Anatolian landowners and chieftains who sold slaves to traders at coastal ports in exchange for Greek and other luxury products.98 Trade in Phrygian slaves continued throughout the rest of antiquity. After Alexander’s conquest of Asia Minor and the rest of the Persian empire, Lydia, Phrygia and other parts of western and central Asia Minor were rapidly occupied by Macedonian settlers, who received (or simply occupied) land as the reward 93 E. R. M. Dusinberre, The collapse of empire at Gordion in the transition from the Achaemenid to the Hellenistic world’, Anatolian Studies 69 (2019), 109–32. 94 Thonemann, Anarchist history, 11–15 highlights the extraordinary extent of this recession, which he characterises, in effect, as a retreat into statelessness. 95 David M. Lewis, Greek Slave Systems in their Eastern Mediterranean Context, c.800–146 BC (Oxford 2018). 96 Hipponax fr. 27 (West); Hermippos fr. 63 a (Kassel-Austin), quoted by Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 1, 27d-e. 97 David M. Lewis, Near Eastern slaves in classical Attica and the slave trade with Persian territories, Classical Quarterly 61 (2011), 91–113. 98 David M. Lewis, The market for slaves in the fifth and fourth-century Aegean: the case of Achaemenid Anatolia, in E.M. Harris / D.M. Lewis / M. Woolmer, The Ancient Greek Economy: Markets, Households and City States (Cambridge 2016), 316–36.

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for their service in the armies of Alexander the Great and his successors.99 A passage from Plutarch’s life of Eumenes, illustrates in microcosm how military officers and mercenary commanders acquired possession of Phrygian territory, in this case in the region around Celaenae, the later Apamea, which served as Eumenes’ headquarters in the winter of 321/320 BC. [Eumenes] marched away into upper Phrygia and wintered at Celaenae. Here the followers of Alcetas, Polemon, and Docimus strove emulously with him for the chief command, whereupon he said, ‘This bears out the saying, “Of perdition no account is made”’. Having promised to give his soldiers their pay within three days, he sold them the homesteads and castles about the country, which were full of slaves and flocks. Then every captain in the phalanx or commander of mercenaries who had bought a place was supplied by Eumenes with implements and engines of war and took it by siege; and so every soldier received the pay that was due him, in a distribution of the captured properties.100 In this way a new landed elite, consisting of veteran Macedonian officers, soldiers and their retinues, began to assert itself in late fourth-century Phrygia. Macedonian settlements can be identified archaeologically at Gordium itself, at the site of Seyitömer Hüyük north of Kütahya/Cotiaeum, and at Tyriaeum in south-east Phrygia. A dossier of royal letters from the Pergamene king Eumenes II shows how the fortified katoikia of Tyriaeum was promoted to the status of a fully organized polis in 188 BC.101 99 S. Mitchell, Dispelling Seleucid Phantoms. Macedonians in Western Asia Minor from Alexander to the Attalids, in K. Erickson (ed.) The Seleucid Empire 281–222 BC. War in the Family (Swansea 2018), 11–35; Makedonen überall! Die makedonische Landnahme in Kleinasien, Panegyrikoi Logoi. Festschrift für Johannes Nollé zum 65. Geburtstag (Bonn 2019), 331–52. 100 Plutarch, Eum. 8. 4–5: ἐξήλασεν εἰς τὴν ἄνω Φρυγίαν καί διεχείμαζεν ἐν Κελαιναῖς· ὅπου τῶν μὲν περὶ τὸν Ἀλκέταν καί Πολέμωνα καί Δόκιμον ὑπὲρ ἡγεμονίας διαφιλοτιμουμένων πρὸς αὐτόν, ‘τοῦτο ἦν,’ ἔφη, ‘τὸ λεγόμενον, ὀλέθρου δὲ οὐθεὶς λόγος.’ τοῖς δὲ στρατιώταις ὑποσχόμενος ἐν τρισὶν ἡμέραις τὸν μισθὸν ἀποδώσειν ἐπίπρασκεν ἐν αὐτοῖς τὰς κατὰ τὴν χώραν ἐπαύλεις καί τετραπυργίας σωμάτων καί βοσκημάτων γεμούσας. ὁ δὲ πριάμενος ἡγεμὼν τάγματος ἢ ξεναγός ὄργανα καί μηχανὰς τοῦ Εὐμένους παρέχοντος ἐξεπολιόρκει· καί πρὸς τὸν ὀφειλόμενον μισθὸν οἱ στρατιῶται διενέμοντο τῶν ἁλισκομένων ἕκαστον. 101 SEG 1997, 1745; English translation by Austin 2006, 412–4 no. 236. P. Thonemann, Cistophoric geography: Toriaion and Kormasa, Numismatic Chronicle 168 (2008), 43–60, esp. 46–8 and plates 1–3, is wrong to locate Tyriaion at the small fortification of at Kale Tepe (cf Belke and Mersich, TIB 7, 1990, 215–6 s.v. Bulasan, with plates 31 and 32); it should be placed at the substantial fortified hill beside Mahmuthisar. The site at Kale Tepe, however, had redoubtable fortifications built from massive masonry and appears to have been

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A handful of epitaphs dating to the fourth and third centuries BC relates to prominent settlers from these communities of Macedonian veterans. They include the gravestone of Demetria daughter of Bacchios, from Larisa in Thessaly, who was buried at Synnada, and the funerary epigrams of the strikingly named Philippos the Macedonian, who had been born in the Macedonian region of Elemia and was buried near Afyon, and of Demetrios, who had received many crowns for his courage in battle and been buried in the plains of Phrygia, famous for its horses, at the western edge of the Phrygian Highlands.102 Hoards of tetradrachms displaying the head of Alexander the Great which have been found at find spots across central Anatolia from Phrygia to Cappadocia, including Sinanpaşa near Afyon (IGCH 1395: 682 coins, c.318 BC), Eskişehir (IGCH 1396: 63 coins, c.315 BC), Yunak (IGCH 1397: 16 coins, c.300 BC), Aksaray (IGCH 1400: 19 coins, c.281 BC) and Gordium (IGCH 1401: 42 coins, c.280 BC), are further evidence for the presence of this wealthy new land-owning class. The Macedonians were Greek speakers, but they did not initially create poleis, Greek cities, in hellenistic western Asia Minor, but rural settlements, katoikiai. The occupants of these sites must have controlled most of Phrygia’s resources until the end of the second century BC, including the abundance of men, women and children who were sold into slavery. These communities had an agricultural base, but disposable income derived from farming probably played a secondary role to the wealth that the new settlers could obtain from stock-rearing and the sale of horses and cattle, from the slave trade, and from warfare. Livestock and slaves could easily be delivered down the routes and tracks of interior Antaolia to coastal ports. Moreover, Macedonians settled in western and central Anatolia were an important component of the armies of the Hellenistic successor kingdoms, especially of the Seleucids in the third and the Attalids in the second century BC. The new Macedonian elite became the dominant element in Phrygia’s population, but was not exclusive. Intermarriage with the indigenous population must have been the norm. There were important groups of Mysians, Galatians and residual Persians settled in different parts of Phrygian central Anatolia. After its re-foundation as a polis in 188 BC, Tyriaeum included the indigenous people, the enchorioi, as part of the citizenry.103 an early Hellenistic stronghold, matching the reference to tetrapyrgia found in Plutarch’s description of Eumenes’ land distributions. See chapter 4.13 n. 2. 102 MAMA IV, 49; SEG 43, 937; MAMA X, 220. 103 SEG 1997, 1745; C. Schuler, Kolonisten und Einheimische in einer attalidischen Polisgründung, ZPE 128 (1999), 124–132.

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Other Macedonian settlements, including Docimium near Afyon, Peltai, a community in the Maeander valley west of Apamea, and perhaps an obscure katoikia called Kleonnaeion, located near the Phrygian sanctuary of the Mother Goddess at Pessinus, which issued bronze coinage in the second or early first century BC, may also have acquired polis status by the second century.104 The only new city foundation named after a member of the Attalid dynasty was Eumeneia, in control of the strategic pass to the upper Maeander valley.105 It would be mistaken to see these developments as early steps on the road to the urbanization of Phrygia. None of these small-scale poleis developed significantly under the Roman empire. Neither Tyriaeum nor Gordium became a Roman city, Kleonnaeion disappeared as a separate polity by the time of the Roman empire. Peltai and Docimium remained insignificant under the Roman empire, despite the latter’s economic importance as the focus of Phrygia’s huge marble industry. The sources of wealth accessible to the new landowners helped Phrygia to emerge from the stagnation of the fifth and fourth centuries. After the Romans defeated the Seleucid king Antiochus III at the battle of Magnesia in 189 BC, most of Phrygia became part of the kingdom of the Attalid kings based in Pergamum. Peter Thonemann’s analysis of the way in which Phrygia was controlled under Attalid rule reaches the conclusion that power at a local level was devolved to the major regional estate owners. These will have included many Macedonians, but also families of native or even of Persian origin which had retained control of their land after the Macedonian conquest. Galatian landowners were also a significant presence in northern and eastern Phrygia.106 The Macedonian katoikia at Gordium remained an important commercial

104 Docimium: L. Robert, A travers l’Asie Minuere (Paris 1980), 240–44; Tyriaeum SEG 1997, 1745 (documenting the transformation of the katoikia into a polis); Peltai, E. Michel, Recueil des inscriptions grecques (1900) no. 542 (a decree of the city of Peltai to honour a foreign judge sent to the city from Antandros in Aeolis); Kleonnaion: P. Thonemann, Pessinous and the Attalids: a new royal letter, ZPE 194 (2015), 117–28. 105 G. Cohen, The Hellenistic Settlements II (1995), 301–2. Eumeneia was founded either by Eumenes II or by his brother Attalus II. 106 P. Thonemann, The Attalid State, 188–133 BC, in Thonemann (ed.), The Attalid Kingdom (Oxford 2013), 1–47 at 13–17. Celtic names occur in the rural settlements east of Dorylaeum: Adiatomaros son of Ollognatos (H. Guney, Zeus of the Cedar Tree, Journal of Epigraphic Studies 3 (2020), 49–60); Dobedon (H. Guney, New epigraphic documents from Northeastern Phrygia, Philia 4 (2016), 60 no. 7); Brannos (H. Guney, The sanctuary of Zeus Sarnendenos and the cult of Zeus in northeastern Phrygia, AS 69 (2019), 160 no. 4); Gaezatoris (H. Guney, New inscriptions from northeastern Phrygia, EA 51 (2018), 167–83 at 177 no. 14), and the Tembris river was known in a Celtic form as the Tembrogius.

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emporium in the second century BC,107 probably dealing mainly in slaves. The sanctuary of the Mother Goddess at Pessinus became less important in the late Hellenistic period, but Strabo emphasized that it remained an emporium, surely dealing in slaves as well as textiles and other animal products.108 Several obscure Phrygian communities minted cistophoric coinage, the main high-value currency of the Attalids, and this reflected their importance within the trading network.109 A number of communities also produced low-value bronze coinage, a further sign of the region’s integration into the increasingly complex economic framework of the Attalid kingdom.110 The next major social and political transformation in western Asia Minor, including Phrygia, followed the decision of the last Attalid king, Attalus III, to bequeath his kingdom to Rome. Rome’s authority was immediately challenged by the revolt of Aristonicus, who claimed to be Attalus III’s legitimate successor, but was firmly established between 129 and 126 BC by the first governor of the new province of Asia, the proconsul Manius Aquillius. The annexation of Phrygia had not been a strategic or political priority for Rome, and both Greater Phrygia and Lycaonia were voluntarily relinquished respectively to Mithridates V of Pontus and Ariarathes VI of Cappadocia. Those decisions were reversed before the end of the second century BC.111 The reason for the change in policy should be traced back to a law of 123 BC, proposed at Rome by the tribune Caius Gracchus, which awarded the right to collect direct taxes from the province of Asia to associations of publicani (public contractors) drawn from the Roman equestrian order. The members of these tax companies 107 Livy 38.18.10–12: postero die ad Gordium pervenit. Id haud magnum quidem oppidum est, sed plus quam mediterraneum celebre et frequens emporium. Tria maria pari ferme distantia intervallo habet, Hellespontum, ad Sinopem, et alterius orae litora, quae Cilices maritime colunt; multarum magnarumque praeterea gentium finis contingit, quarum commercium in eum maxime locum mutui usus contraxere. ‘On the following day [Manlius Vulso] reached Gordium. That is not at all a large town, but, more than usual for a land-locked place, is a busy and crowded trading centre. It is almost equi-distant from three seas – from the Hellespont, Sinope [the Black Sea], and the coast of the opposite sea-shore, which the Cilicians control. It is next to the borders of many great peoples, and mutual advantage has generated commercial business with them at this place above all.’ 108 Strabo XII.5.3, 567. 109 G. Le Rider, ‘Un groupe de cistophores de l’époque attalide’, BCH 114 (1990), 683–701: Blaundus, Dionysopolis, and (less certainly) Lysias and Dioskome; G. Le Rider and T. Drew-Bear, Monnaies cistophoriques des Apaméens, des Praipénisseis et des Corpénoi sous les Attalides, BCH 115 (1991), 361–76, for Apamea, Praepenisseis, Corpeni; Thonemann, Cistophoric geography, Numismatic Chronicle 168 (2008), 43–60 for Toriaion and Cormasa, rejecting the proposal regarding the Corpeni. 110 See Thonemann, ‘The Attalid kingdom’, and ‘Pessinous and the Attalids’. 111 Mitchell, Anatolia I, 29–30.

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now had a direct interest in collecting income from as wide a territory as possible and they relentlessly pursued this objective in Rome’s new Asia Minor territories. Within a few years, in 93 BC, the senatorial propraetor of Asia, Mucius Scaevola, had to intervene to protect the provincial communities from the rapacity of the publicani, and a generation later Cicero, in a letter written to his brother Quintus, governor of Asia from 61 to 58 BC, indicated that his largest responsibility was to maintain a balance between the interests of the provincial cities and those of the equestrian tax-farmers.112 Direct Roman interest in Asia could now be felt throughout the province, including in Phrygia. Provincial land-owners, under pressure to meet their tax obligations to Rome, were forced to mortgage or sell property to Roman and Italian bankers and money-lenders, who thereby rapidly came to acquire extensive estates and other assets.113 The letters and speeches of Cicero from the middle years of the first century BC are an invaluable source of information about the way in which Roman rule had developed in the province, about the interests of Roman and Italian businessmen, and the pressures that these exerted on the local communities.114 Several passages throw light on Phrygian towns, indicating the presence and influence of Roman and Italian entrepreneurs at Apamea, Acmonia, Dorylaeum and elsewhere.115 Already in the first century BC inscriptions, usually in Latin, attest the presence of these successful Italian families.116 Collectively they were usually designated in official texts as οἱ κατοικοῦντες Ῥωμαῖοι, ‘the resident Romans’, and operated as a power block, distinct from the local council and people’s assembly. Several communities in this part of the province of Asia became cities in the late Flavian period and under Trajan. The assize inscription from Ephesus shows that a number independent Lydian settlements took the title of the ruling family: the Φλαουιοκαισαρεῖς Δαλδιανοί (l. 10–11), the Φλαουιοκαισαρεῖς (l. 11),

112 Cicero, Ad Quintum fratrem I.1; D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor 1 (Princeton 1950), 173–4 (Scaevola). 113 For private landowners in Roman Phrygia, see Mitchell, Anatolia I, 158–60. 114 The best overall picture is still provided by T. R. S. Broughton, ‘Roman Asia Minor’, in T. E. Frank (ed.), Economic Survey of Ancient Rome IV (1938), and D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor (1950). 115 For the Sestullii and Aufidii at Acmonia, see S. Mitchell, A Roman family in Phrygia, Anatolian Studies 29 (1979), 13–22 and Anatolia I, 158. 116 MAMA XI 162 for the Pinarii at Kidyessos (see below n. 124); Dindii and Timiniii at Philomelium: Christol and Drew-Bear, Tyche I (1986), 41–43, Lochman, Phrygien; L. Aelius Venustus and family at Acmonia, MAMA XI, 115; MAMA VI 202 (Apamea). Further discussion in P. Thonemann, The women of Akmoneia, JRS 100 (2010), 163–178 at 169–74.

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and the Λορηναῖοι οἱ νῦν λεγόμενοι Φλαουιοπολεῖται (l.7–8).117 The last expression suggests that the imperial name was relatively recent and the inscription itself should probably be dated around 80. It still listed the Μοκαδηνοί as an ethnic group (probably to be understood as a δῆμος in the terminology applied by late hellenistic and early imperial inscriptions of the province of Asia), without mentioning Temenothyrae, or the settlements of Silandus and Bagis. However, Temenothyrae also took the imperial name Flaviopolis, and Silandus and Bagis each minted coinage in the reign of Domitian.118 All three communities probably acquired the rank of independent cities under Domitian between 80 and 96. The creation of Traianopolis at Çarık köy continued this development. The small city of Kidyessos, further east along the same road through central Phrygia, also issued bronze coinage under Domitian.119 The transformation of the larger communities of eastern Lydia and western Phrygia into small urban centres with polis status is illustrated precisely in the Flavian period at the Macedonian settlement of Blaundus.120 The emergence of these inconspicuous communities as poleis at this period is best explained by the presence of the many Roman and Italian families, who had established themselves in the Lydia and Phrygia since the early first century BC and now formed the regional elite.121 Many of the of the towns lay on or close to the main Roman road which ran eastwards from Sardis, the Lydian metropolis, along the Hermus valley into central Phrygia, and beyond into the northern part of central Anatolia. This was of major strategic and commercial importance. The largest concentration of Italian settler families was at Acmonia, where the inscriptions attest a remarkable range of Roman gentilicia among the leading families: Afranii, Atilii, Aufidii, Calvisii, Catilii, Clodii, Clutorii, Egnatii, Furii, Mevii, Musetii, Naevii, Pacilii, Papirii, Petronii, Titedii, Trollii, Turronii and Vibii.122 The origins of this ex-patriate community at Acmonia are illuminated by an inscription erected around 70 BC by C. Sornatius Barba, one of the legati of Lucius Lucullus, Roman commander in the war against Mithridates, which marked the opening of a στατάριον, a slave-market, 117 Coins issued under Vespasian and in the Severan period also show that the inhabitants of Lydian Philadelphia called themselves Φιλαδελφεῖς Φλαουίοι, L. Robert, Monnaies grecques (1967), 73–78. The Flaviokaisareis of line 11 are not otherwise attested, and it is possible that they occurred in the list as an inadvertent doublet of the Flaviokaisareis Daldianoi. 118 See Habicht, JRS 1975, 73 and 77. Nothing more is known of another Lydian or Phrygian city which issued coinage called Sala Domitianopolis. 119 See MAMA XI, xxii. 120 For Blaundus, see 54 nn. 141–2. 121 Compare Thonemann, Phrygia, an anarchist history, 29–31. 122 P. Thonemann, The women of Acmonia, 173.

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doubtless to service the trafficking of captives from the Mithridatic war as well as the burgeoning trade in native Phrygian slaves.123 In the wake of the Roman victories over Mithridates, the slave trade and other commercial opportunities drew Italian settlers, all Roman citizen families, to Lydia and Phrygia, where they soon also became major property owners. Some of the earliest Roman inscriptions from the region belong to these families, for example the Latin funerary monument set up by M. Pinarius M. f. Aem. Tertius for his wife and sons at Kidyessos. One of this family’s descendants was mint master for the coinage issued by Kidyessos under Domitian.124 Families of Italian/Roman origin, generically named κατοικοῦντες Ῥωμαῖοι, formed organised communities, conventus, within the existing cities.125 Apart from Acmonia, the largest and best documented emigrant group was at the trade entrepôt of Apamea,126 but Italian settlers were also to be found in small places. There were ‘resident Greeks and Romans’ at the village of Prizeis on Acmonia’s territory,127 among the Laszeddioi in the territory of Lydian Hyrkanis,128 and at the settlement of Naeis in the Phrygo-Lydian borderland near Blaundus and the unlocated polis of the Apollonhieritai.129 By the imperial period, many family members had become important rural land-owners, settled outside the main commercial and administrative centres. Their presence introduced Roman nomenclature 123 Ἀκμονέων τῆι βουλῆι καὶ τῶι δήμωι Γάϊος Σωρνά[τιος Γαΐου ?] υἱὸς Οὐελίνα Β[άρβα τὸ] στατάριον καὶ τὸν βῶμον ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων κατεσκεύασαν; MAMA VI 260 with Thonemann, The women of Acmonia, 173 notes 30–31. 124 MAMA XI 162 with commentary. 125 IGR IV 632. The bibliography is very extensive; see J. Hatzfeld, Les italiens résidants à Délos, BCH 36 (1912), 5–218; J. Hatzfeld, Les trafiquants italiens dans l’Orient hellénique (Paris 1919); D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor II (1950), 1051–53; A. J. Wilson, Emigration from Italy in the Republican Age of Rome (Manchester 1966); C. Deplace, ‘Publicains, trafiquants et financiers dans les provinces d’Asie Mineure sous la République’, Ktema 2 (1977), 233–52; F. Kirbihler, Die Italiker in Kleinasien, in M. Meyer (ed.), Neue Zeiten – Neue Sitten. Zu Rezeption und Integration römischen und italischen Kultur in Kleinasien (2007), 19–35. For Lydia, see P. Herrmann, Italiker und Römer in Sardeis, in J. Spielvogel (ed.), Res Publica Reperta. Zur Verfassung und Gesellschaft der römischen Republik und des frühen Prinzipats. Festschrift Bleicken (Stuttgart 2002), 36–44, reprinted in P. Herrmann (ed. W. Blümel), Kleinasien im Spiegel epigraphischer Zeugnisse (Berlin 2016), 221–29; M. Christol and T. Drew-Bear, Une famille d’ Italiens en Lydie, Arkeoloji Dergisi 3 (1995), 117–32. 126 See Thonemann, The women of Akmonia, 169–70, and The Maeander Valley (2011), 99–129. 127 T. Drew-Bear, Nouvelles inscriptions de Phrygie (1978), 12–14 (SEG 28 (1978), 1080: τοῖς κατοικοῦσιν ἐν Πρειζει Ῥωμαίοις καὶ Ἕλλησιν. 128 TAM V 1322. 129 P. Herrmann, Ἡ Ναειτηνῶν κατοκία. Ein Beitrag zur historischen Landeskunde des südöstlichen Lydiens, in Kleinasien im Spiegel epigraphischer Zeugnisse (2016), 125–33.

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to the native population, and many Phrygians themselves took simple Roman names without, of course, acquiring Roman citizenship. By the later second century most of the more important settlements in Roman Phrygia had achieved city status, at least as defined by the right to mint their own bronze coinage: Dorylaeum, Nacolea, Pessinus, Amorium, Docimium, Philomelium, Prymnessus, Synnada, Antioch, Apollonia, Eumeneia, Apamea, Acmonia, Cotiaeum, Aezani, Cadi, Temenothyrae. Sebaste, as its name indicates, was an Augustan foundation formed from the synoecism of several villages,130 Smaller places also achieved civic status: the five towns of the Phrygian Pentapolis,131 Iulia (perhaps at Çay), Kidyessos, Metropolis, Traianopolis, Midaeum, Accilaeum.132 These cities were autonomous political units during the second and third centuries, athough of course subject to the authority of the governors, officials and military personnel of the Roman state. The importance of this status is made clear by the famous petition of Orcistus to Constantine, who asked to be raised to the status of an autonomous city, and thus escape subordination to Nacolea. At the time of this appeal Orcistus was required to pay a tax on cultivated crops to the Nacoleans.133 Orcistus’s petition was anticipated by the promotion of Soa, Meirus and Tymandus, which all become cities around 300. The cities of Phrygia came to acquire other aspects of the hellenised civic culture of the Roman eastern provinces.134 Coin types and city titles, as well as other evidence, show that they evolved foundation myths and legends which 130 Attested by a verse inscription, SGO III, 16.01.01; R. Merkelbach, Ganymeds Verstirnung und die Gründung von Sebaste in Phrygien, EA 28 (1997) 140–4. 131 W. M. Calder, A Hellenistic survival at Eucarpia, AS 6 (1956), 49 published a third-century statue base for a man who had served as eirenarch τῶν ἐν τῶ Εὐκαρπειτικῷ πολέων. The five cities were Eucarpia, originally a Macedonian settlement which honoured Alexander the Great as its founder (Ramsay, CB 1.2 (1897), p. 702 n. 638), Stectorium, Brouzos, Otrous (see T. Drew-Bear, Frigya Pentapolisi’nde Bir Bizans Kentinin Lokalizasyonu: Otrous, in 1. Uluslararası Sevgi Gönül Bizans Araştırmaları Sempozyumu (Istanbul, 2011), 256–63), and Hierapolis, the burial place of Abercius. The cities were collectively referred to as a Pentapolis at the time of the Council of Chalcedon (ACO IV 1, p. 230, 31 no. 152). 132 H. von Aulock, Munzen und Städte Phrygiens I (1980) and II (1987); Registerband Sammlung von Aulock. 133 MAMA VII, 305, 41–41: pro cultis. This expression was generally understood as referring to dues owed to Nacolea to sustain its pagan cults, a particular offence to largely Christian Orcistus, until F. Kolb pointed out that the ablative cultis is derived from culta, cultivated crops, not cultus, religious cults, which has the ablative form cultibus: F. Kolb, Bemerkungen zur urbanen Ausstattung von Städten im Westen und Osten des römischen Reiches anhand von Tacitus, Agricola 21 und der konstantinischen Inschrift von Orkistos, Klio 75 (1993), 521–41, at 539 n. 56. 134 Mitchell, Anatolia I, 198–226.

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linked them with figures in Greek mythology, and thus established ties of kinship with important centres of the Greek world.135 There is a particularly rich documentation relating to Synnada, which claimed to have been founded by Acamas son of Theseus, and have a kinship relationship with Athens and Sparta.136 The people of Eumeneia referred to themselves as Achaeans.137 Some of the larger cities in Phrygia have produced material and archaeological evidence characteristic of Graeco-Roman city life. The clearest example is Aezani, one of the most spectacular Roman city sites in Turkey. The first public buildings were already erected in the Hellenistic period. The magnificent Ionic temple for Zeus was completed around 92, to be followed by a theatre combined with a stadium, elaborate marble architecture along the banks of the river Penkalas, including four bridges, which ran through the city centre, colonnaded streets, and a large bath-gymnasium complex.138 Pisidian Antioch, the most important Roman colony in Asia Minor, acquired a major temple and sanctuary for the imperial cult in Augustus’ lifetime and a large bath-house with an associated aqueduct system were probably complete before the middle of the first century.139 The buildings of Pessinus, like those of Aezani, stretched either side of the local river, the Gallus, and include a temple-theatre complex, which resembles models in the western part of the Roman empire. Foundations of a stadium and a theatre have been identified at Apamea,140 and there is no doubt that other important centres such as Acmonia and Synnada, had public buildings, although these have not been identified by survey or excavation. Blaundus, which lay close to the south-western rim of our Phrygian circle, is the only smaller urban site in the region whose relatively well-preserved buildings have been comprehensively surveyed. There is a main street, some 200 metres long, with a temple of Demeter, a bath-house/gymnasium, an agora with colonnades around it, a theatre and even a stadium. The city settlement 135 The best survey is by J. Strubbe, Gründer kleinasiatischer Städte. Fiktion und Realität, Ancient Society 15–17 (1984–86), 255–304. 136 C. P. Jones, The Panhellenion, Chiron 26 (1996), 29–56 at 39–41. 137 P. Weiss, Eumeneia und das Panhellenion, Chiron 30 (2000), 617–40. 138 K. Rheidt and N. Atık, Pergamenisches Anatolien. Aizanoi und seine Beziehungen zur Hauptstadt der Attaliden, Istanbuler Mitteilungen 54 (2004), 375–39; K. Rheidt, Aizanoi in hellenistischer Zeit, in Elmar Schwertheim (ed.), Neue Funde und Forschungen in Phrygien. (Asia Minor Studien, Bonn 2008), 107–122; Aizanoi in: Der Neue Pauly, Rezeptions- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte 13 (1999), 32–40. 139 S. Mitchell and M. Waelkens, Pisidian Antioch. The site and its monuments (Swansea 1998). 140 A. von Kienlin / G. Herdt /A. Ilasli, Das Theater von Apameia, in A. Ivantschik / L. Summerer / A. von Kienlin (eds), Kelainai – Apameia Kibotos: eine achämenidische, hellenistische und römische Metropole (Bordeaux 2016), 151–74.

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had pre-Roman origins and a fortification wall. The main gate, on the north side led to an extramural temple set in a large rectangular sanctuary.141 The decisive period in Blaundus’s development came in the second half of the first century thanks to the investment and patronage of two Roman citizens, C. Mummius Macer and C. Octavius, whose names suggest that they were the leading members of immigrant Italian families. They belonged to the local community of ‘resident Romans’ (κατοικοῦντες Ῥωμαῖοι).142 By contrast, despite many seasons of excavation, little evidence survives of Roman public buildings at Amorium, althought earlier structures may have been demolished as the late Roman and Byzantine settlement evolved. Although only a handful of its cities have produced architectural and material evidence comparable to the larger centres of the Maeander valley or the south and west coastal regions of Asia Minor, in many respects Roman Phrygia came to resemble other parts of the Greek-speaking Roman East.143 However, by focusing on the similarities between the cities of Roman Phrygia with other parts of the hellenized Roman east, we miss the characteristics which distinguished inner Anatolia at this period. Most of the cities in Phrygia were small. They are probably better described as towns, and in material terms their surviving remains are hardly distinguishable from Roman Phrygia’s numerous villages. Much of the land in the Upper Tembris and Akar Çay valleys was a patchwork of imperial estates, controlled by imperial freedmen or slave officials. The farmers on these estates often referred to their villages as their patris, without reference to any local city. During the second and third centuries, the doorstones and other grave steles recovered not from city sites but from rural communities display large money purses, chests to hold the family possessions, and show family members clothed in elaborate dress, the women wearing jewellery. The gentry of Phrygia, whether they were property-owners, or lease-holders on imperial or private estates, acquired their wealth from the land and displayed it in rural contexts. There is little evidence that they felt any incentive to become urban benefactors, or endowed public buildings in the

141 A. Filges, Blaundos. Berichte zur Erforschung einer Kleinstadt im lydisch-phrygischen Grenzgebeit (Tübingen 2006), 189–97; inscriptions 321–7, nos. 2–9; Thonemann, Phrygia, an anarchist history (2013), 32–35. 142 F. von Saldern in Filges, Blaundos, 321–323 nos.2–3; 331 no.17. 143 U. Kelp, Grave Monuments and Local Identities in Roman Phrygia, in Thonemann ((ed.), Roman Phrygia (2013), 70–94, and Grabdenkmal und lokale Identität. Ein Bild der Landschaft Phrygien in der römischen Kaiserzeit (Bonn 2015) stresses the Hellenisation and urbanization of Roman Phrygia in her reading of the evidence.

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nearby cities.144 Evidence for prestigious city-based games and contests which became a prominent part of the urban culture of other parts of western and southern Asia Minor in the second and third centuries is almost entirely absent from the cities of Phrygia.145 It is likely, moreover, that most of the wealthier inhabitants of the larger cities such as Aezani and Antioch lived outside the monumental centres in surrounding farms and villages.146 Among the characteristic features of the culture and lifestyle of Roman Phrygia were an emphasis on hard work, and on the direct dependence of families on agriculture and animal husbandry. The decorated grave and votive monuments which are characteristic of north and central Phrygia demonstrate possessions that were both a source of wealth and of personal pride: ploughs and oxen; cattle accompanied by calves; horses and mules bred and used for transport.147 Jane Masseglia has drawn attention to ‘hands-on work’ as a major theme in the iconography of Phrygian grave steles.148 One group of professions above all required sheer physical prowess: quarrying, stone-masonry and sculpting. Quarrying and to a lesser degree mining were important economic activities. The marble quarries of Docimium, one of the empire’s most important sources of high quality white marble and highly decorative crimson-streaked pavonazzetto, were imperial property by the reign of Tiberius149 and there were subsidiary imperial quarries subject to the same organizational structure in the Upper Tembris Valley near Altıntaş.150 Other Phrygian cities possessed their own local sources of limestone or marble.151 Thanks to the availability of quality marble and skilled stoneworkers, there were distinctive schools of regional sculpture. In the second century it appears that the Docimian quarries, which had hitherto mainly produced architectural 144 They are counterparts of the Phrygian villagers of the Xenoi Tekmoreioi inscriptions from Sağır on the territory of Antiochia, who used their surplus wealth to make large donations to this important rural sanctuary; see chapter 3.4. 145 Mitchell, Anatolia I, 217–25. 146 For the Roman colonists in the territory of Antioch, see B. Levick, Roman colonies in Southern Asia Minor (1967), 56–67; M. Christol / T. Drew-Bear Vétérans et soldats légionnaires à Antioche de Pisidie, in G. Paci (ed.), Epigrafia romana in area adriatica. Actes de la IXe rencontre francoitalienne sur l’épigraphie du monde romain (Macerata, 1998), 303–332; H. Bru, Les origines des colons romains à Antioche de Pisidie, in H. Bru et al., (eds), L’Asie Mineure dans l’Antiquité: échanges, populations et territoires (Rennes 2009), 263–87. 147 M. Waelkens, Phrygian votive and tombstones as sources of the social and economic life in Roman antiquity, Ancient Society 8 (1977), 277–315; Lochman, Phrygien (2003), passim. 148 J. Masséglia, Phrygians in relief: trends in self-representation, in Thonemann (ed.), Roman Phrygia (2013), 94–123. 149 M. Christol and T. Drew-Bear, Tyche 1 (1986), 55–87 and Anatolia Antiqua 1 (1987), 83–137. 150 T. Drew-Bear and W. Eck, Chiron 6 (1976) 312–318 nos. 16–25. 151 M. Waelkens, Carriéres de marbre en Phrygie, Bull. Mus. Ant. 53.2 (1982), 33–55.

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or sculptural pieces for public buildings, including large scale exports to Rome, now addressed local markets. At the top of the range were magnificant decorated sarcophagi, delivered to rich clients in southern and western Asia Minor.152 Quarry-men and stonemasons from the same workshops were responsible for architectural sculpture in a similar style, for instance the elaborate decoration of the theatre at Hierapolis, completed in the early third century. Elaborate steles decorated with a prominent door motif, were one of the defining elements of Phrygian funerary culture in the second and third centuries. The best-known category comprised the doorstones, which were distributed across all the central and northern parts of the Phrygian circle, but were absent from the southwest quadrant, that is the settlements in the upper Maeander valley extending east to northern Pisidia.153 The finest of these were produced in Docimian workshops and were distributed to the village communities along the Roman road network. Funerary portrait sculpture and grave steles depicting human figures became fashionable in the estates and villages of the Upper Tembris Valley between 170 and 300.154 The same workshops were also responsible for producing high-quality aniconic reliefs with the “Christians for Christians” inscriptions. Marble votive monuments for pagan sanctuaries were no less in demand and formed an important part of Phrygian sculpture production. Slavery was a phenomenon that cast a shadow across all Phrygian society. Throughout antiquity, slaves were the region’s most important and lucrative export, and this trade continued unabated  – or indeed increased  – under Roman rule. One of the clauses of the custom’s law of Asia, which had been in force since the creation of the province between 129 and 126 BC, stated that, except for child slaves, the maximum duty payable on male and female slaves 152 M. Waelkens, Dokimeion. Der Werkstatt der repräsentativen kleinasiatischen Sarkophage (Berlin 1982), now updated in Waelkens 2018. 153 Waelkens, Türsteine (1986) with map; U. Kelp, Grabdenkmal und lokale Identität. Ein Bild der Landschaft Phrygien in der römischen Kaiserzeit (AMS 71, Bonn 2015). Doorstones as such were not found on the territory of Eumeneia; see Drew-Bear, Nouvelles inscriptions de Phrygie, 110–11, no. 49 (SEG 28, 1129; Waelkens, Türsteine 183, no. 455) for a doorstone copied at Menteş, but carried from the territory of Sebaste (see MAMA XI, 78 comm.). But see Ramsay CB 1.2, 395 citing inscr. 210, 227, 242, 247, 251 and 280 for the use of the word θύρα inscribed on a grave monument to refer to the door to the tomb (or the world of the dead); T. Drew-Bear, Nouvelles inscriptions de Phrygie (1978). 154 T. Lochman, Studien zu kaiserzeitlichen Grab- und Votivreliefs aus Phrygien (Basle 2003) is an indispensable guide to the material, providing important corrections to Waelkens, Türsteine. Note the work of named sculptors including Teimeas, Zelas and others in the Severan period and the so-called Champaign group, produced between c.240 and 300 (Lochman, Phrygia 72, n. 82).

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should not exceed five denarii.155 In 89 BC it was reported that Phrygian slaves made inadequate military levies in support of Roman forces.156 Philostratus, writing in the third century, put a speech in the mouth of Apollonius of Tyana which included the remarks that slaves in quantity from Pontus, Lydia and Phrygia were available for sale in Cilicia, and that Phrygians, specifically, were ready to sell their children without further thought.157 Whatever the value of this stereotype, inscriptions attest slave traders in Acmonia and Apamea, and it is likely that all the Phrygian emporia handled both slaves and livestock in large numbers.158 Important parts of the economy, including production at the Docimian quarries, was in the hands of imperial slaves, who married free citizen women.159 Trophimus, an imperial slave at Synnada, with his evidently free-born consort Valeria Glykea, buried a wealthy relative Claudia Prepousa at Synnada, but unmistakeably showed their local origin by using a neo-Phrygian curse formula to protect the grave.160 An equally distinctive feature of Roman Phrygia was the language. The inscriptions show that the common language of city and countryside was Greek. The public inscriptions of the city were composed in standard, normalized koine Greek, using vocabulary and orthography that was common to civic inscriptions across the eastern Roman empire in the early imperial period. However, it was another matter with private inscriptions – predominantly epitaphs and votives. These reveal a dialect, largely confined to Phrygia, which must have been as distinctive a spoken language as it appears in the texts.161 In addition, the Phrygian language remained part of the region’s cultural heritage. Over 120 neo-Phrygian inscriptions, used the Greek script to add a formulaic curse formula in the indigenous language, which either stood alone on a 155 M. Cottier et al., The Custom’s Law of Asia (Oxford 2008), 30 (Asia Custom’s Law para 3, line 12). etc. 156 Appian, Mithr. 11–19; cf. Appian, BC 2. 74, 308. 157 Philostratus, VA 8. 7. 12. 158 Acmonia: MAMA VI 260; AE 2006, 1426 ll. 10–13. 159 MAMA IV 53 for Arruntia Attica, his contubernalis and son Q. Arruntius Iustus, set up by Hyacinthus, a slave of Nero, and tabularius at the administrative centre of Synnada; Christol and Drew-Bear, Tyche 1 (1986), 55–62: Latin epitaph for the children of Flavia Exoche and the imperial slave Saturninus, a dispensator at Docimium. 160 T. Drew-Bear, A. Lubotsky and M. Üyümez, Three new Phrygian inscriptions, Kadmos 47 (2008), 109–116. 161 Mitchell, Anatolia I (1993), 174 n. 91, citing C. Brixhe, La langue comme critère d’acculturation: l’exemple du grec d’un district phrygien, in E. Labrun (ed.) Hethitica VIII. Acta Anatolica E. Laroche oblata (1987), 45–80, and Essai sur le grec anatolien au début de notre ère (2nd edn. Nancy 1987). See also C. Brixhe, Linguistic Diversity in Asia Minor During the Empire: Koine and Non-Greek Languages, in E. Bakker (ed.) A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language (Oxford 2010), 228–52.

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grave monument or was attached to a preceding Greek epitaph. The distribution of these texts extends across northern, north-eastern and central Phrygia, and eastwards into the central Anatolian plateau, but excludes the west and south-western regions.162 As a cultural marker, the retention of the Phrygian language appears indissolubly connected to the use of funerary curses on gravestones of the imperial period. Phrygia was, in the words of Louis Robert, ‘la domaine par excellence des imprecations funéraires’.163 As we shall see, this was also a practice that was adopted in a modified form by Phrygian Christians and Jews.164 162 O. Haas, Die kleinasiatischen Sprachdenkmäler (Sofia 1966); Ruge, RE s.v. Phrygien; Mitchell, Anatolia I, 174, 188; map in Brixhe, Du paléo- au néo-Phrygien, CRAI 1993, 323–44 at 328; C. Brixhe, Prolégomènes au corpus néo-phrygien, Bull. soc. ling. 94 (1999), 285–315. 163 L. Robert, Malédictions funéraires, CRAI 1978 (OMS V, 697–745); J. Strubbe, ‘Cursed be he who moves my bones’, in C. A. Faraone and D. Obbink (eds.), Magika Hiera. Ancient Greek magic and religion (Oxford 1991), 33–59; J. Strubbe, ΑΡΑΙ ΕΠΙΤΥΜΒΙΟΙ. Imprecations against Desecrators of the Grave in the Greek Epitaphs of Asia Minor: A Catalogue. (IGSK 52. Bonn 1997). 164 J. Strubbe, ‘Curses against Violation of the Grave in Jewish Epitaphs of Asia Minor’, in J. W. van Henten and P. W. van der Horst (eds.) Studies in Early Jewish Epigraphy (Leiden 1994) 70–128; cf chapter 4.3.

Chapter 3

Phrygia’s Pagan Sanctuaries 3.1

A Religious Land

The abundant evidence for pagan religious practice throughout Anatolia in the hellenistic and Roman imperial periods defies summary, and the impact of religion on social and individual behaviour can hardly be overstated.1 There are more pagan religious monuments in Roman Phrygia and the surrounding regions of central Anatolia than in any other comparable rural land area of the ancient world. It would be absurd to try to analyse the early appearance and spread of Christianity in Phrygia without taking the spectrum of regional religious activity into consideration, and to identify, if possible, the aspects of local pagan religious belief and practice which relate to the observable behaviour of Phrygia’s Christians. This may shed light on the reasons why Christianity appealed to so many of the region’s inhabitants at an early date. An exhaustive study of Phrygian paganism would go far beyond its scope, but the aim in this chapter is to provide an outline of the evidence for pagan cults and religion. In subsequent chapters, there will be opportunities to place Christian monuments in a closer comparative relationship with their pagan counterparts. Most of the evidence for Phrygia’s pagan cults comes from rural sanctuaries. About thirty communities in Roman Phrygia acquired city status before the end of the third century,2 but the majority were small and have produced little evidence of the advanced urban culture found in the cities of western and southern Asia Minor. Only one city of central Phrygia, Aezani, demonstrably contained the range of public buildings which are to be encountered in the larger cities of western Asia Minor, including a theatre, a stadium, a large bath-house/gymnasium, colonnaded streets, ornamental stone bridges over the river that bisected the site, and the magnificent Ionic peripteral temple

1 The titles of Stephen Mitchell, Anatolia. Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor, published in 1993, and Christian Marek’s newer synthesis, published in an English translation in 2016 with the title In the Land of a Thousand Gods, underline that polytheistic pagan religions were at the heart of Anatolian society. 2 This total excludes south-west Phrygia and the cities of the Lycus Valley, notably Laodicea and Hierapolis, which in cultural terms were more closely aligned with the large cities of the lower Maeander.

© Stephen Mitchell, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004546387_004

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for Zeus, set in a large rectangular sanctuary.3 Architectural remains of temples have survived in only two other cities within the ‘Phrygian circle’ defined in chapter 1, at Antioch ‘towards Pisidia’ and at Pessinus on the Galatian periphery.4 Each of these cities had Hellenistic peripteral temples, dedicated respectively to to Mên Askaênos on a hill-top location outside Antioch,5 and to Cybele (the Mother Goddess) at Pessinus,6 and each subsequently acquired imperial cult temples, built respectively under Augustus and Tiberius. There was an extra-mural temple of Apollo Lairbenos at his mountain sanctuary overlooking the gorge of the upper Maeander. Excavation and archaeological research in the other Phrygian cities, some of which may have contained Graeco-Roman temples, has been limited, but the monumental building boom that swept across western and southern Asia Minor under the Roman Empire, seems largely to have by-passed the region. So, the necessary focus for all studies of Phrygian paganism are the region’s very numerous votive and funerary inscriptions, mostly found in rural contexts. Fortunately, these inscriptions were often accompanied by carved reliefs, and their iconography has proved to be as revealing as the texts in providing information about the region’s inhabitants and their religious beliefs and ideas. This documentation of Phrygian paganism also has limitations. Although many aspects of the indigenous religious culture had roots deep in the Anatolian past,7 almost all the information comes from a narrow chronological range in the second and third centuries. Earlier monuments are rare, and direct 3 R. Posamentir and M. Wörrle, Der Tempel des Zeus in Aizanoi und seine Datierung, in K. Rheidt (ed.), Aizanoi und Anatolien. Neue Entdeckungen zur Geschichte und Archäologie im Hochland des westlichen Kleinasiens (2010), 55–87. 4 Both accordingly lie outside the borders of Phrygia adopted by G. F. Chiai in his 2016 article ‘Phrygia’, written for the Reallexicon für Antike und Christentum: RAC XVII (Bonn 2016), 691–721, at 693–94, although his survey includes the big Lycus valley cities. 5 S. Mitchell and M. Waelkens, Pisidian Antoch. The Site and its Monuments (Swansea 1998), c.2 (Hellenistic temple) and 3 (Imperial cult temple). K.A. Raff, ‘The Architecture of the Sanctuary of Men Askaenos: Exploration, Reconstruction, and Use’. In Gazda, E.K. and ng, D.Y. (eds.), Building a New Rome: The Imperial Colony of Pisidian Antioch (25 BC–700 AD) (Ann Arbor 2011), 131–52. 6 Strabo XII.5.3, 567 κατασκεύασται δ᾽ ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀτταλικῶν βασιλέων ἱεροπρεπῶς τὸ τέμενος νάῳ τε καὶ στοαῖς λευκολίθοις, attests the Hellenistic Mother Goddess temple at Pessinus see Strabo XII.5.3, 567; This temple has not been identified in the excavations at Pessinus. For the imperial temple, see M. Waelkens, The Imperial Sanctuary at Pessinus: Archaeological, Epigraphical and Numismatic Evidence for its Date and Identification, Epigraphica Anatolica 7 (1986), 37–72; for the hellenistic cult see the critical discussion by A. Coşkun, The temple-state of Cybele in Phrygian and early hellenistic Pessinus: a phantom? in G. R. Tsetskhladze, Pessinus and its Regional Setting I (Peeters, Leuven etc. 2018), 205–44. 7 See G. F. Chiai, Phrygien und seine Götter (Vienna 2020), c.1–3.

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evidence for paganism from the fourth and subsequent centuries, although significant, is extremely sparse. We thus obtain a synchronic overview of the religious culture of Phrygia during two, well-documented, centuries, but the picture lacks historical depth. Which deities did the inhabitants of Roman Phrygia worship? The answers are provided by countless inscribed votive monuments that have been recorded in the remains of the original sanctuaries, in local villages, in Turkish museum collections, or have come into private hands through the illegal antiquities trade. The votives of northern and central Phrygia have received much detailed attention in the last thirty years. In a study of monograph length on the cults of Phrygia published in 1990, Thomas Drew-Bear and Christian Naour presented new discoveries made by themselves, and extensive commentaries which were for the most part highly critical of previous scholarship.8 In 1999, Drew-Bear, Christine Thomas and Melek Yıldızturan published about 500 short texts from Phrygian sanctuaries, housed in the museums of Ankara, Istanbul, Afyon and Kütahya, as well as in private collections.9 Thomas Lochman’s iconographic and archaeological study of the decorated funerary monuments of Aezani, the Upper Tembris Valley, the valley of the Akar Çay around Afyon, and the territory of Philomelium (Akşehir), which appeared in 2003, included many previously unpublished inscriptions and monuments that had been found by Drew-Bear and Naour.10 New material in Turkish museums has been presented in numerous articles and a monograph by Eda Akyürek-Şahin.11 Phrygian cults and religion have been explored in recent studies by Gianfranco Chiai, culminating in a major monograph on the Phrygians and their gods from Hittite times until the beginnings of Christianity.12 The discoveries and studies of the last generation have enriched the already abundant documentation available from the earlier epigraphic explorers of Phrygia.13

8 9 10 11 12 13

T. Drew-Bear and C. Naour, Divinités de Phrygie, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.18.3 (1990), 1907–2044; indexes in ANRW II.18.4, 2777–81. T. Drew-Bear, C. Thomas and Melek Yıldızturan, Phrygian Votive Steles (Ankara 1999). T. Lochman, Studien zu kaiserzeitlichen Grab- und Votivreliefs aus Phrygien (Basle 2003). E. Akyürek-Şahin, Yazıdere (Seyitgazi). Zeus kutsal alanı ve adak yazıtları (Istanbul 2006). G. F. Chiai, Phrygien und seine Götter. Historie und Religionsgeschichte einer anatolischen Region von der Zeit der Hethiter bis zur Ausbreitung des Christentums (Pharos Bd. 46, Vienna 2020), and numerous shorter studies. Principally, but not exclusively, the explorations of Ramsay and his epigonoi, Anderson, Calder, Buckler, Cox and others, much of which was collected in Ramsay’s, Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, and in MAMA volumes I, and IV–XI. The last champions of this extraordinary tradition were Alan Hall and Michael Ballance.

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Zeus Cults in Northern Phrygia

The cults from the territories of six cities in Phrygia Epictetus (Cadi, Aezani, Cotiaeum, Dorylaeum, Nacolia and Midaeum), the north part of the region covered in this study, have been catalogued in a concise but exceptionally useful study by Marijana Ricl.14 Most of these dedications were made to Zeus. Ricl’s catalogue lists seventy-four distinctive Zeus cults in northern Phrygia, identified by separate epithets or other signifiers.15 About twenty of these epithets were geographical, derived from place names, usually the local villages, while seven referred to the individual who had founded a specific cult. Some of the cult names related to the god’s attributes or functions, notably Bronton ‘the thunderer’ and Thallos ‘god of green shoots’. The titles of Zeus Hippikos and Zeus ἐξ αυλῆς, ‘of the stable’, exemplified care for animals, but this role is emphasized not so much by the names or epithets attached to Zeus, as by decorated votive reliefs which depict the entire range of domesticated farm animals: goats, sheep, cattle, plough-oxen, donkeys, mules and horses. The most imposing testimony to the Zeus cult in Phrygia is the temple at Aezani, dedicated [Διὶ Αἰζανων καὶ Α]ὐτοκράτορι Καίσαρ[ι] θεοῦ Οὐεσ[π]ασιανοῦ [υἱωι Δ]ομιτιανῶ[ι Σ]εβαστωι Γερμ[ανικῶι] under Domitian, probably in 91/92. This temple, a classical peristyle with 6 x 13 Ionic columns, embodying sophisticated Graeco-Roman urban culture, was the basis of the city’s claim to the prestigious title of νεώκορος, ‘temple warden’, and could be linked to the religious ideology of the Domitianic age.16 Nevertheless, the cult of Zeus at Aezani was deeply anchored in the region’s religious traditions. Coin types minted by the city in the second century depicted the myth of Zeus’s birth in a mountain cave, where he was concealed by his mother from his father Kronos. The wild music of the Corybantes drowned the screams of his mother in her birth pains, and the new-born child was suckled by the mountain goat Amalthea. The Mother Goddess, Μητὴρ θεῶν, who was worshipped more widely in Phrygia than any other deity after Zeus, was the Anatolian equivalent of Rhea, the name of Zeus’s mother in the most famous version of this myth, which was

14 M. Ricl, Cults of Phrygia Epiktetos in the Roman imperial period, EA 50 (2017), 133–48. The region is called Phrygia Epictetus by Strabo XII.1.3, 3.7, 4.1, 4.3, 4.4., 4.5, 5.31, 8.1, and 8.12 where the six cities are listed. 15 Some of the epithets (ἐπήκοος, μέγιστος, σώτηρ, πατρῷος, συνγενικός, οὐράνιος, ἄριστος) can be treated as generic and could be combined with other local or functional names. 16 R. Posamentir and M. Wörrle, Der Zeustempel von Aizanoi, ein Großbau flavischer Zeit, Ist. Mitt 56 (2006), 227–246.

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located on Mount Ida in Crete.17 Accordingly, the people of Aezani claimed that Zeus had been born in a cave called Steunos, beside the river Penkalas, a few kilometres west of the city,18 where a sanctuary has been excavated, producing votive reliefs of the late Hellenistic and early imperial periods.19 A modest votive inscription recorded at the nearby city of Cadi was dedicated by an Aezanitan to Zeus and the Mother Godderss of Steunos, and implies that a secondary sanctuary had been founded there.20 The classical temple at Aezani has an unusual characteristic, that the cella is built directly above a vaulted underground chamber, lit by windows at the top of the walls and accessed by a stairway. This should be interpreted as the architectural counterpart of the cave by the Penkalas river, the birth cave of Zeus.21 Coins minted at other Anatolian cities, most of which are in Phrygia, show that Aezani was not the only place to make the claim that Zeus had been born on their territory: Pergamum, Tralles, Laodicea ad Lycum, Acmonia, Apamea, and Amorium all aspired to this distinction.22 A remarkable recent find from the northern edge of Phrygia is the sanctuary of Zeus Sarnendenos at Kızıltepe, the peak of the Sündiken Dağları, a few kilometres south of the river Sangarius and west of the Galatian-Bithynian border city of Juliopolis.23 There are archaeological remains of a rectangular structure, probably a monumental altar rather than a temple, as well as fragments of column capitals and other carved fragments transported to the nearby village of Gürleyik. This mountain range marked the boundary between Bithynia and Phrygia, and dedications to Zeus Sarnendenos have been found in villages north of the range in Bithynia, to the south in northern Phrygia, and to the east in Galatia. Roman provincial boundaries played no part in determining 17 L. Robert, Documents d’Asie Mineure XVIII. Fleuves et cultes d’Aizanoi, BCH 105 (1981), 331–60. 18 Pausanias X.32.3–6. 19 R. Naumann, Das Heiligtum der Meter Steunene bei Aizanoi, Ist. Mitt. 17 (1966), 218–47. 20 K. Buresch, Aus Lydien, 159: Διὶ καὶ Μητρὶ θεῶν Στευνηνῇ Ἀρτεμίδωρος Διονυσίου Αἰζανείτης ἱερεὺς κτίστης ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων. 21 MAMA IX, xx–xxi. The inscription on the architrave shows that the temple was not jointly dedicated to Zeus and the Mother Goddess. 22 L. Robert, BCH 105 (1981), 356–57; J. Nollé, Gephyra 12 (2015), 24 (Amorium). J. Nollé, Vielerorts war Bethlehem. Göttergeburten in antiken Kleinasien, Antike Welt 34 (2003), 637–45. 23 H. Guney, The sanctuary of Zeus Sarnendenos and the cult of Zeus in northeastern Phrygia, Anatolian Studies 69 (2019), 155–74. The nearest village is Gürleyik, and this may be the ancient Sarnenda, although another inscription now in the museum of Eskişehir, reportedly brought from Tepeyaylı Mevkii, near Gürleyik, is a votive set up for Zeus Bronton by a community described as the Ομμεανοὶ δημόται (Ε. Akyürek-Şahin, Phrygia’dan yeni Zeus Bronton adakları, Arkeoloji ve Sanat 28 (2006), 102–104 no. 19).

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the outreach of this important local cult.24 An inscription from the village of Hıdırlar, virtually on the Bithynian-Galatian border, hailed Zeus, surely to be identified with the god of this mountain sanctuary, as ‘the best, greatest, listening, saviour god’, and included four verses written by the dedicator, a Roman citizen Cattius Tergus: ‘Tergus set up this finely wrought gift for you, mightiest of the immortals, having written a poem about your favours in verse of the Muses, o greatest and best, one who gives ear, lord of the universe; may he himself, his children and his cattle be commended to your care’.25 Other Zeus cults are attested by votive inscriptions from the same region: Zeus Akreinenos,26 Zeus Narenos,27 Zeus of the Seven Villages,28 and Zeus of the Cedar Trees.29 When inhabitants of this region were resettled after Trajan’s conquest in the mining district of the new province of Dacia, north of the Danube, they imported the cults of Zeus Sarnendenos, Zeus Narenus and Zeus of the Seven Villages with them to their new homes.30 A significant Zeus sanctuary has been identified in agricultural land northeast of Nacolea, modern Seyitgazi, at a site near the village of Yazıdere.31 24 Bithynia: IK 10.1, 1128 (Beyyayla); Marek, Ep. Anat. 32 (2000), 129–46 at 131–32 = SEG 50, 1223 and 1224 (Emremsultan). Phrygia: Ricl ZA 1994, 157–74 no. 23 (Ağaçhisar); Galatia: RECAM II, 76 (Ikizafer). 25 C. Marek, ‘Der höchste, beste, grösste, allmächtige Gott: Inschriften aus Nordkleinasien’ Epigraphica Anatolica 32 (2000), 129–46) (SEG 50, 1225): Σοὶ μακάρων κύδιστε γέρας τόδε Τέργος ἔθηκεν / εὔτυκτον Μο[υ]σῶν γράμμασι γραψάμενος / σὰς χάριτας, μεγ᾽ ᾽ἄριστε, φιλήκοε, κοίρανε κόσμου / σοὶ δ᾽αὐτός τε μέλοι τέκνα τε κα[ὶ κτέ]ανα. See also Marek 2018. 26 RECAM II 75 (Ikizafer); Guney, AS 69 (2019), 160–63 nos. 4–8 all (Kozlu); M. Ricl, Inscriptions votives inédites au musée d’Eskişehir, Ziva Antika 44 (1994), 157–74 nos. 6–7 (unprovenanced). The adjective Ἀκρεινηνός should be connected with a toponym Ἄκρεινα, itself doubtless derived from the Greek ἄκρα, a peak. The location of the sanctuary probably resembled that of Zeus Sarnendenos, but has not yet been established. 27 RECAM II 11–12 (Beylikahır), 42 (Yuk. Dudaş), 53 (Güce), 67 (Mihaliççik), 70 (Yarıkcı), 86 (Güreş). This sanctuary must have been in the low ground towards the river Tembris. 28 RECAM II 37 (Yuk. Iğde Ağaç). Two inscriptions (RECAM II 34 and 36) imply that there was a temple at the centre of the imperial estate called the choria Considiana. See H. Güney (forthcoming), The Imperial Estate Choria Considiana and “Zeus of the Seven Villages” in North-West Galatia, in A. Coşkun (ed.), Victories and Other Studies into the Agency and Identity of the Galatians in the Hellenistic and Early Roman Periods (Colloquia Antiqua 33, Leuven). 29 H. Guney, A new Zeus epithet found in Northeast Phrygia: Zeus of the Cedar Tree, Journal of Epigraphic Studies 3 (2020), 49–61. 30 A. Avram, Two Phrygian gods between Phrygia and Dacia, Colloquium Anatolicum 15 (2016), 70–83, at 74–78; I. Piso, Kleinasiatische Götter und Kolonisten aus Kleinasien in Dakien, Gephyra 15 (2017), 37–70; S. Mitchell, Two Galatian cults in Dacia, Gephyra 14 (2017), 15–21. 31 E. Akyürek-Şahin, Yazıdere (Seyitgazi). Zeus Kutsal alanı ve adak yazıtları (Istanbul 2006); see SEG LXVI (2006), 1513–1665. The rescue excavation took place in 1979. The site was

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Amid indeterminate traces of ancient buildings, a rescue excavation recovered fragments of about 120 small dedicatory stelae and other monuments, almost all badly broken. They include fifty-nine dedications to Zeus Limnenos, twenty-four to Zeus Bronton, and one to Zeus Patrôos (‘ancestral god’). The adjective Λιμνηνός has the typical form for a toponym, and was derived from a place name Limne, rather than directly from the Greek word for a marsh or pool, which generated the adjectival form λιμναῖος. Several of these stelae, like those from the Upper Tembris valley, mentioned the worshippers’ place of origin. The village ethnics include Ἀπελλοκωμήται, Βειτηνοί, Οὐεβροκωμήται and Σικκουδηνοί, as well as an Ἀρκτοκωμήτης, a Ζανασ[. . η]νός, and a Λιμνηνός. The form Ἀστυνός, may denote an inhabitant of the nearby town (ἄστυ) of Nacolea.32 Αbout eleven of these texts mention persons with Aurelius names dating after 212 (nos. 6, 7, 19, 64, 68, 80, 82, 109, 119, 121); but the majority come from the period 150–212. Only one dedication mentions a priest (no. 59, ἱερεύς). The villagers prayed for themselves and for their family members (ὑπὲρ τῶν ἰδίων), occasionally explicitly for their children, for their own safety and protection (περὶ / ὑπὲρ σωτηρίας, nos. 7, 14, 20, 21, 23, 25, 27, 44, 58, 62, 105, 107, 108, 127), for their crops, but particularly for their oxen (περὶ βοῶν, nos. 2, 5, 6, 8, 12, 17, 23, 52, 65, 108, 117, 122, 153). Compared to the elaborate carvings of the Zeus Ampelites and Zeus Thallos sanctuary of the Upper Tembris Valley, the pictoral reliefs are restricted to crude depictions of eagles (nos. 11, 34, 86), ox-heads (no. 46, 161, 228), yoked ox-heads (nos. 121, 162), and an amphora (no. 14). None of the fragments from the sanctuary preserves an image of the god. Almost without exception the monuments were smashed into small pieces in antiquity, the result of Christian destruction.33 Zeus Bronton, represented by a minority of the stelae found at Yazıdere, was more widespread in north Phrygia than any other Zeus cult, and was doubtless worshipped in several different sanctuaries.34 The distribution of monuments extends north into Bithynia, especially the territory of Nicaea, east into Galatia, erroneously identified as a sanctuary of Meter Tieiobeudene by M. Ricl, Society and economy of rural sanctuaries in Roman Lydia and Phrygia, Epigraphica Anatolica 35 (2003) 77–101 at 78 n. 3 and 95 n. 122, following Th. Drew-Bear Nouvelles inscriptions de Phrygie (Amsterdam 1978), 43–47. 32 Although the usual adjective for a city dweller was ἀστικός. 33 See 404 n. 283. 34 C. W. M. Cox and A. D. Cameron, MAMA V, xxxviii ff.; T. Drew-Bear and C. Naour, ANRW II.18.3, 1992–2113; E. Akyürek-Şahin, Büyük çiftçi tanrısı Zeus Bronton. Arkeolojik ve epigrafik belgerle Phrygia’da bir Zeus kültü, Olba 4 (2001), 163–82; E. Akyürek-Şahin, Phrygia’dan yeni Zeus Bronton Adakları, Arkeoloji ve Sanat 122 (2006), 89–124; G. Chiai, Zeus Bronton und der Totenkult in kaiserzeitlichen Phrygien, in J. Rüpke and J. Scheid (eds), Bestattungsrituale und Totenkult in der römischen Kaiserzeit (Stuttgart 2010), 135–57;

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and even as far as the Black Sea coast. There are relatively few representations of the god, but a small number of busts, which show a long-haired, bearded divinity with hand across the breast supported in a sling, resemble the pattern, although not the artistic quality, of the Zeus Thallos and Zeus Ampelites reliefs from the Upper Tembris Valley.35 Three third-century votive dedications to Zeus Bronton have been recorded in the Upper Tembris region, but this was not the god’s heartland.36 Many of the dedications, including the finds at Yazıdere, follow the conventional pattern of votives set up by a family head (or occasionally a whole village community) on behalf of their crops, their animals and the well-being of their households. However, Zeus Bronton was distinguished from other Zeus cults by the god’s association with deceased family members, whose death was closely connected to and commemorated by the dedication. These monuments, which convey a hybrid impression of being partly votive and partly funerary, are recognisable by various formulas. The commonest pattern is for the dedication to the god to be combined with a dedication to the dead relative, as, for example, Διοφάνης καὶ Διονύσιος Δαμᾶδος ἀδελφῷ Φιλίπῳ καὶ Διὶ Βροντῶντι εὐχήν.37 Other inscriptions combined the usual burial commemoration formula with a votive, for example ᾽Αρχεστράτη σὺν τέκνοις Αἰλίοις Ἑρμῇ κὲ Ἑρμιανῷ ἀνδρὶ γλυκυτάτῳ μνήμης χάριν ἐξετέλεσε κὲ Διὶ Βροντῶντι εὐχήν.38 Implicitly this formula recognised the divinity, or at least the life after death, of the deceased, and this concept was occasionally made explicit, as in a votive text that simply read Διὶ Βροντῶντι εὐχὴν καὶ πατρὶ θεῷ,39 or by an allusion to a person’s spirit or soul, as, for instance, a dedication to the spirits of the dedicator’s father: Διὶ Βροντῶντι

35

36 37 38 39

and G. Chiai, Phrygien und seine Götter Vienna 2020), 272–4. Chiai calculated 150 Phrygian and about 50 Bithynian examples, not including the 24 examples from Yazıdere. See especially T. Lochman, Studien zu kaiserzeitlichen Grab- und Votivreliefs aus Phrygien (Basle 2003), 81–97, esp. 88–89; for the type of bearded, long-haired Zeus, with hand across the breast, see J. Masséglia, Phrygians in relief: trends in self-representation, in P. Thonemann (ed.), Roman Phrygia. Culture and society (Oxford 2013), 94–123, esp. 102–107. Lochman, Phrygien II, 306–308, including examples from Terziler and a probable sanctuary site south of Çal köy. MAMA V 135 ‘Diophanes and Dionysios sons of Damas made a vow for their brother Philipos and Zeus Bronton’; from near Dorylaeum. MAMA V 134 ‘Archestrate with her children Aelius Hernes and Aelius Hermianus completed the burial for her dearest husband in memory and a vow to Zeus Bronton᾽; near Dorylaeum; cf. MAMA V, 157 and 229. MAMA V 232 ‘a vow for Zeus Bronton and their father, a god’. Compare J. G. C. Anderson, Explorations in Galatia cis Halym JHS 19 (1899), 127 n. 142: Ζωτικῷ τέκνῳ θεῷ μνήμην, ‘memorial for the child Zotikos, a god; SEG 34, 1300; and SEG 51, 1451.

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Θεόξενος Μαξίμου ψύχαις πατρὸς σὺν τοῖς ἰδίοις εὐξάμενοι ἀνέθηκαν εὐχήν.40 The idea is also explicitly presented in a number of verse texts, for instance an epitaph from Synaos of 202/3, οὔνομα μοι Μενέλαος, ἀτὰρ δέμας ἐνθάδε κεῖται, ψυχὴ δ᾽ἀθανάτων αἴθερα ναιετάει.41 An otherwise routine grave monument from Apamea stated simply that a deceased couple were equal to the gods, and that the earth weighed light upon them, gods among the gods.42 The funerary Zeus Bronton texts, as well as the inscriptions dedicating mortals to Hekate (see below), imply that there was an afterlife and that the spirits of the dead were enduring or immortal. The inscribed formulas are reminiscent of the Roman cult of the Di Manes, the spirits of departed family members, which was routinely and unreflectively adopted in the Dis Manibus (D. M.) formula which prefaced most pagan Latin gravestones of the imperial period. This Latin expression was translated into Greek in the form θεοῖς καταχθονίοις, sometimes abbreviated to Θ. Κ., a usage which occurs in Asia Minor on the gravestones of Roman officials, or was adopted by families strongly influenced by Roman culture.43 A grave monument recorded near Dorylaeum, which reads θεοῖς κα{κα}ταχθονίοις καὶ Διὶ Βροντῶντι (MAMA V, 225), appears to assimilate Phrygian with Roman practice. Members of the local population may have adopted the translated Latin formula from Roman citizens and officials who lived in their neighbourhood.44 The primary function of the hybrid Zeus Bronton monuments was to serve as gravestones. The votive prayer does not usually appear at the start of the text, the commonest pattern for Phrygian dedications, but at the end, as a supplement to the funerary formula.45 The monuments were not erected in sanctuaries but in graveyards. It is notable 40 SEG 32, 1275; cf. SGO 16/22/09 (Tiberiopolis): For Zeus Bronton. Theoxenos son of Maximus with his family members having made a vow set up a votive to the spirits of his father’. 41 MAMA X 517: ‘My name is Menelaos; my body indeed lies here, but my soul dwells in the upper air of the immortals’. 42 MAMA IV 362: [τ]ὸ[ν πατέρα Γάϊον ?] | Ἀμμίαν τε μητ[έρα] | Φιλόξενος κατὰ πά[ν]|τα τοὺς θεοῖς ἴσους | ἐν τῶιδε τύμβω[ι] | θήκε, καὶ χαίροι(τ)έ μοι | κουφὴν ἔχοντες γα[ῖαν] | ἐν θεοῖς τεοί. 43 MAMA V 225. See Mitchell, Anatolia I, 135, 160; I. Ancyra I nos.219–228; L. Robert, in J. Gagniers, Laodicée du Lycos. Le Nymphée (1969), 326–27. 44 There were Roman citizens and land-owners at Dorylaeum, see A. Avram, Propriétaires et citoyens à Dorylaion: enquête sur les citoyens romains et les villages sur le territoire, in F. Lerouxel and A.-V. le Pont, Propriétaires et citoyens dans l’Orient romain (Bordeaux 2016), 87–110. 45 Further discussion of the cult of the dead in Roman imperial Asia Minor, with special reference to Phrygia, by Chiai, Zeus Bronton, 144–48 and especially M. Waelkens, Privatdeifikation in Kleinasien und in der griechisch-römischen Welt. Zu einer neuen Grabinschrift Phrygiens, Archéologie et religions de l’Anatolie ancienne. Mélanges en l’honneur du Professeur Paul Naster (Louvain 1993), 259–307. Such beliefs were of course not restricted to Phrygia; cf TAM V.2.1067, iambic verse epitaph of Artemon, θάψεν δ᾽ ἀδελφὸς

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that none of the dedications discovered in the sanctuary at Yazıdere has a funerary character.46 The earliest epigraphic evidence for a Zeus cult from the neighbouring Upper Tembris Valley were dedications to Zeus Bennios from the Flavian period, perhaps produced by an Aezanitan workshop.47 Chronologically these are earlier outliers. Most of the texts and reliefs from the Tembris Valley date to the late second and third centuries. One group consists of three high quality votive reliefs for Zeus Andreas, which Lochman has identified as works produced in the workshop of the scuptors Teimeas and Zelas around 180–190, one of them actually a dedication by Teimeas himself. This may have been a short-lived familial shrine, bearing the name of its founder, which was not maintained by subsequent generations.48 The sanctuary of Zeus Andreas was a neighbour of sanctuaries of Zeus Ampelites (or Zeus Ampelikos) and Zeus Thallos, on the slopes of Erikli Dağ, west of Akça Köy near Appia (Abye, now Pınarcık).49 Fragmentary votive reliefs exposed by cultivation or by illegal excavation, which can be compared with better-preserved examples which have found their way into museum collections or into the antiquities trade,50 led to the discovery of these sites in the 1970s, although no significant architectural remains were recognisable.

46

47 48

49

50

Ἀρχέλαος σῶμ᾽ ἐμόν, ψυχὰ δ᾽ ἐμεῦ πρὸς ἄστρα καὶ θεοὺς ἔβα; and TAM V.2.1108, both from Lydian Thyateira. Chiai, Zeus Bronton, 148 cautiously suggests the opposite: ‘Sie sind Weihaltäre mit Weihinschriften, welche die primäre Kommunikative Funktion  … erfüllten, dem Gott mitzuteilen, dass das Gelübde eingelöst wurde. Deshalb scheint die Kultstätte des Gottes der am besten geigneten Ort zu sein, an dem eine derartige religiöse Handlung stattfinden konnte’, but concedes that family tombs were a suitable location for cultic rituals. T. Drew-Bear and C. Naour, ANRW II.18.3,1956–60; Lochman, Phrygien, 82–84. Lochman, Phrygien, 86 and 278: II 309–10; for the Teimeas dedication see L. Robert, BCH 1983, 543 fig. 3. Compare the votive from Çalköy near Aslanapa, now in Kütahya Museum, of Damoneikos, c.200, for Zeus Asclepiades, a cult also named after its presumed founder, Lochman, Phrygien II, 312.; E. Akyürek-Sahin, Olba 4 (2001), 117–24 Taf. 32–34. Discovered by E. Gibson and T. Drew-Bear; see T. Drew-Bear, Local cults in Graeco-Roman Phrygia, GRBS 17 (1976), 247–68 at 252–55; E. Gibson, ZPE 31 (1977), 233; Drew-Bear and Naour, ANRW II.18.3, 1942 n. 116; Lochman, Phrygien, 85. Gibson noted that the sanctuary of Zeus Ampelikos was about ten minutes walk from Zeus Andreas. T. Drew-Bear, C. Thomas and M. Yıldızturan, Phrygian Votive Steles (Ankara 1999), nos. 390, 393, 423, 427, 429, 442, 446, 464, 509, 510, 563, 566, 567, 596, 597, 599–602, 604; Lochman, Phrygien 278–84: II 313–460 (29 votives for for Zeus Ampelites/Ampelikos, 22 for Zeus Thallos, and 88 fragments where the name is missing); E. Akyürek-Şahin, Neue Votivsteine aus dem Museum von Afyon, Gephyra 4 (2007), 59–115 at 61–69 nos. 1–24 (Afyon Museum); for examples at Istanbul, see T. Drew-Bear et al. Phrygian Votive Steles 327–39, and E. Akyürek-Şahin, Epigraphische Mitteilungen aus Antalya IX: Phrygische Votive aus dem archäologischem Museum von İstanbul, Epigraphica Anatolica 33 (2001), 185–93, esp. 185–86 n. 2 α) – θ). Remarkable is γ) (Istanbul inv. no. 6089). According to the

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The Zeus Thallos and Zeus Ampelites monuments, modestly sized but expertly carved plaques or circular tondos, have been assigned to a date range of c.190–250, an earlier period than almost all the region’s Christian gravestones, and it seems that the sanctuaries themselves were no longer frequented by worshippers at the end of the third century. The name Ampelites and the prominence of vines and grapes in the decoration both of the Zeus Ampelites votives and on the majority of the third-century grave monuments leave no doubt that viticulture was present everywhere, but the reliefs on the Zeus Thallos and Zeus Ampelites series show the overwhelming importance of cattle and to a lesser extent horse-breeding for the region’s farmers and land-owners.51 The inscriptions include six dedications from inhabitants of the village of Aragua, part of an imperial estate, which is famous for having initiated a petition to the emperor Philip between 244 and 249, seeking protection from soldiers, powerful men and officials who were seizing men and animals for their transport and other needs. The petition and the imperial subscript were carved on an inscription found at Yapılcan, and this must have been one of the most important settlements in the Altıntaş region.52 Other dedications to Zeus Thallos or Zeus Ampelites were put up by a blacksmith from Cotiaeum (Lochman, Phrygien II 314) and a man from the small town of Malos in the Phrygian Highlands, as well as by villagers from Zemmea (Ζεμμεανός, II, 363), Mossyna (Μοσσυνιανός, II 446), Pas(s)ita (Πασ(σ)ιτηνός II 400, 415, 445), Gordus (Γορδηνή, Γορδηνός, II 367, 407, 437), Nan. . ta (Ναν[-]τηνός, II 366), Toupa (Τουπαηνός), Iskome (II, 393), Sagara (Σαγαρηνός, II 430), the village of the Nine Springs (Ἐνεαπηγείτης, II 320), and an otherwise unnamed trikomia (II 390, 397).53 Most of these places were probably in the Upper Tembris Valley, although only the location of Zemmea, which retained the ancient toponymy transcription in the inventory book of Istanbul Museum, the text reads Αὐ[ρ.] | Διονύ|σιος Χρηστη|ανὸς Διὶ | Θάλλῳ ε[ὐχήν], with only the letters ησ and νος of ‘Chresteanos’ marked as certain readings. No photograph is known, and the supposition that the dedicator was a Christian is unlikely. 51 L. Robert, Documents d’Asie Mineure (Paris 1987), 370–73. Vines and tools of viticulture are not conspicuous on the monuments of Zeus Ampelites (ethnic) or Ampelikos (ktetic), and the epithet probably derived from a toponym (e.g. Ampelon, ‘place of the vine) and did not denote that the god’s primary function was as protector of vines; Lochman, Phrygien, 87. 52 MAMA X, 114 and Mitchell, Anatolia I, 230 figs. 40 and 41 illustrating the petition and the votive stele. The dedications by people from Aragua are Lochman, Phrygien nos. II, 383–4; 388, 391, 396, 436. 53 For village names from this region, see MAMA X, xlii–xlv; T. Drew-Bear and C. Naour, ANRW II.18.3, 1952; Phrygian Votive Steles, 397–400; Drew-Bear, Directory to Barrington Atlas Map 62, Phrygia (1996).

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in the form Zemme until the village was renamed Çayırbaşı in the 1950s, is certain. Festivals and celebrations brought the scattered villagers and landowners of the Upper Tembris Valley together in these sanctuaries near Appia. Reliefs of pack-animals, including saddled horses, mules and donkeys, and cattle appear on the votive monuments of Zeus Thallos and Zeus Ampelites (or Ampelikos).54 These reliefs provide an important contextual background for understanding the famous ‘Christians for Christians’ inscriptions of the Upper Tembris valley, which will be examined in in chapter 4.8. In contrast, most of the Phrygian reliefs depicting sheep and shepherds, the latter identifiable by their heavy felt or sheepskin capes, come from the highland sanctuaries of Zeus Alsenos and Zeus Petarenos, which have been the target of illegal excavations near the mountain village of Kurudere. The stelae, votives made by ordinary country-dwellers of modest means, were carved off-cuts of Docimian marble with architectural features including pilasters, capitals, pediments and acroteria. There are tablets, plaques, statuettes and miniature altars, depicting bearded Zeus busts, figures of men or children in peasants’ capes, male and female figures, animals including oxen, sheep, horses, donkeys, and eagles. The find location is half way between Docimium and Amorium in eastern Phrygia, about 1500 metres above sea level in the upper part of a high valley which divided Şam Dağ on the west from Emir Dağ.55 Another epithet of Zeus found at the Kurudere sanctuary was ὀροχωρείτης, the god who goes over the mountains. Τhe term was geographically appropriate, but also specifically indicated the god’s function as a companion and protector of the highland shepherds.56

54 Lochman, Phrygien, 209: ‘Es wird weniger die Gottheit gezeigt, als viel mehr die für das leibliche Wohl der bäuerlichen Bevölkerung elementaren Belange’. 55 For the original discovery see L. Tuğrul, Votive steles found at Emirdağ, Annual of the Archaeological Museums of Istanbul 13–14 (1966), 175–85, mentioning 150 votive monuments acquired ‘at Amorium’ for the Istanbul Museum, and the full publication by Drew-Bear, Thomas and Yıldızturan, Phrygian Votive Steles (1999), reviewed by M. Ricl, Epigraphica Anatolica 33 (2001), 195–199; T. Lochman, Phrygien, 127 and 302–14: III 92–539. 170 inscribed items are all reportedly from Kurudere (Yanal Mevkii) NE of Docimium, mostly for Zeus Alsenos or Zeus Petarenos dated c.AD 150–212. Lochman, Phrygien, 127 noted that four examples (Phrygian Votive Steles nos. 365, 364, 363 and 540) are high quality work deriving from a Docimeian trained sculptor, and no. 364 is signed by Chariton of Docimeium. A small number of the votives are for other deities: five for Zeus Orochoreites; three for Nike, and one each for Mên, Meter, and Asklepios (see Phrygian Votive Steles, 31–33). There are further examples in E. Akyürek-Şahin, Neue Votivsteine aus dem Museum von Afyon, Gephyra 4 (2007), 59–115 nos. 25–33. 56 Ricl 2017, 137 n. 79. ὀρειφοιτέω / ὀρειφοίτης were words that applied to shepherds (LSJ s.v.), and ὀρειβάτις was a term that described Artemis (Lexicon zur byzantinischen Gräzität, s.v.).

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This important cult is attested not only at the Kurudere sanctuary but also at other Phrygian locations.57 3.3

The Pantheon and Other Phrygian Divinities

Zeus took his place at the head of a pantheon, which was depicted on steles and altars produced by the same Altıntaş workshops that were responsible for the Zeus Thallos and Zeus Ampelites votives. Two decorated steles depicting several divinities, which can be attributed on stylistic grounds to these workshops, are said to have been acquired at Eskişehir, and it is not clear whether they were delivered there in antiquity for local use, or were pierres errantes transported in modern times. A small stele now in the Louvre carries a dedication by Aur. Chrestos to Zeus Chryseos, a cult that is not otherwise attested. It shows a full-length figure of Zeus with his eagle, busts of Helios and Selene in the gable, and two smaller figures, one naked with a club, surely Heracles, the other a female bust, perhaps representing Dike. A yoke of oxen was carved on the socle beside the inscription.58 A more elaborate, but still modestly-sized relief, also in the Louvre, was a dedication inscribed Ἡλίῳ Δίκησι, to Helios and the gods of Justice (?), by three individuals. Despite the inscription, the main object of the votive may have been Zeus, perhaps even Zeus Chryseos. The relief in the gable shows a bust of a bearded long-haired Zeus, placed between Helios and Selene. Below, in two rows, are a mounted rider god, the pair Hosios and Dikaios, identifiable by their attributes of scales and a measuring staff, and a female bust, above a naked Hercules with a palm branch, Hermes with a caduceus, and a yoke of oxen.59 These two reliefs do not illustrate all the members of the Phrygian pantheon, but outline its main contours. Zeus presided over a cosmos that embraced heaven, earth and the underworld. The Sun and the Moon, fixed heavenly elements, formed a counter-balance to gods of the underworld and the afterlife. Helios was as an all-seeing presence, responsible for avenging wrongs, 57 SEG 32, 1271, which mentions male and female priests attached to an important sanctuary near Kızılcaören, north-east of Dorylaeum; SEG 40, 1234 (Altıntaş). An association of 12 mystai of Zeus Orochoreites has been recorded at Amorium, see C. S. Lightfoot, A Catalogue of Roman and Byzantine Stone Inscriptions from Amorium and its Territory together with Graffiti, Stamps and Miscellanea (Amorium Reports 5; Ege Yayınları, Istanbul 2017), 53 no. 129. 58 L. Robert, Hellenica X (1955), 104–7 no. 18; Lochman, Phrygien, 284: II 462 with fig. 79. 59 L. Robert, Hellenica, Revue de philologie 1939, 202–7 (OMS II, 1355–60); Lochman, Phrygien, 284: II 463 with fig. 80.

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abuse and especially violent deaths.60 It was appropriate that a Helios bust should appear on a funerary stele next to the pagan adjuration, ‘By God, do no wrong!’61 Hercules, the tamer of Cerberus, and Hermes, who guided souls to the underworld, played their roles in Phrygian funerary rituals, securing safe passage to the afterlife. Funerary rituals and beliefs regarding the immortality of the soul formed the subject matter of some of the finest funerary sculpture from the region, produced in the workshops of Teimeas, Zelas and sculptors associated with them at the end of the second and in the first quarter of the third century. They show scenes of Heracles and Cerberus, the youthful god Attis, Pluto and Persephone, all mythical scenes with pronounced chthonic or underworld associations.62 Images of mother goddesses are a notable absentee from the reliefs that depicted the Phrygian pantheon, although worship of the Meter Theon, in many local guises was more diverse and widespread than for any other divinity apart from Zeus. Mother moddesses were associated with birth, human fertility, the protection and productivity of the rural environment and the natural world, but had no place in the cult of the dead or the funerary rituals which are an important reference point for most of the steles that show a multiplicity of gods. Ricl lists twenty-two local variations in northern Phrygia, including thirteen epithets derived from place names, one from a sanctuary’s founder, and others of a descriptive character.63 However, the range was narrower than for Zeus and, the actual number of votives is far smaller, as very few cults are attested by more than a single dedication. The exceptions include the Μήτηρ ἀπὸ Κρανὸς Μεγάλου, whose sanctuary was probably east of Dorylaeum,64 and the Μήτηρ Κικλέα.65 Only two sanctuaries of the mother goddess have been precisely located, both – perhaps by coincidence – in caves: the Μήτηρ Στευνηνή at Aezani and the Μήτηρ ἀπὸ Σπηλέου, which was close to the village 60 F. Cumont, Il sole vindice dei delitti, Atti della Pontificia Academia Romana di Archeologia, ser. II. Memorie I.1 (1928), 65–80, and Deux monuments des cultes solaires, Syria 14 (1933), 381–95. For the ubiquity and persistence of the idea, see H. Grégoire and M. Letocart, ΕΝΤΥΧΙΑ ΠΡΟΣ ΗΛΙΟΝ. L’invocation du soleil vengeur dans l’épopée byzantine, Revue des études anciennes 42 (1940), 161–4. 61 Lochman, Phrygien II, 275: II, 266; SEG 53, 1548 (ICG 1834); for the adjuration τὸν θεόν σοι· μὴ αδικήσεις, see chapter 4.9. 62 For examples see MAMA X 106; Lochman, Phrygien, 267: II 184 (ICG 1178). For Attis, see Lochman, Phrygien, 212–16. 63 Ricl, Epigr. Anat. 50 (2017), 142–43 and 146. 64 MAMA V, 8–9; SEG 28, 1184; 58, 1506–7; Lochmann III 538 and 539; cf Ricl, 142 n. 150. For Metropolis in the Phrygian Highlands, see L. Robert, A travers l’Asie Mineure (1980), 257–299 and below p. 371–2 n. 133. 65 MAMA X, 226; W. M. Ramsay, Lycaonian and Phrygian notes, CR 19 (1905) 427 no. 13.

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of Ahılar, north-east of Dorylaeum.66 Neither of these has produced the large quantity of votive monuments and dedications that has been recovered from the region’s Zeus sanctuaries. It is generally assumed that the Phrygian Mother should simply be identified with the goddess known in Greek and Roman sources as Cybele and in the Near Eastern tradition as Kubaba. However, it is rare for texts of the Roman period to mention the mother goddess by this old native name.67 A group of dedications to another female Phrygian divinity, Angdistis, has been recovered from a sanctuary at the Old Phrygian site known as Midas Şehri in the Phrygian Highlands, a settlement known as Metropolis, the town of the Mother (goddess), at least by the fourth century BC. Angdistis, like Cybele, was often conflated with the mother goddess.68 Although their cults were dominant in north and central Phrygia, several other deities were regularly worshipped individually in the region. These include Papas, another male indigenous god, attested near Nacolea and Cotiaeum,69 and the more familiar divinities Mên, Apollo, Helios and Hekate. Hekate, who was iconographically shown as a triple figure, appeared frequently on locally produced reliefs and votive texts and was associated with the underworld. As the chthonic divinity ‘Black Hekate’ she was sometimes invoked on curses to protect the tomb.70 However, the most striking and revealing cult monuments are reliefs which name family members who are said to have been consecrated to the saviour Hekate as part of a rite that implied the passing of mortals into the immortal realm. Six examples recovered from a location near Yağcılar, on the east flank of Mount Dindymus at the southern end of the Upper Tembris valley, now in Kütahya and Uşak Museums, show that the decorated stelae which recorded this rite of passage did not serve as gravestones but were erected in a sanctuary of the goddess.71 66 P. Frei, Epigraphisch-topographische Forschungen im Raum von Eskişehir, AST 1 (1983), 53–62; Ricl, 142 n. 151. 67 Exceptions: MAMA X, 527; SEG 56, 1430. 68 MAMA VI, 390–99; SEG 36, 1201; Ricl 142 n. 144. For the probable location of Metropolis, see c.5.7 371–2 n. 133. 69 Ricl 2017, 144 n. 185; T. Drew-Bear and C. Naour, ANRW II.18.3, 2018–22. 70 L. Robert, Malédictions funéraires grecques, CRAI 1978, 241–89 = Opera Minora Selecta 5 (Amsterdam 1989), 697–745. 71 Lochman, Phrygien, 90–91, 264–65: II 143–47, 285; II 466; N. E. Akyürek Şahin, Kütahya Müzesi’ndeki Hekate Eserleri Işığında Yukarı Porsuk Vadisi’nde (Kütahya) Hekate Kültü (The Cult of Hecate in the Tembris Valley in Kütahya: Evidence from the Kütahya Museum), Kütahya Müzesi Yıllığı 6 (2018, publ. 2019), 127–99; N. E. Akyürek Şahin, Kurtarıcı Hekaten’in himayesine sunulan ölüler: Kütahyadan iki yeni mezar taşı (New grave-stelae from Kütahya: the deceased consecrated to Hekate), Kütahya Müzesi Yıllığı 7 (2019, publ. 2020), 145–60. For this rite, see 277–83.

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Hercules was a god of protean capacity and capabilities. His twelve labours must have spoken eloquently to an earthy Phrygian population, hardened by agricultural labour. An inscription set up by three priests in the north part of the rural territory of Cibyra, long-known but only recently published, documents the building of a temple of Heracles, the new-born Hosios and Dikaios, child of Heracles, and an otherwise unknown ‘Golden Virgin’, Chrysea Parthenos.72 Justice, represented by the dual divinity Hosios and Dikaios, was displayed at the centre of the composition in the second relief from Eskişehir, accompanied perhaps by a female Dike, as well as by Herakles. The Eskişehir relief was a visual projection of religious ideas which associated the anthropomorphic Heracles, who was linked to a rich mythological narrative, with the almost impersonal abstractions of Holy and Just in a single system of belief. The priests in the Cibyratis articulated the connection in words by making Holy and Just Herakles’s new-born offspring. Gods associated with Holiness and Justice, Hosios and Hosia, Dike and Dikaiosyne, are a well known speciality of Phrygian paganism, and their links to regional Christianity are discussed in a later section (chapter 4.10 n. 17 see pp. 274–6). Apollo in Phrygia sometimes appears as the god of prophecy.73 Several votive monuments for the cult of Theos Xyreos, in some cases identified as Apollo, have been recorded in the territory of Hadriani, north-west of the Phrygian circle, attested by inscriptions found at Hadriani itself, and at Tepecik near Tavşanlı. The texts were erected during the term of office of a named prophet, who seems to have had some supervision of religious activity in this small Mysian city. However, it is important to note that prophetai are rarely attested in the rural environment of Phrygia and neighbouring Lydia, and oracular prophecy was not a prominent feature of local Phrygian sanctuaries.74

72 T. Corsten and M. Ricl, A dedication to Heracles, Hosios and Dikaios and Chrysea Parthenos from the Cibyratis, Gephyra 9 (2012), 143–51. 73 SGO III, 33 no. 19 (Upper Tembris Valley; Apollo Clarius); MAMA IX 60 (northern Aizanitis, Apollo Xyreos mentioning a prophet). Two unpublished dedications to Apollo from the statue hoard at Çavdarlı in Afyon Museum (see below) were made in response to oracles received by the worshipper. 74 E. Schwertheim, Die Inschriften von Hadrianoi und Hadrianeia (IK 33, 1987), nos. 6, 19, 23, 24 (reference to an actual prophecy), 25, 26, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35; MAMA IX, 60 with commentary; L. Robert, OMS 1, 421 ff. noted that the evidence for prophets was sparse.

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Major Sanctuaries of Southern Phrygia

The worship of Apollo was an important part of the religious traditions of south-west Phrygia, especially the major city of Hierapolis, but the name of the main cult there, Apollo Kareios, suggests that its origins were Carian, rather than Phrygian, and this is confirmed by the attribute of the double-axe, which was also more typical of south-west than central Anatolia.75 Apollo Propylaios was the presiding local divinity at Eumeneia,76 but the most notable rural regional sanctuary was the temple of Apollo Lairbenos at Asartepe, on the summit of the whale-backed mountain ridge, which looms over 1000 metres above the deep gorge of the Upper Maeander river. On the river’s right bank to the north was the small city of Motella (modern Medele), and an inscription hailed the god worshipped there as τῷ ἐπιφανεῖ θεῷ Ἡλίῳ Ἀπόλλωνι Λαιρμηνῷ τῷ προεστῶτι τῆς Μοτελληνῶν πόλεως.77 The phrase implies that the god was the most powerful guiding force in this small city, and worshippers were attracted from many of the towns and villages in the neighbourhood, including Hierapolis (where Apollo Lairbenos was featured on a coin type) and at least three of its dependent communities, Tripolis, Dionysopolis, Blaundus, the unlocated Atyochorion, and a village dependent on Laodicea. The rich harvest of inscriptions from the site can be classified into three main categories, orthodox votive stelae and altars set up by worshippers, inscriptions that recorded the consecration of sacred slaves (katagraphai),78 and confession texts which were designed to absolve worshippers who had foresworn oaths, broken vows to the god, or otherwise infringed sacred regulations.79 The institution of sacred slaves at the sanctuary and their manumission has been discussed recently by Ulrich Huttner in relation to Paul’s letter to Philemon about the slave Onesimos.80 There were two notable rural sanctuaries in southern Phrygia between the mountain range of Sultan Dağ and the Pisidian lakes Hoyran/Eğridir 75 See U. Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus valley, 44–8. 76 G. Labarre, L’Apollon Propylaios d’Eumeneia et les theoi propylaioi, in P. Brun (ed.), Scripta Anatolica (Hommages à Pierre Debord. Bordeaux 2007), 283–96; See also U. Huttner, Christliche Grenzgänger, 157. 77 W. M. Ramsay and D. C. Hogarth, Apollo Lermenos, JHS 8 (1887), 376–400; K. M. Miller, Apollo Lairbenos, Numen 32 (1985), 46–70 is an excellent survey; T. Ritti, C. Şimşek, H. Yıldız, Dediche e καταγραφαί dal santuario frigio di Apollo Lairbenos, Epigr. Anat. 32 (2000), 1–88 (p. 37 K 36). 78 M. Ricl, Les καταγράφαι du sanctuarie d’Apollon Lairbenos, Arkeoloji Dergisi 5 (1994), 167–95. 79 G. Petzl, Die Beichtinschriften Westkleinasiens, Epigr. Anatol. 22, 1994, 122–143 nos. 106–124. 80 Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus valley, 106–9.

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and Beyşehir. One was at or near the village of Sağır, the home of the Xenoi Tekmoreioi, an association or community of visiting guests who were drawn from villages and cities in central and southern Phrygia and northern Pisidia. The other was the sanctuary of Mên Askaênos, located on a 1600 metre hill summit outside the Roman colony of Antioch.81 The two had in common a unique and unexplained religious ritual called a tekmor. The guests (xenoi) who came to Sağır took their name from the tekmor, while the worshippers of Mên Askaênos, who were almost exclusively natives of the colony at Antioch and therefore, for the most part, Roman citizens, used the verb forms τεκμορεύσας or τεκμορεύσαντες in their dedications to describe the ritual that they had performed.82 The sanctuary of Mên Askaênos was on an outlying hill-top in the southern part of Sultan Dağ and overlooked the large territory of Antioch. Doubtless many of the worshippers who inscribed their vows on the sanctuary walls came not from the urban centre but from the villages across this region, stretching south to the Cillanian plain and west towards Hoyran Lake, where most of the colonists had their farms. A dossier of Seleucid correspondence dating to 209 BC from Philomelium refers to the sanctuary of Mên Askaênos and the Mother Goddess ‘in the place around Killanion’,83 and this is surely a reference to the Antioch sanctuary, apparently in a period before the Hellenistic temple had been built.84 Here the inscriptions take the standard form of votive dedications, set up by individuals on their own behalf for themselves or for 81

It is unfortunate that neither P. Talloen, Cult in Pisidia (2015), nor G. F. Chiai, Phrygien und ihre Götter (2020) in their large-scale syntheses, deal with Mên at Antioch and the Xenoi Tekmoreioi. 82 G. Labarre, Les origines et la diffusion du culte de Mên, in H. Bru, S. Lebreton, F. Kirbilher (eds), L’Asie Mineure dans l’Antiquité: échanges, populations et territoires. Regards actuels sur une péninsule (PUR, 2009), 389–414, at 399 n. 52 offers a cautious discussion of the word’s possible meaning; at 406 he erroneously supposes that the ritual, whatever it was, was exclusively connected to the cult of Mên, while recognizing that the divinity worshipped at the Sağır sanctuary was Artemis (406 n. 116). G. Labarre, Les Xenoi Tekmoreioi d’Antioche de Pisidie: bilan et problèmes, in J. Demaille et G. Labarre (eds.), Les associations cultuelles en Grèce et Asie Mineure aux époque hellénistiques et imperials (Franche-Compté 2021), 143–58 (non vidi), has now suggested that although some texts refer to Artemis, the main god worshipped in the sanctuary was Mên. 83 For the Cillianian plain see G. Labarre, M. Özsait and N. Özsait, Sites et inscriptions de la plaine cillanienne, Anatolia Antiqua 15 (2007), 113–46 with map on p. 114, but no mention of the inscription from Philomelium. 84 H. Malay, A Copy of the Letter of Antiochos III to Zeuxis (209 BC), in: H. Heftner and K. Tomaschitz (eds) Ad Fontes! Festschrift für Gerhard Dobesch (Vienna 2004), 407–13; SEG 54, 1353, line 13. See B. M. Levick, Roman Colonies in Southern Asia Minor (Oxford 1967), xx, and H. Bru, La Phrygie parorée, 144–63 for Antioch’s territory.

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family members.85 Many of these were Roman citizens, members of the dominant class of the large and important Roman colony at Antioch, but other residents and even slaves appear to have made dedications.86 Only two dedications were non-local: by C. Anthestius from the nearby Cillanian plain, and by a certain Artemôn from Docimium.87 118 texts were carved on the outside of the west-facing temenos wall of the sanctuary, surrounding the Hellenistic peristyle temple. Numerous other dedications (161), mostly in fragmentary condition, were carved on small stelae and probably displayed inside or close to the temenos. Aitor Blanco-Perez in a recent study has argued that the inscriptions on the temenos wall were all carved at about the same time towards the end of the second century AD, while the free-standing votives cover a longer period from the late first to the mid third century AD.88 The archaeological remains of the sanctuary are as significant as the inscriptions. As well as two temples, there was a small stadium-like structure, which could have accommodated gymnastic events such as wrestling and boxing, or musical performances, but not running or other athletic disciplines. However, most of the space between and around the temples and the stadium was occupied by rooms designed for sympotic banquets, some designed for larger gatherings, others for small parties of between five and eleven guests.89 Much of the activity at the sanctuary related to eating and drinking, and the many house-like structures there were among the most important social spaces in the Roman imperial colony at Antioch.90 The inscriptions of the Xenoi Tekmoreioi can mostly be dated between c.212 and 238. They take the form of lists and specify the name, patronymic, and place of origin of a donor or contributor, followed by a sum of money in denarii. They thus contain social (onomastic), geographical (toponomastic), and economic (monetary) information. The beginnings of most of the texts 85 G. Labarre, Le dieu Mèn et son sanctuaire à Antioche de Pisidie (Bruxelles 2010); N. Belayche, Luna/Μὴν Ἀσκαηνός. Un dieu romain à Antioche en Pisidie’, in O. Hekster, S. Schmidt-Hofner, and C. Witschel, C. (eds), Ritual Dynamics and Religious Change in the Roman Empire (Leiden/Boston 2009), 327–48. L. Katchadourian, ‘The Cult of Mên at Pisidian Antioch’, in E. K. Gazda / D.Y. ng, (eds.), Building a New Rome: The Imperial Colony of Pisidian Antioch (25 BC–700 AD) (Ann Arbor 2011), 153–72. 86 E. N. Lane, CMRDM I, nos. 29, 217, 283; IV no. 45 (slave). 87 CMRDM IV nos. 65 and 69. 88 A. Blanco-Perez, Mên Askaênos and the native cults of Antioch by Pisidia, in M. P de Hoz, J. P. Sanchez Hernandez, C. Molina Valero, Between Tarhuntas and Zeus Polieus: cultural crossroads in temples and cults of Graeco-Roman Anatolia (Leuven 2016), 117–53. 89 Mitchell and Waelkens, Pisidia Antioch, 72–86. 90 See further G. Labarre / M. Özsait, Une salle de banquet pour Mên et les Volumnii d’Antioche de Pisidie, Dialogues d’histoire ancienne 33 (2007), 91–114.

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are generally missing and have been restored on the basis of one or two nearly complete examples. These contain vows on behalf of the emperors, with references to Artemis which seem to show that Artemis was the principal object of worship.91 The lists contain the names of guests from the cities of Adada (in Pisidia), Apamea, Eumeneia, Antiochia, Apollonia, Synnada, and three obscurer communities which may have achieved city status, Iulia, Malos and Motella. The geographical range covers southern Phrygia, extending north to Synnada, with a southern outlier at Adada in central Pisidia. However, city-dwellers were a small minority. Two persons each from Synnada, Pisidian Adada, and Apollonia, one a city councillor, do not cite a village residence; three of the five Xenoi Tekmoreioi from the colony of Antioch cite their village of origin, while one, ostentatiously, states that he was from the polis itself, Ἀντιοχεὺς πολείτης.92 The rest of the membership came from about 133 separate villages, all named. Thirty-four individuals identified themselves as coming from Synnada, but in thirty-two cases referred to their villages of origin on the city territory. Τhe citizens of Apamea, Eumeneia and Iulia all indicated that they lived in a dependent village. The membership of the organization was exclusively male, and the Xenoi Tekmoreioi were village-dwellers almost to a last man. One of the most mysterious aspects of the inscriptions from both sanctuaries is how to explain the related terms τέκμωρ (attested once in the phrase τέκμoρ ποίσας),93 the adjective τεκμορεῖοι, and the participle τεκμορεύσας. The post-Homeric form of the Greek noun, attested in archaic and classical poetry was τέκμαρ, but both τέκμωρ and τέκμαρ were obsolete Greek words by the fourth century BC, and the re-appearance of the terminology in third-century Phrygia was certainly an artificial revival. The cognate word in classical Greek was τεκμήριον, meaning a sign or a proof. The inhabitants of Phrygia in the second and third centuries AD spoke their own distinct Greek dialect, which had peculiarities of spelling, pronunciation and grammar, and which also introduced unusual archaic vocabulary, especially to describe familial relationships..94 These terms probably appeared in the Phrygian dialect of Greek 91 See n. 82. 92 W. Ruge Xenoi Tekmoreioi, RE Va, 1934, 158–169; G. Arena, Communita di villagio nell’ Anatolia romana. Il dossier epigraphico degli Xenoi Tekmoreioi (Rome 2017), 148 (Adada), 151 (Antioch), 156 (Apollonia), 162 (Eumeneia), 168 (Iulia), 196 (Synnada). 93 E. Lane, CMRDM I, 31 no. 75: Phrygian vernacular Greek for τέκμωρ ποιήσας. 94 The Homeric words δαήρ and ἐνάτηρ also surface again in Phrygian Greek of the third century AD. See C. Brixhe, Interactions between Greek and Phrygian, in J. N. Adams et al. (ed.), Bilingualism in Ancient Society. Language, contact, and the written text (Oxford 2002), 246–66.

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under the Roman empire, because related words were still preserved in the spoken Phrygian language. The distribution map of the neo-Phrygian inscriptions of the third century AD (almost all are funerary curse formulae designed to protect graves) resembles that of the places of origin of the ‘Guest-Friends’, in villages of southern, central and eastern Phrygia. The inscriptions show that there were three official titles in the association, the ἀναγραφεύς, two βραβευταῖ, and the πρωτανακλίτης. The ἀναγραφεύς was doubtless responsible for record keeping. The word πρωτανακλίτης occurs nowhere else but the meaning derived from the verb ἀνακλίνω seems inescapable, and we can be certain that the bearer of this title occupied the first couch at a banquet or symposium. By implication the other members were also banqueteers. The title of the association stresses that the members were guests, xenoi, and their main activity must have involved feasting and drinking. The τέκμωρ might be a pledge of membership, perhaps a promise of payment, made at the banquet. All the members of the Xenoi Tekmoreioi were persons of substance, as each individually contributed substantial sums of money to the association.95 About 63% of them made donations between 100 and 901 denarii, 37% made donations between 1000 and 6001 denarii. The smaller donors contributed 34% and the larger donors 66% of the grand total of nearly 320,000 denarii accounted for in all the surviving texts. These figures are evidence for considerable disposable wealth. Gaetano Arena has calculated that the value of the donations was equal to the proceeds of selling between one (1046,5 modii) and forty (39,006,5 modii) tons of grain. In a good year, a hectare of land (100 × 100 metres = 4 iugera) might produce a ton of grain. Even the poorest member, therefore, must have been able to spare the value of a hectare’s cereal production over and above his family’s subsistence needs.96 Another measure of the value of the donations is the information provided by a dedication to Zeus Kalokagathios recorded at Sağır, that a feast honouring the god could be financed by annual interest on a gift of 100 denarii.97 Assuming an interest rate of 8% the banquet would cost 12.5 denarii. Generosity even at the lower end of the scale shown by the Xenoi Tekmoreioi contributions would not be in the reach of small holders able to produce little more than their own and 95 However, this only applies to the persons whose names were inscribed in the lists. We should not exclude the possibility that there were other members, who contributed less than a certain sum or nothing at all. 96 Figures from Arena, Xenoi Tekmoreioi, 297–301. 97 Arena, Xenoi Tekmoreioi, 122 I 25: ὁ αὐτὸς Σκύμνος καὶ ἔτι ἐπικαταλείπω τῇ κώμῃ * ρ´. ἐκ τόκου γείνεσθαι βέος Δεὶ Καλακαγαθίῳ ὑπὲρ καρπῶν. The term βέν(ν)ος probably described a Phrygian cult association or the feasts held there, Drew-Bear and Naour, ANRW II.18.3, 1955–6.

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their family’s needs. The richest donors were very wealthy farmers. They surely included the many Phrygians who bred animals and earned a good living by hiring mules, horses and oxen for transport purposes. The Xenoi Tekmoreioi were a dining and drinking association, whose members were drawn from the wealthiest village families of Phrygia. Their flourishing farms and estates produced large surpluses. They found ways, no doubt, to minimize the pressure of high taxation which was taking its toll on city populations in the third century. They lived in a largely rural environment and were not attracted by the glamour of urban civic life in the eastern provinces, which in any case was not part of their regional culture. Few Phrygian cities had large theatres, fewer still are known to have put on games, shows and other forms of entertainment. So, not only was there no incentive, but also little opportunity to emulate the behaviour of the civic elites of western and southern Asia Minor. These hard-working farmers and transport men had generated abundant surplus income, and looked for their own forms of entertainment and recognition. After a successful harvest, their wallets and chests, items that were proudly displayed on the gravestones found in Phrygian villages, were crammed with hundreds or thousands of denarii. Their home villages offered few opportunities for large expenditure. They can be imagined, therefore, in the prime years of their life, setting out with a retinue of horses, slaves, and servants to join their peers from the region in a festival of eating, drinking, story-telling, gossip, boasting and self-congratulation, all commemorated in the now broken lists of the Xenoi Tekmoreioi. The sanctuaries of Mên Askaênos and of the Xenoi Tekmoreioi had in common that they provided locations where large numbers of people gathered to worship, to socialise and above all to feast together. From an early date in the first century AD Mên was recognised not only by the indigenous population but by the Roman and Italian immigrants as the patrios theos of the community at Antioch, the most important local divinity. The clientèle of Mên Askaênos were almost exclusively citizens and inhabitants of the colony and the villages on its territory. They adopted not only the Persian-Anatolian god Mên but also the mysterious ritual or procedure of the tekmor as a central part of their organised worship. The centre of the Xenoi Tekmoreioi lay about forty kilometres away. This was probably on Antioch’s territory but there is no sign that the activities there were controlled by the colony’s authorities. A few of the worshippers and banqueters came from Antioch itself, but they were far outnumbered by guests who came from the length and breadth of southern and central Phrygia, many having journeyed for up to four days. Whereas visitors from Antioch to the Mên Askaênos sanctuary could cover the distance in

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an hour or two and would not have to overnight there, most of the pilgrims to Sağır would have lodged probably for at least two or three days. Eating, drinking and socialising would have been at least as important to them as paying hommage to the divinity. The importance of the place and the events that took place at Sağır can be measured by the size of the members’ contributions, but there are difficult questions to be asked about the financial organisation. What motivated the donors to make their contributions? What was the money spent on? What benefits did they receive for their generosity? How was the money accounted for and securely banked? None of the answers to these questions is at all obvious. Donations could be spent on the actual buildings and their fittings, the hardware of the sanctuary, but no cult building has been identified at the site and only a very incomplete impression is provided by the inscriptions. They mention a pronaos and refer to statues, bronze vessels, and a cave construction called an antron.98 A second area of spending would be the running costs of the association, that is the feasts, accommodation and entertainment for the guests at Sağır. This might include salaries for personnel. A third possibility might be the costs of guests who were not donors to the organisation, a form of redistribution to the poorer villagers unable to contribute themselves at the level of the donors. This is entirely hypothetical, but worth mentioning in the context of Ramsay’s suggestion that the Xenoi Tekmoreioi formed an anti-Christian organisation designed to challenge the growing popularity of Christianity in third-century Phrygia.99 The Christians were known and acknowledged for the support which the church offered to poor members of the community, especially widows and orphans. Julian the Apostate’s attempt to revitalize pagan priests and cult centres included the promise of imperial funding to support and sustain to the needy poor and not be outshone by the organized Church. Julian’s objective was precisely to offer an alternative to the 98 Arena, Xenoi Tekmoreioi, 52 I.2, lines 4–5 (statue, bronze object, dish and offering vessel); 78 1.3 lines 3–4 (mounted statue of Helios); 91 i.12 line 5 (bronze statue of Tyche); 93 1.13 lines 9–12 (bronze statue, statue of Artemis, mention of pronaos); 105 1.17 line 2 (? bronze vases); 118 1.21 line 3 (? two bronze vase); 118 1.22 lines 6–8 (statue of Artemis); 123 1.26, line 2–3 (cave and torch). 99 W. M. Ramsay, ‘The Tekmoreian Guest-Friends: An Anti-Christian Society on the Imperial Estates at Pisidian Antioch’. In Ramsay, W.M. (ed.), Studies in the History and Art of the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire (Aberdeen 1906), 303–77, esp. 347–9. Ramsay’s later suggestion in ‘The Tekmoreian Guest-Friends’. JHS 32 (1912), 151–70 at 154–7, that the tekmor was a sort of anti-eucharistic ritual involving twice-baked bread is entirely fanciful.

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provisions offered by Christian xenodocheia.100 The idea that the sums collected by the xenoi tekmoreioi could be used for redistribution and relief of the poor is perhaps not completely to be dismissed. The sanctuaries of the xenoi tekmoreioi and of Mên Askaênos were immensely attractive to the village inhabitants of southern Phrygia and to the colonists who farmed the lands of Pisidian Antioch. The epigraphic evidence from the Zeus sanctuaries of Zeus Sarnendenos on the mountainous frontier with Bithynia, of Zeus Limnenos near Nacolea, of Zeus Ampelites and Zeus Thallos near Appia, and of Apollo Lairbenos near Motella is also unambiguous, that worshippers were attracted to them from numerous villages in each of these regions. The shepherds and country people that visited the high valley of Kurudere east of Docimium evidently gathered from the communities of eastern Phrygia. The harsh winter climate of Phrygia between November and April will have been a deterrent especially to the mountain-top locations, but, in any case, the largest gatherings surely occurred in the early summer months after the grain and other crops for the year had been sown but not yet harvested.101 G. F. Chiai has placed heavy stress on the ‘Ortsgebundenheit’ of rural Phrygian cults, emphasizing that the gods of west central Anatolia, especially in Lydia and Phrygia, had a strong preferential connection to the place where they were worshipped.102 The ethnic labels of the villages where the cult sites were located is proof enough of their strictly local significance, and many divinities of north-east Lydia are explicitly said to have ruled their villages, imposing moral discipline over the local populations. Their authority is conveyed by the confession inscriptions found in Lydian sanctuaries, in which worshippers acknowleged crimes and bore witness to the punishment that they and people associated with them had suffered.103 The Lydian confession texts shine a harsh light on the faults of worshippers, who attempted to achieve atonement 100 The main evidence for this policy, Julian’s letter to the Galatian priest Arsacius, is now, however, generally believed to be a fifth-century forgery. See 493 for a reference to this in the life of Aberkios. 101 P. Thonemann, The Lives of Ancient Villages. Rural society in Roman Anatolia (Cambridge 2022), 81–5, has analysed the dates on votive inscriptions and confession texts from north-east Lydia, and noted that this activity peaked between late spring and early summer, roughly late April to late June. 102 G. F. Chiai, Die Ortsgebundenheit des Religiösen: das Paradigma der ländlichen Heiligtümer Phrygiens in der Kaiserzeit, in C. F. Auffarth, Religion auf dem Land. Entstehung und Veränderung von Sakrallandschaften unter römischen Herrschaft (Stuttgart 2009), 133–60 at 151: Beinamen …, sonstige Attribute (und) kultische Formeln dienten dazu, die Ortsgebundeheit auszudrücken und zu zeigen, dass der Gott in einer bevorzugten Verbindung mit dem jeweiligen Ort stand’. 103 Mitchell, Anatolia I, 191–5, the extensive new bibliography cited in the summary by Chiai, Phrygien und ihre Götter, 300–6, and Thonemann, The Lives of Ancient Villages, 241–83.

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and reconciliation with their divine rulers by erecting steles which described their transgressions. Confession texts were also found at the sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenos, but are rare in the rest of Phrygia.104 The definition and analysis of the local cults of Phrygia must also do justice to the appeal of well endowed and successful shrines to attract a clientele of worshippers and followers from beyond their immediate location. The emphasis in the tekmoreian documentation seems quite different, implying communal celebration at banquets of the gods’ beneficence, not anxiety at the pain, illness or death that might follow from ignoring their wishes. We can read something of the same exuberance in the splendid reliefs of healthy cattle, horses and pack mules who are shown in numbers on the dedications to Zeus Ampelikos in the Upper Tembris Valley. We may be sure that the farmers and other heads of household who commissioned these sculptures would have carried out their dedicatory rituals in celebratory company. Mobility was a notable aspect of Phrygian rural religion. The entire region in the third century was well served by Roman highways, horses and mules were bred and supplied for travel and transport on a commercial basis, and the population moved freely about its business. Sanctuaries throughout Phrygia served to bring families together from their villages and farms and would have been locations of social feasting. The example of the xenoi tekmoreioi, drawn from an area that covered almost half of Roman Phrygia, was exceptional, but pilgrims to other sanctuaries clearly travelled substantial distances, attracted not only by the cult rituals, but by all the social activities which were associated with ancient places of worship.105 104 See Mitchell, Anatolia I, 193 n. 230 for two Phrygian votive inscriptions designed to atone for oath-breaking. 105 R. MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (Yale 1983).

Chapter 4

Christianity in Phrygia in the Long Third Century (180–330) 4.1

Introduction

The chapter that follows, a detailed survey of the earliest epigraphic evidence for Christians in Phrygia, is the longest in this book, and covers the ground which has been at the forefront of most previous studies of the subject. It deals almost entirely with funerary inscriptions, which have attracted the repeated attention of regional specialists, historians, and scholars of early church history because, taken together, they constitute very substantial documentary evidence for Christians and Christian communities in the Roman Empire before the so-called ‘Peace of the Church’ and therefore predate the fundamental shift in the state’s handling of Christianity that began with the reforms of Constantine and can be followed through the fourth century. They can be dated in the period from c.180 to 330, 150 years that we might call the long third century. Like Phrygia’s geographical boundaries, the chronological limits of this overview are inevitably imprecise. Nevertheless, the period is framed by two episodes in the region’s Christian history that have attracted wider attention. The starting point approximates to the decade between 170 and 180, when the Montanist movement first emerged as a challenge to other forms of Christianity in Phrygia.1 The end point around 330, as far as it can be established, comes at the time when the inhabitants of the small east Phrygian town of Orcistus appealed to Constantine that they should be granted the status of an autonomous city, independent from their neighbours in Nacolea, and used the clinching argument that the town’s population was then exclusively Christian, sectatores sanctissimae religionis.2 Almost everything that can be known about Phrygia’s Christians in this period must be gleaned from their gravestones. It is important to date these stones, however problematic this may be in individual cases. A small minority of the texts carry precise era dates; others can be chronologically arranged according to stylistic or other relatively secure criteria; for others, the grounds are more impressionistic. Dating criteria are inevitably reinforced when they 1 See chapter 1.3. 2 See 314 n. 735.

© Stephen Mitchell, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004546387_005

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are applied to a group of monuments, not to isolated texts, because chronological indicators can be accumulated from several inscriptions and then used to date the whole group. One point of methodology needs to be emphasised repeatedly, the importance of context. Most of the inscriptions taken individually are relatively banal in content. They identify individual family members and associates connected to a burial, and have been classified as Christian on the basis of verbal or symbolic allusions to their religion. Many of these allusions are inconspicuous and some are contestable. However, the arguments about whether a given text is or is not Christian inevitably takes on a different dimension when the individual inscription can be related to other texts which are similar in style, content, decoration, find location, or a combination of these. The evidential value of a group is higher than that of an isolated text. Since the foundations of serious study of Phrygian Christianity were laid by W. M. Ramsay’s two-volume masterpiece, The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia (1895, 1897), every attempt to interpret the material has dealt with the challenge of identifying the verbal or iconographic features of the monuments which define them as Christian. This unavoidable task has been made more complicated and often obstructed by a widespread assumption that Christians before the time of Constantine, when their religion was illegal, took pains to conceal their religious allegiance by using verbal and symbolic messaging, which would have been understood by fellow Christians but was unrecognised by others. The label crypto-Christian has accordingly sometimes been given to their monuments. This issue will be dealt with in relation to specific items in this chapter, but it should be said at the outset that the argument is subject to serious reservations.3 In Greek and Roman antiquity it was very unusual for individuals or families to make assertions or claims about their religious beliefs on their gravestones. The reasons for this are connected not only to traditional patterns of funerary epigraphy but to the nature of polytheistic pagan religion. In polytheistic paganism, outright statements of exclusive allegiance to a particular cult or divinity, analogous to a Christian creed, made little sense and did not cohere with the ways in which religion fitted into ancient society. Only gradually under the Roman empire did adherence to a particular religion – Christianity, Judaism or, to a lesser extent, the worship of newly popular divinities such as Isis or Mithras – become an important mark of an individual’s identity, and thus give substance and sense to the claim that ‘I am a Christian’ (or a Jew).4 3 See discussion in chapter 4.8. 4 J. North, Pagan ritual and monotheism, in S. Mitchell and P. Van Nuffelen (eds), One God. Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire (Cambridge 2010), 34–52.

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Following traditional practice, there was no reason or incentive for Christians to declare their religion at all on their gravestones, and many will not have done so in any case. No doubt countless gravestones of the earliest Christians remain indistinguishable from those of pagans and are unrecognisable to us.5 However, those who signified their religious allegiance on their gravestones, were demonstrating the emerging practice of asserting their religious identity. Conversely, using the wording or symbolism of gravestones to convey veiled or coded messages would be at odds with one of the principles of epigraphic commemoration, to use largely formulaic language and a recognisable code of visual symbols as a medium of communication both among contemporaries and to preserve the memory of a family for future generations. The numbers of Christian gravestones in Asia Minor, which gradually increased during this formative period when religion became a new element in the creation of individual and community identities, make it possible to follow this transformational process. Between the second and fourth centuries Christians emerged from obscurity and anonymity not because they had been hiding from persecution, but because they were finding their voice, and with it their place in society.6 It is almost impossible to make connections between the realities of the lives of Christians in Roman Phrygia and events on the larger stage of Roman history, since the inscriptions which are the sole source of information make no references at all to any such connections. The context in which they must be understood is a local one. Taken together they create a world for itself, one which we must attempt to reconstruct or imagine. For such a historical reconstruction to have any validity, it must be based closely on this source material, without introducing misleading or extraneous assumptions about how this should be interpreted. The crypto-Christian interpretation of early Phrygian epitaphs is precisely a product of the speculative hypothesis that Christians lived in fear of denunciation and punishment by the authorities, and were thereby constrained to disguise their religious beliefs by using covert symbols 5 See D. Boin, Coming Out Christian in the Roman World. How the followers of Jesus made a place in Caesar’s Empire (New York and London 2015), 36–56 and passim. The number of pre-Constantinian Christian gravestones in the epigraphically rich cities of western Asia Minor and the Aegean region is virtually restricted to a single group of texts in a catacomb beneath the later Church of the Seven Sleepers at Ephesus; see N. Zimmermann, Das Sieben-Schläfer-Zömeterium in Ephesos. Neue Forschungen zu Baugeschichte und Ausstattung eines ungewöhnlichen Bestattungskomplexes JÖAI 80 (2011), 365–407. 6 S. Mitchell, Epigraphic display and the emergence of Christian identity in the epigraphy of rural Asia Minor, in W. Eck, P. Funke et al., Öffentlichkeit – Monument – Text (XIV Congressus Internationalis Epigraphiae Graecae et Latinae 27–31. Augusti MMXII; Berlin 2014), 275–97.

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or ambiguous language. In fact, there is almost no indication that such fears impacted on the behaviour of most Christians. The idea that Christian families could have concealed their religious preferences in the villages and small towns of Phrygia from their neighbours verges on the absurd. To compensate for the absence of external fixed points of reference, and without creating spurious links to larger historical events and influences, the aim of this lengthy section of the book, dealing with Christian monuments between c.180 and 330, is to place the evidence with as much precision as possible in its local context, by chronological and geographical organisation, by establishing connections between groups of similar materials, by assessing the evidence of Christian epitaphs against the background of non-Christian material from the same sources, and thus piece by piece, setting individual items of information alongside one another, like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, in the expectation that this will eventually produce an intelligible picture. 4.2

Avircius Marcellus and the Phrygian Pentapolis (Map 13)

The history of early Christianity in and around the modern town of Sandıklı, the ancient plain of Eucarpia, is linked to the achievements of a single dominant personality, Aberkios, otherwise known by his full Roman name Avircius Marcellus, born around 130, whose active adult life filled the second half of the second century.7 The evidence for Aberkios’s life derives from his epitaph, a lengthy verse text, written by Aberkios himself, which is known to us from two sources: a full version preserved in a later Life of Aberkios, of uncertain date and authorship,8 and two joining fragments of the original stone itself. The fragmentary inscription was found by W. M. Ramsay and J. R. S. Sterrett at the Hudai Kaplıcaları, south-south-west of Sandıklı, the centre of hot springs in the Sandıklı area and now a popular thermal resort.9 The springs are three kilometers south of the village of Koçhisar, the likely site of the small city of 7 For the identification of Aberkios with Avircius Marcellus, see below. Compare Ramsay, CB I. 2, 709: ‘All that is known of the history of the Pentapolis centres around the name of Avircius Marcellus’. 8 There are editions of three versions of the full life by Nissen (Leipzig 1912), and of one of these by Seeliger / Wischmeyer, Märtyrerliteratur (Berlin 2015); an abbreviated later version by Simeon Metaphrastes, PG 115, 1245–1248, also contains the inscription. See below chapter 6.3 and P. Thonemann, Abercius of Hierapolis. Christianization and social memory in late antique Asia Minor, in B. Dignas and R. R. R. Smith, Historical and Religious Meaning in the Ancient World (Oxford 2012), 257–82. McKechnie, Christianizing Asia Minor, 263–87, has published an overdue English translation. 9 Ramsay, JHS 4 (1883), 424–7 no. 36; CB 1.2, 722–9 no. 657; SGO 3,182–5: 17/07/01 (ICG 1597).

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Hieropolis/Hierapolis, which was Aberkios’s patris. Another fully preserved but shorter verse epitaph for a man named Alexander, son of Antonius, dated to year 300 of the Sullan era, 215/216, which had been found by Ramsay two years earlier at Kılandıras (now Karadirek) at the north side of the Sandıklı plain, has a text which closely replicated the first three hexameters of the Aberkios inscription, as well as the final lines, which threatened anyone who tried to deposit another body in the grave with an extravagant fine. The inscription for Aberkios was cut on an imposing, rectangular altarshaped stone, apparently made from Docimian marble, and conforms with the description found in the Life of Aberkios, that the saint had prepared his own tomb, κατεσκεύασεν ἑαυτῷ τύμβον ἰσοτετράγωνον ἐγχαράξας εἰς αὐτὸν θεόπνευστον ἐπίγραμμα, ‘he made a rectangular tombstone with sides of equal length for himself and carved a divinely-inspired epigram on it’.10 The original dimensions have been estimated as 1.10 by 0.55, but were probably larger than this, taking into account the likely height of the altar’s plinth and the pediment, of which nothing survives.11 The surviving pieces of the shaft display the inscription on the front, carved within a moulded frame, broken to the right and below. The left face of the shaft, decorated with a wreath, but with no inscription, and part of the moulding above it are also preserved. There are many parallels both for the monument and for the lay-out of the text among honorific inscriptions and funerary bomoi set up for well-off citizens in Asia Minor cities. This style of grave monument was a popular choice for wealthy individuals and families in the later second and third centuries and a clear marker of high social standing. As a grave monument alone, regardless of the associations revealed by the inscription, it would have stood out in this small Phrygian city (Fig. 1). Ramsay’s original report of the discovery included the remark that ‘the other three sides were occupied by the inscription which was engraved in a sunk panel surrounded by a broad band of moulding. The breadth of the panel on the side that remains must have been about 15–16 inches’.12 This is misleading, and was not repeated by Ramsay in his later discussions of the text. It would be unusual to carve the inscription on the front, right and rear faces of the stone, and in any case the text was not so long as to require this much space. Since the words εἰς Ῥώμην, which start the seventh hexameter, occupy the top left corner of the front face of the shaft, and the left face of the stone, seen from the viewer’s perspective, was uninscribed, it is certain that the first 10 V. Abercii 77. The life introduced the picturesque fiction that the altar had been transported miraculously from Rome to Hierapolis; see 492. 11 W. Wischmeyer, Die Aberkios-Inschrift als Grabepigramm, JbAC 23, 1980, 22–47. 12 Ramsay, JHS 4 (1883), 424–27 no. 36.

section 4.2: Avircius Marcellus and the Phrygian Pentapolis

Figure 1

Phrygian Pentapolis, Hierapolis. Funerary Altar of Abercius. ICG 1597. Reconstruction in the Vatican Museum of the original fragment found at Hudai Kaplıcaları Wikimedia Commons, Giovanni dall’Orto

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six hexameters were carved on the front pediment, as in the reconstruction of the altar now displayed in the Vatican Museum in Rome. This presents the first six hexameters on the pediment, each verse forming a line of inscribed text, the twelve verses 7–18 in 24 lines on the shaft, and verses 19–20 in two lines on the moulding below the shaft.13 The lay-out of the wording above and below the shaft section is conjectural, but in principle the altar was certainly large enough to accommodate the full text on the front. The text of the inscription has been many times re-edited since the original discovery with minor variations in the readings and the punctuation.

5

10

15

On the pediment Ἐκλεκτῆς πόλεως ὁ πολίτης τοῦτ ̓ ἐποίησα ζῶν, ἵν ἔ̓ χω φανερ[ῶς] σώματος ἐνθὰ θέσιν, οὔνομ᾽ Ἀβέρκιος ὢν ὁ μαθητὴς ποιμένος ἁγνοῦ, ὃς βόσκει προβάτων ἀγέλας ὄρεσιν πεδίοις τε, ὀφθαλμοὺς ὃς ἔχει μεγάλους πάντῃ καθορῶντας‧ οὗτος γάρ μ᾽ ἐδίδαξε | γράμματα πιστά‧ On the shaft εἰς ῾Ρώμην ὃς ἔπεμψέν | ἐμεν βασιληΐδ᾽ ἀθρῆσαι | καὶ βασίλισσαν ἰδεῖν χρυσό|στολον χρυσοπέδιλον‧| λαὸν δ᾽ εἶδον ἐκεῖ | λαμπρὰν σφραγεῖδαν ἔχοντα. | καὶ Συρίης πέδον εἶδα | καὶ ἄστεα πάντα Νισῖβιν | Εὐφράτην διαβάς· πάντ|ῃ δ ̓ ἔσχον συνο[μαίμους], | Παῦλον ἔχων ἐπ᾽ ὄχῳ. | πίστις πάντῃ δὲ προῆγε | καὶ παρέθηκε τροφὴν | παντὶ ἰχθὺν ἀπὸ πηγῆς | παμμεγέθη καθαρόν, ὃν | ἐδράξατο παρθένος ἁγνὴ, καὶ τοῦτον ἐπέδωκε φί|λοις ἐσθεῖν διὰ παντὸς, οἶνον χρηστὸν ἔχουσα, κέρασμα διδοῦσα μετὰ ἄρτου. ταῦτα παρεστὼς εἶπον Ἀβέρκιος ὧδε γραφῆναι‧ ἑβδομηκοστὸν ἔτος καὶ δεύτερον ἧγον ἀληθῶς.

13 The Vatican reconstruction is a broadly correct representation of the original placing of the text on the monument, but curiously omitted the last two verses altogether. McKechnie, Christianizing Asia Minor, 159, follows the view of Margaret Mitchell derived from Ramsay’s first report and other early publications, that the original text was carved on three faces of the stone, and that the Vatican model of the inscription on a single face was an inaccurate representation, adapted for museum display.

section 4.2: Avircius Marcellus and the Phrygian Pentapolis

20

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On the pedestal ταῦθ᾽ ὁ νοῶν εὖξαιτ᾽ ὑπὲρ Ἀβερκίου πᾶς ὁ σύνῳδος. οὐ μέντοι τύμβῳ τις ἔμου ἕτερόν τινα θήσει, εἰ δ᾽ οὖν, Ῥωμαίων ταμείῳ θήσει δισχείλια χρυσᾶ καὶ χρηστῇ πατρίδι Ἱεροπόλει χείλια χρυσᾶ. I, the citizen of a distinguished city, made this while living, so that I should plainly have a resting place for my body, my name being Aberkios, a disciple of the holy shepherd, who pastures flocks of sheep in the mountains and the plains, who has great eyes that take in everything they see. For he taught me (reason and) words of faith; he sent me to Rome to see the queen of cities, and to see the queen with golden robe and golden sandals. There I saw the people who possess the bright seal, and I saw the plain of Syria and all the cities, having crossed the Euphrates to Nisibis. Everywhere I had companions, having Paul on my carriage (?). Faith went before me everywhere and provided nourishment everywhere, the Fish, large and pure from the spring, which the sacred Virgin had brought into being and always provided for friends to consume, having good wine and giving it, mixed with water, with bread. I, Aberkios, standing nearby, have said that these things should be written in this way; In truth, I have completed my seventy-second year. Let the whole congregation that knows these things pray for Aberkios. No one shall place anyone else in my tomb, but if they do, they will place 2000 gold coins in the Roman treasury and 1000 gold pieces for my noble home city Hierapolis.

This text derives from three sources. The actual fragments of the original altar found by Ramsay and Sterrett provide the beginnings of verses 7–15, each verse extending over two lines carved on the front of the shaft. Verses 1–3, which must have been carved in the upper part of the pediment of the Aberkios stone, were repeated almost verbatim on the funerary altar of 216 for Alexander son of Antonius. Verses 20–22 of the Aberkios epitaph were also reproduced at the end of the Alexander stone. Verses 4–6 must have been at the bottom of the altar pediment immediately above the shaft. These lines and other parts of the text which appear neither on the surviving fragments of the Aberkios stone, nor on the version adapted for Alexander, are known from a full but in some respects inaccurate copy, reproduced in the Life of Abercius 77, which was written at an uncertain date in late antiquity, probably in the late fourth century. The writer of the life made the comment: ᾽the words of the epigram

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were thus more or less legible. All the same, time had removed a little bit of their sharpness and disfigured the inscription.’14 Most of the discrepancies between the inscriptions and the literary version of the epitaph do not fundamentally affect its interpretation. In verse 2 the vita has καίρῳ which was most likely a miscopying of the adverb φανερ[ῶς], which can be read on the corresponding line of the Alexander inscription. Almost all editors have emended the last word of line 5 from the vita’s καθαρεύοντας to καθορῶντας, which fits the meaning better. Verse 6 in the vita is too short and the lacuna before γράμματα πίστα must be supplied with a metrical expression ad sensum, as I have done. The last readable letters in line 7 on the Aberkios stone are ΒΑΣΙΛΙ. Although the vita has με βασιλείαν ἀθρῆσαι, ἐμεν is on the stone and Thonemann’s proposal βασιληΐδ᾽ ἀθρῆσαι fits sense and metre perfectly. At the end of line 11 συνομαίμους improves the metre of the vita’s συνομηγύρους, and the term is paralleled in other third-century Christian verse inscriptions. The start of verse 12 provides the only real interpretative crux. The line appears on the Aberkios stone itself but is badly damaged, while the vita has an incomprehensible phrase, Παῦλον δὲ ἔσωθεν. The writer of the vita seems to have had as much trouble with the expression and reading as modern epigraphers. Photographs confirm that the upper parts of the letters ΠΑΥΛΟΝ can be read, but only the last two letters of ΕΧΩΝΕΠΟ are clear before the stone breaks; Παῦλον ἔχων ἐπ᾽ ὄ[χῳ], ‘having Paul on his carriage’ is compatible with the traces, but only the mention of Paul in the phrase seems certain. In line 19 it is tempting to emend the reading of the vita Abercii from ὑπὲρ Ἀβερκίου to ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ, since the repetition of Aberkios’s name is unnecessary so soon after its emphatic appearance in line 18 and it distorts the metre of the hexameter. However, third-person αὐτοῦ itself clashes with the first-person perspective of ἔμου in line 20, and emendation should perhaps be resisted. The reading of the rest of the text is not seriously controversial, although it has provided abundant material for diverse interpretations. The discovery of the Aberkios inscription was a scholarly and theological sensation which made a large impact, especially on the Catholic Church. Ramsay took the pieces which he had found at the hot springs to Constantinople. The larger fragment was offered as a diplomatic gift by Sultan Murat II to Pope Leo in 1892, while Ramsay, it seems, took the smaller lower piece back to Britain, and then presented it himself to the Pope, to be joined with its companion. The re-united pieces were unveiled in the Vatican Museum in 1895, and billed

14 Vita Abercii 77: τὰ μὲν δὴ τοῦ ἐπιγράμματος ὧδε πῶς ἐπὶ λέξεως εἶχεν· ὅτι μὴ ὁ χρόνος ὑφεῖλε κατ᾽ολίγον τῆς ἀκριβείας, καὶ ἡμαρτημένως έχειν τὴν γραφὴν παρεσκεύασεν.

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as the earliest known Christian inscription.15 It has generated an enormous literature, whose proportions are now more a disincentive than an encouragement to scholarly progress. The following discussion does not attempt to pursue every hare that has raced across this academic field.16 Let us begin with the name Abercius, Ἀβέρκιος, a Greek transcription of an unusual Latin gentilicium Avircius.17 Several Latin inscriptions from Rome itself have the name in this original form, but have no perceptible connection with Avircius in Phrygia.18 All the other attestations on stone inscriptions come from

15 http://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/de/collezioni/musei/lapidario -cristiano/abercio/cippo-di-albercio.html (accessed 3.2.2020). Margaret M. Mitchell, Looking for Abercius: reimagining contexts of interpretation of the earliest Christian inscription, in L. Brink and D. Green (eds), Texts and Artefacts in Context. Studies of Roman, Jewish and Christian burials (Berlin / New York 2008), 303–36, an important discussion of the way that the stone has been presented to the public and the scholarly world, and the intended impact of this display. 16 W. Wischmeyer, Die Aberkios-Inschrift als Grabepigramm, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 23 (1980), 23–47 already reckoned with 300 relevant publications, with some updating in I. Ramelli, L’epitafio di Abercio. Uno status quaestionis ed alcune osservazioni, Aevum 74 (2000), 191–205. The most recent studies known to me are Paul McKechnie, Christianizing Asia Minor. Conversion, communities and social change in the pre-Constantinian era (Cambridge 2019), ch. 6 – Aberkios of Hierapolis (Koçhisar) and His Gravestone; Markus Vinzent, Writing the history of early Christianity. From recollection to retrospection (Cambridge 2019), ch.2: ‘Abercius’: pious fraud, now and then? (pp. 77–161); Allen Brent, ‘Has the vita Abercii misled epigraphists in the reconstruction of the inscription? in J. R. Harrison / L. L. Welborn, The First Urban Churches 5: Colossae, Hierapolis and Laodicea (Atlanta 2019), 325–362, an attempt to revive the view of Dieterich that the inscription was a monument of paganism, or pagan-Christian syncretism; Martin Karrer, Die Aberkios-Inschrift. Ein Zeugnis für christlich-jüdische Kontake im 2. Jht., in C. Eberhardt et al., Temple, Lehrhaus, Synagoge. Orte jüdischen lernens und Lebens (Festschrift für Wolfgang Kraus, Leiden 2020), 373–98; and Marie-Françoise Baslez, L’épitaphe de l’éveque Aberkios: les Écritures de foi dissimulées sous l’écriture civique, Journal of Epigraphic Studies 3 (2020), 149–166. The Cult of the Saints web-site (http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E07082) seriously misrepresents the evidence of the inscription. 17 I am puzzled by T. Corsten, “Christliche” Namengebung in Kleinasien, in W. Ameling (ed.), Die Christianisierung Kleinasiens in der Spätantike (2017), 473–89 at p. 484, who concedes that ‚vielleicht’ Aberkios was a version of Avircius, and that Aberkios could be identified with Avircius Marcellus, but then concludes ‘that this is no help in establishing why the bishop of the late third-century [sic] was called by this name’. 18 CIL VI 36746b: M. Avircius Hymnus, a member of a college of priests (pagan); VI, 12923: the tombstone set up by [L.] Avircius [.]astus for his wife Avircia Crene and son L. Avircio Creno; VI 12924; VI 12925: the tombstone for L. Avircius Mercurius set up by his freedmen L. Avircius Fortunatus VI 34598. Other citations in Wischmeyer, Die Aberkios-Inschrift als Grabepigramm, 27.

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Phrygia or its neighbourhood,19 where the Greek forms of the name Avircius appear in several Christian inscriptions of the later third or fourth centuries: A deacon called Ἀβίρκιος Πορφυρίου buried his wife Theuprepia and children at Prymnessus.20 A gravestone of unknown provenance, copied in Afyon, was set up by Αὐρ. Δωρόθεος Ἀβιρ[κ]ίου for himself, his mother Marcellina, other members of his household and his grandchildren. This Christian text probably from around 300, prefaced by a Staurogram between A Ω and ending with greetings to the passing traveller, might even have been carried to Afyon from the Phrygian Pentapolis.21 An inscribed stone found in the doorway of the large church at Pisidian Antioch, perhaps dating to the late fourth century, suggests that it was a votive gift of an imperial official, who could have have been a genuine descendant of his famous predecessor: εὐχὴ Ἀβερκίου κόμητος καὶ οἰκονόμου.22 The name of the bishop of Hierapolis in the Pentapolis (the smaller city) present at the Council of Chalcedon was Abercius, again also potentially a member of the same family in a later generation.23 A late sixthor seventh-century inscription from Carian Aphrodisias contains a list of witnesses ending Γεόργις ὁ ἀδελφὸς Ἀβελκίου, Abelkios being another scribal variation of the name.24 A middle Byzantine epistyle from the small Phrygian town of Kidyessos, north of the Pentapolis, was decorated with the portraits of saints, among them ὁ ἅγιος Ἀβέρκιος,25 and the name appears on a fragment from Amorium at this period.26 In addition a batch of twenty brick stamps from late antiquity, inscribed †ΑΒΕΡΚ|ΙΟΥ ΙΝΔ ϟ Ζ, has been found in excavations at Küçükceşmece west of Istanbul, and similar examples have been reported from other locations in and near Constantinople. An entrepreneur who took the Phrygian saint’s name had founded a brick factory in the capital in the early Byzantine period.27 19 Contrast A. Dieterich, Die Grabinschrift von Aberkios (Leipzig 1896), 3 ᾽Es gab offenbar viele Ἀβερκίοι, Ἀουέρκτοι, Ἀουιρκίοι᾽. 20 Ramsay CB 1.2, 736–7 no. 672; SEG VI, 176 (ICG 1365); see below chapter 4.12) n. 718. 21 CB 1.2, 737–8 no. 673; (ICG 1551). Compare also Marcellina in CB 1.2, 730–33 no. 658. Both elements in Avircius Marcellus’s name were adopted by local Christians. 22 SEG 46, 1767 and 52, 1383 (ICG 4486); see 449 n. 492. 23 ACO 1, 2, 37 l. 33; 107, l. 22–26; 136, l. 41; 149, l. 20; I. 3, 93 l. 8; II.2.2., 76 l. 8; II.3.2, 167 line 23; III.3., 106 l. 6. The V. Abercii 78 even says that the great Aberkios’s immediate successor was also called Aberkios. For the persistence of family traditions between the second and fourth centuries precisely in the vita Abercii, see 501–5. 24 ALA no. 91 (copied by Sherard in 1716, not seen since). 25 MAMA ΧΙ, 173; (ICG 1469). 26 Lightfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 137 M 20 (ICG 4515). 27 M. H. Sayar, Ziegelstempel von den Ausgrabungen am Nordwestufer des Lagunensees Küçükceşmece, in A. Rhoby (ed.), Inscriptions in Byzantium and Beyond. Methods  – Projects – Case Studies (Vienna 2015), 187–94 at 188–9.

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According to the vita, the form Ἀβέρκιος appeared in the version of the famous epitaph which stood in front of the south gate of Hieropolis, which the writer, as we have seen, attempted to copy verbatim. Because the name happens not to survive on the actual inscription fragments, but only in the version preserved in the vita, Markus Vinzent, who questions the authenticity of the grave monument, has suggested that the stone found by Ramsay never mentioned Aberkios and had nothing to do with him, until the author of the Life chanced upon the (to us) anonymous text, and used it as one of the ingredients of a fictive document, in which the sections of the epitaph that are not directly supported by the inscription were (or were likely to be) his own invention, and in any case related not to Aberkios but to someone else.28 Vinzent’s ingenuity is palpable, but his interpretation of the evidence is full of errors, and the logic and conclusions are unacceptable. This hypothesis requires us to believe either that most of verses 4–18, the heart of the epitaph with its complex and controversial allusions, were simply made up by the writer of vita Abercii based on the fragmentary eighteen lines (or perhaps a little more of them) of the inscription recovered by Ramsay, a feat of ingenuity unimaginably far removed from the supposed copying and adaptation of second-century texts by the writer in other sections of the life.29 Or, alternatively, it rests on the supposition that the fragment found by Ramsay was part of an intact inscription seen by the author of the vita Abercii, which related not to Aberkios but to another person, whose life and accomplishments were indeed those of an early Christian leader. This is the logical equivalent of arguing that the works of Shakespeare are not by Shakespeare but by an anonymous person, to whom Shakespeare’s oeuvre can be attributed. The argument is not only abstruse, but also provides no historical gain. If the text referred not to Aberkios but to a Doppelgänger, it would still be the epitaph of a second/third-century Christian leader, whom we would be obliged to call ‘Aberkios’. As shown in the first chapter of this book, Eusebius in book five of the Church History related that an unnamed author had completed a tract refuting the heresy of the Montanists, in which he had taken care not to introduce any teaching that strayed beyond the literal content of the New Testament. He was evidently an educated and highly literate cleric, probably from one of the small cities of the Phrygian Pentapolis. This work was addressed to the man who had commissioned it, ‘beloved Avircius Marcellus’, ἀγαπητὲ Ἀυίρκιε Μάρκελλε. This mode of address to Aberkios was appropriate and respectful 28 Vinzent, Writing the History of Early Christianity (2019), 77–161. 29 For the supposed use of other Roman inscriptions by the author of the life, to construct obviously fictive parts of the hagiography, see Thonemann, Abercius of Hierapolis. This hypothesis is discussed below in chapter 6.3).

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towards a social superior, as befitted a prominent Roman citizen from a family of Italian origin.30 The words of the famous epitaph declare it to be Aberkios’s own work, composed in his seventy-second year, probably at the turn of the third century, a date which is consistent both with the Alexander inscription, which copied the Aberkios text and was erected in 215/16, and with the date of the anti-Montanist work addressed to him, perhaps around 192.31 The rare Latin nomen indicates that Avircius was descended from an Italian family that had doubtless established itself in the region in the first century BC.32 The unusual name and the dating of the epitaph to the same period as the dedication of the anonymous work to Avircius Marcellus make it virtually certain that the latter was indeed Aberkios of Hierapolis.33 The poem’s first line has been misunderstood. The exceptional city to which it refers cannot be the obscure Hierapolis, a country town in rural Phrygia, but the capital of the empire, Rome itself. The full tria nomina of Avircius Marcellus do not appear in the Greek hexameter text, but the four words which which it begins, ἐκλεκτῆς πόλεως ὁ πολείτης, established the writer’s exalted social status, that he was a Roman citizen. So too, by presumption, was Alexander son of Antonius on the monument found at Karadirek (see below). The words [ἐ]κλεκτῆς [π]όλε[ως -], also to be interpreted as a reference to the family’s Roman citizenship, appear at the start of an earlier verse inscription, certainly not Christian, comprising nine elegiac couplets and set up in northern Mysia by a consortium of ten village communities, which commemorated the death at twenty-two of a young man who had died in a hunting accident.34 This identification of the chosen city does not exclude that the phrase contained other meanings for both the composer and readers of the epitaph. Some readers of 30 Eusebius, HE 5.16.3. 31 See 16 n. 52. V. Hirschmann, Ungeklärte Rätsel? Nochmals zur Grabinschrift des Aberkios, ZPE 145 (2003) 133–39 at 139 n. 39 suggests the anonymous work was dedicated to Avircius around AD 202, three years after the death of the Montanist prophetess Maximilla, but this is too late. Maximilla died around 180. 32 Apamea was one of the major settlements of Italian immigrants in central Asia Minor; see further c. 4.2). Also F. Kirbihler (2016). Des Grecs et des Italiens à Éphèse: histoire d’une intégration croisée: 133 a.C.–48 p.C. (Bordeaux 2016). 33 The identity of the two, obvious to Ramsay and Duchesne in 1882, has been denied virtually without argument by many commentators. Wischmeyer, Die Aberkios-Inschrift, 26–27 argues against identity because it does not mention the Latin cognomen Marcellus, but it was commonplace for Greek epigrams to reproduce only one part of the Latin duo or tria nomina. 34 Le Bas / Waddington 1745; Peek, Griechische Versinschriften I, 1160; probably 1st century AD. No names are preserved in the damaged text.

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the inscription may have taken it as an allusion to membership of the heavenly city, although the idea of Augustine’s Civitas Dei had hardly been formed at the start of the third century,35 and the only reference to Jerusalem as ἐκλεκτὴ πόλις in the Greek Septuagint refers to the city’s destruction not its exaltation.36 The following verses demonstrated Aberkios’s cultural sophistication. By the end of the second century, families like his were Greek-speaking and thoroughly assimilated into civic society in Roman Asia. The epitaph showed Aberkios’s command of Greek literary culture and an acquaintance with Christian-Jewish apocalyptic writings. By any reading and interpretation of the epitaph (and they have been legion) he was a commanding figure, a very big fish in the small pool of the Sandıklı plain, and his influence took many forms. The content of the twenty-two hexameter verses of the epitaph is remarkable. Apart from being an elaborate statement about Aberkios’s life, beliefs and activities, couched in sophisticated language, the journeys to Rome and to Syria and Mesopotamia appear to provide the most explicit evidence from any source of early Christian missionary activity after Paul. While much of the language is allusive and metaphoric, and the versification is sometimes clumsy, the general sense is not obscure.37 After announcing his Roman citizenship and his own authorship of the epigram, Aberkios’s name follows with the key descriptor, that he was a disciple of the holy shepherd. Christ, in the unmistakeable allusion, was protector of flocks, an all-seeing presence, and teacher of the faith. He sent Aberkios to see the queen of cities, Rome. However, Aberkios also saw the city through the eyes of Jewish-Christian apocalyptic writings as its imagined counterpart ‘Babylon’. Vera Hirschmann has rightly drawn attention to the wording which the inscription shares with a passage in the fifth Sibylline Oracle, where the decadence of Rome inspires the outcry: αἰαῖ συ, Βαβυλών, χρυσόθρονε χρυσοπέδιλε, and to the relevance of the passages of the Book of Revelation which equated Rome with Babylon.38 Aberkios encountered Rome’s Christian people with the bright seal of their faith, and 35 Origen, Contra Celsum II.3 observed that Christians had a concept of a politeuma in heaven, which contrasted with the Jews’ earthly counterpart; compare Epist. Ad Diognetum 5.9. 36 LXX Sir. 49.6; see Karrer, Aberkios Inschrift, 384 n. 57. Kaner’s interesting study pursues the parallels between the Aberkios epigram and Jewish ideas and imagery, but resorts to special pleading when denying that the reference to a holy shepherd and the holy virgin are to be construed as allusions to Christ and the Virgin Mary. The parallels in general can be explained by the close bonds that existed between Asian Christianity and Judaism; see chapter 8.3). 37 The best analysis of the allusive language is Wischmeyer, Die Aberkios-Inschrift. 38 V. Hirschmann, Untersuchungen zur Grabschrift des Aberkios, ZPE 129 (2000,) 109–16, at 114–5, adducing Or. Sib. V. 434; Rev. 18.12; 18.16 (the gold of Babylon); and Rev. 19.7; 19.14 (the whore of Babylon draped in gold and the white garment of Christ’s bride).

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then travelled to Syria and its many cities, crossing the Euphrates to Nisibis. Everywhere he met members of the Christian ‘family’,39 and had Paul as a (metaphorical) travel companion. Faith was his ever-present guide, and Christ (ἰχθύς) provided enduring nourishment, immeasurable and pure, as delivered by the holy virgin. All this he distributed as spiritual food for his friends, blessed wine mixed with bread. Other than Paul, there is remarkably little explicit evidence from the early centuries for named Christian missionaries,40 but there is no reason to doubt that this was a description of deliberate missionary activity, apparently roughly contemporary with the eastern mission of Alexandria of Pantaenus, reported by Eusebius, which extended as far as India.41 Abercius, speaking in his own person, concluded the verses with instructions that they should be written down when he was in his seventy-second year, and, using the exalted term σύνῳδος, asked for all the members of the community who understood the message to pray for him. No other body should be placed in the tomb, on pain of a colossal fine: 2000 gold pieces to the Roman treasury and 1000 to his goodly (χρηστή) home town, Hierαpolis. The sums involved were purely symbolic.42 This summary, of course, subsumes an enormous quantity of learned dispute about the language and significance of the text, which has pre-occupied commentators since its discovery, but is designed to make one thing clear. No one among Aberkios’s intended readership, whose prayers he invites in line 19: ταῦθ᾽ ὁ νοῶν εὔξαιτ᾽ ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ πᾶς ὁ συνῳδός, would have mistaken the Christian allusions: Christ the shepherd and teacher of the faith, Rome as a new Babylon, the focus of earthly decadence, Rome’s Christian laos united by the seal of baptism, Paul or Paul’s writings accompanying him in the East, the symbol of the fish standing for Christ and providing nourishment for all his peoples, and the bread and the wine of the Eucharist. The famous fourth-century epitaph of Pektorios from Autun (Augustodunum) in France, develops the metaphor of the fish (Christ) providing a source of nourishment for Christians in a very similar way: σωτῆρος δ᾽ἁγίων μελιηδέα λάμβανε βρῶσιν | ἔσθιε πινάων, ἰχθὺν ἔχων 39 40

This justifies the probable restoration συνο[μαίμους] in line 11. The specific allusion to Paul in the epitaph highlights this fact. For other indications of early Christian mission, see Rom. 16. 3–4 (Prisca and Aquila) and Acts 11.20, with M. Goodman, Mission and Conversion. Proselytizing in the religious history of the Roman Empire (1994), 106. 41 Eusebius, HE V.10.2–3. See 168 n. 283 for Iulianus Euteknios, who appears to have been a Syrian missionary to Gaul and other western provinces. 42 For the scale of funerary fines on Asia Minor inscriptions, see H. Lotz, Studien zu den kaiserzeitlichen Grabinschriften aus Termessos: die Höhe der Grabbußen, Chiron 48 (2018), 219–61.

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παλαμαῖς.43 The poetic language and the symbolism were not designed to hide these articles of faith among Christians either from them or from others, but to exalt them in a sophisticated riddling style that spoke to educated believers and to well-informed or curious pagans.44 Although Phrygian Christians in the fourth century also used verse epitaphs to express ideas about their beliefs, the Aberkios inscription is unique for its period, and is quite different from them both in its poetic quality and its complexity.45 How far can we trace the impact of Aberkios’s life and his epitaph? Immediately, attention turns to the epitaph’s little brother, the funerary inscription of Alexander son of Antonius which was directly modelled on it.46 This monument was found by Ramsay two years before the Aberkios fragment in a village then called Kılandıras (now Karadirek), north of the ancient site of Brouzos, which was located at Kara Sandıklı.47 The stone, an almost intact funerary altar carved from a single block of marble about 90 centimeters high, was transported to Istanbul and included in Mendel’s 1914 catalogue of the imperial museum in Constantinople, where it is still displayed.48 The inscription, like its model, covered the entire front of the altar from the pediment to the plinth, with the central part of the text overspilling onto the raised rim around the shaft (Fig. 2). The altar was capped by a columnar crown with indented flutes, resembling an architectural ‘Pfeifenfries’, and the text reads:

43 P. Decourt, Inscriptions grecques de la France (Bordeaux 2004), 234–9 no. 155; D. Feissel, Remarques sur l’épitaphe de Pektorios, argues on linguistic and onomastic grounds that Pektorios, the subject of this extraordinary inscription, which has attracted almost as much discussion as the Abercius epitaph, was a native of Phrygia, perhaps from the neighbourhood of Laodicea Catacecaumene. 44 Margaret M. Mitchell, The poetics and politics of Christian baptism in the Abercius monument, in David Hellholm (ed.), Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism in Early Judaism, Graeco-Roman Religion, and Early Christianity (De Gruyter: Berlin 2011), 1743–82, introduces layers of complexity into the interpretation of the symbolic language which would have been beyond the capacity of ‘those in the know’ to understand them, and seem anachronistic. 45 See 236–60 for the developed fourth-century verse epitaphs from the Upper Tembris Valley. 46 W.M. Ramsay, Les trois villes phrygiennes Brouzos, Hiéropolis et Otrous, BCH 6 (1882), 503–20 at 518–20 no. 5 (the editio princeps); CB I.2, 720–22 no. 656; IGR IV 694; SGO 3, 186–7, 16/07/02 (ICG 1598). 47 MAMA XI 136: A statue base erected for the emperor Septimius Severus between 198 and 210 by ἡ Βρουζη[νων] πόλις recorded at the mosque in Kara Sandıklı. 48 G. Mendel, Catalogue des sculptures grecques, romaines et byzantines du Musée de Constantinople II (1914), 569–70 no. 778. The only published photographs of the stone are in Margaret M. Mitchell, ‘Looking for Abercius’, 333 fig. 9.9 and 334 fig. 9.10.

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Phrygian Pentapolis, Kılandıras / Karadirek. Funerary Altar of Alexander. ICG 1598. Now in Istanbul Museum Professor Margaret Mitchell and Betul Avcı

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[ἐ]κλεκτῆς πόλ|εως ὁ πολείτ|ης] τοῦτ’ ἐποίη[σα] [ζῶν, ἵ]ν’ ἔχω φανερ[ῶς] | σώματος ἔνθα |θέσιν. οὔνομα |Ἀλέξανδρος Ἀντω|νίου, μαθητὴς ποιμένος ἁγνοῦ. | οὐ μέντοι τύμβῳ| τις ἐμῷ ἕτερόν τι|να θήσει· εἰ δ’ οὖν, Ῥω|μαίων ταμείῳ θήσε[ι] | δισχείλια χ̣ρυσᾶ καὶ [χ]ρηστῇ πατρίδι | Ἱεροπόλει χείλια |χρυσᾶ. ἐγράφη ἔτει τʹ μηνὶ ϛʹ, ζῶντος. εἰρήνη παράγουσιν καὶ μνησκομένοις περὶ ἡμῶν. I, the citizen of a distinguished city, made this while living, so that I should plainly have a resting place for my body, my name being Alexander son of Antonius, a disciple of the holy shepherd. No one shall place anyone else in my tomb, but if they do, they will place 2000 gold coins in the Roman treasury and 1000 gold pieces for my noble home city Hierapolis. This was written in the year 300, month seven, for one who lives. Peace to those passing by and holding us in remembrance. The essential textual differences between the first three hexameters and those of the first hexameters of the Aberkios text preserved in the Life are the reading φανερ[ῶς] / φανέρ[αν] on the Alexander stone where the Life has καίρῳ, and the substitution of the name Ἀλέξανδρος Ἀντωνίου, unmetrically, for Ἀβερκίου in the model. The text reproduced nothing from the central biographical section of the Aberkios inscription, but resumed with the financial penaties for disturbing the tomb. The final four lines, as engraved, were new. First came the date of the inscription: ἐγράφη ἔτει τ´ μηνὶ ζ´; then the word indicating that the tomb was erected for a person still living, ζῶντος.49 Finally, there was a hexameter version of a peace greeting to travelers, a formula whose variants were largely restricted in pre-Constantinian Asia Minor to the Phrygian Pentapolis: εἰρήνη παράγουσιν καὶ μνησκομένοις περὶ ἡμῶν. The monument was erected very few years after the inscription for Aberkios and is extraordinary testimony to his influence and importance. Funerary inscriptions in general have a formulaic character, and simple prose epitaphs in the cities and countryside of Asia Minor often replicated one another, changing only the names. Texts in verse were inherently more distinctive, although they too often comprised a collage of commonplace phrases, joined up with or without some modest skill in versification. Peter Thonemann and Christiane Zimmermann have shown that composers of Christian funerary 49 The reading ζώντος, not ζόντος as copied by Ramsay and reproduced in all subsequent editions, is confirmed by the photographs taken for Margaret Mitchell.

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epitaphs of the third and fourth centuries from eastern Phrygia and Lycaonia inserted metrical tags that often repeated one another to describe office holding and Christian virtues, slotting them into their contexts like pieces of a pre-fabricated jig-saw puzzle.50 Many of the clumsy fourth-century Christian verse epitaphs from the Upper Tembris Valley, have very repetitive phrasing, the best that their unskilled composers could manage.51 A pair of fourth or early fifth century verse epitaphs, both copied at Zazaddin Han near Konya, which begin with four hexameters, are identical apart from the proper names: respectively ICG 480 for Apolinaris, ἐνθάδε κῖτε ἀνὴρ, ἱερεὺς μεγάλοιο θεοῖο, / ὃς ἕνεκεν πραότητος ἐπουράνιον κλέος ἦρεν· / ἁρπαγὶς ταχέως ἀπ’ ἐκλησίης τε κὲ λαοῦ / Ἀπολινάριος τοὔνομ’ ἔκων, λαοῦ σέμνου μέγα κῦδος, and ICG 481 for Gregorios, ἐνθάδε κεῖτε ἀνὴρ, ἱερεὺς με[γάλοιο] θεοῖο, / ὃς ἕνεκεν πραότητος [ἐπουράνι]ον κλέος ἦρεν· / ἁρπαγεὶ ταχέ[ως] ἀπ’ ἐκλησίης τε καὶ λ[α]οῦ / [Γρ]ηγόριος τοὔνομ’ ἔχων, [λα]οῦ σεμνοῦ μέγα κῦδος.52 These Lycaonian texts of the fourth century show the dependence of the local clergy on the limited skills and imagination of a local poet. However, the relationship between the funerary verses for Aberkios and Alexander occurs in an entirely different context and is unique at this early date. Aberkios had written his own epitaph; Alexander’s version shows him to be the inseparable follower of his role model. Both were Roman citizens and ‘disciples of the holy shepherd’, but Alexander confined his imitation to these generic marks of distinction. However, by opting for identical wording and versification Alexander virtually sublimated his personality to that of Aberkios. They were both leading figures and in a strict sense ‘brothers in faith’ in a close-knit Christian community. Before looking for wider traces of the Christian community that had been dominated by Aberkios, it is necessary to appreciate the geographical context. The small cities of the region occupied a large and fertile agricultural plain. At the south end was Stectorium, identifiable with a site called Kocahüyük three kilometres north-east of modern Menteş. The Roman road running north from the major entrepôt of Apamea, still preserved in stretches over seven metres 50

For the under-explored topic of Christian poetry, starting points are now the articles of P. Thonemann, Poets of the Axylon, Chiron 44 (2014), 191–232; Christiane Zimmermann, ‘Christian verse inscriptions’ in C. Breytenbach and C. Zimmermann, Early Christianity in Lycaonia and Adjacent Areas. From Paul to Amphilochius of Iconium (Leiden 2018), 480–514; eadem, Gregory of Nazianzus and early Christian village poetry, in S. Mitchell and P. Pilhofer (eds), Early Christianity in Asia Minor and Cyprus. From the margins to the mainstream (Leiden 2019), 126–47. The verse inscriptions of Phrygia and Lycaonia, pagan and Christian, are collected in SGO 3. 51 See below c. 4.8) 2. 52 W. M. Ramsay, Luke the Physician and Other Studies in the History of Religion (London 1908), 389–90.

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wide,53 ran about a kilometre west of the ancient settlement north to Koçhisar, the site of Hierapolis, passing the thermal station of Hudai Kaplıcaları. From Hierapolis, the road inclined eastwards in the direction of Karasandıklı, ancient Brouzos, before it turned slightly west of north, passed through Kılandıras/ Karadirek, and out of the plain towards the important nodal point of both ancient and modern roads east of Afyon. The Life of Aberkios recorded that when the saint was summoned to Rome he went by the shortest way from Hierapolis, south to the port of Attaleia on the Pamphylian coast, where he took ship. This was the main highway that linked Phrygia with the south coast, along which Aberkios and countless others would have travelled.54 The plain of Sandıklı was relatively level, and the presence of five small towns implies that it was densely populated and intensively cultivated in antiquity. A third-century inscription copied at Sandıklı was set up to honour a man who had been eirenarches τῶν ἐν τῷ Εὐκαρπιτικῷ πόλεων, the official in charge of peace-keeping in the cities of the Eukarpitic plain.55 The focal settlement in the Hellenistic period was a new town called Eucarpia, which lay close to modern Emirhisar about eight kilometres west of Hierapolis. Under the Roman empire the community claimed that it had been founded by Alexander the Great himself, and pre-Roman inscriptions record that its inhabitants, evidently ex-soldiers, occupied the land as lot-holders, κληροῦχοι.56 The development of the highway under the Roman Empire may have led to the relative eclipse of Eucarpia, which was off the road, so that it may gradually have been superseded by Stectorium, Hierapolis and Brouzos, but all these settlements were architecturally modest and have left no significant ancient remains for the modern archaeologist. The land-owners of the Pentapolis presumably did not all live in the towns but in smaller villages and on farms and estates across the plain, exactly as envisaged in the plan for Hellenistic land allotments, and the third-century eirenarch was responsible for law and order in all the towns and their small territories. Ramsay, who made a thorough survey of the Sandıklı plain with Sterrett in 1883, treated the entire region as a unity, as there were no obvious territorial boundaries between the cities. He also judged that the find-spots of inscriptions, usually in the modern settlements, should not 53 54

Photograph in Mitchell, Anatolia I, 125 fig. 23. See David French’s maps in RRMAM III.9, 53 (route D10 on his map of Asia – East), and 61 (Asia 3.5.4, the Eskişehir sheet of the Turkish 1: 500,000 series). He recorded traces along the entire length from Apamea through the Sandıklı ova, except for the section between Hierapolis and Brouzos, and milestones have been noted at Menteş, Koçhisar, Karasandıklı, Karadirek, and Emirhisar. 55 W. M. Calder, ‘A Hellenistic survival at Eucarpia’, AS 6 (1956), 49–51, and Bull. Ép. 1958, 467. 56 IGR IV 652 (Eucarpia); see S. Mitchell, Makedonen überall! 331–52.

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be taken as an accurate indication of their original location, as they were easily moved for building purposes or other reasons.57 The discovery of the Aberkios fragment is itself a case in point. If we can trust the observation in the Life that it stood in late antiquity outside the south gate of Hierapolis, we can infer that subsequently, probably after being smashed, it was carried three kilometres south to serve as building material for the late Ottoman bath building at Hudai Kaplıcaları. The plain lay on either side of the north-south axis of the Roman road. This was the main link between the Pentapolis and the outside world and it must have carried heavy traffic from Anatolia towards the cities of southern and western Asia Minor. The travellers along this road have a special place in the region’s Christian epigraphy. As we have seen, the Alexander monument made a significant addition to the Aberkios text, the final greeting: ‘Peace to those who journey by and keep us in their memory.’ The model for this was the address, ‘Greeting, traveller’, χαῖρε παροδεῖτα, which occurred on countless gravestones in Asia Minor and elsewhere, but this local variation gives unusual prominence to the formula. Intrinsically there is nothing that is surprising or hard to explain about a Christian peace blessing, but the invocation in this form is not found anywhere else in the early Christian epigraphy of Asia Minor.58 Travellers were a constant but ever changing presence in the Pentapolis, and acquired a special significance in the Christian inscriptions. The high points of Aberkios’s own activities had been his own travels, west to Rome, his own family’s land of origin, where he met its Christian communities, and east to the many cities of Syria, extending to Nisibis in Mesopotamia, also thronged with his co-religionists. 57 Ramsay, CB I.2,698: ‘It is impossible to assign with certainty the place of origin of the inscriptions found in the different villages in Sandykli-Ova. Communication is so easy, and stones for building mosques and fountains are carried so regularly, that identification of origin in difficult.’ 58 A fourth-century epitaph from Güllüköy the territory of Lydian Blaundus, invoked peace for a local Christian benefactor who had built a tomb which may have been intended for Christians who could not expect a family burial: [κοι]μητήριν | Χρεισ|τιανῶν {Χριστιανῶν} καθολι|κῆς ἐκλησίας τοῦ|το ἔκτισε Γεννά|διος Ἡλίου ἐξ ὧν | αὐτῷ ὁ θεὸς ἔδωκε. vac εἰρήνη αὐ|τῷ παρὰ Κυρίου | ἰς ἅπαντας εῶ|νας (P. Herrmann, Neue Inschriften zur historischen Landeskunde von Lydien und angrenzenden Gebieten (ICG 4509; DAKWien 77.1, Vienna 1959), 13 (SEG 19, 719); Bull. ép. 1960, 364, suggesting a 4th century date; E. Rebillard, Koimetérion et Cometerium: tombe, tombe sainte et nécropole, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Antiquité 105 (1993), 979 n. 34). The expression in pace, which occasionally appears in the Greek form ἐν εἰρήνῃ was a staple element of fifth- and sixth-century Christian epitaphs, mostly from the Latin-speaking western empire; see I. Ankara 2, 441 comm.

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The longest text incorporating this peace greeting, probably dating to the mid-third century, is known only from a copy made at Sandıklı by the English traveller William Hamilton, published in 1842. It is noteworthy that this epitaph, set up by Aurelius Alexandros son of Marcus, for Eugenia, Marcella, Alexandros, Macedo and Nonna, has a double reference to peace. The five children, who had all died at one moment,59 were ‘honoured by God in peace’ θεοτιμητὰ ἐν εἰρήνῃ, while the text began with the words εἰρήνη τοῖς παράγουσιν πᾶσιν ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ. Peace was granted by god and extended to all who journeyed, not only the Christians among them. The last words, carved independently of the main text apparently at the bottom of the monument, are also significant and characteristic for the region: εἰς ΤΗΝΔΕ τὸ ἡ[ρ]ῶ[ι]ον κοινὸν ἀδελῶν. Hamilton’s copy is faulty, but only one interpretation of the sense of these lines is plausible, that a community of brothers constructed the heroon, the funerary monument.60 Both the brotherhood and the peace blessing appear on other tombstones from the region. Two funerary altars, each described by the Christian term κοιμητήριον and recorded by Ramsay in the village of Mağacıl (near Stectorium), combine references to the brotherhood with the peace blessing: Αὐρ. Διονοίσιος πρεσβ[υ]τερος ζῶν κατεσκεύασεν τὸ κοιμητήριον. εἰρήνη πᾶσι τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς,61 and Αὐρήλιος Ἀσκληπιάδη[ς] ἐποίησεν το[ῦ]το τὸ κοιμη[τή]ριον. εἰρήν[η] πάσῃ τῇ ἀδελ[φότητι]. καὶ ὃ[ς ἂν] ἀνορύξῃ [- -].62 In date and content they are closely related to the epitaph for the five children of Aurelius Alexandros. The prominent position of the word ἀδελφός on another bomos from near Stectorium, suggests that the inscription, which reads ἀδελφῷ Αὐρ. Πρόκλος Αὐρ. Ἀπφιανῷ ἀνέστησεν τὸν β[ωμόν], should also belong to this Christian group, and that Apphianos was Proklos’s brother in a Christian sense.63 This Christian community was already identified in Aberkios’s own epitaph by the poetic synonym 59 Hamilton, Researches in Asia Minor II, 475–6 no. 374 (CIG 9266; J. Mordtmann, Zur Epigraphik von Kleinasien, Athenische Mitteilungen 15 (1890), 156–61 at 158–61 no. 2; Ramsay, CB 1.2, 730–33 no. 658; ICG 1599). The children died τοῖς ὑπὸ ἕνα κερὸν νη εῖσιν τὸ τῆς ζώης μέρος. Ramsay thought they had been martyred; it is more plausible that they were victims of an epidemic. 60 The term heroon appears regularly in Christian funerary texts from Eumeneia and Apamea. These lines were carved separately on the stone from the remaining twenty-four lines of the inscription, and the main text indicates that Aur. Alexandros set up the stele for his children; the brethren’s involvement with the funerary monument may have come after he had died, and was a recognition of the family’s importance to the community and perhaps the extraordinary circumstances of the death of the children. 61 CB I.2, 719–20 no. 654 (ICG 1612). 62 CB 1.2, 734 no. 655 (ICG 1613). 63 MAMA XI 147 (ICG 1478).

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συνῷδος. The Aurelius names found in all the other funerary monuments indicate that they dated after 212, extending into the middle of the third century. This fits with the precise date, ἔτους τμ´ (340 Sullan era = 255/6) preserved on a funerary monument from Emirhisar, set up by another Aurelius Alexander, a city counsellor from Eukarpia, for his wife Aurelia Zotike and their children. The inscription used the Eumeneian formula to protect the tomb from interference, including use by other family members, and ended with the Pentapolitan peace blessing: εἴ τις δὲ ἢ ἐκ τῆς συνγενείας ἢ ἕτερον θάψει ἢ κακῶς ποιήσει τῷ μνημείῳ ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεόν· εἰρήνη τοῖς παροδείταις.64 Other Christian gravestones from the Pentapolis should be assigned to the mid-third century. The Eumeneian formula appears on four more texts, twice combined with other indications that the grave was Christian.65 One was the inscription from Başkuyucak, headed by a small cross and carved on the side of a double pilaster, apparently recovered from the balustrade of a dismantled building, set up by Claudia Asia for Claudius Philetos, Claudius Philokalos and Aurelia Asia, probably all family members.66 The formula also appeared on the the bottom half of a broken bomos from near Stectorium, described as a κυμιτήριον,67 on a funerary altar, here called a ἡρῷον, dated to 260 from the east part of the plain, put up by Aurelia Asklepiodora for her husband and son,68 and on the grave from near Stectorium of Aurelius Antonius for himself and his unnamed wife.69 The family tomb erected by Sestullianus Epiktetos from Stectorium used a different expression to invoke god’s protection, ἐνορκίζομέ σο τὸ[ν] θεὸν μή τις συλήσει τύμβον σώματος ἡμετέρου, but also probably referred to the Christian god.70 In contrast, the wording of a slightly earlier doorstone from Karasandıklı was intentionally chosen to show that the family was not Christian: ἐνορκιζόμεθα δὲ τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τοὺς καταχθονίους δαίμονας μηδένα ἀδικῆσαι τὸ μνημῖον, μηδὲ ἄλλον τινα τεθῆναι χωρὶς Γαίου καὶ Ἀσκληπιάδου τέκνων. Οὐκ ἤμην, ἐγένομην, οὐκ ἔσομαι. Οὐ μέλι μοι. ὁ βιὸς ταῦτα. 64 MAMA XI 139 (ICG 1448). 65 See chapter 4.3. 66 MAMA XI 150 (ICG 1460). † Κλ. Ἀσία Κλ. Φιλήτῳ Κλ. Φιλοκάλῳ καὶ Αὐρ. Ἀσίᾳ μνήμης χάριν. ἐὰν δέ τις ἕτερον θήσει, ἔστε αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεόν. The monument resembles a Byzantine double-column, a common element of church architecture in the 5th and 6th century. Another unusual and typically late feature is the horizontal sign of abbreviation, carved above the letters ΚΛ in the first three names. Perhaps a text formulated in the 3rd century was reinscribed later to preserve the family memory, but it is hard to find a parallel for this. 67 JRS 16 (1926), 55 no. 172 (ICG 1019 from Alamesçit). 68 CB 1.2, 718 no. 652; MAMA XI 144 (ICG 1472 from Çevrepınar). 69 CB 1.2, 733 no. 660 (ICG 1614). 70 CΒ 1.2, 734 nο. 661; ΜΑΜΑ ΧΙ 143 (ICG 1478).

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Χαίρετε παροδεῖται.71 The implications of this text are worth emphasizing. The family’s concept of god was singular, but the world of the dead was protected by demons. There was no afterlife, mortal existence was just that (ὁ βιὸς ταῦτα),72 and the message was relayed to passers-by as a counterweight to the peace greetings of the Christian epitaphs set up in cemeteries along the same highway. On the other hand, an inscription said to be from the Phrygian Pentapolis and now in a Greek private collection, decorated with reliefs of a man ploughing behind two oxen, a sack of grain and a wine jar, offered a glimpse into the life of a Christian farmer, awaiting resurrection after a life of toil: Ἐπιγόν{ον}ου γεωργὸς αἰπο[ίη]σα τὸ κοιμητήριον ἐκκ των εἴδίων καμάτων α[ἵως] ἀναστάσεως.73 As well as the epitaphs of Abercius and Alexander, one other developed epitaph from the Pentapolis has been recorded at the site of Brouzos, for Eutropius, pious patriarch of an apparently Christian family buried by his wife Kyrilla (fig. 3).74 The verses state that he was wise, held in honour and had won the respect of a Roman senatorial family for his faith or trustworthiness, διὰ πίστιν. These two words were prominently placed and remain, for us, at least, splendidly ambiguous. Do they denote his Christian faith, or his reliability as a business partner? The following lines refer to his toils, journeys and labours, πολλὰ τε μοχθήσαντα ὁδοιπορίαις καμάτοις τε. It is difficult to escape the impression that Eutropius, like many other enterprising Phrygians, was often away from home, engaged in the transport business along this critical Anatolian highway, before he returned to end his life in his home town to await the resurrection: ἐλθὼν δ᾽ ἰς πατρίδα ἀνεπαύσατο βιότοιο τελευτήν.75 The use of the verb ἀναπαύομαι is an unmistakeable clue to his religion, as this was used exclusively by Christians to denote repose in the tomb before resurrection to 71 CB 1.2, 700 no. 635; Waelkens, Türsteine 185–6 no. 463. Ramsay speculated that the text was composed either by a philosophic pagan or by a Christian not yet emancipated from his old ideas. 72 For this formula, see L. Robert, Epigraphica, Rev. Phil. 1944, 3–56 at 53–6 and Hellenica XIII, 272. 73 SEG 62, 1814 (ICG 4476). The stone is unquestionably Phrygian, although the decorative scheme appears unusual for the Pentapolis. It was probably taken from the area during the brief Greek occupation of 1921/22. For another wine grower from the region, compare Trophimion, the travel companion of Abercius in the fictive version of his journey to Rome (vita Abercii 56). 74 MAMA XI 145; E. Chiricat, Crypto-Christian inscriptions from Phrygia, in Thonemann (ed.), Roman Phrygia (2013), 198–214 (ICG 1445). 75 It is not necessary to imagine that he was a freedman of a senatorial family. Like the famous and much travelled Flavius Zeuxis, who had made seventy-two journeys to Rome before being buried outside the north gate of Hierapolis (SIG3 1229), he did business in his own right.

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Figure 3 Phrygian Pentapolis, Brouzos (Karasandıklı). Funerary altar of Eutropius. ICG 1445 Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, Oxford University. Michael Ballance archive

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eternal life,76 and the next verse justifies his hope of salvation, εἶχε γὰρ καὶ θεὸν ἐπήκοον ὃν πεποθήκει, ‘for he had a god who heard his prayers, whom he had loved’.77 Πόθος was a verb used elsewhere by Phrygian Christians to describe their love of god, but the inspiration for the expression, as Eduard Chiricat has pointed out, almost certainly came from the Psalms, notably from Ps. 119, 20 ἐπεπόθησεν ἡ ψυχή μου τοῦ ἐπιθυμῆσαι τὰ κρίματα σου ἐν παντὶ καιρῷ and 119, 26 τὰς ὁδοὺς μου ἐξήγγειλα καῖ ἐπηκούσας μου· δίδαξον με τὰ δικαιώματά σου. Several allusions in these lines from the Septuagint translation found an echo in the inscription (the longing for god, the listening god, the expectation of the Last Judgement, and even the journeys of the faithful), and it is very plausible that the epitaph consciously alluded to them. Wisdom, σοφίης μέτρον, was the first of Eutropius’s virtues to be mentioned, the left panel of the altar itself was decorated with a stilus case, and the back with a very prominent writing scroll, and these allusions demonstrated his learning. The elaborate funerary curse that followed took a typical Phrygian pattern and was common to non-Christian and Christian graves alike,78 but the fine for grave disturbance, χρυσοῦς ἑκατόν, a hundred gold pieces, although only a tenth the size of the fines on the Aberkios and Alexander tombs, χείλια χρυσᾶ, is reminiscent of them. As in those texts, the figures were purely symbolic, not relating to any currency that was in circulation, or to be explained by the post-Constantinian use of gold currency. The text dates to the first half of the third century and the form of the monument as well as the contents of the text establish a close relationship with the Alexander epitaph. The pediment of the bomos, slightly taller than Alexander’s, was decorated with a pattern that inverts the ‘Pfeifenfries’ on the Alexander altar; above it was a torus and a crown resembling a pine cone or an artichoke head, with four rows of ribbed leaves converging to a point.79 The deep-set panel at the back of the Eutropius stone also resembled the front panel of Alexander’s. They are likely to have been made in the same workshop at around the same period. Eutropius was another follower of Aberkios, not so intimately linked to his master as Alexander, but also a man with wealth and cultural aspirations, and acquainted by reading and study with Christian texts. The epitaph of Eutropius has led full circle back to the monuments for Aberkios and Alexander. That is not an accident, as this grave monument 76 See Feissel, Chron. index s.v. ἀναπαύω, with the note ἀναπαύομαι passim. 77 Cf. ὃς ἐπόθησε θεὸν in another verse epitaph from the Upper Tembris Valley, BCC, JRS 18 (1928), 33–34 no. 250; (ICG 1978). 78 Compare the epitaph set up by Aur. Alexandros for his five children (ICG 1599); see 105 n. 59. 79 The type is similar but not identical to the pine-cone finials of the elaborate 3rd century bomoi of Acmonia.

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was produced in the same environment, even in the same workshop as they were, and reveals that the deceased man had beliefs and cultural aspirations that were likely to have been inspired by Aberkios’s example. The more modest pre-Constantinian Christian grave monuments of the region, all dateable to the period between c.212 and c.260, present a coherent picture of a selfproclaimed Christian brotherhood, settled in the small towns and villages of the Pentapolis, along the main highway bringing traffic from western Asia Minor up the Maeander and Lycos valleys, and from the south coast, through Apamea into the Phrygian heartlands. They were well integrated into their communities. Their lives rested on the same economic base: agriculture, viticulture, and stock raising. Hard rural labour was a major part of their lives; some were engaged in trade and transport. At least the wealthier families had access to education. Like their pagan fellows, their graves were jealously protected by traditional curses and imprecations, which some of them still used alongside or instead of the widely current Christian formula, that those who disturbed the tombs would have to reckon with god. The monuments themselves were not distinguishable in form from those of pagans, and doubtless stood in the same cemeteries, although some of them adopted the term koimeterion, to denote the tomb as a place of rest and sleep before resurrection, a central tenet of Christian belief, in place of the traditional descriptors, bomos or heroon, which were used indifferently regardless of religious persuasion. Non-Christian inhabitants of these communities were certainly aware of their presence. One contemporary pagan funerary inscription used wording that deliberately rejected Christian beliefs, but there is no evidence of religious conflict at an inter-commmunal level. The Christian watch-word ‘peace’ was a Leitmotif addressed to travellers but also to the local population. It called on the spirit evoked by the martyrs of Lyon, Asian and Phrygian Christians of the previous generation (see chapter 1.2). Nevertheless, no threat of martyrdom seems to have hovered over the Christians of the Pentapolis in the early third century. They made no effort to conceal themselves and were not systematically persecuted. 4.3

Reckoning with God: The Eumeneian Formula

Threats designed to deter grave robbing and to prevent unauthorized persons from using tombs for themselves were a feature of many cultures, summed up in the sentence that was carved on William Shakespeare’s tombstone, ‘Cursed be he that moves my bones’. Formulas added to epitaphs which were intended

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to protect the grave from disturbance or interference are characteristic of Phrygia’s funerary epigraphy.80 The custom, expressed with many local variations, was widespread in Asia Minor and included the coastal, hellenized cities and regions, but was most characteristic of the indigenous cultures of the interior, and more prevalent in Phrygia than anywhere else. In the third century the only context in which the indigenous Phrygian language was used in a lasting written form was to add protective curses to funerary epitaphs.81 The emphasis on punishing intruders, grave robbers, or use by unauthorized family members was associated with the veneration of graves and of the dead which can be inferred from other aspects of Phrygia’s funerary inscriptions.82 Pagan imprecations of this sort have been the object of a famous study by Louis Robert,83 and collected into a corpus by Johann Strubbe.84 The commonest Phrygian types began with the protasis τὶς ἂν προσάξει χεῖρα τὴν βαρύφθονον, or variations of this expression, and concluded with a variety of threatening apodoseis, of which the commonest are οὕτως ἀώροις περιπέσοιτο συνφόραις, ‘may he fall victim to an untimely fate’, which occurs in most of the communities of northern Phrygia, and ὄρφανα τέκνα λίποιτο χήρον βίον οἶκον ἔρημον, ‘may he leave his children as abandoned orphans, his wife a widow, and a blighted house’. Inscriptions carrying this threat occurred especially in central and northern Phrygia, but the distribution extended across Phrygia Paroreius into Lycaonia and Galatia, to the Black Sea coast and the Propontis. Sometimes these curses invoked specific divinities; an ominous Phrygian variation was to call upon the avenging demons of Black Hekate. The curses are attested throughout the period when Phrygia’s funerary epigraphy was at its most abundant. Most of the examples appear on decorated steles, including doorstones, of the late second and early third centuries. Some versions remained current in the late third and early fourth centuries and occasionally appeared on Christian monuments. In the Phrygian Pentapolis, the third-century epitaph of the Christian Eutropius from Brouzos has the classic formula εἰ δέ τις τῷ τύμβῳ τούτῳ κακοεργέα χεῖρα προσοίσει, ὄρφανα λείψει τέκνα καὶ οἶκον ἔρημον, and the tomb of Aur. Alexandros from Hierapolis, probably of the second quarter of the third century, includes

80 81 82 83

J. Strubbe, ‘Cursed be he that moves my bones’, 33–59, a classic article. For the neo-Phrygian inscriptions, see 57–8. See 66–7. L. Robert, Malédictions funéraires grecques, 252: ‘En effet la Phrygie est le domaine par excellence des maledictions funéraires.’ 84 J. Strubbe, ΑΡΑΙ ΕΠΙΤΥΜΒΙΟΙ. See also J. Strubbe, ‘Curses against violation of the grave in Jewish epitaphs of Asia Minor’.

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the malediction that ὃς ἂν δὲ προσκόψι ξένος τῷ τύμβῳ τούτῳ ἀωρὰ τέκνα ἔχωσι.85 A remarkable example from outside Phrygia is the Christian gravestone of Aur. Marcellus at Herakleia Perinthus on the Propontis. At the head of the stele is a chi-rho monogram incorporating the letters alpha and omega, indicating a fourth-century, probably Constantinian date, but the text ended with a dramatic variant of the threat of a blighted household, εἰ δέ τις κακουργήσι τὸ λατόμιν ὀρφανὰ τέκνα λίποιτο, γυνέκα τε χήραν, ἐν πυρὶ πάντα δράμοιτο, κακῶν ὑπὸ χῖρος ὄλιτε, ‘if anyone does harm to this ‘quarry’, may he leave his children as orphans, his wife as a widow, may everything run (be consumed?) in the fire, and may he perish by the hands of murderers’.86 In place of and sometimes alongside funerary curses, it was also common to threaten those who disturbed the tomb with a fine, payable to the Roman treasury, to the city authorities, or, less often, to a local association. The threat of a fine was relatively unusual in rural contexts, but common in organised city communities. Some Christians also followed this practice in the third century.87 Christians in Phrygia, and throughout Asia Minor, devised their own distinctive formulae, to deter interference with the grave, and these occurred widely between the third and sixth centuries. The most common of these, already current before the middle of the third century, was ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεόν, the Eumeneian formula, so called because the largest number of examples has been recorded on the territory of Eumeneia in south-west Phrygia.88 Two other expressions which became common in the third and fourth centuries conveyed virtually the same meaning, ἕξει πρὸς τὸν Θεόν,89 and δώσει λόγον θεῷ, a sentiment that was first expressed in these terms by Paul in the Letter 85 MAMA XI 145 (ICG 1445); and Ramsay, CB 1.2, 730–33 no. 658 (ICG 1599; Strubbe, ΑΡΑΙ ΕΠΙΤΥΜΒΙΟΙ, 171–2 no. 245). See also MAMA I 235 (ICG 608) from Altınekin (Lycaonia), late 3rd century, which seems to have been engraved in the arms of a large Latin cross. 86 I. Perinthos 180; Robert, Malédictions funéraires grecques, 257 fig. 1. On p. 259 Robert cites with approval the opinion of E. Kalinka, the first editor, that it is hard to place this text later than the third century, but it must postdate 286 when Perinthus was renamed Herakleia, and the Constantinianum can hardly be earlier than 312. For Christian adoption of pagan curses, see D. Feissel, Notes d’épigraphie chrétienne IV, BCH 104 (1980), 459–75 at 471. 87 The legal and social aspects of protecting the grave by these means have been examined in an extensive project covering western and south-western Asia Minor by K. HarterUibopuu and colleagues, who have examined the issues in a series of articles relating both to the regions and to individual cities (Miletus, Ephesus, Smyrna). 88 W. M. Calder, The Eumeneian formula, in W. M. Calder and J. Keil (eds.), Anatolian Studies presented to William Hepburn Buckler (Manchester 1939), 15–26. 89 W.M. Calder, Studies in early Christian epigraphy II, JRS 14 (1924), 85–92, at 85–88, suggested that the threat ἕξει πρὸς τὸν Θεόν was characteristic of the region around Laodicea Catacecaumene. L. Robert, Hell. XI/XII, 401–404 lists seventeen examples mostly from

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to the Romans, and was widely used on Lycaonian gravestones in the third and fourth centuries.90 Most of the expressions in this format, threatening or promising a reckoning with god, were substantially less menacing than the pagan curses. It was for God to decide how to punish sinners. This contrasted with the common Phrygian formulae which pre-empted this divine decision, by stating that the offender would suffer an untimely disaster, or die prematurely leaving a widow and an orphaned household.91 The Eumeneian formula was recognised as a mark of Christianity by Ramsay during his pioneering explorations of Phrygia, although he acknowledged the possibility that it might also occasionally be used by Jews. This was also the interpretation of Ramsay’s chief follower,92 Calder, and of Louis Robert, who studied the expression in detail.93 Robert, never easily impressed by Anglo-Saxon scholarship, marked his agreement with Calder: ‘W. M. Calder suit un sage règle: il est très possible que certains de ces textes émanent de Juifs; on ne pourra les leur attribuer que d’après un fait précis ou une forte presumption d’origine juive.’94 This judgement in turn has led Walter Ameling to include only two examples with a variant of the Eumeneian formula in his corpus of Jewish inscriptions from Asia Minor, both from Acmonia, a Phrygian city with a well-attested Jewish community.95 Τhe predominant view, that almost all occurrences of the Eumeneian formula should be treated as Christian, has come under strong challenge from Paul Trebilco, who has argued that most of the recorded examples, over seventy in total, contain no indication that they are definitively Jewish or Christian, and therefore cannot be classified as one or the other. Although significantly

90 91

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93 94 95

Lycaonia, and there are additions by Feissel, Notes d’épigraphie chrétienne IV, 463–65, and Chron., 1201. Huttner, Christliche Grenzgänger, 157–59; citing Rom. 14. 10 and 12 and other Christian writers between the 2nd and 4th centuries; Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 522–23, 531–33. The tense of the verb varies between present, future and aorist. Educated Phrygian pagans also adopted a much milder warning on tombs of the late second and early third centuries, τὸν θεόν σοι· μὴ άδικήσεις, which not should be construed as a threat of punishment to those who interfered with tomb, but more simply as a prescription to their fellows, that they should lead just lives; see pp. 268–72. Calder, The Eumeneian formula, 25, commented on one occurrence at Acmonia that he believed to be Jewish (= ICG 1002), that ‘the use … in this one instance raises the question whether in other localities, including Eumeneia and Apamea, we should not attribute individual examples of the formula to Jews’. Robert, Hellenica XI/XII (1960), 399–413. Robert, Hellenica XII/XII, 408–9. W. Ameling, IJO II no. 171: ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὴν δικαιοσύνην τοῦ θεοῦ, and no. 176: ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν τὸν ὕψιστον. Neither text is unquestionably Jewish; the first may be Christian, the second erected for a theosebes.

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more examples of the formula can be classified as Christian by other sure criteria than those that may be Jewish, logically all indeterminate examples should simply be regarded as unproven, and hence unclassifiable.96 This takes scepticism to an unjustifiable extreme. As Ameling has remarked, ‘P. Trebilco zählt die Inschriften mit der Eumeneischen Formel auf, bei denen seiner Ansicht nach nicht sicher zu entscheiden ist, ob sie christlich oder jüdisch sind. „Un fait précis ou une forte présumption d’origine juive“ [the criterion of Calder and Robert] scheint mir bei keinen gegeben, doch ist damit nicht auszuschließen, dass auch jüdische Texte darunter sein könnten’. However, Ameling concluded that little weight should be attached to this reservation: ‘Sehr wahrscheinlich scheint mir das nicht zu sein, da die Eumeneische Formel auch von Trebilco nur zweimal halbwegs sicher für Juden, wesentlich häufig aber sicher für Christen in Anspruch genommen werden konnte. Texte ohne sichere Zuweisung sind also eher christlich als jüdisch’.97 Even Trebilco himself has pointed out that the two texts included in Ameling’s corpus (nos. 169 and 171) are not admissible as Jewish beyond all possible doubt, and thus, on his strict logical criteria, should be judged to be unclassifiable.98 It is important in this debate not to lose sight of the importance of context, which Louis Robert rightly took to be a crucial indicator: ‘Je crois que le cadre locale permet d’assurer ce classement’.99 The same point was made in ironic fashion by Ramsay in his classic study: ‘In following up the epigraphic traces of people who aimed at avoiding obtrusiveness and escaping notice, we shall find many delicate cases, where Christianity may be suspected but cannot be proved; and it will be far from easy to distinguish the cases in which suspicion may be strengthened into comparative confidence from those in which it remains a mere suspicion. I should have formally felt disposed to say that 96 P. Trebilco, The Christian and Jewish Eumeneian Formula, Mediterraneo Antico 5 (2002), 63–97. Trebilco is followed by G. F. Chiai, Christen und christliche Identitäten in den Inschriften des kaiserzeitlichen Phrygiens, in S. Alkier and H. Leppin (eds), Juden  – Heiden – Christen? Religiöse Inklusion und Exklusions in Kleinasien bis Decius ((Tübingen 2018), 91–129 at 98 n. 39, and by Ulrich Huttner in his commentaries for the ICG data-base, and in Christliche Grenzgänger, 157: ‘Nimmt man die Eumeneische Formel für sich, so fehlt das methodische Instrumentarium, um auf eine religiöse Zugehörigkeit zu schliessen – es sei denn, man begnügt sich mit vagen monotheistischen oder henotheistischen Kategorien’. 97 Ameling, IJO II, 361 with n. 71. 98 Robert, Hell. XI/XII, 399–400 accepted the inscription from Acmonia with the threat ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν τὸν ὕψιστον καὶ το ἀρᾶς δρέπανον, as the only certain Jewish example IJO II, 374–75 no. 176 (ICG 1002). In fact, precisely this text seems more likely to refer to a theosebes, a Jewish sympathiser, than to a Jew. See p. 150. 99 Robert, Hell. XI/XII, 410.

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in many inscriptions the Christian tone is a certainty; but since Drs Ficker, Harnack and Hilgenfeld and others have declared that the epitaph of Avircius Marcellus marked the tomb of a priest of Cybele or of some other eclectic with a smattering of Christian knowledge mingled with his paganism, it has become clear that for the present certainty cannot be assumed. It is, however, evident that those scholars have not thought of examining the other scattered Christian epitaphs of the district; and the hope may be entertained that the series given in chapters XII and XVII may affect their disposition’.100 Provided there is no indication of a Jewish presence in the environment where they have been found, it is sounder methodologically to describe inscriptions with the Eumeneian formula as certainly or very probably Christian, than to identify a minority as certainly Christian and the rest as unclassifiable. This is important, as it makes this material available for the enquiry, rather than confining it to an unusable limbo. The discussion, however, provides a helpful introduction to another issue that Trebilco has addressed, namely the extent to which Christians and Jews really formed separate groups in the third century, and how far their beliefs, practices and social status can be distinguished from one another.101 These are more substantial questions to which we need to return. The use of the Eumeneian formula and similar appeals to God to protect the integrity of burials was a special feature of Christian epitaphs in Phrygia and other regions of central Anatolia. Sporadic examples occur outside inner Anatolia, in Bithynia, Thrace and the Propontis, but in all these cases the practice is likely to have been brought there by transplanted Phrygian or Lycaonian families. They rendered in a milder Christian form the pagan funerary curses which were characteristic of third-century Phrygia. They also made these numerous Christian families visible both to contemporaries and to modern scholarship. 4.4

Apamea, Eumeneia and Acmonia (Maps 12 and 13)

4.4.1 Apamea and the Legend of Noah’s Ark Apamea, a city which Strabo called the greatest emporium of Asia after Ephesus, lay about sixty kilometres south of Hierapolis of the Pentapolis.102 100 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 484. 101 Trebilco, Eumeneian formula, 96 after arguing that the formula cannot be used as evidence for either Christianity or Judaism, concludes ‘it seems likely that there may have been close relations between Christians and Jews in third-century Phrygia’. 102 Strabo XII.8.18, 579.

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Before it acquired its dynastic name it was known as Kelainai, and was a centre of one of the satrapies of the Persian empire.103 The city was also known as ἡ κιβωτός, the chest, which could be interpreted as an allusion to the chests of goods which were traded there.104 The same word was used in the Septuagint to describe the Ark of Noah, a legend which was to acquire enormous local significance at Apamea and undoubtedly contributed to the popularity of the nickname.105 Apamean society from the early first century BC was dominated by Italian or Roman emigrant families, which not only included many of the richest individuals living in the city, but were also identified collectively as the κατοικοῦντες ‘Ρωμαῖοι, ‘the Resident Romans’, a formidable section of the political class. Apamea’s geographical position at the headwaters of the Maeander river also helped to shape its role in antiquity as one of the most important points of exchange between east and west Asia Minor, between the Aegean world and inner Anatolia. The central Anatolian communication network converged in the Dombay Ovası, immediately east of Apamea, on a major intersection of roads from the Maeander and Lycos valleys, from north and central Phrygia, from Cappadocia and central Anatolia, and from Pamphylia and Pisidia.106 The Bithynian rhetor Dio of Prusa, in a delightfully unbuttoned address delivered in the city around around 100, evoked a picture of the throngs drawn annually to Apamea during the Roman assizes, when it served as a market and meeting place for visitors from all over Asia Minor: the central and western areas of Phrygia, Lydia and Caria, the southern regions of Pisidia and Pamphylia, and Cappadocians from the East. Whatever was available for sale – a span of horses and a carriage, houses for rent, or women for pleasure – all fetched the highest

103 The importance of Kelainai in the Persian empire has been the subject of much recent attention; see L. Summerer et al. (eds.), Apameia Kibotos: développement urbain dans le contexte anatolien (Actes du colloque internationale, Munich 2–4 Avril 2009; Bordeaux 2011). 104 Strabo 12.6.4, 569; Pliny, NH 5, 106; Ptolemy V.2, 17; see C. Habicht, JRS 65 (1975), 81 discussing I. Ephesos 13, line 18 (Asian communities in the Flavian period). J. Nollé, Beiträge zur kleinasiatischen Münzkunde und Geschichte 3–4, Gephyra 3 (2006), 49–131 at 83 n. 211 dismisses this explanation of the name Kibotos as ‘absurd’; contra Nicola Zwingmann, Erinnerungslandschaften und Identitäten in einer kulturellen Kontaktzone: Denkmäler in Apamea-Kibotos, in Summerer (ed.), Kelainai-Apameia Kibotos (2011), 93–116 at 100 n. 50: ‘Nollé strapaziert die Bedeutung der kibotos / kibotoi … stark’; Thonemann, Maeander, 89–90. 105 Thonemann, Maeander, 90; the city issued bronze coins under Hadrian depicting the local river god Marsyas amid bonded packing cases. 106 M. Christol, Au confins de l’Asie et de Galatie, 439–64.

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prices.107 Probably, as at the other major west Phrygian emporium of Acmonia, slaves were the highest value item of exchange.108 Between the late first- and mid-third centuries Apamea was the meeting place of the κοινὸν Φρυγίας, an institution which may effectively be identical with the community that gathered for the great annual panegyris evoked by Dio.109 The drawing power of Apamea was felt across and beyond Anatolia, but doubtless the greatest number of visitors would have come from other parts of Phrygia, both from inner Phrygia to the north and east, and from the great textile trading centres of Laodicea and Hierapolis in the Lycos Valley to the west. We can be sure that scarcely an inhabitant of the Phrygian Pentapolis, whatever his or her wealth and station, would not have paid a visit to this humming centre of commerce and trade. The reports of the growing Montanist controversy among Phrygia’s Christians at the end of the second century offers a small illustration that the towns of the Pentapolis and the commercial hub of Apamea were inseparably tied to one another. In addition to Apollinarius, bishop at Hierapolis (Pamukkale), and Avircius Marcellus, resident at the city with the same name in the Sandıklı plain, who were both leaders of the Christian community opposed to the Montanist heresy, Eusebius refers to a presbyter called Zotikos from Otrous, a town of the Pentapolis, the Apamean bishop Iulianus, and the martyrdom at Apamea of Gaius and Alexander, two Christians from Eumeneia.110 The intercourse between the Christians of Apamea and its neighbouring cities, is confirmed, as might be predicted, by epigraphic evidence. A weathered but imposing, mid-third-century gravestone, with a pine cone surmounting the pediment, found in the cemetery at Dikici south of Dinar, and marked as Christian by the Eumeneian formula, was erected for himself, his wife and his children by Αὐρή. Ἀρτέμων δὶς Εὐκαρπεὺς οἰκῶν ἐν Ἀπαμείᾳ.111 Another large funerary text found in the same village, carved on a panel from a built tomb, was the work of [Αὐρ. Τρ]όφιμος Διονυσίου from Antioch in Asia, the Carian city of Antiocheia ad Maeandrum, for himself and his wife Aur. Antonina. The word ἴχθυς was placed centrally in the last line of the text, and their Christian identities were proclaimed not only by the Eumeneian formula but by this direct 107 Dio Chrysostom, or. 35.14–16. 108 The slave trade attracted a special tax at Apamea, noted in the famous assize document at Ephesus, I. Ephesos vol. 1 no. 13, II, 18. 109 So Thonemann, Maeander, 110–24. 110 Eusebius, HE 5. 16.5: the συμπρεσβύτερος Zotikos of Otrous; 5.16.17: Iulianus of Apamea and Zotikos from the village of Coumana (perhaps identical with the priest from Otrous); 5.16.22 (Gaius and Alexander). 111 MAMA VI 223 (ICG 961).

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allusion to Christ.112 These families had moved into the larger city. Christian businessmen from Phrygia, doubtless including some Apameans, also settled at their trading destinations. The only third-century Christian epitaph noted at Caesarea, the Cappadocian metropolis, decorated with a relief of a driver with his cart, marked the burial of a Phrygian waggon-master, Παπύλος ἁμαξάρχης | Φρὺξ ὥρᾳ Καππαδο|κῶν δύσμορος | ἐνθάδε κεῖται· ὃς ἂν κακῶς πυήσι | τῷ τάφῳ ἔστη αὐτῷ | πὸς τὸν Θεόν.113 The environment at Apamea was favourable to commerce, but also offered a friendly climate to Christians, and this was an incentive to the widely travelled but anonymous writer of a clumsy and incomplete verse epitaph, which is now in Burdur Museum: Ἀντολίην πᾶσαν καὶ δυσμὴν ἐσιδ[ών] | ἦλθον εἰς τάσδε Κελαινὰς / πρωτό|γυον ἣν τείμησ᾽ ὁ Θεὸς, πλήθυνε δὲ πίστει, having visited the entire Orient and the Occident, I have come to this place Kelainai, the first cultivated land, which God honoured and filled with faith. This fragment contains a wealth of information. The writer was a foreigner who had settled at Kelainai-Apamea after travels to East and West. Although it is easier to imagine that pursuit of a livelihood rather than missionary work was the main motive for his journeys, he inevitably recalls Aberkios. The second stanza, which contrasted his settled retirement with his previous peregrinations, is less transparent. The word πρωτόγυος, nowhere else attested, is an adjective derived from γύης, a plot of land or field, and the verse implies that God had honoured Apamea with the first cultivated plot of land and filled it with faith. Denis Feissel has elucidated this as an allusion to the Apamean version of the flood legend, which asserted that Apamea was the first place where Noah and the rest of mankind could resume cultivation after the waters had receded.114 The background of the epigram was the story in Genesis, which played an extraordinary and central part in shaping Apamea’s Christian identity. A story that is known from verses of the Sibylline Oracle, composed in the time of the Roman empire, surely in Phrygia itself, located Mount Ararat and the Biblical flood legend at the sources of the river Marsyas at Apamea, which, like the Maeander, originated in the springs of the Dombay Ovası and joined 112 MAMA VI 224 (ICG 962). 113 H. Grégoire, BCH 33 (1909), 67 no. 46. The verbal forms πυήσι, ἔστη and πός are characteristically Phrygian, but this monument did not respect the usual Christian taboo in Phrygia against representing the human form. 114 G.H.R. Horsley, Homer in Pisidia (2000), 71–4; RECAM 5, 316 (Burdur Museum); SEG 48, 1552; SGO 4, 126: 18/11/99 (ICG 4459), with Feissel, Chron. 376 citing C. P. Jones for the restoration δυσμὴν ἐσιδ[ών] ἦλθον εἰς τάσδε Κελαινάς κτλ.; Thonemann, Maeander, 93 n. 104; Nollé, Gephyra 3 (2006), 95. The verb πληθύνειν recurred repeatedly in the Septuagint version of the Noah legend. See pp. 434–8.

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the larger river at the edge of the city. This was where the ark was stranded after the waters receded: τῷδε κιβωτὸς ἔμεινεν ἐν ὑψηλοῖσι καρήνοις ληξάντων ὑδάτων.115 The location of the legend in Phrygia was also reported in another third-century writer, Julius Africanus, and by later Byzantine authors.116 The most unexpected and intriguing testimony to the story of the ark at Apamea comes from six civic coin issues dated between 193 and 253, issued in the names of various city magistrates during the reigns of Septimius Severus, Macrinus, Severus Alexander, Gordian III, Philip and Trebonianus Gallus. The reverses of these coins all depict a double scene: to the right, a male and female figure in a chest (the ark or kibotos), floating on water, inscribed with the letters ΝΩΕ or ΝΩΗ, with a raised lid on which two birds can be seen, one perched the other flying from the left with a twig, evidently an olive branch, in its beak. The scene to the left of this shows a standing man and woman, each with the right hand raised in prayer.117 The representation may, but need not have been based on paintings or reliefs displayed at Apamea. It depicted two moments in the Biblical story, the moment when the birds sent from the ark by Noah, respectively the raven and the dove, brought first bad and then good news that the flood had abated, and then the moment of thanksgiving for the return to terra firma, when mankind was saved from the cataclysm and farming could be resumed, according to God’s covenant.118 Although other versions of the flood legend were current elsewhere in and beyond Phrygia,119 the details of the birds, as well as the naming of Noah, leave no possible doubt that this was indeed the Biblical version of the Flood story. The illustrated example, from the reign of Philip, was issued on the authority of M. Aur. Alexander archiereus, civic high-priest of the imperial cult (Fig. 4). 115 Or Sib. 1, 261. Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 95–99 argues strongly for composition at Apamea; J. L. Lighfoot, The Sibylline oracles: with introduction, translation, and commentary on the first and second books. (Oxford 2007), 150 identifies the author as a Christian, writing in the second century. 116 Georgius Syncellus, Chron. 38–42 (DIndorf), quotes the account of the third-century Julianus Africanus. 117 Bibliographical and other details are supplied by Ameling IJO II, 380 n. 104 and Nollé, Kleinasiatischen Münzkunde 3–4, 91 n. 266. Some coins have the same scene in mirror image. 118 Gen. 6–9. For a discussion of a possible allusion to Phrygian traditions about the flood and the location of the Noah story at Apamea in I Peter 3, 19–22, see Larry Kreitzer, “On Board the Eschatological Ark of God: Noah-Deucalion and the ‘Phrygian Connection’ in 1 Peter 3.19–22”, in S.E.: Porter and A.R. Cross (eds.), Baptism, the New Testament and the Church (Sheffield 1999), 228–271. 119 See Nollé, Kleinasiatischen Münzkunde 3–4, 90–91 on Phrygian floods, and the wider explorations of Thonemann, Maeander, 50–98.

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Apamea. Bronze medallion of Apamea issued under the emperor Philip (244–9), depicting the story of Noah. Obv. ΑΥΤ. Κ. ΙΟΥΛ. ΦΙΛΙΠΠΟΣ Κ. Rev. ΕΠΙ Μ. ΑΥΡ. ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΥ ΑΡΧΙ. ΑΠΑΜΕΩΝ Leu Numismatik

There is a large literature about these Apamean coins, based almost entirely on the presumption that the Biblical legend was introduced to Phrygia by its Jewish population. This has been the unanimous judgement of scholars from E. Schürer, in the original edition of the Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi at the end of the nineteenth century,120 to Paul Trebilco’s 1991 handbook, endorsed by Walter Ameling in the corpus of Jewish inscriptions from Asia Minor.121 The reasons why the Biblical story should have been featured in this way at Apamea baffled the authors of the revised Schürer and led to the lapidary editorial conclusion, doubtless penned by Fergus Millar, that ‘It should therefore be made clear at the end of this discussion that the background and context of the appearance of Noah and the Ark on these coins remains wholly unintelligible’.122 Recent scholarly discussion of the 120 E. Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi III. Das Judentum in der Zerstreuung und die jüdische Literatur (Leipzig 1898); compare Ramsay, CB I.2, 669–72. 121 P. Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor (Cambridge 1991), 85–99; Ameling, IJO II, 380–82, who nevertheless comments, ‘In Apameia ist die Diskrepanz zwischen der durch die Münzen suggerierten starken Präsenz einer jüdischen Gemeinde und deren geringem epigraphischen Niederschlag besonders groß’. 122 E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ III.1, revised edition by G. Vermes, F. Millar and M. Goodman (Edinburgh 1986), 28–30. A recent discussion by Lada Semenchenko, The Apamean legend of Noah’s Ark, Journal of Ancient History (Moscow) 2 (2015), 119–39 (non vidi).

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local mythology and mythography, analysis of Apamea’s geologically unstable landscape, which was highly vulnerable both to earthquakes and to flooding events, and a better understanding of the way in which natural phenomena as well as ancient stories shaped local identities, have provided a context for the story of Noah in Phrygia that was previously obscure.123 However, the crucial background and context that escaped the revisers of Schürer’s classic handbook comes from recognizing that the legend was promoted not by the elusive and probably small Jewish population of third-century Apamea, but by the numerous Christian community, who were so prominent between 200 and 250, precisely during the period when the Noah coins were issued by the city.124 Only a single inscription from Apamea contains an explicit reference to the Jews, an otherwise unremarkable mid-third-century grave monument set up by Aur. Rufus, son and grandson of Iulianus, for himself and his wife Aur. Tatiane, which ends not with the Eumeneian formula but with the threat that anyone who interfered with the burial would come to know the law of the Jews, τὸν νόμον οἶδεν τῶν Ἰουδέων.125 The ‘law of the Jews’ may be an allusion to the explicit curses from the book of Deuteronomy, which were cited to deter malefactors on the tombs of Acmonia (see below), but it is enough to recognize this as a general allusion to the justice of God embodied in the Old Testament. As Walter Ameling has pointed out, it is not self-evident that Aur. Rufus himself should be treated as a Jew.126 This is the only allusion to Judaism in the epigraphy of Apamea, and Jewish families are conspicuous by their absence from the funerary inscriptions. This sharply contrasts with substantial numbers of Jews in two other west Phrygian cities, Hierapolis (Pamukkale) and Acmonia, both of which were doubtless derived from the Jewish colonies settled in Phrygia by Antiochus III at the end of the third century BC. The Jews of Hierapolis were identified by the ethnic Ἰουδαῖοι, attested about twenty times in inscriptions from several of the cemeteries.127 The synagogue at Acmonia played an influential role in the religious and community life of the city both among Jews and among Jewish sympathisers.128 123 J. Nollé, Kleinasiatischen Münzkunde 3–4, Gephyra 3 (2006), 89–95 (myths, floods and earthquakes); Thonemann, Maeander, 88–98; Zwingmann, Erinnerungslandschaften (2011), 99–108; G. F. Chiai, Phrygien und seine Götter, 205–10. 124 See Thonemann, Maeander, 91; but note also Zwingmann, Erinnerungslandschaften (2011), 106 who refers to ‚stark jüdischem oder (jüdisch-)christlichem Einfluss’. 125 CB I.2, 539 no. 399bis; MAMA VI 136; (ICG 977). 126 In the commentary to IJO II, 382–83 no. 179. 127 E. Miranda, Le iscrizioni giudaiche di Hierapolis di Frigia (Naples 1999); Le iscrizioni giudaiche di Hierapolis di Frigia, Epigraphica Anatolica 31 (1999), 108–56. 128 See 144–57.

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The majority assumption in earlier scholarship is that Apamea was also home to an important community of Jews,129 but the epigraphy makes clear that any Jews living in Apamea were far outnumbered by the growing community of Christians after 200, and it is possible that Aur. Rufus, invoking the law of the Jews, was a Christian, drawing on the Old Testament heritage, and specifically the idea of a wrathful and avenging God, which Christians and Jews shared with one another. It was Christians not Jews who were a driving force for cultural and religious change at Apamea. While Apamean traditions and history were still dominated by the legends of the Phrygian flute-player Marsyas, his entanglement with Athena and his tragic competition with Apollo, these were now enhanced by the Biblical myth, which was integrated without apparent friction or objections into the fabric of Apamea’s civic and communal identity. The recognition of the iconic value of the Old Testament story extended beyond the Christians of Apamea to the entire community, as is shown by the fact that five of the coin types named the officials, all but one of whom were Roman citizens, who were responsible for the minting, and who appear themselves not to have been Christians (or Jews): Artemas, an agonothete under Septimius Severus; Bacchios, in charge of Apamea’s panegyry under Gordian III; P. Aelius Tryphon, a Roman eques and high-priest of the imperial cult under Severus Alexander; M. Aurelius Alexander, another high-priest under Philip, and Claudius Apollonarius, who was also responsible for a coin issue featuring the god Mên, under Trebonianus Gallus.130 It is evident that leading local Christians, almost certainly Roman citzens like Abercius and Alexander in the nearby Phrygian Pentapolis, were persuasive advocates for the new faith and its attendant ancient history, which fitted so neatly into the geophysical conditions and the experienced reality of Apamean life. The integration of an Old Testament story into the mythology of a Greek polis around 200, and its acceptance by their non-Christian compatriots, remains an unicum in early Christian history, but it is worth noting that the use of such a distinctive biblical iconographical motif is not unparalleled at this period. The extraordinary tombstone from the Çarşamba valley in southern Lycaonia of Mithios and Paulos, which seems to be contemporary with the earliest Noah coins from Apamea, carries not only a unique representation of the crucifixion, but also an iconographically and verbally explicit allusion to the story of Jonah and the Whale.131 129 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 668; P. Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor, 86; Nollé, Kleinasiatischen Münzkunde 3–4, 89–95. 130 Details in Ameling, IJO II, p. 380–1 and Nollé, Gephyra 3 (2006), 91–4. 131 ICG 829; Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 183–7.

section 4.4: Apamea, Eumeneia and Acmonia

Figure 5

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Apamea. View of Dinar and the upper Maeander valley, with blocks from the ‘Noah’s Ark’ church in the foreground Peter Thonemann

We can add an archaeological footnote to the evidence. On the brow of the steep hillside that overlooks the acropolis and civic centre of Apamea and commands a spectacular view over its fertile territory, are the conspicuous remains of a church. The topographical location is highly suggestive. The structure appears as if beached on the foreshore, just as the ark had come to rest on the summit of the mountain after the rains had stopped.132 From the west end of the building an extraordinary panorama unfolds of ancient Apamea, modern Dinar, and the richly watered plain stretching out in the direction of Eumeneia, the promised land vouchsafed to Noah after the waters had receded (Fig. 5). In the pious atmosphere and rapid expansion of church construction in the sixth century, Phrygian Christians, who had successfully secured local recognition for the truth of the story that Noah’s ark had come to land at Apamea, marked not only the legendary moment, but also the actual spot

132 Gen. 8.3: καὶ ἐκαθισεν ἡ κιβωτὸς ἐν μηνὶ τῷ ἑβδόμῳ ἑβδομῇ εἰκάδι τοῦ μηνός ἐπὶ τὰ ὄρη τὰ Ἀραράτ. The topography is excellently shown by the survey of Gustav Weber, Dinair. Célènes –Apamée Kibotos (1892).

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where it happened, by building this church more than three centuries later.133 The land that had in legend provided for Noah now supported a burgeoning third-century Christian population. Christians passing through Apamea can also be glimpsed in an accomplished verse text at Apamea, cut in such excellent lettering that Ramsay wanted to date it to the second century: Ἀπφία ἐγὼ κεῖμαι Μενεκλεῖ μίγα | τῷδε σὺν ἀνδρί, / καὶ γὰρ ζῶντες ὁμοῦ | τοῦτο γέρας λάχομεν· / καὶ λίπομεν | δύο τέκνα, νέον δέ γε Ἀρτεμίδωρον, / | ὃς χάριν εὐσεβίης τεῦξεν τύμβον | φθιμένοισιν. / χαίρε δ’ οἱ παριόντες | καὶ εὐχὰς θέσθ’ ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ. I, Apphia, lie here, mingled with Menekles, my husband, for we have obtained this honour living together, and we have left two children, and the young Artemidorus, who created the tomb for mortals out of piety. Hail, passers-by and offer prayers on his behalf.134 Three Christian touches are apparent in this text. First, Apphia’s naming of both herself and her husband as living, next to the explicit assertion that they lay together in the grave’s embrace; second, the mention of Artemidorus, an apparently unrelated young man, who took responsibility for the burial; third, the invitation to travellers in the last line, to offer prayers for the young Artemidorus. The appeal for prayers on behalf of the maker of the tomb was characteristic of Christian burials, attested most conspicuously on the Aberkios inscription itself.135 Ramsay’s intuition that this inscription might date before 200 is not to be ruled out, although it may be more prudent to place it at the beginning of the third century, alongside many other early Christian epitaphs from Apamea.136 Another early text carved in a recessed panel on the front of a rough-hewn block of marble, a recurring type at Apamea,137 is the grave (heroon) of Frugillianus Auxanon, presumably a Roman citizen, for his wife Metrodora and his natural children, τοῖς τέκνοις ἐκ τοῦ αἵματός μου (fig. 6). In conformity with 133 Zwingmann, Erinnerungslandschaften, 104–6; for the church, see 434–8. 134 CB 1.2, 534 no. 387; Kaibel 386; Peek, Griechische Versinschriften, 1720; SGO 3, 171: 16/04/03 (ICG 1122); discussed by U. Huttner, Vorkonstantinisches Christentum im Lykos- und Mäandertal. Das Zeugnis der Inschriften, in J. Verheyden et al. (eds), Epigraphical Evidence illustrating Paul’s letter to the Colossians (Stuttgart 2018), 13–19. 135 See above chapter 4.2) in line 20: εὖξαιτ᾽ ὑπὲρ Ἀβερκίου πᾶς ὁ σύνῳδος; also on a modest early Lycaonian text, MAMA XI 305 (ICG 1504), and frequently in inscriptions of later periods. 136 Thonemann, Maeander, 91 n. 100 suggests that the delicate short epigram for Antonia, written by Iulianus (MAMA VI 186; SGO 3: 16/04/02) might be the work of the priest Iulianus mentioned by Eusebius, HE 5.16.17, but the content does not hint at this: Ἀντωνία σεμνὴ προλιποῦσα φάος γε τὸ κοινόν, / ἤλυθες εἰς Ἀΐδην, γαίη δέ σοί ἐστ᾽ ἔτι κούφη, ἀθανάτη ψυχή· Ἰουλιανὸς ἔγραψε ποιήσας. 137 For the funerary monuments, see A. Bresson, ‘An introduction to the funerary inscriptions of Apameia’, in Summerer et al. (eds), Kelainai-Apameia Kibotos (2011), 295–308.

section 4.4: Apamea, Eumeneia and Acmonia

Figure 6

125

Apamea. Funerary inscription set up by Frugillianus Auxanon. ICG 963. Now in Afyon Museum Stephen Mitchell

the local rule, this specified that only children who had not come of age could share the grave; once they were adult neither they nor anyone else should disturb their parents’ bones, or they would have to reckon with God’s judgement, ἔστε αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν κρίτην Θεόν.138 Adult children, however, could provide a resting place for their own parents, as in the case of Aur. Dikeos and his wife Auxanouse.139 The word Χρηστιανοί was prominently shown on the frame above a tabula ansata cut on a rough limestone block inscribed with the epitaph of Capito for himself, his wife and his presumably unmarried sister, which ended with the Eumeneian formula.140 Another Apamean text identified the 138 CB 1.2, 537 no. 394; MAMA VI 225 (ICG 963). Burials at Apamea were often restricted to the married couple and children who had not left the home, see P. Thonemann, Households and families in Roman Phrygia, in Thonemann (ed.), Roman Phrygia (2013), 124–42, especially 125–6. In 125 n. 6 he cites seven Apamean funerary inscriptions which granted burial beyond the nuclear family; five are almost certainly Christian (ICG 960, 965, 968, 969, 973), two (MAMA IV 374; CB 1.2, 476 no. 339) are indeterminate. 139 CB 1.2, 535 no. 391; MAMA VI 230 (ICG 968). 140 MAMA VI 235; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions 167–9 no. 20; Gibson, Christians for Christians, 112 no. 39 (ICG 973). Χριστιανοί. | Καπίτω̣[ν -- ἐ]πόη̣σα τὸ ἡ|ρῷον [ἐμαυτ]ῷ καὶ τῇ [γυναικί μου ---] | [καὶ τῇ ἀδ]ελφῇ μου Τροφίμῃ‧ [εἰ] δ[έ τις ἕ]|τερος [ἐπ]ιτηδεύσει, ἔσται αὐτῷ

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couple, Aur. Proklos son of Zotikos and his wife Meltine, as Χριστιανῶν without adding a protective formula.141 It is very likely that the designation in this case marked the family’s conversion, because the block was found ‘in a family burial ground’ on a hillside near Dikici beside an almost identical monument for Aur. Proklos’s father, a text which has no Christian characteristics and contains no Aurelius names.142 The earlier monument should perhaps to be dated c.200–210, the later one c.220–230. There are nineteen gravestones with the Eumeneian formula from Apamea, in four cases combined with the threat of a monetary fine. Three of them are dated: the stele put up by Hermes for himself and his wife Aelia Lucillla in 249/50,143 the tomb of Aelius Pancharios also known as Zotikos for himself, his wife Aelia Atalante and their children, dated to 253/4, which combines the Eumeneian formula with a penalty of 2500 denarii payable to the imperial treasury,144 and the slab put up in 258/9 by Aur. Artemas for his wife Tatia and their children, showing a cleaver, a cup and a shovel, with a hitherto unique variant of the Eumeneian formula, πρὸς τὸν ἀθάνα[τον θεόν]. The relief indicates that he was a butcher, who could ensure that his customers were not served with sacrificial meat.145 The last two lines of the stele for Hermes and Lucilla, mentioning the fine payable to the imperial treasury, were erased subsequently, leaving only the Christian formula (Fig. 7). The dates of these texts all fall within the relatively narrow span of time in the mid-third century when the formula was used at Eumeneia itself. Aur. Zosimus prepared a grave monument (heroon) for himself, his wife Aur Synkletike also known as Tatia, and his mother-in-law Aur. Flavia, daughter of Skymnos. Anyone who attempted anything against this faced a fine of 2000 denarii and punishment by God’s hand, ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὴν χεῖρα τοῦ Θεοῦ. The threats were followed by a clause allowing the burial of another person called Demetrianus. It is not clear how he was related to the family, if at all, and

141 142 143 144

145

πρ[ὸς] τὸν | Θεόν. There is no reason to change the reading to Χριστιανοῦ as suggested by Huttner; see 190. CB I.2, 553 no. 393; MAMA VI 236; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 163–6 no. 19; Gibson, Christians for Christians, 111 no. 38. (ICG 974): Αὐρ. Πρόκλος Ζωτικοῦ ἐπόησα | τὸ ἡρῷον ἐμαυτῷ | κὲ τῇ γυναικί μου | Μελτίνῃ. Χρειστι|ανῶν; on this text see 190 n. 361. MAMA VI 192. CB 1.2, 538 no. 399; MAMA VI 226; ICG 964. CB 1.2, 533 no. 385; (ICG 981). The names Pancharia/Pancharios are not common and seem to be restricted to Christians; see LGPN Vc 342 svv. Pancharios, the son-in-law of Aur. Ktetos and Aur. Lucilla on a gravestone of 241/2 from Acmonia (MAMA VI 319) may well have been a Christian. Other references are to ICG 1094 (Pancharie (verse), Prymnessus), and SEG 41, 1129 (Byzantine, from Sebastopolis in Pontus). CB 1.2, 534 no. 388; L. Robert, Hellenica XI/XII, 437 no. 6 (ICG 980).

section 4.4: Apamea, Eumeneia and Acmonia

Figure 7

127

Apamea. Funerary stele of Hermes and Lucilla. ICG 964. Now in Afyon Museum Stephen Mitchell

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he may have been simply a fellow-Christian. A man named Skymnos, son of Skymnos, grandson of Demetrios, had held a magistracy and is named on coins of Antoninus Pius at Apamea in the mid-second century, and could be the father or a more distant forebear of Aur Flavia. She herself was admitted to the burial as a favour, δώρου χάριν, as an exception to the usual practice at Apamea of confining access to the burial to a married couple and their unmarried children. Ramsay conjectured that she and her daughter were Christians, and she was given Christian burial with Aur. Zosimus, rather than remaining with the pagan family of Skymnos.146 The same phrase appears on another Christian monument, an inscribed panel beneath a triangular pediment carved on the front of a rough-hewn block, put up by Aur. Auxanon son of Auxanon for himself, which permitted burial δώρου χάριν to his brother and his brother’s wife. The text ends with a remarkable greeting to visitors: χαίρετε μοι φιλόθεοι καὶ καλοὶ νεόθηροι (Fig. 8).147 Philotheos is a natural way to address the Christian community, but νεόθηροι occurs nowhere else. It could be a vernacular way of spelling νεώτεροι, but the correct orthography of the rest of the inscription does not support this interpretation. Ramsay, followed by the MAMA editors, suggested that this was a neologism equivalent to νεοθηρεύτοι, ‘fresh catch’ in a figurative sense, new Christians, an attractive speculation in the light both of New Testament imagery, that Jesus’s disciples were ‘fishers of men’, and the reality that the Apamean Christian community in the early third century must have been teeming with converts. Another funerary stele copied at Dikici depicted the defaced busts of a couple in the pediment above an inscription which reads Αὐρ. Ἀφία Ἀσκλᾶ Δίωνος τὸ ἡρῷον ἐμαυτῇ κὲ τῷ συβίῳ [Ζω]τικῷ Δημητρίου. The formula prescribing the fine was carved below the funerary text, but a figure was never inserted. A second inscription was added in another hand on the frame above the panel and below the arch where the busts were carved, [μὴ κα]κουγῆσε{ν}· εἴ τις δαὶ ἀδικήσει, εἴστε αὐτῷ πὸς τὸν Θ[εόν].148 This is the only figural depiction of a 146 CB 1.2, 535–6 no. 392; MAMA VI 231 (ICG 969). In this text, as in CB 1.2, 597 no. 396 (ICG 978); CB 1.2, 533 no. 385 (ICG 981); SEG 6, 268 (ICG 1368), the Eumeneian formula was combined with a fine. 147 CB 1.2, 535 no. 389; ΜΑΜΑ VI 227 (ICG 965); now in Afyon Museum. The Christian associations of the expression δώρου χάριν are reinforced by an important parallel from Thrace, the fine third-century verse epigram for the Asian Christian Tatianos, set up for him, δώρου χάριν, by the unrelated Zosimos, brother of Chrysogonos, who was explicitly identified as a priest, παπᾶς. Among other Christian allusions, this text is also marked by the isopsephism ΩΠΗ = ΙΗΣΟΥΣ = 888. V. Beševliev, Spätgriechische und spätlateinische Inschriften aus Bulgarien (1964), 140–3 no. 207, SEG 14, 486; (ICG 4298). 148 MAMA VI 228 (ICG 966).

section 4.4: Apamea, Eumeneia and Acmonia

Figure 8

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Apamea. Funerary inscription set up by Aur. Auxanon, with a greeting to the ‘philotheoi’ and the ‘neotheroi’. ICG 965. Now in Afyon Museum Stephen Mitchell

Christian couple at Apamea,149 and it is worth speculating whether the busts were defaced by other Christians soon after the burial, who then also added the Eumeneian formula in a more vernacular Phrygian orthography than the primary inscribed text. One example of the Eumeneian formula at Apamea has the variant πρὸς τὸν ζῶντα θεόν, which was commonly found at Eumeneia itself, with the threat of a monetary fine of 500 denarii,150 while other variations threatened a reckoning πρὸς τὸν κρίτην θεόν,151 and πρὸς τὴν χεῖρα τοῦ θεοῦ.152 The majority retained the standard wording, sometimes combined with a monetary fine, as in the tomb of Aur. Domna and her children,153 but more often without, as in the burials of Aur. Photinus son of Ariston for his wife Tatas and their children,154 of Poplios for his wife Ammia daughter of Eutyches and their children,155 of 149 150 151 152 153 154 155

See 263–4 for discussion. SEG 6, 268; (ICG 1368). CB I.2, 537 no. 394; MAMA VI 225; (ICG 963). CB I.2, 535 no. 392; MAMA VI 231; (ICG 969). CB 1.2, 597 no. 396 (ICG 978). CB 1.2, 537 no. 395; MAMA VI 233 (ICG 971). MAMA VI 232 (ICG 970).

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Aurelius Demetrius and his wife Tatarion,156 of Aur. Auxanon son of Pannychos and his wife Ammia,157 of Alexander son of Alexander for his wife Tateis and ‘my brother Timothy’.158 Another damaged and scarcely legible sarcophagus inscription seems to have offered a garbled variation καὶ εἴ τις τούτῳ κακ(ὸν) ἐποίησε πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν αὐτῷ γένοιτο.159 Christian inscriptions which did not include a clause to protect the tomb were probably the exception, although we should not ignore the possibility that such burials simply cannot be identified because they lack other Christian diagnostic features.160 One of the exceptions is the crude funerary stele put up by Aur. Euclides for his foster-child Hermes. In the space where the Eumeneian formula might have been engraved is a relief of a dove sipping from a chalice, placed between two palm trees. In this find context, the symbolism cannot be other than Christian.161 The cluster of mid-third-century gravestones reviewed in the last paragraph are conspicuous by their similarities to one another and present an undifferentiated, but therefore convincing picture of a close-knit cultural and religious community. However, several Apamean epitaphs have contents which departed from the routine. The most obvious was the tomb of bishop Aur. Valens, a shoe-maker by profession, who created an epitaph in the typical Apamean style with the main text carved in a sunken panel on the front of a roughly finished marble block, for himself, his wife Luciliana and τοῖς κειμένοις μετὰ ὑμῶν (fig. 9). The personal pronoun should probably be understood as ἡμῶν with an itacistic confusion between ypsilon and eta. Valens’ profile as a community leader makes it likely that ‘those lying with us’ were unrelated members of the Christian brethren. He protected the tomb with two versions of the Eumeneian formula, one unique to this burial, ἔσται αὐτῷ πὸς τὸν ἐξσουσειάζοτα πάσης ψυχῆς, God who has power over everyone’s soul, and he ended the adjuration with a curious phrase, ὁ ὅρος μέγα εἰστί, ‘the boundary is a great matter’. The natural Christian interpretation is that this would be the boundary that separated the damned from the resurrected. The epitaph was prefaced by a prominent line of abbreviated text – ΖΩ · ΕΠ Δ ΧΡ (Christogram) 156 MAMA VI 229 (ICG 967). 157 CB 1.2, 553 no. 390 (ICG 979), cut on the long side of a sarcophagus. 158 CB 1.2, 533 no. 386 (ICG 982). The possessive μου implies that Teimotheos was an actual not a figurative brother. 159 W. Kubitschek and W. Reichel, Inscriptiones Graecae, Anz Wien. 1893, 54 (ICG 4524). 160 Ramsay CB 1.2, 484 rightly referred to ‘many delicate cases where Christianity may be suspected but cannot be proved’, for instance the epitaph dated to 243 put up by Αὐρ. Θεοδώρα Φιλαδέλφου for herself, her husband Aur. Dikeos and her children, CB 1.2, 473 no. 321. 161 MAMA VI 221 (ICG 959).

section 4.4: Apamea, Eumeneia and Acmonia

Figure 9

131

Apamea. Funerary inscription of bishop Valens. ICG 972 Alain Bresson

Χ ΧΡΕΙ – which can most convincingly be expanded to read ζῶ(σιν) ἐπ(ίσκοπος) δ(οῦλος) Χρ(ιστοῦ) Χ(ρειστιανοὶ) Χρει(στιανοῖς). The combination of the title ἐπίσκοπος with the Christogram is similar to another epitaph for an early bishop at Eumeneia.162 Valens’s humble trade is striking, but in harmony with the overall picture at Apamea and in neighbouring Eumeneia, where the social hierarchy of the secular community was transcended by the egalitarian ethos of Phrygian Christianity. The banausic profession of bishop Valens contrasted with the connections of another Christian text dated to 247/8, a fine and well carved bomos which served as the tomb (heroon) of Auxanon also called Helladios, factor or agent (pragmateutes) of Aelius Trypho, three times Asiarch, for himself, his wife Apame (who took the name of her native city), and her mother Ammia. The style of the monument as well as Auxanon’s connections to a member of the 162 MAMA VI 234; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions 223–9 no. 33; Gibson, Christians for Christians, 113–4 no. 40; (ICG 972). For his trade and the economic importance of leather-working at Apamea, see A. Bresson, The cobblers of Kelainai-Apameia Kibotos, in F. Camia / L. Del Monaco / M. Nocita (eds), Munus Laetitiae, I, Studi miscellanei offerti a Maria Letizia Lazzarini (Rome 2018), 337–350. There is an excellent photograph by A. Bresson, An introduction to the funerary inscriptions of Apameia, 305 fig. 1, reproduced here. The Eumeneia text is ICG 1049.

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provincial élite, distinguished this tomb from the majority at Apamea. Anyone who tried to insert another body in the tomb faced a fine of 1000 denarii and, apart from this, the verdict of a wrathful God: κὲ χωρὶς τούτων τὸ[ν Θ(εὸ)ν] κεχολώμενον ἕ[ξει]. There is space for only three letters where the stone is damaged and this imposes a very short name for the divinity. Franz Cumont suggested Μῆνα, as the wrath of Mên was documented in other funerary curses, but the article τό[ν] would then be superfluous, and the abbreviated Christian nomen sacrum Θ(εό)ν is the better option. The Christian nature of the stone is confirmed by the last word, ζῶμεν, here used in the sense of enjoying eternal life, and contrasted with the conventional sense found earlier in the same text, when Auxanon declares that he has made the tomb while living for himself, ὃ ἐποίησεν ζῶν ἑαυτῷ.163 Faith and friendship were two virtues at the core of Christian belief and behaviour, and should suffice to mark the religion of the short funerary verse found at Dikici put up by Aelius Myrismus for his like-named father τὸν σόφον ἐν φιλίῃ καὶ πίστει πάσης μνήμην χάριτος.164 The style of the monument, a bomos with a conical top above the pediment is like that of the Christian family from Eucarpia that had settled in Apamea, and it was surely produced in the same workshop.165 The virtues of the Apamean Christians were set out explicitly in one of the most interesting third-century texts, which contrasted a life of Christian friendship and generosity with one of selfish materialism, and it is worth quoting in full: τὸ ζῆν ὁ ζήσας καὶ θανὼν ζῇ τοῖς φίλοις, ὁ κτώμενος δὲ πολλὰ μὴ τρυφῶν σὺν τοῖς φίλοις οὗτος τέθνηκε περιπατῶν καὶ ζῇ νεκρῶν [τρό]π[ῳ ?]. ἐγὼ δὲ ἐτρύφησα Μηνογένης ὁ κὲ Εὐσταθής, μετέδωκ[α] ἐμαυτοῦ πάντα τῇ ψυχῇ καλά· ἀμάχως ἐβίωσα μετὰ φίλων κὲ συνγενῶν, μηδέποθ’ ὑπούλως ἢ δολίως λαλῶν τινι. 163 CB 1.2, 476 no. 339; ΜΑΜΑ VI 222 (ICG 960), from 247/8. U. Huttner in the ICG commentary queries the restoration of Θεόν, but the word fits space and sense. The same expression has been restored on a Lycaonian inscription set up by an imperial slave: ICG 361, ἕξει τὸν Θεον [κεχολωμένον]. 164 CB 1.2, 476 no. 342; MAMA VI 201; SGO 3, 170: 16/104/10; (ICG 4462). Ramsay hesitated to identify it as Christian. Μυρισμός, attested in the Septuagint, meant ‘anointing’. This may have been a nom parlant, adopted in the family when it converted, which alluded indirectly to Jesus’s own name Χριστός, which had a similar sense. 165 ICG 961.

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Οὗτος ὁ βίος μοι γέγονεν, ὅταν ἔζων ἐγώ· ἐς πάντα δ’ ηὐτύχησα, ἐμαυτὸν πιστεύσας θεῷ, τὸ δ’ ὀ[φ]ειλόμενον ἀπέδωκα τῇ φύσι τέλος. Ῥοῦφος ἐπύησα Μηνογένει μου γλυκυτάτῳ πατρὶ κὲ Παύλει Μ[η]νογένου φιλάνδρῳ μέχι τέλους. Life is such that he who lives and dies lives for his friends; The man who has acquired much wealth but does not enjoy it with his friends, has perished in his wanderings and lives in the manner of (?) a corpse. But I, Menogenes also known as ‘Steadfast’, enjoyed my life and shared all the good things in my soul; I lived without dispute among my friends and kinsfolk, never spreading gossip with anyone in deceit or trickery. This was the life for me, while I was alive; I succeeded in everything, having placed my faith in God. I have repaid the debt owed to nature at the end. I, Rufus, made this for Menogenes, my dearest father, and for Paula, wife of (?) Menogenes, who loved her husband until the end. The poem, a mixture of six- and seven-foot free iambic verses, appears to have been composed by Menogenes and speaks for itself. He had lived his life without malice, unselfishly sharing his goods and pleasures with his friends and family members, and ascribed his wordly success, which he does not conceal, to his Christian faith. His fictive counterpart is characterized as a miser, who had acquired wealth by constant travel in pursuit of profit (so we should understand περιπατῶν), but lived as if he were a dead man by failing to share his goods and riches. Menogenes, evidently a wealthy Christian, put into words a simple justification both of his faith and of his life-style, in a worldly way that would have appealed to many of his contemporaries. There is little doubt that his decision to adopt the nickname Eustathes, which is only attested by this one inscription from Phrygia, anticipating the wide popularity of the name Eustathios during the fourth and later centuries, was directly influenced by the Christian milieu around him. Constancy, standing by religious and moral principles, was in practical terms often demanded of a newly converted population.166

166 Ramsay CB 1.2, 476 no. 343; MAMA VI 122; SGO 3, 172: 16/04/04; (ICG 1571). See LGPN Vc, 159: Eustathes occurs only at Apamea and Pisidian Termessos in the second and third centuries; Eustathios, Eustathis, Eustathia were common and widespread from the fourth century onwards.

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4.4.2 The Christians of Eumeneia Eumeneia was a strategically important city founded in the mid-second century BC by Attalus II and named in honour of his brother Eumenes II. The site at Işıklı lay at the north edge of a marshy plain, watered by the river Maeander which flowed from the south-east from its source in the Dombay Ovası east of Apamea. Eumeneia’s position controlled a narrow but important pass leading into the interior highlands of Phrygia, the valley of the Kufu Çay which came down from the Pentapolis.167 This location led the Roman authorities to place a military garrison at Eumeneia in the second and third centuries, attested by a series of military gravestones.168 Thirty-four funerary monuments with the Eumeneian formula have been recorded either at Işıklı itself, or in villages belonging to the city territory. All of them belong to the third century, and five have precise dates, respectively 246/47, 249/50, 257/58, 260/61, and 263/64. Another inscription recorded the burial of a soldier who was a stranger to the city, Aurelius Mannos, a mounted archer probably from Syrian Edessa, and had served on the staff of Castrius Constans, provincial governor of Phrygia-Caria who probably held office in 282/83.169 It is likely that the entire group dates between c.240 and 285.170 The burial inscription for the mounted archer Aur Mannes was erected by Aur. Nikeros, son of a like-named father, primarily for himself, his wife and his children. It represents a pattern that can be seen on several Eumeneian Christian tombstones, the admission of someone outside the close-kin group to the family grave. Another example appears to be the marble bomos erected by Aur. Agapomenos, son of Agapomenos, a member of the tribe Phylais, for himself, and a named outsider to whom he had given permission: εἰς [ὃ κ]ηδευθήσε|ται αὐτὸς [κὲ] ὃν ἂν αὐτὸς | ζῶν συνχ[ωρήσῃ κὲ Αὐρ.]| Ἀρτεμίδω[ρον Ἀρισ]|τίππου.171 The name Agapomenos, otherwise unexampled in Phrygia or the Anatolian interior at this early period, is an allusion to Christian agape, the love that Christians held for their fellows and which was embodied in the shared agape meals. The epitaph incorporates the Eumeneian formula, and Aur. Artemidorus should be regarded as a brother in Christ. Another bomos 167 See Ramsay, CB 1.2, 353–73 and map. 168 Thonemann, Maeander, 130–77. For a full list of the published inscriptions of Eumeneia, organised by genre and period, see MAMA XI, pp. 58–64. 169 CB I.2, 529 no. 373 (ICG 1063). For another instance in the third century of a local Christian couple providing burial for an unrelated soldier, in this case a veteran, see IG Bulg. III.1, 1007 (ICG 4496; Philippopolis), with Robert, Hellenica XI/XII, 418 n. 2. 170 This also conforms with the date range of the texts from neighbouring Dionysupolis and the territory of the Hyrgaleis, reviewed below. 171 ICG 1055.

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should probably be recognised as Christian precisely by the criterion of admitting a non-relative to the grave: Σεβῆρος Σεβήρου β´ Ἀργέντις κατεσκεύασεν τὸ ἡρῷον ἑαυτῷ καὶ τῇ γυναικὶ καὶ τοῖς τέκνοις μου καὶ Θεοδότῳ τῷ λαχανοπώλῃ.172 To all appearances Theodotus was not only a family outsider but, as a cabbage-seller or a greengrocer, of lower social status than his friend Severus, whose nickname Argentius – ‘Silvery’  – suggests a person of substance. Another example of Christian brotherhood can be identified on the funerary altar that was literally shared by the families of Aur. Alexandros son of Seios of the tribe Apollonis, and Aur Zotikos son of Caius. Their inscriptions were carved simultaneously on the front and right hand sides of the same altar, and both contained the same extended form of the Eumeneian formula, that intruders should be excluded from the promise of God’s salvation: καὶ νῦν καὶ τῷ παντὶ αἰῶνι καὶ μὴ τύχοιτο τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ ἐπανγελίας.173 Reference to two family burials is compressed into a single text put up by Aurelius Gaius son of Apellas for his wife and mother, and τῷ χρηστῷ φίλῳ Ὀνησίμῳ καὶ τῇ γυναικὶ αὐτοῦ. As with the grave that Theodotus shared with Severus Argentis, this companionship in the tomb is an indication of Christianity, although the curse formula makes no explicit mention of the Christian or Jewish god.174 There may be another example in the case of a bomos copied only by Ramsay at Iğdir which carried two separate inscriptions (ICG 4467). The primary text is fragmentary, for members of an extended family, and ended with a funerary fine; the text on another side of the stone read Αὐρ. Δουλίων κατεσκεύσασε τὸ ἡρῷον ἑαυτῷ καὶ τοῖς τέκνοις καὶ Τατει μετὰ τέκνων τριῶν. Tateis and her three children may have been Christian protégés included in the burial that Aur. Doulion set up for himself and his children. In a more straightforward case, Aur. Mikkalos set up a typical Eumeneian funerary altar for his wife Glykoniane, his named parents

172 Τ. Drew-Bear, Nouvelles inscriptions de Phrygie, 97–8 Eumeneia no. 34; SEG 28, 1125 (ICG 4464). Thonemann, in Thonemann (ed.), Roman Phrygia (2012), 127 doubts this explanation, but there are numerous parallels from across Phrygia. 173 W. M. Calder, Early Christian epitaphs from Phrygia, AS 6 (1956), 49 no. 1; (ICG 1364). The second epitaph has a shortened version: καὶ μὴ τύχυτο τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ ἐπανγελίας. On the pagan and New Testament background to the idea of ἐπαγγελία see U. Huttner, Vorkonstantinisches Chistentum im Lykos- und Mäandertal. Das Zeugnis der Inschriften, in J. Verheyden et al., Epigraphical Evidence illustrating Paul’s letter to the Colossians (Stuttgart 2018), 1–23 at 19–23. 174 CB 1.2, 385 no. 231; MAMA XI 36 (ICG 4465); the burial of a friend is rightly recognised as a Christian feature by A. R. R. Sheppard, Jews, Christians and heretics in Acmonia and Eumenia, Anatolian Studies 29 (1979), 169–80 at 174–5. Instead of the Eumeneian formula, the epitaph invoked an eternal curse on the family of a disturber of the tomb and any accomplice: έστω αὐτῷ κατάρα τέκνων τέκνοις καὶ τῷ συμβουλεύσαντι.

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and unnamed, and perhaps as yet unborn children, and for his brother Rufus and sister-in-law Tatia, and their unnamed children (ICG 1052, fig. 10).175 While sharing the same religion in these cases provides an important reason for sharing a tomb, not adopting Christianity could be grounds for exclusion. A tall narrow stele from Emirhisar (Dedeköy), perhaps cut down from the side of a sarcophagus, contains the conclusion of a longer text, and laid down conditions for the burial of the daughters or daughters-in-law of the family, ἐξὸν εἶ[ν]αι τεθῆναι [Ἀ]μμίᾳ καὶ Τατιανῇ πρὸς τοὺς ἄνδρας, ἐὰν τηρή[σω]σι τὸν Θεόν.176 In order to be admitted to the burial it was necessary that the wives should convert or adhere to Christianity. A poorly engraved Christian gravestone from an unknown Asia Minor provenance, apparently dating to 252/3 by the Actian era, and therefore perhaps from the Cadi region, also imposed the same condition on family members: Αὐρηλίου Ἀρτεμιδώρου Εἰάσονος ἐγένετο κο[ι]μήτηριον, μηδένα τίθ[εσ]θαι βούλομαι μετὰ ἐμοῦ ἐνταῦθα ἔκτος εἴ {σι} τίς μου τῶν οἰκείων πιστεύσει. The nature of the belief in this inscription is also clarified by an extended version of the Eumeneian formula at the end of the epitaph.177 Twenty inscriptions from Eumeneia and its villages have the Eumeneian formula in its simplest form, but there were several variations. Ten added the participle ζῶντα: ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν ζῶντα θεόν. One of the texts invoked the living god combined with a reference to the day of judgement, ἐν τῇ κρισίμῳ ἡμέρᾳ,178 while another made the same point by specifying God’s role as judge, πρὸς τὸν θεὸν κρ[ίνοντα or –ίτην].179 One inscription called on the great name of God: ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸ μέγα ὄνομα τοῦ θεοῦ,180 another appealed not to God but to Christ, who was represented not by the full name but by a Christogram: ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν ΧΡ.181 Two simple epitaphs carved on plain rectangular altars, were compiled respectively by the huntsman Aur. Charidemus φιλοκύνηγος, ‘lover of the hunt’, for himself, his wife Eukarpia and their unnamed children (ICG 1030) and by Aurelius Antonius for his wife Aurelia Rufina (ICG 1032, fig. 11). Three of the graves that applied the Eumeneian formula combined it with the threat of a fine, but two of them, including the funerary altar set up by 175 ICG 4467, Iğdir: flagged by Ramsay, CB 1.2, 379 no. 207 and 389 no. 236, Drew-Bear, Nouvelles Inscriptions de Phrygie, 87–9 Eumeneia no. 21; SEG 28, 1152. ICG 1052, Yakasımak: Ramsay, CB 1.2, 518–9 no. 356; BCC, JRS 1926, 83 no. 206. 176 CB 1.2, 530–33 no. 380; JRS 16 (1926), 57–8 no. 176; (ICG 1042). 177 G. Petzl, EA 38 (2005), 31–33 no. 11; SEG 55, 1431 (ICG 4474). 178 CB Ι.2, 514 nos. 353–4 (ICG 1056). 179 CB I.2, 522 no. 363 (ICG 1059). 180 CB I.2, 525–6 no. 369; F. Guizzi et al. Museo Denizli-Hierapolis, 236–9 no. 151 (ICG 1027). 181 Ramsay, CB I.2, 526 no. 371 (ICG 1062). The monogram, known only from 19th century copies, has been resolved as Ἰ(ησοῦς) Χ(ριστός), but should almost certainly be read as ΧΡ.

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Figure 10 Eumeneia (Yakasımak). Funerary altar of Mikkalos. ICG 1052 W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen

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Figure 11 Eumeneia (Sarıhisarlı). Funerary altar of Aurelius Antonius. ICG 1032 W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen

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Aurelius Zotikos, son of Praxias, a councilor of Eumeneia,182 and another fragmentary example, specified that reckoning with god was the most potent warning of all, τὸ δὲ πάντων μεῖζον. Both inscriptions can be compared with ICG 964 from Apamea where the threat of a fine followed the Eumeneian formula but had been subsequently erased from the text.183 The most intriguing and locally distinctive example of the formula reads ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν καὶ τὸν ἄγγελον Ῥουβῆδος. Roubes, ‘servant of the great God Christ’, was mentioned on another inscription which probably stood in the same cemetery, and further analysis of these two remarkable documents provides a revealing perspective into the social and cultural world of mid-third-century Eumeneia (see chapter 4.5 for ICG 1028 and 1031). Several of these gravestones carried clear indications that the owners of the tombs were prominent members of the civic community and that the formalities of burial were registered by the civic administration. Two burials involved families whose members had a seat on the city council;184 two specified membership of the city gerousia;185 five, including the funerary altar of Aur. Akylas (fig. 12), indicated that the person setting up the tomb was a member of one of the city tribes;186 and two stated that copies of the funerary inscription were lodged in the city archives.187 One of the two members of the gerousia had been a successful competitive athlete in his younger days, Aurelius Eutyches, known as Helix (the grappler), also called by the nickname Eumorphis, ‘fine body’, who had won prizes for wrestling on tour in Italy at Brundisium and near home at Stectorium and Sebaste (ICG 1050). The iconography of his monument suggests that he later became a blacksmith.188 Four graves with the 182 CB I.2, 525 no. 368; JRS 1926, 69–70 no. 194; Guizzi et al., Museo Denizli-Hierapolis, 244–47 no. 155 (ICG 1029). 183 The expression is restored in Drew-Bear, Nouvelles Inscriptions de Phrygie, 107–8 no. 46 (SEG 28, 1155; ICG 1036): [τὸ|δὲ πάν]των μ[εῖζον | ἔσται] αὐτῷ π[ρὸς τὸν | θεόν]. 184 CB 1.2, 525 no. 368 = BCC, JRS 1926, 70 no. 194 (ICG 1029); CB 1.2, 522 no. 364; JRS 1926, 80–82 no. 204 (ICG 1050); CB I.2, 519–20 no. 359 (ICG 1057). 185 ICG 1050; CB I.2, 520 no. 361; Guizzi et al., Museo Denizli-Hierapolis 231–2 no. 148 (ICG 1025). 186 CB I.2, 519 no. 358 = SEG 28, 1156 (ICG 1035); ICG 1050; ICG 1055; ICG 1066. 187 CB I.2, 528–29 no. 372; JRS 1926, 68–69 no. 192 (ICG 1048); CB I.2, 519 no. 357; MAMA IV 385 (ICG 1055). 188 CB I.2, 522–23 no. 364; JRS 1926, 80–82 no. 204; Robert, Hell. XI/XII, 423–24 (ICG 1050). The trip to Italy is a reminder of how many Phrygians travelled to the west, some obviously on business, others who emigrated never to return. One side of this gravestone illustrates three prize crowns, two strigils, an oil bottle, and two training weights (not shields, as in ICG 1050; ʻles objects sur le côté gauche sont à expliquer, Robert, Hell. XI/XII, 425 n. 2; Calder, BJRL 13 (1929), 269 correctly recognised them as a pair of dumb-bells); another shows a hammer, anvil and tongs, indicating Eutyches’s trade after the end of his sporting

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Figure 12 Eumeneia (Sarıhisarlı), Funerary Altar of Aur. Akylas. ICG 1035 Çivril Belediye

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Eumeneian formula are identified by the Christian term κοι (or -υ-) μητήριον,189 and two were for clergy members, respectively for a priest whose name is not preserved and a bishop Metrodorus.190 Only a handful of third-century Christian texts from the region do not contain the Eumeneian formula, at least in their surviving form. The first four lines on the funerary monument of Aur. Glykon (or Glykonides) are preserved: Αὐρ. Γλύκων (vac) | Εὐμενεὺς ΧΡ ἐπίσ|κοπος κατέσκεύ[α|σ]εν τὸ σύνκρουσ|τον …]. These identified him as a bishop, and the prominent christogram, which also appears on the episcopal epitaph of Aur. Valens from neighbouring Apamea, emphasized his clerical rank. It is likely enough that the inscription ended with a version of the Eumeneian formula (ICG 1049; fig. 13).191 A similar text carved on the top of a bomos shaft reads Οὐαλέριος | Γάϊος ΧΡ σὺν | Οὐαλερίᾳ Ἀν|τωνίᾳ γυ|[να]ικὶ Εὐφρο|[σύνῃ].192 On Glykon’s epitaph, the ΧΡ was carved as a monogram with the letters superimposed and the rho extending beyond the top of the chi. On the inscription of Valerius Gaius, the letters form a monogram in which the circle of the rho does not exceed the height of the arms of the chi, but there are two horizontal apices cut at mid height on either side of the combined letter. The iconographic variation seems not to be significant.193 Two other texts had more explicit threats to protect the grave. A damaged, mid-third-century inscription carved in a tabula ansata set up by a husband for his wife, two children and a grandchild, ends with the threat of everlasting punishment, εἰ δαί [τι]ς βουληθῇ θάψαι ἕτερον ἰς αὐτὸ ἢ σκυ[λ]μὸν παρασχεῖν τινὰ [τ]ῷ ἡρῴῳ, ἐπάρατο[ς ἔστε ἰς] τὸν αἰ[ῶνα παρὰ θεῷ].194 Another fine funerary altar of the mid-third century for members of a bouleutic family concluded

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190 191 192 193 194

career. For Aur. Charidemus, φιλοκύνηγος, ‘lover of the hunt’, rather than enthusiast for wild-beast shows, (ICG 1030), see Sheppard, Jews, Christians and heretics, 180. CB I.2, 530 no. 375 (ICG 1064); CB I.2, 530 no. 376 (ICG 1065); CB I.2, 530 no. 379; JRS 1926, 56–57 no. 175 (ICG 1041); Drew-Bear, Nouvelles inscriptions 109–10 no. 48 (ICG 1038). The term in these texts replaced the commoner ἡρῷον, which was used by Christians and non-Christians alike. ICG 1038 (πρεσβύτερος); ICG 1043 (ἐπίσκοπος). JRS 1926, 73–74 no. 200 (ICG 1049). ΜΑΜΑ ΧΙ 44 (ICG 1454). We should distinguish the use of these monograms from the literary convention of abbreviated nomina sacra, which occasionally occurred in third- and fourth-century prose and verse texts and on the inscription of the pragmatikos Gaius (ICG 1031); see 165–6. Drew-Bear, Nouvelles inscriptions, 108–9 no. 47 (ICG 1037). The restoration of the last lines is based on comparison with two funerary texts from the region west of Eumeneia, ICG 1069 and 1071, where the formula is fully preserved; see 143. Compare also the expression κατάρα τέκνων τέκνοις on ICG 4465.

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Figure 13 Eumeneia. Funerary altar of bishop Aurelius Glykon. ICG 1049 W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen

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that the intruder λήψεται παρὰ τοῦ ἀθανάτοῦ θεοῦ μαστεῖγα αἰώνιον.195 The vivid invocation of eternal punishment by flagellation has led Robert and others to treat the inscription as Jewish. The classification is not certain, especially given the use by family members of the names Philippus and Paula, which would have obvious associations for Christians. The Eumeneian formula was used outside the territory of Eumeneia itself, and there is no compelling reason to think that the phrase was invented there. It occurs at Sebaste, Acmonia, Prymnessus, Docimium, and Amorium, as well as the major communities of Phrygia Paroreius, Philomelium and Pisidian Antioch. These are reviewed in later sections.196 A strikingly homogeneous group of dated epitaphs, all of which describe the grave as a κοιμητήριον, have been recorded in villages west of Çivril, either on the territory of the Hyrgaleis or the still unlocated city of Dionysopolis.197 Two have the Eumeneian formula, one explicitly mentioning the living god,198 two end with the more explicit curse already encountered at Eumeneia, ἔσται ἐπικατάρατος ἰς τὸν ἐῶνα παρὰ θεοῦ,199 while a inscription dated to 252/3 = 338 (Sullan era) at Karbasan in the hill country east of the plain of the Hyrgaleis, distinguished as Christian by the term κυμητήριον and by the wife’s name Alypia.200 Another inscription in a nearby village, broken in several fragments, dated to 242/3, specifically identified the owner Saturninus as a Χρειστιανός and may have described the tomb as [τὸν αἰώνιο]ν οἶκον.201 Theses monuments all belong within the range of the dated inscriptions with the Eumeneian formula from Eumeneia itself. 195 CB I.2, 520 no. 361; Guizzi et al., Museo Denizli-Hierapolis, 231–2 no. 348; Robert, Hell., XI/XII, 436–39 (ICG 1025) for a prominent bouleutic family. 196 See chapter 4.6, 4.12 and 4.13. 197 The administrative centre of the territory of the Hyrgaleis was further to the south-west, apparently at Bekilli, close to the right bank of the Maeander (see MAMA IV 315; discussed on p. 422. Their territory extended south to Şapçılar, as is shown by the discovery there of an inscribed petition addressed to Hadrian in 129 by Hermogenes Hyrgaleus, who was in dispute with a certain Apollodotus of Dionysopolis. Dionysopolis is unlocated, but must have been in this region. The petition was received by the emperor, en route, in Apamea. See C. P. Jones, A petition to Hadrian (2009), with discussion of the topography on pp. 458–59. 198 CB I.2, 559 no. 446; MAMA IV 355 (ICG 1070; Sirikli; 255/56); MAMA IV 357 (ζῶντα θεόν; ICG 1072; Dumanlı; 273/74). 199 CB I.2, 558–59 no. 445; MAMA IV 354 (ICG 1069; Sirikli; 253/54); MAMA IV 356; (ICG 1071; Dumanlı; 258/59). 200 CB 1.2, 559–60 no. 447; MAMA IV 353 (ICG 1068): έτους τλη´[μη. -] Αὐρ. Ἀλέξανδρος Ὠφελλίου (Ramsay read Ὠρελλίου) κατεσκεύασα τὸ κοιμήτηριον ἐμαυτῷ καὶ τῇ γυναικί μου Ἀλυπίᾳ. 201 A. Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 118; Gibson, Christians for Christians Inscriptions, 116 no. 42 (ICG 1142 Üçkuyu). The restoration is not certain. The inscription prescribed a fine if another corpse was introduced, but could also have included the Eumeneian formula.

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4.4.3 Sorting Christians from Jews – the Evidence from Acmonia It is a valuable exercise to contrast the extensive evidence for Christians at Apamea and Eumeneia with the picture presented by the inscriptions of another large west Phrygian centre, Acmonia. There were Christian and Jewish families in mid-third century Acmonia. The unambiguously Christian segment of the population is represented by an altar copied at Kızılcasöğüt, set up in 253–54 by Aur. Ioulia for her parents Aur. Ioulios and Beroneikiane, her son Severus and his bride Moundane. The last word of the epitaph was Χρειστιανοί.202 Another fragmentary text, perhaps of the same period, carried the two words Ἡδῖα Χρειστιανή.203 The simple version of the Eumeneian formula occurs in Acmonian territory on epitaphs from Gümle, a village north of the city between Islamköy and Hasanköy,204 and from Çepni.205 These monuments were almost certainly Christian, but the presence of a long-established Jewish population at Acmonia is undisputed, and it is no simple matter to disentangle the religious communities from one another. A famous inscription dating to the third quarter of the first century AD indicates that there was a Jewish place of worship in the city already by that date. Three officials, P. Turronius Cladus and Lucius son of Lucius, both archisynagogoi, and the archon Publius Zotikos, had finished (ἐπεσκέυασαν) the construction of an edifice built by Iulia Severa (τὸν κατασκευασθέντα οἶκον ὑπὸ Ιουλίας Σεουήρας), by adding paintings to the walls and the roof, securing the windows, and completing the rest of the decoration at their own expense and with the help of other contributions. In turn the synagogue rewarded them for their zeal and beneficence with an inscribed gilded shield.206 Iulia Severa came from one of Asia Minor’s wealthiest and influential dynasties, whose ancestry included Pergamene royalty and Galatian kings and tetrarchs who ruled much of central and eastern Anatolia in the first century BC. She married L. Servenius Capito from a prominent family of Italian origin that had been established in Phrygia since the Republican period, and her son, L. Servenius Cornutus, was one of the earliest Roman senators with an eastern homeland. Members of her own family themselves became Roman 202 ΜΑΜΑ ΧΙ 122 supersedes earlier editions (ICG 1284): ἔτ[ο]υς ̣ τλη̣ʹ | Αὐρ. Ἰουλία τῷ |πατ̣ [ρὶ - - -] λ|ίῳ [καὶ τῇ μητρὶ] Βε|ρονεικιαν[ῇ] καὶ | τῷ γλυκυτάτῳ | μου τέκνῳ Σεβή|ρῳ καὶ Μουνδάνῃ | νύμφῃ μνήμης χά|ριν· Χρειστιανοί. 203 Gibson, Christians for Christians 105 no. 33; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 170–73 no. 21; SEG 28, 1083; 31, 1099 (ICG 1285). The words could be construed as datives. 204 MAMA VI no. 336 (ICG 993). 205 Calder, AS 5 (1955), 36 no. 5 (ICG 1362); now in Afyon Museum. 206 MAMA VI 264; IJO II 168; (now in Afyon Museum, photograph in Mitchell, Anatolia II, 34 fig. 15).

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senators in the second century AD.207 Neronian coins of Acmonia featured the names of Julia Severa, Servenius Capito, and Turronius Rapo, from another Italian family, and identified them all as high-priests of the imperial cult.208 This evidence reveals links between the Roman/Italian community at Acmonia, which had certainly been established there since the first half of the first century BC and probably derived much of its wealth from the slave trade, and the Jews, whose origins should be traced to the settlement of Jewish colonies in Phrygia at the end of the third century BC by Antiochus III. Cicero’s speech of 59 BC in defence of the propraetor of Asia L. Valerius Flaccus, who was charged with misrule and extortion, mentions that the Jews of the province, under Roman official supervision, brought contributions in gold to four centres before these were sent to the temple in Jerusalem: 100 pounds to Apamea, twenty to Laodicea, smaller sums to Adramyttium and Pergamum. As many prosperous Jewish families lived in Phrygia, the largest sums were collected at the two Phrygian assize centres. Since Acmonia was part of the Apamean assize district, we can infer that there was a significant Jewish presence there at the time of Cicero’s speech.209 Neither Iulia Severa nor P. Turronius Cladus nor his relation Turronius Rapo appear themselves to have been Jews, but the first two of them had been responsible for building and adorning the synagogue, Turronius Cladus while holding the office of synagogue president (archisynagogus).210 They clearly belong to the category of the supporters and sympathizers of the Jews, well known from the Acts of the Apostles and several passages in Josephus, which refer to them as god-fearers, σεβομένοι / φοβουμένοι τὸν θεόν, and from later inscriptions, which call them θεοσεβεῖς.211 The Jews of 207 See Mitchell, Anatolia II, 9; H. Halfmann, Senatoren, 102 nos. 5 and 5a. 208 See Halfmann, Senatoren, 102–3 nos. 5 and 5a; Mitchell and French, I. Ankara I no. 115 comm. 209 Cicero, Pro Flacco 68–69: Apameae manifesto comprehensum ante pedes praetoris in foro expensum est auri pondus c Paulo minus per Sex. Caesium, equitem Romanum, castissimum hominem atque integerrimum, Laodiceae xx pondo paulo amplius per hunc L. Peducaeum, iudicem nostrum, Adramytii per Cn. Domitium legatum, Pergami non multum. See Mitchell, Anatolia II, 33 with notes. For the Apamean assize district see C. Habicht, JRS 65 (1975), 80–87 discussing the Ephesian assize district inscription, and Pliny, NH V.106. 210 For this term see G. H. R. Horsley, An archisynagogos of Corinth? New Docs. 4 (1987), 213–20; T. Rajak / D. Noy, Archisynagogoi: office, title and social status in the Greco-Jewish synagogue, JRS 83 (1993), 75–93. 211 There is an enormous literature on this issue, including the monograph of B. Wanders, Gottesfürchtige und Sympathisanten (Tübingen 1998). I adhere to the analysis that I published most succinctly in ‘Wer waren die Gottesfürchtigen’, Chiron 38 (1998), 55–64, and in my view subsequent discussions have not affected the central arguments of that paper, that god-fearers identified the object of their worship as theos hypsistos; see 285–9.

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Acmonia were the counterparts of the active and respected Jewish community which enjoyed close relations with the dominant class of Roman citizens at Pisidian Antioch. The account of Paul’s first visit to Antioch in Acts related how his sermons in the synagogue alarmed the Jews, who secured the support of τὰς σεβομένας γυναῖκας καὶ τὰς εὐσχημόνας καὶ τοὺς πρώτους τῆς πόλεως and had Paul and Barnabas expelled from the city.212 This coalition of forces mobilized against Paul at Antioch matched in detail the situation that can be inferred from the relationship between Jews and prominent Romans at Acmonia. The links between Jews and Romans persisted at Acmonia through the imperial period. In the mid-third century the elaborate funerary inscription of Aur. Aristeas son of Apollonius and his wife Aurelia explains that Aristeas had bought a plot of unworked land from Marcus son of Math(i)os. An addition to the text explained that this had been converted into a burial plot by their children Alexander and Callistratus. Aristeas had created a modest foundation, including garden tools for the neighbourhood of the Protopylitai, on condition that these neighbours should cultivate a rose garden every year for a festival in memory of his wife. If they failed to hold the festival they would have to reckon with god’s justice, ἔσται αὐτοῖς πρὸς τὴν δικαιοσύνην τοῦ θεοῦ.213 The annual commemoration of the dead known as the Rosalia was a custom of western, Roman origin, and had probably been introduced to Acmonia by Italian immigrant families in the republican period. Another Acmonian inscription of the late first century AD gave instructions for twelve denarii to be spent annually on a rose festival, including a banquet and a cash distribution in honour of a leading citizen T. Flavius Praxias.214 Two details of the text have been further interpreted to suggest a Jewish connection. The grave plot had been bought from Marcus, son of a man whose name can be read as Μαθου or Μαθ[ι]ου. It has been suggested that the second reading, implying a nominative form Μαθιος or Μαθιας, could be one of the variants of the familiar Semitic and Jewish name Matthaios. However, since the masculine forms Μαθος, Μαθιας and Μαθιος, and feminine forms Μαθα and Μαθια are securely attested by several inscriptions from Phrygian village provenances with no perceptible Jewish associations,

212 Acts 13.50; note the archisynagogi at Acts 13.16; see Mitchell, Anatolia II, 8 and 31. 213 Ramsay CB 1.2, 562–4 nos. 455–57; IJO II, 357–62 no. 171 (from Susuz; ICG 1001); discussion by Robert, Hellenica XI/XII, 409–12; Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 78–81. 214 B. Laum, Stiftungen II no. 173; IGR IV 661. See further, Ch. Kokkinia, Rosen für die Toten im griechischen Raum und eine neue ῥοδισμός-Inschrift aus Bithynien, Museum Helveticum 56 (1999), 204–221 (although the restoration [ῥοδιζε]σθαι in that inscription is not certain; [στεφανοῦ]σθαι would also fit the space and context).

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these are more readily interpreted as indigenous names.215 Accordingly the argument for treating Aristeas’s family as Jewish rests with the use of the version of the Eumeneian formula which invoked God’s justice to protect the foundation. This could well be a rare example of the Eumeneian formula being adopted by Jews, but the family might in fact be Christian. The Aristeas text has nevertheless generally been taken for Jewish because of its context. It is approximately contemporary with a group of inscribed funerary altars set up for wealthy families, whose members in some cases held magistracies and other public offices, and which evoked curses from the book of Deuteronomy to protect the burials. The tomb set up in the year 333 (= AD 248/49) by Aur. Frugianus son of Menokrites and his wife Aur. Iuliane for his mother Makaria and their daughter Alexandria, ended with the threat that if anyone tried to introduce another corpse or illegally sell the grave plot, ἔσται αὐτῷ αἱ ἀραὶ ἡ (for αἱ) προγεγραμμέναι ἐν τῷ Δευτερονομίῳ. The monument, typically for Acmonia, was topped with a large pine-cone finial, and decorated with a wreath on the front and implements for spinning and weaving on the back, symbols respectively of the husband’s public status and the wife’s domestic virtues. The left side had an additional inscription listing Frugianus’s office holding: ἀγορανομία, σειτωνεία, παραφυλακεία, πάσας ἀρχὰς καὶ λειτουργίας τελέσας καὶ στρατηγήσαντα.216 A similar threat was specified on another funerary altar of around the same date, which lacks its opening lines. Apart from the tomb’s owner and his wife, only the two daughters Domne and Alexandria could be buried there, for as long as they remained unmarried. Transgression was punishable by a fine to the imperial treasury of 1000 Attic drachmas (another symbolic payment in an archaic currency), and to a charge of tomb-disturbance (τυμβωρυχία): ἔσται δὲ ἐπικατάρατος ὁ τυοῦτος (= τοιοῦτος) κὲ ὅσαι ἀραὶ ἐν τῷ Δευτερονομίῳ εἰσὶν γεγραμμέναι αὐτῷ τε κὲ τέκνοις κὲ ἐγγόνοις κὲ παντὶ τῷ γένει

215 See MAMA IX 430 comm. and LGPN Vc, 256 for the citations. Note that two children of a man called Μαθιος made a dedication to Zeus Ampelites at Appia in the Upper Tembris Valley (Phrygian Votive Steles no. 413). Robert, Hell. XI/XII, 411 suggested ‘un rencontre d’un nom indigene et d’un nom juif’, but the only evidence for any of the Phrygian bearers of the name being Jewish is the Rosalia inscription from Acmonia. The resemblance with Μαθθαῖος (and other unambiguous forms of the Jewish name) is coincidental; see S. Mitchell, Names and religious categories among the Jews of Asia Minor from the third to the sixth centuries CE, Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, forthcoming. 216 MAMA VI, 355a; IJO II, 364–68 no. 173; Robert, Hell. X, 247–51; Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 61–63; Horsley, New Docs 1, 101 (ICG 991). Copied by Ramsay at Uşak in 1914 and Calder in Izmir in 1934, but attributed to Acmonia on the grounds of the monument’s style and content.

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αὐτοῦ γένοιντο.217 There is a very similar grave altar for T. Flavius Alexander, dated 242/43, which describes his life of public service and virtuous conduct with lapidary brevity: βουλεύσας, ἄρξας, ζήσας καλῶς, μηδένα λοιπήσας. His offices, like those of Aur Frugianus, were listed on another face of the stone in three pairs: εἰρηναρχία, σειτωνία; βουλαρχία, ἀγορανομία; στρατηγία, σειτωνία. Use of the tomb was confined to himself and his wife Gaiane, and anyone who tried to open the grave should reckon with curses and a fine: ἔσονται αὐτῷ κατάραι ὅσε ἀνγεγραμμένα εἰς ὅρασιν καὶ ἰς ὅλον τὸ σῶμα αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς τέκνα καὶ εἰς βίον. The fine to the imperial treasury would be 500 denarii.218 An Acmonian altar found at Banaz carries a funerary inscription dated to 254–55, set up by Aurelius Rufus for his brother Hermes and niece Rufina, who had both died young, and for himself, his own wife Euelpiste and his nephew Parthenius during their lifetimes, ends with the threat that anyone who dug up the tomb to insert another corpse, or who bought the grave, or defaced its inscription, should have his whole family wiped out by god’s anger: ἐξολέσι ἐκίνου σύνπαν γένος ἡ θεοῦ ὀργή.219 God’s wrath derived exactly from the milieu of the Deuteronomy curses. The stone was also decorated with a spindle and distaff to symbolize his wife’s accomplishments. The same formula was used by a family of Phrygian traders of Italian origin, the Catilii, almost certainly from Acmonia, on their tombstone at Rome. It is unclear in their case also whether they were Jews, God-fearers or Christians.220 More specific imprecations were invoked on other Acmonian grave stones, including the family tomb (προγονικὸν μνημεῖον) originally built by the grandfather of I(ulius) Titedius Amerimnus. Amerimnus had restored the structure for the burial of his own wife, Aur. Onesime daughter of Euelpistos, and it would become his own grave.221 This primary text ended with the threat of a fine if anyone used the grave for an additional unauthorized burial. A second inscription carved on the side of the altar must have referred to another burial, that of 217 MAMA VI 335; Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 63; Robert, Hell. X, 248; Horsley, New Docs I01 no. 61 (ICG 990). Recorded at the village of Emiraz. 218 Ramsay CB i.2, 653 no. 564; MAMA VI 174; Robert, Hell. X, 252–53; Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 62–65; IJO II, 362–4 no. 172; (ICG 992). The text was copied in Uşak. 219 Ramsay, CB I.2, 615 no. 526; MAMA VI 235; IJO II, 375–78 no. 177; (ICG 988). 220 Ameling, IJO II, 178. 221 Ramsay, CB I.2, 565–66 no. 465–66; MAMA VI 318; IJO II, 370–74 no. 175 (ICG 985), from Susuz. The photograph at the end of line 3 in ICG 985 shows an iota followed by a punctuation mark, implying the full name Iulius Titedius Amerimnus, not simply Titedius Amerimnus, as in previous editions. Another family member with this rare Italian nomen, M. Titedius Tatianus, is attested at Acmonia (MAMA VI 315). Common gentilicia such Iulius, Claudius, Aelius and Ulpius often served as praenomina in Roman nomenclature of the later second and third centuries.

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Amerimnus himself, and reinforced this threat The beginnings of both inscriptions have been lost, but the text of the curse which concluded the second inscription survives: [εἴ τίς τι]ν̣α θάψετο [πονή|ρῳ] δόλ[ῳ], λάβοιτ[ο ἀπρ]|οσδόκητον ὁ[ποῖ]|ον καὶ ὁ ἀδελφὸς α[ὐτ]|ῶν Ἀμέριμνος· ἐὰν | δέ τις αὐτῶν μὴ φοβ|ηθῇ τούτων τῶν κ[α]|ταρῶν, τὸ ἀρᾶς δρέ|πανον εἰσέλθοι[το] | εἰς τὰς οἰκήσις αὐ|τῶν καὶ μηδίναν ἐνκ[α]|ταλείψετο. ‘if anyone buries anyone (else) by a deceitful trick, may he suffer the sort of unforeseen (fate) as their brother Amerimnos. If any of them is not fearful of these curses, may the sickle of a curse enter their houses and leave no one unscathed.’ The ‘sickle of a curse’ is an allusion not to a passage in Deuteronomy, but to Zacharias 5, which described how an angel brought God’s wrathful message to the priest Jesus, through a sign in the sky: καὶ εἶπε πρὸς με, τὶ σὺ βλέπεις; καὶ εἶπα ἔγω ὁρῶ δρέπανον πετόμενον μήκους πηχέων εἴκοσι καὶ πλάτους πηχέων δέκα. Καὶ εἶπε πρὸς μέ, αὐτὴ ἡ ἀρὰ ἡ ἐκπορεύομένη ἔπὶ πρόσωπον πάσης τῆς γῆς· διότι πᾶς ὁ κλέπτης ἐκ τούτου ἕως θανάτου ἐκδικηθήσεται καὶ πᾶς ὁ ἐπίορκος ἐκ τούτου ἐκδικηθήσεται. ‘And he said to me “what can you see?” And I said, “I see a flying sickle twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide.” And he said to me “This is the curse which is going out across the face of the whole world. On this account will every thief be punished with death from this, and every perjurer will be punished from this.” Τhe Hebrew version of Zacharias here refers not to the flying sickle of the Septuagint translation but to a flying scroll (megilla not maggal). We may infer that the people of Acmonia were familiar with scripture in the Greek translation, not in the Hebrew original, which had distorted the original sense of the passage into this vivid image. Two other details are important for understanding the inscription’s social and religious setting. One is the phrase [πονήρῳ] δόλ[ῳ], the Latin tag ‘by malicious deceit’, which was also used on the gravestone put up by the two Roman soldiers Aurelius Gaius and Aurelius Menophilus on the territory of Dioclea.222 The legalistic Roman overtones of the expression were appropriate on the grave of a Roman citizen of Italian colonial descent. The other detail is more important for assessing the religious context of the burial. The writers of the curse vowed that anyone who tried to introduce another body should suffer the same unexpected but unspecified fate as had befallen Amerimnus, ‘their brother’. Since the curse addresses the whole community, not Amerimnus’s siblings, the clear implication is that Iulius Titedius Amerimnus was a member 222 Buckler and Calder in MAMA VI 318 restored [χειρὶ] δολί[ᾳ], which is paralleled in a Greek verse inscription from Rome (IGUR III 1167), but the photograph of the squeeze has only ΔΟΛ followed by space for one letter. There is no visible iota or trace of an alpha; a narrow omega would be possible. [πονήρῳ] δόλ[ῳ] is a preferable restoration although the words usually occurred in the reverse order, as in ICG 998, or on the territory of Amorium at Kuzören, MAMA VII 341.

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of a brotherhood, like the Christian brotherhoods identified by inscriptions elsewhere in Phrygia. The composition of the inscription closely resembles the grave monument recorded by Hamilton at Sandıklı which was set up by Aurelius Alexander for his five children, who had all died in a single calamitous episode. That stone also displayed a supplement to the main text, in which a community of brothers (κοινὸν άδελφῶν) took charge of another burial, certainly that of of Aurelius Alexander himself.223 Amerimnus, who had outlived his wife, was probably the last surviving member of a notable family, who perished unexpectedly and miserably and received burial from a brotherhood of co-religionists. Τhe sickle curse reappears on another fragmentary gravestone copied by Ramsay at the village of Yenice, west of Acmonia. The restorations are dependent on comparison with the Amerimnus epitaph: [ἐὰν δε τις ἕτερον σῶμα εἰσενέγκῃ ἔσ]ται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν τὸν ὕψιστον καὶ το ἀρᾶς δρέπανον εἰς τὸν ὖκον αὐτοῦ [εἰσέλθοιτο καὶ μηδέναν ἐνκαταλείψαιτο].224 The novelty here, unparalleled in any other use of the Eumeneian formula, is the reference to θεὸς ὕψιστος. This was a term found in the Septuagint to designate the Jewish God Yahwe and it is attested epigraphically in other Jewish contexts, but it was generally avoided by Christians. However, hypsistos was normally the epiclesis of a unique ‘Highest God’, who received worship in sanctuaries across almost the entire east Mediterranean, the Black Sea settlements and the Near East, including many places in Phrygia.225 A votive inscription to Theos Hypsistos has been identified in precisely the village, Yenice, where the curse fragment occurs.226 Another similar votive of slightly later date was copied at Çorum, also on Acmonian territory.227 It is a natural inference that the curse was invoked by one of Theos Hypsistos’s worshippers. The combination with the Old Testament curse is unproblematic. There are strong arguments for identifying followers of Theos Hypsistos with the god-fearers (θεοσεβεῖς, σεβόμενοι τὸν θεόν, φοβούμενοι τὸν θεόν), who were certainly present among those who worshipped in Acmonia’s synagogue, and who included its Roman founders Iulia

223 ICG 1599, see 105. 224 Ramsay, CB I.2, 652 no. 563; MAMA VI 209; IJO II, 374–75 no. 176; (ICG 1002). 225 See 285–91. 226 SEG 1976/77, 1355: Ἐβίκτηος ἐπύησεν θεῷ ὑψίστῳ εὐχήν. 227 SEG 1976/77, 1356: Αὐρ. Τατις Ὀνησίμου χαλκέος σύνβιος σὺν τῷ συνβίῳ Ὀνησίμῳ θεῷ ὑψίστῳ ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων ἀνέθηκεν.

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Severa and Turronius Cladus.228 The Yenice curse belonged to the tombstone of a god-fearer, a θεοσεβής.229 Two other fragmentary epitaphs from the territory of Acmonia alluded to another vivid image, the curse of the ‘iron besom’ or the ‘iron carding comb’. One is a large grave monument in the form of a door, brought from Ahat köy to Uşak as building material, and set up by Flavia Teuthrantis for herself and her husband Hermogenes son of Hermogenes. The curse runs, μετὰ δὲ τὸ τούτους δύο τεθῆναι εἴ τις ἀνοἰξει ἢ ἐπιβουλεύσει, σά ον σιδαροῦν εἰσέλθον τὸν οἶκον.230 The other, from Susuz köy, was put up by Ammia for her foster-parents C. Vibius Crispus and Tyche, and ends μετὰ δὲ τὸ τούτους δύο τεθῆναι ὃς ἂν ἀνορύξει σάρον σιδαροῦν εἰσέλθον τὸν [.]ικῶνα ξάναιτο καὶ τῷ συμβουλεύσαντι.231 Neither the meaning nor the origin of the curse is clear. The appearance of the rare verb ξανάω in the second curse, related to the verb ξαίνω, to card wool, suggests that the σάρον was not a broom or a besom, but a carding comb whose iron prongs made it an instrument of torture. The curse is not to be found in the book of Deuteronomy or elsewhere in the Old Testament, but the vividness of the image matches that of the flying sickle.232 Acmonia possessed a synagogue which must have been used by Jews. Finds from the site near Ahat include two architectural fragments, respectively displaying a menorah and a Torah scroll, that may even have come from the building itself,233 and a Greek/Hebrew bilingual fragment probably from 228 See S. Mitchell, Wer waren die Gottesfürchtigen? (1998), 55–64 and p. 145 n. 211. W. Scheperln, Der Montanismus und die phrygischen Kulte (1929), 87 had already reached the same view of SEG 26/27 (1976) 1355: ‘So ist (die Inschrift) entschieden nicht christlich, sonder stammt möglicherweise aus jüdischen Kreisen, wahrscheinlicher aber von Heiden, die jüdisch beeinflußt waren’. Robert, Hell. XI/XII, 400 n. 4 discounted this prematurely: ‘Il n’y a pas le moindre indice pour cette dernière hypothèse en l’air’. 229 Individual theosebeis are attested by this technical designation by inscriptions from Bithynia, Rhodes, Cos, Aezani and in the Upper Tembris Valley (see below ch. 4.10), and at various locations in the Latin West. Thanks to extraordinary epigraphic finds not only at Aphrodisias and Sardis, but also at Miletus, Philadelphia, Tralles and at Panticapaeum in the Crimean Bosporus, many other theosebeis or sebomenoi ton theon are known to have worshipped in synagogues alongside the Jews; see Mitchell, Cult of Theos Hypsistos, 117–8. 230 Ath. Mitt. 25 (1900), 467; Waelkens, Türsteine 425. Robert, Hell. X, 247–56. For the name Teuthras/Teuthrantis, virtually confined to north and central Phrygia, see P. Thonemann, Heroic onomastics, Historia 64 (2015), 357–85 at 377–78. 231 Ramsay, CB I.2, 654 no. 567. See LSJ s.v. ξᾰνάω, grow weary with carding wool: hence, generally, work hard, grow weary. 232 See the excellent although inconclusive discussion by J. Strubbe, ‘Curses on Jewish epitaphs (1994), 87–98. 233 Ramsay CB I.2, 651–52 no. 561 for a stone from Kaylı (very close to Banaz), ὑπὲρ εὐχῆ πάσῃ τῇ πατρίδι above a menorah.

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the fourth century, inviting prayers for the peace of Israel and Jerusalem.234 The personal name Αφιλλα, for which a Hebrew origin has been conjectured, appears on an Acmonia gravestone, but is more likely to be a simplified spelling of an Anatolian Lallname Ἀπφίλλα.235 The synagogue, like those that are documented by archaeological and epigraphical discoveries at Aphrodisias and Sardis, but also like the synagogues at Pisidian Antioch and elsewhere in Asia Minor and Greece reported in Acts, were also frequented by non-Jewish sympathisers and worshippers, most notably the wealthy Roman citizens who founded the building in the first century AD. These sympathisers, the φοβούμενοι τὸν θεόν, σεβόμενοι τὸν θεόν, and metuentes of Acts and other first or early second-century sources, appear in all these cases to have constituted a formally recognised community, distinct from but closely associated with the Jews because of their shared place of worship. They were designated in inscriptions as θεοσεβεῖς. This situation is represented with perfect clarity by the famous inscription from Aphrodisias, probably datable to the fifth and early sixth centuries, which lists by name and often by profession ninety Jews (eighty-seven Ἰουδαῖοι, three προσηλύται) and sixty-five god-fearers (θεοσεβεῖς).236 Some of the god-fearers at Acmonia came from Roman citizen families, who constituted the civic elite, and these (like their counterparts at Sardeis in the later empire), were generous donors to the community and the building. Others, to judge by the inscriptions from the village of Yenice, were members of the rural Phrygian population who worshipped Theos Hypsistos. In the absence of clear-cut indications of the religious allegiance of the tomb builders and their families, the interpretation of the funerary curses from Acmonia remains highly disputed. Most recent commentators have followed the lead of Louis Robert in treating the funerary altars with curses taken ‘from Deuteronomy’ to be Jewish.237 Others have cautiously pointed out that since Deuteronomy and the rest of the Old Testament tradition was also part 234 MAMA VI 334, IJO II, 170; unique in Asia Minor until the recent publication of Hebrew texts from the Sardis synagogue (see now IJO II nos. 105–9). 235 MAMA VI 297; Aphilla, wife of Trophimus and mother of Aur. Apollonius; cf. Αφιλλα Ορεσου in the Hauran (IGLS 21.5 1, 247). However, Dan Dana points out to me that the Phrygian example is likely to be a diminutive of the common Phrygian Lallnamen, Ἀππία, Ἀπφία, Ἀφφία etc., thus Ἀ(π)φίλλα; see 167. 236 I. Aph. 11.55. SEG 36, 970. For edition, commentary and references to the abundant literature, see IJO II, 71–112 no. 14. Note Fergus Millar’s authoritative judgement: ‘it would be difficult to imagine clearer evidence that theosebeis could be categorized as a formal group attached to a Jewish community, and distinguished both from Jews and from full proselytes’ (Schürer2 III.1, 166). 237 Robert, Hell. X, 249–58; Ameling, IJO II pp. 345–79 nos. 172, 173, 174, 175. Trebilco, Jewish communities, 58–84.

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of the Christian heritage, we cannot exclude the possibility that these curses could have been invoked by Christians.238 Moreover, since the evidence from Aphrodisias and elsewhere has made clear that the theosebeis or god-fearers attended synagogue worship in significant numbers, and these were certainly present at Acmonia, we have to reckon that these could have formed a third religious category to which these graves, or some of them, might be attributed. Faced with the dilemma of identification, it is essential to look at the context of what we know. Acmonia stands out from the other cities of Phrygia in having a synagogue, constructed in the early empire by wealthy Roman citizens, god-fearers rather than Jews, but who nevertheless held office in the synagogue. The Jews and their followers thus possessed a public place of worship of some splendour. Architectural and inscribed fragments confirm that the synagogue itself was still in existence in the fourth century. The influence of the synagogue at Acmonia is also evident from another perspective. Until recently, the inscriptions with their tomb curses at Acmonia were the only epigraphic texts from third-century Phrygia which alluded to or quoted from the written books of the Old Testament, and the citations made precisely this point: the curses were γεγραμμέναι or ἀναγεγραμμέναι. By alluding directly to these written texts, the users of the curses were referring to the Torah scrolls, housed in the synagogue.239 Prominent Roman citizen families, whose family heads held multiple public offices and used religious curses from the Old Testament to protect their graves before and after 250, could have been Jews, proselytes or god-fearers. We cannot rule out the possibility that some of these worshippers were Christians. We know from Ignatius’s letter to the Magnesians that some Christians in Asia worshipped on the Sabbath in the second century,240 and from the fifth-century Church historians that many of them ignored orthodox Christian practice by celebrating Easter on 14 Nisan (the so-called Quartodecumani).241 Socrates 238 U. Huttner, Christliche Grenzgänger, 152–55; G. Horsley, New Docs I, 1010 no. 61 comm. 239 The sarcophagus of L. Nonius Glycon, found at Gümüşler, a village on the territory of Laodicea ad Lycum, published by A. Ceylan and T. Corsten, Epigraphica Anatolica 25 (1995), 89–92; IK 49, 111 (SEG 44 1075; IJO II no. 213; ICG 945) ends with a similar curse: εἰ δε τις ἀνύξει καὶ κηδεύσει τινα ἢ ἐκχαράξει τὰ γεγραμμένα, Ε Ι Ι . ΣΧ Ι Ι αὐτῷ τὰς ἀρὰς τὰς γεγραμμένας ἐν τῷ Δευτερονομίῳ. Nonius Glycon may have been a Jew or a godfearer, and the curse probably stems from the Jewish community and their synagogue at Laodicea (Ameling, IJO II, p. 443–4). Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 247–9, notes that the curses of Deuteronomy were also invoked in the early Christian tradition (Gal. 3.10 and 3.13). Nonius Glycon could theoretically have been a judaising Christian. 240 Ignatius, ep ad Magnesios, 9; quoted and discussed below in chapter 8.3. 241 See chapter 7.2 and 7.3.

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remarked that this was the normal practice of Asian Christians.242 Against this background, it would not be in the least surprising if Christians, even as they grew in numbers and self-confidence in the third century, were drawn to share worship with the Jews. They had no public places of worship of their own. There would be strong arguments for associating in prayers and preaching with Jews, god-fearers, and many influential Roman families at Acmonia. The attacks against this practice by John Chrysostom and other fourth-century Christian authorities confirm only that there was widespread fraternization. Christian and Jewish beliefs regarding death, resurrection and the last judgement were substantially similar. The basic notion of accountability to God which is found in all the formulae designed to protect burials, was expanded both by Jews and Christians to include references to the day of judgement at which these accounts would be settled. Two clear Jewish examples were identified by Louis Robert at Nicomedia in Bithynia, a gravestone combining a reference to the last judgement with a fine payable to the synagogue, ἕξει πρὸς τὴν κρίσιν καὶ δώσει τῇ συναγώγῃ (δηνάρια) α´, and a virtually identical allusion to God’s judgement ἕξι κρίσιν πρὸς τὸν Θεόν, combined with a typical Jewish blessing.243 Variations on the theme occur on more than twenty third- or early-fourth-century epitaphs recorded across the east Roman world from Athens to Jerusalem, with the largest number in central Asia Minor: ἐν τῇ κρισίμῳ ἡμέρᾳ (ICG 1056 Eumeneia), ἐν ἡμέρᾳ κρίσεως (ICG 274, Laodicea Catacecaumene; ICG 2317, Pessinus; ICG 3258, Philippi; ICG 2105 = IG II/III (2nd ed.) 5, 13519, Athens), τὸν Θεὀν κρίνοντα (ICG 1059 Eumeneia), τὸν ἐρχόμενον / τὸν μέλλοντα κρίνειν ζῶντας καὶ νέκρους (ICG 312 Iconium, ICG 625 Philomelium; unpubl. Pisidian Antioch; TAM V.2, 1156 Thyateira; ICG 383 Laodicea Catacecaumene; cf ICG 3714 Ancyra), τὸν θεὸν ὅστις κρίνει δικαίους καὶ ἀδίκους (ICG 2391 Galatia); τὴν μέλλουσαν κρίσιν (Byzantion 20 (1950), 116, Soloi; Hell. XI/XII, 403 n. 16, Jerusalem); ἔχι τὸ κρίμα ἀπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦ παντοκράτορος (MAMA III 577, Corycus), πρὸς τὴν ἐωνίαν κρίσιν (Studia Pontica III.1, 234; Euchaita); κατἀ τῆς αἰωνίου κρίσεως καὶ τῆς δόξης τοῦ Θεοῦ (ICG 3368, Sparta).244 An interesting text from the end of the third century was carved on the sarcophagus of Heliodorus, councillor, gerusiarch and benefactor of Thracian Heracleia, the name given to Perinthus around 286, which called on all the slaves of God, Heliodorus’s fellow-Christians, not to damage his tomb in Bithynian Cius, the city where he had resided at the end of his life. As well as being an early example of the expression δοῦλοι τοῦ θεοῦ, here used to denote all the members of the Christian community, this text 242 Socrates, HE V.22; see 550–1 and 560–2. 243 Robert, Hell. XI/XII, 386–87 and 392. 244 See 317 n. 747 and 319 n. 752.

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also specified that God separated the living and the dead, κρίνοντα ζῶντας καὶ νεκρούς, and similar expressions occurred on several epitaphs from Perinthus itself.245 Most of these examples can be classified with reasonable confidence as Christian texts, far outnumbering the two Jewish examples, but nothing in them distinguished Christian from Jewish ideas about the Last Judgement. On the inscription of Aur. Aristeas of Acmonia, who set up a foundation to commemorate his wife with an annual rose festival, the protective appeal was to an abstraction, ἡ δικαιοσύνη τοῦ Θεοῦ (ICG 1001). As has been seen, the religious status of the family members – Christians, Jews or God-fearers – is in this case debatable. Another recurrent theme was eternity, a concept that could denote eternal punishment or eternal life. Four epitaphs from the Eumeneia or Dionysopolis threatened an eternal curse, ἔσται ἐπικατάρατος ἰς τὸν αἰῶνα παρὰ Θεοῦ.246 An example of the classic Eumeneian formula from Galatian Ancyra adds that accountability to God was now and for ever, καὶ νῦν καὶ ἰς τὸν αἰῶνα (ICG 3074), while another Eumeneian text added that the offender would not benefit from God’s promise of resurrection and salvation, καὶ νῦν καὶ τῷ παντὶ αἰῶνι καὶ μὴ τύχοιτο τῆς τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐπανγελίας (ICG 1364). This was a clear Christian message, but it was one that was shared with Jews. An epitaph from the Jewish cemetery of Beth Shearim in Palestine, warned that ὃς ἐὰν μεταθῇ ταύτην, ὁ ἐπανγειλάμενος ζωοποιῆσε τοὺς νέκρους, αὐτὸς κρίνει.247 The wrath of God was more familiar from the Old than the New Testament. Despite the obvious connection that could be made between invocations to God to protect the grave and the theme of divine anger, it does not appear often in inscriptions. Aurelius Rufus set up a memorial at Acmonia which designated two graves, that of his brother and his brother’s daughter, who had died prematurely (ταχυμόροις), and the grave intended for himself, his wife and another nephew, presumably a survivor of the disaster that had struck his brother’s family: τύνβοις γὰρ δύο τοῦτο τὸ σῆμα ἐπίκιται. The invocation to protect the grave was unusually explicit: μετὰ τὸ θεθῆναι αὐτος ὃς ἂν ἀνορύξξι καὶ βαλῖ ἄλλον νεκρὸν ἢ τύνβον πρίατε ἢ γράμμα μιάνι, ἐξολέσι ἐκίνου σύνπαν γένος ἡ θεοῦ ὀργή, ‘after they have been laid to rest, whoever digs up the grave or casts another body on top, or buys the tomb or sullies the inscription, may the wrath of God destroy his entire family’. It is not difficult to hear the tombmaker’s anger and 245 M. Alkan / J. Nollé, Heliodoros, or the fate of a Christian councilman of Perinthus during the Great Persecution, Gephyra 14 (2017), 117–32; cf M. H. Sayar, Perinthos-Herakleia nos. 185, 186, 199. There is no compelling reason to associate Heliodoros with the tetrarchic persecutions, although the text refers to πολλῶν καμάτων. 246 ICG 1037 and 1049, territory of Eumeneia; ICG 1069 and 1071 (Dionysopolis). 247 J. and L. Robert, Bull.ép. 1956, 230; 1958, 44.

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emotion in this wording.248 The gravestone from Apamea of Auxanon, the business agent (pragmateutes) of the Asiarch Aelius Tryphon, combined the threat of a fine to the fiscus of 1000 denarii, with an invocation of God’s wrath κὲ χωρὶς τούτων τὸ[ν Θεὸν] κεχολώμενον ἕ[ξει].249 A text from Laodicea Catacecaume adapted an expression from Homer in a semi-metrical tag, εἰ δέ τις (τὴν στήλην) σείνετε, ἀθανάτοιο Θεοῦ μηνμα λάβοιτο.250 Direct and unambiguous references to god’s anger on Christian gravestones are attested in Athens (ICG 2058) and on a version of the Eumeneian formula on the grave of five-month old child at Rome, certainly part of an immigrant family from Asia Minor: Θεόφιλος ἐνθάδε κεῖται, ζήσας μῆνας ε´. εἴ τις τὰ ὀστᾶ μου σκυλεῖ, ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τῆν ἐρχομένην ὀργήν.251 God’s hand in executing punishment was invoked in a version of the Eumeneian formula from Apamea, ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὴν χείρα τοῦ Θεοῦ (ICG 969), and the nature of such punishment vividly expressed on a tombstone from Eumeneia, λήψεται παρὰ τοῦ ἀθανατοῦ Θεοῦ μαστεῖγα αἰώνιον (ICG 1025), an image which which was closer to everyday reality than the flying sickle and iron carding-comb of the Acmonia cemeteries. Another Lycaonian gravestone from Laodicea Catacecaumene ends ἠσχήσι π[ρὸς τὸ]ν βραχίονα τὸν ὑψηλ[ὸν] κὲ τὴν κ[ρίσιν τὴν] ἐρχομένην. God’s arm, raised to protect his people, is an image that recurred in references to the flight from Egypt in the Septuagint. The phrase on the inscription appears nearly to quote the words God addressed to Moses, λυτρώσομαι ὑμᾶς ἐν βραχίονι ὑψηλῷ καὶ κρίσει μεγάλῃ, but its sense has been reversed to denote an arm raised not to protect, but to inflict punishment. It is more likely that this inscription combined two appropriate and familiar images, God’s arm and the Last Judgement, than that it was a deliberate quotation from an Old Testament passage.252 Both Jews and Christians believed in a single creator God, and that their lives and conduct were subject to God’s judgement, which would be fulfilled at the end of time by their own admission among the righteous, or by damnation. The idea of God as the one who would judge the living and the dead, with attendant rewards and punishments, was shared by Diaspora Jews and by

248 CB 1.2, 615 no. 526; MAMA VI 325; IJO II 375–8 no. 177 (ICG 988); see 148 n. 220 for the same curse used by an Acmonian family settled in Rome. 249 ICG 960. 250 ICG 210 from Kadınhan; cf. LSJ s.v. μήνιμα: μή τοί τι θεῶν μ. γένωμαι (Iliad 22, 358; Od. 11, 73). 251 ICUR I 4005. 252 MAMA XI 271 with comm. (ICG 1521). Even in Acmonia, where a Greek version of the Old Testament was available for consultation in the synagogue, the allusions to Deuteronomy were imprecise.

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Christians, settled in and outside Asia Minor. They were brought together not separated by these beliefs. 4.5

The Lawyer, the Preacher and a Guardian Angel: A Tale from Eumeneia

Two mid-third century inscriptions from the territory of Eumeneia call for special attention, the epitaph copied at Emircik which was set up by Gaius, a legal professional (pragmatikos), for himself, his family and a man bearing the Semitic name Roubes, and the grave (ἡρῷον) of Aur. Zotikos Lykidas, found at the neighbouring village of Haydan, which ends with an imprecation ‘to God and the angel of Rubes to protect the grave which he had built for himself and his sisters Phronima and Maxima’.253 The name Roubes (Rouben), certainly a reference to the same person, establishes a link between the two epitaphs. The contents and significance of the larger verse text, the epitaph of Gaius, rival that of Abercius’s epitaph, and the two inscriptions together provide a unique and unparalleled insight into the Christian community of Eumeneia. The epitaph of Gaius was carved on a substantial rectangular bomos typical for wealthier families in Eumeneia and generally in south-west Phrygia (fig. 14). The form and layout can be closely compared with funerary monuments from the territory of Dionysupolis, all ending with the Eumeneian formula, two from Sirikli dated respectively to 253/4 (ICG 1069) and 255/6 (ICG 1070), and two from nearby Dumanlı, dated to 258/9 (ICG 1071) and 273/4 (ICG 1072). The altar for Gaius should be dated within this range. The pediment has been damaged, removing the first line of the text. Three of the four sides of the altar carried verse inscriptions, which were composed by Gaius himself. A ( front) [οὐνόμασιν σεμνοῖσιν] ἰσόψηφος δυσὶ τοῦτ[ο] Γάϊος ὡς ἅγιος, ὡς ἀγ[α]4 θὸς προλέγω· / (on shaft) ζωὸς ἐὼν τοῦτον τύμ βον τὶς ἔτευξεν ἑαυτῷ; / Μούσαις ἀσκηθείς, 8 Γάϊος πραγματικός, / 253 Robert, Hell. XI/XII, 429–35; A. R. R. Sheppard, Jews, Christians and heretics (1979), 175–76; (ICG 1028 for Lycidas, and ICG 1031 for Gaius).

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Figure 14 Eumeneia (Emircik). Funerary altar of Gaius, front face. ICG 1031 Anthony Sheppard

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[ἠ]δ’ ἀλόχῳ φιλίῃ Τατίῃ τέκεσίν τε ποθητοῖς, / ὄφρα τὸν ἀΐδιον τοῦ12 τον ἔ[χ]ωσι δόμον, / σὺν Ῥουβῇ μεγάλοιο Θ(εο)ῦ Χ(ριστο)ῦ θεράποντι. B (right) [οὐ]κ ἔσχον πλοῦτον πολὺν 16 εἰς βίον, οὐ πολὺ χρῆμα, / γράμμασι δ’ ἠσκήθην ἐκπο νέσας μετρίοις· / ἐξ ὧν τοῖσι [φ]ίλοισιν ἐπή[ρ]20 κεον ὡς δύναμίς μοι, / σπουδὴν ἣν εἶχον πᾶσι χαριζόμενος. / τοῦτο γὰρ ἦν μοι τερπνὸν 24 ἐπαρκεῖν εἴ τις ἔχρῃζε, / ὡς ἄλλων ὄλβος τέρψιν ἄγει κραδίῃ. / μηδεὶς δ’ ἐν πλούτῳ τυφω28 θεὶς γαῦρα [φ]ρονείτω, / πᾶσι γὰρ εἰς Ἅιδης καὶ τέ λος ἐστὶν ἴσον. / ἔστιν τις μέγας ὢν ἐν κτή32 μασιν· οὐ πλέον οὗτος, / ταὐτὸ μέτρον γαίης πρὸς τάφον ἐκδέχεται. / σπεύδετε, τὴν ψυχὴν 36 εὐφραίνετε πάντοτε, θνη[τοί], / ὡς ἡδὺς βίοτος, καὶ μέτρον ἐστὶ ζοῆς. / ταῦτα, φίλοι. μετὰ ταῦτα τί 40 γὰρ πλέον; οὐκέτι ταῦτα· / στήλλη ταῦτα λαλεῖ καὶ λί θος, οὐ γὰρ ἐγώ. / C. (left) θύραι μὲν ἔνθα καὶ πρὸς Ἄϊδαν ὁδοὶ / ἀνεξόδευτοι δ’ εἰσὶν

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ἐς φάος τρίβοι· / οἱ δὴ δίκαιοι πάντοτ ̓ 48 εἰς ἀ[νά]στασιν / [πρ]οδε[ικνύ]ουσι (?), το[ῦ] το δυνα[μέων] θεός [-----] 52 [-----] [-----] [---] ποιμ[ένα] το[---] 56 [---] ἀ[νάστα]σις (?) 1: restored by BCC; 14: Θ(εο)ῦ Χρ(ιστοῦ), ΒCC; 49: perhaps [τ]όδ᾽ ἐ[κφράζ]ουσι; 50: damaged text, as read by Sheppard. A. Equal in numbers to two solemn words, I, Gaius, declare this, as a holy and as a virtuous man. Who, a living man, made this tomb for himself? Gaius the lawyer, trained in the arts of the Muses, made it, also for his beloved wife Tatia, and his adored children, so that they might have this eternal home, accompanied by Roubes, the servant of the great God Christ. B. I did not have much wealth for my life, or many possessions, but I received a perfect training in writing verse. From this, as far as in my power, I met the needs of my friends, graciously bestowing my talent for the benefit of all of them. For, just as wealth stirs joy in the hearts of others, it was my joy to help anyone who was in need. Let no one, blinded in his wealth, think haughty thoughts, for all must enter Hades and their end is equal. One man is great in his possessions – he does not have more. The same measure of land receives him for burial. Make haste, mortals, gladden your soul always, as life is sweet and there is a measure to life. That’s it, friends. What is there after that? These things are no more. The monument and the stone say these things, not I. C. Here are the gates and the roads to Hades, the paths cannot be trodden back to the light. And yet, the righteous until the resurrection announce this, ‘This is the God of Hosts’ Gaius’ monument was first copied by Pierre Paris in the nineteenth century, and has been re-published and discussed many times since. The stone survives

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and is now housed in Pamukkale Museum.254 The first line, half of a hexameter verse, is missing and must have been inscribed on the damaged pediment. Below it, carefully spaced and centred above a garland, is the surviving part of the elegiac couplet that began the text: [οὐνόμασιν σεμνοῖσιν] | ἰσοψηφὸς δυσὶ τοῦτ[ο] | Γάϊος ὡς ἅγιος ὡς ἀγα|θὸς προλέγω. Gaius proclaimed his name in its literal form, and then declared its equivalence to two terms which had the same numerical value, 284, the adjectives meaning holy and good. The riddle of an isopsephism, playing on a word’s numerical value, was a distinctive trait among early Christians,255 and among Jews in the Greek-speaking world. Furthermore the verb προλέγω, chosen to conclude this initial presentation, could be used for formal and legal announcements,256 entirely appropriate to the subject that it introduces. The proclamatory couplet is separated by a garland from two more elegiac couplets and a hexameter, which were carved on the front panel of the altar. Gaius declares himself to be a πραγματικός, a business lawyer,257 but before his profession names his proudest skill, as a writer of verses. ζωὸς ἐὼν τοῦτον τύμ|βον τὶς ἔτευξεν ἑαυτῷ;258 Μούσαις ἀσκηθείς, Γάϊος πραγματικός. This pride was not misplaced, as the verses are technically almost flawless. On the right-hand side of the stone there is another fourteen-line poem, consisting of seven almost impeccable elegiacs.259 The carving of the poem is as scrupulous as the versification. Each verse forms two lines of carved text, and the stone-cutter, certainly on the poet’s instructions, has placed an indent before the second half of each verse. Syllabic division at the line ends was reduced to a minimum and done with equal care: ἐκπο|νέσας, ἐπήρ|κεον, τυφω|θείς, κτή|μασιν, λί|θος. The final inscription on the left side of the stone changed to iambic trimeters. There were originally seven lines of verse making fourteen lines of carved text, although only the first four verses survive intact. Again, the second half of each verse was indented, and only one word was divided between two inscribed lines (figs. 15–19).260 254 ICG 1031 with extensive bibliography; The elegant restoration of line 1, first suggested in BCC, JRS 19 (1926), 61–64 no. 183, was probably by W. H. Buckler. 255 The earliest Christian text identified in Asia Minor, a graffito on the column of a basement stoa in Smyrna probably dating 177/8, contains an isopsephism; see 565 nn. 178–9. 256 See LSJ s.v. II. 2. 257 Robert, Hell. XI/XII, 415–16: homme de loi et d’affaires; 416 nn. 1–2 has parallels and explanations; ‘Winkeladvokat’ (legal attorney), Zingerle. 258 Τίς not τις, introducing a rhetorical question, as seen by A. Wilhelm, Griechische Grabinschriften aus Kleinasien, Sitzb. Berl. 1932, 810–811; compare Robert, Hell. XI/XII, 421. 259 At the end of the sixth couplet ἐστι ζόης is scanned with a short iota before zeta. 260 Line 4: τοῦ|το δυνα[μέων] Θεός; the first four letters of δυνα[μέων] were read with difficulty, and the whole word restored by Anthony Sheppard, see 170 n. 288.

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Figure 15 Squeeze of Gaius inscription. ICG 1031, front lines 2–4 British Institute at Ankara, Digital Repsitory

Figure 16 Squeeze of Gaius inscription. ICG 1031, front lines 5–14 British Institute at Ankara, Digital Repsitory

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Figure 17 Squeeze of Gaius inscription. ICG 1031, right, lines 15–36 British Institute at Ankara, Digital Repsitory

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Figure 18 Squeeze of Gaius inscription. ICG 1031, right, bottom right, lines 35–42 British Institute at Ankara, Digital Repsitory

Figure 19 Squeeze of Gaius inscription. ICG 1031, left, lines 43–56 (?) British Institute at Ankara, Digital Repsitory

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The design and execution of the altar are very close to that of three Christian grave monuments recorded at Dionysopolis, dating respectively to 253–4 (ICG 1069), 255–6 (ICG 1070) and 258–9 (ICG 1071). They are all products of the same craftsmen and the epitaph of Gaius should also be dated between 250 and 260. It would be hard to identify a Greek inscription from Asia Minor which has been composed and designed with more attention to detail.261 The text on the front face contained the essential information about the persons to be buried in the tomb, which was built by Gaius for himself, his wife Tatia, rendered in the Ionic poetic form Τατίη, and their children. The latter were not named, very likely because Gaius did not consider his family to be complete when he wrote the epitaph. There might be more sons and daughters to follow, or elder children might leave the household to get married, and would be buried elsewhere.262 Not only Gaius himself, but also his wife and children were alive when the tomb was constructed as their eternal dwelling place (τὸν ἀΐδιον δόμον). Then cames the isolated hexameter with the information which shows that this burial was not merely exceptional but extraordinary. Burial, normally confined to close family members, was extended to an unrelated outsider: Roubes, servant of the great God Christ: σὺν Ῥουβῇ μεγαλοῖο Θ(εο)ῦ Χ(ριστο)ῦ θεράποντι.263 The line break occurred after μεγαλοῖο, the weak caesura of the hexameter. The first word of the next line employed the convention, which was already observed in manuscripts of the New Testament by 200, of using the abbreviated nomen sacrum, ΘΥ for ΘΕΟΥ. There can be no serious doubt that the nomen sacrum Χ(ριστο)ῦ followed Θ(εο)ῦ on the epitaph of Gaius.264 Both nomina sacra stood apart from their surroundings in the line. The published photographs show ΘΥ, with ypsilon above theta. Buckler and Calder noted that the traces of ΧΡ, ‘the usual monogram’, on the stone were clear, although the 261 See the important discussion by G. Agosti, Eisthesis, divisione dei versi, percezione dei cola negli epigrammi epigrafici in età tardoantica, Segno e testo 8 (2010), 67–98 (Feissel, Bull. Ép. 2013, 499). The surface of the stone has become badly worn, and the letters are less clear on the squeezes, made in the late 1970s, than in earlier photographs. 262 See 125. 263 This is the natural interpretation of the text, as Robert observed, Hell. XI/XII, 435: ‘il ne semble pas qu’on puisse interpreter autrement l’épitaphe de Gaius qu’en admittant que Roubès partageait ce tombeau, tout au moins que Roubés était enterré tout près de là’; and 435 n. 4: ‘À vrai dire il me semble que l’interprétation stricte est la plus naturelle.’ 264 Compare the dedication of a τράπεζα to Θ(ε)ῷ Ἰ(ησο)υ Χ(ριστ)ῷ in the late third-century mosaic inscription by Ἀκεπτοῦς ἡ φιλόθεος at Megiddo in Palestine, part of the floor of this early Christian prayer hall; Y. Tepper and L. Di Segni, A Christian Prayer Hall of the Third Century (Jerusalem 2006), 36 (Feissel, Bull. ép. 2008, 562).

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outlines were blurred and the photograph is indistinct (fig. 20). In fact, it is better to restore, Χ[Υ].265 Gaius’s skill as a versifier and the care with which the inscription has been carved leave no room for doubt about what this stood for: Χριστοῦ, and only Χριστοῦ, fits sense and metre perfectly, and at this point above all in this scrupulously prepared inscription, no mistake was conceivable.266 The convention of using abbreviated nomina sacra in this text is a mark of Gaius’s literary culture and should be should be distinguished from the use of the chi rho monogram found in four other third-century inscriptions from the region: the epitaph of the Eumeneian bishop Glycon Χρ(ιστοῦ) ἐπίσκοπος (fig. 13),267 the imprecation that concluded the epitaph of Aur. Menophilos, a Eumeneian counsellor,268 the use of a monogram to indicate that the Roman citizen Valerius Gaius was a Christian,269 and the monogram in the middle of the line of abbreviations that headed the Apamean gravestone of the bishop and shoemaker Aurelius Valens, ΖΩ. ΕΠ Δ ΧΡ Χ ΧΡΕΙ (fig. 9), best resolved to read ζῶν ἐπ(ίσκοπος) δ(οῦλος) Χρ(ιστοῦ) Χ[ριστιανοὶ] Χρει(στιανοῖς).270 The use of the abbreviation in two of these cases was connected to the high ecclesiastical status of the persons commemorated, and in the others appeared on the tombs of locally prominent families. Who was Roubes? The name is the first and most important clue. It was Semitic, probably precisely Hebrew in origin. In the Old Testament Ῥουβην was the eldest of the sons of Jacob and thus the founding father of the first of the twelve Tribes of Israel.271 It is attested in the Greek forms Ῥουβης, Ῥουβην, Ῥωβη and ῾Ῥωβηλ at Joppa and Jerusalem, and in Syrian Antioch. A name Ῥουβεις Τωτος occurs once in Asia Minor, at Hamaxia on the coast of Rugged Cilicia, but the patronymic there indicates that these were indigenous Anatolian forms of Luwian origin, and Ῥουβεις, with a characteristic Anatolian ending, was presumably a south-east Anatolian variant connected

265 BCC, JRS 16 (1926), 63 (Hell. XI/XII, 422 n. 1): ‘Θεοῦ is represented by its monogram, the two upper strokes of the upsilon being distinct on the squeeze; immediately after it stood the usual monogram of Χριστοῦ, the lines of which are blurred but still recognizable᾽. 266 For another early example of ΘΝ see I. Ankara 2, 352 (ICG 3704), probably of the late third or early fourth century. The usage was common in third and fourth century Lycaonia. 267 BCC, JRS 16 (1926), 70 no. 200; Gibson Chr. for Chr. 115 no. 41; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscr. 220–23 no. 32; (ICG 1049). Αὐρ. Γλύκων | Εὐμενεὺς Χρ(ιστιανὸς) ἐπἰσκοπος. 268 CB I.2, 526 no. 371 (ICG 1062) ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν Χρ(ιστόν). 269 MAMA XI 44 (ICG 1454). 270 MAMA VI 234 (ICG 972). See also Χρ(ιστὸ)ς) Ἰη(σοῦ)ς in a late-third-century epitaph by the ‘poet of Çeşmeli Sebil’, MAMA XI 207, P. Thonemann, Poets of the Axylon (2014), 210 (ICG 1497). 271 Gen. 35.22; 37. 21–22; etc.

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to the Semitic root.272 Semitic names of Hebrew origin were exceptionally rare in pre-Constantinian Greek inscriptions from Asia Minor, although they became much more frequent in the epigraphy of late Antiquity during the fifth and sixth centuries, thanks to the growing influence of the Greek Bible among Christians and Jews. During late antiquity Hebrew names in indeclinable forms occur with some frequency in Greek-Jewish and Christian epitaphs, but were almost unknown earlier.273 Apart from Roubes at Eumeneia, supposed examples from Phrygia or the neighbouring regions before the end of the third century were the occurrences of the name Μαθιος or Μαθος at several Phrygian locations, and a verse inscription from Phrygian Apollonia (Uluborlu), which names an immigrant woman from Antioch called Debbora, married to a man from Pamphylian Sillyum.274 The distribution and occurrences of the name Math(i)os in Asia Minor suggest strongly that it was an indigenous regional name, with no Jewish or Christian associations,275 while the Antiochene woman was evidently a native of the Syrian metropolis, not one of its Asia Minor homonyms.276 This pattern is confirmed at the significant Jewish centre of Acmonia, where no Hebrew names appear, unless we admit the possible, but unlikely exception of the female name Aphilla attested in an outlying village.277 Likewise, no Semitic name forms occur in the twenty-five funerary texts which mention Ἰουδαῖοι at Hierapolis, unless we allow that the male version of the same Jewish name Hafila appears in the hellenized form, Θεοφίλου ἐπικλὴν Ἁφελίου.278 One of the few names of Hebrew origin that became popular among indigenous Asia Minor Christians in the third and fourth centuries, was Μαριάμη, which occurs on a number of modest Christian epitaphs

272 Robert, Hell. XI/XII, 422–23. 273 Margaret H. Williams, Semitic name use by Jews in Roman Asia Minor, Jews in a GraecoRoman Environment (Stuttgart 2013), 363–88. 274 MAMA IV 102; SEG 30, 1507 and 1903. 275 See 146–7. 276 Mitchell, Anatolia II, 8–9 n. 60 for Debbora. 277 MAMA VI 297; see 152. 278 E. Miranda, Le iscrizioni giudaiche di Hierapolis di Frigia (Naples 1999); EA 31 (1999), 118 no. 5 (SEG 1999, 1818) and 138, prefers the Semitic derivation; W. Ameling, IJO II 206, followed by LGPN Vc s.v., links the name to the Greek adjective ἀφελής, meaning artless or naïve. Despite Miranda and Ameling, in another Hierapolitan epitaph, IJO II 189 (SEG 1999, 1814), we should read Ἱκεσίου τοῦ Ἰουδαίου Θέωνος not Ἱκεσίου τοῦ [καὶ] Ἰούδα τοῦ Θέωνος, excluding the Semitic form Ἰούδας. A. Chaniotis, Studia Classica Israelica 21 (2002), 226–27 comments on the ‘predominance of pagan names’, among Jews, but this understates the reality.

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from Lycaonia and east Phrygia.279 Although there had been Jewish settlements in western Asia Minor since the end of the third century BC, members of these communities without exception took Greek names, and are thus not readily distinguishable onomastically from the rest of the population. Louis Robert’s suggestion that Roubes might originally have been a Jew from one of the neighbouring cities of Phrygia, who had converted to Christianity, should accordingly be ruled out.280 The epitaph of Abercius, who, two generations before Gaius, had visited and been received among his co-religionists at Rome and in the Near East as far as Syria, the Euphrates and Nisibis, shows that religious leaders moved between Christian communities. Other influential figures travelled from East to West, most famously Irenaeus from Asia to become bishop of Lugdunum, but he was not unique. Christians from the East made a large impact in the western part of the empire.281 Epigraphy provides the examples of Pektorios, probably from Lycaonia, buried in Gaul at Augustodunum,282 and Iulianus, also known as Euteknios, from Syrian Laodicea, ‘conspicuous ornament of Syria, a noble and righteous star loved by men’. He was buried at Lugdunum having travelled to the Celtic land of Gaul, where persuasion flowed from his tongue. He moved through various provinces, came to know many peoples and trained their souls in virtue. He ceaselessly committed himself to the waves of the ocean and brought all the gifts which God had entrusted to him to the Celts and the lands of the West.283 A similar figure was Eugenius, an energetic priest in the Novatian church of Laodicea Catacecaumene, whose reputation for charity among the poor extended throughout Phrygia and Asia, in the East and in the West. His inscription also contained an isopsephic reference to Jesus, ‘the

279 MAMA VII 98 (ICG 154, Laodicea Catacecaumene), 580 (ICG 593, Axylon), VIII 127 (ICG 784, Carşamba valley), XI 334 (ΙCG 1528, Perta). See LGPN Vc 266 s.v. Μαριάμη and Μαριόμη. 280 Hell. XI/XII, 423: ‘Il me paraît que nous avons ici un contacte entre des chrétiens d’Euméneia et une de ces communautés juives florissantes en Phrygie. Roubês pouvait être un converti venu de la synagogue.’ 281 See Chapter 1.2 on the martyrs of Lyon. 282 IGF 155 with D. Feissel, Remarques sur l’épitaphe de Pektorios. 283 The reference to ‘training in virtue’ and ‘God’s gifts’ strongly favour the argument of the first editors, A. Audin, J.-F. Reynaud, J. Pouilloux, Une nouvelle inscription grecque à Lyon, Journal des Savants 1975, 58–75, that the epitaph relates to missionary activity; C. P. Jones, A Syrian in Lyon, AJPhil. 99 (1978), 336–53, proposes less persuasively that Iulianus Euteknios was an energetic and successful merchant.

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first angel’, and an abbreviated nomen sacrum.284 Rather than Roubes being a native to Phrygia, it is almost certain that he came from Palestine or from one of the cities of the Semitic Levant. He would be a counterpart, travelling in the opposite direction, of Abercius who had made his way along the roads of the empire to Syria and Mesopotamia. The vocabulary chosen by Gaius to describe him, as ‘servant of the mighty Jesus Christ’ leaves no doubt that Roubes was a commanding figure, who was adopted among the already numerous Christians of Eumeneia as a charismatic religious role model. We can only grasp the personality and influence of Roubes through the prism of the verses written by his protégé. Gaius presents himself as a sympathetic and engaging figure. His literary skills were far above the level reached by most writers of verse epitaphs outside the metropolitan centres of government and learning. He composed with metrical precision and care for the meaning which he wished to convey. He did not rely on Homer for epic colour, exotic vocabulary and an air of learning which could disguise technical deficiencies,285 but the seven elegiac couplets on the right-hand side of the gravestone relayed an ethical message conveyed in everyday, largely prosaic language.286 The verses were directly addressed to his friends. He was not wealthy in cash or possessions, but a poet, a skill he could share with them, and being helpful to others gave him the satisfaction that others might derive from possessing riches. No one should be led astray to haughty ideas by their wealth, for death comes alike to everyone. A man, however rich, occupies a grave no larger than anyone else. Mortals everywhere should take delight in their lives, for that is the extent of their existence. That is life, and there is nothing to follow it. These sentiments were his own, but reflected widespread popular philosophy. The final couplet stating that it was the stone and the stele that was speaking, not the man himself, was designed to fit the context of a gravestone addressed to future readers, and was not intended to disown these

284 Mitchell, Anatolia II, 100, 101 fig.24, literature at 102 n. 406; text in SCO 3 no. 14/06/05 (ICG 52); Breytenbach and Zimmmermann, Lycaonia, 755–59: ‘The inscription suggests a vast geographical perspective’. 285 As the very different work of the poets of the Axylon, analysed by Peter Thonemann, Chiron 44 (2014), 191–225. 286 Robert, Hell. XI/XII, 426 n. 2 shrewdly points out that Gaius, who put his talent at his friends’ disposal, could have been the author of the verses in CB 1.2, 514 no. 353–54. If so, he relied on his learning as much as his poetic flair, as these verses replicate two of the ethical sententiae of Menander, Gnomai 283 and 291, as noted by Ramsay, CB I.2, 516–17.

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sentiments in favour of a more austere Christian message.287 The iambic poem on the other face of the stone provides the religious perspective of a Christian. The road to Hades allows only one direction of traffic, but the righteous, until the time of their resurrection, declare the power of the God of hosts. The sense of these verses is incomplete, but the language referring to resurrection fits precisely with the repeated allusions in other inscriptions from Eumeneia and elsewhere in third-century Asia Minor to God’s final judgement.288 They imply that Gaius and his co-religionists him reconciled conventional ideas about a good life well lived, with expectations of Christian salvation. Gaius’ sentiments were down to earth and reflected conventional wisdom, although they are raised from banality by their context, but his self-presentation was far from that. His claim to holiness and goodness, expressed through the device of the isopsephism at the head of the text, was not simply conventional. The adjective ἀγαθος does not call for detailed comment as it need not imply more than the uprightness, respectability and virtuousness that was expected of all men and women of standing, but it was not usual for ordinary Christians to apply the grand word ἅγιος to themselves. The term is used for saints, and the church itself. In the sixth century, Montanist gravestones applied the adjective to devout persons,289 and a Montanist apostle, seemingly a missionary, described his role as ‘calling (men) to sainthood’, καλέσας εἰς τὴν ἁγιοσύνην.290 Ἁγιότης was not one of the attributes assigned to either men or women among the abundant third and fourth-century Christian epitaphs of Lycaonia.291 Only a lengthy fourth-century verse inscription from the Upper Tembris Valley set up by a Novatian Christian family described their exceptionally pious daughter

287 So, rightly, Robert, Hell. XI/XII, 426–27; compare Ramsay, CB I.2, 517 with similar observations on the compatibility of conventional ethical thinking about the pleasures of life with Christian doctrine. 288 The third verse reads οἱ δὴ δίκαιοι πάντοτ᾽ εἰς ἀνάστασιν. The next two lines of the inscription are damaged. Buckler and Calder suggested [πρ]οδε[ικνύ]ουσι τ[. .] |τ….  … . Θεός. Ramsay had copied … ΛΕ … … ΟΥΣΠ . . |ΤΟ…. … . ΕΛϹ. Sheppard in his 1979 article, proposed τ[οῦ]|το δυνα[μέων] Θεός, marking the first six letters after the line break and the theta as uncertain. His squeeze, accessible on the BIAA web-site, confirms the readings of the third verse (including δίκαιοι and ἀνάστασιν). An alternative restoration in the fourth verse could be [τ]όδ᾽ ἐ[κφράζ]ουσι, τοῦ|το Δυνα[μέων] Θεός. 289 So the sixth century gravestone from Sebaste: [†] ἐνταῦθα κῖται | [ὁ] ἅγιος Παυλῖνος | [κτ]ίστης κὲ κοινωνὸς | [ἔχω]ν τὴν χάριν | [Θ(εο)ῦ] ἔτη πε´| [ὁ ἅγ]ιος Τρόφιμος | μάρτυς. Tabernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 490–96 no. 80 (ICG 1363); see below chapter 5.13 n. 10. 290 S. Mitchell, Apostle to Ankara (2005), 207–23; I. Ankara 2, 411 (ICG 3761). 291 Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 441–47.

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Ammia, who had been baptised on her death bed, as ἁγία.292 Gaius proclaimed his own faith and piety in an unusually emphatic form.293 This piety was clearly connected to that of his Christian companion. Roubes, we should assume, was the teacher who had inspired Gaius, himself a grounded and cultivated professional lawyer. What had brought them together? It is not too far-fetched to evoke another well documented and life-changing association between a trainee lawyer and a charismatic and deeply learned Christian teacher, who were close contemporaries of Roubes and Gaius: Origen of Alexandria, towering intellectual champion of third-century Christianity, and Gregory, the later bishop of Neocaesareia in Pontus. Gregory, formerly known by the name Theodorus, had been sent from his home city in Pontus to study law at Berytus in Syria, the main centre for legal education in the eastern Roman Empire. In the mid 230s Origen was compelled to leave his native city Alexandria for Caesarea, the Roman administrative centre of Palestine, where he began to teach pupils and disciples. Theodorus became a devoted student, abandoned his legal studies when these were well advanced, and returned, reborn and renamed Gregorius, to his native Pontus, probably around the time of Origen’s death in 254. Here he became the first bishop of Neocaesareia and the central figure in the conversion of the region to Christianity. Gregory expressed his debt to Origen in a Panegyric of his teacher.294 It is entirely possible that Gaius as a young man had also travelled to Berytus to acquire his legal training. There he could have met and attended the preaching and teaching of Roubes. Under circumstances which we cannot know, the two came back together to Phrygia, where Roubes joined Gaius’s household. The older man died first, and with his passing Gaius created the tomb which would serve first his religious mentor, and then his whole family. There was an epilogue. After the death of Roubes, the owner of a neighbouring grave, Aurelius Zotikos Lykidas, called upon the teacher’s angel to provide protection for his own tomb, εἴ τις δὲ ἕτερον θήσει, ἔστε αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν καὶ τὸν ἄνγελον τὸν Ῥουβῆδος (fig. 20 and 21). This testifies to the stature of Roubes as a Christian leader, and to the belief in angels, which is attested by many texts in and beyond Phrygia, and can be traced back at least to the time of Paul’s 292 ICG 1689; see 256–8. 293 Presumably he was a layman. 294 R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (London 1985), 479–507; S. Mitchell, The life and lives of Gregory Thaumaturgus, in J. W. Drijvers and J. W. Watt (eds), Portraits of Spiritual Authority. Religious Power in early Christianity, Byzantium and the Christian Orient (Leiden 1999), 99–138 at 99–108; F. Celia, Studying the scriptures at the school of Caesarea: the testimony of Gregory of Neocaesarea’s oratio panegyrica, Origeniana Duodecima (Leuven, 2019), 285–295.

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Figure 20 ICG 1031 detail of line 15: Roubes servant of Θ(εο)ῦ Χ(ριστο)ῦ Anthony Sheppard

Figure 21 Eumeneia (Haydan). Funerary altar of Aur. Zotikos Lykidas, front face. ICG 1028 Anthony Sheppard

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mission.295 In this case we should surely understand the angel of Roubes as the spirit of a man that lived on and retained its spiritual power after his death. The nearest explicit parallels for this belief are the collection of about seventy funerary steles recorded on the island of Thera, dating to the third or fourth centuries, usually inscribed with the simple formula ἄγγελος followed by a name in the genitive. The religious associations of the Thera angels have been disputed, but there are decisive indications that these were Christian burials, although they may have been influenced by Jewish notions and practices.296 In a lengthy recent discussion Horsley and Luxford cautiously but surely rightly infer that ‘we may not be far from the idea that the angel is the soul of the deceased’. More speculatively in respect of the angel of Roubes, they suppose that the belief and practice were brought from Thera to Eumeneia. There is no other indication of such a connection, and the angels at Thera do not, according to their own analysis, play the role of protectors of other persons’ graves.297 This function, however, is explicitly attributed to an unnamed angel on an inscription from another Cycladic island, Melos, painted on the wall of a catacomb, probably around the middle of the fourth century, for a single religious household consisting of three priests, a deacon, two dedicated virgins and the women’s mother: καὶ ἐπὶ γέμι τὸ θήκιον τοῦτο, ἐνορκίζω ὑμᾶς τὸν ὧδε ἐφεστῶτα ἄνγελον μή τίς ποτε τολμῇ ἐνθάδε τινὰ καταθέσθε. Ἰησοῦ Χρειστέ, βοήθει τῷ γράψαντι πανοικί, ‘since this tomb is groaning, I adjure you by the angel that stands guard here, let no one dare to place anyone else here. Jesus Christ, assist the writer and the whole household.’298 It is arbitrary to think of a direct connection between the Melos and the Eumeneia texts. Rather, the idea of a guardian angel being invoked to protect the grave had certainly arisen independently in 295 See Mitchell, Anatolia II, 46 and index s.v. angels, and the comprehensive discussion of G. H. R. Horsley and Jean M. Luxford, Pagan angels in Roman Asia Minor: revisiting the epigraphic evidence, Anatolian Studies 66 (2016), 141–83, a study that is not confined to pagan examples. Further discussion in chapter 6.5. 296 They were Christian according to H. Grégoire; pagan according to M. Guarducci; and gnostic according to G. Kiourtzian, Recueil des inscriptions grecques chrétiennes des Cyclades, de la fin du IIIe au VIIIe siècle après J. C. (Paris 2000), 247–82. 297 Horsley and Luxford, Pagan angels, 160–69. 298 IG XII.3.1238. The devout household for whom this tomb was reserved resembles and might have been nearly contemporary with the family-based monastic community created by the elder Macrina, sister of Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa, in Pontus. D. Feissel, Notes d’ épigraphie chrétienne II, BCH 101 (1977), 212–14 comments on the resemblance of the Melos and Eumeneia examples, and has also argued for the ‘role tutélaire des anges’ at Thera. But if so, they must simply have been protecting their own graves, and it is better here to adopt Horsley and Luxford’s view that they were simply the souls of the dead, without emphasizing their tutelary function.

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two distinct, devout communities, which drew on common ideas in Jewish and Christian thinking about the nature and role of angels. There may yet be another, more mundane, reason to explain the spirit of Roubes and the connection to the funerary monument set up by the lwayer Gaius. The tomb’s maker, Aurelius Zotikos Lykidas had been in dispute with his brother over rights to the tomb. He called God to witness the righteousness of his cause: μάρτυρα τὸν Θεὸν δίδω ὅτι κατεσκεύασα τὸ ἡρῷον, νωθρῶς ἔχοντος Ἀμιανοῦ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ, ἀπὸ τῶν ἐμῶν καμάτων καὶ ἐντέλλομε Φρονίμη(ν) καὶ Μαξίμαν τὰς ἀδελφάς μου τεθῆνε μόνας.299 ‘I present God as my witness that I built the tomb, despite the sluggish apathy of my brother Amianus, with my own labour, and I give instructions that only my sisters Phronima and Maxima should be buried there.’ The text uses explicitly legal terms relating to the calling of witnesses and issuing instructions (μάρτυς, ἐντέλλομαι). Τhis surely reflects a dispute between Zotikos and Amianos, perhaps an actual court case, and we can make a shrewd guess that Gaius the lawyer had been involved in the hearing and the adjudication. After the dispute had been resolved in his favour, Aur. Zotikos completed the family tomb for himself and his two sisters, explicitly excluded his contentious brother, and appealed for protection to the angel of Gaius’s mentor Roubes. This was a dispute which had arisen in a close-knit Christian community in which all the participants were intertwined with one another. This reconstruction of the connected lives and dealings of Gaius the lawyer, his probable client, and their Christian mentor, Rubes, who had moved from his homeland in the Near East, fits well into moral values of the society which were set out explicitly in other grave monuments, in the flourishing Christian community of Apamea and Eumeneia. Gaius himself made clear that his Christian beliefs, above all in the resurrection of the righteous, were not at odds with, but conformed with the conventional secular virtues of high-minded local citizens. He would have recognised the similar sentiments also put into moralising poetry by the steadfast Menogenes of Apamea,300 in the epigram composed for Gellia of Smyrna, another immigrant to the κλυτὸν πέδον, the ‘famous plain’ of Eumeneia, in whom beauty, god-given wisdom and virtue were completely unified,301 and the allusion to wisdom, friendship, good faith and gratitude expressed more laconically in the verses of Aelius 299 Robert, Hell. XI/XII, 429–35; Sheppard, Christians and Heretics in Acmonia and Eumenia, 175–76 (ICG 1028). 300 ICG 1571; see 132–3. 301 Drew Bear, Nouvelles inscriptions de Phrygie, 75–8 no. 8; SGO 3, 179, 16/06/02; ICG 1033: δῶκε δέ σοι σοφίην̣ θεὸς οὐρανῷ ἐνβα[σιλεύων], / ὄφρα τεὸν φιλέουσα πόσ[ιν κλέος] ἄφθιτον ἕξεις· / κιρναμέ[νη κάλ]λει σοφίην ἀρετήν τε τε[λείαν(?)]. Perhaps this was the work of Gaius.

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Figure 22 Squeeze of the right-hand side of ICG 1028, mentioning the angel of Roubes British Institute at Ankara, Digital Repsitory

Myrismos.302 None of these texts blatantly refers to the Christianity of these families, and their religious affiliation has been called into question, but this misses the key point. The Christian beliefs of thoughtful and responsible men and women at Apamea and Eumeneia were not at all in conflict with 302 ICG 4462; see 132 n. 164.

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the conventional morality of the educated citizen class. They were admirably adapted to reinforce them. 4.6

Western Phrygia and The Myso-Lydian Borderland (Maps 8 and 12)

Eumeneia’s northern neighbour was Sebaste and the standard Eumeneian formula occurs on four inscriptions. One was set up by Claudius Trophimus for himself, alone (fig. 23),303 and another by a doctor and city counsellor Aur. Messalas, son of Messalas, for his wife Ammia and their grandchild, also called Messalas.304 Two other texts set up respectively by Aur. Dionysius and Antonius Pollio, a trader (παντοπώλης), are dated to 252/53 and 255/56.305 Another funerary altar found on the territory of Sebaste near the village of Erice, reportedly in the collapsed ruins of an early Christian church, was put up by a couple Menophilos and Ammia for Παίθῳ ἀδελφῷ Χρειστιανῷ, with the collaboration of Paithos’s (or Paetus’s) wife Alexandria and their children.306 If this was a regular close-kin burial it would be normal for the wife to have taken precedence in the text.307 The Erice inscription appears to be an example where the term brother, as was noted in the neighbouring Pentapolis, refers to the Christian brotherhood rather than to the kinship between Menophilos or Ammia (either would be possible) and Paithos. A doorstone from Kırka on the territory of Sebaste, has the laconic inscription Ἀρτεμίδωρος Ἡλιάδῃ Χριστιανῷ carved on the triangular gable.308 The Kırka tombstone probably illustrated the same phenomenon, to the extent that the identification of Artemidorus and Heliades as Christians, eclipsed their family relationships. 303 CB I.2, 560 no. 450; BCC, JRS 1926, 93 no. 226 (ICG 1022). 304 CB I.2, 560 no. 451 (ICG 4468): Αὐρ. Μεσσάλας β´ Σεβαστηνός, ἰατρὸς βουλευτής … οὐκ ἔχοντος ἐξουσίαν ἑτέρου ἐπισενενκεῖν μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν τοῦ Μεσσάλα· εἰ δὲ μή, ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεόν. 305 CB I.2, 560 no. 448 (ICG 1609); CB I.2, 560 no. 449 (ICG 1610). 306 MAMA XI 85 (ICG 1286): Μηνόφιλος καὶ ἡ γυνὴ αὐτοῦ Ἀμμία Παίθῳ ἀδελφῷ Χρειστιανῷ κὲ Ἀλεξανδρία Παίθῳ ἀνδρὶ κὲ τὰ παίδια αὐτῶν μνείας χάριν ἐπῦησαν. Even if the report of the find-spot is correct, the church must be much later than the inscription. 307 Compare an inscription from Meydan in northern Lycaonia: Αὐρη. Καλπορνία δεφὴ καὶ Πῶλα δελπὴ κα Μουνα ἀδελπὴ μννάμνης χάριν. εἴ τις θελήσι ἕτερον ἐπενβαλε, ἔσθε αὐτῷ φρὸς τὸν θεόν (ICG 422). The three sisters, named without reference to other kin, must be members of a sorority, confirmed as Christian by the use on their grave of the Eumeneian formula; another text from the same village ended with the Eumeneian formula and includes the abbreviated nomen sacrum Θ(εό)Ν and appears to mention a presbyter (ICG 425). Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 521 hesitate unnecessarily to call these texts Christian. 308 MAMA XI 82; (ICG 1477). Artemidorus might be the veteran bishop of Temenothyrae (ICG 1371; see 180).

section 4.6: Western Phrygia and The Myso-Lydian Borderland

Figure 23 Sebaste (Selçikler). Stele of Aur. Trophimos. ICG 1022 W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen

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Stones from Sebaste have sometimes been carted south from the ancient site to the region of Eumeneia.309 These include the tomb of a Christian family which was carved on a doorstone from a Sebaste workshop, but seen at Menteş, a village SSW of Işıklı. Doorstones were not a form of funerary monument in use at Eumeneia.310 The stone carried two texts, both Christian. The primary inscription, from the first half of the third century, reads Εὐγένιος πρ(εσβύτερος) [Πρό]κλῃ τῇ ἀδε[λφῇ ἀνέσ]τησεν μνήμη[ς χάρι]ν. Ῥουφεῖνος Ι [-]. This is one of the earliest mentions of a Christian priest on a Phrygian tombstone, but the doorstones set up for clergy members at neighbouring Temenothyrae, probably between 180 and 215, provide contemporary parallels. Prokle might be a natural sister of Rufinus, or a sister in the Christian sense. In any case Eugenios will have served the brotherhood implied by Sebaste’s other third-century texts.311 The secondary text, carved in the triangular pediment of the doorstone is dated 435 (Sullan era) = AD 350: ἔτους υλε´ μη. β´· Τρύφων ἐκυμήθη. The secondary text did not displace its predecessor, and it is logical to assume that Tryphon was granted right of burial in the existing tomb, either because he was a descendant of one of those named in the earlier text, or, more likely, because he too was a prominent member of the Christian community. This is a notably early occurrence of the verb ἐκυμήθη, but the usage is not surprising, given the wide prevalence of the word κοιμητήριον/κυμητήριον to denote Christian tombs in third-century Phrygia. One of the most striking and homogeneous groups of pre-Constantinian Christian inscriptions from Phrygia comes from the Temenothyrae, the first Phrygian settlement reached by travellers coming along the Hermus Valley from Lydia. The site’s remains are buried beneath the modern Turkish provincial centre of Uşak.312 Temenothyrae, described by Pausanias as a city of moderate size in upper Lydia, was metropolis of a region called Mokadene.313 A late Hellenistic inscription found in north-west Lydia mentions ὁ περὶ Μοκαδα δῆμος as one of four communities including Ancyra Sidera,314 and αccording to Ptolemy two peoples called the Mokkadenoi and the Kydisseis

309 See Ramsay, CB 1.2, 365–6 with 604 no. 478, for a statue base for Marcus Aurelius put up by the council and people of the Sebasteni, which was copied at Işıklı. See P. Thonemann in MAMA XI p. 58. 310 T. Drew-Bear, Nouvelles inscriptions de Phrygie (1978), 110 no. 49; SEG 28, 1129 (ICG 1039). 311 Rufinus might hypothetically be an unrelated member of the brotherhood, like Phellinas at Temenothyrae, discussed on 186–8. 312 T. Drew-Bear, The City of Temenouthyrai in Phrygia, Chiron 9 (1979), 275–302. 313 IGR IV 618, λαμπροτάτη μητρόπολις τῆς Μοκαδηνῆς. 314 SEG 33, 1004 from Yiğitler near Demirci.

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lived in Great Phrygia close to Bithynia.315 Mokadene extended fifty kilometres west of Temenothyrae to include the town of Silandus, which was also called a μητρόπολις τῆς Μοκαδηνῆς, as well as a village in the same region called Thermai Theseos, ‘the Baths of Theseus’.316 The area of these settlements included the small Roman towns of Bagis and Lyendos, which lie west of Uşak.317 According to the Roman division of the province of Asia into assize districts, these communities in the upper Hermus valley were in the conventus of Lydia’s largest city, Sardeis. However, the population of this region in the late hellenistic period regarded itself as Mysian. Epigraphic discoveries have shown that many of the settlements assigned to North-East Lydia (including the regions of Catacecaumene and Maionia) belonged to Mysian Abbaitis.318 The Mysoi Abbaitai were responsible for setting up inscribed decrees at Cadi and Silandus, and minted coins.319 A famous passage suggests that the Montanist movement originated in this transitional area between Lydia, Mysia and Phrygia, at a village called Ardabau.320 ‘Ardabau’ (we cannot be sure of the name in its transmitted form) was situated at the western edge of the Phrygian circle. Since Montanus and his followers were soon to create their own new centres at Pepuza and at Tymion, one of two villages belonging to an imperial estate, located at the village of Şükraniye, south of Temenothyrae, Ardabau probably also belonged in this neighbourhood.321 This information from Eusebius provides a valuable social and geographical context for evaluating the earliest Christian inscriptions from the region. The most important of these have been identified at Temenothyrae and at the smaller city of Traianopolis.322 Traianopolis, which was located at Çarık Köy, about ten kilometres on the main road leading east from Uşak, 315 The Kydisseis lived around the small city called Kidyessos, which was located near the village of Balmahmut, between Dumlupınar and Afyon, more than forty kilometres east of Acmonia; see MAMA XI nos. 160–74, and chapter 5.14). 316 TAM V. 1, 71 (Thermai Theseos); Habicht, JRS 65 (1975), 72. The inscription from Ephesus published by Habicht lists communities in the assize district of Sardis in the following sequence: Macedones, Ancyrani, Synaeitai, Mocadeni, Cadyeneis, Lorenaioi, Iouleis Gordenoi, and Habicht infers that the territory of the Mocadeni between Silandus and Temenothyrai extended north of the Hermus river towards the Simav Dağları. 317 Pausanias I.35.7; Ptolemy 5.2.27; P. Herrmann, TAM V.1 1 ff. (inscriptions of NE Lydia); Drew Bear, Chiron 1979, 277 nn. 10–11. 318 T. Lochman, 204 with nn. 28–29: ‘Vielmehr mit Phrygien als mit Lydien in Verbindung’; ‘Lydien selbst ist ein stark hellenisiertes Gebiet’. 319 See Chapter 2.1) n. 41. 320 Eusebius, HE 5.16.7; see above chapter 1.3). 321 See further chapters 1.3 and 7.2 for Pepuza and Tymion. 322 For Traianopolis, see S. Mitchell, Trajan and the cities of the East, in I. Piso (ed.) Traian und seine Städte (Cluj-Napoca 2014), 225–32 at 225 n. 3.

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was one of two settlements of a people called the Grimenothyritae.323 Temenothyrae itself was no more than a day’s journey for a normal traveler from Sebaste or Acmonia, and two day’s distant from Eumeneia along well established roads. The earliest Christian texts from Temenothyrae were inscribed on a group of about a dozen impressive funerary monuments produced in the same workshop between c.180 and 220.324 Three of the published examples displayed a single door, but eight others had a double-door façade, all with elaborate decoration. The door sections are between 1.05 and 1.30 metres high, and about 25–30 centimetres deep, but only made up the middle course of the original grave monuments. The bottoms of the blocks were finished with anathyrosis, the technique which enabled a mason or builder to place one block accurately on another, indicating that the doors stood on bases or plinths, and all of them have flat tops for supporting a gable. Their design resembled that of the impressive series of single, double and triple doorstones at Aezani, dating to the Antonine period (c.140–180), which were placed on decorated stone plinths, and capped by architraves, friezes and a pediment with consoles and cornices, all carved on a single elaborate gable block. The largest Aezani examples, which were between 3.50 and 4 metres high, resembled the facades of small temples or monumental tombs and were used by the city’s wealthiest families.325 Although smaller, the Temenothyrae series were also important symbols of wealth and standing. The earliest of the Temenothyrae series displayed a single, rather squat four-panelled door between two pilasters decorated with an ivy leaf design, below an arch. In the arch above the door there is a relief of a three-legged table which supports a disc decorated with a simple incised cross. The arch spandrels are filled with a fleshy lily-flower design, and the two-line inscription is crisply cut on a projecting band at the top of the stone (fig. 24): Δειογᾶς Ἀρτεμιδώρῳ ἐβισκόβῳ | ἐκκ τοῦ κυριακοῦ μνήμης χάριν (ICG 1371). The Christian character of the monument is not in doubt. Artemidorus was a bishop, holding the same title and status in his community as Aur. Valens the shoemaker at Apamea (ICG 972) and Aur. Glykon at Eumeneia (ICG 1049). Two other monuments are closely associated with it. Another single doorstone decorated with a spindle, distaff and a small box, was inscribed Διογᾶς ἐβίσκο|πος Ἀμμίῳ 323 F. Imhoof-Blümer, Die Prägeorte der Abbaiter, Festchrift für Otto Benndorf, 204–207. 324 For what follows see S. Mitchell, An epigraphic probe into the origins of Montanism, in Thonemann (ed.), Roman Phrygia, 168–97. 325 K. Jes, Türgrabsteine in Aizanoi II: Fassadenmonumente mit Scheintür, Ist. Mitt. 51 (2001) 279–318; for the dating see Waelkens, Türsteine, 46–49.

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Figure 24 Temenothyrae. Funerary doorstone for bishop Artemidorus. ICG 1371 Marc Waelkens

πρεσ|βυτέρᾳ μνήμης | χάριν (ICG 1372). The stone, copied in the late nineteenth century, has not survived, and no photograph exists, but neither the reading, including the feminine form πρεσβύτερα, nor the identity of bishop Diogas with the man who had buried bishop Artemidorus is in any doubt. Diogas appears for a third time on a double doorstone from the same series erected by his wife: Αὐρ. Τατιανὴ ἑαυτῇ ζῶσα σεαυτῇ καὶ Διογᾷ συνβ[ί]ῳ ἐβισκόπῳ μνήμης χάριν (ICG 1373; fig. 25). On this monument, the doors between arches have been replaced by two recessed niches. The left-hand niche is decorated with a mirror, a scent bottle, a wool-basket and a carding comb carved in relief. The right-hand niche contains a table with elaborate legs standing on a plinth, and on it a disk with eight solar rays surrounding a simple incised cross. The gravestone’s design matched the couple’s profile; the female implements were

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Figure 25 Temenothyrae. Funerary doorstone of bishop Diogas. ICG 1373 Marc Waelkens

fit for a model wife, the cross within a circle showing the sun’s rays, or, better, a victory wreath, for the leader of Temenothyrae’s Christian community. Artemidorus had been a single man, or a widower without living children and of modest means when he died, and was buried with church funds. There are no close epigraphic parallels for the expression ἐκκ τοῦ κυριακοῦ in a similar context, but the explanation is difficult to avoid.326 Diogas, although he lacked a title in this text, was presumably his deputy as well as his successor, since he took charge of the burial. Probably not long after, now bishop himself, he undertook the same duty for a leading Christian woman, Ammion. We may 326 A 4th century inscription from a village on the territory of Blaundus reads [κοι]μητήριν | Χρεισ|τιανῶν {Χριστιανῶν} καθολι|κῆς ἐκλησίας τοῦ|το ἔκτισε Γεννά|διος Ἡλίου ἐξ ὧν | αὐτῷ ὁ θεὸς ἔδωκε. vac εἰρήνη αὐ|τῷ παρὰ Κυρίου | ἰς ἅπαντας εῶ|νας. It is conceivable the funds ‘provided by God’ were from the church’s own resources, but a more likely explanation is that Gennadios used the private fortune which God had granted him to create a tomb for the use of unnamed Christians of the catholic (post-Nicene) church, who may have lacked the means to provide for their own burials. See P. Herrmann, Neue Inschriften zur historischen Landeskunde von Lydien und angrenzenden Gebieten (DAKWien 77.1, Vienna 1959), 13 (SEG 19, 719); Bull. ép. 1960, 364 (ICG 4509); cited by Rebillard, Koimeterion 979 n. 34.

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assume that she had no close living family members, and was evidently elderly. Excepting the prominent positions held by women in the early Montanist community, especially the prophetesses Maximilla, Priscilla, and Quintilla, the title πρεσβύτερα is unique among the Christians of Phrygia and hardly paralleled elsewhere.327 At this early date, before the end of the second century, we cannot assume that there was an established clerical hierarchy in the community, and Ammion appears to have been a spiritual leader among the Christian women of Temenothyrae, a female counterpart to Artemidorus. We might speculate that she had the status of a presbyteros, but did not necessarily fulfil the liturgical functions of a male priest. Diogas himself was married and shared a tomb with his wife Tatiane who outlived him. She bore the pseudo-praenomen Aurelia, indicating that the burial occurred after 212, but the date should not be much later than this. Two other double doorstones from the same series are also undoubtedly Christian, one set up by Asclepiades for himself and his wife Melte (ICG 1375), the other by Marcia for her nephew (ἀδελφοτέκνον) Lucius and his wife Tatia (ICG 1374). Both displayed the same motif as the gravestone for Diogas, an elaborate table supporting a cross within a solar disc or a victory wreath. This motif also appears on a broken stone from the same series, on which the personal names are no longer preserved (ICG 1376). ICG 1374 and 1375 appear to be a few years earlier than Diogas’s grave as none of the persons mentioned had acquired the name Aurelius. This onomastic evidence provides an important argument for dating the whole Christian series between the burial of Artemidorus around 180 and that of his successor Diogas around 215.328 William Tabbernee also places the earliest in the series between 200 and 210, about twenty years earlier than the date range favoured by Marc Waelkens.329 327 There is a valuable discussion of possible parallels, mostly in early Jewish communities, in Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 67–72, but there is no compelling reason to accept his conclusion, and that of Elsa Gibson, Montanists at Uşak, 437–38, that Ammion was a Montanist female priest. 328 Sabine Huebner’s study of clergy in Asia Minor established that bishops, priests and deacons generally avoided using the Aurelius name on their inscriptions, even when this was taken by their family members (Huebner, Klerus, 57). However, neither ICG 1374 nor 1375 were the graves of clergy (pace McKechnie, Christianizing Asia Minor, 137). Stylistically they are hardly distinguishable from ICG 1373. 329 Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 62–86 nos. 3–8, suggested 200–210 for the graves of Artemidorus and Ammion, the second quarter of the 3rd century for the rest of the group, although without detailed arguments. E. Gibson, Montanist epitaphs at Uşak, GRBS 16 (1975), 433–38 did not try to date the texts. Waelkens’ late chronology conflicts with his own observation that the series was modelled on the productions of the Aezani workshops, which he dated mostly to the middle and third quarter of the second century.

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Τhe onomastic argument for dating the series falls short of definitive proof, because not all families or individuals chose to place the Aurelius name on their tombstones after 212. The inscription from Temenothyrae for Eutyches and his family and their associate Phellinas, which should be dated to 232/3 (ICG 1288, see below), as well as some mid-third-century texts from Eumeneia,330 show that families and individuals might omit the Roman citizen nomenclature. However, the early chronology at Temenothyrae is supported by the dating of non-Christian tombstones in the same typological series. Two doorstones, respectively for Iskopellianos and Severa set up by their children Tatianos and Clemens, and for Clemens’s eighteen-year-old daughter Severa, have no Aurelius names,331 while two other non-Christian examples in the series mention Aurelii.332 It is natural to date the latter after and the former before 212, and there is a prosopographical argument to support this early dating. The gravestone of Iskopellianos, which stylistically resembles the monument for bishop Artemidorus at the beginning of the Christian series, appears to commemorate a citizen of Temenothyrae with the same unusual name, Skopelianos son of Zeuxis, who acted as mint-master for coin issues between 150–161. He is likely to have lived until c.180, but not until 210.333 The tombstone of his grand-daughter Severa, a touching epitaph which compared her to the lilies which featured on the grave’s decoration, can be placed around 190. An honorific statue base for Aurelius Clodius Eutyches, a city benefactor, which was set up by Aur. Skopelianos son of Zeuxis shows that the family remained prominent for another generation after 212.334 This Zeuxis, father of Aur. Skopelianos, was probably a son of either Tatianos or Clemens, and derived his name from his great-grandfather.335

The style of monument would have been decidedly old-fashioned if it did not reach Temenothyrae until around 220. See Mitchell, Epigraphic probe, 185–88. 330 ICG 1288 see below; Eumeneia: ICG 1034; 1043; ?1051; 1053; ?1056; 1060. Some of these Eumeneia texts may have had the Aurelius name in broken parts of the inscription, and all of them date to the mid-3rd century. 331 Waelkens, Türsteine nos. 369 and 371. 332 Waelkens, Türsteine no. 376, and an unpublished example in Uşak Museum noted by Peter Thonemann; see Mitchell, Epigraphic probe, 186. 333 Roman Provincial Coinage (on-line at http://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk) 2179, 2991, see Mitchell, Epigraphic probe, 189 fig. 8. 334 IGR IV 615. 335 Mitchell, Epigraphic probe, 188–90; Gibson, Montanists at Uşak, 441 n. 30 also identified the Iskopellianos of the doorstone with the Skopelianos Zeuxi(dos) of the Antonine coin issue.

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Since their first publication by Elsa Gibson, the Christian examples in this closely related group of doorstones have been assumed to be Montanist.336 However, the only argument for this is the presence of the female presbyter, evidently an elderly member of the community who kept close company with the male church leadership. At this early date, we cannot rule out that this revered woman received priestly status. The monuments betray no other signs that they are Montanist. It is more plausible to see thεm as representative of the Christian mainstream in Temenothyrae, at odds with the breakaway movement, which under their prophetic leaders created new settlements out of the city in the bleak rural territory where they founded their new Jerusalem.337 Another revealing document from the Christian community at Temenothyrae is a doorstone of Docimian marble copied at Uşak in 1843 by Philippe Le Bas and noted there by K. Buresch in 1895 and J. Keil in 1908,338 before it was transported to Izmir. The best photograph, taken by an unknown person in the Basmane Museum depot in Izmir perhaps in the 1920s or 1930s and now in the archive of the DAI Rom, was reproduced in Waelkens’ corpus of doorstones. A subsequent photograph printed in Elsa Gibson’s Christians for Christians study, shows that the inscription text had become worn and the first line was hardly legible.339 The text ended with the plural ethnic Τεμενοθυρεῖς, and this supports the inference from the original find-spot that the stone came from Temenothyrae.340 However, the doorstone type is typical of the Docimian workshops in the Afyon region, and it was probably commissioned by the

336 McKechnie, Christianizing Asia Minor, 132 is dogmatic: ‘A distinctive feature of Montanist churches vis-à-vis the Great Church was that they had female clergy, and therefore any chance that the epitaph might come from a non-Montanist context is ruled out.’ He develops the argument on p. 145; see Tabbernee’s more nuanced discussion, Montanist Inscriptions, 68–72. 337 The argument of Mitchell, An epigraphic probe into the origins of Montanism, in Thonemann (ed.), Roman Phrygia, 191–7, has been contested implicitly by P. Lampe, Early Christianity 7 (2016), 381–94 at 388–90, and explicitly by McKechnie, Christianizing Asia Minor, 132–9 and 143–6. 338 Le Bas Waddington III.1 no. 727; K. Buresch, Aus Lydien, 162 (omitting line 1); Keil noted the find spot as ‘Uschak, Hadji Hassan Mahalle, in dem Baptisterion einer in Ruinen liegenden armenischen Kirche verkehrt eingemauert’. The text was reproduced by Ramsay, although he had not seen the stone himself, CB I.2, 558 no. 444 (ICG 1288). 339 Waelkens, Türsteine no. 488, reproducing Neg. DAI Rom 1974.1819; Gibson, Christians for Christians, plate 31. 340 See T. Drew-Bear, Temenothyrae (1979), 292–93 no. 1; the use of the ethnic at Temenothyrae itself is paralleled, for instance, by many citizens of Eumeneia who used their ethnic on the inscriptions of their home town.

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Temenothyrae family and produced for export, as were many Docimian sarcophagi in the second century.341 The first line of the text carries a date, but has been consistently misinterpreted. Le Bas reported the reading ἔτους τξγ´μη. Περειτίου ι´, 10 Pereitios in the year 363 (Sullan era) corresponding to 278/79. This reading was adopted in all subsequent editions until Thomas Drew-Bear drew attention to Keil’s unpublished notebook copy (fig. 26), which corrected the figure for the year to τζι´, 317, separated by punctuation marks, i.e. 232/3.342 This reading is confirmed by the DAI photograph published by Waelkens, and according to the revised dating the stone was carved less than twenty years after the last of the main Temenothyrae series. The overloaded decorative style and heavy use of the drill for the ornamentation of the stone are appropriate for the late Severan period, not the end of the third century, and the Docimian workshops in any case had ceased production of monuments like this before 250.343 The whole inscription reads ἔτους τζι´ μη(νὸς) Περειτίου ί | Εὐτύχης Εὐτύχου Τατί|ᾳ γυναικὶ καὶ πατρὶ μνή|μης χάριν, Χρειστιανοί, | καὶ ἑαυτῷ Φελλίνας, Τεμενοθυρ|εῖς.344 Τhe family group is clear, Eutyches made the gravestone for his homonymous father and his wife Tatia. However, the last line adds another name, the unusual, probably indigenous form Phellinas.345 Ramsay, followed by Waelkens and hesitantly by Tabernee, deduced that Phellinas was the stone-mason, but this is implausible.346 The professional activity is indicated 341 Waelkens, Türsteine no. 488, recognised that the type matched those from the valley of the Akar Çay, and suggested that the stone itself came from a site in the Afyon region; Lochman, Phrygien III, 55, attributes the production to a Docimian workshop, and suggests that a Docimian atelier may have set up business at Temenothyrae. M. Waelkens, The sarcophagus workshop of Dokimeion, in E. Özer, Aizanoi IV. The International symposium on burial customs 2018 (Istanbul 2019), 537–627, has reappraised the production of Docimian sarcophagi through the second century and argues that all of them were produced in a single workshop at Docimian itself, not in subsidiary external ateliers. 342 T. Drew-Bear, Chiron 10 (1980) 639 corrected his earlier report of Keil’s reading in Chiron 1979, 292 n. 86, from τξγ´ (as in the apparatus of Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 241–48 no. 36 at 243) to τζι´. I am grateful to Thomas Corsten and Vera Hofmann for copying the relevant page of Keil’s notebook and for photographs of the squeeze that he made. 343 Lochman, Phrygien, 117 and 124–25. 344 Apart from the date, this is the text established by Drew-Bear, Temenothyrae (1979), 292–93 no. 1; The published photographs confirm Χρειστιανοί not –οῖς, and Τεμενοθυρεῖς not Τημενοθυρεύς. Divergent readings are recorded in Tabbernee’s app. crit. 345 The closest parallel that I can see for the name is Selinas, bishop of the Gothic Arian foederati in the 380s, born of a Gothic father and a Phrygian mother; Socrates, HE V.23; Sozomen, HE VII.17.7–8; and 364. 346 Phellinas has nevertheless entered the academic literature on ancient sculptors and even earned a Wikipedia entry for himself, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phellinas, which provides a spurious biography.

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Figure 26 Temenothyrae. Inscribed doorstone set up by Eutyches and Phellinas in 232/3. ICG 1288 Asia Minor Archive, University of Vienna, courtesy of Thomas Corsten

neither by a verb (ἐποίει) nor a noun (λάτυπος). Phellinas, like everyone named on the stone, was identified by the plural ethnic at the end as coming from Temenothyrae, but the monument, from its style, was the work of Docimian craftsmen. Furthermore, the reflexive pronoun ἑαυτῷ must refer to Phellinas and not to Eutyches the son, as it is syntactically separated from the main burial formula by the designation Χρειστιανοί. The inscription’s physical layout also supports this interpretation. The text that related to the family, ending with the word Χρειστιανοί, was cut in the tabula ansata above the door. The date, which was inscribed when the monument was completed,347 was carved in smaller letters on the narrow upper rim of the tabula ansata, while the last line, in letters that resemble those of the preceding lines, was added on the top of the doorframe, with the final three letters placed vertically on the right side of the frame. It appears that Eutyches the son commissioned the tomb in the usual way as shown by lines 2–4 of the inscription, while Phellinas was responsible for the wording of the additional lines. Αlthough it is likely that the inscription was cut at one moment, two stages of composition can be detected. Phellinas, an outsider to the family, completed the burial ritual, ex hypothesi 347 It does not mark the date of death, as this was not the tomb of one individual.

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acting for the Christian brotherhood of Temenothyrae, and emphasized this by placing the collective ethnic at the end of the text.348 Another similar but not identical Docimian-style doorstone, dated by Waelkens to the first quarter of the third century, has been recorded at Çarık köy and attributed to the small neighbouring city of Traianopolis.349 This too has a short inscription carved within a tabula ansata reading simply Θεοδώρου leaf | Χρειστιανοῦ | μνήμης χάριν.350 As no family is mentioned and Theodorus does not claim to have commissioned the tombstone himself, it is likely that this too was a burial arranged by the Christian community for one of its members. These, like other doorstones produced by Docimian artisans, had been transported along the road that ran west from Afyon through central Phrygia. The prominent appearance of the word Χρειστιανοῦ, here placed after the name Theodorus, is a phenomenon common to several other Phrygian grave monuments, and it is instructive to compare them with one another. An elaborately decorated stele, first recorded in Kütahya but identifiable as one of a series of similar monuments produced by a workshop at or near Cadi in north-west Phrygia, has an inscription put up by Auxanon for his dead father Tryphon and mother Auxanouse in her lifetime, and ending with the word Χρησιανοί.351 Thomas Lochman in his study of the products of this workshop has argued for a date for this stone between 150 and 160.352 It is significant that this is the only example in the series studied by Lochman which does not portray a human figure. However, the crudely carved final word seems to be a later addition to the text. While this mid-second-century stone relates to one of the earliest known Christian families in Asia Minor, they were only later identified as Christians, probably in the third century. The taboo against showing the human form, which was strictly observed during the third century, seems to have been already established a century earlier.353 348 The design of the inscription, with the primary text in the tabula ansata, is the same as the nearly contemporary ICG 1287. 349 The workshop attribution is uncertain (see the various suggestions, including Acmonia, Temenothyrae, and Trajanopolis itself noted by Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 89), but the resemblance to Docimian doorstones is close. 350 A. Körte, Inscriptiones Bureschianae 34 no. 61; MAMA VI 95; Gibson, Christians for Christians, 35; Waelkens, Türsteine 154 no. 392; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 87 no. 9 (ICG 1287). 351 ICG 1225; see 193–4. 352 T. Lochman, Deux reliefs anatoliens au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Budapest, Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts 74 (1991), 11–24. 353 See 215–8 for discussion of the aniconic Christian monuments of the Upper Tembris Valley.

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An epitaph carved on two faces of a rectangular block of Docimian marble found at the site of Kidyessos in central Phrygia, reads ( front face) Αφφια Ἑρμῇ συνβί|ῳ ζῶσα κὲ ἑαυτῇ κὲ | τοῖς τέκνοις αὐτοῖ|ς Τροφίμῳ κὲ Ἑρμογᾷ κὲ Αὐξάνοντι τέκν[ο]|ις γλυκυτάτοις ἐπο[ί]| (left-hand face) ησε μνήμης χάριν· Χριστιανοί. The upright shaft of a cross was carved above the text on the left-hand face.354 The plural usage alluded to the community that attended the burial, not simply to the family members. This was very like an inscription of 253/4 from Kızılcasöğüt, on the territory of Acmonia, set up by Aurelia Ioulia, which ended with the word Χρειστιανοί, and the short perhaps incomplete text from Acmonia for Ἡδεία Χρειστιανή.355 A similarly laconic doorstone from Kırka on the territory of Sebaste, reads Ἀρτεμίδωρος Ἡλιάδῃ Χριστιανῷ carved on the triangular gable.356 No family relationship existed between the two, and it appears that one Christian took responsibility for burying another. A valuable clue to the interpretation of the usage comes from a sarcophagus copied at Hierapolis (Pamukkale). A broken inscription along one of the long sides reads ἡ σόρος καὶ ὁ τόπος ἐφ᾽οὗ […], with a continuation on the short side, Αμμίᾳ καὶ Ασκληπίῳ ἡ Χριστειανῶν.357 The text on the short side needs elucidation. Tabbernee translated ‘For Ammia and Asklepios. The coffin is that of Christians’, supplying the word σόρος, but the syntax is faulty and the construction unparalleled. Huttner in ICG translated ‘Für Ammia und Asklepios, Mitglieder der Christen(gemeinde)’, but this omits the article and assumes a genitive for dative substitution. The solution proposed by Wilhelm Schultze is that we should understand a feminine collective noun denoting the Christian community to complete the sense.358 Ἐργασία, συμβίωσις, and ἐκκλησία are all theoretically possible, but the best option is ἀδελφότης, one of Schultze’s suggestions, and the text should be translated ‘the brotherhood of Christians for Ammia and Asklepios.’ The same ellipse should be assumed for a mid-third-century epitaph from Apamea which reads Αὐρ. Πρόκλος Ζωτίκου ἐποίησα τὸ ἡρῷον ἐμαυτῷ καὶ τῇ γυναικί μου Μελτίνῃ. Χρειστιανῶν.359 The simple word Christian in relation to an otherwise conventional family epitaph, was

354 MAMA XI 164 (ICG 1461). MAMA XI 165 (ICG 4510), a funerary altar from the nearby village of Tokuşlar with an incomplete text, includes the personal name Θεοδούλη, which was almost exclusive to Christians (see I. Ankara 2, 356 comm). 355 ICG 1284 and 1285. 356 MAMA XI 82; (ICG 1477). 357 I. Hierapolis no. 319; Tabbernee, Montanist inscriptions, 91–93 no. 10 (ICG 922). 358 V. Schultze, Altchristliche Städte und Landschaften II. Kleinasien I (Gütersloh 1922), 428. 359 ICG 974; see 126.

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carved at the top of a rough limestone block in one of the Apamea cemeteries, decorated with a tabula ansata inscribed with an epitaph by Capito for himself, his wife and daughter (ICG 973). It ended with the Eumeneian formula. This text simply designated the local brotherhood as Χριστιανοί centrally placed on the upper rim of the inscribed tabula.360 The collective ‘the Christians’ followed by a prominent cross, is attested in a village close to Orcistus in eastern Phrygia on a doorstone reading Αὐρ. Ἀριστόνεικος τῇ σ]|υνβίῳ Ἀμίᾳ καὶ [υἱῷ ? γ]|λυκυτάτῳ Δόμ[νῳ κὲ ἑαυ]|τῷ ζῶν, οἱ Χρηστ[ιανοί] †.361 It seems that in all these cases the word Χρηστιανός (and the variant spellings) not only referred to the religion of the occupants of the tomb, but also evoked the wider community, the Christian brotherhood to which they belonged. This brotherhood was clearly involved in the rite of burial, sometimes explicitly taking responsibility, as in the case of Ammia and Asklepios at Hierapolis, sometimes represented by a deputy such as Phellinas at Temenothyrae who was closely associated with the family, sometimes stepping in where no family members were available to organize the burial, as with Theodorus at Traianopolis, Heliades at Sebaste, and probably Hedia at Acmonia. The crucial role of local Christian communities undertaking the costs of burial, which may sometimes have been necessary, also underlies the part played by bishop Diogas at Temenothyrae, responsible for the graves of his predecessor Artemidorus, paid for from ‘the Lord’s funds’, and the church elder (prebytera), Ammion. The plural nouns Χρειστιανῶν, οἱ Χριστειανοί, Χριστιανοί, added at the beginning and end of several texts, sometimes without any close syntactical connection to the burial formula, are the semantic counterpart of the Christian brotherhoods that attended these funerals. These usages also provide a suitable introduction to an analysis of the most eye-catching and extensively studied of all the early Christian epitaphs of Phrygia, the Christians for Christians inscriptions from the villages of the Upper Tembris Valley. Before leaving west-central Phrygia two further important Christian texts require discussion. An altar set up in a funerary precinct at the village of Hocalar on the territory of the Moxeanoi south of Acmonia’s smaller neighbour Dioclea, recorded the joint family burial arranged by two ex-soldiers, Aurelius Gaius and Aurelius Menophilus, for themselves and their wives, allowing no one else to use the burial place except their legitimate children. The text was relatively lengthy and described a funerary precinct with an altar 360 MAMA VI 234; Gibson, Christians for Christians 112 no. 39; Tabbernee, Montanist inscriptions, 167–69 no. 20 (ICG 973); see 125. 361 MAMA VII 296b; Gibson, Christians for Christians no. 45; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 96–99 no. 12; Waelkens, Türsteine no. 578; (ICG 1289).

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(the preserved stone) a sarcophagus and an enclosure, τὸν βωμὸν καὶ τὴν κατ᾽ αὐτοῦ σορὸν σὺν τῷ περιβόλῳ. The protective formula allowed no one to introduce a foreign body or sarcophagus. If anyone did so they had to reckon with god and pay a fine to the imperial treasury, and a record of the funerary text was placed in the city archive. Εἴ δε τις ὑπενάντιον ποιή|[σει δόλῳ π]ονήρῳ ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν | [καὶ δώσει] τῷ ταμείῳ [-] | [τούτ]ου ἀντίγρα[φον ἀπετέθη εἰς τὰ ἀρχεῖα].362 The expression δόλῳ πονήρῳ, translated the Latin legal expression dolo malo, ‘with malicious deceit’, which also appeared at Acmonia, doubtless derived from the bureaucratic military culture of the two ex-soldiers.363 The use of the Eumeneian formula dates this inscription around the middle of the third century, and this is the earliest epigraphic evidence for the burial of Christian veterans, who had retired to this part of Phrygia, presumably their homeland, and were probably established as local land-owning gentry. It may not be a coincidence that another veteran, Aur. Zotikos, an exbeneficiarius, subsequently built the earliest Christian church yet recorded in Phrygia, barely fifteen kilometres to the north of Hocalar. This Roman veteran had returned to his home town or village near Dioclea, on the tribal territory of the Moxeani between Acmonia and the Pentapolis. Most of the Christian remains reported here appear to be Middle Byzantine, but they are anticipated by the earliest evidence for church building in Phrygia. Two columns were recovered from ruins called Öreniçi on a hill above the village of Uluköy, inscribed with apparently identical texts cut inside a circular wreath. The more complete example reads: Ε´. Αὐρήλιος | Ζωτικὸς δὶς | ἀπὸ βενεφικιαρί|ων εὐξάμενος | τῷ θεῷ ὀκτακίο|νον μετὰ τῆς ἐπισ|κευῆς εὐχαριστῶν | τῇ τοῦ θεοῦ προνοί|ᾳ ἀνέστησε, Ε (the figure denoted thε fifth of the eight columns). Aurelius Zotikos son of Zotikos former beneficiarius, having made a vow to god set up the ‘eight columns’ with the additional construction as a thank-offering to the providence of god’. The columns were found amid a pile of marble blocks and a hoard of ten bronze crosses, evidently the site of an ancient church. The name ‘eight-columns’, not otherwise attested, suggests that the building was a small basilica with three aisles, separated by two rows of four columns. Thomas Drew-Bear, the discoverer, dated the text not earlier than the second half of the third century.364 The 362 MAMA VI 358 (IGC 998); see Trebilco, Jewish Communities (1991), 58–60. 363 See ICG 985; see 149 n. 222. The expression occurred occasionally on other funerary texts from Asia Minor, eg I. Kyzikos 83. 364 T. Drew-Bear, Un beneficiarius chrétien en Phrygie, in H. Wolff and C. Le Bohec, L’ armée romaine et la religion dans le Haut-Empire romain (Lyon / Paris 2009), 35–9; SEG 59, 1483–4; AE 2009, 1433–4 (ICG 4511). R. Haensch, Kirchenbau in Asiana, in Ameling (ed.), Christianisierung, 378 nos. 26–7, dates the inscriptions to the first half of the fourth century.

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style of the inscriptions cut on large roundels on the columns resembles three similar inscribed columns from a church in the Upper Tembris Valley, and the comparison probably favours a date around or soon after 300.365 There is a useful parallel at Megiddo in Palestine for a Roman military officer providing funds for a church, also probably dated to the later third century, with floor mosaic inscriptions, one identifying a woman who donated the altar, προσήνικεν Ἀκεπτοῦς ἡ φιλόθεος τὴν τράπεζαν Θ(ε)ῳ Ἰ(ησο)ῦ Χ(ριστ)ῷ μνημόσυνον, a second that commemorated four women from the community, μνημονεύσατε Πριμίλλης καὶ Κυριακῆς καὶ Δωροθέας, ἔτι δὲ καὶ Χρηστήν, and a third which made clear that the whole mosaic had been paid for by a Roman centurion, no doubt from the nearby garrison, Γαιανὸς ὁ καὶ Πορφύρις (ἑκατοντάρχης) ἀδελφὸς ἡμῶν φιλοτειμήσαμενος ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων ἐψηφολόγησε. Βρούτις ἠργάσετο.366 The building near Dioclea was probably constructed between 260 and 310, substantially earlier than the main wave of church building in Asia Minor which did not begin before the mid-fourth century. 4.7

Aezani and North-West Phrygia (Maps 4, 5, 8 and 9)

It is difficult to form any coherent impression of early Christian communities in north-west Phrygia. The most important settlement of the region was Aezani, but the city itself and the villages in its territory have produced minimal evidence for Christian texts that date before the fourth century. A broken doorstone from Zobu köy, about five kilometres north-east of the ancient city, begins with the words Αὐρ. Κυριακός, a name exclusively used by Christians.367 A succinct epitaph cut on a simple block recorded at Aezani itself, begins with a cross and has a text that reads † | Αὐρ. Φίλιππος σὺν τῇ | συνβίῳ αὐτοῦ ἑαυτοῖς | ὑπόμνημα.368 It may date to the fourth century. These isolated items from an 365 ICG 1158, 1161, 1163, 1164, 1196; see 260–1. 366 Y. Tepper/ L. Di Segni A Christian Prayer Hall of the Third Century (Jerusalem 2006); SEG 56, 1899–1901; C. Markschies, Was lernen wir über das frühe Christentum aus der Archäologie des Heiligen Landes, Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 11 (2008), 421–47 at 432–42, prefers a later date, but details of the inscriptions speak for the late third century (see Feissel, Bull. ép. 2008, 562). Compare the φιλόθεοι addressed on a mid-3rd cent. epitaph of Apamea (ICG 965) and for the abbreviated monogrαms and nomina sacra, see ICG 972, 1062, 1454 (Χρ(ιστοῦ); 1049 (Θ(εό)ν); 1031 (Θ(εο)ῦ Χ(ριστο)ῦ); 1497 (Χρ(ιστὸς) Ἰη(σοῦς). 367 MAMA IX 390 (ICG 1301); for Kyriakos, see I. Ankara 1 no. 57 comm. for an apparent exception from Ephesus. 368 M. Wörrle and C. Lehmler, Aezanitica minora, Chiron 36 (2006), 71 no. 129 (SEG 56, 1488; ICG 4512).

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epigraphically rich region contrast with the numerous early Christian texts in the neighbouring Upper Tembris Valley and other parts of Phrygia. The evidence from Aezani’s western neighbours Cadi, Synaus and Ancyra Sidera, the north-western Mysian part of the Phrygian circle, tells a similar story. Although these minor cities have all produced gravestones that have been identified as Christian, in most cases the criteria for the identification are unconvincing or precarious. The clearest example from this region is the gravestone of Tryphon and Auxanousa, already cited as an unambiguous example of the appearance of the term Χριστιανός in an early text. This handsome, highly decorated grave stele has a high triangular pediment with acroteria separated by garlands and small birds, two birds on either side of a wool basket in the triangular gable end, and a panel between decorated pilasters, divided into an upper register with a carved wooden chair and a horse, and a lower register with a pruning hook, a writing codex, a carding comb, a scent bottle and a mirror. Below this the inscription reads Αὐξάνων Τρύφωνι πατρὶ κὲ Αξα|νούσῃ μητρὶ ἔτι ζώσῃ μνῆ χάριν. I Χρησιανοί (fig. 27).369 The original find-spot is unknown. The earliest information from the Greek scholar I. Meliupolis, who was based at Haydarpaşa (Istanbul), said that the stone came from Kütahya, but originated at Aezani.370 By this time the object had already been transported to Istanbul, and it later entered the museum there.371 Stylistically the stele belongs to a series which has been studied in detail by Thomas Lochman, and was produced by workshops at or near the Myso-Phrygian city of Cadi. However, unlike all the others in the series, this example deliberately avoided any human representation, thus conforming to a pattern which can be observed a century later in the Upper Tembris Valley. Based on comparison with dated examples, Lochman has proposed that it was carved between 150 and 160, although the final word of the inscription, identifying the family a Christian, was a crude later addition.372 369 Frequently published: Gibson, Christians for Christians, no. 30; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions no. 57 (ICG 1225); see 188 n. 351. 370 Ath. Mitt 22 (1897), 353 no. 4. 371 See Arch. Anz. 1933, 135–6 no. 48. 372 T. Lochman, ‘Deux reliefs anatoliens au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Budapest’, Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts 74 (1991), 11–24. For other examples from the series, see E. Zingg, Eine Kadoi-Stele im Museum zu den Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen, Epigraphica Anatolica 46 (2013), 181–7 and H. Uzunoğlu, Phrygia’dan bir grup yeni mezar steli, Mediterranean Journal of the Humanities 9 (2019), 382–4 no. 5 (dated to the year 175 Actian era = AD 144/5). Further on this group of texts, see G. H. R. Horsley, A marble funerary stele from Phrygia in Canberra, Epigraphica Anatolica 53 (2020), 89–118.

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Figure 27 Cadi neighbourhood. Grave Stele of Tryphon and Auxanousa. ICG 1225 W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen

One other grave monument from the area has been generally identified as Christian, a grave stele from the village of Çeltikçi near Gediz, now in Kütahya Museum and dated to 179/80 (264 in the Sullan era), for Eutyches put up by his syntrophos, a Roman citizen called P. Silicius Ulpianus, his parents Eutyches and Zosimes, and his brother Antipatros. The terminology suggests that Silicius Ulpianus and Eutyches were raised together for a period in the

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same household, and Eutyches died relatively young. The stele has a similar format to the gravestone of Tryphon and Auxanousa, although the central decorated field between the pilasters, depicting a relief of the deceased man, extended up into an arched niche, which has been almost completely broken away (fig. 28).373 The monument for Eutyches resembles the grave steles with two figures, respectively in the Römisch-Germanisches Museum Mainz, and the Getty Museum, the former for Alexandros and his wife Valeria, dated to 165/66 (Sullan era 250),374 the latter for Tatianos and his mother Tation, dated a few years later by Lochman around 180.375 Lochman has assessed the group as products of the same Cadi workshop, and the localization is confirmed by a similar example, now in Kütahya but reportedly from Cadi, depicting a single male figure, with an inscription for Theophilos set up by his parents Poplas and Aristes (?) and his brother Onesimos.376 Calder identified the Eutyches stele as Christian, because the figure holds a circular disc in his right hand decorated with a cross (a Christian patena or even the bread of the Eucharist), and a bunch of grapes in the left, whose stem, in Calder’s judgement, resembled a T-shaped cross. This identification has been widely accepted,377 but rightly questioned by Thomas Corsten.378 The so-called T-shaped cross is not a normal feature of Christian iconography, and there is no compelling reason to identify the disc with a cross in the figure’s right hand as eucharistic. However, it remains open to question what the disc was, and its prominent cross is not a casual part of the decoration but catches attention at the centre of the composition. The very similar gravestone set up by Theophilos for Poplas, Aristes and Onesimos, depicts a single figure holding a knife or dagger in his right hand, with a larger disc, decorated with concentric circles and hanging tassles, held in his left hand. This disc is too small to be a shield and the figure should not be interpreted as a Roman soldier, as suggested by the editor. All the persons on the group of Cadi gravestones were 373 W. M. Calder, AS 5 (1955), 33–35 nο. 2 (SEG 15, 795; Bull. Ép. 1956, 292; (ICG 1224). 374 E. Pfuhl and H. Möbius, Die Ostgriechischen Grabreliefs II (1979), 282 no. 1171; G. Koch, Roman Funerary Monuments in the J. Paul Getty Museum I (Malibu 1990), 117 fig. 2, 127 no. VII 1. 375 G. Koch, Roman Funerary Monuments (1990), 115–16 fig. 1. 376 T. Drew-Bear, Kütahya’da keni kurulan bir müzenin yazıtları, 23 AST 2 (2006), 37 with 40 fig. 7: Ποπλᾶς κὲ Ἀριστής (?) οἱ γονεῖς κὲ Ὀνήσιμος ὁ ἀδελφὸς αὐτοῦ Θεοφίλῳ γλυκυτάτῳ μνήμης χάριν. 377 Mitchell, Anatolia II, 38 with n. 227; Mitchell, Epigraphic display and Christian identity (2014), 283–84; Destephen, La christianisation de l’ Asie Mineure jusqu’ à Constantin, 183 no. 126; McKechnie, Christianizing Asia Minor, 155–6. 378 T. Corsten, „Christliche“ Namengebung, in Ameling (ed.), Christianisierung (2017), 480–81.

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Figure 28 Cadi (Çeltikçi). Grave stele of Eutyches. ICG 1224. In Kütahya Museum Stephen Mitchell

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shown wearing elaborate costumes, the best clothes that they owned,379 and displayed vine pruning hooks, codexes, and mirrors, the accoutrements which defined their identities and life-styles. The male figure on the stele in the Getty Museum has his hair cut and trimmed into impeccable ringlets and wears a decorated cloak and tunic with ornate hanging decorations on the front, fit for a village or a civic festival, doubtless to celebrate the vintage.380 Perhaps we should interpret the tassled disc of the Theophilus grave and the disc with a cross in Eutyches’ hand as a tambourine or a small percussion instrument. The fact that Eutyches is depicted in person on the stone published by Calder provides a strong additional argument that he was not a Christian. Exactly the reverse is the case with the non-iconic gravestone of Aur. Glykie put up by her husband Aur. Quadratus at Bahtıllı on the territory of Ancyra Sidera, which probably dates between 212 and 240. This has an equally prominent cross in a disc, placed within an inverted semi-circular wreath, on the gable of the gravestone. The composition resembles the design of a cross within a victory garland which was favoured for several of the early Christian gravestones at Temenothyrae, and which developed as the most prominent visual Christian motif in the late third-century series of Christians for Christians stelae in the Upper Tembris Valley.381 The Bahtıllı stone, which, like the gravestone of Tryphon and Auxanousa, avoided depicting human figures, was certainly Christian.382 Eusebius’s report of the birth of the Montanist movement in a Myso-Phrygian village, shows that the occurrence of Christian inscriptions in Cadi and Ancyra Sidera between 150 and 250 was not outlandish. However, these isolated texts do not provide an adequate base for speculation about the size and nature of the Christian community. We should, in any case, set aside the group of simple epitaphs recorded at Yemişli and Naşa, villages on the territory of another Myso-Phrygian city, Synaos, which included small discs or rosettes in the gable decoration, some of which appear to display a cross in an upright position: the gravestones for Diogenes set 379 They can be compared with the traditional, often highly-coloured clothing worn by villagers in south-east Europe (notably Romania and Bulgaria) up till recent times which form the centre piece of many ethnographical museum collections. 380 For an even more elaborate festival costume on a Bithynian gravestone, see M-L. Cremer, Der Schellenmann, EA 7 (1986), 21–34; see the discussion of the ‘Bell Man’ by Koch, Roman Funerary Monuments, 118–19 figs. 9–11. 381 See chapter 4.6 and 4.8. 382 Gibson, Christians for Christians, 101–2 no. 31; (SEG 28, 1100; ICG 1238). The initial chi of χάριν also has the upright cross form, which is sometimes but certainly not always a deliberate Christian marker. M. Ricl, ZA 40 (1990), 163 notes examples on the votive reliefs for Hosios and Dikaios; Lochmann, Phrygische Grab- und Votivreliefs, 93 n. 203 suggests that this form of the chi was given a new impetus by Christian use.

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up by his parents,383 for Chrysaeis, wife of Trophimos son of Themison,384 for Ammion set up by Askles,385 for their father set up by the brothers Izoueinos and Apollophanes,386 and for their father Presbytes, set up by Diogenes, Metrodorus and Apollinarius.387 In the absence of other decisive indications, they should be classified as pagan. Even if these could be confidently identified as Christian, they do no more than supply a sample of the names, none overtly Christian, favoured by families in this isolated region.388 4.8

The Upper Tembris Valley (Maps 5, 9 and 10)

The river Tembris (the modern Porsuk Çay) rises west of Afyon in the mountains south of the modern town of Altıntaş and flows north, sometimes through grazing areas, sometimes through fertile farmland, to Kütahya. There were only two ancient cities in the valley, neither of major importance. Appia, which minted coins in the late hellenistic period using the ethnic ΑΠΙΑΝΩΝ or ΑΠΠΙΑΝΩΝ, can be identified with the village of Abya, renamed Pınarcık, south-east of Altıntaş. There are no significant monumental remains at Appia and few indications apart from its coinage that it had civic status.389 The other city in the region was Soa, which was located at the village of Altıntaş.390 This is to be distinguished from the village formerly called Kurd Köy, which was later re-named Altıntaş (town), and is now the main settlement of the southern part of the Upper Tembris valley. Inscriptions indicate that Soa had a βουλή and δῆμος, a standard criterion for civic organisation, in the third or fourth century; previously it was the most important settlement of the Soenoi, attested in the 240s as being a community on the territory of Appia.391 There were many villages in the Upper Tembris Valley named in inscriptions and other 383 384 385 386 387 388 389

MAMA X 378 (ICG 1229). MAMA X 381 (ICG 1230). MAMA X 389 (ICG 1231). MAMA X 391 (ICG 1232). MAMA X 414 (ICG 1233). The Christian interpretation of these symbols in MAMA X, xxxvi–xl was premature. Coins of Appia, H. Von Aulock, Münzen und Städte Phrygiens I, 58–60; and MAMA X, xv-xvi, arguing against the suggestion that it took the name from Appius Claudius Pulcher, Cicero’s predecessor as governor of Cilicia in the late 50s BC. Contra, C. P. Jones, Appia in Phrygia (2000), 233–41. 390 The map in MAMA X, introduction, wrongly marks Soa at Altıntaş town (formerly Kurd Köy) not at Altıntaş village further to the east. 391 For Soa’s civic status, see MAMA X, xx n. 15 citing an unpublished text and IGR IV 605. In the mid-third century the Soenoi formed a koinon with their eastern neighbours the

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sources,392 but much of the region was owned by major landowners, including members of the Roman senate, or was imperial property. Imperial slaves and freedmen, and other estate managers, formed an élite strand in rural society.393 The broad plain of the upper Tembris extended for about thirty-five kilometres from south-east to north-west, beginning where the river emerged from a narrow valley above the village of Beşkarış and ending at a canyon-like section of the river north of Haydarlar, which ran northwards past Cotiaeum. The terrain was mostly fertile agricultural land, but the marshy areas north of Altıntaş were more suited to cattle-rearing than to cereal agriculture, and low hills used for viticulture. The Christians of the Upper Tembris Valley have been been the subject of many articles and monographs, sparked by the discovery of inscriptions containing the ‘Christians for Christians’ formula, which has been a source of repeated speculation and debate. The first phase of research and discovery, principally conducted by W. M. Ramsay and his pupils and associates, was summed up in a fine report by J. G. C. Anderson in 1906.394 The direction of work over the next half century was set in a series of articles by W. M. Calder, published between 1923 and 1956. Elsa Gibson’s edition and commentary of all the Christians for Christians inscriptions, including several discoveries made by herself and Thomas Drew-Bear in the early 1970s, brought a decisive fresh impetus, and a full presentation of the epigraphic material was incorporated into William Tabbernee’s monumental volume of Montanist inscriptions and testimonia published in 1997. Christian inscriptions not available to Gibson, copied in the 1920s by Sir Christopher Cox and the 1950s by Michael Ballance, have been published in MAMA X (1993) and XI (2013), and texts that have come to light in the local villages or been brought to the museum collections in Kütahya have been published by Drew-Bear. Other previously unpublished funerary and votive monuments copied by Drew-Bear are included in Tomas Lochman’s authoritative archaeological study published in 2003, which has established a fresh chronology for much of the material, based mostly on

Moeteanoi, both dependent on Appia (MAMA X 114, the Aragua petition of AD 240s). Compare the relationship of Orcistus to Nacolea. 392 For villages and village names in the Upper Tembris Valley, see MAMA X, xlii–xlv; and the list of Phrygian toponyms compiled by T. Drew-Bear for the Barrington Atlas Map 62 Phrygia (II, 958–75). 393 J. Strubbe, Imperial Estates in Phrygia, Anc. Soc. 6 (1975), 230–36; MAMA X, xxxiii–xxxv. 394 J. G. C. Anderson, Paganism and Christianity in the Upper Tembris Valley, in W. M. Ramsay (ed.), Studies in the History and Art of the Eastern Roman Provinces (Aberdeen 1906), 183–227.

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stylistic criteria. Other monuments have entered the antiquities trade and appeared in auction houses. The interpretation of the Christians for Christians texts has been dominated by a debate which can be traced back to Ramsay, and was developed by Franz Cumont, when he surveyed the state of Christian epigraphy in Asia Minor in 1895. Ramsay took the view that outright conflict and persecution was rare in Phrygia: ‘a spirit of forbearance in practice was encouraged on both sides, and in the course of generations this became the rule of practical life’. This forbearance encouraged Christian discretion: ‘Apart from a small number of cases … the Christians in Phrygia did not on their tombstones proclaim the religion of the deceased and of the survivors by words or symbols. We are left to infer that certain epitaphs are Christian by indirect reasoning.’395 Ramsay never wrote an extensive study of the Upper Tembris Valley material, although he was aware of the texts, later collected in Anderson’s 1906 article, in which ‘the survivors are proclaimed as Christians’ and which formed exceptions to this generalization.396 Cumont used the term ‘crypto-chrétien’ to characterize early Christian funerary texts, although he employed the term in two senses. First, it covered the unknown quantity of epitaphs from all over the Roman world which were put up by Christians but simply made no mention of their religion. Second, it could be applied to vague expressions or allusions, whose Christian significance would be clear to initiates but not a cause of suspicion for others.397 W. M. Calder developed the implications of the latter definition in his 1923 article on ‘Philadelphia and Montanism’, in which he argued that the Christians for Christians inscriptions of the Upper Tembris Valley were put up by Montanists. In contrast to Ramsay, who assumed that pagans and Christians peacefully co-existed with one another in Phrygia, Calder started from the premiss that Christianity before Constantine was an illegal religion. Although he recognised that for the most part this state of affairs did not lead to active persecution, he argued that ‘the machinery of persecution was always at the disposal of those who could show good cause why it should be set in motion. And the machinery once set in motion, the law had to take its course.’ According to Calder, most Christians were at pains to conceal their religion and ‘in the Christian epitaphs of the pre-Constantinian period, we find a universal avoidance of any overt avowal of Christianity, which would attract the notice 395 See Ramsay’s chapter, ‘The Christian inscriptions of south-western Phrygia’, CB I.2, 484–513, quotations at 501 and 491. 396 CB I.2, 490–91; cf. Anderson, SERP, 183 (a reference to the planned third volume of CB), 196–202. 397 F. Cumont, Les inscriptions chretiennes d’Asie Mineure, Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 15 (1895) 245–299, at 249–52; quoted and translated by Chiricat 2013, 201.

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of, or give a handle to, the hostile pagan. Indeed the vast majority of Christian epitaphs of this period are indistinguishable among the mass of pagan epitaphs.’398 Exceptions to this rule could be found only in the Roman catacombs, and in third-century Phrygia, where the identification of inscriptions as Christian was a by-product of the precautions taken by Phrygians to protect their graves, either by curse formulas, invoking supernatural retribution, or by the threat of fines. The Christians of the region accordingly developed their own variants of protective curse formulas, ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεόν or δώσει θεῷ λόγον. Although the Christian character of these expressions, except for a small number of Jewish examples, was incontestable,399 Calder also argued that the use of the term θεόν / θεῷ was in most cases deliberately ambiguous, something that ‘could give no possible offence to a pagan who would see in it a reference to the god of the locality, whom he himself was wont to honour as θεός in his dedications.’ He followed the judgement of Ramsay and Cumont, that these Phrygian monuments contained no distinctive Christian symbolism, and avoided displaying a cross,400 and even claimed that the use of the terms πρεσβύτερος and ἐπίσκοπος did not distinguish Christians, as both titles could be found among pagans. His conclusion was that almost all the Christian inscriptions of southern and central Phrygia, across a geographical band that stretched roughly between the Maeander and the Hermus, and then eastwards towards Laodicea Catacecaumene, were concealed Christian epitaphs in the second sense identified by Cumont, allowing the religion of the occupants of the grave to be denied, or at least to remain unproven. In contrast, the unambiguous Christians for Christians monuments of northern Phrygia represented another strand of defiant Christianity, namely Montanism. 398 W. M. Calder, Philadelphia and Montanism, 7 (1923), 309–54; quotations at 309–10. 399 Calder, Philadelphia and Montanism (1929) 315: ‘In short, the Christian origin of a large series of third-century epitaphs in central Phrygia is definitely established; in the chain of reasoning which led Ramsay and Duchesne to the identification of these epitaphs, no weak link has been revealed by subsequent discovery, and the results secured by them form a solid foundation for further work.’ Calder’s fullest statement was ‘The Eumeneian formula’, in W. M. Calder and J. Keil (eds.), Anatolian Studies presented to William Hepburn Buckler (Manchester 1939), 15–26. 400 BJRL 1923, 318: only two or three exceptional cases before 350. Cf Calder, JRS 14 (1924), 28, citing Calder, JRS 10 (1920), 56 for the cross only appearing commonly after the mid-fourth century, but conceding the use by Phrygian Montanists in the third century. Compare Ramsay, CB 1.2, 489–90, who surveyed the use of symbols including the palm, vase, dove, anchor and fish, and concluded: ‘Probably none of these symbols was exclusively Christian … probably every symbol which was publicly used by the Chr. in the third century was selected, because it was also in pagan use and would be less likely to attract special attention’.

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Calder’s hypothesis was immediately reviewed by H. Grégoire in an article in which he endorsed the division of the Phrygian documentation into cryptoand phanero-christian texts, although he did not accept the classification of the Upper Tembris Valley inscriptions as Montanist.401 Calder himself was ambivalent about using the term crypto-Christian, noting in one of his last published articles that ‘I have in my time both used and protested against it’.402 He had adopted the phrase unproblematically in the 1920s,403 but indicated his doubts in his longest article on the Eumeneian formula.404 Nevertheless, the word ‘crypto-Christian’, used to describe vague and therefore unprovocative allusions to the religion, has ghosted its way through discussions of Phrygian Christianity for a century. Among recent scholars both Sylvain Destephen and Ulrich Huttner have adoped Calder’s central argument that Christians deliberately adopted veiled language as a form of self-protection. Destephen claims that ‘l’environnement, parfois hostile et violent que les chretiens subissent, les incite à ne pas révéler leur appartenance réligieuse’. In consequence, the innumerable Roman imperial epitaphs of communities in west and north-west Asia Minor, which certainly included some Christians, simply provided no indication of Christianity, while the Christian inscriptions of the central Anatolian regions (276 texts, of which 274 were funerary) were typified by ‘la confidentialité voire la clandestinité dans laquelle se développe le christianisme pendant les trois premières siècles de son existence.’ The visual religious symbols adopted by Christians embodied ‘une iconographie codée (qui) permet d’expliciter sa foi à des initiés sans contrevenir à la bienséance’.405 It is certainly mistaken to claim Christian significance for motifs such as the vine, vase, cups, or doves, which were commonplace in the iconography of central Anatolian grave monuments, whenever they occur,406 but ambigui401 H. Grégoire, Épigraphie chrétienne, Byzantion 1 (1924), 695–716. 402 Calder, AS 5 (1955), 28. 403 Calder, JRS 14 (1924), 28; cf. JRS 16 (1926), 74: ‘Bishop Glykonides’ epitaph [ICG 1049] … marks a fuller affirmation of Christianity than the normal crypto-Christian epitaphs of third-century Eumeneia.’ 404 Calder, The Eumeneian formula (1939), 25, ‘the not very happy term crypto-Christian’. 405 S. Destephen, La christianisation, 165–66. 406 The key modern study is M. Waelkens, Phrygian votive and tombstones, in which he argues that most of the iconographical motifs relate to activities of daily life. This analysis is subsumed in his Kleinasiatische Türsteine. T. Lochman, ‘Die Religion der Phrygier im Spiegel der Funerärsymbolik’, Phrygien (2003), 209–18, discusses the significance of lions (sometimes differentiated by sex) as grave-watchers, eagles (male) and song-birds (female) as symbols for for the deceased man and woman. See further T. Lochman, Eine Gruppe spätantiker Grabsteine aus Phrygien, in E. Berger (ed.), Antike Kunstwerke aus der Sammlung Ludwig III. Skulpturen (1990), 453–508, at 500–506.

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ties are often resolved when these depictions were linked to terminology (e.g. πρεσβύτερος, ἐπίσκοπος, κοιμητήριον), or formulas, including the Eumeneian formula, which leave no doubt about their Christian significance. The context in such cases provides an essential tool to the interpretation of the symbols. Furthermore, very many gravestones were unambiguous. Destephen’s own catalogue includes more than sixty pre-Constantinian gravestones which incorporated a cross in their ornamentation, and forty-one that quite simply use the term Χριστιανός as an identifier on the epitaph.407 Destephen accepts that the Eumeneian formula was a clear mark of Christianity, even though the emphasis on a single θεός as well as references to the last judgement, God’s justice and other features do not in all cases suffice to distinguish the Christian from the Jewish god.408 He suggests, however, that the formula neutralized the reference to the deity to such a degree that it caused no offence to followers of traditional cults: ‘La référence à une divinité anonyme et dont l’unicité n’est jamais affirmée offert l’occasion de ne pas heurter le sensibilité des partisans des cultes traditionnels’. This, in effect, is a reversion to the view of Ramsay, that Christian relations with pagans were unprovocative, dominated by tact and forbearance. However, this analysis is unconvincing. It attributes almost Macchiavellian intent to Christians who chose a name for their god that was supposedly both non-threatening to polytheistic pagans, who could choose to overlook that it referred to Christianity at all, and at the same time established Christian affinity to a Jewish strand of monotheism. Christians, in fact, knew hardly any other name for god except Θεός, although of course they sometimes qualified this by other attributive or predicative phrases, according to the context in which the name appeared.409 So far from using the word θεός to create ambiguity, they had no option but to call their god by this name, if their appeal was to be intelligible. The discussion in the previous section of the contexts in which the Eumeneian formula appears has shown that there could be no serious doubt either in antiquity or today about the religion of the deceased.410 To anyone who paid them any attention, the graves were obviously Christian.

407 Quotations and figures from Destephen, La christianisation, 164–65. 408 Destephen, La christianisation, 167 refers to ‘les rares chrétiens’ who use the simple word theos, ‘la forme plus neutre et equivoque’, but on p. 169 with n. 35 he concedes that the attestations of the Eumeneian formula are both numerous (94 examples) and extended well beyond Phrygia. 409 Christiane Zimmermann, Die Namen des Vaters (2007), 23–25 for a summary list from the NT; Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 694–701. 410 Chapter 4.3.

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Ulrich Huttner, who follows Trebilco’s arguments that it is impossible in most cases to make a definitive distinction between Christian and Jewish applications of the Eumeneian formula, has also returned to the crypto-Christian debate in a recent paper.411 He rightly rejects the possibility that the threat ἐσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεόν might have referred at Eumeneia to the important local civic deity Apollo Propylaios, attested in several texts, including one depicting Apollo as punishing transgressions.412 He concedes that many of these inscriptions were clearly Christian, and that one, perhaps, even shows awareness of Pauline theology,413 although others, at least hypothetically, could be Jewish. However, he judges that a casual passer-by might have been unable to identify the grave’s religion, and thereby revives the argument that crypto-Christian texts or symbols could have deliberately been used on graves to protect the family from hostile pagan neighbours or Roman prosecution. This interpretation still rests on Calder’s supposition that Christians were in ever-present danger of prosecution, and that many of them turned to subterfuge to hide their religious affiliation. There is surely no doubt that when Christians were a deliberate target of persecution concealment was commonplace. Tertullian’s Apologeticum, written around 200, implies that Christians originated under the shelter of the Jews, a permitted religion, quasi sub umbraculo insignissimae religionis, certe licitae (although we should guard against taking this too literally), and Athanasius accused Arians of hiding among the gentiles during the Great Persecution.414 The proceedings of Church Councils after 312 repeatedly dealt with the question of how to treat Christians who had been compromised if they had taken steps to hide or avoid arrest during persecution.415 But these texts in no way provide a ‘handfeste Bestätigung’ that the term crypto-Christian appropriately characterizes their funerary epigraphy. Christian concealment in a time of pressing danger was something quite different from adopting an ambiguous form of identification on a tombstone. There was no need for Christians to expose themselves to this supposed risk, since they always had the option of not drawing attention to their religion at all, the usual pattern in antiquity. If they wished to protect their graves they had no need to call on divine punishment, but could threaten those who interfered with their tombs with a fine payable to the imperial treasury. Some indeed did so.416 411 U. Huttner, Christliche Grenzgänger. 412 SEG 26, 1376, Ἀπόλλωνι Προπυλαίῳ Ἐπιτύνχανος κολαζὀμενος ἀνέθηκεν. 413 CB I.2, 521–22 no. 362 (ICG 1043) the grave of bishop Metrodorus. 414 Tertullian, Apol. 21.1; Athanasius, Adversus Arianos 64. 415 In the West at Elvira, and in the East at Ancyra and at Neocaesareia. The issues in an aggravated form were at the root of the Donatist schism in Africa. 416 See ICG 960, 969, 998.

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It is important not to confuse two phenomena. The religious behaviour of Christians themselves in their everyday life and conduct, and the ways in which they identified or drew attention to their religion on their gravestones. In daily life, the religious practices of the inhabitants of the small towns and villages of Phrygia must have been well known to their neighbours, whether they were Christians, Jews or pagans. Pliny as governor of Bithynia around 110, when Christian numbers were certainly much smaller than in third-century Phrygia, had no difficulty in establishing the essentials of Christian social and religious practice, which he duly reported in his letter to Trajan.417 As religion was without doubt an essential element in establishing the values and behaviour patterns of the Phrygian population, members of each of these groups, to a greater or lesser degree, behaved in conformity with these beliefs. Their rituals were not conducted in secret. It would have taken wilful ignorance not to recognise that a family or an individual was Christian, not pagan. However, for the most part the religious preferences of the different groups did not provoke conflict, not least because they shared similar cultural and moral viewpoints. Funerary inscriptions that incorporated curse formulas and the threat of a fine, show how important it was to the inhabitants of Roman Phrygia to protect their family graves. What Ramsay and others have called the sanctity of the tomb was founded in deep-rooted and well-developed Phrygian ideas about the after-life. The formulae that were used to secure and protect burials throughout inner Anatolia usually involved explicit invocation of the gods, thereby providing an indication of the family’s religious identity: pagan, Jewish or Christian. Their message was clear, using words and symbols that were immediately intelligible to the community, not veiled in ambiguity. The Eumeneian formula – ‘he will have to reckon with God’ – was not adopted to avoid giving offence to polytheistic pagans, nor designed so that a Christian family could deny its religious allegiance in face of a Roman governor’s tribunal. It had the simple purpose of providing symbolic protection for the tombs of Christians  – and perhaps occasionally Jews  – from interference. Calder’s ambivalence about using the term crypto-Christian is amply justified, and the concept has simply obstructed the interpretation of the south Phrygian monuments.418 However, we need to examine Calder’s concomitant argument that the overtly Christian monuments of the Upper Tembris valley, set up by Christians

417 Pliny, ep. X, 96. 418 Robert, Hell. XII/XII, 404 n. 5 dismissed the idea: ‘il ne parait pas indiqué d’appeler la formula, avec W.M. Calder, “crypto-chrétienne”’.

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for Christians, were Montanist.419 Calder maintained that the conspicuous declaration of Christianity on these Tembris Valley tombstones was deliberately provocative and defiant, a challenge to pagan convention and the Roman authorities, and matched the behaviour of the first generation of Montanists who deliberately courted martyrdom. This question has divided scholars,420 but the Montanist interpretation now finds little favour. Apart from their unambiguous assertions of Christianity, the tombstones of the region have no other distinctive Montanist features. There are no references in the Tembris Valley inscriptions to Montanist clergy, or to central features of Montanism, such as their belief in post-Testamental prophecy, or to any proclivity towards voluntary martyrdom. Modern scholarship suggests that outside the works of Tertullian there is no evidence that the followers of Montanus were more likely to court martyrdom by provocative behaviour than other Christians.421 The region where the Christians for Christians inscriptions have been found is not close to the Montanist heartland of Pepuza and Tymion, or to the communities of the upper Maeander valley, where Montanism was intensely controversial in the late second and early third centuries. The hypothesis is an arbitrary one and distracts from the task of evaluating the inscriptions on their own terms. 4.8.1 The Prose Texts of the Upper Tembris Valley Allegedly the earliest Christian gravestone recorded from the Upper Tembris Valley is a doorstone, first recorded by Perrot in the 1860s, and rediscovered and photographed by Christopher Cox in the 1920s at Zemme, a village whose ancient name survived until modern times before it was replaced by the banal Turkish toponym Çayırbaşı (‘at the head of the water-meadow’).422 Marc Waelkens classified the Zemme doorstone in the series C Altıntaş 1, dating between the mid-second century and the late Antonine period, ie c.150–175.423 The schema of the stone is typical. The arched gable, now broken, appears to have shown a lion and a lioness above a felled bull. There is an eagle with spread wings above the door panels, carved within an elaborately decorated 419 He found a weighty supporter in Louis Robert. See Bull. ép. 1956, 24; and 1979, 522, reviewing Gibson’s discussion of the Christians for Christians inscriptions in the Upper Tembris valley: ‘d’ailleurs nous croirions, avec Calder, que l’implantation du novatianisme au IVe siècle invite à admettre celle du montanisme au IIe et au IIIe.’ 420 For discussion of the scholars who have accepted or rejected the idea, see Tabbernee, Montanist inscriptions, 148–50 and Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 104–112, who both reject the Montanist interpretation of the Christians for Christians inscriptions. 421 See 5 n. 11 and p. 19. 422 G. Perrot et al., Exploration archéologique de la Galatie et de la Bithynie, d’une partie de la Mysie, de la Phrygie, de la Cappadoce et du Pont 1 (1872), 150 no. 99; MAMA X 198 (ICG 1195). 423 Waelkens, Türsteine, 115 no. 271 and in MAMA X 198 comm.

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frame, depicted a stilus case and a lock in the two upper panels, a cup with a high stem placed on an altar, decorated with a wreath, in the bottom left, and a bird perched on a basket in the bottom right panel. The only inscription that has survived are two words carved above and below the wreath on the altar in the bottom left panel, which Perrot read as ἱερεῦ χαῖρε. Cox made out the letters ΙΕΡ and the second word, the latter being confirmed by the squeeze which he took (figs. 29a and 29b). The MAMA commentary tentatively suggested a Christian interpretation, with the argument that the cup on the altar recalls the placing of the supposed panis eucharisticus on the tripod table of the Temenothyrae Christian gravestones, and noted a parallel for the cup on a stele copied at Kütahya.424 Both the dating of the stone and the Christian interpretation have been accepted by Tomas Lochman.425 This interpretation, however, is clearly erroneous. The Kütahya stele depicting a similar cup was set up in honour of a priest, who had been ‘honoured by Zeus’, and is represented by a bearded bust, right hand across the breast, holding the cup in his left hand. The word ἱερεῦς on its own could occasionally denote a Christian clergyman, and examples are found in third and fourth century Lycaonian inscriptions, usually in verse texts,426 but the term never occurs in pre-Constantinian Phrygian epitaphs.427 The stele with the cup recorded at Kütahya commemorates a priest of Zeus, and the doorstone at Zemme can quite simply be identified as the grave monument of a pagan priest and his wife, the latter symbolized by the bird on the wool basket, the former by the depiction of a conventional wreathed altar, inscribed with a greeting to the man who served the cult, and displaying the wine cup which graced the festivals. It would be logical to identify him as a priest of the cult of Zeus Ampelites, whose sanctuary has been identified near the neighbouring village of Akçaköy (fig. 30).428

424 BCC, JRS 15 (1925), 154 no. 140; with full description and commentary; the stone has been now transferred to a depot in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara. Lochman, Phrygien, 264–65: II 147a dates it to the early third century. The text has been restored to read [Ἀλ]έξανδρος Μητ[ρό|φιλ]ον τὸν ἱερέα [τιμηθ|έντα] ὑπὸ Διὸς καθ[ιέρωσεν]. In a separate panel above the bust with the cup is a bearded bust representing Zeus himself. See chapter 4.10 n. 9. 425 Lochman, Phrygien, 258: II, 54, suggesting a date 160–70, ‘wohl das älteste christliche Dokument dieser Gegend’. 426 See Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lykaonien, 618–28; Sabine Hübner, Der Klerus, 61; B. Kötting, Die Aufnahme des Begriffs Hiereus in den christlichen Sprachgebrauch, in B. Kötting (ed.), Ecclesia Peregrinans (Münster 1988), 409–436. 427 MAMA I 402 (ICG 1703), a Christian verse epitaph from the territory of Nacolea, mentions a εἱερεῦς Θεοῦ from a much later date. 428 See 69.

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Figure 29 a

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Upper Tembris valley (Zemme). ICG 1195. MAMA X 198 C. W. M. Cox archive

Another reason for rejecting the Christian interpretation of this gravestone is that it would be a remote chronological outlier in the region. The earliest subsequent Christian monument belongs eighty years later, a bomos copied at Kurd Köy (Altıntaş town), set up for her husband by a woman, Aur. Ammeia, assisted by her son-in-law Zotikos, and her grandchildren Allexandreia, Telesphoros and Allexandros. A date was inscribed on the pediment, reading [Τ]ΛΓ 333 (Sullan era) = 248.429 If the family relationships in the epitaph are 429 [τ]λγ´| Χρειστιανοὶ |Χρειστιανῷ | Αὐρ. Αμμεια | σὺν τῷ γαμβρ[ῷ] | αὐτῶν Ζωτι|κῷ κὲ σὺν τοῖ[ς] | ἐγόνοις αὐτῶ[ν] | Ἀλλεξανδρείᾳ | κὲ Τελεσφόρῳ | κὲ Ἀλλεξάνδρῳ | συνβίῳ ἐποίη|σαν. Anderson,

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Upper Tembris valley (Zemme). ICG 1195. MAMA X 198 C. W. M. Cox archive

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Figure 30 Upper Tembris Valley. Stele for a priest of Zeus Stephen Mitchell

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correctly recorded, the name of Ammia’s husband was omitted, but the text was prefaced, and for a reader dominated, by the reference to Christians in lines 2–3. Anderson, who copied the text in 1897, had no hesitation in reading Χρειστιανοὶ Χρειστιανῷ, and was followed by Calder in his 1923 publication. In 1928, Calder, Buckler and Cox opted for Χρειστιανοὶ Χρειστιανο[ῖς], based on their impression that omikron seemed more probable than omega, and that this was supported by the squeeze they made. Tabbernee accepted this suggestion and regards the plural as certain, although ungrammatical, as he thought that the word should agree with the singular συνβίῳ in line 12. The published photograph and Anderson’s copy clearly favour an omega and the earlier reading should be adopted. A simple Christian stele, whose design and lettering suggest that it is contemporary with the stone put up by Aur. Ammia, was recorded at Kuyucak, opposite Zemme on the east side of the Tembris. The stone is broken and the names of those responsible for the burial are missing, but the deceased was an unspecified relative (συνγένης) of the family, and the concluding formula Χριστιανοὶ Χριστιανῷ indicates that the tomb was intended for him alone. It is noteworthy, therefore, that this was not the burial of a child or a marriage partner, but of a more distant relation.430 Less can be said about a smaller fragment of a stele from Karaağaç, a village between Altıntaş and Appia, with an arched pediment, which displays a bird on a basket, typical for a female burial, and carries the text [Χριστι]ανοὶ Χριστιανοῖς carved across the lintel below the arch and spilling into the right-hand margin of the stone. This is likely to have been the heading of another mid-third century epitaph.431 Paganism and Christianity, 214 no. 11; Calder BJRL 7 (1923), 337 no. 2; JRS 18 (1928), 21–22 no. 23; SEG 6, 141; Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 56–57 no. 22; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 196–202 no. 27 (ICG 1264). Although the first letter did not survive, Anderson and Calder regarded the reading of the date as certain. ΥΛΓ, ie AD 348, would fall outside a plausible range for the style of the inscription, while AD 248 suits the Aurelius nomenclature and fits comfortably into the cluster of era dates for Christian gravestones recorded in south-west Phrygia. 430 Anderson, SERP 227 no. 23; (Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 58 no. 23;) MAMA X 8 (Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 202 no. 28) (ICG 1157). 431 Calder BJRL 1929, 268 no. 2, Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 49 no. 18; MAMA X 146; Tabbernee Mont. Inscr. 205–207 no. 29 (ICG 1189). Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 207–208 no. 30. has rescued from near oblivion another fragment from the Upper Tembris Valley, published in an English transcription by W. M. Ramsay, Expositor 1888, 253–54 no. 5. I am grateful to Peter Thonemann and Emmanuel Zingg for identifying this text, copied at Çal Köy, in one of Ramsay’s 1884 notebooks. It ends with an an era date, ἔτους τμ´ (340 (Sullan) = 255), beneath a relief showing a pair of humped yoked oxen. The two partially preserved lines above this read [-]ιος Ὀνησι[μ -]| [-]ανός [-?]. The restoration [Χριστι]ανὸς [Χριστιανοῖς] is unlikely, as a nominative singular never appears in the comparable texts.

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A substantial but undecorated funerary bomos from Appia (Abya mod. Pınarcık), has a text that was accurately recorded by Anderson, but has been misrepresented in modern editions.432 The gravestone was put up by Aur. Zotikos for his parents Markion and Appe and his brother Artemas. The Christian formula Χρειστιανοὶ Χρειστιανοῖς was separated from the rest of the text by a gap and was cut in the middle of the front face of the altar. As the plural Χριστιανοὶ does not agree with the singular subject, Anderson suggested that the formula had already become sterotyped, but this is a misunderstanding of the function of the expression. ‘Christians for Christians’ was used to indicate that the entire Christian community, beyond the immediate family, was involved in the burial commemoration. The Aurelius name and the style of the monument suggest a date in the 230s or 240s. A bomos in the same style from Appia may hint at a major family tragedy, or at least records several, near simultaneous, deaths. The tomb was primarily erected by Aur. Rufina, daughter of Trophimus, to commemorate her husband, Aur. Alexandros, and five children: Kyrilla, Beroneikianos, Aurelia, Glykonis and another Beroneikianos. She was joined in setting up the tomb by one surviving son, who bore the same name as his father, Aur. Alexandros, and by a woman, Domne, who may have been the wife of the elder Beroneikianos. The text runs Αὐρηλία Ῥουφεῖνα Τροφίμου | γλυκυτάτῳ ἀνδρὶ | Αὐρηλίῳ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ Δόμνη |τῷ ἑαυτῆς ἀνδρὶ καὶ τοῖς τέ|κνοις Κυρίλλῃ καὶ Βερονει|κιανῷ καὶ Αὐρηλίᾳ καὶ Γλυ[κ]ωνίδι καὶ ἑτέρῳ Βερονικια|νῷ μνήμης χάριν ἐποίησεν |σὺν τῷ ἑαυτῆς υἱῷ Αὐρηλίῳ | Ἀλεξάνδρῳ δὶς ἔτι ζῶντες. | Χρειστιανοὶ Χρειστιανοῖς.433 The Christians for Christians formula was given prominence by being placed at the end of the text. Another grave monument from Appia, set up by Aur. Trophimus, had a decorated pediment displaying heraldic lions, rampant above a bull, in an arched niche between panels decorated with fish and dolphins. The motif of the lions with a bull occurs on many pagan monuments from Phrygia in the later second 432 The earliest publications, Anderson, Paganism and Christianity, 214 no. 12; Calder BJRL 7 (1923), 337 no. 3; and IGR IV 602 all correctly print the first words as Αὐρ. Ζωτικὸς Μαρκίωνος. The letters omega nu are in ligature at the start of line 2. Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 11 no. 2 introduced the erroneous reading Μαρκιανός, which was adopted by Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 181–86 no. 24 and Huttner (ICG 1152). The same patronymic occurs in the dative in line 3, where omega has been omitted in error: Μαρκίνι. 433 Anderson, SERP 216 no. 14; Calder, BJRL 1923, 338 no. 5; Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 9–10 no. 1; MAMA X 168; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 186–89 no. 25. (ICG 1151). The words γλυκυτάτῳ ἀνδρὶ were inserted above line 2 in small letters, and it is evident that the deaths included the respective husbands of Aurelia Roufina and Domne. Aurelius Alexandros was married to Aurelia Rufina, as shown by their like-named son Aur. Alexandros δίς. Domne must have been married to one of the Beroniciani, presumably the elder one.

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and early third centuries, especially on the gables of doorstones, and drew on a rich pagan tradition. Lions were age-old companions of the Phrygian goddess Cybele; they served to protect the grave and can also be interpreted symbolically as representing the deceased in their after-life.434 An early generation of Christians may have used this traditional funerary imagery more readily than their successors, but more likely gave little thought to the matter. The style also fits a date in the 230s. The text of the inscription, broken to the right, contains many small slips and has eluded a definitive restoration, but almost certainly had the words Χρειστιανο[ὶ Χρειστι]|ανοῖς in the last two lines, although in this case they were followed, after a gap, by another name Τροφιμ[-].435 An inscription cut in a tabula ansata from Keçiler, a remote village of the region southwest of Appia, probably comes from a stele resembling the doorstones from Traianopolis and Temenothyrae and had a framed inscribed panel between the shaft and the gable of the grave monument. The shaft displayed a spindle and distaff but nothing is recognisable in the damaged pediment. The text records a three-generation family, Eutyches, father of Macedon, and grandfather of another Eutyches. The dead named by the epitaph were Macedon’s bride Ammia, the elder Eutyches’ granddaughter Tatia, and probably an unnamed son of Macedon and Ammia. The formula Χριστια[νοὶ Χριστι]ανοῖς again occurred in the emphatic end position.436 Another inscription that can be tentatively assigned to the middle of the third century, is the text recorded at Gecek, carved in the recess of an undecorated triangular gable, framed by plain margins, twenty-five centimeters high and eighty-three centimeters wide, which may once have been the top of a broad stele or a doorstone. The inscription was put up by Aur. Glykon and their children for his wife Demetria, who had died, and ends Χρηστιανοὶ [Χρηστ]ιανῇ, although the grave was also for his own use, ἑαυτῷ ζῶν (Fig. 31).437 434 Lochman, Phrygien, 210–12; Lochman, Eine Gruppe spätantiker Grabsteine aus Phrygien, 500–506. 435 Anderson, Paganism and Christianity, 215 no. 13. Gibson, ZPE 28 (1978), 28–30 no. 11 (Koç collection) and in Chr. for Chr. 46–49 no. 17 (adopted by Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 190–96 no. 26) restored the text respectively with shorter and longer lines; both versions are reproduced by Huttner, ICG 1260, but neither is completely convincing. The first surviving letter of [Χρειστι]|ανοῖς was copied as an omicron by Anderson and corrected in his edition to an alpha; the photograph published by Gibson shows traces of a damaged letter which can be read as an alpha. 436 Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 18–19 nr. 7 (SEG 28, 1108); Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 285–88 nr 45; (ICG 1253; for the comparanda, see ICG 1287 and 1288; 185 n. 338 and 188 n. 348. 437 Anderson Paganism and Christianity, 215 no. 16; Calder, BJRL 17 (1923/4), 338 no. 6; BCC, JRS 18 (1928), 24 no. 235; (SEG 6, 143); Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 54–55 no. 21; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 312–15 no. 52; (ICG 1263, with an excellent photograph from the Calder archive).

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Figure 31 Upper Tembris valley (Gecek). Gable of Stele set up by Aur. Glykon. ICG 1263 W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen

Not all third-century texts from the Upper Tembris Valley region have the Christians for Christians formula. One example from the village of Beşkarış, at the southern extremity of the Tembris Valley region, is the substantial funerary bomos put up by Aur. Ammia for her elderly husband Aur. Polion, son of Doulion, and their child Sabina. Above the text was a simple relief of a plough and on the pediment a Christogram, comparable in position and appearance to the Christograms which were carved on epitaphs of Apamea and Eumeneia around AD 250.438 Another inscription from Zemme, at the heart of the region, was put up by another Aur. Ammia for her husband Aur. Dionysius, aided by her seven children Zotikos, Ammianos, Dokimos, Trophimos, Metrodoros, Theodoule and Ammias. Apart from the revealing Christian name of her The name of the third child has been copied as Παππίκιος, but there may have been an attempt to change this to Πατρίκιος. Both forms are attested locally. Lochman, Phrygien, 63–65 and 256–57: II. 13–30 (catalogue) argues that all the doorstones with a triangular gable from the Upper Tembris Valley were imported products from Docimian workshops and should be dated to the first half of the second century. If he is right, the post-212 Christian inscription on the example from Gecek was a secondary addition to the stone. 438 MAMA X 52; (ICG 1169); cf. the christograms on tombs of bishops at Eumeneia (ICG 1049) and Apamea (ICG 972). The plough resembles the simple example on a late secondor early-third-century bomos (MAMA X 85), or a more elaborate example on a midsecond-century gravestone (MAMA X 83), both from Altıntaş.

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daughter, Theodoule, the family’s Christianity was made plain by a Latin cross cut inside a large wreath at the top of the stele, in the style favoured for the more elaborate marble steles described below (fig. 32).439 An aniconic stele of high quality, recorded in Altıntaş village, ancient Soa, was the grave monument set up by Auxanousa, wife of Andronikos, with her son Trophimus and nephew, who bore the unusual indigenous name Lassamos, otherwise attested only at Cotiaeum, for Auxanousa’s husband and themselves: Αὐξάνουσα ἡ σύνβι[ος Ἀν]δρονίκου κὲ ὁ υεἱὸς αὐτοῦ [Τρό]φιμος κὲ ἀνεψιὸς αὐτο[ῦ] Λασσαμος ζῶντες ἑα[υ]τοῖς κὲ Ἀνδρονείκ[ῳ]. Χρηστιανοὶ Χρηστ[ιαν]ῷ ἐποίησαν (fig. 33). There are a distaff and spindle on the triangular pediment, while the shaft shows a pair of slender birds pecking at a vine, which occupies most of the main panel, luxuriating from behind a pair of very realistic humped oxen, even shown with winter coats.440 The quality of the workmanship is outstanding, comparable to some of the fine Zeus Ampelites reliefs. The work, dated too late around 300 by Anderson and Tabbernee, was probably created in the mid-third century. After the mid-third-century group of Christians for Christians monuments from the Upper Tembris region, a gap of twenty or thirty years may have intervened before the production of a distinctive series of attractive white marble grave steles, in the style classified by Waelkens as Altıntas C 1, many of them for the Christian community. Tomas Lochman has pointed out that in design and execution they are closely related to the Bogenfeldstelen of the so-called Champaign group, which were produced over a long span between 240 and 310.441 They are generally about 1 to 1.5 metres high, between 50 and 70 centimeters wide, and relatively slender. The Christian examples have triangular pediments containing a prominent wreath enclosing a Latin cross. The side and central acroteria at the top of the gable were decorated with schematic palmettes in low relief, and the panels on either side of the wreath were sometimes inscribed and sometimes left blank. The shaft of the stele was enclosed in a double frame. The outer band of the frame, forming the pilasters and the lintel above a central niche or panel, was always decorated with dense bunches of grapes hanging from snaking vine tendrils. The narrower inner band was decorated with an overlapping abstract leaf design. In the Christian examples the central panel itself was sometimes entirely taken up by an inscription, 439 BCC, JRS 18 (1928), 25 no. 237 (ICG 1979). For the name Theodoule, see I. Ankara 2 no. 356 comm. 440 Anderson, Paganism and Christianity, 218–18 no. 17; Calder, BJRL 7 (1923), 338–39 no. 7; BCC, JRS 18 (1928), 29–30 no. 44; Pfuhl / Möbius, Die ostgriechische Grabreliefs II, 284 no. 1154; Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 51–53 no. 20; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 308–12 no. 51; (ICG 1262, with an excellent photograph from the Calder archive). 441 Lochman, Phrygien, 72.

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Figure 32 Upper Tembris Valley (Zemme). Funerary inscription of Aur. Ammia. ICG 1979 W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen

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Figure 33 Upper Tembris valley (Altıntaş). ICG 1262 W. M. CALDER ARCHIVE, UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN

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sometimes by decorative elements and symbols, or by both. No human figures were shown on the Christian examples. The plinth below the panel was also available for the end of the inscription or for other reliefs. The intact monuments have a tab below the plinth for fitting the stele onto another stone, but none has been identified in its original location. The Tembris Valley workshops, which must have been located near the marble Altıntaş quarries which produced these steles,442 were also responsible for other products in the third century, including votive dedications for the sanctuaries of Zeus Ampelites and Zeus Thallos near Akçaköy, in the first half of the third century, and the very uniform group of smaller votives for the sanctuary of the divine pair Hosios and Dikaios at Yaylababa Köy south of Cotiaeum, in the second and third quarters of the third century.443 The arrangement and decoration of the gables and frames of pagan grave monuments, including the Bogenfeldstelen, which portray between one and four standing figures in an arched niche, were also very similar to the lay-out and appearance of their Christian counterparts.444 Some of of these pagan tombstones have era dates: the gravestone of Laodike, depicting a draped female figure, found at Girei Çal köy, is dated 208/09;445 the tall niched stele set up by Aur. Beroneike and their children for her husband Sallios and herself in 232/3, and the stele put up by Aur. Nanas for her husband Aur. Papias in 239/40, both in the Koç Collection, Istanbul;446 the monument 442 MAMA X, xxviii–xxxii; for a map, see M. Waelkens, From a Phrygian quarry. The provenance of the statues of Dacian prisoners in Trajan’s forum at Rome, AJA 89 (1985), 641–53, p. 642, marking quarries near Altıntaş itself, Çakırsaz, Pınarbaşı and Murathanlar. These produced the full range of white and coloured marbles found in the more extensive Docimian quarries. In the late first and early second century they were imperially controlled, but thereafter served local needs. 443 Lochman, Phrygien, 69 n. 71 for the date of the Hosios Dikaios series, whose lettering suggests that the later stones overlapped chronologically with the later Christian for Christians series; 81 n. 123 for the date range of production; and 86–88 for Zeus Ampelites (c.200–250) and Zeus Thallos (c.190–230). 444 Pioneering publications are M. Waelkens, in S. D. Campbell, The Malcove Collection, A catalogue of objects in the Lilian Malcove collection, University of Toronto (1985), 129–35 nos. 16–18; G. Koch, Zwei Grabreliefs aus Phrygien im J. Paul Getty Museum, in Roman Funerary Monuments (1990), 115–32, especially 124 no. 4 (fig. 15), no. 5 (fig. 16), no. 6 (fig. 17), no. 10 (fig. 18), no. 11 (fig. 19), no. 14 (fig. 20), 125 III.2 (fig. 21), 127 fig. 22 (Christian example = ICG 1258), 125 IV. 1 (fig. 23). The earlier discussions have been corrected and refined very significantly by Lochman, Phrygien, 69–75 and passim. 445 MAMA X 276 and pl. XXXII; Lochman, Phrygien, 269: II 205. 446 E. Gibson, The Rahmi Koç Collection: Inscriptions. Part I, Grave Monuments from the Plain of Altintaş, ZPE 28 (178), 1–34, at 11–15 nos. 1 and 2; Lochman, Phrygien, 269 nos. 214 and 215.

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for a soldier, Tatianos, who had died at barbarian hands, in the year 301, probably 270 by the Actian era.447 A stele in Kutahya Museum dated 284/85 set up by Aur. Menandros and Severa showing a male figure between two children;448 the very fine stele, now in the Krannert Museum, Champaign, Illinois, depicting a couple with their son, to be dated by the Actian era to 293/94,449 and a stele dated έτους τπθ´, 389 Sullan era = 304/305, with one female and two male figures, holding respectively a spindle and distaff, a staff and a diptychon, and a vine pruning hook, brought to the Kütahya Museum from the village of Çömlekçi (fig 34).450 The central male figure on this last monument stands on a block decorated with a yoke of ploughing oxen, and the plinth below the niche carries the finest relief from Roman Anatolia of a solid-wheeled cart (Turkish kağnı), laden with a tightly wrapped bundle of unidentifiable produce. The family members are identified as Aur. Marcianus, son of Marcus, his wife Domna, their son Leontios, whose premature death aged nine caused the family gravestone to be commissioned, and their other children Ammiantos, Diomedes and Eumelos. The inscription ends with the typical Phrygian curse, that whoever lays a malignant hand on the tomb, may he leave behind his children as orphans, his wife a widow, and his house deserted. Since the details of the pilaster decoration, the pediment and the other relief work in the case of the latest three dated works resemble the schema and decoration of the Christian group, they provide a framework point around which the chronology of the later Christians for Christians must be built.451 Tomas Lochman suggests

447 Lochman, Phrygien, 74–75 and 271–72: II 229; (SEG 39, 1389). 448 E. Gibson, Gravestones in the Kütahya Museum, TAD 1980, 59–85 at 66–68 no. 7; Lochman, Phrygien, 272: II 232. 449 A. B. Terry und R. G. Ousterhout, Souvenir of a world in transition: a late Roman grave stela from Phrygia, Krannert Art Museum Bulletin 6, 1 (1980), 14–28 = Koch, Grabreliefs aus Phrygien, 124 no. 20; redated from 239/40 (Sullan era) to 293/94 (Actian era) by Lochman, Phrygien, 272: II 237. 450 ICG 1283. Çömlekçi, in Kütahya Museum. Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 37–40 no. 16; (SEG 28, 1101); Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 316–22 no. 53; Horsley, New Docs 5, 146; Lochman, Phrygien, 273: II 240. Ἔτους τπθ .̓ Αὐρ. Μαρκειανὸς Μάρκου κὲ Δόμνα τέκνῳ Λέοντι γλυκυτάτῳ ἀωροθανῇ ἐτῶν θ ̓ κὲ ἑαυτοῖς κὲ τὰ τέκνα αὐτῶν Ἀμμίαντος κὲ Διομήδης κὲ Εὔμηλος πατρὶ ζῶντι κὲ μητρὶ ζώσῃ κὲ ἀδελφῷ θεθνῶτι γλυκυτάτοις μνήμης χάριν. τίσς ἂν προσάξει χῖρα τὴν βαρύχθονον ὀρφανὰ τέκνα λίποιτο οἶκον χῆρον βίον ἔρημον. Tabbernee wrongly reads the child’s age as ιθ´ (19). The cart is illustrated by D. H. French, Epigraphica Anatolica 17 (1991), Tafel XIa. 451 Koch, Grabreliefs, 131 called the later dates of 284/85 and 304/305 into question, suggesting that they might point to re-use of the stones, but this is not apparent from the carving of the stones themselves, and Koch himself concedes that the similar Christian stones (illustrated by ICG 1258), should come at the end of the series, although he himself suggests a mid-third-century date for them.

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Figure 34 Cotiaeum territory (Çömlekçi). Grave stele dated 304/5. ICG 1283. Kütahya Museum Stephen Mitchell

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a date range between AD 270 and 310 for the Christian stones,452 William Tabbernee c.285/90–305/310.453 The chronology is broadly confirmed by the longest of the Christian examples, the epitaph of the soldier Aur. Gaius, discovered by Drew-Bear in the village of Adaköy at the north end of the Upper Tembris Valley.454 Aurelius Gaius had served in legio I Italica, legio VIII Augusta, and legio I Iovia Scythica in the course of a career under the emperor Diocletian, which had taken him to every corner of the empire, τὴ[ν ἡγεμον]ίαν κυκλεύσας. The regions where he saw service included Spain and Mauretania, the Rhine frontier, the Carpathian and Balkan regions; the provinces of Asia Minor, the Near East and Egypt.455 Now he had returned, εἰς πατρ[ίδα …]ννουντίων ἐνδ᾽ ἦν τεθρ[εμμένος, ἐν κώ]μῃ Κοτιαέων καταμένων. All editions have accepted the supplement εἰς πατρ[ίδα γαῖαν Πεσσι]ννουντίων, proposed by Drew-Bear, but it would also be possible to restore an Anatolian village name ending –nnous, to be located, as the next line makes clear, in the territory of Cotiaeum, rather than the city name of Pessinous. This toponym would be the ancient name of Adaköy, Gaius’ native village where he was buried.456 Below and to the left of the long inscription there is a shield and spear, and a relief that originally showed four men, each standing beside a bridled and saddled horse.457 Back in his native Phrygia the soldier Gaius was engaged like many of his fellow countrymen in providing transport services, a profession for which he had admirable experience and qualifications. The restored penultimate phrase of the inscription, ἕως τῆς 452 Lochman, Phrygien, 69 n. 71 for the dating of the Christian examples, catalogue II, 284–293, and 81 n. 123 for non-Christian products of this workshop. 453 Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr., 250. 454 Drew-Bear, Voyages d’ Aurélius Gaius, 93 ff. Taf. 1–4; AE 1981, 207–9 no. 777; SEG 31, 1116; (ICG 1379; Lochman Phrygien, 277: II, 293), dated soon after 303 by Lochman. 455 Drew-Bear, in the original edition, concluded that the geographical regions corresponded to Roman administrative provinces; M. Sartre, EA 2 (1983), 25 ff, argued that the text used regional names in common usage and was not based on official provincial nomenclature. M. Colombo, Correzioni testuali ed esegetiche all’epigrafe di Aurelius Gaius (regione di Kotiaeum in “Phrygia”), ZPE 174 (2010), 118–26, presumes that Gaius was always a member of the comitatus of the emperor Diocletian, and saw service that began with the battle of Viminacium in 285 and continued to about 304. 456 Compare the toponym Perminous in Pisidia (alternative form, Perminounda), with a dative form Περμινοῦντι, the location of the cult of Apollo Περμινουνδέων; see I. Cen. Pisid. pp. 103–110 with no. 104a. Another parallel is the name of the Galatian tetrarchic fortress at Γορβεοῦς (Strabo XII.5.3, 568), which reappears in the late Roman itineraries in the forms Curveunte (It. Burd. 575.9), and Corveunte (Tab. Peut.). 457 Only two are fully preserved; Colombo, ZPE 174, 121 unconvincingly proposes that the reliefs of the shield and spear, and the four horsemen represent five stages in Gaius’s own career.

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[ἀ]να[στάσεως], which occurs also in third-century and early fourth-century Christian epitaphs from Macedonia and Asia Minor, indicates that Aurelius Gaius was a Christian.458 The mid-third-century epitaph of his namesake, Gaius from Eumeneia, already contained a reference to the resurrection (ἀνάστασις) of the righteous (above chapter 4.5)). The top of the Adaköy stele is broken but shows the left and right sides of the wreath typical of Christian steles in this series. There is no trace of a cross, but it could have been entirely removed by the break. It is natural to ask the question how Gaius’s status as a Christian should be reconciled with his lengthy military service under Diocletian, especially if he spent much of his time in a unit that accompanied the emperor in person on his travels and campaigns. Imperial measures against the Christians reached their first climax in February 303, with the first imperial edict of the Great Persecution. However, Lactantius recorded that Diocletian had already been provoked by the failure of his sooth-sayers, the haruspices, and ordered everyone in his palace entourage to perform sacrifices, as well as provincial governors to require soldiers under their command to do the same, on pain of discharge from service.459 It is impossible to say with certainty whether Gaius discreetly managed to reconcile Christianity with military service until he reached the normal age for discharge,460 or had been forced to leave his legion as a result of the new imperial policy around 302 and 303, or had first become a Christian after his retirement. The last option is worth consideration. Both the first editor and Tomas Lochman have dated the inscription close to 303, when Gaius might have completed twenty or more years of legionary service. However, the occupational reliefs on the gravestone, the apparent reference to his wife, Iulia Areskouse, who was possibly still living, and the expression καταμένων ἐν κώμῃ, which hints at residence over an extended period, would all suit the civilian life of a veteran. Aurelius Gaius might have commissioned the monument several years after 303, and his conversion, or at least the public declaration of his Christianity, could have occurred during this period, when he was living among other Christians, not in the secular or pagan environment

458 See I. Ankara 2, p. 114 and 132 for references. 459 Lactantius, De mort. pers. 13; Eusebius, HE VIII.2.4; T. D. Barnes, Sossianus Hierocles and the Antecedents of the Great Persecution, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 80 (1976), 239–52 conjectured that this occurred at Antioch in AD 302. 460 For other Phrygian Christians of the third century who had done military service, see ICG 998 and pp. 191–2.

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of Diocletian’s armies. The Christians for Christians formula does not appear on the stone; he may have been a late-comer to the community.461 The other Christian inscriptions in this group come from find spots distributed across the Upper Tembris Valley region. Three are in the collection of Kütahya Museum without a recorded provenance. The provenanced stones come from Aslanapa in the north-west, Akçaköy, Aykırıkçı, Üçhüyük and Alibeyköy in the central region around Altıntaş town, and Eftet in the south-east. In every case the setter-up of the tomb used the abbreviated pseudo-praenomen Aur. but this prefix was not added to any of the other names. The Christians for Christians formula was usually placed at the end of the inscription, as was normal in the earlier examples of the mid-third century. A stele, reportedly found at Erikli Mevkii near Akçaköy, now in the Koç Collection in Istanbul, exemplifies the normal pattern. It was almost a metre high and forty-five centimeters wide, and displayed a Latin cross in a wreath in the gable. The figural decoration consisted of two saddled horses carved at the bottom of the main panel, and three pairs of yoked oxen on the plinth. The inscription was added after the reliefs had been cut. Most of the text was inscribed on the main shaft above the yoked horses, but it overran this space so that the final lines were cut left and right of the wreath in the gable. It documents a large family: Αὐρ. Δόμνα ἀνδρὶ Μέλῃ κὲ ἑαυτῇ ζῶσα κὲ τὰ τέκνα αὐτῶν Κύριλλος κὲ Ἀλέξανδρος κὲ Ἰστρατονικὴς κὲ Εὐθυχειανὴς κὲ Τατιανὸς κὲ Ἀλεξανδρία κὲ Αὐξανὼ κὲ Κυριακὴς κὲ Εὐσέβις κὲ Δόμνος πατρὶ κὲ μητρὶ ζώσῃ. Χρηστιανοὶ Χρητιανοῖς.462 Aurelia Domna had ten surviving children, five boys and five girls, who joined their mother in setting up the tombstone at their father’s death.463 The Christians for Christians tag at the end seems generalized, and is not a close reflection of the fact that a woman initiated the 461 Compare three other Bogenfeldstelen with figural decoration for soldiers: Lochman, Phrygien, 74–75 and 271–72: II 229 (SEG 39, 1389) for the soldier Tatianos, killed by barbarians in 270/71; Lochman, Phrygien 273: II 245 (from Işıklar), set up for Εἰούστῳ (not Εἰσύστῳ, as Lochman) στρατιώτῃ ὀπτίωνι and II 246 (Kütahya Museum), put up by Ἀλέξανδρος ἰστρατιώτης and his siblings, the children of Aur. Elpis and Eutychos. The last two monuments, dated on stylistic grounds around 300, were for pagan contemporaries of Aur. Gaius. 462 Gibson, ZPE 28 (1978), 1–33; 1, 30 ff. nr. 12 Taf. 6c; (SEG 28, 1104); Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 261–67 no. 40; Lochman II, 284 (ICG 1254). Dated by Lochman to 270–290, Tabbernee 305–310 and Huttner to 290–310. The children were probably listed in order of birth, so that male and female names are mixed up. Ι read the girl’s name Αὐξανώ not Αὐξάνω as suggested in the published editions. 463 Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr., 265, suggests that the ten children (τέκνα) may include the marriage partners of their offspring; compare the designation by the mother in ICG 1177 (see 224 n. 466) of her son’s bride (νύνφη) as another τέκνον.

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commemoration of a single person, her husband. As usual, it is better seen as a reference to the involvement of the wider Christian community in the burial. The nomenclature of the children is notable for including two names, Κυριακής and Εὐσέβι(ο)ς, which were exclusively or almost exclusively used by Christians. A stele from Aykırıkçı divides the main panel into three bands, with the inscribed text in the top, a pruning hook, a diptych and a distaff and spindle in the middle, and three pairs of yoked oxen at the bottom. The text reads Αὐρ. Ἀππης ἀνδρὶ Τροφίμῳ τῷ κὲ Κράσῳ γλυκυτάτῳ κὲ τὰ τέκνα αὐτῶ Τρόφιμος κὲ Νικόμαχος κὲ Δόμνα κὲ Ἀππης πατρὶ κὲ μητρὶ ζώσῃ. Χρηστιανοὶ Χρηστιανῷ.464 The final formula referred to the dead man, Trophimus also called Cras(s)us. None of the family members bore a distinctively Christian name. Only the bottom half of the example found at Üçhüyük is preserved. The lower part of the shaft was decorated with a pruning hook, a diptych and a yoke of oxen before the inscription was added. Again, the bural was initiated by a woman for her husband and herself, supported by two children: Αὐρ. Κύριλα ἀν[δ]ρὶ Εὐτύχῳ Δευκωμήτῃ κe ἑαυτῇ ζῶσα κὲ τὰ τέκνα αὐτῶν Ἐπιτύνχανος κὲ Κύριλος Χρηστιανοῖς μνῆμης χάριν. Νικηφόρος κὲ Ἀλέξανδρος ἀδελφῷ. The names of Eutychos’s brothers were squeezed onto the panel beside and on the diptych, and it appears that the usual Christians for Christians formula was also abbreviated to Χρηστιανοῖς for lack of space (fig. 35).465 The pattern of the epitaph from Alibeyköy is almost identical, except that the couple’s one child was old enough to be married, and his bride joined in commemorating her parents-in-law: Αὐρ. Κύριλλα ἀνδρὶ Ἀσκληπάδῃ κὲ ἑαυτῇ ζῶσα κὲ τὰ τέκνα ὐτῶν Ἀσκληπιάδης πατρὶ κὲ μητρὶ κὲ Δόμνα νύνφη ἑκυροῖς. Χρηστιανοὶ Χρηστιανοῖς μνήμης χ̣άριν. The decoration in the lower part of the shaft comprises a yoke of oxen, a wool-carding comb, distaff and spindle, and, apparently, a set of wood-working tools.466 A damaged stone from Doğalar with a text that ended [Χρηστιανοὶ | Χρη]στιαν[οῖς] was put up by Aur. Alexandria with the aid of her children for her husband Trophimas and herself, and has been taken to be the earliest in this series and dated around 464 Now in Bursa Museum; Ath. Mitt. 25 (1900), 465 no. 1; Calder, BJRL 7 (1923), 342 no. 10; Pfuhl / Möbius Ostgriechische Grabreliefs 1159 Taf. 174. Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 28–30 Nr. 12, taf. 13. Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 251–57 no. 38; Koch, Grabreliefs, 127 Abb. 222, 131; ICG 1258. Lochman, Phrygien (II, 286) dated 280/90; Tabbernee 290–300; Huttner 290–310. 465 Now in Kütahya Museum. Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 26–27 Nr 11, Taf. 12. SEG 28, 1099; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 267–71 no. 41; ICG 1257 (Lochman II, 290). Lochman dated c.290–300; Tabbernee 305–310; Huttner 290–310. 466 Calder, BJRL 13 (1929), 268 NR. 1; SEG 6, 103; Gibson, Chr. for Chr. nr 14, Taf. 14; MAMA X 104 Taf. 10. Tabbernee, Mont Inscr. 258–61 no. 39; (ICG 1177; Lochman II, 291). Lochman dated c.290–300; MAMA c.305–310 (end of series).

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Figure 35 Upper Tembris Valley (Üçhüyük). Christians for Christians grave stele set up by Aur. Kyrila from Deukome. ICG 1257. Now in Kütahya Museum Stephen Mitchell

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280. The stele’s decoration included the usual cross in a wreath at the top with a pruning hook beside it, and a horse and yoked oxen on the shaft, perhaps accompanying another cross in a circle.467 Only the upper part of the unprovenanced stele for Mikos, now in Kütahya Museum, is preserved. The shaft is reserved for reliefs of a whip, a diptych, a comb, a distaff and spindle, and the inscription is carved on either side of the wreath which encloses a Latin cross: Αὐρ. Τατιον Φιλομήλου τέκνῳ Μίκῳ κὲ Ἑρμιονὴς ἀνδρὶ Μίκῳ κὲ Μίκαλος πατρί, Χρηστιανοὶ Χρηστιανοῖς, μνήμης χαριν. Strictly the dative plural Χρηστιανοῖς does not agree with the singular Μίκῳ, the individual for whom the gravestone was set up, and the expression should again be understood ad sensum as alluding to the whole Christian community beyond the immediate family members named on the stone (fig. 36).468 Another gravestone of uncertain origin seems to have served the needs of two families, which were presumably closely linked to one another. The inscription in the main panel was set up by parents for their daughter, Αὐρ. Εὐκτήμων κὲ Αμμιας τέκνῳ Ὀνησίμῃ Χρηστιανῇ. The decoration below shows pairs of carding combs, distaff and spindle, as well as a bird and a wool basket. There are yoked oxen and a plough on the plinth. The reduplication of female work tools in the relief is explained by the second inscription, carved above the shaft on either side of the wreath and cross, Αὐρ. Θεόδωρος κὲ Πατρίκις κὲ Πρόκλα κὲ Εὐκτήμων Χ[ρησ]τ[ιανο]ὶ Α[ὐρ.] Δόμ[νῃ] ἑκυρᾷ [Χρ]ηστιανῇ.469 Another Patriki(o)s appears in the gravestone set up by Aur Stratonikos for Aur. Erpidephoros (Elpidephoros), a text carved above a relief of a pruning hook above a plough pulled by yoked oxen: Αὐρ. Εἰστρατόνικος τέκνῳ Ἐρπιδηφόρῳ

467 MAMA X 217; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 248–51 no. 37 (ICG 1197). 468 Kütahya Museum. Calder, AS 5 (1955), 35 Nr 3; Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 30 no. 13; Mitchell, Anatolia II, 60 f. Abb. 19. Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 281–84 no. 44; (ICG 1259; Lochman II, 285). Dated Lochman c.270–290. Mitchell c.275; Tabbernee c.310. 469 Kütahya Museum. Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 24–25 Nr 10 fig. 11; (SEG 28, 1098); Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 271–77 no. 42; (ICG 1256; Lochman, Phrygien, 276: II, 287). Lochman dated 280/90; Huttner 290–310. The relationship between the two epitaphs is obscure; see Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 275, who suggests that Aur. Domne is Onesime’s step-grandmother. For the inclusion of obscure relatives, compare ICG 1157 for a syngenes. The practice must be evaluated in the context provisionally explored by P. Thonemann, Households and families in Roman Phrygia, in Thonemann, (ed.), Roman Phrygia. Culture and Society (2013), 124–41, and S. Destephen, Familles d’Asie Mineure au miroir des MAMA, Epigraphica Anatolica 43 (2010), 135–48.

section 4.8: The Upper Tembris Valley

Figure 36 Upper Tembris Valley. Christians for Christians grave stele of Aurelia Tation. ICG 1259. Now in Kütahya Museum Stephen Mitchell

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κὲ Διονυσιὰς ἀνδρὶ κὲ τὰ τέκνα αὐτῶν Εἰστρατόνικος κὲ Κύριλος κὲ Πατρίκις κὲ Φίλητος πατρὶ, Χρησσιανοὶ Χρησσιανῷ.470 The immediately apparent difference between these Christian gravestones, all probably to be dated between c.280 and 310, and other productions of the Altıntaş workshops, is that none of them depicts a human form, apart from the tiny figures with their horses on the Adaköy stone. The sculptors developed a new design for their Christian clients. The niche with its human figure or figures was replaced by a rectangular zone at the top for the wreath and the cross, and a large oblong panel for the inscription and for non-figural relief decoration. There is no doubt that the eschewal was deliberate. This group, and all the Christian inscriptions from the Upper Tembris Valley, present a highly significant aberration from the pattern observed by Jane Masséglia, in a perceptive discussion of the relief sculpture of Roman Phrygia, that ‘portraiture and epigraphy were at the heart of how Phrygians recognized and evaluated the person behind the public monument’.471 The Christians of the region precisely avoided the first of these tools of self-representation, and thus drew attention to their own distinctiveness. This résumé of this aniconic group from the turn of the third and fourth centuries ends with an anomalous example from Aslanapa which follows the design of the other steles but does not contain the Christian for Christian formula and shows no other clear signs of Christianity.472 The gable contained a wreath, without a cross inside,473 and there was a lengthy inscribed text. The first part was cut on either side of the wreath and the rest fills the whole of the front panel except for the depiction of a set of tools: a bow saw, two hammers and a bow drill. The text itself was not a conventional gravestone, but set out the terms of the will of Aur. Papylos, which related to other family members, some obscurely related to him. Perhaps the workshop offered their customer Aur. Papylos the option of the design normally used for Christians, as this allowed room for a lengthy text in place of the human figures which usually filled up the space of the pagan monuments (fig. 37). 470 Kütahya Museum. Gibson, Chr. for Chr.22–23 nr 9, Taf. 10; SEG 28, 1097; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 277–80 no. 43; (ICG 1255; Lochman, Phrygien, 276: II, 292). Lochman dated c.300; Huttner 290–310; Tabbernee 300–310. 471 Jane Masseglia, Phrygians in relief, in Thonemann, (ed.), Roman Phrygia. Culture and Society (2013), 96. 472 Kütahya Mus. Inv. 12. Anderson, Paganism and Christianity, 212–14 no. 10; Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 33–36 no. 15 fig. 15; (SEG 36, 1192); MAMA X 36; (ICG 1205; Lochman II, 288). Lochman date c.290–300; Huttner c.300. 473 The photographs show a patch of roughened damaged surface inside the wreath, suggesting that a cross had been removed, but it is not clear when, or by whom.

section 4.8: The Upper Tembris Valley

Figure 37 Upper Tembris Valley (Aslanapa). Christian grave stele. ICG 1205. Kütahya Museum Stephen Mitchell

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Another large Christian family was commemorated on a slender stele found at Yalnızsaray, but said to come from a location two kilometres northwest of Eymir. The expression Χρηστιανοὶ Χρηστιανοῖς was carved at the top of the shaft, below a narrow band of decorative moulding and above a tasselled wreath, carved in a different style from the preceding group. The family members were listed below in a way that leaves the actual relationships ambiguous: Αὐρ. Πατρίκις κὲ Μακεδόνις κὲ Ζωτικὸς κὲ Ἀμμιὰς κὲ Ἐπικτὴς γνησίῳ πατρὶ Κυρίλλῳ κὲ μητρὶ Ἀμμίᾳ κὲ υἱοῖς Ὀνησίμῳ κὲ Κυρίλλῳ κὲ Πατρικίῳ κὲ ἀδελφῇ Δόμνῃ μνήμης χάριν. A large isolated letter alpha at the bottom of the shaft may relate to the stone’s original positioning in a cemetery.474 In addition to this stele group, the Upper Tembris Valley village sites have produced five or six other Christians for Christians inscriptions which have the form of slender bomoi, but also appear to date to the late third century and were high quality products of the same workshops. A funerary altar from Yalnızsaray was certainly produced by the same workshop as the main stele group and should also be dated within a decade of 300. The decorative details on the main shaft, including reliefs of a horse with a raised foreleg, two oxen yoked to a plough, carding comb, distaff and spindle, and diptych, and above all the wreath enclosing a Latin cross, motifs which replicate exactly the designs on the main stele group, but the stone itself was a bomos rather than a stele, with a prominent pyramidal top, a pediment section in two bands carrying the funerary text, and three bands of decoration on the front side of the altar with the Χρηστιανοὶ Χρηστιανοῖς text conspicuously displayed inside the wreath beside and below the cross.475 The text on the pediment reads Αὐρ. Εὔτυχος Μενάνδ[ρου] κὲ Πρόκλα τέκνῳ Κυρίλλῳ κὲ [νύ]μφῃ Δόμνῃ κὲ ἐγγόνῳ Κυριακῷ καταλιπόντες τέκνα ὀρφανὰ Ἀλέξανδρον κὲ Πρόκλαν κὲ Αὐ[ρ.] Εὔτυχος ἀδελφῷ Κυρίλλῳ κὲ ἐνατρὶ Δόμνῃ κὲ Εὐτυχιανὴς δαέρι [Κ]υρίλλῳ κὲ ἐνατρὶ Δόμνῃ. The emphatic although syntactically maladroit phrase ‘leaving behind orphaned children’, which must refer to Kyrillos and his bride Domne, suggests that a tragedy had overtaken the couple and one of their children, Kyriakos. The involvement of the younger Aur. Eutychos and his wife Eutychianes in the

474 Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 50–51 no. 19; (SEG 28, 1100); Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 304–308 nr. 50; (ICG 1261). Against Tabbernee, there is no obvious reason why the four men and one woman who set up the gravestone for Kyrillos and Ammia should not all have been their children. The three named sons include in the burial might have been their own deceased siblings, and Domne their aunt, their father’s sister. 475 Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 12–14 no. 3. SEG 28, 1096; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 292–96 no. 47; New Docs 3, 133–34; SGO 3, 255. G. J. Johnson, Christan self identity in 3rd and 4th cent. Phrygia, Vig. Christ. 48 (1994), 350–52, (ICG 1153; Lochman, Phrygien, 277: II 294).

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burial of their brother/brother-in-law and their sister-in-law suggests that the orphaned Alexandros and Prokla passed into their care. Two other altar-shaped stones display the distinctive motif of a horse with raised foreleg and were contemporary products of the same workshop. One is a Christian stone, copied in Kütahya Museum, which shows a crudely cut inscription inserted between the wreath with a cross, diptych and whip. It reads Αὐρ. Δόμνος κὲ Ξανθίας κὲ Ἀστέρις κὲ Δημήτριος πατρὶ Δημητρίῳ κὲ μητρὶ Ἄππῃ, Χρηστιανοὶ Χρηστιανοῖς, κὲ τοῖ ἀδερφοῖ ὑμῶν Πορφυρίῳ κὲ Συνεσίῳ κὲ Κυριακῷ. The supplementary phrase added after the reference to Christians for Christians is ungrammatical and problematic. The spelling ἀδερφός for ἀδελφός is found often in Phrygian Greek, but who were ‘your brothers’? If the possessive pronoun related to the four surviving children of Demetrius and Appe, why is the second- not the first-person pronoun used? If it relates to the parents, how could they be familial brothers of both Demetrios and Appe? Perhaps Porphyrius, Synesius and Kyriakos were not kin, but members of the Christian brotherhood to which the family of Demetrius and Appe belonged, and were buried alongside the couple in the collective ritual. Another explanation is that ὑμῶν should be understood as a Phrygian itacism of ἡμῶν, which would simply make them brothers of Aur. Domnos and his three siblings. All three names are characteristic of later antiquity, but neither Porphyrius nor Synesius is typical for the region, and only Kyriakos is distinctively Christian.476 The design and the iconographic detail of the horse with raised foreleg are matched on another funerary bomos from Doğanlar, now in Kütahya Museum, with a pyramidal top, carrying a lengthy inscription for Genadius. The decoration on the top comprises a book roll, a stilus case, and diptych with the inscription Γεναδίῳ τῷ πᾶσι ποθήτῳ. The main inscription set up by Aur. Dades and his wife Amianes for Genadios and two other infant children continues across two bands of the pediment and the top of the main shaft. This is decorated with a large wreath enclosing a damaged figure of an eagle, a comb, mirror, spindle and distaff to the right, and a horse with raised foreleg at the bottom (fig. 38).477 Another epitaph was added below the wreath for their parents 476 T. Drew-Bear, 23 AST 2 (Ankara 2006), 37 and 40 fig. 8; 24 AST 1 (Ankara 2007), 441 fig. 2; (SEG 58, 1538; ICG 1366). For Synesios, see L. Robert, Malédictions funéraires, 244–45: ‘Nom ou surnom, Synésios est principalement lié à une activité intellectuelle, philosophe ou rhéteur, comme l’illustre évêque de Cyrénaique, ou médecin ou scholasticus, etc.’. The father of the deacon Abircius, on a 4th century grave monument from Prymnessus, was called Porphyrius (SEG 6, 176); see 94 n. 20 and 308–10. 477 A horse with a raised foreleg appears to have been a signature of one of the Upper Tembris Valley workshops. The motif, clearly carved by the same sculptor in each case, appears also on the Christians for Christians stones from Yalnızsaray (ICG 1153) and the stone set

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Figure 38 Upper Tembris Valley (Doğanlar). Funerary stele for Genadios, now in Kütahya Museum Stephen Mitchell

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and two deceased brothers by Dades (presumably Aur. Dades) and Elpizon.478 This style of monument with a prominent wreath and without human figures, was generally preferred by Christians, but the defaced representation of an eagle within the wreath suggests that the style had been adapted for nonChristian use. Another altar-shaped stone from the same workshop is virtually identical in design but smaller. The inscription has vanished altogether as the pediment has been broken, but the shaft has the same three decorated bands framed by an identical overlapping leaf pattern above and below. At the top is the Latin cross in a relief beside a whip, a carding comb, a diptych a spindle and distaff and a song-bird. The central band has four saddled horses, confirming the symbolism of the whip, that the family was in the transport business, and there is a yoke of oxen with a plough at the bottom.479 The lower part of another bomos of this type has been recorded at Karaağaç. The decorated front shaft was framed above and below by a quarter-round overlapping leaf pattern, a feature of the other stones in the series, and displays the usual wreath enclosing a Latin cross (partly erased in modern times), between free-hand vine tendrils with thick bunches of grapes, carved above a pruning hook, diptych, spindle, distaff and comb. Three pairs of yoked oxen occupy a separate band at the bottom of the shaft. Apart from one damaged line which survives on the pediment, the rest of inscription was inserted into the blank space on the shaft below the wreath and above the row of tools: [- -] Ἑρμόδωρος Τροφίμ[ῳ] πατρὶ κὲ μητρὶ κὲ Λουκειανὴς νύνφη κὲ τὰ ἔγγονα αὐτῶν Χαρίτων κὲ Εὐγενία. Χριστιανοὶ Χρηστιανοῖς.480 Another smaller example of this type was sold in the London art market in the early 1990s. The inscription reads: Αὐρη(λία) Ἀπφιον Αὐρη(λίῳ)] Ζήνωνι up by Aur. Domnos (ICG 1366). and this epitaph from Doğanlar. Four other pagan gravestones from the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century also have the motif, carved on a small scale: MAMA X 163 (Akçaköy) and 256 (Kusura); JRS 15 (1925), 151 no. 137 (dated to c.305 in MAMA X 163 comm.) and 171–72 no. 164. However, the motif is also found earlier and a good example appears on a votive relief put up for the Meter Theôn Zingotene, also from Doğanlar, probably dating before the middle of the third century, MAMA X 215. 478 MAMA X 219, dated around 285; the commentary in MAMA suggests that the figure in the wreath was human (Genadius), but the photograph shows an eagle with spread wings, as rightly seen by T. Drew-Bear, 24 AST 1, 438 with 442 fig. 3, who interprets it as a pagan symbol. For the significance of eagles on Phrygian grave monuments, see Lochman, Phrygien, 234. 479 Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 14 no. 4; (ICG 1154; Lochman, Phrygien, 277: II 295). Lochman date, 280–90. 480 Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 15 no. 5; SEG 28, 1107; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 296–300 no. 48; (ICG 1155; Lochman, Phrygien, 277: II 296). Lochman date 280–90; Tabbernee 300–310.

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Παπᾶ κὲ τέκ[νῳ] Ζήνωνι κὲ ἐγγόνῳ Ζήνω[νι] κὲ ἑαυτῇ ζῶσα κὲ τὰ τέκνα αὐτῶν Ἀλέξανδρος κὲ Ζη̣νόδοτος κὲ Χαρίτων κὲ Λουκειὰς κὲ Ἀμμιὰς κὲ Σευῆρα. Χρηστιανοὶ Χρηστιανοῖς. The text began on the pediment and continued onto the main shaft, inserted between the wreath with the cross, diptych, pruning hook, distaff and spindle, with a whip framing the composition vertically from the left. As often, oxen and a plough occupy a band at the bottom. The deceased, all homonymous, appear to belong to three generations – Aur. Zenon son of Papas, Zenon his son and Zenon his grandson – and the tomb was commissioned by Aur Zenon’s widow, Aur. Apphion and their other children, three male, three female.481 A more modest funerary altar decorated with a wreath and an almost erased cross in the same style was recorded by Christopher Cox at Nuhören, with the inscription, now broken on the left, confined to the pediment: [—]νος | [—]λης | [—]ς γ̣ανβρὸς κὲ Εὐ[— Μ]αρκελλῖνα τῆς Κυρίλλης θυγάτηρ. | [Χρηστιανοὶ Χ]ρηστιανοῖς. The simpler design could be an argument for a date in the third quarter of the third century.482 This résumé of the prose epitaphs from the region ends with two crudely carved steles from Appia, (Abya, now Pınarcık), one published by Elsa Gibson and tentatively dated to the early fourth century. It begins with a cross and ends with a version of the Eumeneian formula, unusual for this region and perhaps the latest attested version so far recorded: μνῆμα Εὐστ|αθιαν|οῦ μακελαρει|ως κὲ εἴ τι|ς ἐπιβουλε|ύσι, ἔτη αὐ|τοῦ πὸς τὼν παντωκράτ|ωρα θεόν. The reading of the beginning of the text is complicated by the fact that it takes the form of a palimpsest, first μνῆμα Ἀβασκάντου followed by indistinct traces, overwritten with μνῆμα Εὐσταθιανοῦ μακελαρείως (?). Eustathianus was a butcher at a fresh food market (macellum). Paul, 1 Cor. 10.23, advised that Christians should have no compunction at consuming meat from a (pagan) market, and a Christian butcher no doubt served customers of all religious persuasions. The second text, recorded in Afyon Museum in 1977, is unpublished but clearly identified in the Museum accession register as coming from the same village, ancient Appia. The stele is smaller than the epitaph of Eustathianus, but the style of the monuments and the lay-out of the texts are virtually identical: † | μνῆμα δια|φέρωντα | Χαρίτονος | Μοντανοῦ κ|ουρέως· καὶ εἴ τις | θέλῃ ἐπιβου|λεύσῃ ἔστη αὐ|τῷ πρὸς τὸν | Θεὸν καὶ | τὴν Τρίαδαν (ΙCG 4525). Both were surely products of 481 Southeby’s antiquities auction catalogue 13–14.12.1990, 236 f. Nr. 425. (SEG 40, 1249); Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 300–304 no. 49; Lochman, Phrygien, 277: II 297 (ICG 1156). Lochman date c.280–300; Tabbernee 300–310. Huttner rightly reads the patronymic Παπᾶ, a very common Phrygian name, instead of παπᾷ, ‘grandfather’, preferred by Tabbernee. Tabbernee takes the three apparent daughters of Aur. Zenon and Aur. Apphion to be the brides of the three sons. 482 Calder, BJRL 13 (1929) 268–69 nr. 3; (SEG 6, 164); Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 17 no. 6; MAMA X 245; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 288–92 no. 46; (ICG 1200).

section 4.8: The Upper Tembris Valley

Figure 39 Upper Tembris Valley (Appia, Pınarcık). Funerary stele for Chariton son of Montanos from Appia. ICG 4525. Now in Afyon Museum STEPHEN MITCHELL

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the same workshop, commissioned by local tradesmen (a κουρεύς was a bar�ber). The alternation in the final formula, between the Pantokrator and God and the Trinity, on contemporary texts shows that no chronological significance should be attached to the variation.483 4.8.2 The Verse Texts The attractive Christians for Christians steles with a prominent cross in a wreath on the pediment, dating between c.280 and 310, and the closely related group of slender bomoi, all carry prose texts. There were other inter-related clusters of aniconic gravestones with verse inscriptions, some of which retained the Christians for Christians formula, while others indicate Christianity by other means. Chronologically they are probably a little later than the cross in wreath steles, but the date ranges may have overlapped. The most easily recognisable examples have texts that begin with the formula ἐνθάδε γῆ κατέχι, followed by the name of the family member whose death led the tomb to be built. They contain a sequence of clumsy hexameter verses, which share stock phrases with one another, and then usually mutate into prose when confronted with a sequence of personal names. Three have been recorded at Aykırıkçı, and two each at Çakırsaz and Altıntaş. All the find spots belong within a circle with a fifteen-kilometre radius. The longest of these texts, the epitaph of Domnos ‘the great soldier’, was recorded in Aykırıkçı before being taken to Bursa Museum.484 The opening lines read Ἐνθάδε γῆ κατέχι Δόμνον μέγαν ἰστρατι[ώ]την | τὸμ πάσης ἀρετῆς κὲ ἐν ἀνθρώποισι φανέντα, | τὸν τὰ τοσαῦτα καμόντα κὲ ἐνδοξότατον μέγαν ἰστρατιώτην. The description of Domnos as ‘great soldier’, not once but twice, betrays not a sophisticated use of emphatic repetition but a lack of compositional skill. The poetic level of this and the other epitaphs in the group is low. The stele for Domnos was large, 1.41 metres high 0.77 wide, and 0.25 thick. The pediment, broken on the right, was wider than the shaft, and contained 483 E. Gibson, A Christian epitaph from the Upper Tembris Valley, Bulletin of the American Papyrological Society 12 (1975), 151–7; Horsley, New Docs I, 136–7 no. 86; Bull. ép. 1976, 675 (ICG 1268). McKechnie, Christianizing Asia Minor, 234 n. 13 supports a third-century date, consistent with most usages of the Eumenian formula. Gibson read Α(ὐ)ρ(ήλιος) in the first line, but the photograph does not confirm the reading and the parallel inscription for Chariton has no Aurelius name. The Chariton stone was recorded in Afyon Museum in 1977; the inventory number was E1979, accessed on 10.9.1963, with the provenance ‘Kütahya, Altıntaş, “Abia” mevkinde.’ 484 G. Mendel, BCH 33 (1909), 422–27 no. 428; Calder, BJRL 7 (1923), 342–44 no. 12; A. Wilhelm, Grabinschr. aus Kleinasien, 852; Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 80–84 no. 29; SGO 3, 243–44 16/31/12; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 371–85 no. 60; Mitchell, Epigraphic display and Christian identity in rural Asia Minor, 290–93; (ICG 1270).

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a double wreath, which probably once framed a Latin cross. The place of the pilaster capitals was occupied by geometric designs, and the pilasters themselves were not represented in architectural form. The left pilaster was decorated with bunches of grapes hanging from a twisting vine stem; the right pilaster had only a single bunch of grapes at the bottom; above it is a diptych, and above that the final lines of the inscription. Almost the entire surface of the stone below the wreath is therefore taken up by the text – three lines on the lintel, twenty-six in the main panel, five on the plinth, and eighteen short lines on the right-hand pilaster. The text on the plinth, partly broken to the left, forms a natural conclusion to the text and probably preserved the name of the sculptor who produced the stone, [Χρηστιανοὶ Χ]ρηστιανοῖς ἔτι ζῶν|τες ἐποίησαν. τὸν Θεόν σοι· ἀνά|γνους μὴ ἀδικήσῃς | [– λάτυπ]ος ἔτευξα. The inscription provides details of the large family of the patriarch Domnus, a soldier like Aur. Gaius of Adaköy. While the focus of Gaius’ epitaph was on his extraordinary military career, Domnus’s inscription was entirely concerned with the family’s status in his native community. The first ten lines of the text recorded family members who had died: Domnos himself (aged 60; a rounded figure), his wife Kyrilla, his sister Kyrilla, their son Kyrillos (aged 30), a young man with cultural aspirations described by the unusual adjective πάνμουσος,485 and his two sons, Chrysos and Alexandros, who bore the same names as their father’s brothers. The next section of the inscription listed surviving family members who would share the tomb in due course. His sons Chrysos and Alexandros became priests, community leaders, and champions of justice: ἱοὶ Χρηστιανοὶ πρεσβύτεροι λαοῦ πρεστάμενοι | νόμῳ δίκεα φρονοῦντες ἄνδρες ἀριστῆες μεγαλήτορες, and were themselves heads of large families. Chrysos and his wife Tatianes had three sons and two daughters; Alexandros and Appe three sons and seven daughters, as well as a daughter-in-law Marcella and unnamed (perhaps not yet born) grandchildren. The final lines of the inscription, on the right of the frame, added the names of other deceased family members: a cousin, a daughter-in-law and perhaps three of Alexandros’s children who had already been named in the earlier list of survivors, but were now dead. Only one of twenty-nine individuals in the text has a name that was exclusively used by Christians, Kyriakes. The stele’s design was derived from that of the later third century products of the region, and the inscription should be dated not later than the first quarter of the fourth century.486 Kyrilla, one of the daughters of Alexandros and Appe and a granddaughter of Domnos, married a man called Sosthenes, and his gravestone, a product 485 See Robert, Hell. XIII, 55–56. 486 Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr., 378 suggests the second or third quarters of the 4th cent.

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of the same workshop and composed in the same style, has also been recovered from Aykırıkçı and taken to Bursa Museum: Ἐνθάδε γῆ κατέχι Σωσθ[έ]νην ἄνδρα ποθητὸν |καὶ κάλλι καὶ μεθι καὶ σ[ω]φροσύνῃ δὲ μάλιστα. Sosthenes, who died aged thirty (the age is rounded) had been three years married to Kyrilla, who had borne him a daughter called Domna.487 The stele has a very schematic wreath in a triangular gable with palmette acroteria and simple herring-bone decoration, while the shaft carries the inscription. This ends with the same formulae as the epitaph for Domnus: Χρηστιανοὶ Χρηστιανοῖ[ς]. τὸν Θεόν σοι· ἀναγν[ο]ὺς μὴ ἀδικαίσις.488 The initiative and presumably the cost of the burial, however, was not left to the youthful Kyrilla and her infant daughter, but assumed by her father and mother, the priest Alexander and Appe. Burial was also extended to Sosthenes’ parents, Sosthas and Domna, defined by the unusual descriptor συντέκνοι, a couple who shared children with them. In these extended Christian families, sons- and daughters-in-law could be viewed as part of one household (although this should not necessarily imply that the families cohabited with one another), and associated couples of an older generation gave to understand that they shared children in a younger generation.489 The gravestone was set up a few years later than Domnos’s, but probably still in the first quarter of the fourth century. The third long epitaph recorded at Aykırıkçı was carved on a slender stele a metre high, about sixty-five centimetres wide, with a design which also retains some of the decorative features of the previous generation. The pediment was simply an extension of the main shaft. It framed an oblong rectangular panel with a plain wreath containing a slightly oblique cross, centred between two poorly formed plants or palms and a flower bud. The pilasters on either side of the main inscribed panel are still recognisable with flutes at the bottom and crudely decorated capitals; between them there is a chalice on the left and a jar or jug on the right, with vine tendrils above them.490 The text began abruptly without naming the deceased, but this is almost certainly because a line has been lost at the top of the stone, which could have read: Ἐνθάδε γῆ κατέχι … The first words of the preserved inscription, τὸν φιλοχρήστοραν αὖθις ἐνὶ μεγάροισι φανόντα correspond formally with the second or third verses of this whole group 487 G. Mendel, BCH 33 (1909), 420–22 no. 27; Calder, BJRL 7 (1923), 339–40 no. 8; Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 76–79 no. 28; SGO 3, 266 16/31/88; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 394–400 no. 62; (ICG 1269). 488 For this formula, see chapter 4.9. 489 See Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr., 399, endorsed by Huttner, ICG 1269 comm. 490 Anderson, SERP, 223–24 no. 21; Mendel, BCH 33 (1909), 418–20 no. 426; Calder, BJRL 7 (1923), 340–42 no. 9; Gibson, Chr. for Chr., 70–75 no. 27; SGO 3, 265 16/31/87; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr., 385–93 no. 61; (ICG 1267).

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of epitaphs: for Domnos, τὸμ πάσης ἀρετῆς κὲ ἐν ἀνθρώποισι φανέντα (ICG 1270); for Zotikos at Çakırsaz, τὸν πᾶσιν φίλιον κὲ ἐν ἀνθρώποισι φανέντα (ICG 1266); for Sosthenes (line 3), τὸν πάσης ἀρετῆς καὶ ἐν ἄνδρεσι κῦδος ἔχοντα (ICG 1269); and for Zotikos son of Dionysius, also at Çakırsaz, τὸν φιλοσυνγενέα κὲ ἐν ἀνθρώποισι φανέντα (ICG 1265). The last of these was a rectangular stele with a cross in a wreath above the main inscription, but had two lines of text inscribed on the upper frame, reading τὸν θεόν σοι· μὴ ἀδικήσις. Ζώσιμος Διονυσίου Νανα Κασσηνός. This was where the name of the man buried at Aykırıkçı would have stood. Those of his wife Non(n)a and brother Trophimos appeared later in the text (ICG 1267). He prided himself on being a leading magistrate in his home town, known both for his hospitality and his piety: ἄρχοντα πατρίδος λαοῦ καὶ πᾶσι ποθητὸν / εὐξενίην ποθέοτα καὶ εὐσεβίην ἅμα πᾶσιν ‘leader of the people in his native place, loved by all, a lover of hospitality and of piety among everyone’. Unlike the sons of Domnus he was not a priest; the phrasing indicates rather that he had been a secular office-holder. The occasion of the burial was probably the premature death of the couple’s children, whom they had sent forward on their way, while their grandparents were still alive. Not only the style of the stele, but also aspects of the inscription suggest an early fourth-century date for the stone. The dedicator is described near the start of the epitaph in language that recalls mystical initiation and honouring by God, τὸν πάσης ἀρε μεμοιημένον εἵνεκα τιμῆς, σοὶ θεὸς ἀκαταφρόνι χάριν ἔθετο. The vocabulary of mystic initiation and being honoured by god, resembled phrases found in third century pagan inscriptions,491 but above all can be recognised in the grave monument of the last known pagan priest of the Upper Tembris Valley region, Epitynchanos, an altar dated to 313/314, which was produced in the same atelier as the later group of Christian for Christian steles, including the stone for Nonna’s husband. Epitynchanos, who took the additional name Athanatos, ‘immortal’, described himself as μυηθὶς ὑπὸ καλῆς ἀρχιερίας δημοτικῆς, καλὸν ὄνομα Ἰσπατάλης, ἣν ἐτίμησαν ἀθάνατοι θεοί, and indicates that he himself was τιμηθέντα ὑπὸ θεῶν ἀθανάτων. Epitynchanos was a mystic initiate of a high priestess who had been honoured by the gods; his anonymous Christian counterpart shared these ideas about holiness.492 491 τιμηθέντα ὑπὸ Διὸς, τιμηθέντα ὑπὸ θεᾶς Ἑκάτης; see 279–83. 492 ICG 1007; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr., 392 understands μεμυημένον in an exclusively Christian sense (as indeed the author intended), referring to baptism, and takes αὖθις φανόντα ἐν μεγάροισι in the first line as a reference to Christian rebirth. However, the language of mystical initiation does not seem to be present in other Phrygian Christian texts of the third and fourth century, although it has been unconvincingly restored in an apparently Montanist inscription of the the century (ICG 1363, Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 490–96 no. 80). If φανόντα can be understood as future participle of φαίνω, then the phrase might

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Another indication of the pagan background to the Aykırıkçı stele is the explicit threat of punishment to those who interfere with the grave, using a unique formula which gave a Christian twist to the time-honoured Phrygian practice: μήτις ἐμῶν εἰδίων ἢ συνγενέων μνήματα λύσι ἤ τις τῶν ἀ[λ]λωπατριωτῶν ἔπιτα ὄστεα γυγμώσι [γυμνώσει?] ἀνασκάψι δὲ τὸ πτῶμα ἐρχομένης κόλασιν ἐώνιον, ‘may none of my family members or kinsfolk destroy the monument, or anyone from another home afterwards lay bare the bones and dig up the body, in expectation of eternal punishment.’ The grammar and syntax of the composition are full of errors,493 but take us directly to the cultural level of the family, because the anonymous setter-up of the grave, like Gaius at Eumeneia, says explicitly that he was the author of the epitaph: Σῆμά τέ οἱ τεύξας εἰδίης πραπίδεσι, / στίλην γράψας μνήμης χάριν ἔθετο αὐτὸς, ‘having crafted the monument for himself by his own skills, having written the text of the stele he set it up himself in memory.’ Unlike Gaius, the skilled versifier at Eumeneia, the man from Aykırıkçı and his stone-cutter produced ungrammatical text. The execution of the inscription was also remarkably crude. The inscription is regular enough as far as the middle of line 13 (ἅμα πᾶσιν), where a break is shown by a mark of punctuation. The rest seems to have been added later.494 The final envoi which follows the threat against tomb disturbance, reads Χρητιανοὶ Χρηστιανοῖς παρεστήσαμεν τὸ ἔργον. Several other Christians for Christians texts, including Domnus’s stone, use the ἐποίησαν to describe their action.495 Here, the explicit use of the second aorist active of the verb παρίστημι governing the noun ἔργον, ‘we Christians have created the building (or the monument) for Christians’, indicates a work force drawn from the Christian community of the neighbourhood.496 Two grave steles in this series have been recorded in the village of Çakırsaz, commemorating the families of men named Zotikos. The first of these was rectangular, 1.08 metres high 67 centimeters wide and 52 centimeters thick.497 On the top there is a quarry production inscription, showing that the block mean ‘about to appear again in the halls’, although we would expect the middle φανούμενον. More probably the aorist participle φανέντα was intended, as on similar verses in this group. However, we should not overburden the interpretation of this barely intelligible Greek text. 493 Merkelbach and Stauber commented, ‘Eigentlich kann man diesen aller Grammatik spottenden Text gar nicht übersetzen’. 494 The clumsy execution might indicate that these lines were carved when the stele had been set upright into the wall of a building, no longer conveniently placed for the stone cutter. 495 ICG 1157, 1253, 1262, 1264, 1270. 496 τὸ ἔργον, as usual in imperial and later inscriptions, should refer to an actual construction. 497 Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 59 no. 25; SEG 28, 1206; SGO 3, 269, 16/31/91; (ICG 1265).

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originally came from one of the Altıntaş quarries at the end of the first century AD.498 The first two lines, comprising the adjuration τὸν θεόν σοι· μὴ ἀδικήσις, and the name of the family head, Ζώσιμος Διονυσίου Νανα, were cut on the upper margin. The addition of the grandfather’s name probably distinguished Zosimus son of Dionysios from another individual with the same name and patronymic. He was also identified by an ethnic, Κασσηνός, carved at the top right of the main panel, at the same level as a Latin cross in a neat circle, centred between a pruning hook and a mattock. Kasse was perhaps not the ancient name of Çakırsaz but of another Tembris Valley village. The relief decoration of the stone was completed by spindly vine tendrils on the left and right margins and a yoke of oxen with a plough on the plinth. The retention of this decoration suits an early fourth century date. The text, which occupied the entire main panel, begins with five hexameter verses, but these shift into prose, including short rhythmic tags, as the epitaph continued with a list of Zosimus’s children and grandchildren. As usual, the dead were named before the living: Zosimus, his wife Zosime, his sons Makedonis and Patrikis, who had died before reaching adulthood, and three grandchildren, Patrikis, Trophimos and Kyriakos, also cut off before their time. The living family members were two surviving sons, Hermes and Eutychis, their own and their dead brothers’ wives, Ammia, Domna, Alexandria and Zosime, and the surviving grandchildren, Zotike, Ire(ne), Trophime, Sophronis, Zosime and Auxanon. This family of farmers was distinguished by its impeccable respectability. Zosimus was an honoured and prominent man, who loved his family and was respected in the community. He had died at a good age (‘sixty’), honourable in his family life and in his marriage. There was no more to be said except to point to their four sons, all married, and their offspring. A weathered and broken stele from the same village reveals a younger namesake, who died aged thirty. His epitaph, which begins ἐνθάδε γῆ κατέχι Ζωτικόν … [μ]έγιστον / τὸν πᾶσιν φίλιον κὲ ἐν ἀνθρώποισι φανέντα self-evidently fits into this group, although in its damaged condition there is no unambiguous text or symbol to indicate that it is Christian.499 A fragmentary doorstone from Altıntaş, decorated with ivy tendrils on either side of the door-frame, twice repeats the formula ἐνθάδε γῆ κατέχει. None of the names of the family members is certain, but one line of the text, ἐκ μέλανος κόσμου ἰς [φῶ]ς ἐώ[νιον], left no doubt that they were Christians, 498 T. Drew-Bear and W. Eck, Chiron 6 (1976), 316 no. 21. 499 Gibson, Chr. for Chr. 65–66 no. 26; SGO 3, 270 (16/31/92); (SEG 28, 1207; ICG 1266). Gibson translates and discusses the formula τὸν θεόν σοι· μὴ ἀδικήσις as if it should be read in line 12 of the text, but does not print the words in her edition.

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and the tomb should also be dated to the early fourth century.500 A longer and better-preserved text of the same class, also copied at Altıntaş, is the only surviving example for a woman.501 The text was carved at the top and on the left-hand side of a large re-used doorstone, 1.12 by 0.73. Theodora, ‘green shoot of an olive tree’, seems to have died in her middle years, praised for her youthfulness (νεότης), but already a mother of a son, Philetos, two daughters, Kalligeneia and Onesime, and youthful grandmother to Basilios. Her husband, Onesimos son of Phileros, set up the memorial, which emphasized the female virtues of ἐμφροσύνη and σωφροσύνη. A verse repeated that she was now contained by the earth and the house from which there is no coming-back, ἀνέκβατος οἶκος. The sentiment mirrors that of Gaius of Eumeneia, who alongside an explicit affirmation of Christian belief in resurrection, described death as a path from which there was no return: θύραι μὲν ἔνθα καὶ πρὸς Ἅιδαν ὁδοὶ / ἀνεξόδευτοι δ’ εἰσὶν ἐς φάος τρίβοι.502 Although it contained no unambiguous text or symbols to indicate this, Theodora’s epitaph can also with reasonable confidence be claimed as Christian. The poetic level of ἐνθάδε γῆ κατέχει group of texts is so modest that they were probably composed by the individual family members, aided and guided by convention, a knowledge of appropriate stock phrases, and probably by the stone-cutters themselves, who must have understood the texts they were carving. The husband of Nonna explicitly claimed authorship. We know from the reliefs depicting diptychs and stilus cases that family members were proud to be literate, and it is likely that many of them had the skill necessary to paste together familiar metrical tags into hexameters, although these are never free from metrical or grammatical errors. They had no reason to be ashamed of their efforts, as all the compositions were at a similar level. An inscription copied at Aslanapa, in a western branch valley of the Tembris, is a geographical and perhaps a chronological outlier in the Upper Tembris Valley group of verse texts. It was carved on the side of a broken and otherwise undecorated grey marble sarcophagus, probably from the nearby quarry at Göynükören, which largely supplied Aezani. Since regional sarcophagus production seems to have stopped by 250, this burial may belong a generation or more before the ἐνθάδε γῆ κατέχει group. The poem commemorated a girl, Kyrilla, who died too young to be married or betrothed, and ends vividly, ἣν γὰρ ἔδι κώμοισι βρέμειν ταύτην τάφοις ἐστεφάνωσεν, ‘she, who ought 500 MAMA X 78 (ICG 1174). 501 Kaibel, Griechische Versinschriften, 143–44 no. 368; Petrie, Epitaphs in Phrygian Greek, 119–20 no. 1; MAMA X 77 (ICG 1173). 502 ICG 1031, see p. 170.

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to have been clamorously acclaimed in merry-making, was the one whom he committed to the tomb with a burial wreath.’ The syntax of the inscription is highly opaque, and the verses, which alluded to the Erinyes, Acheron, and the pitiless servants of Pluto, were certainly transferred and adapted from a pagan context but were placed alongside the final assertion, that the burial was performed by Χρηστιανοὶ Χρηστιανοῖς. Allusions to Greek mythology and the imagery of the pagan underworld are to be found in other Christian verse texts of the region dating to the late third or early fourth centuries (see below). The Christians for Christians formula was included in a verse text, as on the Domnus and Sosthenes epitaphs from Aykırıkçı. Since the sarcophagus seems to have been intended for Kyrilla alone, the use of the plural as usual pointed to the general participation of the Christian brotherhood, not to the buried individual alone.503 The central cluster of Upper Tembris Valley villages produced another notable group of Christian verse texts, which generally show a higher level of literary competence and sophistication, and stand out for the care and precision of their design and decoration. The most complete of these, recorded in Çakırsaz, is a stele with a triangular pediment, probably made from marble from the local quarries.504 The inscription, in worn condition but carved in neat even lettering two centimetres high, filled a recessed central panel flanked by a frame decorated with a maeander pattern. The text began above the panel with the invocation τὸν θεόν σοι· μὴ ἀδ[ικήσεις] followed by an address: πολλά, ξένοι κάμνοντες, ἐπὶ χθόνι τῇδε πέπρωθη. The verb κάμνω in Greek inscriptions from late antiquity was the vox propria to describe labour on a building, construction work,505 and the labouring guests or strangers should be the persons, like the Christians mentioned at the end of the epitaph of Nonna’s husband, who participated in building the tomb. The quality of the hexameters that follow is better than in the ἐνθάδε γῆ κατέχει group. They commemorate Eutychianus, who died in his middle years, his wife Amarante, and their son Kyrillos, whose early death brought grief to his parents and to the whole συνγενία, their kin. Apart from the context, Eutychianus’s Christian belief is implicit in the description ὃς ἐπόθησε Θεόν, λιπὼν τὸν κόσμον ἅπαντα. Two couples and their four children 503 Calder BJRL 13 (1929), 269 nr. 4; Gibson, Chr for Chr. 58 no. 24; MAMA X 275; SGO 3, 282 (16/32/04); Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 209–12 no. 31; (ICG 1206). 504 A. Koerte, Ath. Mitt. 25 (1900), 411–14 no. 21; Petrie, Epitaphs in Phrygian Greek, 129–30 no. 12; JRS 18 (1928), 33–34 no. 250; SGO 3, 263: 16/31/85; (ICG 1978). 505 See I. Ankara 2, 339 comm. and D. Feissel, Chron. 647, discussing a mosaic invocation to Christ made by the καμόντων εἰς τὸν ἅγιον οἶκόν σου, ‘καμόντες doivent être les ouvriers᾽. For a Middle Byzantine example from Phrygia, see MAMA XI 154 (ICG 1446; Brouzos): † Κ(ύρι)ε βοήθη τοὺς καλõς κάμοντα(ς) τὸ ἔργον τοῦ τημήου Προδρόμου†.

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were responsible for the burial, which they shared with the deceased group, and were described by the clause ἔτι ζῶντες μνημόσυνον ἐποίησαν ἑαυτοῖς, but their relationship to the family is not clear. Eutychianus died too young for them to have been his own surviving children and grandchildren; Pappikios and Theodotos, the husbands, may have been Eutychianus’s brothers. A similar broken stele from Çakırsaz contains the end of a funerary text set in a sunken inscribed panel, although it lacks the maeander decoration. The letters of the inscription, 1.5 centimetres high, were again cut with scrupulous care. The text begins with a consolatory tag which Christians adopted from a pagan repertoire, followed by a conventional theological statement about God’s powers: οὐδὶς [γὰ]ρ ἀθ[ά]νατος εἰ μὴ μόνον ἷς θεὸς αὐτός, / ὁ πάντων γεν[έ]της κὲ πᾶσι τὰ πάντα μερίζων. The names that follow belonged to a large family spread over three generations, Trophimos and his wife Eliane, their five children Anteros, Glyke, Makedonios, Auxanon and Kyriake, the five children of Anteros who had married a woman called Sigeris, and a child born to Makedonios and his bride Alexandria (fig. 40).506 Trophimos, the eldest child of Anteros, as will be seen, later acquired a gravestone of his own. A fragment recorded at Sevdiğin appears to be a contemporary product of the same workshop, as it had a central inscribed panel enclosed by a frame decorated with a maeander pattern.507 Much of the text is lost but the legible lines, neatly carved, are verses apparently referring to three brothers, Ζωτικὸν γόνον ἐσθλόν, Εὐγένιον ἔπιτα πίστον διάκονον ὄντα, τὸν τρίτον Κάλλιστον πατρίδος γνήσιον ὄντα. This is the earliest appearance of a deacon in an Upper Tembris Valley epitaph. The decoration and form of these three monuments is not distinctive enough to allow stylistic dating, but the texts themselves are likely to be relatively early. The only exclusively Christian name that they include is Kyriake. Like the ἐνθάδε γῆ κατέχει group, only the first sections tend to be in verse, stitching together commonplace phrases and metrical tags. In the second half, when the description of the deceased gives way to naming the living family members, the inscriptions revert to prose and hardly depart from a normal third century pattern: Παππίκιος κὲ Θεόδοτος ἔτι ζῶντες μνημόσυνον ἐποίησαν ἑαυτοῖς σὺν ταῖς γυναιξὶν Ἀγέλῃ κὲ Ματρώνῃ, ἀλλὰ κὲ τὰ τέκνα αὐτῶν Κύριλλος κὲ Εὐτύχιος κ̣ὲ Πατρίκιος κὲ Παππίκιος ἐποίησαν μνήμης χάριν (ICG 1978); τούτοις ζῶντες ἐποίησαν μνήμης χάριν ἔτι ζῶντες Τροφίμου σύμβιος Ἠλιανὴ κὲ τούτων τὰ τέκνα Μακεδόνις κὲ Αὐξάνων κὲ Κυριακὴ θυγάτηρ κὲ ἡ νύμφη αὐτῶν Σιγερις κὲ τὰ 506 Petrie, Epitaphs in Phrygian Greek, 129 no. 11; BCC, JRS 18 (1928), 33 no. 249; SGO 3, 245: 16/31/13 (ICG 1159). 507 MAMA X 15 (ICG 1160).

section 4.8: The Upper Tembris Valley

Figure 40 Upper Tembris Valley (Çakırsaz). Funerary stele for Trophimos and his family, made by Aur. Athenodotus. ICG 1159 W. M. CALDER ARCHIVE. UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN

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ἔγγονα αὐτῶν Τρόφιμος κὲ Ἀντέρως [κὲ] Μακεδόνις κὲ Ζωτικὸς κὲ Μαρκιανὴ κὲ Νόννα ἐποίησαν μνήμης χάριν (ICG 1159). They could comfortably be placed any time after 250 and it is unlikely that they are later than 320. Trophimos son of Anteros, the eldest grandchild of Trophimos and Eliane of Çakırsaz, commissioned another epitaph for himself. This text concerned Trophimus alone. As the first son of Anteros, who was himself the first-born child of Trophimos and Eliane, he was evidently the patriarch of one of the region’s predominant families, loved and honoured by all, τίμιος καὶ πᾶσι ποθητός. The epitaph described him in the language of civic eminence, probably indicating that he held office in the inconspicuous city of Soa: ὃς σοφίῃ καὶ γνώμῃ καὶ ἐπιστήμῃ δὲ [μ]άλιστα / πατρίδος προϊστάμενος βουλῇ καὶ γνώμῃ ἁπάντων, ‘with his wisdom, judgement and knowledge he had provided leadership for his home town, according to the council and judgement of everyone.’ He had fulfilled the years that God had allotted to him, and paid the debt that everyone owes, πλήρωσας τὰ ἔτη, ἅπερ θεὸς ὥρισεν αὐτῷ, / ἐκτελέσαντα δάνος ὅπερ πᾶσι δάνιόν ἐστιν. This monument, the signed work of a sculptor from Docimium, Aur. Athenodotus, survived until the end of the nineteenth century, when it was copied by Alfred Körte, but has not been recorded since.508 No photograph of the epitaph is known, but Körte described it as a marble plaque, broken below with a raised margin around the inscribed panel, sixty-four centimeters high, fifty-two wide, and thirty-eight thick, with two-centimetre-high letters. There was no figure decoration, but the lettering was unusually precise and careful, evenly cut between ruled guidelines. In line 10 the letter nu of γνώμῃ, omitted in error, was inserted above the line. This detail indicates the care taken by the mason in proof-reading and correcting his own handiwork. The same style of correction can be seen on the stele of Trophimos and Eliane (ICG 1159), where the pi of πᾶσι in line 3 was also neatly inserted above the line. The dimensions and design of the stone, the exceptionally even lettering and the lay-out of the inscription for Trophimus son of Anteros are virtually identical with the family gravestone of Trophimus and Eliane, the parents of Anteros and grandparents of Trophimus, and there is no doubt that they are the work of the same craftsman. Alfred Körte also copied the inscription for Eutychianus (ICG 1978), which was in a more weathered condition, and considered but rejected the possibility that they were both produced by the same stone-cutter, since the stone for Trophimus son of Anteros used the upright, not the cursive form for 508 Koerte, Ath. Mitt. 25 (1900), 410–11 no. 20; Gibson, Chr. for Chr., 67 no. 2; SGO 3, 246–47: 16/31/14; Bull. ép. 1963, 260; Robert, A travers l’Asie Mineure, 227 (ICG 1977). Huttner noted the connection to ICG 1159.

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the letter omega found on the Eutychianus stele. However, the discovery of another signed piece by Aur. Athenodotus, for Akakios (ICG 1360), shows that this argument is groundless. The design of the frames of ICG 1978 and ICG 1360 was similar and both used an upright omega, so the stone-cutter felt at liberty to use both letter forms. We should conclude that the two signed pieces ICG 1360 and 1977, ICG 1159 for the same family as 1977, 1978 which has the same frame design as 1360, and 1160 which shares the maeander pattern frame design with 1159 and the high-quality lettering of the whole group, were all the work of the same craftsman, Aur. Athenodotus. The jewel in the crown of this group is the remarkable epitaph of Akakios, which was brought to Kütahya Museum, certainly from the neighbourhood of Altıntaş, and published by Calder in one of his last articles.509 The stone, which is complete, is the most accomplished work of the mason who carved it. As on the now lost gravestone for Trophimos son of Anteros, he placed his signature emphatically in the first line, on the upper margin of the shaft. Above it is an arched pediment, with deeply cut but plain mouldings, enclosing a wreath in front of a knotted ribbon: Αὐρ. Αθηνόδοτος Δοκιμεὺς τεχνίτης ἐποίησε τὸ ἔργον (fig. 41). The epitaph, the longest of the group, filled the main panel on the shaft, which was also deep set and surrounded by a plain moulding, and included two lines on the plinth and two further long lines cut along the left-hand margin, at a right-angle to the rest of the text. The cursive letters, one and a half centimeters high, were evenly cut with few errors. The line ends of the hexameters were marked by carved leaves. Athenodotus worked in close collaboration with the writer of the epitaph. Körte, discussing the Trophimos epitaph, went further and suggested that he was also its composer: ‘Da die Künstlerinschrift dasselbe unglückliche Bestreben Verse zu schmieden zeigt wie die eigentliche Grabschrift, wird Athenodotos auch für die literarische Form des Denkmals verantwortlich sein’.510 The contents of the poem for Akakios are too personal for this to be strictly accurate, but the collaboration between the stone-cutter and the commissioner of the monument is clear. Akakios, son of Menodoros, died aged about sixty, thirty years a widower and only once married. He had arranged for his only child Lucilla to be married to a

509 W. M. Calder, AS 5 (1955), 31–33 no. 1; Bull. ép 1956, 293; SEG 15, 796; M. Guarducci, Epigraphia Greca IV (1978), 392–94 fig. 113; SGO 3, 247–49: 16/31/15; SEG 30, 1484; C. Gavallotti, Intorno ai metri vari di epigrafi greche cristiane, Vetera Christianorum 17 (1980), 279–90; T. Drew-Bear/ F. Demirkök / E. Ş. Dönmez / M. Türktüzün, Kütahya Tugay Anadolu Kültür-Sanat ve Arkeoloji Müzesi Yayınları I (Kütahya 2007), 326–329; E. Akyürek-Şahin, Anadolu’dan epigramlar I. Hiristiyan Akakios’un mezar epigramı, 129–36; (ICG 1360). 510 A. Körte, Ath. Mitt. 25 (1900), 411.

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Figure 41 Upper Tembris Valley. Funerary stele of Akakios, made by Aur. Athenodotus. Now in Kütahya Museum. ICG 1360 Stephen Mitchell

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cousin, Trophimus, so that, as close family, she could tend him in his old age,511 but bitter fate had carried her off a year and half later, and she predeceased her father by four years.512 His own wife Domna, had died when her daughter Lucilla was thirty and been buried separately. Now Akakios and Lucilla shared an ancestral grave, τύμβοις παππώοις. The phraseology of the poem, treading a line between the conventional and heartfelt, brings a real – and tragic – figure into view. It begins with the summary, Ἀκάκιον σώφροναν ἄνδρα, / Μηνοδώρου υἱόν, θεοτίμητον ἀληθῶς, /ήσιον ἐν κόσμῳ ἑῆς πάτρης κατὰ πάντα. Τhe claim to be honoured by God was made also by Nonna’s husband (ICG 1267). Despite his honourable standing in the community, Akakios had never married again. The words of the epitaph emphasize his loneliness, μουνόγαμος μοῦνον τεῦξεν τέκνον ἐν βιότοιο, in contrast to the many children and grandchildren of the other family epitaphs of the region. The composition, like other Phrygian Christian epitaphs, betrays knowledge of pagan culture, not only in the allusions to the Moirai weaving the fate of mortals and to Hades, but also in the educated reference to Protesilaos, the first Greek warrior to die at Troy, a bitter precedent for the premature deaths of his own wife and daughter. Akakios’s Christianity was not in doubt and he received the seal of baptism – surely as death was approaching – and thus secured a pass to immortality in the bosom of Abraham and a dwelling in paradise as one of God’s servants: τὴν σφραγῖδα Θεὸς ἐμοὶ τέκνῳ διασώζι· / θνητὸς ἐν ἀθανάτοις Ἀβρὰ[μ κ]όλποις τετύχηκα, / Θεῷ δουλεύω, Παραδίζοισι κατοικῶ. This language is distinctive. The only other explicit references to baptism in third- or early fourth-century inscriptions from Asia Minor occur in Abercius’s epitaph, referring to the baptised Christians of Rome, in the lament for Ammia at Altıntaş, discussed below, and on the gravestone of Eustochius, a leading member of the fourth-century Christian community at Cotiaeum.513 A sophisticated fourth-century verse inscription for a priest from Laodicea Catacecaumene contained another rare mention of the bosom of Abraham.514 G. H. R. Horsley has shrewdly observed that the image was more likely to be familiar from Christian liturgy, than from 511 P. Thonemann, Close-kin marriage in Roman Anatolia, Cambridge Classical Journal 63 (2017), 1–24 at 9–10 notes this as a very rare indication of the motivation for a close-kin marriage provided by an epitaph. 512 The precise reckonings of four years and eighteen months emphasize Akakios’s pain and grief at the short span of his relative happiness and security, and contrast with the generalised age-rounding to thirty and sixty, which were hardly more than conventional ways to indicate mature adulthood and old age in the other verse epitaphs from the region. 513 ICG 1355. 514 MAMA VII 587; SGO 3, 73–74: 14/03/04 (ICG 270); discussed by Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 510–12, 792–94. The phrase occurs in a sixth-century epitaph from Afyon, ICG 1554; see 399 n. 268.

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direct knowledge of the Old οr New Testament.515 The allusion to Paradise, twice in the poem, was also an uncommon feature of Anatolian epitaphs. One of the extended verse inscriptions at Kuyulu Sebil in northern Lycaonia, for Diomedes, an unmarried young man, refers to him being snatched away before he had experienced the corruption of the world to ageless immortality in paradise: ὃν θεὸς αὐτὸς ἥρπασε πρὶν κακίῃ κόσμου φρένας ἐξαπάτησε θήσιν ἀθάνατον καὶ ἀγήραον ἐν Παραδίσσῳ.516 Exactly this thought is expressed in the poem by the much older Akakios, ἐμοὶ γὰρ οὐ μελέτη· κακὸν κόσμον κατέλιψα … Παραδίζοισι κατοικῶ.517 The life he had lived had been entirely free from contention, among the old, the young and his contemporaries, and he was escorted to whatever destination God ordained, the Underworld or Paradise, with all honours by his fatherland, ἄνδρες πρεσβύτατοι κὲ ὁμήλικες ἠδὲ νέοι τε, / δῆριν πρὸς τίναν ἔσχον; οὐ πρὸς νέον οὐδὲ γέροντα· / τιμῇ τῇ μεγάλῃ παρὰ πάτρης παρεπέμφθην, / θεός πού μ’ ἐκέλευσ’, ἐνὴ Πλουτεῖ ἢ Παραδίζῳ. The reference to his honourable burial indicated once again that the entire Christian community formed the escort for his final journey. Aur. Athenodotus’s name itself provides a good argument that these texts are relatively early and should be placed in the last decades of the third or the beginning of the fourth century, like the fine group of Christians for Christians steles, all commemorating persons with the Aurelius name, including the dated pagan grave stele for Aur. Marcianus of 304/305 (ICG 1283). The names in the Athenodotus group and the ἐνθάδε γῆ κατέχει texts show no more evidence of Christianisation than those from the second half of the third century. Kyriake and Kyriakos occur, but the only other exclusively Christian name was that of Akakios himself, equivalent to Latin Innocentius, a man free from evil.518 The 515 G. H. R. Horsley, New Docs. 3 (1983), 105–107 on an early-fifth-century Alexandrian epitaph where the expression occurs. In the NT the soul of Lazarus was said to rest in the bosom of Abraham, Luke 6.20–22. See also Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 712 n. 1305. 516 MAMA VII 560; SGO 3, 61: 14/04/02 (ICG 349); cf. Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 710 and 712. 517 For paradise in Christian epitaphs, see J. Dresken-Weiland, A. Angerstorfer, A. Merkt, Himmel, Paradies, Schalom. Tod und Jenseits in antiken christlichen und jüdischen Grabinschriften (Regensburg 2012), 36–43 and 216–217. 518 Calder thought that the name Akakios was exclusively Christian; Robert, Bull. ép. 1956, 293 claimed that there are pagan examples, but cited none. A remarkable inscription from Ephesos names the husband of the pagan high-priestess Favonia Flacilla as Akakios. I have argued elsewhere that this text may relate to the pagan revival of Maximinus Daia, when former Christians reverted to paganism; see I. Ankyra I, 57 comm. I. Smyrna 649, a dedication to the Nemeseis, refers to the son of P. Cornelius Zosimus as Πό(πλιον) Κορ(νήλιον) Ἐπίκτητον τὸν υἱὸν τὸν καὶ Ἀκάκιν, self-evidently a nick-name and a nom parlant. LGPN Vc, 11 s.v. cites I. Pessinous 48, a third-century tombstone set up by Ἀκάκιος καπουρᾶς (a maker of pastries). He could be Christian or pagan.

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quality of Athenodotus’s five steles shows that they belong to a period when the fine sculptural tradition remained strong, but no other named Docimian sculptor can be assigned to the fourth century.519 Three other extended verse texts are also best dated to the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century. The style of the two monuments, whose inscriptions were carved on three sides of large bomoi, is very similar and they are near contemporary products of a single workshop, set up hardly later than 300.520 The similar language and phraseology of the two funerary poems suggests that they were composed by the same person.521 The third text, which was also carved on a pavonazetto marble bomos, is lengthy and stylistically similar to the others, but damaged, and it has eluded a convincing reconstruction or interpretation.522 One, from Akçaköy, contains the verses commemorating Aur. Menandros son of Karikos and his family (figs. 42, 43, 44).523 The other, copied at Kurd Köy (Altıntaş town), was set up by Aur. Trophimos son of Eutyches.524 J. Fraser published a pioneering study of the two inscriptions in 1906, based on copies made by Ramsay in 1884, which were checked and revised by Anderson in 1896. The text from Akçaköy was recorded again by Cox in 1925, and the stone is now in Kütahya Museum; The Altıntaş inscription was last copied by Calder and Cox in 1924, and was the subject of an extended article in 1927, but has not been recorded since. The names on the two monuments were taken by Ramsay’s pupil, John Fraser, to indicate that they relate to two linked families. He presumed that Karikos, the father of Aur. Menandros at Akçaköy had been married to a woman called Aur. Tatia, but had died relatively young. His widow made a second marriage to Aur. Trophimus, son of Eutyches, from Altıntaş. The link between the two families is revealed by the couple Ammias and Telesphoros. Aur. Menandros referred to Ammias as his sister (κασιγνήτη) and to Telesphoros, her husband, as his brother-in-law (γαμβρός), but also stated that Ammias was daughter of Trophimus. She therefore must have been a half- not a full sister. 519 Inscriptions for Docimian sculptors: L. Robert, A travers l’Asie Mineure, 224–7. 520 Note that Fraser, Epitaphs in Phrygian Greek, 131 and doubtless also Ramsay, thought that the inscriptions should be dated to the third century. Buckler, Calder and Cox dated them to the period 300–350, BCC, JRS 17 (1927), 55. 521 See the analysis of J. Zingerle, JÖAI 23 Beibl. 976, endorsed by Wilhelm, Griechische Grabinschriften aus Kleinasien, 819–20 (offprint 30–31). 522 MAMA X 118; (ICG 1184). 523 J. Fraser, Inheritance by adoption and marriage, in 143–48 II; MAMA X 169; SGO 3, 160–62: 16/ 31/83; S. Destephen, EA 43 (2010), 145 n. 36 (ICG 1192). 524 Fraser, Inheritance by adoption and marriage, 137–42 I; BCC, JRS 17 (1927), 49–58; Wilhelm, Griechische Grabinschriften aus Kleinasien, 27–39; H. Grégoire, Notes épigraphiques, Byzantion 8 (1933), 61–65; SGO 3, 271–74: 16/31/93 (ICG 1689).

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Figure 42 Upper Tembris Valley (Akçaköy). Funerary altar set up by Aur. Menandros, front side. ICG 1192 Stephen Mitchell

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Figure 43 ICG 1192, right side Stephen Mitchell

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Figure 44 ICG 1192, left side STEPHEN MITCHELL

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Aur. Trophimus’s own inscription named Ammia (not Ammias) as his daughter and Telesphoros as his threptos, i.e. an adopted son. They appear later in the text as the couple, Aur. Ammia and Aur. Telephoros, parents of two children of their own, another Ammia and Nonna. Aur. Trophimus’s wife, the mother of Aur. Ammia, was Aur. Tatia, and according to Fraser’s reconstruction, she must previously have been married to Aur. Menandros. Since Aur. Tatia’s name simply does not appear on the inscription for Menandros, the link between the families remains at the level of a plausible conjecture.525 Aur. Menandros son of Karikos came from Epioikion, a name which suggests the large farmstead or estate which he owned.526 He died aged forty, so we might place his birth around AD 260. The mourners at his grave were his wife Demetrianes, a half-sister Ammias, daughter of Trophimos, and her husband Telesphoros, and a son-in-law Asclepas, whose bride, also called Ammias, had died very young. He was survived by Demetrianes’ parents, Florus and Ammias of the village of Iskome,527 and seven or eight children, three boys, one still an infant, and five girls, all probably born within a space of around ten or twelve years, among them Ammias, who died when she was just married.528 The front of the altar was decorated with a wreath containing a cross, which was described by Ramsay in 1884 as neatly engraved, but has been entirely defaced. Another cross was almost concealed exactly in the middle of the second side of the text, where a verse read ὃν δακρ[ύο]υσα πατρὶ ☩ κατεθά[ψ]ατο πένθιμα θρηνήσαντες τύνβῳ ἀφενγῇ. The mason substituted a small cross for the final sigma of the word patris.529 The cross is inconspicuous. Rather than being a deliberate choice by the commissioner of the monument discreetly to project 525 The link was accepted by MAMA X 169 comm. with stemma. BCC, JRS 17 (1927), 54 state that the ‘the stemma in which Fraser unites the family groups depends partly on a restoration whose validity we have no means of testing’. 526 For the terminology, see C. Schuler, Ländliche Siedlungen und Gemeinden im hellenistischen und römischen Kleinasien (München 1998), and D. Feissel, Études d’épigraphie et d’histoire des premières siècles à Byzance (2020), 377: ‘Il est en effet assez fréquent, sans qu’il s’agisse d’un règle, qu’un ἐποίκιον soit nommé d’après son propriétaire ou son fondateur’. 527 Ἰσκομαινοί; A dedication on behalf of the inhabitants of Ἰσκωμή was found at Karaağaçören, T. Drew-Bear, GRBS 1976, 156 ff. 528 If Aur. Menandros died around 300, we could reconstruct these rounded birth or death dates for the other relatives: Karikos b. 230 d. 260; Aur. Menandros b. 260; his wife Demetriane b. 270; Florus father-in-law b. 235; Ammias I mother-in-law b. 245; Ammias II, half-sister, b. 265; Trophimos, her father, b. 230; Telesphorus brother-in-law b. 260; Asclepas son-in-law b. 275; Ammias III his daughter b. 284 d. 300, other children, Patrikis (b. 286), Alexandros (b. 287), Trophimiane (b. 283), Domna (b. 288), Kyrilla (b. 290), Alexandria (b. 293), Demetrios (b. 296). 529 Visible on the squeeze in the collection of the British Institute at Ankara.

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his Christian identity, this was an invention of the stone-cutter, who chose to substitute the Christian symbol for an alphabetic letter (sigma) so that it served as a visual pun, which he incorporated exactly in the centre of this side of the altar, the point that he had reached in carving the text. The substitution of the cross for the last letter of the word which denoted their homeland thus expressed the participation of the Christian community in the burial, in the way that was made so explicit in the Christians for Christians texts. In other respects, the burial verses, with references to Hades, Pluto, the Moirai, and to the steadfast fidelity of Demetriane, a match for Penelope, revealed the pagan cultural environment that was familiar to all the inhabitants of the Upper Tembris valley. The Altıntaş altar was for Aur. Trophimos son of Eutyches, and his wife Aur Tatia (previously married to Aur. Menandros according to Fraser’s reconstruction), who survived him by less than a year and died aged 70. Their daughter Ammias and threptos Telesphorus, who were husband and wife, were responsible for the burial. Aur. Telesphorus and Aur. Ammia were beset by several family deaths at the same time – not only the older generation but also their own daughter Ammia, whose Christian faith is described in remarkable detail, and Kyriakos, who was betrothed to their other daughter Nonna.530 Trophimos was a man of learning, σοφίης διδάσκαλος (twice repeated), perhaps a schoolteacher, and the verses about him use the pagan imagery of the underworld, Πλουτέος οἰκία νήων, ὃς πάντων νεκύων ψυχὰς παρεδέξατο χήρων, before reflecting on the finality of death, a popular philosophical theme which can be found in several other third-century Christian epitaphs: οὐδ’ ἄν τις θα[ν]ὼν ἑλισσόμενος ἐπὶ κόσ [μο]ν πάλιν ἔλθῃ, / οὐδ’ ἕθεν [ἔστ]αι γνῶσις οὐδ’ αἰελίου [γλ]υκὺ φένγος εἰδέσθην, / οὐκ ἄστρων δρόμος ἐστίν, ο̣ὐρανόθεν δὲ σελήνης / φένγος οὐκ ἰσορᾶτη, ἰσκο̣τόεσα δὲ νύξ. ‘No one who has died comes round again in a cycle to the world, he will not acquire consciousness, or be able to see the sweet light of the sun, no course of the stars, no light of the moon in heaven will be visible, except darkening night.’531 There are no Christian allusions either in these lines or those that relate to his wife Aur. Tatia, who is also described by the conventional terms appropriate for mature married women, σεμνότης and στοργή, respectability and love of her family. When they were born, probably in the 220s, neither is likely to have been born into a Christian family; conversion 530 ICG 1689. The birth and death dates of the family members might be roughly as follows: Eutyches b. 200; Aur. Trophimus b. 225 d. 305; his wife Aur. Tatia b. 230 d. 305; his threptos Aur. Telesphorus b. 260; his adopted daughter Aur. Ammia b. 265; their children Domna b. 280 d. 295; Ammia b. 285 d. 305; Nonna b. 290; her bridegroom Kyriakos b. 280 d. 305. 531 Compare the epitaph of Gaius, chapter 4.5. Pythagoreans believed in cyclical rebirth.

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to Christianity will have occurred, if at all, in their middle years. In contrast Ammias and Telesphorus are likely to have been Christian. One of their daughters, Ammia was to die a baptised virgin; the other, Nonna, had a name that is not attested before the third and fourth centuries and seems to have been exclusively Christian,532 and she was betrothed to a Kyriakos. The gripping part of the inscription is the text on the left side of the altar, relating to the younger Ammia. It was cast in the form of a dialogue between the girl and her grieving parents. Their address was conventional: “Ἀμμία, θυγάτη πινυτή, πῶς θάνες ἤδη; τί σπεύδουσ’ ἔθανες; ἢ τίς σ’ ἐκιχήσατο Μοιρῶν, πρίν σε νυνφικὸν ἰστέφανον κοσμήσαμεν ἠν θαλάμοισιν, πάτρην σε λιπῖν πεν[θ]αλέους δὲ τοκῆας; κλήι σε πατὴρ κὲ πᾶσα πάτρ[η] κὲ πότνια μήτηρ, τὴ σὴ[ν] ἀωρότηταν κὲ ἀθαλάμευ[τον] ἡλικίην”, Ammia, modest daughter, how did you die already? Why did you hasten to your death? Which of the Fates overtook you before we decked you with a marriage crown for the bridal chamber, and you left your fatherland and your lamenting parents? Your father mourns for you, and all your fatherland and noble mother for your adolescence and unwedded youthfulness. Her reply is remarkable: Τῆς δ’ ἀναφθενξαμ[έ]νη ψυχὴ{ν} Ἀμμίαο θανούση[ς] / δάκρυα θερμὰ χέουσα παρί[σ]τατο πατρὶ αἰδὲ τεκούσῃ, / [τ]ὴν οἶστρος θανάτοιο λάβεν, ἐννῆμαρ δὲ θανοῦσα / λεξ[α]μένη καθ’ ὕπνους παρηγο[ρ]ίην θανάτοιο· / “μὴ κλῆε, πάτε[ρ] πολυώδυνε, μηδὲ σύ, μήτη[ρ]· / ἓν τέλος ἐστὶν τὸ πᾶσιν ὀφιλ[ό]μενον· / δῶρα πάτρης ἔλαβ[ον] συνλικίης τε ἁπάσης, / δῶρ[ά] τ’ ἀλεγινῶν κὲ πενθαλέου θαν[ά]τοιο· / ἀλλ’ ἔμ’ ἐδικέ[ωσ]ε [σω]τὴ[ρ ἐ]μ[ὸς Ἰη]σοῦ[ς Χρ]ιστ[ό]ς· / [ἐώνιον] ἤματι τού[τ]ῳ [κ]ῦδ[ος ὀνηθεῖ]σα, διὰ πρ[ε]σβυτέρο[υ χει]ρ[ῶν] β[ά]πτισμα λαβοῦ[σα], / ἔνδικον τιμὴν παρθενίης, ἁγνὴ παρθένος ἦλθον πίστιν ἀπ[ι]νο[ῦ]σα (?), / φῶς ἀέναον ἔχο[υ]σα, Ναυατῶν ἁγίων δὲ [μ]ένουσα. / π[α]τ[ὴρ] γὰρ ἐμὸ[ς] πολύοκνος αἰδέ τ[ε] μήτηρ ἀργὴ μορμύξαντες / [ἀϋ]τὴν ἐμ[ὴν ἐπ]ήκ[ο]υσ[αν]· παρθενίην Χρισ[τῷ γὰρ] ἐκδ[οῦ]σα πένθ[ος] ἄτλητον ἔθηκ[α].” ‘The soul of the dead Ammia called out, weeping warm tears, as she stood beside her father and mother. The sting of death has taken her; in her death agony over nine days, she expressed the consolation for her death in her delirium: “Do not mourn, my father beset by sorrows, nor you, mother. One end is due to everyone. I have received the gifts of my fatherland and of all my contemporaries, and the gifts for my pains and grievous death, but my saviour Jesus Christ has pronounced judgment on me, rewarding me with eternal glory on this day, as I have received baptism from the hands of a priest, the just glory of my virginity, and I have gone as a holy virgin, keeping (?) the faith, preserving everlasting light, and remaining among the Novatian saints. My ever-hesitant father and my helpless mother, 532 LGPN Vc, 320–21.

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whimpering, heard my cry, for giving up my virginity to Christ I have suffered pain that cannot be endured.” The poet’s version of Ammia’s words provides otherwise undocumented information about the Christian community. It reveals that Ammia belonged to the Novatian Church, the movement that followed the theology of the Roman priest Novatus or Novatianus, forged in the Christian debates of the 250s. Novatus’s followers argued that only God could forgive Christians who had abandoned their faith in time of persecution, or committed other mortal sins after baptism; hence they could not be readmitted to the sacraments. There is no reason to think that Ammia, as a Novatian, belonged to a minority Christian group, or, as Calder argued, that she was at odds with her orthodox parents.533 It cannot be the case, however, that all the epigraphically attested Christians of the Upper Tembris Valley were explicitly Novatians, if only because the earliest Christians for Christians inscription of 248 predates the origin of the schism during the persecution of Trajan Decius in 250. Ammia had been baptized by a priest, and this is the one of the earliest explicit mentions of a presbyteros in the Upper Tembris Valley. The rite was carried out on her death-bed, precluding her from falling into sin before she reached the protection of her saviour and spiritual bridegroom, Jesus Christ. In uncomfortably vivid imagery, the language of the inscription compared the physical pain of lost virginity with the anguish experienced by Ammia in her death throes. This is one of the most explicit expressions of the central Christian idea that a girl’s virginity was reserved for Christ the bridegroom. The notion was not restricted to the Novatians although it harmonized perfectly with their rigorist doctrines.534 The lament ends, and the text turns to Ammia’s grieving sister Nonna, herself newly bereaved, Καῦσέ με κασιγνήτη Νόνα βαρπενθὰς ἐκίνη, ἣν χήραν ἐλέλιπτο γαμβ[ρὸ]ς Κυριακὸς ἐμῖο, ζευκτὸν γαμετ[ὴν] προλιπόν, ὃν Μοῖ[ρ]αι ἔ[κτειναν]. ‘My sister Nonna in deep mourning has wept for me, she whom my brother-in-law Kyriakos left a widow, abandoning his betrothed spouse, himself killed by the Fates.’535 Two verse inscriptions from Zemme (Çayırbaşı), probably came from the same workshop, although no photographs or drawings exist to confirm this. The first is addressed to any stranger educated enough to read the tombstone. It commemorated Zotikos, perhaps a member of the local council (βουλή) 533 BCC, JRS 17 (1927), 57–58; Calder, BJRL 1929, 262–63. 534 The Novatians of Phrygia opposed remarriage. See 554–5 and 559. 535 Calder’s reconstruction and interpretation of the text were corrected by A. Wilhelm, Griechische Grabepigramme aus Kleinasien, 821–23, who showed that Ammia’s address ends at ἔθηκα.

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either at Appia or Soa, although he must have resided and been buried in his village. The verses contain a conventional, but Christian view of the division between mortal body and immortal soul: σάρξ ἐν γῇ ἀ[π]όκειτη [ὅ]θεν κὲ ἐλήφθη, ψυχὴν δὲ Θεὸς σῶσεν οὐρανίος ἐνὶ [ζ]ῶσιν. The reference to Zotikos now being among the living is perhaps the only distinction between this belief, and a pagan Phrygian notion of the after-life of the soul.536 The other epitaph, for Aquila, makes clear that the dead man was both a Christian, λιτουργὸν Θεοὺ ἀνγέλοις τε ποθητόν, and a secular magistrate, λαοῦ προστάμενον νόμῳ τ[ὰ] δίκεα φρονῶν(τα). His wife Kyrilla, three sons Trophimos, Patrikios and Kyrillos, and two daughters-in-law, both called Ammia, were responsible for the burial. At God’s behest Aquila was now awaiting resurrection: ἦρθε κ[ε]λε[ῦ]μα Θεοῦ μετασταῖ[ν]αι ἰς ἀνάπαυσιν.537 Another long inscription from Soa, copied at Altıntaş village, was laid out in a style reminiscent of Docimian doorstone. The pediment was rectangular but enclosed an arched niche, which was reserved for two birds pecking at bunches of grapes hanging from a vine tendril. The same motif occurs on the fine Christian stele set up by Auxanousa (ICG 1262). Left and right of the niche there were a pair of two-handled cups or jars, above schematically carved decoration including swastikas. Most of the inscription was crowded onto the lintel and the plinth below the central panel, which itself was divided by a central column, and flanked on either side by two bands of decoration in place of pilasters, the outer decorated with ivy leaves, the inner with bunches of graps hanging from a vine tendril. The left side of the central panel shows male implements, a diptych and stilus, wool shears, a bow saw, a drill and the top of a storage jar; the right side has a mirror, a carding comb, spindle and distaff, a scent bottle and a wool basket. The absence of human figures from the crowded composition is striking, and confirms that this was a Christian commission from one of the Altıntaş workshops.538 The text included metrical 536 Petrie, Epitaphs in Phrygian Greek, 124 (copied by Ramsay and Anderson; SGO 3, 242 16/31/11; SEG 59, 1483; ICG 4497. For the soul in pagan inscriptions, see 66–7. 537 Petrie, Epitaphs in Phrygian Greek, 125 (copied by Ramsay), improved at BCC, JRS 15 (1925), 144 (ICG 4498); see A. Wilhelm, Griechische Grabepigramme aus Kleinasien, 846. There is no evidence to support the views of Anderson, who judged Aquila to be a pastor or a bishop, venerated by the people; or of Ramsay, who thought he was a victim of the Great Persecution, but Anderson, SERP 201, is probably right to date the inscription no later than the early fourth century. 538 Anderson, Paganism and Christianity, 219–20 no. 18; BCC, JRS 18 (1928), 30–31 no. 245; MAMA VI 368; SGO 3, 251–53: 16/31/75; Waelkens, Türsteine 116 no. 276; (ICG 1006). Not in Lochman, Phrygien, who argues that doorstone production in the Upper Tembris Valley had ceased by about 200. P. Thonemann, The Lives of Ancient Villages (Cambridge 2022), 196 n. 11, suggests that Waelkens, Türsteine, 107–9 no. 252, the work of the sculptor

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phrases or tags, but can hardly make a credible claim to be in verse. The family relationships are not entirely clear in the long text which was put up by Aur. Kyriakos and his brother (συνομ[αίμων] or συνόμ[ημος]) for their father Aur. Stephanos,539 who was described in poetic terms as πρεσβυτάτῳ ἐννόμῳ οὐρανίου βασιλῆος, εὐσεβείην ἐρίτιμον ἐνὶ φρεσὶν ἀσκήσαντι. These phrases may not have been a circumlocution for the Christian office of πρεσβύτερος, as the term is hardly to be found in contemporary inscriptions from the Upper Tembris,540 but certainly indicate that he was a community elder. Kyriakos then adds a touching epitaph for his own wife Hermione, who had lovingly brought up their children, Kyrilla, Stephanos, Alexandros and the infant Domna, mentioning also Kyrilla’s mother Epictesis and her devoted brothers, γνησίους συνομήμους. On stylistic grounds Waelkens has dated the stone between 290 and 310; it may be earlier than this.541 Concluding this survey of verse epitaphs is an unparalleled text copied by Cox at Keçiler but allegedly brought there from Abya (Appia), the tomb of Heortasius, copied on a thin marble slab: ἐνθάδε σῆμα τέτυκτο ἐπισκόπου ἀνδρὸς ἀγαύου, / οὔνομα κληζόμενος Ἑορτάσιος φιλος ἀνδρῶν, / τίμιος εὐνοῦχος ἀεὶ Θεὸν λιτανεύων, / ὃς νέος ὢν ἔθανεν ἀκηδέα πάντ᾽ ἀπολίψας / στέμμα τε λιτουργῶν καὶ ἐκλησίαν πολύτιμον· Four features are new in this inscription: Heortasius, who had died young, became an episkopos at an early age, had chosen to become a eunuch, came from a clerical family and was a member of the much honoured ekklesia. The lettering and lay-out of the inscription suit a date around 300.542 Heortasius’s choice to become a eunuch places him within the strong ascetic tradition which emerged in many parts of fourth century Asia Minor, but marks him as an outlying figure among the other Christians of the region.543

Onesimos Euglyphis, set up by Aur. Marion, in the late third cent., is the closest stylistic comparison. This monument appears to be a stylistic anomaly. 539 All the editions reproduce the name of Kyriakos’s brother as [Ἀριστογείτω]ν, but this is a random and unlikely conjecture of a name not registered in LGPN Vc. 540 Possibly the only example is the priest who baptised Ammia (ICG 1689). 541 For this workshop see Waelkens, Türsteine, 86–93. 542 Calder, BJRL 13 (1929), 269 no. 5; C. W. M. Cox, Bishop Heortasius of Appia, Anatolian Studies presented to W. H. Buckler (1939), 63–66; ΜΑΜΑ Χ 152; SGO 3, 242: 16/31/11 (ICG 1190). The MAMA editors date the text too early (2nd–3rd century), Calder and Cox too late (350 or later). 543 For ascetic traditions and monastic communities, established by the mid-fourth century, see the outstanding discussions of Susannah Elm, Virgins of God: the making of asceticism in late antiquity (Oxford 1994), and Anna Silvas, The Asketikon of Basil the Great (Oxford 2005).

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The Christian funerary monuments of the late third and early fourth centuries leave no doubt that the Upper Tembris Valley brotherhood was numerous, self-confident and prosperous. It would be surprising if the community did not share a will and interest in building places of assembly for sharing meals or for worship. The inscriptions themselves contain hints that that these Christians undertook building projects together.544 The earliest attested church building in the region should probably be assigned to the period before 320. Three texts carved in roundels on columns, which resemble the inscriptions of the ‘eight-columns’ church at Dioclea founded by the veteran Aur Zotikos, all appear to come from a single building.545 The example copied at Kuyucak has a prominently displayed votive text naming a city magistrate (perhaps from Soa) and a priest: ὑπερὶ εὐχῆς Εὐτροπίου ἄρχοντος κὲ τοῦ ἀνιψίου Πατρικίου πρεσβυτέρου.546 A similar column at Sevdiğin reads ὑπερὶ εὐχῆς Μακεδονίου τετελη(κότος) κὲ παντὸς τοῦ οἰκοῦ αὐτοῦ,547 while one at Karaağaç has ὑπερὶ εὐχῆς τῆς παρθένου Ζωτικῆς † κὲ τῷ πατρὶ αὐτῆς Ὀνησίμου. The description of Zotike as a parthenos indicates that she was consecrated to the church by her family.548 A broken column from Zemme, set up as a votive by Patrikios, and naming a priest,549 and another column at Karaağaç with a trishagion text: Ἅγιος ὁ Θεός, [ἅ]γιος ὁ ἰσχυρός, ἅγιος ἀθανατός, ἐλέησο[ν ἡμᾶς],550 could belong to the same church or to a very similar building. Two additional striking texts, probably of the same period, are an inscribed column found with other pieces of ecclesiastical architecture in an illegal excavation at Altıntaş town with a dedication formula similar to the preceding stones although it is not cut in a wreath on behalf of two imperial officials, ὑπερὶ εὐχῆς | Ευνομίου κο|μήτος κὲ | Ἰωάνου δο|μιστικοῦ, and a column recorded at Çukurca with a very well carved inscription simply reading οἶκος Θεοῦ, describing the building to which it belonged, a church. Both, however, may be somewhat later.551 The magistrate Eutropios 544 545 546 547 548 549 550

ICG 1267 and 1978. See 191–2. MAMA X 9; (ICG 1158). Height 0.82, diameter 0.54. MAMA X 16; (ICG 1161). Height 0.80+; diameter 0.50. ΜΑMA X 23; (ICG 1164). Ht 1.70 diameter 0.52. MAMA X 211; (ICG 1196). ΜΑΜΑX 22; (ICG 1163). Height 1.93, diameter 0.52. For the trishagion, see S. Mitchell, P. Niewöhner, A. and L. Vardar, Church building and wine-making east of Ankara. Regional aspects of central Anatolia in the early Byzantine period, Gephyra 21 (2021), 199–229, at 209–13. 551 The Altıntaş finds were published by P. Niewöhner, Ist. Mitt. 56 (2006), 445 no. 62 (the inscription ICG 4526, the decorated panels, p. 448 no. 70 and 70a, which could be early or mid-fourth century, and sandstone column capitals and other decorated pieces, pp. 468–70 nos. 107–12, which appear later. From Çukurca, see MAMA X 254 (ICG 1202).

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on the Kuyucak stone can be compared with the anonymous Christian archon commemorated in one of the long epitaphs from Aykırıkçı, and with Aquila, known from the extended funerary text for Aquila at Zemme.552 The building or buildings to which the columns belonged and the later Upper Tembris Valley funerary monuments may be approximately contemporary with one another. The previous pages have provided a dense résumé of the information provided by tombstones about Christians living and dying in the Upper Tembris Valley region roughly between 250 and 320, derived from forty-five preserved monuments, all but one carrying inscriptions. Twenty-seven are in prose, seventeen in verse. The information is extremely homogeneous. No family group stands out as being radically different or eccentric in relation to the others, or in relation to the families revealed by the pagan tombstones of the same area. The family structure and relationships revealed by these burials seems to have been the same in the Christian and the pagan populations. When a significant member of the close family died – wife, husband, son or daughter – a gravestone was made for the deceased, but in many cases also designed as a memorial for the dead person’s marriage partner while they were still alive. Children of a marriage took an active but secondary role in setting up a memorial for a dead parent, or a primary role where both parents had died. In the prose texts, there are twelve instances in which wives, usually supported by their children and their children-in-law, took responsibility for the burial of their husbands, but only three of husbands for their wives. The likely explanation is that men tended to marry younger women, who outlived their partners, more often than they predeceased them. In all but four of the prose texts the setters-up of the tomb used the pseudo-praenomen Aurelius to indicate that they were Roman citizens by virtue of the constitutio Antoniniana of AD 212, and in two of the cases the information is almost certainly missing because the inscription is incomplete.553 The retention of Aurelius names throughout the third century is noteworthy. Only one individual had a Roman citizen name other than Aurelius, Iulia Areskouse (?), wife of the Diocletianic veteran soldier Aur. Gaius. For the most part the Christian families of the third century took names that were entirely characteristic of the region, but a handful were exclusively or almost exclusively used by Christians: Akakios, Eusebios, Kyriakos/Kyriake

The neat carving of the letters (square sigma and epsilon, ypsilon with cross-bar, theta with a tilde central bar) suggested to the MAMA editors that the text might be third-century. 552 ICG 1267; BCC, JRS 15 (1925), 144; ICG 4498, see 259 n. 537. 553 No Aurelii appear in ICG 1253, 1262; the beginnings of ICG 1155 and 1200, where the name Aurelius was usually placed, are not preserved.

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and Theodoule.554 During the second half of the third century there was only a very limited tendency among Christians to adopt distinctive nomenclature related to their religion.555 Many of the texts placed the words ‘Christian for Christians’ prominently in the inscriptions precisely to draw attention to the collective role of the Christian brotherhood in the lives – and specifically the burials – of Christian families. This provided not only a semantic but also a fundamental social contrast with the conduct of pagan families at the burial rite. They represent the overriding importance of a Christian collective which was not tied to a single village, or to a specific place of worship, but which could claim a regional identity. Nowhere was this Christian regional identity more fully developed than in the Upper Tembris Valley. None of these Christian monuments depicts a human figure, with the exception of the lengthy epitaph of the veteran Aur. Gaius, whose grave stele shows, at a small scale, four saddled horses tended by their grooms. The avoidance of human representation is significant, because the same workshops during the same period were notable for producing figured steles of high quality for their non-Christian customers. The Christians, however, like their pagan counterparts, depicted the tools, implements, and animals which laid the foundation for their existence. The funerary altar from Beşkarış is an early example and displays only the outline of a simple plough (ICG 1169). The workshops that produced the fine decorated steles between 280 and 310 for a Christian 554 Eusebios (in contrast to Eusebes, which was widely used by pagans) seems to have been almost exclusive to Christians, but occurs only once in the Upper Tembris Valley. For Akakios, see above n. 130. For Kyriakos and Theodoule as Christian names see I. Ankara 1 no. 57 comm. and 2 no. 356 comm. respectively. See also 126 n. 144 for Panchares. Christian luminaries had begun to identify themselves with supernomina from the early second century, if not earlier, as illustrated by Ἰγνάτιος ὁ καὶ Θεοφόρος, whose additional name is not otherwise attested in this form before the Byzantine period; see Huttner, Early Christianity in the Cities of the Lower Maeander Valley, 3.1.2.3 n. 1418; compare also the otherwise anonymous recipient of Luke’s Gospel and Acts, Theophilos, although this name was not strictly restricted to Christians. 555 S. Destephen, Christianisation and local names in Asia Minor: fall and rise in late antiquity, in R. Parker (ed.), Changing Names. Tradition and innovation in ancient Greek onomastics (Proceedings of the British Academy 222, 2019), 258–76, especially 260–64. Destephen has counted 961 individuals (695 men, 266 women) on 288 pre-Constantinian inscriptions from Asia Minor, bearing respectively 312 and 140 different names, and reaches the conclusion, that ‘Christianisation … did not jeopardise the local onomastic traditions.’ On the basis of a narrower investigation, T. Corsten, Christliche Namengebung in Kleinasien, in W. Ameling (ed.), Die Christianisierung Kleinasiens in der Spätantike (2017), 473–89 on p. 489, concludes ‘dass “typisch christliche” Namen vor der “konstantinischen Wende” fast unbekannt sind’.

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clientèle were more accomplished and made a speciality of these reliefs, which were clearly tailored to the requirements of individual families. Accordingly a gravestone which was designed for two dead women, in addition to a yoke of oxen with a plough showed two sets of implements for wool production: spindle, distaff and carding comb (ICG 1256). The reliefs on another monument were restricted to a whip, a horse with raised foreleg and a diptych, an emblem which implied a reasonable level of functional literacy. This household, like several others, doubtless specialized in the transport business (ICG 1366). It was possible to emphasize the wealth and standing of a family by the number of animals. Aur. Gaius, as well as a shield and spear from his soldiering days, showed four horses with their attendants, implying that many people worked for him (ICG 1379). The gravestone set up by Aur Domna, mother of ten children for her husband Meles, showed two saddled horses and three yoke of ploughing oxen (ICG 1254), and there were three plough teams on the stone from Aykırıkçı, which also showed a dolabra or vine-pruning hook, a diptych, and a distaff and spindle (ICG 1258). An inscription set up by children and grandchildren for their parents showed three pairs of plough oxen, and the same combination of tools and implements. The importance of viticulture to this family was emphasized by the presence of vines not as mere decoration on the pilasters, but on the main shaft of the stone (ICG 1155). The stele from Alibey put up by his wife, son and daughter-in-law indicated that Asclepiades, the deceased paterfamilias, was a skilled artisan as well as a farmer, showing carpenter’s tools alongside a yoke of oxen and the wife’s wool spinning equipment (ICG 1177). The elaborate tombstone of another well-off family suggests a household which particularly profited from wool products. The left side of the main panel shows a workman’s tools, a diptych and wool shears, while the right has a mirror, a wool basket, and knitting needles, as well as the usual comb, spindle and distaff (ICG 1006). All the other decorated stones offer variations on a core repertoire of yoked oxen with a plough, a pruning hook and a diptych, characterising the men, and spindle, distaff and carding comb for the women. These monuments radiate an immense but also uniform pride in the accomplishment of these peasant families, whose success and prosperity can be measured impressionistically by the size of their households. Four, five and six surviving children were commonplace. The inscriptions include families that claimed seven, nine and ten surviving children.556 556 Childless: ICG 1267, (?)1379; 1 child: ICG 1155, 1169, 1177, 1259, 1262, 1269, 1360, 4497; 2 children: ICG 1006, 1152, 1153, 1257, 1689; 3 children: ICG 1160, 1173, 4498; 4 children: ICG 1006, 1255, 1258, 1366; 5 children: ICG 1256, 1261, 1270; 6 children ICG 1151, 1156, 1159, 1263, 1265; 7 children ICG 1979; 9 children: ICG 1192; 10 children ICG 1254, 1270. The information must

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Cotiaeum and the Adjuration ‘Do No Wrong’ (Map 5)

After Aezani, Cotiaeum was the most important city of north-west Phrygia. It was sited in a western side valley of the Tembris, with hilly, even mountainous, country especially to the west. It did not occupy a prominent position in transanatolian overland connections, although it was accessible in the Phrygian road network from Aezani to the south west, Appia and Soa to the south, and Dorylaeum from the north-east. The city territory stretched at least as far as Adaköy, burial place of the Christian veteran Aur. Gaius, but most settlements further south in the Upper Tembris valley belonged to imperial estates or were on the territory of Appia and Soa.557 Roman Cotiaeum lay alongside of the imposing Byzantine and Turkish Kale, but no buildings have survived under the streets of modern Kütahya. Recent excavations in the city have exposed tombs of the Roman period whose distribution suggests that the centre of ancient Cotiaeum lay at the foot of the acropolis to the east of the castle.558 Apart from coin issues, the only noteworthy material remains of the ancient city are the fine figured grave steles and votive monuments, dating to the later second and third century, which were recorded by travellers and scholars in Kütahya, especially in the city’s Armenian cemetery, and in its churches and fountains, or now form part of the museum collections there. Cotiaeum is notable for rectangular steles with single, paired or multiple portrait busts, placed in one or more rows on the stone.559 There is a fundamental problem about identifying the original location of this material. These steles and reliefs all derived from marble quarries and sculpture workshops of the Upper Tembris Valley. Some of them were certainly transported to Cotiaeum long after the end of antiquity, to serve as gravestones especially for for Kütahya’s Armenian population, who added their own secondary inscriptions, in Armenian, in the nineteenth century.560 However, in almost all cases there are no criteria for deciding whether a gravestone was commissioned and

557 558 559 560

be handled with care. S. Destephen, Familles d’Anatolie au miroir de MAMA, 138 noted that the average number of children mentioned in 1431 gravestones published in the central Anatolian volumes of MAMA was 1.5, a figure that is ‘dépourvue de toute réalité démographique’. See Lochman, Phrygien, 55, for the geographical isolation of Cotiaeum from the other settlements of the Upper Tembris Valley. S. Ünan, Yeni Belediye Binası Hafriyatı Kurtarma Kazısı, Kütahya Müzesi 2016 Yıllığı 4 (2017), 213–32. esp. 222 map 1, and 223 map 3. Stockwerkstelen, in the terminology of Lochman, Phrygien, 60–61. See K. Belke, TIB VII, 314 with nn. 71–74. Note BCC, JRS 1925, 153 no. 139 brought from Aezani after the 1830s (Texier); BCC, JRS 1925, 167 no. 158 = Perrot 126 no. 189 reportedly brought by a Greek from Altıntaş.

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brought to Cotiaeum in antiquity, or whether transport occurred in modern times. Logistically the demands were identical, and it is likely at all periods that the relatively massive monuments were shipped downstream on boats or rafts. In the discussion that follows I have assumed that unless there is evidence to the contrary, all the funerary monuments recorded at Cotiaeum were originally commissioned and displayed there.561 Members of the educated elite in second-century Cotiaeum engaged with higher Greek culture. Aelius Aristides, a native of either Hadriani or Hadrianutherae in neighbouring Mysia, was a pupil of the sophist Alexander of Cotiaeum, and composed a funerary encomium for him, which was sent in the form of a long letter to the council and people around 150. In 161 he also delivered a funerary speech for his own young pupil Eteoneus, a member of one of Cotiaeum’s leading families. The prose epikedeion for Eteoneus provides a valuable point of comparison with the verse epitaphs from Phrygia, both pagan and Christian, most of which were also composed for young people. It is worth quoting some lines from Aristides’ address, which illustrate the loving devotion of parents and the virtues of their child in words which are echoed more clumsily in both pagan and Christian funerary inscriptions.562 αὐτοὶ δὲ οἱ γονεῖς ὁ μὲν ἀνδρῶν γνωριμώτατος, ἡ δὲ γυναικῶν σωφρονεστάτη, ἀλλὰ καὶ εἰς παίδων τῶν αὑτῆς ἐπιμέλειαν κρείττων ἡ γυνή. τροφὴ δὲ καὶ φύσις ἀξία τῆς γενέσεως, ᾧ γε τροφὸς μὲν καὶ φύλαξ ἡ μήτηρ, σῶμα δὲ καὶ ψυχὴ πρέποντα ἀλλήλοις. ἰδεῖν μέν γε κάλλιστος καὶ μέγιστος καὶ τελεώτατος τῶν ἐν τῇ ἡλικίᾳ καὶ πλεῖστον ἡδονῆς τῷ θεωμένῳ προσβάλλων, τὸν δὲ τρόπον κοσμιώτατος καὶ ἐλευθεριώτατος, μεγαλοπρεπείᾳ μετ᾽ ἀφελείας ἐμπρέπων, ὥστ᾽ οὐκ ἦν εἰκάσαι πότερον παῖς ἐστιν ἢ νεανίας ἢ πρεσβύτης. His parents themselves are the most distinguished of men and the most commendable of women, and the wife has more influence over the care of her children. His upbringing and natural gifts were worthy of his high birth, with his mother being the source of nurture and protection, while his physique and spirit matched one another. In appearance he was the fairest, tallest and most accomplished of his contemporaries, a source of the greatest delight for anyone who cast eyes on him, most graceful 561 The problem has been made drastically worse by illegal excavation throughout the Upper Tembris Valley region since the 1970s, which has brought to light dozens of votive and grave steles, which have entered private and museum collections, in and outside Turkey, without any recorded provenance. For a summary of this catastrophic situation, see Lochman, Phrygien, 23. 562 Aelius Aristides, or. 31 (11, 76 Dind.).

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and free in his manners, frank and distinguished in expression, making it hard to judge whether he was a child, a youth or old beyond his years. Aristides, the orator and stylist, developed the commonplaces of funerary consolation in the manner of a virtuoso pianist, far removed from the clumsy and hesitant finger-work of the composers of most Phrygian epitaphs, but the music of the written word was a cultural form which the farmers of the Tembris Valley had in common with the flawless rhetoric of the second sophistic movement. Sculpture combined with literature was part of a cultural ideal which was within the grasp and comprehension of many Phrygians, including the descendants of immigrant Roman and Italian negotiatores, members of the wealthy and educated indigenous civic elite, and the prosperous farmers of the Upper Tembris Valley.563 As well as representations of the tools and implements of their daily lives, beginning in the later second century, they took delight in the figured representation of human figures, animals and divinities on the monuments that they commissioned, and thus provided a vigorous market in which sculpture production could thrive. The centres of production were associated with the marble quarries close to the village of Çakırsaz and the town of Altıntaş itself. Although their work was not exported far beyond northern and central Phrygia, these workshops produced sculpture for prosperous landed gentry and for the wealthier families in local towns and cities. Some of the artists who signed their work used village ethnics, which would have been familiar to their customers, and reflected the local pride of the artists and their clients. Local tastes were sophisticated, and led to considerable variation in the types that could be offered. The products of the Altıntaş sculptors included votive steles for wealthy and well-patronised pagan sanctuaries, such as those of Zeus Ampelites and Zeus Thallos (see below chapter 4.10 n. 63), as well as funerary steles in the form of doorstones (Türsteine), niche steles with prominent full-length human figures (Bogenfeldstelen), and steles with panels at two or even three levels (Stockwerkstelen), displaying portrait busts. The repertoire also included cylindrical and rectangular altars, used either as votive or funerary monuments.564

563 Lucian, Somnium 2, related that he faced the choice of becoming of a sculptor or a man of letters, before he emerged as one of the most famous authors of the second century. 564 Lochman, Phrygien, 59–81 for the typology of the funerary monuments, 81–97 for the votives.

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The most important of these workshops was the family business of Zelas and Teimeas, names which alternated between father and son over three generations from c.180 to 230. The fine grave stele from Kütahya, probably set up at Cotiaeum around 220 by Proteas and Tatias for themselves, their daughter Domna, and Proteas’s brother Octavius (Ὀκτάῑος), carried the signature of Ζήλας λάτυπος prominently on the upper margin of the decorated shaft (Lochman, Phrygien II, 148; ICG 1356). It featured a double row of male and female portraits, two spears and two shields decorated with prancing horses, which surely signified that the two men had served as Roman cavalrymen. The sculptors Teimeas and his son Zelas were educated pagans, and their reliefs included votive dedications,565 as well as funerary steles with divine and mythological scenes, including the myth of Attis, Heracles and Cerberus, and the rape of Persephone, all of which were linked to Phrygian and Greek ideas of the underworld and the afterlife. The choice of these themes indicated not only religious preferences but also the sculptors’ social status, just as allusions to classical mythology in verse epitaphs marked out the cultural aspirations of the Phrygian poets.566 The members of the military family of Proteas and Octavius opted for a style of grave monument dominated by their own portraits. Their paganism is confirmed by the appearance of a smaller clothed figure standing on an altar-shaped base between the two lower busts, which should be interpreted as representing a divine statue. A supplement to the normal funerary text, placed to the left of the male bust in the lower register, contains a formula which occurs on several other inscriptions from Cotiaeum, the Upper Τembris Valley and other parts of Phrygia: τὸν θεόν σοι· μὴ ἀδικήσεις.567 This formula appears on many pagan, or apparently pagan, grave steles: Cotiaeum – The stele of Proteas and Tatias, carved by Zelas. – A Bogenfeldstele with a couple standing in the aedicula and a bust of Helios between their heads. The man carries a writing scroll and the panel shows a pruning hook and a plough.568 565 To Zeus Andreas dated c.180. See Lochman, Phrygien 86 and 278: II 310 (by Teimeas); and II 309 (Drew-Bear, GRBS 1976, 252 no. 9) is by the sculptor Epitynchanos, an associate of Zelas. 566 For the works of these and other sculptors associated with them, signed and attributed, see Lochman, Phrygien, 97–8, 101–104. 567 BCC, JRS 15 (1925), 156–58 no. 144; Waelkens, Atelier lapidaires en Phrygie 123–25; (SEG 29, 1408); Lochman, Phrygien 265: II 148; (ICG 1356). 568 Lochman II, 275: II, 266; (SEG 53, 1548; ICG 1834); Cotiaeum (Çekirge), now in Kütahya Museum; dated c.220 (Lochman). The formula ends the inscription.

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– A third century verse inscription put up by Elpizon for his wife Kyrille and five children who had died young. The text began with virtually the same verse that the sculptor Teimeas and his wife Nana had used on the epitaph of their daughter. No image of the monument is recorded, but it was without doubt another product of the Teimeas workshop.569 – A stele with two half-length figures in a niche. The formula appeared on the panel between the heads of the two figures.570 – A stele with male and female busts in the arched gable and two full length figures between pilasters in the panel below. The formula was on the frame that divides the gable from the panel.571 Upper Tembris Valley – Beşkarış. A broken fragment of a large Bogenfeldstele which shows the formula between the heads of two of the three standing figures which filled the main panel, precisely as if one of them was addressing the words to the viewer.572 – Alibeyköy A Bogenfeldstele with a single frontal female figure, identified as Ape by the inscription. In the pediment there is a carefully executed mythological scene representing the rape of Persephone on a wagon drawn by two horses, led by Hermes, with a female figure carrying a torch, perhaps Hecate, hovering above the abduction.573 – Akçaköy. A male portrait stele with the words of the formula on either side of the man’s head.574

569 A. Souter, CR 1897, 137–38 VIII; Wilhelm, Griechische Grabepigramme aus Kleinasien, 60 no. 4. This verse epitaph includes the line ἀένεον τόδε σῆμα πατὴρ εἵδρυσε θυγατρί κτλ., which was carved on the gable monument set up by the sculptor Teimeas and his wife Nana for their daughter (BCC, JRS 18 (1928), 32 no. 247; Petrie, Epitaphs in Phrygian Greek, 121 no. 3; Lochman, Phrygien 255: II 8; cf. Waelkens, MAMA X 61 comm., rightly attributing the work to Teimeas. 570 BCC, JRS 15 (1925), 162–3 no. 152. Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 407–09 no. 64 (ICG 1358). Cotiaeum. 571 Miltner, JÖAI 30 (1937) Beibl. 58 no. 62; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 412–14 no. 66; Pfuhl / Möbius, Ostgriechische Grabreliefs 1, 175 no. 598; Lochman, Phrygien, 266: II 175 (ICG 1391). Cotiaeum, now in Ankara Museum. Dated c.200 (Lochman). 572 SERP 220–21 no. 19; MAMA X 49 (dated c.220–30); Wilhelm, Griechische Grabepigramme aus Kleinasien, 61 no. 3; Lochman, Phrygien, 275: II 267 (ICG 1168). Dated c.190 (Lochman). 573 MAMA X 106; Lochman, Phrygien, 267: II 184 (ICG 1178). Dated c.200 (Lochman), c.220–240 Waelkens. The formula is on the upper frame of the stele. 574 MAMA X 162; Lochman, Phrygien, 274: II 249 (ICG 1191). Dated c.180/90 (Lochman); c.220–240 Waelkens.

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– Aykırıkçı. A Bogenfeldstele depicting a bearded man and his wife with a child between their shoulders. The formulaic inscription is displayed on an open diptychon.575 – Yeni Karaağaç (near Altıntaş). The top part of a stele with a couple standing beneath the arch. The formula was carved between the heads.576 Territory of Acmonia – Hasanköy in the north part of the territory of Acmonia. An early-third-century doorstone with paired portrait busts in the pediment, signed by the sculptor Euphemos.577 – Hatıplar, territory of Acmonia. A mid-third-century doorstone with portrait busts in the gable.578 – South and east of Altıntaş – Olucak. A finely carved stele dominated by portrait busts, with a gable crowned by a relief of an eagle holding victory wreath in its beak.579 – Hacibeyli. A small portrait stele with a triangular gable featuring male and female busts, a standing child centred below the busts and what appears to be the image of a swaddled baby squeezed between them, and the τὸν θεόν σοι formula on the plinth below the figures.580 – Prymnessus. A very fine Docimian doorstone with a team of four horses depicted in the upper and lower panels. The formula was carved above the door lintel.581 – Antioch. A stele of the early third century with male and female busts in the gable, with the formula at the bottom of the stone.582 – Inscription from Pisidian Antioch.583 575 Mendel, BCH 33 (1909), 290–92 no. 47. Wilhelm, Griechische Grabepigramme aus Kleinasien, 852 no. 7; Lochman, Phrygien, 274: II 248 (ICG 1838), in Bursa museum. Dated c.180/90 (Lochman). 576 Lochman, 275: II 270; (SEG 53, 1550; ICG 1837). Dated c.220 (Lochman). 577 Waelkens, Türsteine, 160–61 no. 401; MAMA VI 321 (ICG 986). 578 Waelkens, Türsteine, 160 no. 400; MAMA VI 322 (ICG 987), dated by Waelkens c.240–260. 579 MAMA VI 363; Pfuhl / Möbius I, 793 Taf. 116; Lochman, Phrygien, 266: II 178 (ICG 1004). Lochman dates 230/40 (woman’s hairstyle). 580 Calder, AS 5 (1955), 35–36 no. 4; (SEG 15, 800; ICG 1361); from Hacibeyli (near Eğret Han, Döger), now in Afyon Museum. 581 Waelkens, Türsteine 196 no. 485; Waelkens, Ateliers lapidaires en Phrygie, 109–110; (SEG 29, 1378); Lochman, Phrygien, 296: III 57 (ICG 1377). In Basmane Museum, Izmir. Dated c.240 (Lochman). 582 D. M. Robinson, Greek and Latin inscriptions from Asia Minor, TAPA 57 (1926), 219–21 no. 42; IK 67, 8 B173; SGO 3, 412: 16/61/99; Wilhelm, Griechische Grabepigramme aus Kleinasien, 853 no. 11 (ICG 1327). 583 Sterrett, EJ 157 no. 142; Wilhelm SB Berlin 1932, 853 no. 10.

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All these monuments are certainly or very probably pagan, and can be dated between c.180 and 240, before any Christian gravestones can be securely identified in the Upper Tembris Valley or at Cotiaeum. Most of the examples of the formula appear on portrait steles, and this is not a coincidence. The five words of the formula were usually carved close to the heads of the figures, in the manner of a ‘speech bubble’ in a modern cartoon, displayed on the open page of a diptych; or placed prominently but separated from the rest of the text on the frame around the main relief. The clear intention was to make the persons represented on the stone speak to the reader or viewer. The syntax of the address formula was explained by Adolf Wilhelm in a classic study. It had the form of an exclamation, ‘ein beschwörender Anruf’, to catch the attention of the addressee, τὸν θεόν σοι, followed by a negative command, μή with the future indicative ἀδικήσεις or the present subjunctive ἀδικήσῃς.584 A restored example on a doorstone from the territory of Acmonia provides an addition of the text: [τὸν θεόν σοι· μὴ] ἀδικήσεις. εἰ δ[έ] τις ἀδικ[ή]σει, τὰ] [διπλᾶ ?] αὐτῷ γένοιτο, which expanded the address from mere warning or advice to a threat.585 This brought the expression into line with the widespread Phrygian usage of placing a curse on whoever interfered with the tomb.586 However, this message was not made explicit in the other cases, and the words in themselves were no more than a general and polite adjuration to the reader to behave justly and do no harm. The usage is not common in literary Greek, but Wilhelm drew attention to two prose works of the second century where it occurs, the Epicurean discourses of the philosopher Epictetus, as transcribed and published by his pupil Arrian, and the Stoic Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. The Epictetus citations are all extracts from spoken dialogue between Epictetus and one of his interlocutors,587 and Marcus uses the expression in an imagined address to his Φαντασία.588 The phrase was a feature of educated conversational language, not dissimilar to many comparable, now rather old-fashioned English expressions: ‘by heavens!’, ‘struth!’ (God’s truth), ‘good Lord!’, where the use of god’s name intensifies the expression but has lost any religious connotations. The citations in the agnostic Epicurean discourse of Epictetus were also clearly devoid of any theological content. We may infer that the exclamation τὸν θεόν σοι was 584 A. Wilhelm, Griechische Grabepigramme aus Kleinasien, 847–856. The second word occurred in variant spellings typical of Phrygian Greek: ἀδικαίσις, ἀδικήσις, ἀδικήσες. 585 MAMA VI 321; Waelkens, Türsteine, 160–61 no. 401 (ICG 986). The restoration is not certain; perhaps restore [τὰ |αὐτὰ] αὐτῷ γένοιτο. 586 See discussion above, chapter 4.3. 587 Epictetus II.19.15; III.7.18; 20.4; 22.77; IV.1.47. 588 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations VII.17.2.

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characteristic of polite conversation among the landed gentry of the Upper Tembris Valley and of the educated Phrygians of Cotiaeum, doubtless including Eteoneus, the young pupil of Aelius Aristides with which this section began. Soon after the sculptors of the region first introduced portraiture into the repertoire, from around 170,589 the inscriptions gave their human figures a voice, expressing the decorous warning to viewers of their graves, to do no harm. In contrast with the ‘malédictions funéraires’ so widespread in other Phrygian funerary epigraphy, the expression was part of the culture of the educated élite, to be found on the lips of the sophrones and the semnoi, urging their fellow citizens to conduct their lives justly and fairly.590 More than a century after the first pagan examples, the formula was adopted by the region’s Christians. It appears on the verse epitaphs at Aykırıkçı of the ‘great soldier’, Domnus (ICG 1270), of Sosthenes (ICG 1269), of Zosimus son of Dionysios at Çakırsaz (ICG 1265), and on two of the fine works of Aur. Athenodotus (ICG 1977 and 1978), all dated to the beginning of the fourth century.591 These monuments no longer portrayed human figures and the function of the formula had subtly changed, into an invocation to the Christian god. It remained, however, a preserve of polite society. The usage is also found on later Christian inscription inscriptions, for instance on the sixth-century tombstone of a priest (possibly a bishop) in Lycaonia,592 By classifying the great majority of the τὸν θεόν σοι· μὴ ἀδικήσεις texts as pagan gravestones with figural decoration, dating between 180 and 240, the number of significant early Christian monuments from Cotiaeum itself is reduced to a single text, the epitaph of Domnus, son of Eustochius, carved in large letters on a massive block of marble, 1.05 metres high and 2.40 metres long, originally re-used in the wall of a building in the Greek quarter of Kütahya, and now in Kütahya Museum.593 A block of this size would not have been transported

589 Lochman, Phrygien, 68: ‘Erst ungefähr nach 170 n. Chr. tauchen auch die ersten Nischenstelen mit der Darstellung stehender Figuren auf’. 590 Chiai, Christen und christliche Identitäten, 111 misunderstands the expression as a threat: ‘Der Ausdruck  … sollte jedenfalls reichen, um das Grabdenkmal vor Schändungen zu schützen: alle wussten, was hätte passieren können’. 591 See 246-51. MAMA X 108 (ICG 1179) from Alibeyköy has the formula carved along the top margin of a completely erased or defaced main panel. Since there are not even vestigial traces of figure decoration, it is likely that this had been entirely filled with text, and perhaps also belonged to the series carved by Aur. Athenodotus. 592 ICG 109, cited and emended on 391 n. 236, and on an unpublished gold lamella excavated from a tomb in Juliopolis (information, Melih Arslan). 593 BCC, JRS 15 (1925), 142–44 no. 125; Grégoire, Byzantion 8 (1933), 59–61; Gibson, Chr. for Chr., 87 no. 5; Tabernnee, Mont. Inscr., 414–9 no. 67; SGO 3, 281: 61/32/03; (ICG 1355).

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from outside the city, and it was part of a large built tomb or heroon.594 The text, carved in large even letters, comprised seven hexameters in memory of Domnus, son of Eustochius,595 who had died aged thirty (a rounded figure), but was already a pre-eminent figure in the civic body, and a pious lover of the poor: [τ]ὸν κλυτὸν ἐν ζωοῖσι, τὸν ἔξοχον [ἐ]ν μερόπεσσι, | τὸν πρώτιστον βουλῆς ἠδὲ πόληος ὅλης, τὸν πτώχους φιλέοντα | [ε]ἵνεκεν εὐσεβίης. The contrast in the first line between ζωοῖσι and μερόπεσσι doubtless represents the high esteem in which Domnus was held both among the devout Christian community, the living who looked forward to eternal life, and the wider citizen body.596 The description of Domnus as lover of the destitute, is an emphatic allusion to this characteristic Christian virtue.597 The clauses that followed, which described a young man beloved by the immortals (the Christian community that enjoyed eternal life), bathed in the springs of immortality before being consigned to the isles of the blessed, were surely a poetic reference to the rite of baptism conducted on Domnus’s death-bed: τὸν ἀθάνατοι φιλέεσκον, τοὔνεκα καὶ πηγαῖς | λούσαμεν ἀθανάτοις, καὶ μακάρων νήσσοις |ἔνβαλον ἀθανάτων. The rite, but not the circumstances, may be compared with the graphic description of the death throes and baptism of the Novatian Ammia in the lengthy gravestone for the family of Aur. Menandros from Altıntaş.598 The heroon of Domnus probably dates to the first half of the fourth century. An inscription from Dereköy on the territory of Cotiaeum towards Aezani, which reads Εὐτόνιος Εὐπαλίου πολιτευομένου καὶ Ἀντωνίνης υἱός σὺν Δαιμητριανῷ θρεπτῷ πολλῶν φίλος ἐνθάδε κεῖται, perhaps belongs to the same social environment, the cultivated Christian elite of the Constantinian age. Father and son both bore unusual names that spoke for training in the palaestra, implying strength, grace and social status. The father had been a member of the city council, but his son, who must have died young, is identified with a Christian

594 For another large block with a funerary verse text from a monumental built tomb at Cotiaeum, see Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca 363; Peek, Griechische Versinschriften 669; SGO 3, 280: 16/32/02; A. Baroni, A proposito di un epigramma metrico da Kotiaion (Peek, GVI, I, 669), Studi classici e orientali 35 (1985), 229–234; (SEG 35, 1391). 595 All examples of the name in LGPN Vc are Christian from the fourth century or later. 596 The same contrast between μερόπεσσι (secular) and μάκαρας (Christian immortality) was made in a roughly contemporary verse text from the Phrygian Highlands, ICG 1656; see 298. 597 See M. Cassia, La piaga e la cura: Poveri e ammalati, medici e monaci nell’ Anatolia rurale tardoantica (Rome 2009); Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 535–47. 598 See 257–8.

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virtue, the mutually supportive friendship which was the hall mark of Christian communities.599 4.10

Contextualising the Christians of the Upper Tembris Valley (Maps 9 and 10)

The best documented cult site in the northern part of the Upper Tembris Valley was a sanctuary of Hosios and Dikaios, located at Yaylababa Köy, a village at the south margin of the hilly territory of Cotiaeum and the north edge of the Gireiovası. Broken fragments of more than fifty small steles have been recovered, displaying the dual divinities as beardless male figures, side by side, one carrying weighing scales, the other a measuring staff, in exactly the iconographic pattern and style seen in steles depicting the Phrygian pantheon from Eskişehir (fig. 45).600 Most of the votives were made by individuals on behalf of themselves or family members, but two were made on behalf of associations, respectively of the vine-lovers,601 and of a group of younger men, the νεώτεροι.602 They depict only the divinities, without any visual representation of the dedicators, their possessions, their afflictions, or their animals. This corresponds to the character of the cult, which focussed on morality not material possessions.603 None of the reliefs mentions the dedicator’s village of origin, and Hosios and Dikaios probably served a more local clientèle than the popular and attractive sanctuaries of Zeus Ampelites and Zeus Thallos in the south part of the Upper Tembris Valley. All the texts belong to the third century. Lochman has suggested that the small steles from the group should be dated 220–250, and the circular tondos between 260 and 280, but this precision may be over-ambitious.604 The dating 599 MAMA X 313 with comm.; see Feissel, Chron. 362 and Bull. ép. 2014, 581 for the names (ICG 1208). 600 Lochman, Phrygien, 284: II 463 with fig. 80; see 71 n. 59. 601 H. Malay, Φιλάνπελοι in Lydia and Phrygia, EA 38 (2005), 42–44. 602 Ricl, EA 1990, 26 no. 53; Lochman, Phrygien II 481 proposes restoring [ἱερῶν κὲ ν]εωτέρων, without foundation. 603 The cult of Hosios and Dikaios did not exclude more conventional material prayers, for the crops (eg Drew-Bear, Nouvelles inscriptions de Phrygie (1978), 38 no. 3 (SEG 1978, 1177) ὑπὲρ … καρπῶν θελεσπορίας), farm animals, and especially for a family’s physical health, but these were exceptions to the rule. See M. Ricl, Hosios kai Dikaios 2e partie, 84–6. 604 Lochman, Phrygien, 93 judges that the drapery of the tondo figures lacks plasticity, and the letter chi in the tondos (usually in the word εὐχήν) tends to take an upright crossshaped form, a style found on both pagan and Christian gravestones from the Tembris Valley workshops in the last quarter of the third century. Most of the tondos are too

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Figure 45 Cotiaeum territory (Yaylababa). Votive to Hosios and Dikaios. Now in Kütahya Museum Stephen Mitchell

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argument, derived from votives at a single sanctuary, and based on the style of drapery observable on very fragmentary reliefs and a single letter form (chi), is too flimsy to carry the weight of Lochman’s conclusion, that the worship of the semi-abstract divinity Hosios and Dikaios should be interpreted as a significant religious development of the middle and later third century, a step away from traditional anthromorphic pagan worship towards an aniconic aethetic.605 About two hundred inscriptions relating to the cult of Hosios and Dikaios have now been recorded, mostly in Phrygia, but also in neighbouring regions, or further afield. The great majority belong chronologically to the end of the second or the third century including securely dated examples from the 170s, 180s, and 190s; outliers have tentatively been assigned to the first or early second centuries.606 The worship of Hosios and Dikaios was established before the third century, and the chronological distribution of votive monuments in Lydia, Phrygia and neighbouring regions was similar to that of other cults of these regions in the Roman period.607 The worship of ‘abstract’ divinities was not restricted to the third century, and the cult of the Righteous and the Just was compatible for Phrygians in the Roman Empire with the worship of anthropomorphic divinites such as Heracles, Dionysus or Zeus. The monuments for Hosios and Dikaios do not in themselves constitute evidence for a significant change in the religious culture of Phrygia between the second and third centuries. badly damaged to give any impression of the drapery, and the rotated position of the chi appears variable in the small available sample, and can also be seen on the supposedly earlier steles. 605 Lochman, Phrygien, 97: ‘Am Ende ihrer Produktion spiegeln die Votivreliefs einen geistigen Wandel in der Religion der lokalen Bevölkerung wider. Die in der Spätzeit allein produzierten Hosios-kai-Dikaios Votive zeugen von einer allmählichen Abkehr von der heidnischen Religion, da sie gewissermassen eine „Zwischenstufe“ zum endgültigen Sieg des Christentums bilden, das sich zuvor schon allmählich ausgebreitet hatte’. Cf Lochman, Phrygien, 206–7, 218 and 234–35. For a similar hypothesis, see Louis Robert, Anatolia 3 (1958) 118 ff = OMS I, 417 ff. 606 M. Ricl, EA 18 (1991), 5 no. 7 (182/83); 6 no. 8 (172/73); 37 no. 81 (190/91); M. Ricl, Newly published and unpublished Inscriptions for Hosios and Dikaios and their Contribution to the Study of the Cult, in E. Winter (ed.), Vom Euphrat bis zum Bosporus. Kleinasien in der Antike. Festschrift für Elmar Schwertheim zum 65. Geburtstag (Asia Minor Studien 65, Bonn 2008), 568 no. 2 (176), 572 no. 27 (196), 573 no. 36 (196, less likely 138). Outliers: Ricl 2008, 568 no. 1 (dated to 58, an acclamation μέγα τὸ ὅσιον, μέγα τὸ δίκαιον, embedded in a confession text, not necessarily evidence for a separate cult); 573 no. 35 (tentatively but inconclusively dated to the 1st cent. BC/AD); 574 no. 37 (perhaps 1st or 2nd cent.); 575 no. 44 3rd/2nd cent. BC (!) in Thessaly. 607 It should be emphasised again that this is the date range when epigraphic monuments and figured reliefs were produced, and not necessarily the date range when the cult existed.

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4.10.1 The Religious Specialists Another characteristic feature of pagan Phrygian religious life can be seen in a relief stele copied at Kütahya, but probably brought there from a site in the Upper Tembris Valley. The inscription, carved around 200 and now unfortunately clipped at the top when the stone was recut to serve as a gravestone in Kütahya’s Armenian cemetery, reads [Ἀλ]έξανδρος Μητ[ρο|φιλ]ον τὸν ἱερέα [τιμηθ|έντα] ὑπὸ Διὸς καθ[ιέρωσεν] (fig. 30).608 The restoration of the two verbs is based on expressions that occur on gravestones or dedications set up in the Upper Tembris Region by their relatives for individuals who had been singled out for divine favour, τειμηθέντα ὑπὸ Σωτείρης Ἑκάτης κατειέρωσαν, ἀπειέρωσαν τιμηθέντας ὑπὸ Σωτείρης Ἑκάτης, τιμηθέντα ὑπὸ θεῶν ἀθανάτων καθιέρωσαν.609 The relief at Kütahya, which is not a gravestone, represents aspects of the ceremony in which the priest was honoured. Above the inscription was a schematic wreath, and below it a long-haired male bust, with hand acoss the breast, between a bird (an eagle?) carrying a wreath in its beak to the left, and a standing naked figure, probably Hermes, to the right. Below in the main panel there is a very similar but larger male bust of a figure who appears to hold a goblet in his left hand, above a symmetrical composition of two fir trees, two portable amphorae, and a large two-handled jar with three objects, perhaps cups, placed on it. At the bottom is a crudely carved animal, perhaps an ox.610 There is clearly some latitude in the interpretation of these images, but the 608 The stone was later transferred to the Ankara museum. Buckler, Calder and Cox, JRS 15 (1925), 154 no. 140; E. Pfuhl / H. Möbius, Die ostgriechischen Grabreliefs II (1979), 511 no. 1520; Mitchell, Anatolia II (1993), 26 fig. 11; Lochman, Phrygien, 265: II 147 and 147a. 609 A. D. Nock, Studies in the Graeco-Roman beliefs of the Empire, JHS 45 (1925), 84–101 at 100–101, understood τιμή in the sense ‘having received special grace from’; M. Paz de Hoz, The verb καθιερόω and references to a divinity in Anatolian funerary formulas, Arkeoloji Dergisi 5 (1997), 161–9, collects ten examples. Lochman, Phrygien 264: II 143–47 lists the Hekate texts: including Lochman Eine Gruppe spätantiker Grabsteine aus Phrygien, fig. 1 (SEG 40, 1241), which is also illustrated by Massèglia, Phrygians in relief, in Thonemann (ed.), Roman Phrygia (2012), 98 fig. 5.1 (not necessarily funerary); and Koch, Phrygien 123 Abb. 14 a-b with the text Ἄπφιον τὸν ἑαυτῆς σύνβιον Γάειος κατεειέρωσεν Σωτήρῃ Ἑκάτῃ, καὶ Ἀπελλᾶς καὶ Γάειος ἐτείμησαν τοὺς ἑαυτῶν γονῖς μνήμης χάριν. Τειμέας Μουρματεανός, and reliefs of Mên, triple Hekate, Apollo/Sozon and Cerberus (?). Important new texts reporting kathierosis to Hekate and other Hekate reliefs have been published by E. Akyürek-Şahin, Kütahya Müzesi Yıllığı 6 (2018, publ. 2019), 127–99 and Kütahya Müzesi Yıllığı 7 (2019, publ. 2020), 145–60. The sanctuary from which they originated has been located at Yağcılar near Arslanapa, on the west side of the Upper Tembris Valley; see 73. 610 Some details are ambiguous, as the faces of the three figures have all been deliberately damaged, and the stone is worn. ‘Hermes’ appears to hold a caduceus in his left hand, but this might be a club, which would better suit Herakles. Buckler, Calder and Cox tentatively interpreted the three objects above the large vessel as loaves placed on a bread-jar.

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amphorae, the large wine jar and the (probable) goblet held by the largest figure indicate a festival and wine drinking, and the trees suggest a wooded grove as the sanctuary’s location.611 The goblet matches the relief of a goblet standing on an altar which is part of the decoration of a late-second-century gravestone copied at Zemme in the Upper Tembros Valley, carrying the inscription ἱερεῦ χαῖρε.612 The nature of the ceremony of aphierosis or kathierosis and the religious ideas behind it are largely matters for speculation. It appears clear, however, that the consecration did not occur post mortem, although the status of having been honoured by a god might appear on a gravestone. The persons so honoured were religious specialists, distinguished for their piety or for their priestly office. This is clear from two inscriptions of the mid-third-century, relating to a priest called Telesphoros. A small altar signed by the sculptor Lucius and dated by the Sullan era to 249/50, records the aphierosis of Telesphoros by his children Aur. Epitynchanos and Epinikos, acting with their mother Tertulla, in the company or presence of the ‘holy band’ of which Telesphorus was the hierophant: Ἀγαθῇ Τύχῃ. Αὐρήλιοι Ἐπιτύνχανος καὶ Ἐπίνικος σὺν τῇ μητρὶ Τερτύλλῃ πατέ[ρα] Τελέσφορον ἀπεειέρωσαν, έτους τλδ´, σὺν τῇ εἱερᾷ εἰσπείρῃ ἧς καὶ εἱρ[ο]φάντης. The reliefs on all four faces have been deliberately mutilated, probably by Christians in antiquity, but displayed a figure with a thyrsus (Dionysus?), a coiled snake, a second figure with a bunch of grapes, and a third figure with a fillet round his head, perhaps the consecrated Telesphorus. The imagery is unmistakeably Dionysiac. The stone, first copied in 1901 by Ramsay at the railway station of Banaz (near Acmonia), was brought to Smyrna, where it was seen and re-edited by S. G. Cole.613 Marc Waelkens, however, argued that the altar was a product of the Altıntaş workshops and probably came from the Upper Tembris Valley, like most of the other consecration inscriptions.614 This hypothesis is supported by a subsequent discovery, another small altar with reliefs recorded by Drew-Bear at Terziler, but reportedly brought from the village of Eymir in the heart of the Tembris Valley.615 The main face shows 611 See H. Güney, Zeus of the Cedar Tree, Journal of Epigraphic Studies 3 (2020), 56–59. The votive monuments for Zeus Alsenos (Zeus of the woodland grove), recovered from the highland sanctuary at Kurudere between Docimium and Amorium, are more numerous than for any other Phrygian cult (Drew-Bear et al., Phrygian Votive Steles; Lochman, Phrygien, 302: III 92–509). 612 ICG 1195; see 207. 613 W.M. Ramsay, Two days in Phrygia, REA 3 (1901) 275; S. G. Cole, Dionysiac Mysteries in the Phrygia in the Imperial Period, EA 17 (1991) 41–49. 614 M. Waelkens, Privatdeifikation, Mélanges P. Naster (1984), 285–6. 615 Lochman, Phrygien, 290: II 527, illustrated at Abb. 77–78 (copied by T. Drew-Bear in 1979).

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a frontal standing figure, defaced, between two vines with grapes. The other sides show, respectively, five pairs of oxen in three tiers, the one in the middle with a suckling calf; two pairs of oxen beneath a kantharos with a vine growing out of it; and five pairs of oxen in three registers. The inscription on the front reads ἔτους τλε´. Αὐρ. | Τελέσφορος ὑ|πὲρ τῶν ὑπα|ρχόντων | Δεὶ Ἡρα|κλῇ εὐχ|ήν and dates to 250/51. Several convergent reasons make it almost certain that the two altars relate to the same person: the dates in two consecutive years; the design and execution of the monuments themselves; their provenance, in one case likely and in the other certain, in the Upper Tembris valley; the identical style of defacement inflicted on both reliefs; the name of the protagonist in both cases: respectively Telesphorus, father of a family of Aurelii, and Aur. Telesphorus; and the fact that both altars drew attention to unusual religious credentials. The earlier text commemorated the consecration of Telesphoros as a hierophant, head of a sacred band; the later is a dedication made by the same man to an unparalleled hybrid divinity Zeus-Herakles, a figure depicted in a full-figure guise more appropriate to Herakles than to Zeus, who was always represented in the region by his bust. This unique dedication can be compared with the construction by three priests of a temple near Cibyra for Herakles, his new-born son Hosios and Dikaios and the Gold Virgin. Here too, religious innovation was in the hands of a local religious specialist.616 After Ramsay first published the altar of Telesphorus seen at Banaz, he accepted a suggestion that Telesphorus son of Epitynchanos might have been the grandfather of Aur. Epitynchanos, member of another family of religious specialists attested in a remarkable inscription of 313/14, which Ramsay himself had copied in 1884 at Oturak, a village about thirty kilometres south-west of Altıntaş, later on the railway linking Afyon with Uşak.617 In 1902 this inscription entered the collection of the Musées Royaux du Cinquantenaire de Bruxelles, the gift of Paul Gaudin.618 Gaudin was director of the railway company (La Société Ottomane du Chemin de Fer de Smyrne-Cassabe et prolonguements), responsible for building the line from Izmir to Afyon, and a significant 616 Lochman, Phrygien, 198: ‘Nur bei den Zeusvotiven erscheint der Gott, allerdings nicht in voller Gestalt, sondern nur in Büstenform’. For the temple in the Cibyratis, see 74 n. 72. 617 V. Chapot, Sur quelques inscriptions d’Acmonia de Phrygie, REA 4 (1902), 77–84 at 84; W. M. Ramsay, Nouvelles remarques sur les textes d’Acmonia, REA 4 (1902), 267–70 at 269–70. The line ran from Uşak through Kapaklar, Banaz, Oturak, Dumlupınar, Yıldırımköy, and Balmahmut, to Afyon. The section from Alaşehir to Afyon was built between 1893 and 1899. The French station master at Banaz, M. Lantois, had collected antiquities there, including the altar of Aur. Telesphoros, copied by Ramsay when it was in his possession. 618 F. Cumont, Catalogue des sculptures et inscriptions antiques des Musées Royaux du Cinquantenaire de Bruxelles (Brussels 1913), 158–63 no. 136 (ICG 1007).

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collector of antiquities, some of which he donated to the Louvre in Paris and the Brussels Royal Museum.619 The monument of Aur. Epitynchanos itself is remarkably like the two that relate to Telesphoros. All were small altars with almost the same dimensions,620 decorated with reliefs on all four faces, all deliberately damaged, presumably by Christians, in antiquity. The style of the carving is typical of the Altıntaş workshops. The stone in Brussels differs in that it was carved more than sixty years later than the others, and carried a much longer text. The date, carved at the top of the rear face, was ἔτους τϙη´ 398 (Sullan era), corresponding to 313/14, and this date fits the style of the letter forms and the vine and grape decoration on the rear and side faces, which are comparable to those of the text-rich Christian inscriptions of the early fourth century (see chapter 4.8). The front face displayed three reliefs: at the top, a small bust of Helios; in the middle, a mounted figure, perhaps carrying a double axe, riding to the right, with the horse’s foreleg raised in the manner characteristic of the Altıntaş workshop;621 at the bottom, an elongated male bust, perhaps Zeus. The text identified the central figure of the dedication [ἀ]θάνατος Ἐπιτύνχανος Πίου ‘the immortal Epitynchanos, son of Pius’, who had been three times honoured by the Gods, first by Hekate, a second time by Manes Daes (or Daos) Heliodromos Zeus, and a third time by Phoebos archegetes, giver of oracles: τιμηθεὶς ὑπὸ Ἐκάτης πρώτης, δεύτερον ὑπὸ Μάνου Δάου Ἡλιοδρόμου Διός, τρίτον Φοίβου ἀρχηγέτου χρησμοδότου. The expressions suggest that Epitynchanos was honoured on three different occasions. If the reliefs on this side of the altar correspond to a single ceremony they fit best with the second, as the composite divinity can be identified in the three images of Helios (evoked by the word ἡλιοδρόμου), a rider god Manes Daos, and Zeus. Epitynchanos had acquired the ability to prophesy, associated with Phoebos, although he asserts that this gift came from all the gods: ἀληθῶς δῶρον ἔλαβον χρησμοδοτῖν ἀληθείας ἐν πατρίδι, κὲ ἐν ὅροις χρησμοδοτῖν, νόμους τιθῖν, κὲ ἐν ὅροις χρησμοδοτῖν πᾶσιν· τοῦτο ἔχω δῶρον ἐξ ἀθανάτων πάντων. The front face of the stone ends with a dedication to his parents, who had also held prominent priestly positions: ἀθανάτῳ πρώτῳ ἀρχιερῖ καλλιτέκνῳ Πίῳ κὲ μητρὶ Τατίει (ἱ)ερί(ῃ) ἡ ἐτέτεκε καλὰ τέκνα καλὸν ὄνομα πρῶτον ἀθάνατον Ἐπιτύνχανον ἀρχιερέα, σωτῆρα πατρίδος, νομοθε[τη].

619 See M. Waelkens, Ateliers lapidaires en Phrygie, 114 n. 45, citing L. Robert, Hell. III, (1946), 38 n. 4; Hell. X, 119 n. 5 and 7; 120 n. 5; Bull. ép. 1972, 458; Journal des Savants 1975, 180. 620 Dionysiac altar, ‘petit autel’; Zeus-Herakles 0.85 × 0.37 × 0.37, letters 0.018; Aur. Epitynchanos 0.84 × 0.39 × 0.39 at base tapering to 0.29 × 0.29; letters 0.015. 621 See 231–2 n. 477.

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Apart from vines on the pediment and the base, the relief decoration on the rear face of the stone is confined to a simple wreath, placed centrally in an inscription which begins with the date, and continues with more details of Epitynchanos’s spiritual biography, put in his own words. ‘I am the one who has observed the instructions of the immortals and speaks (‘babbles’) about everything, immortal Epitynchanos, initated into the mysteries by the fair public high priestess, with the fair name Spatale, whom the immortals had honoured both in and beyond the boundaries,622 because she had rescued many from foul tortures’.623 The subject then switched to the children and grandchildren who had consecrated Epitynchanos, ‘Diogas and Epitynchanos and his bride Tation and their children Onesimos, Alexandros, Asklas and Epitynchanos consecrated the high-priest Epitynchanos when he had been honoured by the immortal gods himself.’624 The whole text was carved at one time and the only later addition was a simple cross, crudely but deeply carved in the middle of the wreath. It is not clear how the two episodes recorded here, the initiation of Epitynchanos into the mysteries by the high-priestess Spatale, and his consecration by his children and grandchildren, fitted chronologically with the events recorded on the face of the altar. There is no indication that the consecration occurred post mortem.625 The inscription on the left side of the stone had a text that explicitly revealed Epitynchanos’ two sons as having the same status as their father: ἀθάνατοι πρῶτοι ἀρχιερῖς ὁμάδελφοι Διογᾶς κὲ Ἑπιτύνχανος σωτῆρες πατρίδος νομοθέτε. The damaged reliefs show a bird at the top left carrying a wreath in its beak, a male bust in the centre, and an eagle, flying to the left with a wreath in its beak at the bottom. The birds carrying wreaths are doubtless further visual allusions to the ritual of being honoured by the gods. 622 V. Hirschmann, Der Schatten der Unsterblichkeit. Der Priester und Prophet Epitynchanos, Epigraphica Anatolica 36 (2003), 137–52, at p. 138 with n. 5 suggests that the boundaries were only those of the sanctuary, not of the city or village (patris) where the priests were active. However, the parallels adduced (6th century Justinianic rulings on church asylum) are not relevant. 623 The allusion is not clear. 624 ἔτους τϙη´. κὲ τηρῶν ἐντόλας ἀθανάτων κὲ ἐγὼ ἶμε ὁ λαλῶν πάντα ἀθανατος Ἐπιτύνχανος μυηθεὶς ὑπὸ καλῆς ἀρχιερίας δημοτικῆς καλὸν ὄνομα Ἰσπατάλης, ἣν ἐτίμησαν ἀθάνατοι θ[εοὶ κὲ]ν ὅροις κὲ ὑπὲρ ὅρους, ἐλυτρώσατο γὰρ πολλοὺς ἐκ κακῶν βασάνων. ἀρχιερέα Ἐπιτύνχανον τιμηθέντα ὑπὸ θεῶν ἀθανάτων καθιέρωσαν αὐτὸν Διογᾶς κὲ Ἐπιτύνχανος κὲ Τατιον νύνφη κὲ τὰ τέκνα αύτῶν Ὀνήσιμος κὲ Ἀλέξανδρος κὲ Ἀσκλᾶς κὲ Ἐπιτύνχανος. 625 Ramsay, Cumont, Grégoire and Merkelbach and Stauber all treat the altar as a grave monument. It contains no funerary formulae, does not have the form of a gravestone, and does not refer to the burial of other family members. The appropriate comparison for consecration during Epitynchanos’s lifetime is the stele for Metrophilos.

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The right face of the stone shows a standing male figure, wearing a chlamys, possibly holding a staff in the right and another object in the left hand. No inscription is reported but the photograph in the Brussels museum catalogue shows the letters ΓΑΘ below and to the right of the figure.626 This might be part of the sculptor’s name. The many unusual or unique features of this small altar mean that detailed explanations of the inscriptions are highly speculative. The date of the monument has encouraged the inference that Epitynchanos occupied one of the high priesthoods created by the emperor Maximinus Daia in 312 to organise and restore pagan worship in the provinces in the face of the spread of Christianity.627 However, the fact that Epitynchanos’s father Pius (clearly a nom parlant) and both his sons were also archiereis suggests not only that this was an inherited family priesthood, but more importantly that the high-priesthood had been created before Maximinus’s measure was taken in 312. Not only the title of archiereus, held by all the three generations of Epitynchanos’s family and by Ispatale, but also the naming of Epitynchanos and his two male children as saviours of their patris and lawgivers (νομοθέται) imply that they were locally eminent, recognised office holders not merely in the sanctuary but throughout the community, within and beyond its boundaries. If the text does come from the Upper Tembris, the community in question was likely to have been Soa or Appia, and these expressions find parallels in the descriptions of prominent Christian figures at the beginning of the fourth century, such as the sons of the great soldier Domnus, Χρηστιανοὶ πρεσβύτεροι λαοῦ πρεστάμενοι νόμῳ δίκεα φρονοῦντες ἄνδρες ἀριστῆες μεγαλήτορες, who were responsible for their father’s burial (ICG 1270).628 The appearance of the composite Manes-Daos-Heliodromos-Zeus as one of the divinities to honour Epitynchanos is evidence for religious innovation in the sanctuary, but the underlying theological ideas are inevitably obscure.629 The dedication to Zeus Herakles of 250/1 already indicates a similar tendency 626 The letters are not visible in the photograph illustrating Hirschmann, Der Schatten der Unsterblichkeit, and perhaps had been removed by cleaning. 627 Eusebius, HE 8.14.8–9; cf. S. Mitchell, Maximinus and the Christians, 116–7. Ramsay, Cumont and Grégoire all adopted this view. See O. Nicholson, the ‘pagan churches’ of Maximinus Daia and Julian the Apostate, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45 (1994), 1–10. 628 ICG 1270, see 236 n. 484. 629 V. Hirschmann, Der Schatten der Unsterblichkeit, explores the possible Mithraic and Orphic background to Manes-Daos-Heliodromos-Zeus; further discussion by A. Filippini, Fossili e contraddizioni dell’ “èra costantiniana”: i dignitari del culto imperiale nella Tarda Antichità e il loro ruolo nelle “riforme religiose” di Massimino Daia e Giuliano, in A. Kolb/ M. Vitale (eds): Kaiserkult in den Provinzen des römischen Reiches. Organisation, Kommunikation und Repräsentation (Berlin 2016), 409–475 at 436–437.

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towards religious syncretism, and suggests that the priests who served the sanctuary were genuine religious specialists, open to both speculation and cult innovation. The role of Spatale is also matter for conjecture, but most of the evidence for mysteries and mystical initiation in second- and third-century Phrygia is linked to Dionysiac cult, which is also, ex hypothesi, attested for the sanctuary by the inscription of 249/50.630 The use of the adjective ἀθάνατος by living family members is remarkable, and cannot simply be explained by the notion of post mortem deification, attested for some Phrygians, as it was clearly applied to the living priests.631 It might be construed as a response to the Christian claim to eternal life after death, but this is far from certain. By combining the idea of aphierosis (sanctification, making holy) with the widespread Phrygian belief in the immortality of the soul and life after death, it was not out of the question that a notably devout priestly family should simply refer to themselves as immortal. One other important text has been associated with the Epitynchanos dossier, a long but fragmentary verse inscription copied at Doğanarslan (or Doğaraslan), at the east side of the Upper Tembris Valley by Ramsay and published in 1897, a village on the route between Soa and Meirus (see below). The stone has not been recorded since then.632 The sixteen hexameter verses, produced by a notably competent poet, described how Epitynchanos took delight in understanding the movements of the stars, the sun and the moon, which gave life to earthly existence and decided the lot of life and death which falls to mortals. Epitynchanos himself had mastered knowledge of this heavenly kosmos and had prophetic powers, being able to pronounce divine truths about the present, the future and the past, and had obtained high honour from the true-born in many cities. He had left behind him young sons no less gifted than himself. Having learned the measure and the limits of the kosmos, he had now reached the darkness which comes to everyone. The sophistication and quality of these verses are far-removed from the clumsy composition and repetitive expressions of the Athanatos Epitynchanos altar. Although both inscriptions relate to an Epitynchanos with prophetic gifts, it is hard to believe that they refer to the same individual. It is more likely that the epitaph from 630 See Altay Coşkun, Dionysiac associations among the dedicants of Hosios kai Dikaios, Gephyra 19 (2020), 111–33, although not all his suggestions that many supposed village ethnics should be re-interpreted as the names of religious associations are convincing. 631 See discussion on 67 n. 45 and G. F. Chiai, Zeus Bronton und der Totenkult in kaiserzeitlichem Phrygien. 632 A. Souter, Greek metrical inscriptions from Phrygia, Classical Review 11 (1897), 136–38; IGR IV 647; W. Peek, Griechische Versinschriften, 1487; SGO 3, 240–41: 16/31/10; SEG 43, 943C; partial text and comments in Ramsay, CB I.2, 790–1.

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Doğanarslan relates to another family member, from the third century, for instance Aur. Epitynchanos the son of Telesphorus, conjecturally the grandfather of Athanatos Epitynchanos. If so, his prophetic gifts anticipated those of his grandson. If we accept the suggestion, that the three small altars of 249/50, 250/51 and 313/4 were all set up at the same place, have we any idea where this was? Ramsay copied the Athanatos Epitynchanos altar at Oturak, a village at the east end of the Banaz Ova, and he, and subsequent researchers, attributed it to Acmonia, the most important city of this district. Marc Waelkens inferred that it should be assigned to the Upper Tembris Valley, both on stylistic grounds, and because the railway station at Oturak, about thirty kilometres south-west of Altıntaş, served as a gathering point for antiquities which were subsequently transported out of the region to Izmir and beyond.633 There can be no doubt that Paul Gaudin used the railway line which his company had built, when he exported this and other monuments to Brussels and Paris, but the argument is irrelevant because Ramsay had seen the stone at Oturak in 1883, a decade before the French railway company obtained the contract to build the line, and sixteen years before it was completed. If the altar had been moved from a site in the Upper Tembris Valley to Oturak, it was for another reason unknown to us. The provenance of the two altars of Telesphorus from the mid-third century also need to be elucidated. The Dionysiac dedication of 249/50 was in the possession of the station-master and copied at Banaz railway station in 1901, two years after the line had been inaugurated, before it was moved to Izmir. It is likely that it was brought to Banaz, hypothetically from a site in the Tembris Valley, for that reason. Its counterpart of 250/51, was seen by Drew-Bear at Terziler, a village about half way between the Tembris and Aezani, but had reportedly been transported there from Eymir, a village on the east bank of the Tembris north of Altıntaş. The history of all three stones reveal them to have been pierres errantes, and the original sanctuary remains unlocated. The discovery of the stone at Terziler tips the balance in favour of the Upper Tembris Valley itself, but the find-spot of the altar of 313/14 at Oturak still lends some weight to the suggestion that the sanctuary could have been on the territory of Acmonia, as Ramsay originally suggested. The funerary epitaph of Epitynchanos from Doğaraslan cannot help either, even if it commemorates a member of the same family. Doğararslan lies at the east edge of the Tembris valley close to Meiros and the Phrygian Highlands. No details are preserved 633 M. Waelkens, Privatdeifikation, Mélanges P. Naster (1984), 285–6.

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about the size, find circumstances or appearance of the stone except for Ramsay’s 1881 copy. 4.10.2 Theos Hypsistos The votive monuments and other inscriptions relating to the cult of Theos Hypsistos provide another contextual reference point for the Christian inscriptions of the Upper Tembris Valley.634 The interpretation of the archaeological, literary and epigraphic evidence for this cult has been contested in the last twenty years. Two recently published inscriptions decisively favour the view that Theos Hypsistos was the name of a god, a distinct divine personality, not an expression of exaltation that was applied to the names of other gods, especially Zeus, to emphasize their theological significance. One is an inscription, which can be dated to 135/6, from the Thracian city of Nicopolis ad Istrum, founded by Trajan on the lower Danube, and records the building of a temple of Theos Hypsistos by Iason, son of Apphοs, citizen of Prusias ad Hypium (Ἰάσον Απφου Προυσιεὺς ἀπὸ Ὑπίου τὸν ναὸν Θεοῦ Ὑψίστου ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων κατεσκέυσασεν), to mark the victory and enduring rule of the emperor Hadrian, under the supervision of the imperial governor of Thrace, Cavarius Fronto, and the council and people of Nicopolis.635 Τhis is a formal building inscription marking the founding of the god’s temple, and there can be no doubt that Theos Hypsistos was the official name of the god who was worshipped there. The cult was established by the late Hadrianic period, and the inscription marked its introduction to the new Thracian city of Nicopolis ad Istrum from Asia Minor by a citizen of Prusias ad Hypium. Doubtless many other new settlers from Prusias and other parts of Bithynia were transplanted to Thrace when the city was founded after Trajan’s Dacian wars. The text has a striking counterpart in another second-century inscription, the dedication made after a dream of an altar to the gods Holy and Just by the council and people of Nicopolis ad Istrum, during the magistracy of Felix son of Mukapor and his colleagues. The excellent lettering of the text 634 See S. Mitchell, The cult of Theos Hypsistos between pagans, Jews and Christians, in P. Athanassiadi and M. Frede (eds.), Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Oxford 1999), 81–148, and Further thoughts on the cult of Theos Hypsistos, in Mitchell and Van Nuffelen (eds.), One God (2010), 167–208; N. Belayche, Hypsistos: une voie de l’exaltation des dieux dans le polythéisme gréco-romain, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 7 (2005), 34–55; and De la polysémie des épiclèses: Hypsistos dans le monde gréco-romain, in Belayche and others (eds.), Nommer les dieux: théonymes, épithètes, épiclèses dans l’Antiquité (Rennes 2005), 427–42. 635 N. Sharankov, Building Inscription for a temple in Nicopolis ad Istrum, Archeologia 55 (2014), 28–48 (in Bulgarian with English summary).

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confirms that this was also a public dedication,636 and this is one of the rare monuments for the cult of Hosios and Dikaios found outside the heartlands of inner Anatolia where the cult originated. It was put up on behalf of a population which remained closely tied to its religious roots in Asia Minor. One other important observation can be made about the temple of Theos Hypsistos. The dedication commemorated Hadrian’s victory over the Jews in the Bar-Kochva war of 132–35. Although Theos Hypsistos was a term used to denote the god of the Jews, notably in many passages of the Septuagint, and there is evidence especially in the third century for Jews and non-Jews (theosebeis) engaged in common worship of Theos Hypsistos, who in such contexts was a god recognised by Jews and non-Jews, the temple at Nicopolis at the end of Hadrian’s reign was for a pagan Asia Minor divinity. The temple dedication in Thrace honoured a pagan Theos Hypsistos and marked Hadrian’s final and bloody victory in his Jewish war. In other contexts, when the highest god was worshipped by non-Jew and Jew alike, the cult of Theos Hypsistos acquired Jewish as well as pagan characteristics. The other recently published inscription is a fragmentary prose text said to be from the area of Dascylium, in the Mysian hinterland of Cyzicus. The text was carved on a block which probably came from a building, beneath a very damaged relief, broken at the right. The left-hand end of the relief has been defaced, probably intentionally, but depicted two rows of figures, presumably divinities, the lower seated, the upper standing. At the centre, the signs of the Zodiac, worn but not deliberately damaged, were arranged in a circle around a central tondo, depicting two snakes confronting one another from above and below, with what may be a thunderbolt between them. To the left and right were figures of the sun and the moon, and four small busts in the corners which may represent the winds. The whole composition appears to be a representation of the cosmos, containing the heavenly bodies, the stars of the zodiac, a pantheon of gods, and perhaps an intimation of the underworld in the form of the serpents. The first two lines of the worn and broken inscription allude to the relief: [πάντ]α ὁρῶν καὶ ἀκούων ὕψιστος θεὸς θεοὺς ἔδιξε ΠΑ. [ – about 40 missing letters – πεί]ρατα ἄστρα, βρύγμον δρακόντων, φόβον βρόντης. The text ends [-] Ἀντωνείνῳ δὲ βασιλεῖ διὰ βίου νείκην καὶ κ[ράτος ? -]. The editor suggests that this is a reference to the emperor Antoninus Pius himself, who was actively interested in zodiacal astrology, rather than to one of the successors, Caracalla or Elagabalus, who bore his name. Although there are many 636 IGBulg. II 680 with Taf. 66; Ricl, EA 18 (1991), 48–9 no. 110, assigned the inscription to the late second century; the letter forms resemble those of the Theos Hypsistos inscription and favour an earlier date.

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uncertainties of interpretation, the first line of the text identifies an all-seeing and all-hearing highest god as a demiurge or cosmic creator, responsible for ‘presenting’ the other subordinate gods, the heavenly bodies and the roaring dragons (of the underworld?). This conception is recognisably related to the theological ideas which framed the famous Clarian oracle, known from several sources in late antiquity, and especially from a much-discussed inscription at Oinoanda, which envisaged the supreme nameless divinity, ruler of the other gods, as all-seeing Aether. The relief is on a modest scale, and the inscription was carved in small letters, suggesting that it was not part of a large public monument, but might have been commissioned for display in a small sanctuary or a building used by an association of cult worshippers. The damage that the stone has suffered appears to have been deliberately inflicted, presumably by Christians in late antiquity.637 This fragment presents Theos Hypsistos as a supreme pagan divinity, to whom the other gods and heavenly forces were subordinate, and no less clearly than the text from Nicopolis ad Istrum refutes the suggestion that the name was simply a term of exaltation applied to another existing god. If the allusion to the ruler Antoninus is indeed to Antoninus Pius, this would confirm that the cult was established in Asia Minor around the middle of the second century, but later Antonine rulers should not be excluded. Simple votive inscriptions dedicated to Theos Hypsistos were to be found across northern Phrygia. Two examples were recorded in the territory of Acmonia, respectively at Çorum Köy and Yenice, the former by a woman and her blacksmith husband.638 In addition to the Yenice votive text, a third-century gravestone found in the same village ends by warning those who disturb the tomb that they will have to reckon with τὸν θεὸν τὸν ὕψιστον καὶ τὸ ἀρᾶς δρέπανον, an obscure curse which certainly originated in the Jewish community at Acmonia.639 These votive texts, however, are less likely to have been set up by Jews, than by worshippers of Theos Hypsistos, who attended the Acmonia synagogue as godfearers, theosebeis. Documents from Acmonia, discussed in chapter 4.4, show that this synagogue was one of the most important locations in Phrygia where Jews and Jewish sympathisers came together in common worship.640

637 E. Schwertheim, Epigraphica – Lydien, Mysien – Türkei der Sammlung Yavuz Tatış (Izmir 2018), 196–201 no. 125; G. Staab, Neues zu Theos Hypsistos: Der „Höchste Gott“ als kosmischer Herrscher und Modell für Antoninus Pius, ZPE 210 (2019), 116–134. 638 SEG 26/27 (1976/7), 1356 by Aur. Tatis. It is interesting that the woman initiated this votive. 639 SEG 26/27 (1976/7), 1355; Ameling, IJO II, 374–5 no. 176. 640 See 150–4.

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Two votives for Theos Hypsistos have been found in the territory of Aezani: one each at Ağarı and Haci Kebir,641 probably coming from the same sanctuary near the city itself. Another altar decorated with a garland enclosing three corn sheaves, dated τμβ´ (342 Sullan era = 257/8) has been recorded at Tavşanlı in the valley of the Rhyndacus, due north of Aezani, east-north-east of Cotiaeum.642 However, the largest cluster from north-west Phrygia has been recorded in villages on the territory of Tiberiopolis, along the Emet Çay, the upper reaches of the ancient Aesepus, and they may all come from a single sanctuary before being scattered in modern reuse. Three stones found at Kırgıl may mark the location of the sanctuary itself.643 Four more altars have been noted at Ulaslar and the villages of upper and lower Yoncaağaç, including one from a community of Thermenoi of 211/12, and another dated stone of 221/2,644 one at Hasanlar,645 and a dedication dated to 245/6 at Hısarcık.646 Theos Hypsistos appears to have been more widely worshipped than any other god in this remote valley close to the boundaries with Mysia and Bithynia.647 A Christian verse text, perhaps dating to the first half of the fourth century, from the neighbouring city of Hadriani in Mysia reflects the influence of this cult, if not necessarily of this specific sanctuary. It commemorates Neikatoris son of Xenophon, who had achieved highest renown among all men and had the standing of a shepherd (?) among the people of the highest god, shaping the beliefs of all his fellows by his psalms and readings, before finding his rest in the place of the undefiled Christ.648 The reference to ‘people of the highest god’ in this region makes an unmistakeable allusion to the cult of the hypsistarians. Neikatoris can take his place alongside Gregory the father of Gregory of Nazianzus, who was converted from being a follower of Theos Hypsistos to 641 642 643 644 645 646 647

648

MAMA IX 59; and Drew-Bear and Naour, ANRW II.18.3, 2041 no. 31 (SEG 40, 1188). Drew-Bear and Naour, ANRW II.18.3, 2036 (SEG 40, 1227). MAMA IX P68 and P 69; Drew-Bear and Naour, ANRW II.18.3, 2041 no. 34 (SEG 40, 1196). MAMA X 427, 435 (ἔτους τϛ´), 440 (simply θεῷ, but ὑψίστῳ can be understood), 443 (ἔτους σπϛ´). MAMA X 488. The dedication is to θεῷ ἐπηκόῳ, but the offerings of a lamp (?) and a fire shovel, appropriate for a cult associated with light and fire, make the identification with Theos Hypsistos almost certain. MAMA X 504 (ἔτους τλ´). The catalogue in Mitchell, The cult of Theos Hypsistos (1999), 141–2 misleadingly assigns the stones from Kırgıl (nos. 210–12) to the Aezanitis, from Ulaslar and Yoncaağaç to Synaus (nos. 221–4), and from Hasanlar and Hısarcık (nos. 225–6) to Tiberiopolis. They should all be treated as a single group. SGO 2, 125: 08/08/13. Eleven dactylic verses with some uncertain restorations, but the middle section is clear: [․]ε τειμὴν πλείστην ἐκτή|[σ]ατο πᾶσι βροτοῖσιν ἐν | [ὅλ]ῳ τε λαῷ θεοῦ ὑ[ψί]|[στ]ου ποίμνεια τέρπ[εται ἐν] | [ψ]αλμοῖς τε ἁγείοις κ[αὶ ἀνα]|γνώσμασιν πάντας ἐθί[ζων] | ἐν ἁγείῳ τε τόπῳ εὕ[δει] | Χρειστοῦ ἀχράντο[υ].

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becoming a Christian by a party of bishops travelling to the council of Nicaea in 325. Inscriptions for Theos Hypsistos have been recorded in northern Phrygia on the territories of Dorylaeum and Nacolea.649 The material from the Upper Tembris Valley is similar. There are two votive texts, both dated. The earlier, copied at Arslanapa, was carved on an altar which displays a wheatsheaf in a garland, and reads [ἐπὶ] Νικομ[ά]χου [ἔτου]ς τλη´. Αύρ. Ἰάσων θεῷ ὑψίστῳ εὐχήν.650 The year, 338 by the Sullan era, corresponds to 253/4, and Nikomachos was presumably the priest in the sanctuary, a small but valuable detail that shows that this was not a private dedication in Iason’s house or farm. The later text has reached the Kütahya Museum from an unknown provenance in the region. It is carved on a slender plain white marble column and formed part of the structure to which the text refers: ἔτους τϙγ´. Αὐρ. Ἀλέξανδρος Τιμοθέου καὶ ἡ σύνβιος αὐτοῦ Αὐρ. Ἀμμία εὐξάμενοι θεῷ ὑψίστῳ εὐχὴν σὺν τοῖς τέκνοις αὐτῶν Ἀττικὸς κὲ Ἀρτέμων κὲ Τιμόθεος κὲ Πλάτων ἀνέστησαν τοὺς κίονας σὺν τῷ προπύλῳ. This sober and correct inscription, emanating from an educated couple, who named their youngest son after the famous philosopher, gives a rare indication of the sanctuary’s architecture, an imposing gateway with columns. As always with Theos Hypsistos votives, neither of these stones has figural decoration depicting the worshippers or the divinity, who was strictly aniconic.651 The text of 308/9, virtually contemporary with the altar of Athanatos Epitynchanos, is one of the latest dated non-Christian religious monuments from Asia Minor. Two more inscriptions from the region need to be considered in relation to the cult of Theos Hypsistos. One is a gravestone from Sevdiğin west of Altıntaş, now in Kütahya Museum, and probably dating around 250. This funerary text was set up by Aur. Domna, who identified herself both as a god-fearer, a theosebes, and as a female elder, presbeutissa.652 Evidently a matriarch in her family, 649 Dorylaeum: MAMA V 186 (Kuyucak), and SEG 44, 1058 (Aş. Cavlanköy); Nacoleia: MAMA 211 and 212 (Seyitgazi); SEG 28, 1182 (Nacoleia). 650 Drew-Bear / Naour, ANRW II.18.3, 2038 no. 32 (SEG 40, 1235). 651 Mitchell, The cult of Theos Hypsistos, 107. A dedication to Theos Hypsistos from Amastris on the Black Sea coast (C. Marek, EA 32 (2000), 135–7; SGO 2, 10: 10/03/01; SEG 2000, 1225) cited an Apolline oracle and precisely made the point that the god was invisible: θεῷ ὑψίστῳ ὀμφῇ ἀκερσεκόμου βωμὸν θεοῦ ὑψίστοιο ὃς κατὰ πάντων ἔστι καὶ οὐ βλέπεται, εἰσοράᾳ δὲ δείμαθ᾽ ὅπως ἀπαλάληκται βροτολοιγέα θνητῶν, ‘To Theos Hypsistos, by an oracle of the long-haired god (Apollo), … set up an altar of Theos Hypsistos, who is present everywhere and cannot be seen, but who oversees how terrors, the bane of mortals, are kept at bay.’ 652 T. Drew-Bear, Société et vie quotidienne en Phrygie d’après les inscriptions du Musée de Kütahya, Bulletin de la société nationale des antiquaires de France 2008, 82–6, presenting the catalogue of a new Museum created at Kütahya’s military airport: Anadolu Kültür, Sanat ve Arkeoloji Müzesi (Istanbul 2007). For presbeutissa, presumably a variant of

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she commissioned the gravestone for herself and her husband, now dead, their three daughters and a grand-daughter. The text ended with a garbled series of clauses protecting the burial, which include a fine payable to Domna’s patris,653 and the threat of a charge of τυμβωρυχία. The term theosebes has been extensively studied. It was most commonly used to denote non-Jewish individuals who participated in synagogue worship or who were Jewish sympathisers, as attested at Acmonia and elsewhere.654 The most famous example of the usage is found in the lengthy foundation inscription from Aphrodisias, probably for a funerary association and dating to late antiquity, which lists the contributing members as ninety Jews and sixty-five theosebeis.655 It was not simply a way of describing the personal piety of the individual that it identified, but a specific technical designation of religious status and identity. I have argued that the word was applied to the worshippers of Theos Hypsistos, not only those who joined Jews in synagogue worship, but also the followers of the cult in their own sanctuaries, irrespective of Jewish participation. Short funerary inscriptions from the islands of Rhodes and Cos, and from Bithynia, used the adjective to describe individuals outside Jewish contexts. The Bithynian funerary relief, now in the Bursa Museum, with a text reading Ἐπιθέρσῃ τῷ θεοσεβεῖ καὶ Θεοκτίστῳ τὰ τέκνα Μαρκιανὸς καὶ Ἐπιθέρσης μετὰ τῶν ἀδελπῶν ἐκ τῶν εἰδείων μνἠμης χάριν, depicts a fire altar, an important feature of the rituals associated with Theos Hypsistos, and this strengthens the hypothesis that the relief marks the tomb of one of his worshippers, a ‘hypsistarian.’656 As well as the doorstone from Sevdiğin, another simple epitaph copied at Aezani can be added to this group of texts: [-]ανις | Ἰουλιανῷ |Παρδαλᾶ] εἰδίῳ πατρὶ | θεοσεβῇ |μνήμης | χάριν.657 No Jewish presence has been attested on Aezani’s territory, and the presbytis, compare IG XII.3, 933 (Thera), ἄνγελος Ἐπικτοῦς πρεσβύτιδος, and canon 11 of the Council of Laodicea (perhaps mid-fourth century), περὶ τοῦ μὴ δεῖν τὰς λεγομένας πρεσβύτιδας ἤτοι προκαθημένας ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ καθίστασθαι, which denied recognition of female Christian ‘elders’ within the Church. 653 The name of the community ended [-]ληνοί. Perhaps Kellenoi (Drew-Bear) or Apolenoi. 654 Mitchell, The Cult of Theos Hypsistos, 115–21; Wer waren die Gottesfürchtigen? Chiron 28 (1998), 55–64; B. Wanders, Gottesfürchtige und Sympathisanten (1998), 87–137 for the epigraphic evidence available at that date. 655 The fullest edition with full commentary is now Ameling, IJO II 71–112 no. 14. 656 I. Prusa Olymp. 115 (interpreted as Christian; excellent photos reproduced in P. Harland, Associations in the Greco-Roman World no. 44, on-line at http://philipharland.com/greco -roman-associations/grave-of-a-god-fearer-prepared-by-the-brothers-ii-ce); W. Ameling, Ein Verehrer des θεὸς ὕψιστος in Prusa ad Olympum (IK 39, 115), Epigraphica Anatolica 31 (1999), 105–8 (SEG 49, 1776). 657 M. Wörrle and C. Lehmler, Chiron 36 (2006), 70 no. 129 (SEG 56, 1487). ‘anis for Iulianos son of Pardalas his/her own father, god-fearer, in memory’.

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reference to a theosebes should be connected to the two votive texts found in neighbouring villages, which attest a Theos Hypsistos sanctuary close to the city.658 The religious environment of the Upper Tembris Valley and Cotiaeum between the later second and the early fourth century was both multi-faceted and subject to change. In an eloquent paragraph of his Hellenica, Louis Robert explained the problem of defining religious beliefs in Asia Minor at this period: ‘It is difficult to achieve precision – from the evidence about a single family – in this religious world of Asia Minor in the third century, where religions jostled alongside one another: orthodox Christians (both lax and observant) and heretics of all manner of sects, Montanists and gnostics, Jews and judaisers who followed doctrines of very different intensity, according to the influence of Jewish doctrines or practice on pagans and Christians, syncretising pagans and observers of cults which were being developed during the period by innovating movements, worshippers of the Holy and Just and of solar divinities’.659 None of the evidence available to us makes it possible to trace the progress of any individual Christian or Christian family through this kaleidoscopic variety of religious belief and practice. There are no conversion stories that can be told, except by relying on unsupported conjecture. The social transformation of Phrygia from pagan to Christian between 150 and 350 is apparent, but the agents of change are largely hidden. A closer look at the context, however, does make it possible to see some important patterns in the broader picture. The inscriptions of the farmers of the Upper Tembris Valley and of Cotiaeum itself between c.170 and 220 provide a homogeneous panorama of a prosperous and self-confident society. The population, largely of local origin but tempered by an influx of families of Italian or Roman origin, who had been property owners since the first century BC, acquired culture and education à la grecque, especially during the second century. The sophist Aelius Aristides, himself born in neghbouring Mysia, had been taught by Alexander, a professor from Cotiaeum, and his surviving works addressed to the people of the city attest that the local upper class valued sophisticated literary culture. This culture embraced knowledge and appreciation of mythology and Greek religious ideas, which were transmitted by pagan literature. Accordingly, Phrygian religious notions drawn from indigenous beliefs and practice, including ideas about the immortality of the soul and the afterlife, evolved under Greek influence. The gods – Zeus, the Mother of the Gods (Cybele), Attis, Holy and Just, Helios, Selene, Hekate – were indigenous 658 See 288 n. 641. 659 L. Robert, Hell. XI/XII (1960), 438; the French text cited by Mitchell, Anatolia II, 48 n. 282.

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and displayed in a local iconography, but the pantheon expanded to include additions from the Greek tradition – Apollo, Heracles, Hermes – whose divine personalities, articulated in mythology and literature, matched Phrygian ideas about prophecy and oracles, and the funerary rituals that marked the passage between life and death. The men and women who adopted this religious outlook were also highly receptive to artistic developments in the later second century, which were made available to them by the high-quality sculpture workshops linked to the marble quarries around Altıntaş. The best sculptors were themselves members of the region’s educated class. The earliest locally produced gravestones which showed human figures appeared around 170, at first featuring portrait busts of family members, before evolving, in the third century, to display full-length figures with highly characteristic dress and hairstyles. The latest dated example of this series, from 304/5, shows that the style was retained for more than a century. It is important to emphasize how distinctive these human portraits were. Human figures feature hardly at all on the grave monuments of most of the important Phrygian cities: Apamea, Eumeneia, Acmonia, Temenothyrae, Dorylaeum, Nacoleia, and even Aezani. Figured funerary sculpture appeared in the cities in the Afyon region in east central Phrygia, clearly developed by Docimian craftsmen, but it only dominated the repertoire in Cotiaeum and the Upper Tembris Valley. Portrait funerary sculpture was a striking distinguishing marker in the region, adopted by the region’s wealthier families.660 This population was certainly pagan, probably conservatively pagan. We catch a glimpse of their spoken language in the expression that some families used to protect their graves and their splendid steles, τὸν θεόν σοι· μὴ ἀδικήσεις.661 It is fair to assume that for most of them their form of paganism was represented by the conventional dedications to Zeus Ampelites and Zeus Thallos, and in other sanctuaries, which were carved in the same workshops by the same sculptors as the figures of the funerary reliefs. The sculptor Teimeas himself belonged in this company. He was responsible for the funerary monument of his own daughter Nana (admittedly in the unusual form of a separate gable without portraiture), and for a superbly carved dedication of his own on

660 J. Masséglia, Phrygians in relief: trends in self-representation, in Thonemann (ed.), Roman Phrygia (2012), 95–123, is a fundamental essay. 661 Other inscriptions used the more menacing formulas τὶς ἂν προσοίσει χεῖρα τὴν βαρύφθονον, κεῖνος δὲ ἀώροις περιπέσοιτο συμφόραις, its more explicit counterpart ὄρφανα τέκνα λίποιτο, χήρας βίον, οἶκον ἔρημον, or the many variants on these expressions, not forgetting those that still used the Phrygian language, for instance ιος νι σεμουν κνουμανε κακουν αδδακετ τιε τιττετικμενος ειτου.

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behalf of his village to Zeus Andreas, as well as commissioned work for clients which featured explicit pagan mythological scenes.662 The fashion for figured steles continued until the beginning of the fourth century, although the numbers begin to taper off after 250. Conventional dedications to gods of the Phrygian pantheon hardly occur after 260. Apart from the tondi from the Yaylababa Hosios kai Dikaios sanctuary, discussed above, Lochman’s catalogue dates none of nearly 250 pagan votive mouments from the Upper Tembris Valley after AD 250. We have noted the two altars for Telesphorus put up in 249/50 and 250/51 respectively. In Lydia to the west, we can compare the remarkable stele put up by a priest of the ‘One and only God and of Hosios and Diakios’ dated to 256/7, which perhaps combined the cults of Theos Hypsistos and the Phrygian gods of justice,663 and there are other dated Lydian dedications to Holy and Just in 241/2, 242/3 and 257/8,664 and to Mên in 269.665 After this, and during the rest of the third century, no more surviving votive dedications to the pagan gods worshipped in and around Phrygia were commissioned or carved. The second half of the third century thus appears as a period of marked religious change. Lochman suggests that the main reason was economic, but this explanation is hardly compatible with the continued production of high-quality funerary sculpture.666 Lochman has also proposed that votive monuments continued for Holy and Just in the Yaylababa sanctuary for a generation after the practice had died out in other cults, but the stylistic dating evidence for this important conclusion is tenuous. It is nonetheless clear from the two dated stones found in or near the Upper Tembris Valley that one cult did bridge the gap between 250 and 300, that of Theos Hypsistos. The later of these, in 308/9, records construction in a sanctuary. The cult was alive and active at the beginning of the fourth century. This is confirmed in the lower Maeander region by one of the early-fourth-century tax register documents from the Ionian city of Magnesia, which records a property belonging to a ἱερεὺς ᾽Υψίστου, contemporary epigraphic evidence for the survival of

662 See Lochman, Phrygien 97–8. The daughter’s gravestone, BCC, JRS 18 (1928), 32 no. 247; Lochman, Phrygien 255: II 8; Zeus Andreas, Robert, BCH 1983, 543 Abb. 3. Lochman, Phrygien 86 and 278: II 310; consecration and funerary stele by Teimeas Mourmateanos, Koch, Phrygien 123 Abb. 14 a-b. See 268 n. 565. 663 For opposing interpretations see the articles of Belayche and Mitchell, in Mitchell and Van Nuffelen, One God (2010). 664 TAM V. 1 338, 247; TAM V. 3. 1637 (confusion of Hypsistos with Hosios kai Dikaios). 665 CMRDM I, 43–4 no. 65. 666 Lochman, Phrygien, 91, 97, 218.

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this distinctive cult.667 Worshippers of Hypsistos were mentioned and identified by the Church fathers in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, and the epigraphic evidence indicates that they were present in substantial numbers across northern Phrygia, mostly attested in rural districts. This religious movement certainly spanned the gap from the mid-third to the fourth century. The Christians in the Upper Tembris Valley became visible epigraphically exactly in this period, beginning with the dated Christian for Christians inscription of 248. Nothing Christian from the region has survived that is clearly earlier than this text. No doubt some plain, and chronologically hard-to-place, gravestones should be assigned to the early part of this period, but the Christian community did not become prominent until the main series of Christians for Christians monuments which date to the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth century. These were identifiable by the conspicuous formula, which identified not just the owners of the tomb but the united Christian brotherhood of the Upper Tembris Valley. They were also remarkable in the deliberate choice to avoid figural representation on the tombstones, and were thus instantly recognizable iconographically. The choice to suppress the human image was a feature that the Christians had in common with the worshippers of Hypsistos, whose Highest God was an invisible being, never portrayed on votive sculpture. At this period, in this part of Phrygia, there was no Christian figural imagery, either of God or of his worshippers. 4.11

The Phrygian Highlands, Nacolea and Dorylaeum (Maps 6 and 10)

After the abundance of third- and early-fourth century Christian documents from the Upper Tembris Valley, the neighbouring regions of northern Phrygia present a much sparser picture in this early period, although Christian inscriptions were again common in the fifth and sixth centuries. The so-called Phrygian Highlands form the territory east of the Upper Tembris between Seyitgazi (Nacolea) and Iscehisar (Docimium).668 The region 667 I. Magnesia 122 d. 13; S. Mitchell, in Mitchell and Van Nuffelen, One God, 203 A 42; U. Huttner, Pagane relikte in der Spätantike: griechische Katasterinschriften als religionsgeschichtliche Quellen, in C. Breytenbach and J. Ogereau (eds.), Authority and Identity in Emerging Christianities in Asia Minor and Greece (Leiden 2018), 3–32 at 28–31. 668 The name has become widely used since the publication of Emilie Haspels’ classic archaeological study of the area (1937–9; 1950–58), published as The Highlands of Phrygia. Sites and Monuments (Princeton 1971). She wrote an absorbing memoir of her travels, edited by D. Berndt: Emilie Haspels, Midas city Excavations and Surveys in the Highlands of Phrygia. I am the last of the travelers (Istanbul 2009).

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is mountainous and the hills are mostly forested.669 The main settlement of the old Phrygian period was the large hill-top site known today as Midas Şehri, ‘Midas City’, above Yazılıkaya. This village took its name from the spectacular carved rock façade, the Phrygian sanctuary now called the Midas Monument. This was the largest of several rock monuments in the region, dating to the seventh or sixth centuries BC. Several were apparently unfinished when the Achaemenids took control of inner Anatolia around 550 BC.670 Thereafter Midas City lost political importance but the location continued to be identified as Metropolis, city of the Mother Goddess. The more important settlements of the Hellenistic and Roman periods were concentrated west of Yazılıkaya, in the valley around Kümbet, named from a prominent Islamic tomb. The river flows northwards to become the Seyit Suyu at Nacolea, before it joins the upper waters of the Sangarius. The Roman and late Roman city of Meiros, was located at the west edge of this picturesque region at Geriz Malatyası (also Malatça), now Demirözü. The ancient settlement was at the foot of a hill in the narrow valley of the Candıraz Dere, the route of the railway line between Kütahya and Afyon. Meiros was at the intersection of the Roman roads that ran NW–SE from Cotiaeum to Philomelium and SE–NW between Soa (Altıntaş) and Nacolea. Otherwise, in antiquity as today, the Phrygian Highlands contained only village settlements, overlooked by the monuments of Phrygia’s past.671 Two inscriptions found in the region call for discussion. One was a stele with a triangular gable, inscribed with a twenty-two-line text, found by Emilie Haspels at the village of Akoluk, located in a secluded valley in the north-east part of the Phrygian highlands, approximately half-way between Nacolea and Cotiaeum.672 The language included several metrical or semi-metrical tags 669 L. Robert, A travers l’Asie Mineure (1983), 257–99 for evocative descriptions and photographs. 670 S. Berndt-Ersöz, Phrygian Rock-Cut Shrines: Structure, function and cult practice (Leiden 2006). 671 Village names and ethnics attested by Christian inscriptions from the Phrygian Highlands include Eizikos (IGC 1704) and Ouazenos (IGC 1703), both on inscriptions from Başaran, Pontanenos (IGC 1634 at Akoluk; Pontana was probably in the territory of Nacolea, see Haspels, Highlands, 357–8 nos. 152 and 153), Progasenos (IGC 1675), and Namantanon (?) (IGC 1676), both attested at Alaca Asma. Note the places of origin of Phrygians who died in Proconnessus and Constantinople, Feissel, Etudes d’épigraphie et d’histoire des premiers siècles de Byzance (2020), 109. 672 Haspels, The Highlands of Phrygia, 338–9 no. 107; SGO 3, 349/50: 16/41/15; J. Poirier, the Montanist nature of the Nanas inscription, Epigraphica Anatolica 37 (1991), 151–9; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 419–23 no. 68; SEG 34, 943; 43, 943; V. Hirschmann, “Nach Art der Engel”, Die phrygische Prophetin Nanas, Epigraphica Anatolica 37 (2004), 160–168 (ICG 1635).

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and vocabulary. The lettering is unpractised, but the text was cut with some care, without word breaks at the end of the first twelve lines which described the main subject, a woman prophet called Nanas. The style of the monument and comparison with the crude Christian verse epitaphs of the Upper Tembris Valley suggest an early-fourth-century date. This was the Christian resting-place (κημητήρ[ιον]) created by the προφήτισα Νανας Ἑρμογένου for herself and her husband. His name is not preserved, as the second half of the text is badly worn in the lower right corner, but the description of Nanas herself is fully legible: εὐχῆς καὶ λιτανίης | προσεύνη τὸν ἄνακτα | ὕμνοις καὶ κολακίης | τὸν ἀθάνατον ἐδυσώπι· | εὐχομένη πανήμερον | παννύχιον θεοῦ φόβον | εἶχεν ἀπ’ ἀρ̣χῖς· | ἀνγελικὴν ἐπισκοπὴν | καὶ φωνὴν εἶχε μέγιστον | Νανας ηὐλλογημένη |ἧς κημητήρ[ιον -],673 ‘Prophetess Nanas, daughter of Hermogenes. She did adoration to the Lord with prayers and rituals, she admonished the immortal with her hymns and beseechings. Praying all day and all night she was in fear of God from the beginning. She possessed an overseeing role like an angel and had a very great voice, the highly-praised Nanas, whose resting place [-]’. Haspels suggested that the first three words were a later addition to the text in a different hand, but the letters, although uneven, are carefully placed on the margin above the main shaft, and should be understood as integral to the composition.674 Nanas’s prophetic function is immediately reminiscent of the three female prophets (Priscilla, Maximilla, Quintilla) associated with the origins of Montanism, the Phrygian heresy. Female prophets, including the famous daughters of Philip at Hierapolis,675 can be identified in other Christian traditions, but Nanas herself has generally been taken for a Montanist. The description of her being engaged in prayers and songs of praise for the Lord, day and night, conforms with the ecstatically inspired prophetic powers of the Montanist tradition. Further, if we follow the most natural implication of ἀνγελικὴ ἐπισκόπη that she acted like a bishop with the charisma of an angel, she appears to have acquired inspired authority in the community.676 Just as the content of the inscription itself was different from that of the main-stream 673 In normalised orthography εὐχαῖς, λιτανίαις, κολακίαις, ἐδυσώπει. The photograph of the stone appears to show προσευνητόν, understood as προσαινητόν by Merkelbach and Stauber. Tabbernee adapted the emendation to προσκυνητόν, which in fact appears to be legible on the squeeze. Feissel, Chron. 116 no. 363 proposed reading προσεύνη τὸν ἄνακτα, and this restores the balance of the two clauses. 674 Compare the roughly contemporary texts from the Upper Tembris Valley which prefaced the main inscription with the subject’s name on the upper margin of the shaft: ICG 1265 and 1270. 675 See chapter 1.3 and 7.1. 676 Hirschmann, EA 37 (2004), 166–8; Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 711 n. 11 sees no evidence for ecstasy and is skeptical.

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fourth-century gravestones of the Upper Tembris Valley, so the ancient forerunner of Akoluk, an isolated village, could have been a suitable location for a heretical community. The second substantial third- or early-fourth-century text from the Phrygian Highlands, was recorded by Haspels at Yapıldak, a village south of Kümbet, near the headwaters of the Kümbet Çay. It was carefully carved in a tabula ansata on a broad stone plaque, which formed the long side of a sarcophagus, evidently the grave of a prominent person, as is confirmed by the contents of the epitaph.677 The text consists of ten rudimentary verses set up by Zosimus, son of Patrikios and Domne. The second half of the inscription is conventional, referring to his respectable and industrious wife (her name is damaged), who wove fine clothing, their dear children who had all died young and been laid out for early burial, and their delight in the shared marital bed. Zosimus’s description of himself, states that he was of noble birth, honoured in his home town and a member of ‘the highest people’, ἐκ λαοῦ ὑψίστου, and that he was a writer of works whch were of inspired utility: πνευματικαῖς γραφαῖς καὶ Ὁμηρίοις [ἐ]πέεσσιν / γράψας ἐν πίνακι ὅσα χρῄζουσι βροτοῖσι / ἐν πίνακι πτυκτῷ σοφοῖσι τὸ μέλλο[ν] ὑπει[πώ]ν, ‘writing in inspired letters and Homeric wording on a tablet many things from which (men) benefit, dictating the future for wise mortals on a folded tablet’. The published versions of this text mark an erasure on the stone after ἐπέεσσιν, but Haspel’s excellent photograph suggests that the space here had simply been left blank, before the next verse was begun on the next line. Γράψας ἐν πίνακι πτυκτῷ is taken verbatim from Iliad 16.169 but the mention of tablets and Homeric verses may well indicate that the form of prophecy employed by Zotikos involved selecting lines at random from the Homeric corpus, whose meaning could provide an answer to the question that had been posed.678 The claim that these messages were spiritually inspired indicates that Zosimus was a religious specialist. One can compare the much superior hexameters written about Epitynchanos, another prominent and honoured figure, on the inscription found at Doğanarslan, a village no more than thirty kilometres across hilly country west of Yapıldak, which revealed his astrological knowledge and prophetic ability. The lines that describe Epitynchanos’s powers might aptly be applied to Zosimus: τῆσδε μαθημοσύνης Ἐπιτύνχανον ἴδριν 677 Haspels, Highlands of Phrygia, 313–4 no. 40; SGO 3, 344–5: 16/41/09; ICG 1658. 678 Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 371; compare the sortes Vergilianae and similar oracular procedures which can be found in pagan, Jewish and Christian traditions; see T. Grüll, T. “With spiritual writings and Homeric words”. A Hypsistarian soothsayer in fourth-century Phrygia, Chiron 51 (2021), 355–386; E. N. Merisio, L’ epitafio di Zosimus: tra versi omerici e “scritture ispirate”, Prometheus 48 (2022), 253–66.

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ἔοντα / πνοίης ἀπλανκτους εἰδότα μαντοσύνας / θέσφατα τ᾽ ἄνθρώποισιν ἀληθέα φημίζοντα / ὄντων μελλόντων ἐσσομένων πρότερον, ‘Epitynchanos, being versed in this knowledge (viz. of the heavenly bodies), who knew the unwavering predictions of the spirit, and uttered true pronouncements to men of what is, of what is to come, and of what has been in the past’.679 Neither inscription indicates or hints that Epitynchanos and Zosimus were Christians. Both were specialists in the fluid and creative traditions of the later third and early fourth century whose spiritual qualities gave them superior knowledge and prophetic powers, both of which were prized by their communities. Zosimus identified himself as a member of the ‘highest people’. It is an obvious inference, that he was a worshipper of the highest god, Theos Hypsistos. The argument rests not only on the word ὕψιστος, an adjective which otherwise in inner Anatolia is only applied to the cult of Theos Hypsistos, but also on the fact that Zosimus identifies himself as belonging to a distinctive named religious group, known to the Cappadocian fathers in the late fourth century as Hypsistarii or Hypsistiani, and, ex hypothesi, at earlier periods as theosebeis. This was a widespread group of worshippers whose religion formed a core element in their identity, and in this respect were comparable to the followers of the classic forms of monotheism, Judaism and Christianity.680 Zosimus’s epitaph appears in an interesting context. Several crudely carved but extended verse texts found in the immediate neighbourhood, two of them engraved and painted inside arcosolium tombs, and probably dated to the fourth century, identified the landowners as farmers (γεωργοί) proud of their local origins (φιλόπατρις). One, set up by Papias son of Anikios with his wife Constantine, names with aristocratic and imperial associations, emphasised the joy they took in their family, in their private and community lives, and their blessed status as Christians: + Παπιας Ἀνικίου μετὰ συνβίου φιλόπατρις / Κοσταντίνης φιλότ[εκ]νυ / ὕτινες ὀλβιότητι βεβίωκαν τέκνω[ν ἀ]πέλαυσαν / πρωτόλογυ πατρίδος, προφανέστατυ ἐν μερόπεσσιν, / τούτους ὡς μάκαρας λιτὴ σορὸς ἐνθά κεῦε / τοὺς δὲ λυποὺς πάντας πολυετῆ χαρίσει ΧΜΓ. The initial cross and the concluding siglum ΧΜΓ were explicit signs of Christian affiliation.681 but two comparable inscrip-

679 References at chapter 283 n. 632. 680 See 145–6, 150–2, 285–6, and 290. 681 Haspels, Highlands 310–11 no. 36; SGO III, 340: 16/41/05 (ICG 1656). Haspels, Highlands, 212 suggested that this was a much later text, citing the appearance of the cross, the name Constantine and the spelling of the vowels, notably upsilon for omicron iota. The wife’s name fits any date after c.320 and 350; the small prefatory cross was a feature of many fourth-century texts, and the vowel usage conforms with normal Phrygian usage in the third century and fourth centuries, as shown by Feissel, Pektorios, 298–301.

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tions from the same context show no signs of their religion,682 and the verses from Yapıldak for Zotikos, Aphia and their daughter Kyrilla concluded with a pagan funerary imprecation, τίς τοῦτο σῆμα ἀτιμάσει κρίσιν πάθοιτο Πενθέος καὶ Ταντάλου.683 These four verse texts from the Kümbet valley, commemorating substantial local landowners and their families, which were surely composed at roughly the same period, illustrate the religious mélange of this corner of rural northern Phrygia. No other inscriptions for the cult of Theos Hypsistos have yet been recovered from the Phrygian Highlands, but three examples have been recorded at Nacolea, one decorated with an ear of corn by a well-travelled worshipper who had promised to make the dedication in Rome,684 another for the preservation of the owner’s oxen as well as the family’s well-being,685 and a third addressed to Theos Hypsistos, Hosios and (probably) Dikaios.686 Another third-century votive altar decorated with three ears of wheat has been recorded at the village of Kuyucak, half way between Nacolea and Dorylaeum.687 Although Dorylaeum and the villages around it have produced inscriptions of the fifth and sixth centuries, there is only a single Christian inscription which appears to be earlier, an unassuming slab with a short text: Π † Π | Λουπικῖνος Μουντάνῃ | συνβίῳ Χρειστιανῇ | πνευματικῇ μνήμης | χάριν.688 The text, prefaced by a cross but in the simple pattern of a Greek gravestone of the early empire, probably belongs to the late third or early fourth century. The names of both husband and wife, Lupicinus and Montana, were Latin in origin and hint at a Roman military background. Several Christian military officers and soldiers were buried at Dorylaeum and Nacolea in the later fourth and fifth centuries.689 In such splendid isolation, there is little that can 682 Haspels, Highlands 311–13 nos. 37–38. 683 Haspels, Highlands 313–14 nos. 40 (ICG 1658) and 41. The word κρίσις does not occur otherwise in pagan imprecations, and the usage may show the influence of contemporary Christian funerary texts. 684 MAMA V, 211: θεῷ ὐψίστῳ εὐχὴν Αὐρήλιος Ἀσκλάπων ἣν ὁμολόγησεν ἐν Ῥώμῃ. 685 MAMA V, 212. 686 Drew-Bear, Nouvelles inscriptions de Phrygie (Amsterdam 1978), 41–2 no. 8 (SEG 28, 1182). The stone has θεῳ ὑψίστῳ καὶ Ὁσίῳ καὶ ΔΙΙ, the last two letters being uncertain. There was no space for Δικαίῳ in full, but this should be understood, not Διί, as in the published editions. 687 MAMA V 186. 688 ICG 1439. The text is lost but known from three separate copies made in Eskişehir in the 1890s, and was first published by G. Weber, Funde, Ath. Mitt. 22 (1897), 352 no. 1 and by G. Pargoire, Epitaphe d’une montaniste à Dorylée, Echos d’Orient (later Revue des études byzantines) 5.3 (1902), 148–9. There is exhaustive bibliography and discussion in Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 401–6 no. 63. 689 ICG 1370, 1383, 1395, 1401.

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be said about this text. Tabbernee summarizes the general view that this was a gravestone of a Montanist Christian, inferred both from the name of the deceased woman and by her identification as a pneumatike, a term applied to the Montanists by Tertullian.690 The hypothesis has been reinforced by the suggestion of H. Gregoire, that the letters Π Π placed on either side of the cross should be resolved to Πνευματικοὶ Πνευματικοῖς, by analogy but also in deliberate contrast with the Χριστιανοὶ Χριστιανοῖς formula of the Upper Tembris Valley.691 However, this explanation of Π Π is very speculative. Montanists acknowledged the power of the spirit, πνεῦμα, as a source of the New Prophecy, but not all their followers were themselves inspired, and the term πνευματικός was not applied to the whole community by other sources.692 As the inscription of Zosimus shows, inspiration was a quality to be found among religious specialists, pagan, Christian or Jewish. Montana was a Christian woman who claimed this gift, and in this she resembled Nanas of Akoluk. Both may have been Montanists, but the indications remain inconclusive. Early Christian texts were an extreme rarety in the territories of Nacolea and Dorylaeum. Almost none has been found in the villages north of the middle Tembris valley or in the highland territory to the north which extended to the sanctuary of Zeus Sarnendenos, on the boundary between Phrygia and Bithynia. Since the region has been extensively explored, especially by Cox and Cameron in 1931, by Peter Frei in the 1980s, and by Hale Guney between 2013 and 2019, and since the local museums at Dorylaeum and Seyitgazi have been active in collecting material from the region, this cannot be explained by a lack of exploration. One of the few exceptions to the general rule is a recently published stele, probably fourth century, now in the museum at Seyitgazi (Nacolea), put up by Makedonios for his wife Theodosia and son Domnus, with an invocation of god’s protection, ἴ τις ἐπιβουλεύσι ἕξι πρὸς τὸν θεόν.693 The absence of Christian gravestones from the third and early-fourth centuries appears to reflect the real situation, that few of the inhabitants had become Christian. Why should this be so? Two explanations can cautiously be offered. 690 Tertullian, Marc. IV. 22.5; Prax. 1.7; mon. 1.1.; ieiun. 1.1, 3.1, 11.1, 16.8. 691 H. Grégoire, Épigraphie chrétienne I. Les inscriptions hérétiques d’ Asie Mineure, Byzantion I (1924), 708. 692 Another funerary stele from Nacolea, set up by Anthos (?) for his brother Apollonius, is also prefaced by a very large letter pi; MAMA V 260; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 327–9 no. 55 (ICG 1424). However, this is detached from the rest of the text and may not even have been intended as a letter. 693 E. Akyürek-Şahin, Yazıdere (Seyitgazi). Zeus kutsal alanı ve adak yazıtları (Istanbul 2006), 147 no. 34; ICG 4489. For the ‘Laodicean’ formula see, W. M. Calder, Studies in early Christian epigraphy II, JRS 14 (1924), 85–8; Robert, Hell. XI/XII, 401–4; Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 522–3.

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One concerns deep-rooted and institutionalised ideas in North Phrygia about life after death, which pre-empted this central Christian message and robbed it of its novelty. The cult of Zeus Bronton was found throughout the entire region. In addition to numerous conventional votives, which very often involved all the family members in the votive ritual, the epitaphs of deceased family members were frequently combined with a dedication to Zeus Bronton, so that the monument served a double function as a funerary and a votive text, and implicitly or explicitly conveyed the idea that the dead person, or the dead person’s soul, was itself immortal.694 References to the after-life and the immortality of the soul were not uncommon in funerary verse inscriptions from Asia Minor, but the formulas of the Zeus Bronton dedications in the territories of Dorylaeum and Nacoleia suggest that here these ideas, which were explicitly articulated on their tombstones, were not exceptional but mainstream, shared by most of the population. Christian ideas about resurrection and eternal life after death perhaps added little to expectations that they already held. The other is the powerful appeal of the cult of Hosios kai Dikaios in the third century. Holiness and justice were central virtues for Christians, and had an even more significant place in Phrygian cult, which underpinned the worship of these ‘abstract’ or ‘neutral’ divine beings. The affinity between pagan Anatolian and Christian beliefs both about the afterlife and about holiness and justice is manifest in a remarkable, but in the last analysis unsurprising grave monument, probably of the fourth century, from the territory of Pontic Amaseia. The triangular gable shows a prominent and unambiguous cross between two ivy leaves, and Latin crosses combined with similar leaf decoration appear at the bottom of the shaft of the stele. The burial text, for a young man, ran μνῆμα τοῦ νέου {ΑΝ} | Ἀντιγόνου οὗ τὸ σῶμα | ἐπὶ γῆς κὲ ἡ ψυχὴ μετὰ τῶν ὁσίων δικέων, ‘memorial of the youth Antigonius whose body is on the earth and whose soul is with the holy (and) just’.695 Marek, who discovered and published the inscription, rightly calls attention to the similarity of this inscription to one of the prayers included in a lengthy liturgical text, attributed to Gregory of Nazianzus, which was delivered in the presence of the Christian brotherhoods which attended funerals, μνήσθητι Κύριε τῶν προκεκοιμημένων ἐν τῇ ὀρθοδόξῳ πίστει τῶν πατέρων ἡμῶν καὶ ἀδελφῶν, καὶ ἀνάπαυσον τὰς ψυχὰς αὐτῶν μετὰ ὁσίων μετὰ δικαίων, ‘Be mindful, o Lord, of our fathers and brothers who have been laid to rest before in the orthodox faith, and bring relief to their souls 694 C. W. M. Cox and A. Cameron, MAMA V, xxxiv–xxxviii, cited with approval by Robert, Hell. XIII, 275 n. 1; G. Chiai, Zeus Bronton und der Totenkult; See 66–8. 695 Marek, Nochmals zu den Theos Hypsistos Inschriften, 145–6, who restores ὁσίων (κὲ) δικέων ad sensum but perhaps unnecessarily.

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among the holy, among the righteous’.696 He also rightly draws attention to the Jewish idea of the souls of the righteous, who will enjoy salvation.697 However, the allusion to Antigonos’s earthbound body and soul among the righteous is conceptually indistinguishable from the contrast between the mortal body and immortal soul found in Phrygian pagan epitaphs. The reference to ὁσίων δικέων, even at a find spot which was remote from the Phrygian heartlands, is likely to have evoked associations with the pagan cult. Christian, Jewish and pagan Phrygian notions of holiness and righteousness overlapped with one another. The studies of Marijana Ricl and Tomas Lochman have both reached the conclusion that the area where the worship of Hosios and Dikaios originated, and was most deeply rooted, was north-west Phrygia, in and around Dorylaeum.698 As Ricl points out the numerous votives from the territory of Dorylaeum come not from one place (as the rich cache from Yaylababa köy on the territory of Cotiaeum), but from several sanctuaries, and thus illustrate both the cult’s popularity and its rural character. Since the appearance of Ricl’s studies, the full publication of a remarkable group of large altar monuments dedicated to Hosios kai Dikaios, recovered in modern Eskişehir from the centre of ancient Dorylaeum, now shows that this indigenous cult was also prominent in the mainstream religious life of the city.699 Another important sanctuary of Hosios was located at Başaran, at the eastern edge of the Phrygian Highlands.700 Hosios kai Dikaios, the cult of righteousness and justice, was a

696 Liturgia Sancti Gregorii 367. The text based on Migne, PG 36, is available on-line at http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/02g/0329-0390,_Gregorius_Nazianzenus,_Liturgia _sancti_Gregorii,_MGR.pdf. 697 LXX Numbers 23: ἀποθάνοι ἡ ψυχή μου ἐν ψυχαῖς δικαίων; and Enoch 1.8. 698 Ricl, EA 19 (1992), 71: ‘La plupart d’entre eux ont étés découverts dans la région montagneuse située au nord-ouest de la Phrygie, sur les territoires des villes antiques de Dorylée, Nacoleia, Kotiaeion, et Aezani’; Lochman, Phrygien, 204: ‘Wir meinen, daß das Ursprungszentrum des Hosios Dikaios-Kultes das Territorium der Stadt Dorylaion war: Aus der Gegend von Eskişehir und Inönü stammt nämlich eine große Anzahl von Dokumenten, die zum größten Teil in die Mitte des 2. Jhts. gehören und somit wohl die ältesten Hosios kai Dikaios-Votive darstellen’. 699 E. Akyürek-Şahin and H. Uzunoğlu, Neue Weihungen an Hosios kai Dikaios aus dem Museum von Eskişehir, Gephyra 19 (2020), 189–230 (18 new monuments, 9 from a findspot which may mark the location of the civic sanctuary): ‘Die hier zum ersten Mal veröffentlichten Weihungen bringen zwar keine größeren Neuerkenntnisse in Bezug auf den Kult mit sich, doch bekräftigen sie auf Grund ihrer Fundorte aus der Umgebung Dorylaions die These, dass der Kult aus diesem Gebiet stammt’. 700 E. Akyürek-Şahin and H. Uzunoğlu, Neue Inschriften aus dem phrygischem Hochland, Gephyra 21 (2021), 177–97, nos. 1 and 2.

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central moral reference point for Phrygians.701 Strong attachment to this cult, as well as a widespread belief in the immortality of the soul, under the protection of Zeus Bronton, may offer at least a partial explanation for the slow progress of Christianity in northern Phrygia, when compared with the conspicuous Christian presence in south-west Phrygia by the mid-third century around Eumeneia, and a generation later in the Upper Tembris Valley. Perhaps Christianity had less to offer that was new to the inhabitants of northern than to those from central or southern Phrygia. 4.12

Central and Eastern Phrygia from Synnada to Amorium (Maps 10 and 11)

The Christians of central and eastern Phrygia, extending north-east, east and south-east from Afyon at the centre of the “Phrygian circle”, have not been the subject of any separate investigation, unlike the groups at Eumeneia and Apamea, at Temenothyrae, and in the Upper Tembris valley.702 As a starting point, we can take Synnada, the meeting point for one of the Asian province’s assize districts. Synnada, modern Şuhut, the most important city of central Phrygia, lay twenty-nine kilometres south of Afyon at the west side of a plain which extended about sixteen kilometres from north to south and was between three and six kilometres wide from west to east. In the early Roman empire, it was the administrative headquarters of the procurator of Phrygia, who took responsibility for imperial estates and above all for the marble quarries at Docimium. An important Roman road ran from Docimium through Sülümenli to Synnada, heading for Apamea.703 South of Synnada a relatively easy route went through Atlıhisar, the find spot of a milestone which was many times re-inscribed between the reigns of Nerva and Constantine,704 to Karaadıllı, where it joined the highway running north-east from Apamea via Metropolis to modern Çay. This was the road that carried the transport of heavy Docimian marble products destined for the cities of the south and west coasts of Asia

701 Compare the the emphatic judgement of Socrates, HE IV.28.9–12 in the mid-fifth century about Phrygian morality; see 588 n. 144. 702 Ramsay collected the texts known to him in Cities and Bishoprics I.2, 733–46 nos. 664–92. 703 Tab. Peut. IX.4–X.1. 704 French, RRMAM 3.5 (Asia) no. 44; compare RRMAM 3.5, 45a and b from Ağzıkara and 47 from Sülümenli, from the same road linking Synnada and Docimium.

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Minor. A hillier western road probably ran from Atlıhisar along the Avlağı (formerly Uzun) Dere through Kınık to Metropolis.705 Synnada was one of the rare Phrygian cities which made an early mark in the literary tradition. Eusebius named a bishop Atticus around 220, who allowed a layman, Theodorus, to preach to the brethren after the fashion of Origen, and a synod was held there before the middle of the third century, which discussed the topic of baptism by heretical groups.706 Only two Christian inscriptions of this period are safely identifiable, both by their use of the Eumeneian formula. One is the very modest grave monument set up by Elpidephoros (?) and his wife Nike for their unnamed child, carved in vernacular Greek on a rough slab with a representation of a gable below it.707 The other is one of the most remarkable relics of the early church in Phrygia, an ossuary, excavated in 1907 in a field outside Şuhut, which was brought to the museum in Bursa. This marble reliquary, resembling a miniature sarcophagus twenty-five centimetres high and twenty centimetres wide, had inscriptions on the front and on the lid. Fragments of a skull were said to have been preserved inside at the time of discovery. The text on the front reads ὧδε ἔνα Τρο|φίμου τοῦ μ|άρτυρος ὀστέ|α, while the lid has the characteristic warning τίς ἂν δὲ ταῦ|τα τὰ ὁστέα | ἐκβάλῃ ποτέ, | ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τ[ὸ]| θεό|ν.708 Gustave Mendel in the original publication offered good arguments for a third-century date based on the content of the inscription: not only the use of the Eumeneian formula which is not otherwise attested after 300, but the absence of a cross and the simple description of Trophimos as μάρτυς, without the virtually obligatory ἅγιος of fifth-century and later inscriptions.709 These arguments are confirmed by the nature of the monument itself, a miniature version of the Docimian sarcophagi, which ceased to 705 Discussion by Anderson, JHS 18 (1898), 102–4; TIB 7, 159 route D6; note TIB 7, 204–5 reporting no trace of a Roman road at Balçıkhisar. French named the main highway route D3 on his map RRMAM 3.5, p. 26; more detail on RRMAM 3.8 p. 15 and p. 61 (Eskişehir sheet). 706 Eusebius, HE VI.18.19 and VII.7.5. 707 MAMA IV, 91 (ICG 1096). The first name has been read as [Ἐλα]φοφόρος, which is otherwise unattested, so perhaps [Ἐλπιδη]{φο}φόρος, assuming dittography; the text ends ὃς ἂν δὲ αὐτῷ κακ[ὸν] ι ποίησι ἔσται πὸς τὸν θεόν. 708 G. Mendel, BCH 33 (1909), 342–8 no. 102; W. M. Calder, Monuments of the Great Persecution BJRL 8 (1924), 357–8; M. Guarducci, Epigrafia Graeca IV, 390–2 no. 4; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 236–40 no. 35; Nowakowski, Saints, 435–6 Phr/10/01 (ICG 1378). The form ἔνα is unusual, but this should be a form of ἔνοντα, the neuter plural participle of ἔνειμι, formed by analogy with ἔνι from ἔνεστι. Tabbernee, followed by Nowakowski, suggests that the imprecation on the lid with square sigmas and epsilons, was cut by a different mason from the text on the front which used lunate letters, but lunate letters were used on the lid for ὀστέα, ἔσται, πρός and θεόν and the argument is groundless; cf 410 n. 316 and 467. 709 See Nowakowski, Saints, 212–4.

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be produced at full size around the middle of the third century.710 An anonymous passio of St Trophimos relates that Trophimos was a citizen of Pisidian Antioch, who was martyred with two companions at Synnada in the time of the emperor Probus (276–82). The relationship between the ossuary and the passio is complex and explored in a later chapter.711 Prymnessus, modern Sü(ğ)lün, also contained a Christian community in the third century. An undecorated bomos, copied in the modern village, has a routine but damaged funerary text set up by a man for his wife and mother, but ended with a variation of the Eumeneian formula which referred to God the creator, ἐὰν [δέ] τις κακῶς πυήσι ἔστη α[ὐ]τῷ πὸς τ[ὸ]ν κτίσαντα τὰ πάντα.712 This text may be roughly contemporary with a mid-third-century doorstone from the region, copied in Afyon, which presents significantly more problems of interpretation. Above the door panels there is a relief depicting a litter designed to carry a passenger. The identification of the object depicted is confirmed by the incomplete inscription … μμης χά[ριν] λεκτεικαρῳ: ‘in memory, for the litter-bearer’. The door panels below this show figured scenes: top left, a woman, a child in front of her, a mirror and a wool basket; top right, a man with raised right arm, as if delivering an address, beside a small table; in the bottom panels which are combined into a single scene, a man and a woman are shown standing behind a waggon, drawn by a pair of oxen, which carries an object or pair of rectangular objects, conceivably blocks of marble. Another short inscription is carved on the frame between the upper and lower panels, reading Ὀνήσιμος θεοῦ δοῦλος (fig. 46).713 Most of the primary inscription, which presumably related to the reliefs of the litter and the door-panel scenes, is missing. The scenes themselves seem internally contradictory. The man with raised arm, presumably the head of household, is unlikely to have had the modest profession of a litter-carrier; the draft oxen pulling their heavy load suggest that he may have been in the transport business, perhaps specifically the carting of marble from the Docimian quarries to customers, but the 710 Mendel, BCH 33 (1909), 343: ‘Le reliquaire reproduit très exactement la forme d’une certaine classe de sarcophages très répandus dans toute l’Asie Minieure. Les proportions seules sont modifies, car la cuve se rapproche du carré et l’ensemble est plus haut que large’. The end of full scale sarcophagus production by Docimian worshops has been set by various scholars between c. AD 250 and 280; see M. Waelkens, The sarcophagus workshop of Dokimeion (2019), 573 nn. 280–83. 711 See chapter 6.2. 712 ΜΑΜΑ XI 177 (ICG 1474). The Prymnessan family of L. Rupilius Theophilus, which moved to Pisidian Antioch, has erroneously been taken for Christian (ICG 1347); see 320. 713 Afyon Museum Inv. E. 1552. ΜΑΜΑ IV 32; Pfuhl / Möbius, Die ostgriechischen Grabreliefs I, 154; Waelkens, Türsteine 486 (third quarter of 3rd cent.); Mitchell, Anatolia I, 170 fig. 39; Lochman, Phrygien 297: III 58 (c. AD 250) (ICG 1087).

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Figure 46 Afyon region. Funerary doorstone naming Onesimos, ‘slave of God’. ICG 1087. Now in Afyon Museum Stephen Mitchell

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depiction of a couple behind the cart is hard to explain. Then, what is to be made of the second inscription, which is unconnected syntactically and in its placing on the stone to the earlier text? Onesimos appears to be a Christian, who adopted the common appellation ‘slave of God’.714 If this part of the inscription also dates to the third century, it would be a notably early use of the term, which became widespread in the fifth and sixth century, although the concept is conveyed in the fourth and even the third centuries by frequent use among Christians of the names Theodoulos and Theodoule. A partial solution to the dilemma is to treat the Onesimos text as secondary, perhaps added to the earlier grave monument by a much later family member. In contrast to the strictly aniconic Christian monuments of the Upper Tembris Valley, it is striking to find a Phrygian Christian monument so richly decorated with human figures. The faces of the persons seem to have been subsequently defaced. Another third-century doorstone copied in Afyon presents fewer problems of interpretation and is certainly Christian. The two upper panels of the door depict small figures of a draped and veiled woman and a man, respectively above a distaff and spindle and a writing case in the lower panels. Their names are now missing, but the surviving lines of the inscription record a fine of 1000 Attic drachmas payable to the imperial treasury for unauthorized use of the tomb, except for those who tend the elderly, τοῖς γηροκοσμήσασιν ἔξεσται μόνοις, and conclude by invoking the Eumeneian formula against those who damage the monument, τὶς ἂν κακῶς ποίσει τῷ μνημείῳ ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεόν.715 Care for the elderly was a cardinal Christian virtue, and marks this as a Christian text as decisively as the final formula. Human figures are also depicted on another remarkable group of steles which come from villages and towns around Afyon in the Akar Çay valley, some of which appear to be Christian. Tomas Lochman has identified ten examples and designated them as Nischenstelen Typ 2, produced by a regional workshop from Docimian marble, which he dates between c.160 and 190. They range in height from around 0.60 to 1.40 metres high, 0.35–0.55 centimetres wide, and up to 0.25 metres thick, and usually have moulded decoration on the short sides as well as the front face. Complete examples have a triangular gable with semi-palmette acroteria at the corners and a palmette acroterion at the apex, enclosing an embossed shield or a more elaborate decorative element. Decorated or undecorated pilasters, capped by acanthus or other floral capitals, frame the main field which may contain an aedicula niche with 714 Compare MAMA XI 230 (Kinna), a fourth-century epitaph (also with two busts), ending πατρὶ ̣ | Κυρίω⟨νι⟩ (?) κ[αὶ μη]|τρὶ Κ⟨υρί⟩λλης,| Θεοῦ δούλ[ῃ] or Θεοῦ δούλ[οις]. 715 ΜΑΜΑ IV 31; Waelkens Türsteine 194–5 no. 480 (ICG 1086).

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figures, human figures on a platform, or other figural decoration. Inscriptions are either carved on the frame of the gable or in the main field.716 Three of these steles have inscriptions which might be Christian. One is a monument in Afyon Museum reportedly from the village of Çepni near the small city of Dioclea, and first published by Calder. The triangular gable, which was separated from the shaft by a heavy band of decorative moulding, has been broken, and the pilasters are decorated with semi-fluting in the lower half and flutes in the upper half below the capitals. The main field contains a knotted wreath with fillets above the draped figures of two men and a woman, standing on a platform, below which is a ten-line inscription: Αὐρ. Νανα Μηνοφίλου | κατεσκεύσαεν τὸ | μνημῖον τῷ υἱῷ Εὐ|φήμῳ ἐκ τῶν ἀπολει|φθέντων | ὑπὸ αὐτοῦ ὑπαρχόντων. | ὃς ταύτῃ τῇ ἰστήλῃ | κακοεργέα χεῖρα | προσοίσι, ἔστη αὐτῷ | πρὸς τὸν θεόν (fig. 47).717 The Aurelius name indicates that the inscription must be later than 212, and the Eumeneian formula hardly occurs elsewhere before 250. Lochman placed the stele at the end of the series, dated around 185/90, but noted the clumsy lettering of the text as an argument that this was added in a second phase of the stone’s use. The three figures of the relief also do not match the mother-son combination mentioned in the text. There might have been an earlier epitaph carved on the missing gable, but it may be simpler to extend the chronological range of the Nischenstelen Type 2 by a generation, and date the text and monument to c.225, making it one of the earliest examples of the Eumeneian formula. A similar complication is presented by a second example from this series, found at Prymnessus, where the Christian nature of the inscription, at least, is not in doubt. The text itself is straightforward, Ἀβίρκιος | Πορφυρίου | διάκων κα|τεσκεύασα | τὸ μεμόριον | ἑαυτῷ καὶ τῇ | συμβίῳ μου | Θευπρεπίῃ | κὲ τοῖς τέκνοις. The simple grave formula suggests a relatively early date, but the term μεμόριον seems first to occur in fourth century inscriptions. Abirkios, like other Phrygian Christians, surely took his name from his famous namesake at Hierapolis, who died at the beginning of the third century (fig. 48).718 This follower of the famous Avircius Marcellus is not likely to have died before 250, but even this early date is incompatible with the decoration of the stone, which is recorded in an idealised drawing prepared by Lady Ramsay for her husband. This shows an elegant stele with a high triangular pediment enclosing a whorl design, capped by semi-palmette acroteria at the corners and a flamboyant palmette at the 716 Lochman, Phrygien, 118–9; 298–300: III 67–78; figs. 111–8. 717 W. M. Calder, AS 5 (1955), 36 no. 5; Mitchell, Anatolia II, 60–1 fig. 20, both identifying one female and two male figures; Lochman, Phrygien 299: III 76; (ICG 1362). 718 See above chapter 4.2.

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Figure 47 Çepni, territory of Dioclea. Funerary stele set up by Aurelia Nana. ICG 1362. Now in Afyon Museum Stephen Mitchell

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Figure 48 Prymnessus. Funerary stele set up by Abirkios the deacon. ICG 1365 Lady Ramsay ((CB 1.2, 736–7 no. 672)

apex. The shaft, flanked by plain pilasters with floral capitals, contains the text, placed above three unusual figures: a male bust to the left and a female bust to the right looking inwards at the draped figure of a child.719 Ramsay thought that the figure was ‘one of the earliest representations of the saviour’, while the busts represented Abirkios and Theuprepia. Lochman’s recent work, however, leaves little doubt that this stele is one of the Nischenstelen that he identified, and should therefore be dated at the end of the second century. The figures in relief, as far as may be judged, match other work from the Docimian workshop, including one example published by Lochman which combines three full-length figures standing on a plinth above a row of four busts.720 The inscription, as reproduced in Ramsay’s drawing and in the transcription of the French epigraphic travellers Legrand and Chamonard, was neatly and boldly carved. This must surely be a later addition to the stone, probably added around the mid-fourth century, by the deacon Abirkios for his family. He, like Aur. Nana at Çepni, used or adapted a gravestone with figural decoration. Custom and practice in the communities of the Akar Çay differed from that in the Upper 719 Ramsay, CB I.2, 736–7 no. 672 (also Asianic Elements in Greek Civilisation, 241–2; Church in the Roman Empire, 440–2); E. Legrand and J. Chamonard, Inscriptions de Phrygie, BCH 17, 290 no. 98 ‘au desous de l’inscription, un petit personage, drape à la romaine, debout entre deux têtes qui se font face’ (ICG 1365). 720 Lochman, Phrygien, 298: III 65. Illustrated by Masséglia, Phrygians in relief, in Thonemann (ed.), Roman Phrygia (2013), 111 fig. 5.12. The text reads Αμια ἐπύισεν τῦ(ς) τέκνυ(ς) ἀώρυς χάριν μνήμης.

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Tembris region. Perhaps local pride in the attractive products of the Docimian sculpture workshops overcame Christian reservations in these cases. Another stele not included in Lochman’s catalogue is now in Afyon Museum, reportedly brought from Sülümenli (fig. 49). It has a high triangular pediment enclosing a boss with palmette acroteria. The pilasters are decorated with vine leaves and have simplified acanthus capitals, and the shaft itself is divided into two registers, each depicting a couple on either side of a standing child. Both men have short cropped hair-cuts and stubble beards. The man in the lower register grips a sheathed sword in his right hand, holds a bundle of papers in his left hand, and has a buckled travelling cape over his himation. His counterpart in the upper register holds a similar bundle of papers but without the military accoutrements. The women, both veiled and wearing long cloaks, hold distaff and spindle, and the children clasp pieces of fruit. The inscription reads Παπίας Ἀλεξάνδρω ἐποίαισα ταύτη|ν τὴν στήλην πᾶσι τοῖς ἐμοῖς μνήμη|ς χάριν. Τὶς ἂν δὲ τούτῳ τῷ μνημίῳ | κακὴν χεῖρα προσαγάγαι, ἕξει | πρὸς τὸν παντοκράτορα θεόν. ‘I, Papias son of Alexander, made this stele for all my family in memory. Whoever applies an evil hand to this memorial, shall reckon with the almighty god’.721 This might be a gravestone designed for two brothers who has served as soldiers, one (Papias?) perhaps now a veteran, and their families. Jane Masseglia has dated the monument to the second half of the third century, but this stretches the Nischenstelen series too late for comfort, and it should have been carved around 200, before the introduction of Aurelius names. It was customary, as shown by the previous example, to add protective formulas to the inscriptions on the monuments from this workshop and from the region. One example dated by Lochman c.160, also from Sülümenli, has the wording καί τις αὐτῷ κακῶς ἐποίησε πὸς θεὸν έχει.722 Another, from Docimium itself, reads εἰ δε τις τύμβῳ κακοεργέα χεῖρα προσούσι ὄρφανα τέκνα λίπη οἶκον ἔρημον.723 A third small stele, of unknown provenance for a child, makes the threat more personal: ὃς δε μοι ἐς τύνβον χεῖρα κακὴν προτενεῖ, τοίους τοὺς ἰδίους παῖδας φθιμένοισι διδοῖτο.724 The burial at Docimium which reserved access to those who tended the elderly ended with he Eumeneian formula,725 while a longer damaged text shows a Christian priest using the Eumeneian formula in combination with the formula referring to evil hands. The ten much restored 721 J. Masséglia, Phrygians in relief, 111 fig. 5.8; J. Strubbe, Arai Epitymbioi, 151 no. 29, with full text in SEG 47, 1754 (ICG 4503). 722 Lochman, Phrygien, 298: III 64. The threat appears twice in the inscription, and the second time reads πὸς τὸν θεόν ἔχει. 723 Lochman, Phrygien, 298: III 66; cf. Strubbe, Arai Epitymbioi, 259. 724 Lochman, Phrygien, 298: III 67. 725 MAMA IV 31 = Waelkens, Türsteine no. 480 (ICG 1086).

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Figure 49 Afyon district, Sülümenli. Funerary stele set up by Papias. ICG 4503. Now in Afyon Museum Stephen Mitchell

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hexameters refer to two young women, prematurely dead, leaving behind their impoverished father, a model of justice. He is identified in the prose lines that ended the epitaph and invoked Christian protection for the tomb: Δωρόθεος πρεσβ. Α[two names] | τέκνοις ἀώρο[ις τὴν στήλην μνήμης χάριν] | ἀνέθηκα. Εἴ τις [δὲ ἄλλος τῷ μνημεί|ῳ κακὴν χῖρα πρ[οσενέγκῃ, ἔσται αὐτῷ προ]|ς τὸν θεόν.726 In the wording of these formulas, the clients, who commissioned the monuments, expressed their religious choices. Which of them should be classified as Christian? The Eumeneian formula used on the doorstone which allowed the tomb to be used by those who cared for the elderly, on the priest Dorotheos’s monument for his daughters, and on Aurelia Nana’s inscription at Çepni should surely be treated as Christian, although in two cases the families were not shy of human representation. How should we classify the monument from Sülümenli, for a child who had died prematurely, which also invoked protection from a single god, but marked the tomb with two raised hands, the iconographic symbol of an appeal to Helios to avenge a crime? Who was the almighty god in the mind of Papias when he commissioned the fine family grave monument from Sülümenli, now in Afyon Museum? If dated around 200 this would be a remarkably early testimony for the Christian god. Perhaps this was an appeal to Theos Hypsistos, known to his worshippers as pantokrator,727 but there is no certainty, as Zeus, as well as the Christian god, was also labelled pantokrator in contemporary inscriptions.728 These texts present problems of interpretation which are still beyond resolution. There were certainly Christians in villages on the territory of Amorium, Docimium’s eastern neighbour, in the third century.729 The Eumeneian formula appears on an acephalous text for an anonymous twenty-year-old at Davulga,730 on a crude stele put up by Ammia son of Metrophanes at Piribeyli,731 and on a modest third-century doorstone from Amorium erected by Paulos for

726 Ramsay, CB I.2, 743 no. 684; SGO III, 389: 16/53/99 (ICG 1577). 727 Epiphanius, Pan. 80. 2; Greg. Naz., Or. 18.5 (ὁ παντοκράτωρ δὴ μόνος αὐτοῖς σεβάσμιος). 728 See I. Nicaea II.1, 1121; II.2, 1512; C. Marek, Der höchste, beste, größte, allmächtige Gott, Inschriften aus Nordkleinasien, Epigraphica Anatolica 32 (2000), 129–46; C. Marek, Nochmals zu den Theos Hypsistos Inschriften, in S. Alkier / H. Leppin (eds), Juden, Christen, Heiden? Religiöse Inklusion und Exklusion in Kleinasien bis Decius (Tübingen 2018), 131–48. 729 W. M. Calder, MAMA VII, xxxviii–xxxix. C. S. Lighfoot, Amorium Reports 5. A catalogue of Roman and Byzantine stone inscriptions from Amorium and its territory, together with graffiti, stamps and miscellanea (Ege Yayınları, Istanbul 2017). 730 MAMA VII 276b; SGO 3, 358: 16/43/96; (ICG 1810). 731 J. G. C. Anderson, JHS 19 (1899), 309 no. 256; MAMA VII 276 (ICG 1811).

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himself and his wife Kyriake.732 Another gravestone copied in Emirdağ was set up by a priest who did not reveal his name for his father Teimeas, also a priest, and his wife.733 Other potentially Christian texts are much more dubious, and the representation of fish hanging from a short bar, which appears on several door-stones from these villages, should not be interpreted as Christian symbolism, but as the depiction of an important economic resource, the catfish or Wels (Silurus glanis), hung up to be smoked, caught in the upper Sangarius and doubtless marketed in the surrounding towns.734 The town of Orcistus, located at modern Ortaköy, was situated between Amorium and Nacolea, closer to the former but administratively subordinate to the latter, and it was this dependence that led its community leaders to send a petition to Constantine, asking to be upgraded to the rank of a self-governing city, and then appealing to him again when its rights continued to be infringed by the Nacoleans at the end of the 320s. Famously, one of the arguments that they advanced to persuade the emperor was that at the time of the petition most of Orcistus’s inhabitants were Christians: quibus omnibus quasi quidem cumulus accedit quod omnes ibidem sectatores sanctissimae religionis habitare dicantur.735 Two Christian inscriptions that are likely to pre-date Constantine’s rescript, are a crude doorstone from the village of Kırkpınar, set up by Aur. Aristoneikos for his wife and son, which ends like the Upper Tembris Valley epitaphs with a reference to the whole Christian community, οἱ Χρηστ[ιανοί],736 732 Waelkens, Türsteine 210 no. 518; MAMA VII, 297 (ICG 1295). The wife’s name is distinctively Christian. 733 A. Körte, Kleinasiatische Studien II, Ath. Mitt. 22 (1897), 1–51 at 34 no. 14; (Lighfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 52 no. 123): Τειμέου πρε[σβυ]|τέρου καὶ αὐτ[ὸς] | πρεσβύτερος τ[ῇ] | γλυκυτάτῃ μου | συνβίῳ Δόμνῃ | μνήμης χάριν. ICG 4514. 734 H. Yaman, Amorium antik kenti stelleri (PhD Dissertation Çanakkale 2006), 70–71; C. S. Lightfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 37 no. 60 with comm. C. S. Lightfoot, Christian burials in a pagan context at Amorium, in J. R. Brandt et al. (eds), Life and Death in Asia Minor in Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Times. Studies in archaeology and bio-archaeology (Oxford 2017), 188–95 at 192 fig. 11.7, illustrates a frieze above the door of a Roman tomb at Amorium with a relief of a fish, whose long head, clearly distinguished from the body, identifies it as a catfish. For the economic importance of catfish and their presence in the rivers of Turkey, see L. Robert, Journal des Savants 1961, 104–9. 735 ICG 1292; MAMA VII 305 1, 39–42. D. Feissel, L’épigraphie d’Orient, témoin des mutations de l’empire constantinien, in XVI Congressus internationalis archaeologiae christianae (Romae 22–28.9.2013): Costantino e i costantinidi, l’innovazione costantiniana, le sue radici e i suoi sviluppi. Pars II (2016), 1221–35, at 1223–4 refutes the contention of R. Van Dam, The Roman Revolution of Constantine (Cambridge 2007), 177 n. 21, that sectatores sanctissimae religionis was a deliberately vague phrase, non-committal about the Orcistans’ Christianity. 736 ΜΑΜΑ VII 296b; Gibson, Chr. for Chr., 124 no. 45; Waelkens, Türsteine, 225–6 no. 578; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr., 96–9 no. 12 (ICG 1289).

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and a doorstone at Bağlıca, commissioned by Aur. Kallistos and his wife Kyriake for their foster-child (threptos) Kyriakos.737 By the mid-third century there was a significant number of Christians living in east Phrygian villages, where the eastern boundary of the Roman province of Asia divided it from Galatia. Many more examples have been recorded in the steppe south of Haymana, the rural expanse of the Proseilemmene between Galatia and Lycaonia.738 The Eumeneian formula itself was used in elaborated form, including an abbreviated nomen sacrum, beyond Phrygia’s eastern boundary in Galatian Ancyra.739 4.13

Phrygia Paroreius: Philomelium, Pisidian Antioch and Apollonia (Maps 14 and 15)

The survey of Christian Phrygia in the third and early fourth centuries turns to the south-east quadrant of the Phrygian circle and to three important communities: Philomelium, whose church community received the letter from Smyrna that related the story of Polycarp’s martyrdom, Pisidian Antioch, the only city covered in this survey which occupied a place in Paul’s missionary itinerary in the mid-first century, and Phrygian Apollonia, between Antioch and Apamea. The Christian inscriptions of Philomelium, and its small eastern neighbour Tyriaeum, have been surveyed by Breytenbach and Zimmermann, in their exhaustive documentation of Lycaonian Christianity.740 Tyriaeum, originally a Macedonian military katoikia, was promoted to the rank of a city after 188 BC, probably lost this status under the Roman empire, but sent its own bishop to the Council of Chalcedon in 451.741 The urban settlement was the large mound 737 MAMA VII 296a; Waelkens, Türsteine, 229 no. 590 (ICG 1290). 738 J. Krumm [= P. Hommel], Frühes Christentum in Galatien: Inschriften aus dem südlichen Haymana-Hochland, in C. Breytenbach and J. Ogereau (eds), Authority and Identity in Emerging Christianities in Asia Minor and Greece (Leiden 2018), 89–111; MAMA XI 229, 230, 237, 240, 243, 244. 739 Ι. Ankara 2, 352 (ICG 3704): ἔστε αὐτῷ πρὸς Θ(εὸ)ν καὶ νῦν καὶ ἰς τὸν αἰῶνα. 740 Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 304–14 (Tyriaion), 314–9 (Philomelion); see map 9 on p. 303. 741 The evidence for the site and the settlement’s early history is summarised by P. Thonemann, Cistophoric geography, 43–53. However, I am grateful to Robert Rocicki for pointing out that there is a large mound site beside the village of Mahmuthisar, with a fortification wall made from ashlar blocks, and this should indeed be the site of Tyriaeum, as proposed in TIB 7, 409–11. The smaller castle at Kale Tepe, with fortification walls typical of the late fourth century BC, proposed by Thonemann as the site of Toriaeum, may indeed

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at Mahmuthisar, where an important inscription records the promotion of the community from being a Macedonian katoikia to a small city in the early second century BC. It is not clear how long it retained this independent status. The villages in the region of Tyriaeum and eastwards to Laodicea Catacecaumene have produced a crop of simple Christian gravestones, mostly to be dated to the fourth and early fifth centuries, for persons with Aurelius names, including many presbyters, deacons and deaconesses. The frequent mentions of clerical office holders are a feature of the Christian epigraphy of north Lycaonia which is strikingly different from the pattern across most of Phrygia, where clergy are recorded much less frequently. It should be noted that one of the simple epitaphs from near Tyriaeum, put up by Aur. Mithres for his sister Anastasia and decorated with both a staurogram and a christogram, carries a crude portrait bust of a woman, no doubt the deceased woman.742 Philomelium, named after a Macedonian dynasty, in which the names Philomelos and Lysias alternated and which became integrated into the Seleucid kingdom, was a more important settlement than Tyriaeum. After the foundation of the Roman provinces of Asia in 129 BC and Cilicia around 100 BC, it became the centre of the Lycaonian conventus, where Roman governors, including Cicero in 51 BC, held assizes.743 In the imperial period, it was the most important settlement between Synnada and Iconium, on an important transanatolian route, and was situated close to the border between the province of Asia and the Augustan province of Galatia, as well as in the ethnic boundary zone between Phrygia and Lycaonia.744 Philomelian territory included the east slopes of the long ridge of the Sultan Dağları, the well-watered and fertile land between the mountains and the central plains, and a considerable expanse of the steppic area around Akşehir Göl.745

be the stronghold of a Macedonian settler, and a smaller counterpart of the Hellenistic katoikia/polis. 742 MAMA VII 126 (ICG 171); Robert, Hell. XIII, 94 for the Iranian name Mithres. 743 Cicero, ad fam. 3.8.4–6; Cicero, ad Att. 5.20.1 records that he administered justice for five days at Apamea, three at Synnada, five at Philomelium and ten at Iconium. See R. Syme, Observations on the province of Cilicia, in Anatolian Studies presented to W. H. Buckler (1938), 312–4. 744 Pliny, NH V, 94–5. 745 For the geography see H. Wenzel, Sultandagh und Akschehir Ova: Eine landeskundliche Untersuchung in Inneranatolien (Kiel 1932), and Die Steppe als Lebensraum: Forschungen in Inneranatolien II (Kiel 1937). The site, where no monumental remains survive, was located at Akşehir by Leake in 1807, and finally confirmed by an epigraphical discovery published in the 1980s (SEG 35, 1397; ICG 624; see 454 n. 509). For historical details, see R. Billows, Kings and Colonists. Aspects of Macedonian imperialism (Leiden 1995), 99–100

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The early Christian texts from Philomelium have more in common with the Phrygian than the Lycaonian pattern. A stele which should be dated around 250, close to the composition date of the Martyrium Polycarpi, presents a family, in which the wife’s name, Aurelia Curtia Ma(cr)ina points to Roman immigrant roots (Fig. 50). It and two other third-century gravestones from Akşehir, and an example from the nearby village of Gedil, end with the Eumeneian formula to protect the grave from interference.746 Another text on a sarcophagus found at the outlying village of Koraşı, which probably still belongs to the third century, invoked God at the day of judgement: ὂς ἂν ταύτῃ | σορ[ῷ] κακοεργέα | χεῖρα προ|σοίσει, δώσ|ει τῷ θεῷ λόγον τῷ μέλλοντι κρεί|νειν ζῶ[ν]τας κὲ | νεκρούς.747 These Christian families are likely to have been among the immediate recipients of the letter from Smyrna about Polycarp, which, significantly, was addressed not only to the community at Philomelium but to ‘all the communities of the holy and universal Church in the whole region’.748 The writer was well aware that most of the local Christians lived in the surrounding villages, not in the town itself. A short mountain road connected Philomelium with Pisidian Antioch, the major Roman colony which had been evangelised by Paul in the late forties of the first century. There is no need here to retell the story of Paul’s mission to Antioch, followed by his visits to Iconium, Lystra and Derbe in Lycaonia.749 The likely continuity between the Pauline mission and its first converts, and the Christian population in south central Asia Minor, especially Lycaonia, is a major theme in Breytenbach and Zimmermann’s study of early Christianity in Lycaonia.750 An argument for similar continuity, which is based mainly on the widespread use of the names Paul and Thekla in Christian inscriptions

746

747 748 749

750

with earlier literature; Seleucid dependency, J. Ma, Antiochus III and the Cities of Western Asia Minor (Oxford 1999). IK 62, 7 no. 10 (ICG 616); IK 62, 11–12 no. 20 (ICG 617); IK 62, 33 no. 86 (ICG 622); J. G. C. Anderson, JHS 18 (1898), 113 no. 53bis, IK 62, 34 no. 89 (ICG 623). Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 318 with n. 1368, exclude these texts from consideration and thereby minimize the early Christian presence at Philomelium. Their survey discusses the substantial number of fourth- and fifth-century Christian texts. IK 62, 37 no. 95; (ICG 625); for the last judgement in this formula, see 155 and 319 n. 752. Mart. Polycarpi 1; see chapter 1.1. Acts 13.14–51; for Paul passing through the Phrygian and Galatian country, ie Phrygia Paroreius, without specific mention of Antioch, see 16.1–6; 18.23. Mitchell, Anatolia II (1993), 6–10. See T. Witulski, Die Adressaten des Galaterbriefes: Untersuchungen zur Gemeinde von Antiochia ad Pisidiam (Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments, Band 193, 2000). Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Early Christianity in Lycaonia, 60–126.

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Figure 50 Philomelium. Funerary stele for Aurelia Curtia Macrina; ICG 616. Now in Akşehir Taş Medrese Stephen Mitchell

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of the late second and third centuries, cannot be made for Pisidian Antioch. The names Paul and Thekla were not unknown in Christian Phrygia, but not frequent. The earliest Christian inscriptions at Antioch are recognised from the use of the Eumeneian formula around the mid-third century. There are seven examples, five of which have the simple wording ἔσται αυτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεόν. One of the exceptions is the mid-third-century stele set up by Aurelia Valentilla for her husband Aurelius Macedo, which ends ὅς δε ἂν ἐπιβουλέυσι τὴν στήλην ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ θεοῦ, recalling the μέγα ὄνομα of God invoked at Eumeneia.751 The other is a broken third-century text from a sarcophagus, apparently set up for themselves and their children by members of two families, which invokes God who would come to pass judgement on the living and the dead: [ἔσται αὐ]|τῷ πρὸς τὸν ἐρχ[όμενον κρῖ]|νε ζῶντας κὲ ν[έκρους].752 The reference to the Last Judgement echoes the references to the κρίτης θεός at Eumeneia and Apamea (above), the formula noted at Philomelium, and another variation that occurs at Apollonia.753 The other Antiochian instances are routine. It is a noteworthy coincidence, but perhaps no more than this, that all the tombstones had been commissioned by women in the various families. The names on the grave created by Memmia Munetia Maxima for her child Memmius Mounetius Maximianus at Salir, the village at the western edge of the colony’s territory which was the main meeting place of the religious association of the Xenoi Tekmoreioi, mark them as Roman citizens.754 A bomos at Antioch itself put up by Petronia Frontina for her husband Q. Appius Marcianus suggests the same social profile.755 Two fragmentary Christian texts also relate to Roman citizens, one mentioning a Septimia Severa,756 the other with names

751 Sterrett, Epigraphical Journey, 153–54 no. 138 (ICG 1324). 752 C. Wallner, in a presentation to the 15th International epigraphic Congress, Vienna 2017; Compare epitaphs from Iconium, ending ἐὰν δε τις ἐπισβιάσετε πάσχῃ πρὸς τοῦ ἐρχομένου κρίνειν ζῶντας καὶ [νέκρ]ους (ICG 312), Philomelium, δώσ|ει τῷ θεῷ λόγον |τῷ μέλλοντι κρεί|νειν ζῶ[ν]τας κὲ | νέκρους (IK 62 no. 95; ICG 625), and Thyateira, τὸν κρείνοντα ζῶντας καὶ νέκρους θεὸν κεχολώμενον ἔχοιτο (TAM V. 2, xxx), with commentary at I. Ankara 2, pp. 118–19; Robert, Hellenica XI/XII, 406. There is a 5th or 6th century example of a similar usage in a funerary inscription from Elaioussa-Sebaste (Cilicia), E. Equini Schneider (ed.), Elaiussa Sebaste III. L’agora romana (Istanbul, 2010), 160 no. 21 (Feissel, Bull. ép. 2011, 725): Ἐνθάδε κῖτε Ἰωάννης ὁ πιστὸς καὶ φιλόχριστος ὁ καὶ Καστρήσεις· ἔχει δὲ πρὸς τὸ κρίμα τοῦ Θεοῦ ὁ ἔξω[θ]εν τοῦ οἴκου αὐτοῦ ἐν α[ὐτ]ῷ ἀποτιθέμενος. See 154–5. 753 See 317 n. 747 and 322 n. 766. 754 Sterrett, Wolfe Expedition, 219 no. 353 (ICG 1317). 755 IK 67, 59–60 no. 113; SEG 56, 1697 (ICG 1348). 756 IK 67, 60 no. 115 (ICG 1350).

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that are beyond reconstruction.757 Only the burial of the husband of a woman called Philia has no visible hint of the Italian or Roman origins of Antioch’s colonists.758 All these texts can plausibly be dated to the middle years of the third century. One well-carved funerary altar from Antioch which identifies a family of Roman citizens from Prymnessus, L. Rupilius Theophilus the father and his two sons L. Rupilius Claudianus and L. Rupilius Bion, has been misconstrued as a Christian text and should be excluded from consideration (fig. 51). Both children died at a young age, ἀώροι,759 and Bion is described by the phrase Λ. Ῥου|πιλίου Βίωνος υἱοῦ πρεσ|βυτέρου τοῦ Θεοφίλου, However, the word order indicates that this simply means ‘elder son of Theophilus’ and does not identify him as a Christian priest,760 and the restoration of the Eumeneian formula twice in the epitaph and subsequently erased, is unconvincing and appears not to fit the traces on the stone. The reason for the erasures is obscure. The Eumeneian formula was also used by communities along the road which linked Antioch with Apollonia and Apamea. There is an example at Pise (ancient Pissia), a village on the territory of Tymandus, a town which, like Orcistus, aspired to civic independence around the beginning of the fourth century. The text reads: [τὶς] ἂν ὧδε θελήσε | [τινα] κοι[μ]ῆσε, ἔσθε | [αὐτῷ] πὸς τὸν θε|όν. The verb κοιμάω was characteristically Christian, and its use here was designed to deter Christian grave intruders.761 The only other certainly Christian gravestone recorded from Tymandus also used the term κοιμητήριον.762 A broken funerary monument found in the village of Büyükkabaca, between Tymandos and Hoyran Göl and close to Pise, set up by Babeis and Hermokrate for their parents, ends with the expression εἰς αἰῶνα εὐσεβίης ἕνεκα. In funerary 757 IK 67, 60 no. 114 (ICG 1349). 758 SEG VI 568 (ICG 1331). 759 ΙΚ 67, 58–59 no. 112 (SEG 56, 1697; ΙCG 1347); note the correction of Feissel, Bull. ép. 2006, 551. The inscription is now in Yalvaç Museum. 760 The published versions of the text read: Λ. Ῥουπίλιος Θεόφι|λος Πρυμνησσεὺς | Λ. Ῥουπιλίῳ Κλαυδι|ανῷ υἱῷ ἀώρῳ· | (5) [[εἰ δέ τις ἀδικήσει,| ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸ]]σι τὸν | [[Θεόν]]· | ὁ αὐτὸς [τάφος] καὶ Λ. Ῥου|πιλίου Βίωνος υἱοῦ πρεσ| (10) βυτέρου τοῦ Θεοφίλου | καὶ αὐτοῦ ἀ[δελφοῦ] ὃ[ς] ἂν̣ | κακουργήσῃ τὸν τάφ̣[ον | τ]ῶν ἀλλοτριοχώρων, ἔσ|[[ται αὐτῷ] πρ[ὸς τὸν Θεόν]. This should be corrected. Instead of ἀ[δελφοῦ] in line 11 read ἀ[ώρου]. Both the imprecations were largely erased in antiquity. The first was probably a pagan formula such as [[κατηράμενος ἔστω | ὅς ἂν κακουργή]]σι τὸν | [[βῶμον]], and the second might simply have read ἔσ[τω κατάρατος] vel. sim. 761 MAMA IV 264 (ICG 1141). For Tymandus and its status, see 30 n. 20. 762 Sterrett, Wolfe Expedition, 389 no. 564 (ICG 1140), set up by Artemon for his wife Aur. Iouliane. Artemon’s mother, Aur. Kyria, came from Banbula, a village near Μetropolis; see 459 n. 544.

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Figure 51 Antioch. Funerary altar set up by L. Rupilius Theophilus of Prymnessus. ICG 1347. Now in Yalvaç Museum Stephen Mitchell

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inscriptions of the imperial period this usage of the phrase εἰς αἰῶνα only occurs on Christian texts, and this could be a very early example.763 Apollonia, modern Uluborlu, was an important centre, which, like Blaundus, Eucarpia and Amorium, even claimed Alexander the Great as its founder, and the city prided itself on its multiple ethnic origins, including Lycians and Thracians.764 The settlement appears to have supplanted, but not suppressed a native Phrygian settlement called Mordiaion, and before the end of the fourth century had replaced its pagan theonym with the Christian Sozopolis. Many inscriptions have been recorded, in primis texts which relate to the creation of a major sanctuary of the imperial cult at the beginning of Tiberius’s reign, including the inscription of a Greek copy of the Res Gestae of Augustus.765 The only example of the Eumenian formula recorded at Apollonia had the extended wording which invoked the day of judgement: if anyone should lay evil hands on this place of burial (ἡρῶιον), (? erect) a building in the place, or do wrong by introducing an alien body (ἐξ ὑπο[βολ]ῆς ?), ἔστε αὺτοῖς πρὸς τὴν κρίσιν τὴν θεοῦ.766 The script, which combined rhomboid omikrons with cursive omegas, suits a third-century date, and this text should be roughly contemporary with another gravestone for a Christian priest, the presbyteros Aur. Peon son of Theophilos, who was buried with all his children by his wife Dadas, daughter of Auxanon and grand-daughter of Diogenes, witness it seems to another family tragedy.767 These two texts are more decisively identifiable as Christian than two other grave steles, where the only indication is the shape of a cross carved in the triangular pediment above the inscribed shaft. The gravestone put up for his father by Aur. Asclepiades, son of Alexander, grandson of Artemon, who could trace his ancestry back seven generations to a certain Olympichos, his wife Aur. Kosmia, with a heritage of four generations, and their daughter Aur. Artemonis, reveals the impressive tenacity and long family memories of Apollonia’s gentry, but the lopsided cross, which could be a simple rosette, in the pediment is not sufficient to show that these families had 763 G. Labarre et al., Nouvelles inscriptions sur le territoire d’Apollonia Mordiaion, Adalya 16 (2013), 1–14 at 2 no. 4, dated 2nd–3rd cent. AD (ICG 4502). 764 H. Bru, La Phrygie Parorée et la Pisidie septentrionale aux époques hellénistique et romaine (Leiden 2017), 38 ff. and G. Labarre et al., Colonisation et interculturalité en Pisidie et Phrygia Parorée, EA 48 (2015), 87–114, explore the ethnic complexity of the region in detail; on the Christian inscriptions, see McKechnie, Christianizing Asia Minor, 187–209. 765 MAMA IV 200 ff.; updated by G. Labarre et al., La collection du musée d’Uluborlu: nouvelles inscriptions d’Apollonia Mordiaion, Anatolia Antiqua 20 (2012), 121–46. 766 ΜΑΜΑ ΧΙ 17 (ΙCG 1441), see 317 n. 747 and 319 n. 753. 767 MAMA IV 220 (ICG 1134). Note that this text is an exception to the rule noted by Hübner, Klerus 57 and 79, that members of the clergy did not display the Aurelius name on their inscriptions.

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Figure 52 Apollonia (Uluborlu). Funerary stele set up by Aur. Asclepiades. ICG 1136. Stephen Mitchell

become Christian in the third century (fig. 52).768 Equally uncertain is another modest gravestone with a simple female bust on the shaft and a cross in a circle in the pediment, with the inscription Αὐξάνων καὶ | Αὐξάνουσα | Ἐλπίσζοντι | τέκνῳ μνή|μης χάριν. The optimistic names ‘Increasing’ and ‘Hoping’ were certainly used by Christians, but also commonplace among pagans in and beyond Roman Phrygia. There is no doubt, however, about the Christianity of Aur. Asclepiades son of Marcus and his wife Aur Domne, whose modest gravestone, set up during their lifetimes perhaps around 300, has three crosses cut in low relief in a line between the names of husband and wife.769 Another inscription, perhaps of the final quarter of the third century, documents seven generations of the family of Aur. Artemon on a funerary altar which he erected initially for his father Aur. Auxanon, a city counsellor, and mother, Aur. Domne, and subsequently for his grandfather Aur. Auxanon Zoulakios, 768 MAMA IV 222, accepted as Christian at MAMA X, xxxviii (ICG 1136); claimed as Christian and dated to soon after 214 by P. Mckechnie, Apollonia, an early testimony for Christianity in Asia Minor, Epigraphica Anatolica 41 (2008), 141–6, who restates his argument in Christianizing Asia Minor, 191–5 against C. P. Jones, EA 42 (2009), 143–4. For rosettes that look like crosses, compare the examples from Ancyra Sidera and Synaos, above pp. 197–8. 769 MAMA IV 224 (ICG 1138): Αὐρ. Ἀσκλ[η]|πιάδης Μάρ(κου) |☩ ☩ ☩ |καὶ Αὐρ. |Δόμνα | ἡ γαμετὴ | αὐ ζο̑ντε | ἑαυτοῖς | [ἐ]ξ ε[ἰδίων(?)]

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another city counsellor, who must have outlived his son.770 The family relationships are complex. Aur. Artemon was son of Aur. Auxanon, grandson of Aur Auxanon Zoulakios, great grandson of Auxanon, and great-great-grandson of Dometios. He was married twice, with the consequence that his two sons (called Zotikos and Auxanon), his grandson (called Aur. Artemon), and his second wife, Aur. Ammia of Nanita, daughter of Bradon, joined him in the subsequent burial of Aur. Auxanon Zoulakios (who had been married to Aur. Domne (1), daughter of Heuremon, grand-daughter of Licinius, and of Aur. Domne (2), Aur. Artemon’s first wife (τῇ γυνακὶ αὐτοῦ τῇ πρώτῃ, presumably the mother of the two sons). She was described as Αὐρ. Δόμνη Δούλου Διογένου Χρηστιανοῦ. Ηer father was called Doulos and her grandfather Diogenes, identified as a Christian. Doulos, ‘Slave’, is not rare as a male name in this region,771 and should be accepted here, however surprising it may appear in the context of an Apollonian family with such extended genealogical ramifications. Aur. Artemon was old enough to have a living grandchild with the same name, and had a father and grandfather who were also both Aurelii. This implies that the inscription was carved in the late third century at the earliest. Perhaps he and his wife Aur. Domne had been born in the 230s. Domne’s Christian grandfather, Diogenes, could have been born around 170, and if so his conversion is likely to have dated near to the end of the second century. McKechnie rightly emphasizes that he must have been a remarkable Christian personality, for his confessional belief to be signalled in this unusual way around a hundred years later. Perhaps this signalled that he was the first family member to have adopted the religion, or that he did so in a context that was unusual for the time and place, perhaps as a city counsellor like Aur Auxanon Zoulakios and his son Aur. Auxanon in the following generations. The formulation of the inscription itself does not make it clear whether his Christianity distinguished him from the rest of his kin, or whether other family members shared this confession. The latter possibility seems more likely, and would suggest that they were proud of the pioneering status of their forebear. However, the extreme frequency of the name Diogenes among pagans and Christians in the second and third centuries, and the lack of coroboratory indications make it difficult to accept McKechnie’s conjecture that he was identical with another pioneering Phrygian Christian, bishop Diogas of Temenothyrae.772 770 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 537; MAMA IV 221; Gibson, Chr. for Chr.s 131–3 no. 44; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. 229–35 no. 34; (ICG 1135). 771 MAMA IV 221, 263; G. Labarre et al., Nouvelles inscriptions et monuments de la vallée d’Apollonia (Phrygie-Pisidie), Adalya 14 (2011), 279–80 no. 17. 772 P. Mckechnie, Diogenes the Christian, New Docs 10 (2009), 159–63; and Christianizing Asia Minor, 204–9.

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Another family gravestone of about the same date is likely to be Christian: [μ]νήμης χάριν το[ῦ | μ]ακαρίου καὶ θεο|[τ]ιμήτου Νικηφόρ|ου δʹ κὲ τῆς σεμν|οτάτης γυνεκὸς | αὐτοῦ Δόμνης Αὐ|ξεντίου.773 The letter delta after the husband’s name indicates that he was the fourth family member in direct line of descent to bear the name Nikephoros and should not be interpreted as a drastic abbreviation of δ(ιάκονος) as suggested by the MAMA editors,774 but the adjective theotimetos, which adapted terminology that was used by the pagan religious specialists of the region, occurs occasionally in early Christian Phrygia. It was used when referring to the unexplained deaths of the five children of Aur. Alexandros in the Phrygian Pentapolis around the mid-third century, θεοτιμητὰ ἐν εἰρήνῃ,775 and the pious Christian Akakios in the Upper Tembris Valley around or soon after 300.776 Makarios was almost exclusively used by Christians, and although most of the examples in funerary epigraphy are much later than the Apollonia text, this early use is paralleled by the remarkable third-century gravestone for the Christian priest Philtatos, buried at Dorla in the Çarsamba valley of southern Lycaonia, ὁ μακάριος παπᾶς.777 Nikephoros, descended from a family proud to retain this name in an unbroken male descent, thus emerges with his most respected wife, not simply as a member of the Christian community but as one of its outstanding members and representatives. The text does not explain who was responsible for the burial. It is possible that the inscription for the devout couple was erected by the collective Christian community. The heterogeneous evidence from Apollonia leaves no doubt about the presence of this brotherhood in the third century, including members of local families which had been at the heart of the city for several generations. Like the indications among the Roman citizen population of Pisidian Antioch, these inscriptions are sufficient to show that there was an appreciable and doubtless influential Christian population in Apollonia during the third century.

773 MAMA IV 223 (ICG 1137). 774 Hübner, Klerus, 52 adopts the suggestion that Nikephoros was a deacon, but the use of numerals to indicate generations and repeated name use in the same family is a feature of the epigraphy of Apollonia, already illustrated by Ἀλεξανδρος δ´ and Ἀσκληπιάδης β´ in ICG 1136, as well as the stemma of Artemon and Auxanon, ICG 1135; see also Sterrett, Wolfe Expedition, 555. 775 ICG 1599; see 105 n. 60. 776 See 247–50. 777 ICG 811.

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Overview

Before moving to review Phrygian Christianity in the post-Constantinian period, a short summary of the most important information presented by the epigraphic evidence from the region in the long third century is obviously essential. 1. The inscriptions, all funerary, contain dozens of micro-histories, relating to families that were, or had become Christian. Only a handful can be directly linked with one another: Abercius and his follower Alexander in the Pentapolis (ICG 1597 and 1598), Gaius the lawyer and the angel of Rubes, invoked by Aur. Zotikus (ICG 1031 and 1028); the adjacent gravestones in a cemetery near Apamea of the Christian Aur. Proklos (ICG 974) and his probably pagan father (MAMA VI 192); the early fourth century Tembris Valley verse epitaphs of Trophimos and Eliane (ICG 1159) and of their grandson Trophimos son of Anteros (ICG 1977); and the entangled family networks of Aur Menandros son of Karikos (ICG 1192) and Aur. Trophimos son of Eutyches (ICG 1689). 2. The inscriptions can be assembled in distinctive homogeneous groups coming from the same town or rural region, and sometimes clearly attributable to the same production workshop. This indispensable contextual information makes it possible to assess the characteristics of, formulate hypotheses, and draw conclusions about groups of texts with more certainty than when dealing with individual inscriptions or monuments in isolation. 3. The earliest Phrygian Christian inscriptions should be dated between c.180 and 200. They include the epitaph of bishop Artemidorus at Temenothyrae (ICG 1371), the famous verse epitaph of Abercius from the Pentapolis (1597), and, less certainly, the verses at Apamea for Apphia, Menekles and their children (ICG 1122). The remarkable depiction of the story of Noah’s Ark on coins of Apamea beginning around 200 confirms the influence of the Christian community there at that date. Funerary inscriptions from a village near Cadi, dated to 179/80 (ICG 1224) and from Zemme in the upper Tembris Valley, probably dating to the 170s (ICG 1195), are unlikely to be Christian. The occupants of another gravestone from near Cadi which has been dated on stylistic grounds to 150–60 were subsequently identified as Christians by an addition to the inscription, and the absence of human figures from the elaborate decoration is another indication of Christianity. This appears accordingly to be a Christian burial from the middle of the second century, but it was not marked as such until a later date (ICG 1225).

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4.

5.

6.

7.

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‘Coming out’ as Christian was a phenomenon that began around 200, but it took two further generations before Christian funerary texts became frequent. Most of the dated examples of the most widespread marker, the Eumeneian formula, occurred between 240 and 260, and it was certainly used in the 270s and 280s, but not demonstrably later. The earliest dated Christian text from the Upper Tembris Valley is from 248. Christian communities did not make themselves visible in all parts of pre-Constantinian Phrygia. By the mid-third century there were many Christian families at Apamea, Eumeneia and in the Phrygian Pentapolis, and substantial communities in the central and western regions including Temenothyrae and Sebaste. The important city of Acmonia, where Italian immigrant families had long been the dominant local population, contained an almost inextricable mixture of Christians, Jews and worshippers of Theos Hypsistos in the third century. In the Upper Tembris Valley, Christians probably outnumbered non-Christians by the end of the third century. The picture is less clear cut in Docimium, Prymnessus and Synnada in the Akar Çay basin close to Afyon, and in the regional metropolis of Synnada, but Christians were numerous in Philomelium, Antioch and Apollonia, the cities of Phrygia Paroreius. By contrast there was almost no sign of Christianity before 300 in Aezani and the small cities of north-west Phrygia, or in Cotiaeum, Dorylaeum, and Nacolea. All the Phrygian Christian groups appear to have formed close-knit and mutually supportive communities, or brotherhoods. Aberkios addressed the Christian brotherhood of the Pentapolis in his funerary inscription as συνόμαιμοι, using poetic language in place of the terms ἀδελφός (eg ICG 1366) or occasionally the collective ἀδελφότης, which appear in prose texts. There is very little evidence for churches or other physical places of worship, but the Christians for Christians inscriptions of the Upper Tembris Valley betςeen c.250 and 320, and texts from other parts of Phrygia show the active engagement of Christian communities at funerals (ICG 1192 is a notable case). Group membership transcended the boundaries of individual villages, and Christianity was an identity marker that went beyond the ties of kinship and family. It was not uncommon for a tomb to include another member of the Christian brethren or sorority alongside family members and close kin. There is much less evidence from Phrygia than from Lycaonia for an organised clerical hierarchy before Constantine, and fewer texts for bishops, deacons or priests. Auxiliary clerical offices, such as readers (anagnostai), rural bishops (chorepiskopoi), canons (kanonikoi) or dedicated virgins (parthenoi), are unknown at this period.

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There is little evidence in the inscriptions for the nature of Christian beliefs or for ritual activity. It is evident from many references to ζῶντες, ‘the living’, to the role of God as judge, κρίτης, and less frequent allusions to resurrection, ἀνάστασις (ICG 1028, 1379) and to eternity, αἰώνιος, εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα (ICG 1174), that Christians believed that if their earthly existence was just and righteous, they would be rewarded with a blessed afterlife. 9. Biblical allusions and citations are virtually unknown. In their epitaphs, Abercius was inspired by the example of the Paul (ICG 1597) and his follower Eutropius may have recalled Psalm 119 (ICG 1445). Whereas the name Paulos (and Paula) seem to have been widely adopted at an early date in Lycaonia, they appear only rarely in pre-Constantinian Phrygia, suggesting that influence of the apostle, and his writings, was less strong in Phrygia than in the cities and regions covered by his missionary journeys. The coherence of Christianity as a moral and religious system was more important than the dissemination of specific knowledge about Christianity and Christian texts in appealing to and winning converts among the Phrygian population. 10. Christians in Phrygia almost always chose not to depict themselves or other human figures on their gravestones, despite the strong regional sculptural traditions in the third century. The Christian gravestones of the Upper Tembris Valley were rigorously aniconic, the result of a deliberate choice to distance themselves from the funerary portraiture which was strongly favoured for upper-class pagan burials. There are rare exceptions to this pattern in other parts of Phrygia at Apamea (ICG 966), and in the region of Afyon and Docimium (ICG 1087, ICG 1362, SEG 47, 1754). 11. A few distinctive personal names were introduced and were used exclusively by Christians in this period. The commonest of these were Kyriakos/ Kyriake, derived from the Lord’s day, by analogy with the Greek-Jewish name Sabbatios, which evoked the Sabbath, and Theodoulos/Theodoule. Other rarer Christian names, never used by pagans, included Agapomenos, Akakios and probably Panchares. Eustathes occurs as a Christian sobriquet, anticipating the very widespread Eustathios in later centuries, but the distinctive onomastic repertoire of the fourth to sixth centuries, which was dominated by names such as Anastasios/Anastasia, numerous Theo-compounds, and Biblical names, had yet to appear. 12. The epigraphic evidence suggests that second half of the third century was an important period of religious innovation. Dedications and votives to divinities from the traditional Greek or Phrygian pantheon are hardly recorded after 250. Sanctuaries of Theos Hypsistos and of Hosios and Dikaios, the Phrygian Gods of Justice and Righteousness, remained active, and new cults and forms of worship for syncretic divinities appear in this period, apparently developed by priests or other religious specialists.

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13. Phrygia’s pagan population had well developed notions of the after-life of the soul, which were articulated in many inscriptions and sometimes displayed in funerary iconography. In northern Phrygia, these beliefs were associated with the cult of Zeus Bronton Chthonic gods and goddesses, including Attis, Hekate, Herakles and Cerberus, and Hermes, appear on votive reliefs and evoke the passage of mortals from life to after-life and immortality. Christian belief in eternal life and the resurrection of the righteous should be appreciated against this background. 14. There is little evidence in the inscriptions for religious conflict, persecution or martyrdom. Eusebius mentioned a handful of Phrygian martyrs in the 180s (see chapter 1) and has the unverifiable account of the Christian inhabitants of small Phrygian town burnt to death during the Great Persecution,778 but the only epigraphic example of a martyr is the remarkable ossuary of Trophimus (ICG 1378), apparently accurately dated by the passio Trophimi to the reign of Probus (276–82). The inscription of Aur. Epitynchanos (ICG 1007; see chapter 4.10) n. 19) from around 313/4 mentioned the high-priestess Spatale, ‘who rescued many from evil tortures’. If the context is one of pagan-Christian conflict, then Christians were the perpetrators not the victims of this. As far as we can judge, Christians and pagans, although clearly distinguished from one another by their religion, shared the same way of life, were involved in the same professions: principally farming, and had similar cultural aspirations. 15. Christians were drawn from all levels of Phrygian society. They included wealthy and cultivated Roman citizens of Italian origin, like Abercius, or Eutropius whose family had contacts with Roman senators, members of city councils and other local notables at Apollonia and Eumeneia,779 the cultivated Eumeneian lawyer Gaius (ICG 1028), the factor of the Asiarch Aelius Trypho at Apamea (ICG 960), and families of similar wealth and status at Temenothyrae (chapter 4.6) nn. 35–45). Bishop Valens at Apamea, the cobbler (ICG 972), or Aurelius Eutyches, called Helix of Eumeneia, the wrestler turned blacksmith, had a humble professional standing (ICG 1050). Wealthy Christian farmers were magistrates and community leaders in the small towns of the Upper Tembris Valley (ICG 1265, ICG 1270, ICG 1977). Of the rest, it can be said that they were wealthy enough to commission grave monuments and most of them were farmers.

778 See 431–2. 779 See 131–3; P. McKechnie, Christian councillors in the Roman Empire before Constantine, Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion 5 (2009), 1–20.

Maps 1 Western Turkey, ancient Phrygia 2 Western Phrygia (Ancient World Mapping Centre) 3 Eastern Phrygia (Ancient World Mapping Centre) 4 Northern Phrygia 1. Ancyra Sidera and Tiberiopolis 5 Northern Phrygia 2. Aezani and Cotiaeum 6 Northern Phrygia 3. Dorylaeum, Nacolea and Meirus 7 Northern Phrygia 4. Orcistus and Pessinus 8 Central Phrygia 1. Synaus, Cadi and Temenothyrae 9 Central Phrygia 2. The Aezanitis, the Upper Tembris Valley and Acmonia 10 Central Phrygia 3. The Upper Tembris Valley, the Phrygian Highlands, Akroinos and Synnada 11 Central Phrygia 4. Amorium 12 Southern Phrygia 1. Temenothyrae, Sebaste, Motella, Eumeneia and Choma 13 Southern Phrygia 2. Dioclea, the Phrygian Pentapolis, and Apamea 14 Southern Phrygia 3. Synnada, Metropolis, and Apollonia/Sozopolis 15 Southern Phrygia 4. Antiochia and Philomelium

© Stephen Mitchell, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004546387_006

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Western Turkey, ancient Phrygia

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Western Phrygia (Ancient World Mapping Centre)

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Eastern Phrygia (Ancient World Mapping Centre)

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Northern Phrygia 1. Ancyra Sidera and Tiberiopolis

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Map 5

Northern Phrygia 2. Aezani and Cotiaeum

336

Map 6

Maps

Northern Phrygia 3. Dorylaeum, Nacolea and Meirus

337

Maps

Map 7

Northern Phrygia 4. Orcistus and Pessinus

338

Map 8

Maps

Central Phrygia 1. Synaus, Cadi and Temenothyrae

339

Maps

Map 9

Central Phrygia 2. The Aezanitis, the Upper Tembris Valley and Acmonia

340

Map 10

Maps

Central Phrygia 3. The Upper Tembris Valley, the Phrygian Highlands, Akroinos and Synnada

341

Maps

Map 11

Central Phrygia 4. Amorium

342

Map 12

Maps

Southern Phrygia 1. Temenothyrae, Sebaste, Motella, Eumeneia and Choma

343

Maps

Map 13

Southern Phrygia 2. Dioclea, the Phrygian Pentapolis, and Apamea

344

Map 14

Maps

Southern Phrygia 3. Synnada, Metropolis, and Apollonia/Sozopolis

345

Maps

Map 15

Southern Phrygia 4. Antiochia and Philomelium

Chapter 5

Established Christianity from the Fourth to the Eleventh Century 5.1 Ekklesia The previous chapter dealt almost entirely with the evidence of inscribed gravestones, which provide information about individuals and families in most but not all parts of Phrygia during the long third century, and confirm the existence of Christian communities, which came together for worship and mutual support, notably at funerals. The anti-Christian edict of Valerian in 257 explicitly targeted normal Christian practice by outlawing their assemblies and gatherings in cemeteries: οὐδαμῶς δὲ ἐξέσται ούτε ὑμῖν ούτε ἄλλοις τισὶν ἢ συνόδους ποιεῖσθαι ἢ τὰ καλούμενα κοιμητήρια εἰσιέναι, and a similar measure formed part of Maximinus’s anti-Christian legislation in 312.1 Τhe funerary inscriptions collected in the previous chapter have provided numerous examples to demonstrate that cemeteries were a focal point of Christian activity, where the entire community joined the family members at burials to commemorate their dead. They provide little evidence for church officials or the existence of a formal ecclesiastical hierarchy, but these regional community gatherings were certainly compatible with the term σύνοδος used in Valerian’s and Maximian’s edicts, or the normal Greek word for an assembly, ekklesia, used in the letter of Polycarp sent to the Christians of Philomelium and its villages in the mid-third century, and one which was regularly used in Acts and the Pauline letters to describe groups of assembled Christians. In the fourth and fifth century, the emphasis shifted from Christian burials to Christian buildings and Christian ritual. Alongside inscribed gravestones, which were less frequent than they had been in the third century, other types of inscriptions now identified the vows and prayers of worshippers and were engraved on the columns and decorative features of Christian churches or chapels, or embedded in mosaic floors. It is also possible to recognise these 1 Eusebius, HE VII.11.10 (relating to Egypt); cf [Cyprian] Acta Proconsularia 1: praeceperunt etiam, ne in aliquibus locis conciliabula fiant nec coemeteria ingrediantur. The ruling was rescinded by Gallienus, HE VII.13.1, who restored κοιμητήρια to Chrιstian ownership, but revived by Maximinus, Eusebius, HE IX.2.1: πρῶτον μὲν εἴργειν ἡμᾶς τῆς ἐν τοῖς κοιμητηρίοις συνόδου διὰ προφάσεως πειρᾶται.

© Stephen Mitchell, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004546387_007

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buildings archaeologically through their material remains. The first evidence for these, discussed in the previous chapter, can be tentatively dated to the late third or to the beginning of the fourth century.2 Although whole structures from late antiquity are rarely preserved, even in ruined form, a repertoire of architectural ecclesiastical sculpture and surviving fragments of decoration are sufficient to indicate the presence of the churches to which they belonged. Christianity in this period thus became recognisable as a built landscape, and the term ekklesia acquired its full material sense, describing a physical church, not only a Christian community. The evidence collected in this chapter traces the emergence of Christianity not only as the prevailing religion, but also as the dominant cultural force in Phrygia between the later fourth and sixth centuries, and beyond into the Middle Byzantine period. It includes archaeological as well as epigraphic evidence, relating to church building as well as burials. There remain obstinate problems in dealing with chronology, which are even more intractable than those encountered in the classification of third-century inscriptions. 5.2

Early Church Building in Central Anatolia

There is very scanty archaeological evidence for specialised buildings designed for Christian worship In Asia Minor before 300. Many Phrygian Christians probably worshipped under conditions which corresponded with the observations of the younger Pliny in the eastern part of the province Pontus and Bithynia, which he reported to the emperor Trajan around 110. Christians would meet at first light on a fixed day, sing a hymn to Christ and swear an oath not to commit any wrong-doing, including theft and adultery, and to keep their promises and undertakings. Later in the day they would meet again for a shared meal.3 Gathering for prayers in an open space at dawn was a practice that these Bithynian or Pontic Christians had in common with the worshippers of Theos Hypsistos in the third century, as prescribed in the famous Apolline

2 See 191–2 and 261–2. 3 Pliny ep. X.96. Affirmabant autem hanc fuisse summam vel culpae suae vel erroris, quod essent soliti stato die ante lucem convenire, carmenque Christo quasi deo dicere secum invicem seque sacramento non in scelus aliquod obstringere, sed ne furta ne latrocinia ne adulteria committerent, ne fidem fallerent, ne depositum appellati abnegarent. Quibus peractis morem sibi discedendi fuisse rursusque coeundi ad capiendum cibum, promiscuum tamen et innoxium.

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oracle text inscribed at Oinoanda, and described in some detail by Epiphanius in the later fourth century.4 Many passages in Acts, Paul’s letters and other early sources show that Christians met in the houses of leading members of their communities.5 Some churches, structures exclusively designed for Christian worship may have been built in the course of the period between Pliny’s letter to Trajan and the end of the third century, but they are archaeologically almost invisible,6 and their existence has largely been inferred indirectly from institutional developments, such as the emergence in the second and third centuries of organised Christian communities comprising priests and other clergy under the oversight of bishop. This too was not a uniform process. In Phrygia, bishops and presbyters are attested before the end of the second century in Hierapolis and Temenothyrae, and by the middle of the third century in Apamea and Eumeneia, but were inconspicuous in other regions, including the Upper Tembris Valley, where signs of a clerical hierarchy were overshadowed by the prominence of the collective Christian brotherhoods. One important indication that there was church building in Asia Minor before the end of the third century is Lactantius’s report that one of the first acts of the Great Persecution in 303 was for military officers and officials, led by the praetorian prefect, to tear down the door to the church, make for the altar and burn the scriptures. The church is said to have stood on an elevation in full view of the imperial palace in a quarter crowded with other structures. Diocletian accordingly gave orders that the soldiers of the guard should raze the building to the ground, not set it on fire and risk a city conflagration.7 4 S. Mitchell, The cult of Theos Hypsistos, 81–94; Epiphanius, Pan. 80.1–2. Other evidence for liturgical practice resembling that described by Pliny, R. Merkelbach, Der Eid der bithynischen Christan, ZPE 21 (1976), 73. 5 H. Leppin, Die frühen Christen von den Anfängen bis Constantin (Munich 2018), 122–33 is a balanced general appraisal. S. Heid, Gab es Hauskirchen? Anmerkungen zu einem Phantom, Studia Teologiczno-Historyczne Śląska Opolskiego 38 (2018), 13–48, argues that there is no formal evidence for house churches or that domestic Christian gatherings and prayer meetings took place on consecrated ground, however that term should be understood. Compare the approach of M. F. Baslez, L’Église à la maison. Histoire des premières communautés chrétiennes (1e–IIIe siècles) (Paris 2021), who interprets the terminology of the house church from the perspective of a domestic community, rather than domestic structures. 6 L. M. White, Building God’s House (1990). 7 Lactantius, de mortibus persecutorum 12: Qui dies cum illuxisset agentibus consulatum senibus ambobus octavum et septimum, repente adhuc dubia luce ad ecclesiam praefectus cum ducibus et tribunis et rationalibus venit et revulsis foribus simulacrum dei quaeritur, scripturae repertae incenduntur, datur omnibus praeda, rapitur, trepidatur, discurritur. Ipsi vero in speculis--in alto enim constituta ecclesia ex palatio videbatur--diu inter se concertabant, utrum ignem potius supponi oporteret. Vicit sententia Diocletianus cavens, ne magno incendio facto pars aliqua

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Of course, Nicomedia would not have been the only place where a church was built, and it was one of the provisions of the first edict of persecution that churches should be demolished everywhere.8 Epigraphic and archaeological exploration has yielded slight but significant indications that other Christian buildings existed in this period. The earliest Phrygian church yet recorded seems to be the ‘eight columns’, constructed, perhaps close to the turn of the fourth century, by Aur. Zotikos, a Roman veteran who had retired to a rural location near Dioclea east of Acmonia.9 At the same period wealthy local people in the Tembris Valley, probably including a magistrate from the town of Soa, may have been responsible for another church of similar design, and it was suggested on palaeographical grounds that the text οἶκος θεοῦ carved on a column found at Çukurca, in a western side valley of the Upper Tembris, might date to the third century, but these indications are far from conclusive. No other ecclesiastical buildings of such an early date have been noted elsewhere by excavations in Phrygia.10 The religious and political reformation of Constantine’s own thirty-year reign from 306 to 337, including the dozen years of sole rulership after 325, was not matched by dynamic economic development in the eastern parts of the empire and apart from the foundation of the new capital at Constantinople, inaugurated in 330, there was little building activity in provincial cities, either secular or religious.11 Constantinian church building, supported by imperial sponsorship, was focussed in the imperial centres of Rome and Constantinople, or in places of overwhelming religious significance, and these imperial foundations mostly dated to the period of his sole rule between 325 and 337.12 The Golden Church at Antioch, begun in 327, was not consecrated until the Encaenia Council of 342. The same period saw the construction of the Church of the Apostles at Constantinople, the Church of St Peter at Rome, the Church

vivitatis arderet. Nam multae ac magnae domus ab omni parte cingebant. Veniebant igitur praetoriani acie structa cum securibus et aliis ferramentis et immissi undique fanum illud editissimum paucis horis solo adaequarunt. 8 Eusebius, HE 8.2.4. 9 See 191–2. 10 ΜΑΜΑ Χ 254 (ICG 1202); cf. 261–2. 11 S. Mitchell, The cities of Asia Minor in the age of Constantine, in S. Lieu / D. Montserrat (eds), Constantine. History, historiography and legend (1998), 52–73. 12 R. Klein, Das Kirchenbauverständnis Constantins des Grossens in Rom und in den östlichen Provinzen, in Das Antike Rom und der Osten. Festchrift K. Parlasca (Erlangen 1990), 77–101.

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of the Holy Sepulchre at Bethlehem, and perhaps the first Church of John the Baptist at Ephesus.13 Provincial Church leaders were doubtless inspired to emulate the imperial example, but evidence from Asia Minor is sparse. One church that was constructed around 340 was the ecclesiastical complex at Laodicea Catacecaumene, erected on the initiative and largely at the cost of M. Iulius Eugenius, whose tenure as Laodicea’s bishop extended over twenty-five years from around 315–340.14 This initiative has aptly been compared with the slightly earlier construction of the new Church at Tyre by its bishop Paulinus, commemorated in a lengthy panegyric by Eusebius.15 The excavations at Laodicea on the Lycus, metropolis of Phrygia, have produced important examples of church building in late antiquity, but the chronology of these structures remains frustratingly imprecise. A modest apsidal chapel was inserted unobtrusively into the agora in front of Temple A, which had served as a sanctuary of the imperial cult, the political focal point of Laodicea,16 and has been dated, according to the excavators, by a coin of 328–30, found directly beneath the floor. This structure gave Christianity a critical symbolic presence in a location that must have been the political centre of this major city, but it could never have served the liturgical needs of even a small Christian community.17 Two other churches have been found in central locations at Laodicea and fully excavated. Perhaps the earlier of these was the so-called Central Church, an almost square structure divided into three broad aisles with a shallow apse at the east side, and a narthex, close to the central political agora. Coins minted for emperors from Licinius to Honorius are evidence that the church was in use during the fourth century, but none is from a 13 D. Feissel, L’épigraphie d’Orient, témoin des mutations de l’empire constantinien, in XVI Congressus internationalis archaeologiae christianae (Romae 22–28.9.2013): Costantino e i costantinidi, l’innovazione costantiniana, le sue radici e i suoi sviluppi. Pars II (2016), 1221–35; S. Mitchell, Constantine, Fl. Constantius praet. praef. and the building of the Great Church at Antioch, ZPE 210 (2019), 180–4. 14 MAMA I 170 (ICG 371). There is an extensive bibliography on Eugenius and his career, based exclusively on the evidence of this inscription. 15 Eusebius, HE 10.4. Christine Smith, Christian rhetoric in Eusebius’ Panegyric at Tyre, Vig. Christ. 43 (1989), 226–47. 16 F. Guizzi, The inscriptions of temple A from Laodikeia: new evidence from the age of Diocletian to the age of Constantine, in C. Şimşek and T. Kaçar (eds), The Lykos Valley and Neighbourhood in Late Antiquity (Istanbul 2018), 201–15. 17 U. Huttner, Christianisierungsprozesse im Spätantiken Phrygien, in W. Ameling (ed.), Die Christiansierung Kleinasiens in der Spätantike (Bonn 2017), 154–5; good pictures in F. Bayram, Laodikeia’da Hiristiyanlık ve Kiliseler, in C. Şimşek and T. Kaçar (eds), The Lykos Valley and Neighbourhood in Late Antiquity (Istanbul 2018), 127–37 figs. 6–7.

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foundation context.18 The argument for an early date is plausible, but rests on the building’s simple ground plan, which was shoe-horned into a square insula block, and thus does not have the elongated basilica form of many fourth- or early fifth-century churches.19 Based on its location, it is tempting to speculate that this structure was the counterpart of the church at Nicomedia that was demolished in 303 by Diocletian’s praetorian troops. The excavators at Laodicea have also proposed a fourth-century, even Constantinian, date for the basilica, which was built alongside but on a different orientation from Temple A and the political agora. This very large building evidently fulfilled the role of the city’s cathedral church at least until the sixth century. Coin finds again are said to support a fourth-century date for the original church, although it was evidently modified in the following centuries, but a firm foundation date remains elusive.20 It is tempting to link the consecration of the church to the fourth-century Church Council held at Laodicea, but the date of this, with suggestions ranging from c.340 to c.380, is also uncertain. Other indications of church construction before 340 should not be excluded, but are unverifiable and derived from unreliable, although not necessarily erroneous sources.21 Signs of a new Christian built environment in the interior of Asia Minor occur first from around 350. An extra-mural church excavated at Sardis, the metropolis of Lydia, has been dated by coin finds to the 350s.22 Ancyra, capital city of Galatia, witnessed the inauguration of a new church at the council organised there in 358 by its bishop Basil. The reference

18 C. Şimşek and F. Bayram, Merkez kilise ve çevresindeki yapı kalıntıları, 10. Yılında Laodikeia. Laodikeia Çalışmaları 3 (Istanbul 2014), 283–302; C. Şimşek, 2010 yılı Laodikeia kazıları, Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı 33.4 (2011), 569–601 at 576–84. 19 Niewöhner, Church building in Anatolia, 299. 20 C. Şimşek, The Church of Laodicea. Christianity in the Lykos Valley (Denizli 2015), 84 has published a chart of the coin finds (10 from the 3rd; 117 from the 4th, 168 from the 5th and 37 from the 6th century), and claims that there is dating evidence for the first of two phases in the first quarter of the fourth century, but stratigraphic and locational evidence for the coin finds has not been published to support this suggestion. 21 P. Niewöhner, Church building in Anatolia during the reign of Constantine and his dynasty, in Acta XVI Congressus Internationalis Archeologiae Christianae, Constantino e I Constantinidi. L’innovazione constantiniana, le sue radici, e il suo sviluppo (Vatican 2016), 295–308 cites possible evidence for early-fourth-century churches at Lampsacus, Cyzicus, Nazianzus, Tarsus and Ancyra. The hagiographic sources often mention churches, martyria and other structures, but the value of this information is very variable. 22 Niewöhner, Church building in Anatolia, 298; H. Buchwald, Churches EA and A at Sardis (Harvard University Press 2015), 1–28, 57–60. Buchwald uses the coin finds to suggest the construction of Church EA around 350 and refers to it as one of the earliest dateable churches in western Asia Minor (p. 26).

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to this event implies that the church had a precursor.23 The large church at Pisidian Antioch excavated in the 1920s, produced a mosaic inscription set up by bishop Optimus, attributable to the 370s.24 Until recently, this appeared to be the earliest firmly dated church in late Roman Asia Minor. One central Anatolian church, indirectly dated by mosaic inscriptions, provides a useful bench mark against which to assess the situation in Phrygia. An almost rectangular church building was excavated around 2010 at Fındos, the ancient town of Bindaios in northern Pisidia, between Isparta and Eğirdir. This had a mosaic floor which incorporated bird and animal motifs into a largely abstract design and contained several inscribed panels. One of these identified three Pamphylian craftsmen, Il(l)us, E(l)pidius and Agapius, while others recorded the burial of a couple, Diocles and Eugenia, who had doubtless helped to finance the church’s construction, vows made by a comes Helladius on behalf of his like-named son, Helladius neos, and a prayer for the fortune and safety of Gaius, another comes, and for the family of Berytas, a dignitary from the Pisidian metropolis Sagalassus. Helladius may be identical with a comes on the staff of Valens’ praetorian prefect Modestus, who received two letters from Basil of Caesareia in 372 requesting favours for two of his protégés. If the identification is correct, the mosaic inscriptions, which imply that Helladius contributed to the construction costs of the building, should date to the 370s. He may have been of local origin. Several other pieces of white marble wall cladding with fragmentary texts recording prayers and vows of worshippers were found in the building.25 Another church of unusual design and perhaps a similar date has been reported at the site of Pappa-Tiberiopolis, in the borderland between Pisidia and Lycaonia. It had a single nave with an apse, a narthex, a 4-columned atrium, and a room identified as a kitchen, with two mosaic inscriptions in the nave, one reading ΚΟΝΩΝΝΜΑΡΙ, the other, in three lines, Αὔξι κόμ(ης) Λεόντι | Αὔξι κομή(τισσα) (?) Σιδονία | Αὔξι κόμ(ης) Κόνων.26 23 Sozomen HE 4.13. 24 ICG 1332, 1333, 1334. S. Mitchell / M. Waelkens, Pisidian Antioch. The site and its monuments (Swansea 1998), 213; M. Taşlıalan, Excavations at the church of St Paul, in T. Drew-Bear, M. Taşlıalan, and C. Thomas (eds), Actes du Ie colloque sur Antioche de Pisidie (2002), 9–32; see 443–4. 25 M. Akaslan, D. Demirci, Ö. Perçin and G. Labarre, L’église paléochrétienne de Bindeos (Pisidie), Anatolia Antiqua 23 (2015), 151–78. 26 Y. Benli / S. Gürdal, Yunuslar (Pappa antik kenti) 2015 ve 2016 yılı kazı çalışmaları, 26. Müze Kurtarma Kazıları Sempοzyomu (Ankara 2017), 417–38; for another possibly early mention of a comes responsible for church building in the Upper Tembris Valley, see ICG 4526 and 261 n. 551.

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The inscriptions from Laodicea Catacecaumene and Bindaios provide valuable information about the financing and oversight of church construction. Bishop Eugenios at Laodicea Catacecaumene was a social as well as an ecclesiastical grandee. His wife was the daughter of a Roman senator, and his position in society had been consolidated by twenty-five years at the head of the local Church hierarchy. The church that he had built entirely at his own expense was an exemplar of the most advanced Christian design, a sanctuary enhanced by stoas, a tetrastoon (probably the atrium), decorated with wall paintings and mosaics, a fountain house, and an imposing doorway adorned with marble décor. This was his proudest achievement, and his sarcophagus occupied a place of honour, an adornment of the church community and of his family: πᾶσαν τὴν ἐκλησίαν | ἀνοικοδο[μ]ήσας ἀπὸ θεμελίων καὶ σύνπαντα τὸν περὶ αὐτὴν | κόσμον τοῦτ’ ἐστιν στοῶν τε καὶ τ[ετ]ραστόων καὶ | ζωγραφιῶ̣[ν] καὶ κεντήσεων κὲ ὑδρείου καὶ προπύλου καὶ πᾶσι τοῖς | λιθοξοϊκοῖς ἔργοις καὶ πᾶ[σι ἁπ]αξαπλῶς κατασκευά[σας λειψόμε]νός τε τὸν τῶν ἀνθρώπων | βίον ἐποίησα ἐμαυτῷ πέ[λτα τ]ε καὶ σορὸν ἐν ᾗ τὰ προ[γεγραμμένα] ταῦτα ἐποίησα ἐπιγρφῖνε | [εἰς κό]σμον τῆς τε ἐκ[λησίας κ]ὲ τοῦ γένους μου.27 Eugenios matched a precedent established at the highest level by the emperor Constantine, who initiated and financed church building in the major imperial centres. There will have been few Christian leaders, inside or outside the ranks of the clergy, who had the means to support benefactions on this scale. The church probably built about thirty years later at Bindaios was also a prestigious and lavishly decorated building in this modest community, which included white marble decorative elements and wall cladding, and the figured, inscribed, and abstract patterned mosaics, which were the work of named Pamphylian craftsmen brought in from one of the large cities of the south coastal region. The construction was funded by wealthy lay donors, the couple Diocles and Eugenia, imperial officials, and a leading citizen of Sagalassus, who must have had links to Bindaios through property ownership or kinship connections. This was a donation by wealthy local lay persons, but the collaboration sprang from different motives. Diocles and Eugenia were named post mortem, ὑπὲρ μνήμης, and had probably left funds in their will; one comes, Helladius, contributed ὑπὲρ σωτηρἰας Ἑλλαδίου λαμπρ. νέου, suggesting that his son had recovered from an illness or some other life-threatening crisis; the votive of the other comes, Gaius, was ὑπὲρ τυχῆς καὶ σωτηρίας, and Tyche or 27 ICG 371 lines 13–18. For the wider context, see R. Haensch, Christlicher euergetismus ob honorem. Die Einsetzung von Klerikern in ihre Ämter und die von diesen vorangetriebenen Bauprojekte, in J. Leemans et al., (eds), Episcopal Elections in Late Antiquity (Berlin 2011), 167–81.

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Fortuna would have been a force that guided a career attended by the risks and challenges of state service. The mosaic inscriptions from the church at Pappa-Tiberiopolis similarly imply that the work was undertaken by comites in state service. The initiative and impetus for building these churches on the margins of Phrygia stemmed from wealthy individuals with local roots but with earlier careers in the imperial bureaucracy. 5.3

Church Building in the Aezanitis (Maps 5 and 9)

The territory of Aezani is the best starting point for a regional survey thanks to Philipp Niewöhner’s fundamental and systematic study in the early 2000s of architectural fragments from late antiquity and the Byzantine period in the villages around Çavdarhisar. This followed the 1925 and 1926 epigraphic surveys of Christopher Cox and J. R. Cullen, published in MAMA IX, and an epigraphic reconnaissance of the Aezanitis by M. Wörrle in the 1990s.28 Niewöhner’s work has led to a fresh understanding of the rural settlement and church building in the Aezanitis in late antiquity.29 Between the mid-third and late-fourth century there was little new building in Aezani. The cityscape continued to be dominated by grandiose public structures, including the temple of Zeus in its temenos, the theatre and stadium, the large Antonine bath-house, and the built-up river-front of the Penkalas with its four fine stone bridges. As generally throughout Asia Minor, little new public architecture can be dated to the age of Diocletian and Constantine, and the existing structures were more liable to decay and neglect than renovation or restoration. There was no recognisable activity in the temple, and the stadium underwent at least partial demolition in the mid-fourth century, when stone seats were removed to supply material for other, private, buildings. By the end of the fourth century, the west spectator stand was itself adapted into a dwelling place. The gymnasium attached to the large second-century bath house also seems to have been abandoned. 28 C. Lehmler and M. Wörrle, Neue Inschriftenfunde aus Aizanoi 3. Aezanitica minora I, Chiron 32 (2002), 571–646. 29 P. Niewöhner, Aizanoi and Anatolia. Town and countryside in late late antiquity, Millenium 3 (2006), 239–53. This summarizes the main results and hypotheses of his published doctoral dissertation, Aizanoi, Dokimion und Anatolien. Stadt und Land, Siedlungs- und Steinmetzwesen vom späteren 4. bis ins 6. Jht. n. Chr. (2007). P. Niewöhner Mittelbyzantinische Templonanlagen aus Anatolien. Die Sammlung des Archäologischen Museums Kütahya und ihr Kontext, Ist. Mitt. 58 (2008), 285–345 at 306–8 comments on the sparsity of Middle Byzantine finds outside the now fortified Zeus temple/church enclosure.

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The only significant new building of the fourth century was a section of colonnaded street in the area south of the Penkalas river, erected largely from re-used Spolien around 400. Much of the construction material was taken from a late Hellenistic temple of Artemis, which had evidently been systematically demolished towards the end of the fourth century. The earliest clear evidence for church construction at Aezani appears only in the sixth century. A circular market building, which had been in use around 300 and displayed a copy of Diocletian’s price-edict, but was liable to flooding, was reconstructed at a higher level, apparently as a church, and two rooms of a third-century bath-house were also reconfigured as a church, both after 500.30 Probably around the same period a small chapel with painted frescoes was created in the west stand building of the stadium.31 The temple of Zeus was not demonstrably converted into a church before the Middle Byzantine period,32 although earlier Christian use cannot be ruled out since the inscription which marks its consecration at the start of the eleventh century refers to this as a restoration or renewal. Two finely carved texts were engraved at an easily legible height on blocks placed above one another on the exterior north wall of the cella. The first of these reads † ἀνεκ(αι)νήσθη ὁ ναὼς οὖτ(ος) | παρὰ Μιχ(αὴλ) ἀρχ(ι)διάκο(νου) κ(αὶ) δο(μεστικοῦ ?] | ἐτ. Ϛφιγ´ ινδ. γ´| κ(αὶ) οἱ ἀναγινό(σ)κοντες εὐ|χεσθε ὑπ(ὲρ) αὐτοῦ. ὁ θεὸς συνχωρέσῃ τόν, ‘This church was renovated by Michael, archdeacon and domesticus (?), in the year 6513, third indiction. Those who read this, pray for him; God will allow this’.33 The date corresponds to 1005. The second text, clearly cut by the same hand, but harder to decipher, was in verse and began with an invitation to enter the church, ἠσέλθ(ε) χ[έ]ρων ἐν τῷ ναῷ Κυ(ρίου), and to share the eucharist.34 In late antiquity Aezani had experienced a rapid decline from the urban splendour of the second and third centuries. The stadium and gymnasium were no longer in use, the large bath-house doubtless continued to function, but its gymnasium had been abandoned. The temple of Zeus suffered gradual neglect, as layers of soil and rubble accumulated round it, and a prominent pagan temple for Artemis was demolished before 400 and converted into a colonnaded street, the equivalent of a shopping mall, which may have usurped the role of the nearby macellum building. The street also incorporated re-used stonework from the Bath-Gymnasium complex. However, Aezani’s temples 30 Niewöhner, Aizanoi, Dokimion und Anatolien, 145–7 with Abb. 12 (macellum converted to a church); 143–5 (bath-house church); 71–2 (colonnaded street). 31 Niewöhner, Aizanoi, 148–51. 32 Niewöhner, Aizanoi, 153–5. 33 MAMA IX 557; (ICG 1307). 34 MAMA IX 558; Feissel, Chron. 361; (ICG 1308).

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were not replaced by church building on a substantial scale. Stray finds of ecclesiastical architecture of the sixth-century,35 as well as the documentary evidence for bishops after the council of Nicaea imply that there must have been other churches in the city, but the scale of the Christian presence was modest. This impression is re-inforced by the sparse epigraphic record of the early Christian period, which comprises a grave monument for a protodiakonos called Paulos, perhaps of the late fourth or early fifth century, a bronze cross found in the bath-house church, with an inscription ‘for Anastasios’, and a well-cut marble church panel, probably designed for an inset metal cross, which carries a primary dedicatory text set up by a Palatine officer and his wife: [? Εὐχὴ Σα]μαρίτου Παλατινοῦ καὶ Ἀναστασίας [? τῆς συμβίο]υ αὐτοῦ, ἀμήν, and a finely engraved invocation cut above it, which is judged to be a later addition, but probably still belongs to the fifth or sixth-century: † μνησθῆτι Κ(ύρι)ε τὸν δοῦλον σου Βασίλειον.36 Τhe urban centre of Aezani stagnated in the fourth and fifth centuries, but the villages in its territory flourished, gaining importance in relation to the city. Niewöhner’s tables show that almost all the typical marble inscribed monuments of the early imperial period (including grave monuments and votive texts) were found in Aezani itself or its immediate neighbourhood, and almost never in the outlying settlements, whereas decorated marble stone work from the fifth and sixth centuries, almost exclusively used for church decoration, occurs in roughly even proportions across the entire territory. In other words, quality stone work was now as likely to be found in the scattered villages as in the urban centre. The church architecture was predominantly made of grey marble, obtained from local quarries, but there were also more elaborately decorated pieces of Docimian marble. Fine Corinthian capitals with acanthus decoration intended both for full-size and half-size columns indicate that the work of Docimian craftsmen was in renewed demand in the fifth and sixth centuries. The only exactly dated evidence for village church building in the region is the dedication inscription of a church at Yağdığın, barely three kilometres north of Aezani itself, founded in memory of a deaconess Epiphania, but built by the labours of the entire community under the direction of the master builder Marcellus and his son in the first indiction, year 518: ὑπὲρ μνήμης κ[ὲ] | ἀναπαύσεως [τ]|ῆς μακαριοτάτη[ς| Ἐπιφανίας διακο|νίσσης. Ἐγένετο | τὸ ἔργον τοῦτο | συνυπουργησάν|των πάντων | ἰνδ(ικτίωνος) α ̓ ἔτους φιη´ | ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς 35 Niewöhner, Aizanoi, 75. 36 ICG 1314; ICG 1385; ICG 4513, published by M. Grünbart in P. Niewöhner, Mittelbyzantini­ sche Templonanlagen aus Anatolien, 318–20 no. 16.

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Μαρκέ|λλου κὲ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐ|τοῦ οἰκοδόμων.37 The year 518 by the Sullan era is 433 and corresponded with the first year of an indiction cycle, and the estate of the most blessed Epiphania, the deaconess, had probably financed the building of the village church. The participation of the whole community in the construction, clearly under the direction of the Marcellus and his son, is a significant detail. The text, now lost, marks an early stage in the emergence of rural churches in the Aezanitis Much of the later decorated and carved stone work has been recorded in outlying parts of Aezani’s territory where there is no indication of earlier occupation under the Roman empire. The rural population must have increased between the fourth and sixth centuries, and settlements emerged in upland areas which had previously been marginal land. The sculptural finds indicate that most of them now had their own churches. Niewöhner’s distribution map marks village settlements with remains from fifth- or sixth-century churches in the plain around Aezani at Örencik, Abaş, Ağarı, Tepecik and Haci Mahmut, in the uplands south of the city at Yenigüney, Cabrail, Yenicearmutcuk and Yeşildere, in the north-west highlands towards Cotiaeum at Saray, Sinekçiler, Mustafalar, Pullar, Küreyişler and Çömlekçi, and in the western valley towards the Upper Tembris at Pazarcık, Yalnızsaray and Pınarbaşı (ancient Spore).38 Christian inscriptions occur only rarely in these villages. There are four columns with votive prayers at Haci Mahmut, the most explicit of which is a thank offering to God and his archangel (Michael) after the recovery of his children probably from illness: εὐχαριστῶν τῷ θ(ε)ῷ κὲ τῷ ἀρχανγέλῳ ἀνέστησεν ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς κὲ σωτηρίας τῶν τέκνων αύτοῦ μοχθήσαντος Μαγα[λ]ᾶ τοὺ πεδὸς αυτοῦ,39 and a fragmentary text on the elaborately decorated octagonal platform of a pulpit or ambon.40 These pulpits were conspicuous centerpieces of the architecture of village churches, as eye-catching as the wooden or carved stone mimber which dominates the interior of a Turkish mosque. Out of nearly 400 carved items from the churches of Aezani and the Aezanitis,41 only one other piece carries an intelligible inscribed text. This is

37 38 39 40 41

Fontrier, BCH 7 (1883), 502–3 no. 2, later moved to Alaşehir, and copied by Keil and Von Premerstein, Zweite Reise in Lydien (1908), p. 89 (ICG 1312). Niewöhner, Aizanoi, Faltplan opp. p. 70; see also Niewöhner, Ist. Mitt. 58 (2008), 308, 315 no. 9, 316–7 no. 12 (Örencik). MAMA IX 551 (ICG 1302). The other texts are MAMA IX 554 (ICG 1304 ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς Κραυγασίου καὶ Πατρικίας), 555 (ICG 1305 ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς Τρύφωνος ΙΔΑΥΔΟΥ) and 559 (ICG 1309). Niewöhner, Aizanoi, 257 no. 318 with Taf. 33 Abb. 116. Niewöhner catalogued 350 items from local marble, and 43 smaller items, mostly capitals, made from Docimian marble.

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a large octagonal base made from local marble found west of Aezani in the village of Tepecik, recording the building of a church to St Stephen: ἐγένετο τὸ ἔργο[ν] | τοῦ Ἁγίου Στεφάνου | ὁ φόρος κ(αὶ) ὁ ἄμβω[ν] | κ̣(αὶ) ἡ κολιμβίθρα | ἐπὶ τοῦ ὁσιοτάτου | ὑμῶν (= ἡμῶν) ἐπισκόπου | Ἐπιφανίου. The phoros (atrium), ambo (pulpit) and kolymbethra (font) were costly parts of the church. The families that helped finance the building were named on two other faces of the base, divided between the living: ὑπερὶ εὐχῆς κ(αὶ) | σωτερίας Κυρίλ|[ο]υ καὶ τῆ(ς) συνβίου | αὐτοῦ καὶ τῶν τέ|κνων αὐτοῦ Σωσ|θένου καὶ τῆς συν[β]ίου αὐτοῦ Δρ[․]ου καὶ |τῶν τέκνων αὐτοῦ Στ[ε]|φανίδος. ἀμήν, and the dead: καὶ ὑπὲρ μνήμης | καὶ ἀναπαύσεω[ς] | Θεοδούλου καὶ | τῆς συνβίου αὐτοῦ | Κυριακῖς καὶ Θε|οδούλου καὶ Τροφί|[μη]ς καὶ ΕΓΕΙΝΑΕΚ | Στεφάνου καὶ Γεν|θλίας ☩.42 Niewöhner suggests that parts of a pulpit found in the neighbouring village of Zobu also came from this church. This ambon was one of seventeen examples that he recorded across the Aezanitis, a statistic which shows how inadequately the sparse epigraphic record reflects the actual number of churches in the region.43 5.4

North-West Phrygia (Maps 4 and 5)

Very few definitively Christian remains have yet been identified in the territory that lay west of Aezani towards the edge of the north-west Phrygian quadrant, at Tiberiopolis, Ancyra Sidera, Synaus, Cadi. All four settlements were certainly occupied in late antiquity and represented by bishops at church councils, and Synaus and Ancyra were associated with hagiographical traditions.44 Tiberiopolis has been approximately located in the upper Rhyndacus valley at or near Emet, although the focus of settlement in Middle Byzantine times shifted north to the fortress at Eğrigöz, ancient Akrokos, whose walls probably date to the eleventh and twelfth centuries.45 One fragmentary Byzantine Christian text has been recorded at Eğrigöz on a double column, recut from an earlier Roman doorstone.46 The late settlement of Ancyra Sidera 42 MAMA IX 560; (ICG 1310). 43 Niewöhner, Aizanoi, 79 and 254–63 nos. 307–33. 44 The Vita Agapeti at Synaos has interesting local details. See U. Huttner, Christianisierungsprozesse, in Ameling, Die Christianisierung Kleinasiens in der Spätantike, 158–9; and chapter 6.5. 45 C. Foss, Survey of Medieval Castles of Anatolia I: Kütahya (BIAA monograph; Oxford 1985), 108–17; TIB 7, 245; note an inscription fragment (ICG 4504) and a fine marble panel with a cross from Eğrigöz in Niewöhner, Ist. Mitt. 56 (2006), 448 no. 68. 46 MAMA X 538; cf. A. D. Mordtmann, Anatolien, Skizze und Reisebriefe aus Kleinasien (1850–1859) ed. F. Babinger (Hannover 1925), 41–43, quoted by TIB 7, 247–8; ICG 4504.

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is identified with a Byzantine castle near the village of Boğazköy, previously called Kiliseköy, and its Byzantine remains include a relief supposedly depicting St George and the dragon, a plaque from a Middle Byzantine iconostasis, and a poorly recorded inscription of the same period recording the restoration of a church of St Theodore.47 Another fortification of uncertain date and late Roman remains, including early Byzantine column capitals, have been noted in the nearby village of Bahtıllı.48 Synaus, Ancyra’s neighbour to the east, also possessed Byzantine fortifications east of the ruins of the ancient town, which are the source of architectural pieces ranging from the Roman to the Middle Byzantine period.49 Part of a church with mosaics, supposedly dating to the fourth or fifth century, has recently been investigated by the archaeologists of Kütahya Museum.50 A similar picture has been established at Cadi, although on the basis of an even smaller quantity of distinctive remains.51 However, the apparently low incidence of Christian remains in north-west Phrygia may simply reflect the lack of research in the area. Kütahya Museum houses remains from a church, including decorated liturgical furnishings made from sandstone and Docimian marble and an inscription, reportedly brought from ‘Altıntaş bei Gediz’, but the find-spot was clearly Altıntaş (town) in the Upper Tembris Valley.52 Nevertheless, exploring the region in 1836, Hamilton had encountered the ruins of an early Byzantine church standing three metres high at Gökler, eleven kilometres east-south-east of Gediz.53 Phrygia north of Aezani and west of Cotiaeum included the modern towns of Tavşanlı and Tunçbilek, both in the valley of the Koca Su, the ancient Rhyndacus, which flowed north and then west before reaching Lake Uluabad and the Marmara Sea. Much of the country was forested and thinly settled in the Roman imperial period, but this region also seems to have seen population growth and the development of larger settlements during late antiquity. There were many villages with early Christian remains in the region around Dodurga, south-west of Bozüyük and more than fifty kilometres west of Dorylaeum. It is uncertain whether these communities were attached to Dorylaeum, 47 TIB 7, 184–5; St Theodore, CIG IV 8823 (ICG 1236): Ἀνεκενί(σ)θ[η] ὁ ν[αὸ]|ς τοῦ Θεοδόρ‑ [ου κτλ]. 48 TIB 7, 204. 49 TIB 7, 395–6. 50 S. Ünan, O. Pekşen, S. A. Duğan, Simav mozaikli kilise kurtarma kazısı, Kütahya Arkeoloji, Sanat Tarihi ve Tarih Araştırmaları VI (Ankara 2019), 11–30. 51 TIB 7, 285. 52 P. Niewöhner, Ist. Mitt. 56 (2006), 407–73: Kat. 57, 62–3, 70, 106–9, 111–2. See 261 n. 551 and ICG 4526. 53 Hamilton, Researches I, 109; TIB 7, 261.

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Cotiaeum or some other city. The gazeteer of Tabula Imperii Byzantini notes church architectural remains at Dodurga itself,54 Esenmez, Erenköy, Eceköy, Bozalan, Saraycık, Yeni Dodurga, Kızılsaray, Çukurca, Ilıcak Su and Küçükköy.55 Fragmentary fifth- or sixth-century votives respectively on a frieze and a column have been recorded at Ilıcak Su.56 Other inscriptions include a large font or basin at Ömerler,57 part of an ambon at Yorguç with a votive donor inscription put up by Diodorus for himself and his family,58 two plaques decorated with a cross and φῶς ζωή invocations at Kozluca and Çarşamba, perhaps from the same building,59 a gaming board with an intriguing text which gives a glimpse of raucous behaviour in the tavern at Çarşamba,60 a votive for a whole family at Göçebe,61 one of several votive columns at Domur,62 a staurogram on a column capital at Peşemit,63 and a marble plaque at Üçdereağzı, perhaps from the later sixth century, covered with crosses and short inscriptions which appear to invoke St Michael and St Sisinios.64 Eight moulded and inscribed entablature sections, which have been found at Tavşanlı, the regional centre, and the village of Karaköy, stand out from the routine discoveries in this region.65 Karaköy was presumably the original location of the church.66 The inscription was in verse couplets, divided from one another by punctuation, carved in a single line along the frieze in letters five or six centimetres high. The text ran around the interior of the building, probably supported on the columns which separated the three aisles of a basilica church. The design resembled the presentation of similar lengthy verse texts in two of the most prestigious foundations of sixth-century Constantinople, the churches of St Polyeuctus, built in the 520s, and of St Sergius and St Bacchus, which was dedicated a few years later. The poem which celebrated 54 See also Niewöhner, Aizanoi, 127 Abb. 9. 55 TIB 7, svv. Further remains from early Byzantine churches in this region have been noted in a new survey, but Middle Byzantine stones seem to be absent. 56 MAMA X, 347 and 348 (ICG 1221 and 1222). 57 MAMA X 327 (ICG 1210); probably 5th cent. 58 MAMA X 328 (ICG 1211); late 5th or early 6th cent. 59 MAMA X 341 (ICG 1218) and MAMA X 332 (ICG 1214). 60 MAMA X 330 (ICG 1213), reading † μὴ θεομάχος νήων † | † ἀσβολόθη ὁ ῥονχάζων †, for which Feissel, Chron. 362 ventures the ingenious emendation μὴ θεομάχος (μ)ὴ ὢν, ‘may the snorter not be covered in soot, so long as he is no enemy of God!’ 61 MAMA X 337 (ICG 1217). 62 MAMA X 342 (ICG 1219). 63 MAMA X 343 (ICG 1220). 64 MAMA X 350 (ICG 1223). 65 MAMA IX 552 and X 335; SGO 3, 204: 16/23/03; Nowakowski, Saints, 421–2 Phr/02/02 (ICG 1216); TIB 7, 398. 66 See Ramsay, CB I.2, 738: ‘Stones go to the great centres, not from them’; other valuable remarks in CB 1.2, 366.

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the foundation of St Polyeuctus by Anicia Iuliana, whose text is preserved in the Palatine Anthology, was carved above the arches and between three exedrae on either side of the central nave.67 The entablature around the central nave of the octagonal church of St Sergius and Bacchus carried twelve hexameter verses in praise of St Sergius and the founders Justinian and Theodora.68 The Phrygian church fell short of the splendour of these imperial models but was surely inspired by them, and should be dated towards the middle of the sixth century.69 The original text cannot be fully restored but refers to the church itself (οἶκον), to Michael who was presumably the patron saint, and leaders of the awe-inspiring heavenly host, [οὐ]ρανίης φρικτῆς ἡγέμονες στρατ[ίης], and includes the names of the father Theodoros, wife The[odora?] and perhaps the children of the donor. The verses, as far as they can be restored, are metrically accurate, the language is poetic and classical, and the orthography avoids the Phrygian dialectal forms found in most inscriptions from the region. The founder must have been a member of the imperial aristocracy, doubtless from a family which originated from or possessed estates in this part of northern Phrygia. This enterprise could have been at the centre of the recolonization of this previously neglected region. 5.5

Cotiaeum and Its Territory (Maps 5 and 6)

Niewöhner’s survey of the Aezanitis is complimented by his study of the architectural pieces from late antiquity housed in the museum or noted in the city of Kütahya.70 Ancient Cotiaeum is entirely buried by the modern town, so virtually no building remains have been recorded in situ before the construction of the Byzantine castle, whose earliest phase is assigned to the ninth century.71 Spolien, including pieces of church architecture and decorative elements from

67 Anth. Pal. I. 10, 1–41; J. Bardill, Église Saint-Polyeucte à Constantinople: nouvelle solution pour l’énigme de sa reconstitution, Architecture paléochrétienne (Gollion [Vaud], 2011), 77–103, 155–158; D. Feissel, Bull.ep. 2013, 510. Dated between 524 and 527. 68 CIG 8639; full bibliography in D. Feissel, Les édifices de Justinien au témoignage de Procope et de l’épigraphie, Antiquité Tardive 8 (2000), 81–104 = Études d’épigraphie et d’histoire des premières siècles de Byzance (Paris 2020), 481–38 on 497. Dated between 527 and 536. 69 The style of Constantinopolitan church decoration in the fifth century found close counterparts in Phrygia; see Niewöhner, Aizanoi, 123 ff. 70 P. Niewöhner, Frühbyzantische Steindenkmetzarbeiten in Kütahya. Zu Topographie, Steinmetzwesen und Siedlungsgeschichte einer zentralanatolischen Region, Ist. Mitt. 56 (2006), 407–73. 71 C. Foss, Survey of Medieval Castles of Anatolia I. Kütahya (BIAA Monograph 1985).

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church interiors have been found in the mosques, tombs and other buildings of Turkish Kütahya. Niewöhner has identified three distinguishable series of decorated capitals and six different types of altar screen in the early Byzantine material. This should indicate that Cotiaeum in the sixth century had at least six substantial churches, twice as many as have been identified in the excavations at Aezani, and suggests that the city had overtaken its neighbour in size and importance. The castle walls contain a modest amount of re-used material from late antiquity, but since smaller decorative pieces of liturgical furniture are not to be found, the churches from late antiquity seem not to have been demolished or abandoned when the castle walls were built, probably in the ninth century.72 Cotiaeum became the most important city of north-west Phrygia during late antiquity, with a marked but unexpectedly diverse Christian presence. It is also one of the few Phrygian centres which has yielded up a little history in the conventional sense. Passages in the Church Histories of Socrates and Sozomen imply that the city was not only an orthodox bishopric under the imperial and patriarchal authority of Constantinople, but also a centre of the Novatians and the Arians in Phrygia. The accounts of the Novatian council held in 367 at Pazon, a Phrygian village near the sources of the Sangarius, indicate that it was not attended by the four leading Novatian bishops, who were based respectively at Constantinople, Nicaea, Nicomedia, and Cotiaeum.73 At this time both Constantinople and Nicaea had named Novatian bishops, respectively Agelios and Maximos, who held office alongside their orthodox counterparts and thus formed exceptions to the rule established at the Council of Nicaea that there should be only one bishop in each town or city. Nicomedia and Cotiaeum probably also had their own bishops, although they are not named in the text.74 By implication the Novatian bishop of Cotiaeum would have been the most senior cleric of the Church in Phrygia.75 There was also a marked Arian presence at Cotiaeum thanks to the local settlement of Goths in the later fourth century. This has left one epigraphic trace, a circular marble bowl with four handles and a Christian invocation around the rim which reads Κύριε βοήθι Εὐγενίῳ Τουτίλα. This item in Kütahya Museum may be from the city itself.76 Eugenius’s father had a Gothic name, which he 72 Niewöhner, Ist. Mitt. 56 (2006), 409–11. Foss dates the fortifications to the ninth century; R.W. Edwards, Speculum 62 (1987), 675–80 prefers a seventh century date. 73 Socrates, HE IV.28; Sozomen, HE VI.24.8. 74 Can. Conc. Nicaeae 8; see 554 n. 124. 75 See chapter 7.2. 76 Niewöhner, Ist. Mitt. 56 (2006), 452 no. 76 (incorrectly reading the last name as Τουπλα; ICG 4506).

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shared, among others, with the king who led the Gothic forces in Italy against Justinian’s troops in 541–52.77 The emperor Theodosius I had introduced Goths from the tribe of the Greuthungi, who had been defeated by Roman forces in AD 382, to agricultural settlements in Phrygia, where they were liable for military service and had to live under Roman laws.78 This clearly formed part of the formal treaty or foedus of that year by which Gothic groups were now recognised as Roman foederati. There are several other indicators of these new arrivals to the region. Zosimus mentioned the barbarian alae settled in Phrygia which had supported the rebellion of Tribigild, Gothic leader and Roman comes in 399.79 After the suppression of the insurrection, the policy of Gothic settlement in Asia Minor was abandoned, but existing colonies continued and their nomenclature advertised their ethnic origins. They include Arintheos in a village near Dorylaeum,80 Valameriakos at Laodicea Catacecaumene,81 Besoulas, the prominent deacon at Philomelium,82 and Urfila (Ulfila), a primicerius at Pessinus.83 Toutila and his son Eugenios should be added to their number.84 There were also many Goths in Constantinople. The Constantinopolitan Goths in the fourth and early fifth century, like most of their fellows in the Balkans and the western empire, were Arian Christians. Their ecclesiastical leader until his death in 383 was Ulfila, responsible for the first translation of the Bible into Gothic, whose parents were said to have been Cappadocians, taken captive by Gothic raiders in Asia Minor around 260.85 77 PLRE 3, 1328–32; see further https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totila. 78 Zosimus 4.35, 38–9; Cons. Const. s.a. 386; Claudian, In Eutrop. 2. 205 (referring to them as coloni) and 582 (captivi). 79 Zosimus V.13.2; PLRE II, 1125–6 for Tribigild. 80 ICG 1383; see below. 81 A. Laniado, Un anthroponyme germanique dans une inscription chrétienne de Laodicée Brûlée (Phrygie Pacatienne), Tyche 14 (1999), 167–71. 82 SEG 52, 1355 (ICG 619); see 452 n. 504. 83 A. Avram, Some Remarks on newly published Inscriptions from Pessinus, Ancient West and East 11 (2012), 271–276 (no. 7). See the discussion by U. Huttner, Germanen in frühbyzantinischen Inschriften. Vom Namen der Person zur Identität der Gruppe, Gephyra 16 (2018), 185–204. A man of Germanic origin called Dagelas appears on an inscription of Lydian Philadelphia, TAM V.3, 1889. 84 See also 377 and 454 n. 507. Soldiers and settlers of Germanic origin were not confined to central Anatolia; see Feissel, Études d’épigraphie et d’histoire des premiers siècles de Byzance (2020), 226–7, for Ounitharios at Elaioussa-Sebaste, Arabindas and perhaps Autharonios at Corycus in Cilicia. 85 There is an extensive literature on Ulfila; see P. J. Heather and J. F. Matthes, The life and work of Ulfila, in The Goths in the Fourth Century (Liverpool 1991), 133–43; Hagith Sivan, The making of an Arian Goth: Ulfila reconsidered, Revue bénédictine 105 (1995), 280–92; Ulfila’s own conversion, Harvard Theological Review 89 (1996), 373–86.

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The complex and sometimes contradictory sources about Ulfila’s life leave no doubt that he was recognised as bishop of the Gothic peoples within the eastern Empire.86 Ulfila’s successor was Selinas. The Church historians reported on Selinas’s relationship with the Roman Arians of Constantinople who had split into two factions, the followers of Marinus, a Thracian bishop, and Dorotheus, Arian bishop of Antioch. Selinas predictably joined the followers of Marinus (also called the Psathyrians, ‘the Crumblies’), and then supported another splinter group under Agapius, Arian bishop of Ephesus. The two Arian factions resolved their differences thirty-five years later in the consulship of Flavius Plintha, 419, a date which makes it possible to put the start of the schism in 386, about four years after the Gothic settlement in Asia Minor. According to Socrates, Selinas was of mixed descent, with a Gothic father and a Phrygian mother, and preached in both languages, ἀμφοτέραις ταῖς διαλέκτοις.87 Sozomen observed that the Goths were drawn to Selinas as he had been Ulfila’s secretary, and clarified the meaning of the last phrase which he understood to mean not that Selinas preached in Gothic and Phrygian (a language that was perhaps no longer spoken in the fourth century), but in Gothic and Greek.88 Selinas’s family circumstances are a matter of pure conjecture. If he had been born in the 330s, making him around fifty when he succeeded Ulfila, we could imagine that his parents had met in Constantinople, his father a Gothic soldier serving under Constantine, his mother a new Phrygian immigrant to the capital. No Gothic groups are known to have been settled in Phrygia before the 380s, but perhaps his family heritage gave him a special interest in the colonies of foederati of 382, and his change of allegiance from the party of the Thracian or Moesian Marinus to that of Agapius of Ephesos is another hint of his involvement with the Asia Minor Goths. The families that settled at Cotiaeum and Dorylaeum, so long as they adhered to Arianism, would have acknowledged him as their bishop.89 At the end of 442 a major political and cultural figure from the reign of Theodosius II, Cyrus of Panopolis, was sent to become bishop of Cotiaeum, in the apparent expectation that he would soon meet an unhappy end. The 86 R. W. Mathisen, Barbarian bishops and the churches ‘in barbaricis gentibus’ during late antiquity, Speculum 72 (1997), 664–97 at 672 and 674–7. 87 Socrates, HE V.23; Sozomen VII.17, 7–8. 88 Sozomen, HE VII.17.7: καὶ ἐπὶ ἐκκλησίας ἱκανῷ διδάσκειν οὐ μόνον κατὰ τὴν πάτριον αὐτῶν φωνὴν ὰλλὰ γὰρ καὶ τὴν E̔ λλήνων. 89 Lynn E. Roller, Attitudes towards the past in Roman Phrygia: survivals and revivals, in The Adventure of the Illustrious Scholar. Papers presented to Oscar White Muscarella (Leiden 2018), chapter 7 suggests that Selinas was based in Cotiaeum but there is no ancient evidence for this.

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Chronicon Paschale, John Malalas and other later writers give similar accounts of his banishment, derived from a common source, the mid-fifth-century historian, Priscus of Panium. The patrician Cyrus, who had held the offices of praetorian prefect and city prefect for four years, and had been responsible for constructing the sea-walls and other building operations and for introducing street-lighting to Constantinople, was deposed from office and had his property confiscated by the emperor, who was jealous of his popularity. Cyrus sought asylum, became a priest and was sent to be bishop of Cotiaeum, whose citizens were said to have put to death four previous incumbents. Cyrus arrived before the feast of the Holy Nativity to a hostile reception from a congregation which suspected that he might be a Hellene (pagan), and demanded that he preach a Christmas sermon. The new bishop simply proclaimed that the birth of the Lord was best honoured by silence, since the Virgin had conceived the Logos by listening. Cyrus’s reference to the Theotokos in this briefest of sermons may have been enough to confirm his Orthodox credentials against the Nestorians. John Malalas erroneously wrote that he remained bishop until his death.90 Other evidence shows that he returned to Constantinople after the fall of his most powerful political enemy, the eunuch Chrysaphius, and probably lived on under the emperors Marcian and Zeno until around 470.91 Cyrus, who was one of the leading epigrammatists of his generation, originated from the Egyptian town of Panopolis, and was a near contemporary of Panopolis’s most famous literary figure, the poet Nonnus. Alan Cameron, in a remarkable study of Cyrus’s cultural and political career, has demonstrated that there is no substance in the rumoured charges of paganism that hovered round him both in Constantinople and on his arrival in Phrygia. He has also inferred that Cyrus’s years as bishop provide a simple explanation of a major riddle of Phrygian hagiography.92 The only prominent martyr connected to Cotiaeum was St Menas, whose cult originated in Egypt and whose largest cult centre was the great pilgrimage church of Abu Mena, west of Alexandria, 90

For Cyrus, see PLRE II, 336–9 Cyrus 7. The main sources for the Cotiaeum story are Malalas 14.16, 361–2, Chron. Pasch. I, 588 and Theophanes, Chron. a.m. 5937 (the last two locating the exile to Smyrna). An independent fifth-century source, the Life of Daniel the Stylite 31–2, confirms the location as Cotiaeum. For the sermon see T. E. Gregory, The Remarkable Christmas Homily of Kyros Panopolites, GRBS 16 (1975), 317–24. 91 For Cyrus in Constantinople in the 460s, see R. Lane Fox, The Life of Daniel, in M. J. Edwards and S. Swain, Portraits. Biographical representation in the Greek and Latin literature of the Roman Empire (Oxford 1997), 175–225. 92 Alan Cameron, The Empress and the Poet: Paganism and politics and the court of Theodosius II, Yale Classical Studies 27 (1982), 217–289; and the revised shortened version ‘The empress and the poet’, in Wandering Poets and Other Essays on Late Greek Literature and Philosophy (OUP New York 2016).

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which commemorated the tradition that Menas was martyred at Alexandria in the persecution of Diocletian.93 The saint was revered throughout Egypt,94 but the surviving Greek versions of his martyrdom located his passio not in Egypt at all, but in Asia Minor, usually at Cotiaeum. The fullest version presents the Egyptian Menas as a Roman military officer in a unit called the κατάλογος ‘Ρουτιλλιανῶν, who defied the imperial edict to worship pagan gods, and was tried, tortured and condemned by Pyrrhus, governor of Phrygia Salutaris.95 The text was closely modelled on, indeed largely plagiarized from another, almost entirely fictitious passio, that of St Gordius, written by an even more famous literary bishop from Asia Minor, Basil of Caesaria.96 There is no reason to doubt Cameron’s suggestion that it was Cyrus who introducing the story of Menas’s martyrdom to Cotiaeum, the bishopric which he was to occupy for nearly a decade. Given the ubiquity of Christians in fifth and sixth century Phrygia, and the region’s reputation for piety, it is striking how few martyrs of persecution were attested in local traditions.97 Phrygia at the time of the early fourth-century persecutions was not a zone of religious conflict, and Cyrus, perhaps as he brought his new see into line with the expectations of mid-fifth-century Constantinople,98 had to introduce a saint from alien territory, his own homeland. Conflict, however, was evidently a central aspect of the religious life of Cotiaeum by the mid-fifth century, if we can believe the report that four of Cyrus’s episcopal predecessors had been put to death by its inhabitants.

93 H. Leclercq, Menas (Saint), Dictionnaire d’Archeologie Chrétienne 11.1 (1933), 324–97. 94 See the Cult of the Saints data-base from Oxford University for a provisional list of citations: http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/results.php?full_text_headings=Menas. 95 Acta Sancti Menae Martyris Aegyptii, Analecta Bollandiana 3 (1884), 258–70; see discussion below at chapter 6.4. 96 P. Franchi de Cavalieri, Hagiographica (Studi e Testi 19, Rome 1908), 9–18; A. Busine, The origins and development of the cults of Saint Gordius and Saint Mamas in Cappadocia, in S. Mitchell and P. Pilhofer (eds), Early Christianity im Asia Minor and Cyprus (Leiden 2019), 109–25. See 510–1. 97 U. Huttner, Christianiserungsprozesse, in Ameling (ed.), Die Christianisierung Kleinasiens, 159–61 and 165–6, lists the names of eleven saints or martyrs (omitting Menas) under the heading ‘Hagiographische Quellen’. S. Destephen, Martyrs locaux, 91–2 documents twelve martyr cults in Pacatiana and nine in Salutaris; see also his observation in Dialogues d’histoire ancienne 18 (2019), 95–7: ‘Il est impossible d’établir à partir de la documentation hagiographique un lien objectif entre les progress de l’évangélisation et la violence des persecutions.’ 98 Compare the establishment of martyr cults in Constantinople by Theodosius’s sister Pulcheria, including the forty martyrs of Sebaste, Sozomen, HE IX.2.

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Without further contextual evidence it is hard to assess the truth of this allegation, but this is a theme to which we shall return.99 Fifth or sixth-century churches can be identified in Cotiaeum’s territory. The Byzantine stone work in Kütahya Museum includes a Docimian marble capital of the first half of the fifth century, no doubt from a local church, brought from Arslanlı, near the excavated site of Seyitömer, north-east of the city.100 An inscription on a grey marble column from a church at Şahmelek, WNW of Kütahya, has been restored as a plea for a safe recovery and absolution of sins, but the donor’s name is not preserved.101 Five architectural pieces which include two small Docimian marble capitals from Kırgıllı (Kırkıllı) ten kilometres north-west of Kütahya and a protruding corner capital of similar material from nearby Sökmen, should also derive from basilica churches in these villages.102 5.6

The Upper Tembris Valley (Maps 9 and 10)

The Tabula Imperii Byzantini volume for Phrygia and Pisidia contains numerous entries for villages where Thomas Drew-Bear had noted early Byzantine architectural fragments during his Phrygian surveys.103 Eight villages on either side of the Tembris gorge in the hills south of Cotiaeum contain material of this sort, but appear not to be the source of earlier inscriptions of the Roman imperial period. This is the pattern observed by Niewöhner in the Aezanitis, and it suggests that there were new, or at least enlarged, settlements and a growing population in the upland regions during late antiquity.104 The villages along the western tributaries of the Upper Tembris, south of the modern Kütahya – Uşak highway and beyond the eastern limit of Niewöhner’s Aezani survey, which were already settled in the Roman imperial period, have also produced later material.105 The Upper Tembris valley itself, the source of so 99 100 101 102

See chapter 5.12. Ist. Mitt. 2006, 464 n. 101. MAMA X 326 (ICG 1209). Ist. Mitt. 2006, 425–6 Kat 1–3, and 432–3 Kat. 20 and 22 (Arslanlı); 456–7 Kat. 87 (Sökmen). The Byzantine cave dwellings at Sökmen included a chapel (Haspels, Highlands, 242 and 251). 103 See TIB 7, 7. 104 See TIB 7, sv Akçamescid, Anasultan, Bayat (Pullar), Gelinkaya, Güven, Kıreç, Koçak, Kuyusınır, and Yenice. Niewöhner’s Aezanitis survey itself extended to Pullar and he noted remains from three churches in the neighbourhood. 105 See TIB 7, sv Adaköy. Note MAMA X 251 (panel with a peacock) and 252 (Ionic impost capital with Latin cross; cf Niewöhner, Aizanoi Taf. V, 50 and 51), Aslıhanlar, Bezirgan,

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many inscriptions of the second to fourth centuries, remained densely settled in late antiquity, with early Byzantine architectural pieces as well as inscriptions reported in most villages.106 A decorated half-column from a window frame from Altıntaş town in the Upper Tembris Valley,107 represents only the tip of the iceberg of items of ecclesiastical architecture from this well-surveyed region.108 A similar picture is reported from the villages south of Appia, which lay beyond the Tembris watershed in the upper valley of the Gediz Çay, including Middle Byzantine material and an epitaph from Oysu, west of Altıntaş.109 The reports of architectural pieces from late antiquity far outnumber the harvest of fifth- or sixth-century inscriptions from the same region. The cluster of apparently new settlements south of Kütahya has so far produced no inscriptions to match the architectural pieces. The settlements west of the Tembris are rich in inscriptions of the second and third centuries, but there were fewer in late antiquity. From Terziler there is a fourth-century epitaph, erected for two sons, and ὑπὲρ μνήμης καὶ ἀναπαύσεως for (probably) a daughter-in-law, her child and the whole household.110 A column found at Gökçeler has an invocation by Trophimas, presumably a donor, to Michael the archangel: ☩ Ἀρχάν[γ]ελε [β]οήθι το̑ δούλου σου Τροφιμᾶ. It is probably sixth-century.111 The central Upper Tembris Valley villages are less rich in inscriptions of the late Roman period than in texts of the third and early fourth centuries. The earliest churches seem to have been built around the beginning of the fourth (Girei)-Çalköy, Gökçeler, Nuhören, Terziler. Earlier inscriptions from this area: MAMA X nos. 249–84. 106 Roughly from north to south: TIB 7, sv Aykırıkçı, Yalnızsaray, Üçhüyük, Zemme, Gecek, Akçaköy, Abya-Pınarcık (Appia), Kurtköy (Altıntaş town), Altıntaş village (Soa), Murathanlar, Eftet (see the font, MAMA X 41, and the side panel of an ambo, MAMA X 42, from this village), and Beşkarış. 107 Ist. Mitt. 2006, 437 Kat. 39. 108 Niewöhner, Ist. Mitt. 56 (2006), 423, cites TIB 7, 66: ‚‘Hier legte die im Vergleich zu Lydien verhältnißmässig grosse Zahl an frühen christlichen Architekturstücken den Schluß nahe, dass … der Wohlstand … sich auf das Land ausgedehnt hat’. 109 TIB 7, sv Oysu, Keçiler (MAMA X 154, ambo panel said to have come from Appia), Allıören, Çalköy. For finds at Oysu, including an inscription reading ἔνθα κατάκιτε ὁ δοῦλος τ(οῦ) [θεο)]ῦ Θεφύλακ | τος ἀπώθανον μινὶ Ὀκτοβρίο ἡμέ | ρᾳ ε´ ὅρᾳ ι´ |ἔνδικτος δ´, see Niewöhner, Ist. Mitt. 56 (2006), 470 no. 113 (ICG 4527) and Ist. Mitt. 58 (2008), 310, 313–4 nos. 6–7, but two decorated Middle Byzantine pieces had been brought there from Kilise-Orhaniye in the Phrygian Highlands, Ist. Mitt. 335–6 nos. 47–8, where they had been recorded by Emily Haspels. 110 MAMA X 292 (ICG 1207). 111 MAMA X 243 (ICG 1199); Nowakowski, Saints, 475: Phr/04/02. There is also a third-century funerary text in the village on which the letters Α Ω appear, but these seem likely to be a later addition to the text (MAMA I 239; ICG 1198).

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century, but inscriptions from the later fourth to sixth century are sparse. A panel from the side of an ambo at Karaağaç with an indistinct inscription referred to the community’s congregation (laos).112 At Altıntaş village, the site of Soa, the only Christian inscription later than the fourth century is a Middle Byzantine verse, perhaps of the eleventh century, which emphasized the Christian emotion of pothos, yearning for the saviour, which was commonly expressed in this architectural context, where the templon marked the entrance from the naos to the altar area: ☩ ἔδειξεν ἔργον ἠγλαϊσμένον πόθος ὃ προσθεᾶται [—] (Fig. 52).113 At Murathanlar to the south the rear side of a doorstone was used for an amateurishly engraved dedication which followed the usual late fifth- or sixth-century formula, [ὑπερὶ] | [εὐ]χῆς Πατρι|[κί]ου πρεσβ(υτέρου) | κὲ τῆ συν|βίου αὐτοῦ | Θεωχάρη | κὲ το̑ν παιδί|ων αὐτοῦ Ζ[ω]|τικοῦ κὲ Ἰγ|γινου(?) κ[ὲ -].114 A font at Alibey Köy was dedicated by a father on the occasion of his son’s baptism: ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς Δόμνου ἐπὶ πεδίου Τροφίμου,115 and another broken panel fragment from the same village may be a vow of a father and his son Polychronios.116 A text on a doorframe at Yapılcan should relate to church building,117 while a fragmentary panel from Appia (Pınarcık) has an inscription referring to a bishop and a priest, […] ἐπισκο κ(ὲ) Κυριακοῦ πρε[σβ(υτέρου)]. The lettering and style of abbreviations suggest a late sixth-century date.118 The pervasive Christianity of all these Upper Tembris Valley communities is indicated by boundary stones which were marked by a cross: the boundary stone at Şıhali near Nuhören, between two private properties, marked ὅρ(οι) Πατρικίου and ὅρ(οι) Μαντάλου (or –ίου),119 the ὅροι † Ἀραυ|κώμ†ης (probably ancient Aragua), crudely indicated on a column found at Eymir,120 and rough field stones at Sevdiğin, Karaağaç and Alibey Köy respectively marking the south/north, east and west boundaries, perhaps of a church property, whose inscriptions were prefaced by crosses and show the letter rho of ὅρος as a Christogram.121 112 MAMA X 145; (ICG 1188). 113 BCC, JRS 18 (1928), 32–3 no. 248; MAMA X 92; SGO 3, 278: 16/31/98; Feissel, Chron. 364; Pallis, Byz. Zeitschr. 2013, 785 no. 26; (ICG 1176). 114 MAMA X 64; SEG 48, 1511; (ICG 1170). 115 MAMA X 111; (ICG 1182). 116 MAMA X 110; (ICG 1181). 117 MAMA X 119; (ICG 1185). 118 Niewöhner, Aizanoi 294 no. 475; (ICG 1839): [–] ἐπισκό(που) κ(αὶ) Κυριακοῦ πρε[σβ(υτέρου)[–]. 119 MAMA X 253 (ICG 1201). 120 MAMA X 178 (ICG 1194). 121 MAMA X 17, 24 and 109; (ICG 1162, 1165, and 1180); Nowakowski, Saints, 426–7: Phr/04/01.

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5.7

Meiros and the Phrygian Highlands (Maps 6 and 10)

The Phrygian Highlands south of Nacolea and east of the Upper Tembris Valley were explored in detail by Emily Haspels between 1946 and 1958, working alone or with a single companion, resulting in the two volumes of The Highlands of Phrygia, published in 1971.122 Volcanic tuff outcrops dominate the remarkable landscapes and many were honeycombed with caves, which were extended into rock dwellings and churches during later antiquity. These have conventionally been assigned to the period between the seventh and ninth centuries. Afyon (Akroinos), Amorium and Dorylaeum were repeatedly mentioned in accounts of Arab campaigns and raids into Asia Minor after the mid-seventh century, and the local population would have had excellent reason to take refuge in the highland country, west of the main SE/NW route which led across Anatolia towards Constantinople.123 These rock-cut settlements, some of them up to seven storeys high, provided protection and accommodation for the rural population and their animals. Haspels identified a minimum of thirty-one rock churches in these cave settlements, as well as smaller chapels, identifiable by their ground plans, Christian symbols, graffiti and occasional inscriptions, as well as by damaged wall paintings and carved decoration.124 Christian settlements between the fourth and the sixth century are less easy to define and identify, but cut stonework from the later Roman period, usually identified by Haspels as Docimian marble and comparable to the material documented by Niewöhner in the Aezanitis, has been reported from most of the villages. A group of three remarkable white marble capitals, two decorated with relief sculptures of an eagle, were brought to Kütahya Museum from the village of Doğarslan (Doğanarslanlar) at the west edge of the Phrygian highlands, close to the city of Meiros.125 Architectural remains from church buildings between Cotiaeum and Meiros have been noted in the northern part of the highlands at Akoluk, Belkavak, Avdan, Erikli, Kırka and Seyrecek, south-east of Meiros in the Kümbet valley at Oynaş and Yapıldak, further east at Erten, Hanköy and Başören (Başaran); and in the southern highlands at Ayazin and

122 C. H. E. Haspels, The Highlands of Phrygia (2 vols, Princeton 1971). Haspels died in 1980, but her travel diaries have now been excellently edited: Emilie Haspels, Midas City Excavations and Surveys in the Highlands of Phrygia. I am the last of the travelers (ed. D. Berndt, Istanbul 2009). 123 K. Belke, TIB 7 (1990), 83–101. 124 Haspels, Highlands, 245–54 for the inscriptions. 125 Ist. Mitt. 2006, 427–8 Kat. 9–11; see TIB 7, 337–8 for reports of 5th or 6th century material in the nearby villages.

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at the thermal spring of Gazlıgöl Kaplıca.126 Christian inscriptions from late antiquity have been found at several of these villages. Akoluk was the find location of the fourth-century grave monument of the female prophet Nanas (ICG 1635; see 295–7), a child’s tomb of the fourth century,127 a later marble grave cover decorated with Latin crosses above and a text which names Onesimos, a church reader, his son Sophronios, and Hermaios, whose relationship to the father and son is undetermined,128 and a crude epitaph from neighbouring Yeniköy Göcenoluk for a priest Porphyrios.129 There were Christian epitaphs In nearby settlements at Sandıközü,130 and Güllüdere,131 some of which may be later than the sixth century. The valley between Kümbet and Oynaş contained the most important Roman and late Roman community of the central highlands, and is the find spot of two important statue bases erected by an unnamed polis for Epinikos, a patrician, who had been praetorian prefect of Oriens in 475 and consul, and his wife Dikaia, identified as a benefactor.132 Epinikos must have originated from and retained connections to this part of Phrygia, as his statue is said to have been set up by the city on the initiative of the landowners in recognition of his foundations and patriotism, ἐκ τῶν κτητόρων τὸν φιλόπατριν καὶ φιλὀπατριν ἡ πόλις. The text for Dikaia was prefaced by a prominent cross, as became common on honorific texts of the fifth century. There had been imperial properties in the Kümbet valley at least since the third century, but the identity of the city is uncertain.133 A handful of other short funerary texts confirms the 126 Haspels, Highlands I, 221–4 and II figs. 357–80 lists and illustrates carved church stonework from Emre Tekke, Türkmen Baba, Güllü Dere, Ilıca Dede Tekke, Avdan Teşvikiye, Kilise-Orhaniye (Malos), Akhisar, Kümbet, Kayı, Incik (from Kaysar Kale), Doğluşa, Demirli (‘a large Byzantine ören’), Çobanlar, Idris Yaylası, Belce (from Efsin Baba), Ilıca and Akın. 127 Haspels, Highlands I, 337–8 no. 105 (ICG 1634). 128 Haspels, Highlands I, 338–40 no. 106; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 423–5 no. 68; (ICG 1636). 129 Haspels, Highlands I, 336 no. 100 (ICG 1681, probably 6th cent.). 130 Haspels, Highlands I, 341 no. 11 (ICG 1380), a fragment which ended with a reference to resurrection, perhaps: [? ἀν]οίκησε [? τύμβ]|ον τοῦτον [ἕως] | ἀναστάσεος; Haspels, Highlands I, 342 no. 111 (ICG 1682), epitaph of Michaeles with a Maltese cross, perhaps 6th cent. 131 Haspels, Highlands I, 343 nos. 117 (ICG 1683, perhaps early 4th cent.), and 343 no. 118 (ICG 1684), which G. Pallis, Byz. Zeitschr. 2013, 783 no. 19 dates to the 10th or 11th cent.; restore ὑπὲρ μνἠμης κὲ ἀ[ναπαύσεως …]. 132 PLRE II, 397; T. Mommsen, Hermes 32 (1897), 660–63 from copies made by Ramsay; (ILS 8845 a and b); Haspels, Highlands I, 306–7 nos. 28–29 (ICG 1652, 1653). 133 TIB 7, 340–1 identifies the city with Metropolis, a settlement close to the village of Melissa where the famous Alcibiades was murdered in 404 BC; see L. Robert, A travers l’Asie Mineure (1981), 257–99. However, this Metropolis is not attested between the late classical

figure 53 Upper Tembris Valley (Altıntaş). Middle Byzantine templon inscription. ICG 1176. W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen

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expected Christian presence,134 which was already attested in the first half of the fourth century.135 Numerous decorated items of templon decoration from one or more churches confirm that there was a substantial and wealthy Christian presence in the valley in the tenth and eleventh centuries (fig. 54). A bomos found near Kümbet has been interpreted as marking the boundary of a Church of the Virgin, possibly in the sixth century.136 There was a large Byzantine settlement with a necropolis consisting of arcosolia tombs and two churches side by side at Inli (Inlice mahalle) at the east edge of the Kümbet valley. A rock-cut inscription in the necropolis, surrounded by crosses, invoked God’s help for Constantinos.137 Constantinos appeared again as one of four names in a similar invocation painted on the wall near the chancel of one of the churches: Κ(ύρι)ε βοίθι τοὺς δού|λους τοῦ Θ(εο)ῦ, Κοσ|ταντίνου β. |Καλονᾶ, Στε|φάνου, Μιχα|ιλίου β. ἀμ(ή)ν | Κ(ύρι)ε σο̑σο αὐτούς.138 The abbreviation β. should be resolved to β(ασιλικός), an honorific indication of status used by imperial agents, which is almost unparalleled in Byzantine epigraphy but appeared often on seals. The name Ka(l)lonas, first attested in the eighth century, and used by representatives and dependants of an extended Byzantine family which was based in Constantinople in the tenth and eleventh centuries, confirms that this was a group of four local notables, probably the builders of the church, two of them acting in imperial service, and one with connections to a major family in the imperial capital.139 Like the much earlier texts for Epinikos and his wife at Kümbet, the inscriptions demonstrate some of the important links which connected this highland Phrygian valley with Constantinople. period and two possible mentions in sources of late antiquity: Hierokles, Synekdemos 677.12, and Stephanus of Byzantium, who has an entry Ἄμβασον, μητρόπολις τῶν Φρυγῶν, ethnic Ἀμβασίτης, based on a citation from Alexander Polyhistor in the 1st cent. BC. The name Metropolis would fit the most important Phrygian site ‘Midas Şehri’ of the region at Yazılıkaya, where the mother goddess was worshipped. However, it appears that the Kümbet valley was in the territory of Meiros; see S. Mitchell, A note on Meiros in Phrygia, Gephyra 21 (2021), 237–41. 134 Haspels, Highlands I, 309–10 no. 34 (ICG 1654), 315 no. 43 (ICG 1659), 315 no. 44 (ICG 1660). 135 Σεε 298῏9. 136 Haspels, Highlands I, 211 and 310 no. 35 (ICG 1655); the interpretation is very uncertain. 137 Haspels, Highlands I, 332 no. 90 (ICG 1642). 138 Haspels, Highlands I, 332 no. 89 (ICG 1641); for Middle Byzantine decoration built into the Islamic tomb at Kümbet, see Niewöhner, Ist. Mitt. 58 (2008), 292–4, 309, 3 329 nos. 36–7. 333–5 nos. 43–46, and nos. 47–48 which were taken in recent times to the village of Oysu near Altıntaş. 139 G. Kiourtzian, Basilikos, relecture d’une inscription phrygienne, Δελτίον της χριστιανικής αρχαιολογικής εταιρείας 33 (2012), 333–342; cf. Feissel, Bull. ép. 2014, 575. For another example near Synnada in 571, see 462 (ICG 1099).

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Figure 54 Phrygian Highlands, Kümbet. The Islamic tekke containing many pieces of Middle Byzantine templon screens Stephen Mitchell

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A named community at the east side of the Highlands was the δῆμος Μαληνῶν, Malos, at Kilise Orhaniye (now Gökçeyayla).140 Haspels recorded many decorated white marble pieces which had been excavated in the village and which belonged to several different buildings in late antiquity. Two column capitals were decorated respectively with pairs of bulls and stags on either side of a cross, and other pieces displayed crosses, peacocks and plant motifs from the repertoire of church decoration.141 An inscription on a white marble screen post specified that construction was the responsibility of ‘our bishop John and all his reverend clergy’, ἐπὶ τοῦ ἐπισκόπου ἡμῶν Ἰωάννου κὲ παντὸς τοῦ εὐαγοῦς κλήρου †, and another screen post from the same building named a church reader as a donor, Ἀσκληπίου πρωταναγνώστου †.142 A sixth-century inscription copied at Başaran (Başören), east of Malos, marked the grave of Domnos, a priest in the village of Eizikos, on the territory of the city of Meiros, and the Ioannes responsible for the work at Malos was probably Meiros’s bishop.143 An earlier verse gravestone from the same village named Maximos, ἱερεὺς Θεοῦ, native of an otherwise unknown community called Ouaza.144 In Ottoman and modern times the largest settlement in the area grew up around the caravanserai at Khosrev Paşa Han. The Christian inscriptions found there include four architrave sections marking the building of an οἶκος, that is a church,145 and a broken four-line text carved on a door lintel, which began [? ἐν προσώ]πῳ δεσποίνης ἡμῶν τῆς Θεοτόκου τῆς [ἀ]ειπαρθέν[ου], and alluded to the biblical account of the Israelites in Egypt, before appealing for protection for all who dwell in God’s house, and ending with the invocation Ἐμμανουὴλ μεθ ̓ ἡμῶν ὁ Θ(εὸ)ς.146 Haspels’ survey work also identified a Roman and late Roman settlement north of Malos at Erten, where a prominent inscription cut into a panel on a rock face marked the fourth or early fifth century tomb of Alexander, a reader in the holy church of the Novatians, and his son: μνημῖον Ἀλεξάνδρου ἠδ᾽ υἱοῦ † ἀναγνώστου τῆς ἁγίας τοῦ Θεοῦ τῶν Νουατι†ανῶν ἐκλησίας †.147 In 368, a break-away Novatian group, including the bishop of Cotiaeum, has held a synod at a place 140 TIB 7, 334–5 s.v. Malos (2); the ancient name may be preserved in the modern toponym Mallıca. 141 Haspels, Highlands, I, 223, and 2 figs. 365–73. 142 Haspels, Highlands, I, 320 nos. 53 and 54 (ICG 1637 and 1638). 143 MAMA I 403 (ICG 1704); reading corrected by Mitchell, Gephyra 21 (2021), 243–6. 144 MAMA I, 402; SGO 3, 351: 16/42/01 (ICG 1703); compare the Οὐαζεαται on the territory of Nacolea. 145 MAMA I 396 (ICG 1701), perhaps 5th cent. 146 MAMA I 397 (ICG 1702), perhaps 6th cent. 147 Haspels, Highlands I, 318 no. 50 (ICG 1688).

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called Pazon near the sources of the Sangarius, and resolved to celebrate Easter at the same time as the Jewish Sabbath.148 Northern Phrygia was a stronghold of the Novatian church until the mid-fifth century. An unpublished stone now in the Afyon Museum probably dating to the fourth century called on the Church of the Cathari, the name commonly used for the Novatians, to aid the leading magistrate (archon), clergy and their home town (patris).149 This must have come from an early church built in one of the Phrygian towns. 5.8

Dorylaeum (Map 6)

Almost no Christian texts of the third or early fourth centuries have been recorded in Dorylaeum and its southern neighbour Nacolea. The picture changed fundamentally in the fifth and sixth centuries when inscriptions and cut stone from church buildings occur at least as frequently as they do in the Aezanitis, the Upper Tembris Valley and the Phrygian Highlands. The surroundings of these two north Phrygian cities, like the region around Aezani, have been extensively surveyed on several occasions. The MAMA team led by C. W. M. Cox in 1930, covered much of the territories of Dorylaeum and Nacolea, and the results were published in MAMA V. P. Frei carried out village-by-village survey in the modern Turkish vilayet of Eskişehir, but only two preliminary reports and a study of Phrygian place names have appeared in print.150 Thomas Drew-Bear made repeated visits to north Phrygian villages and sites between the 1970s and 1990s, which have been reported in sporadic publications. Both Frei and Drew-Bear provided unpublished information about their findings to Klaus Belke and Norbert Mersisch for inclusion in the Tabula Imperii Byzantini volume on Phrygia and northern Pisidia, and the gazeteer of TIB 7 accordingly contains many entries which refer to decorated architectural fragments and occasionally inscriptions of the early (4th–6th centuries) and Middle Byzantine (10th–11th centuries). These brief notices confirm Frei’s observation at the end of his field work, that the Byzantine architectural fragments seen in 148 Socrates, HE 4.28. 16–18; Sozomen, HE 6.24.7; 7.18.1; Mitchell, Anatolia II, 103–4; see chapter 8.2. 149 ICG 4491. Photo published on https://www.flickr.com/photos/jordanpickett taken by Jordan Pickett, probably a door-lintel with a text arranged around a central Latin cross, reading ἁγἰα τοῦ Θ(εο)ὺ ἐν Χ(ριστ]ῷ ἐκλησ[ία] |τῶν Καθαρ[ῶ]ν βοήθησον | τῷ ἄρχοντι [σ]ὺν τῷ κλήρῳ κὲ | τῇ πατρίδι κὲ τῶ[ν τ]εχν[ι]τῶν Μενν|έου διακόνω Κοτοβηνω σὺν τῷ ὑειῷ αὐ|τῶ Ἰστράτωνι ἀναγνώστῃ τῷ κὲ πά|ψαντι. 150 P. Frei, 1 AST (1983), 53–62; Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi 25.2 (1980), 71–85; Epigraphica Anatolica 11 (1988), 9–34.

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the villages substantially outnumbered those from earlier antiquity, and imply that the Eskişehir region was thickly settled at least until the sixth century.151 Dorylaeum was the Phrygian city closest to Constantinople, and the presence of several Christian military gravestones of the fifth and sixth centuries suggests that units or detachments from the imperial capital were regularly posted here. It was on the shortest transanatolian route between Constantinople and south Anatolia, and must have been heavily used for all forms of official communication and for military purposes. There is a funerary text from the first half of the sixth century, carved on the upper part of a stele with acroteria, for Theodoulos, comes of the Schola Gentilium Iuniorum, a unit of the Palatine army, already attested in the Notitia Dignitatum for the East by 420.152 It may be that the grave of Fl. Florentius gentilius, erected by his wife Thekla at Mutalip, a large village settlement north of Dorylaeum, was for a member of the same unit.153 The monument indicates that the family had settled there, perhaps after he had retired from service. Other inscriptions also suggest the presence of retired military men or officials and their families, including the boundary stone of property belonging to Kirykos, an agens in rebus, ὅροι Κιρυκοῦ μαγιστριανοῦ,154 and the column that served as a tomb monument for Stephanos domesticus, perhaps to judge from the letter forms both from the later fifth century155 A column capital of local grey marble recorded a military family which built a chapel or oratory, probably in the late fifth or early sixth century, at Yenisofça, in the Porsuk valley towards Cotiaeum: † Αὐξιαγάθων ὁ καὶ Ἀρίνθεος στρατιώτης βίαρχος σὺν τῇ γαμετῇ αὐτοῦ Ἀλεξᾷ κὲ τῶν πεδίων αὐτῶν Σευήρου καὶ Κομητᾶ τὸν εὐκτήριον οἶκον. This was found in front of a rock-cut church in an ancient necropolis, and was presumably from a funerary chapel built by this wealthy family in the graveyard. The name Arinthaeus is of Germanic origin, as were many recruits to the units of the Palatine armies, most of them later arrivals to Asia Minor than the Goths settled around Cotiaeum and Nacolea by Theodosius I.156 151 Frei, 1 AST, 57: ‘Die Gegend von Eskişehir war offenbar in byzantinischer Zeit ziemlich dicht besiedelt. Dafür zeugen die byzantinischen Architekturfragmente, welche die antiken an Zahl weit übertreffe dürften’. 152 Drew-Bear / Eck, Chiron 6 (1976), 305–7 (SEG 26, 1374; ICG 1370). 153 MAMA V, 77; cf. D. Feissel, BCH 107 (1983), 615; SEG 33,1122; (ICG 1401). 154 ΜΑΜΑ V, 4 (ΙCG 1394). 155 MAMA V, 5 (ICG 1395): ἀπὸ δομεστικῶν ΧΑΥΔΙΑΣΤΙΣ (meaning uncertain). 156 P. Frei, AST 1 (1983), 62 no. 5 (SEG 34, 1292; Feissel, Chron. 372; ICG 1383). LGPN Vc s.v. Ἀρινθαῖος dates this too early to the 3rd/4th century. Huttner, Gephyra 16 (2018), 189–90 assumes that the church was a city building, but the findspot speaks against this. Compare 454 n. 507.

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The inscriptions of Dorylaeum itself include a handful of grave covers prefaced by the ἔνθα κατάκειται formula: for Stephanos son of Senator, grandson of Andreas,157 for Paulacius son of Marianus,158 for Thekla,159 for Eustochia,160 and for Makarios son of Secundus.161 The use of Grabplatten demonstrates the change in practice from upright grave steles to horizontal grave coverings which took place between the fourth and sixth centuries and is best documented in the funerary monuments of Galatian Ancyra.162 The lid of a small Christian sarcophagus has survived, decorated with birds and sheep, as well as a cross, although with no inscription preserved to identify the owner.163 A substantial marble font was dedicated in memory of a priest called Zourzas by his father Theodoulos and unnamed mother. Their son’s name also points to an immigrant family from the Balkans.164 One of the local churches was dedicated to St Stephen, and boundary stones indicated property belonging to churches of the Virgin and to St Sisinius.165 Christian inscriptions first occurred on the territory of Dorylaeum in the fourth century. The earliest of these texts may be a frieze fragment of Docimian marble from Bozüyük, in the north-west part of the city’s territory, displaying a Christogram between acanthus leaves, with a funerary inscription that may mark the donation of another deacon. It has been dated on stylistic grounds to the fourth century.166 A more informative inscription from Bozüyük, probably of the sixth century, combined an appeal to the archangel Michael with vows for the preservation of themselves and their family, and commemoration of

157 MAMA V, 11 (ICG 1412); Στέφανος Σενάτορος ὑειὸς Ἀνδρέου. For names derived from Roman social ranks, see I. Ankara 2, 451 comm. 158 MAMA V, 108 (ICG 1415). 159 MAMA V, 1404 (ICG 1414). 160 MAMA V, 132 (ICG 1418). 161 MAMA V, 133 (ICG 1419). Perhaps restore Μακάρις Σεικούν(δου) υἱο(υ) (? Πατρι)κίου with a papponymic as in ICG 1412. 162 See discussion in I. Ankara 2, p. 14. 163 MAMA V, 59 (ICG 1400). 164 MAMA V, 56 (ICG 1398); Zgusta, KP para. 398 for the name. Compare Ἠστοτζᾶς (Stotzas), a federatus named on a 6th century gravestone in Constantinople, discussed by Huttner, Gephyra 16 (2018), 193–5, and the man called Ἀποατζῆς, born in the pass that separated Philippopolis from Serdica, who died in Afyon (ICG 1554; see 399 n. 268). 165 MAMA V, 131 (ICG 1417; Nowakowski, Saints 419 Phr 01/04); MAMA V, 130 (ICG 1416; Nowakowski, Saints 419 Phr 01/03); MAMA V, 55 (ICG 1397; Nowakowski, Saints 418 Phr 01/02). 166 Niewöhner, Aizanoi, 292 no. 467 (ICG 1825): [– ? διακό]νου (Christogram) καὶ μνήμης τῶν γονέων καὶ τῆς συμβίου Θεοδότ[ης].

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their dead kinsfolk.167 G. Mendel recorded an oval box made from silvered copper, inscribed with a text for the health, preservation and redemption of sins of a monk, Ioannes, said to be from Bozüyük, perhaps from the sixth century.168 South-west of Dorylaeum towards Kütahya the texts include a grave cover for Ioannes son of Paternus at Karaşehir,169 and a sarcophagus for two deacons and their children at Akkaya.170 Modest inscriptions from Avdan and Süpören in the direction of Nacolea may be Middle Byzantine.171 In contrast to the thinly scattered inscriptions, early Byzantine architectural fragments have been noted in almost all the villages on Dorylaean territory: in the north-west sector towards Bozüyük at Taşköprü, Tekeciler, Ilkburun, Keskin, Çukurhisar, Zemzemiye, Küçüğüm and Oluklu,172 south-west of Dorylaeum along the Porsuk valley towards Kütahya at Karaşehir, at the thermal spring at Hasırca Çiftliği, at Demirli and at Ali Baba Tekkesi near Seydi,173 and east and south-east of Dorylaeum at Osmaniye near the ancient town of Midaeion,174 Sevinç, Karaay, Gökçeoğlu, Imişehir and Sarıkavak.175 The hilly country south of Dorylaeum contained many ancient villages extending as far as Alpanos, which was on the border with Nacoleia.176 Substantial settlements with Christian architectural remains were situated at or near Karapazar, Akören, Süpören (the ancient village of the Οὐεζαεῖται), Yürük Kırka, Kıravdan (which lay on the Roman road to Amorium), Kanbut Çiftliği, Sarı Süngür and Sultandere.177

167 A. von Domaszewski, Inschriften aus Kleinasien, AEMO 7, 168–88 (175 no. 27); (MAMA V 187 no. 1; Nowakowski, Saints 417 Phr 01/01; ICG 1421): ἐκ τῶν παροχῶν σου, ἀρχάγγελε, Ἰωάννης κὲ Κωνσταντῖνα ἐποίησ[αν -] | ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς κὲ σωτηρίας αὐτ[ῶ]ν κὲ τὴς συνγενίας αὐτ[ῶ]ν κὲ μνήμης κὲ ἀναπαύσε[ως -]. 168 G. Mendel, BCH 33 (1909), 401 no. 400; (ICG 1422); 5th or 6th cent. 169 MAMA V 116 (ICG 1403). 170 Ath. Mitt. 25 (1900), 416 no. 25 (MAMA V 187 no. 1; ICG 1420). 171 Avdan: MAMA V 144 (ICG 1404); Süpören: MAMA V 164 and 165 (ICG 1405 and 1406). 172 See TIB 7 svv for these villages and the early Byzantine material noted there. There were important Roman settlements, attested by inscriptions, at Ilkburun, the location of a trikomia (MAMA V 86–100) and Eveköy (MAMA V 101–5). 173 TIB 7 svv. An invocatory inscription at Hasırca, MAMA V 320 (ICG 1409). 174 TIB 7, 352; for Midaeion (Karahüyük) see TIB 7, 341–2. 175 TIB 7, svv. 176 TIB 7, 181 citing Frei, AST I (1983), 55 for the boundary stone. 177 TIB 7, svv. TIB 7, 390 reports a Middle Byzantine inscription on the hüyük at Sultandere, naming Καλαίνικος (? Καλλίνικος) σπαθάρης πὀλεος Δοκη[μίου ?] (ICG 4529); other inscriptions from the site are published at MAMA V 110–12.

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5.9

Nacolea and Orcistus (Maps 6 and 7)

Nacolea, modern Seyitgazi, enjoyed some limelight in the history of the Roman Empire in the fourth century as it was the location of the decisive battle of 366, when the emperor Valens finally defeated the serious challenge of the usurper Procopius.178 Gothic immigrants were probably given land around Nacolea around 382 and many settlers must have remained after the uprising headed by their leader Tribigild was crushed in 399.179 Like Dorylaeum, Nacolea’s inhabitants included soldiers and veterans, exemplified by the Latin verse epitaph of Flavius Aemilianus, a native of Singidunum in Moesia Superior, who was buried in 356 by his sons Aelianus and Aelius after twenty seven years of military service. His religious allegiance is unclear.180 The most important ecclesiastical foundation at Nacolea was the church of St Michael, built around the middle of the fifth century by John Studios, consul in 454, who also built the monastery which bore his name in Constantinople, now Istanbul’s Imrahor Camii. Column capitals from the time of Theodosius II have been identified in the great dervish tekke at Seyitgazi,181 and no less than five cross-shaped marble fonts, each presumably from a different church, have been noted at the Islamic shrine.182 One building in the town has been the object of a rescue excavation, which uncovered an apse mosaic, decorated with abstract designs and a tabula containing a donor inscription: Φλ. Εὐσέβιος ἔγδικος πόλε|ος Νακολέων εὐξάμενοι | μετὰ Ἑλένης ἐμούσωσαν.183 The benefactor 178 Modern accounts in J. F. Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus Marcellinus (London 1989), N. Lenski, Failure of Empire. Valens and the Roman State in the Fourth Century AD (Berkeley 2002), and U. Huttner, Christianisierungsprozesse, in Ameling (ed.) 2017, 161–2. 179 The settlement in Phrygia: Zosimus 4.35, 38–9; Cons. Const. s.a. 386; Claudian, In Eutrop. 2. 205 (referring to the Goths as coloni) and 582 (captivi); Tribigild and Gothic alae in Phrygia, Zosimus V.13.2; located near Nacolea, Philostorgius HE IX.8. 180 T. Drew-Bear, A fourth-century Latin soldier’s epitaph at Nakolea, HSCP 81 (1977), 257–74; AE 1977, 806; 2010, 1594 (ICG 1440). 181 Suda (ed. Adler) IV (1935), 438; C. Mango, St Michael and Attis. Δελτίον της χριστιανικής αρχαιολογικής εταιρείας 12 (1984 publ. 1986), per. 4, 39–62, at p. 45–7; J. Kramer, Architekturteile des Seyitgazi-Tekke (Vilâyet Eskişehir) und die Michaelskirche von Nakoleia, Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik 22 (1973), 241–50. TIB 7, 346 reports an earlier opinion of C. Mango that the mention in the Suda of a church built by John Studios at Nacolea should in fact refer to the construction of the Church of St Michael at Germia in Galatia; C. Mango, The date of the Studios basilica at Istanbul, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 4 (1978), 115–22 at 117 ff. 182 TIB 7, 346. 183 M. Fuat Özçatal / B. Yelda Olcay: 1997 Yılı Seyitgazi İlçesi Mozaik Kurtarma Kazısı, Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu 8 (1997), 529–50; (SEG 47, 1746; AE 1997, 1446; Feissel, Chron. 373; ICG 1836).

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was Nacolea’s official legal spokesman, defensor civitatis, a rank which required him to act as a middleman between the Phrygian city and Constantinople, probably in the late fourth or early fifth century. Two other fragmentary texts allude to church buildings: a plaque carved in even lettering which should probably be restored to read [–τ]ῷ σεβασμί[ῳ οἴκῳ -],184 and a white marble frieze fragment, in cursive lettering, reading ἀνεκ[αινίσ]θι ὁ ναὼς τοῦ Ϲ[-]. This formula is typically Middle Byzantine, and the church in question was probably restored in the tenth or eleventh century, following a pattern that can be seen in many Phrygian towns.185 An inscription in a trapezoidal frame, which was probably attached to a church wall, invokes God’s forgiveness, † ἱλάσθιτι τῶν ἁμαρ(τιῶν) †,186 while crude inscribed blocks with Christian symbols and invocations may also have been part of church architecture.187 A more elaborate text on a column combined Biblical quotations from the Psalms and the New Testament with pagan imagery to depict the triumph of Good over Evil: ἀνασ[τί]τω ὁ θ(εὸ)[ς] κὲ διασ|κορπυσθίτοσαν ὑ ἐχθρὶ | αὐτοῦ· ὁ σιντρίψας τοῦ | Ἅδου κράτος κὲ αὐτὸν ῥίψας | ἐν Ταρτάροσιν ἕος τῖς ἱμέ|ρας ωʹ τῶν φʹ ποδὸς ἑκάστο κτὰ τὰ ἔργα ἡμο̑ν. ☩. Allowing for the distinctive Phrygian orthography, the first line is an accurate quotation from Psalm 67.1, ἀναστήτω ὁ Θεός, καὶ διεσκορπωσθήτωσαν οἰ ἐχθροὶ αὐτοῦ, and the last line closely renders 2Tim. 4.14: ἀποδώσει αὐτῷ ὁ Κύριος κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ. These citations from relatively unfamiliar Biblical texts were doubtless taken from written copies of the Psalms and New Testament epistles respectively, but the compiler still drew on the classical tradition for the evocation of Hades and Tartaros.188 A few Christian gravestones and invocations have been noted in Nacolea itself, for Domna

184 ΜΑMA V 313 (ICG 1430). 185 MAMA V 171 KB.12; (ICG 1436); perhaps restore Σ[τεφάνου]. Compare the temple conversion at Aezani, MAMA IX 557 (ICG 1307) in AD 1005 (see 355 n. 33; an inscription from the lower city church at Amorium (ICG 1316, see 385 n. 209); at Ancyra Sidera MAMA X p. 184 Ancyra no. 2 (ICG 1236): Ἀνεκεν[ίσ]θ[η] ὁ ν[αὸς τοῦ ἁ]|γί]ου Θεοδόρ[ου κτλ.] (readings very uncertain); and the 10th century church dedication recorded on an inscription at Akroinos (ICG 4507, see 395 n. 252). 186 ΜΑΜΑ V, 310; (ICG 1427). 187 MAMA V 312; (ICG 1429): Ἐμμανοὴλ | ἡμῶ(ν) Κύρι(ε) Πάτηρ; MAMA V 314 (ICG 1431): ζῇ above the arms of a cross. 188 MAMA V 311; (ICG 1428). The expression ἕος τῖς ἱμέ|ρας ωʹ τῶν φʹ, ‘until the last day of the 500 (?)’ is obscure. The script, appears to resemble a book hand, especially the abbreviations of the last line. Lettering, orthography and abbreviations may be late 6th or early 7th cent. For access to the Bible in the Byzantine period see 601.

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daughter of Gerontios,189 for Konon a scrinarius,190 perhaps for Eudokia,191 and for a priest.192 Nacolea had a large territory in the third and fourth centuries, extending south-east for over fifty kilometres as far as Orcistus, before this rival town was also awarded city status by Constantine. The villages reveal a similar picture to those of Dorylaeum and the other north Phrygian cities. Three gravestones introduced by the simple word μνήμη, for Hermion, Zotikos and a third person, were copied in the ruins of a three-aisled basilica below the peak of Türkmen Baba at Kızılsaray at the western edge of the city territory,193 and a bronze cross, reportedly from Bardakçı Köy, south of Nacolea, ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς κὲ σωτηρίας Χαρίτωνο[ς] has reached Seyitgazi Museum.194 The ancient community of the Sereanoi between Nacolea and Dorylaeum may have extended across several small settlements at Güllüsaray, Kandamış and Cifte Pınarlar around Kuyucak, all of which have yielded finds of church architectural decoration.195 A broken inscription records the offerings of a pious family: [τὰ σὰ ἐκ τῶν σῶν] σὺ (i.e. σοὶ) προσφέρομεν προσδεό[μενοι, ? Κ(ύρι)ε βόηθι -]|ου κὲ Γεοργίας κὲ Δόμνης κὲ Ἰω|[αννου τέκνων| Ἰωάννου πρεσβυτέρου κὲ Ἀμμία[ς τῆς συνβίου αὐτοῦ].196 A deacon set up another votive in a Kuyucak church197 and two inscriptions from near Doğançayır have invocations to St Thekla, combined with a possible place name Mantalos.198 As elsewhere, the number of fifth and sixth century churches attested by fragments of architecture indicates the distribution of Christian communities more reliably than the epigraphic evidence. Apart

189 MAMA V 308; (ICG 1425); 4th or early 5th cent. 190 MAMA V 309; (ICG 1426): ☩ Κ(ύρι)ε βοή|θι Κόνω|νος ἰσκρ|ηναρί|ου, on a column; 5th– 6th cent. 191 E. Akyürek-Şahin, Yazıdere (Istanbul 2006), 150 no. 40 (ICG 4500), ἐθάδε κατ|άκιτε δό|λι τὸ Θ(ε)οῦ | Ἐβδοκία. The orthography of this small stele, of uncertain provenance, points to a Middle Byzantine date. 192 L. Robert, Hell. X (1955), 15; (ICG 1014): † τόπος | ΗΓΜ πρεσ|βυτέρου (copy of Radet; perhaps ἡγ(ου)μ(ένου)). 193 Hapels, Highlands I, 217–21 and 346 nos. 125 and 126 (ICG 1685, 1686, 1687). For the formula, compare I. Ankara 2, 485–8. 194 E. Akyürek-Şahin, Yazıdere (Istanbul 2006), 149 no. 38; ICG 4501. 195 MAMA V 82–89 and R 6–13, 149–52 for inscriptions; TIB 7, 320. 196 MAMA V 152 R 13 (ICG 1432). Restorations exempli gratia; for the introductory formula, cf ICG 1421. 197 MAMA V 191 (ICG 1423). 198 MAMA V, 188 nr. 4 (ICG 1438 and 1439). Mantalos is discussed by A. V. Walser, Kaiserzeitliche und frühbyzantinische Inschriften aus der Region von Germia in Nordwestgalatien, Chiron (2014), 527–620, at 550–6.

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from the villages which have produced inscriptions, decorated stones from churches have been recorded at Saraycık Çiftliği, Göknebi, in the Islamic tekke of Melekgazi Türbesi,199 at Çukurağıl (Yazıdere), Alpanos/Sarayören, Musalar, Kayacık and Osmanbey Yaylası, Aşağı Ilıca, Avdan (ancient Marlakkos, previously an important sanctuary of Zeus Bronton), Demirli, Sarıöküz near Çamlıca and Bağören.200 The Christian epigraphy of Orcistus, independent of Nacolea from about 330, is relatively sparse, despite the famous claim of the inhabitants in their petition to Constantine, that they were all Christians before this date.201 Early Byzantine remains were built into a surviving Seljuk or early Ottoman building, perhaps to be interpreted as a small han, beside the ancient Roman site at Ortaköy, including a Middle Byzantine frieze block of a church which was seemingly partly funded by Photion, son of a priest Eugenios, which ends with the invocation ἀμήν † ἅγιος ὁ Θ[εός] (fig. 55).202 Other texts come from church buildings of the Middle Byzantine period.203 One tenth-century building inscription carved on the side of a Roman funerary lion monument, relates to fortifications and mentions a topoteretes, Michael Bourtzes, who was perhaps identical with or a close relative of a commander responsible for capturing Antioch in 969: ἐκαληεργήθ(ησαν) υαʹ πόδ(ες) ἐ(ς) τὸ | δεξηὸ(ν) μέρος ἕος τῇ πόρτᾳ παρὰ Μηχ(αὴλ) | ὑπ[ά]του κὲ τεποτερ(ητοῦ) τοῦ Βούρτζη τοῦ Λαπτου|κουμητοῦ. The lion is likely to have been an ornamental feature placed beside the gate to which the text refers. Since no traces of a Byzantine fortification are visible at Orcistus and the site is unsuited for a defensive stronghold, it is very tempting to accept the suggestion of C. S. Lighfoot that the stone had been transported twenty-five kilometres from Hisar köy to the Seljuk settlement at Ortaköy, and in fact relates to the castle at Amorium, well attested archaeologically by the excavations and dating to the tenth or eleventh century.204

199 200 201 202 203

L. Robert, Hellenica X, 78–89. TIB 7, svv. See 314 n. 735. MAMA 7, 309 (ICG 1293). MAMA 7, 302 (ICG 1291), an invocation of the Virgin by her servant Manuel, and an unpublished inscription in the Seljuk building beginning ἐκαλιεργήθησαν (ICG 4531). 204 W. H. Buckler, Two gateway inscriptions, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 30 (1929/30), 646–8 no. 2; MAMA 7, 310, Lightfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 69 no. 187 (ICG 1294); see 386 n. 212; cf TIB IV, 211 and 475–6 n. 602.

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Figure 55 Orcistus. Middle Byzantine donor inscription and other architectural pieces in Seljuk building. ICG 1293 Stephen Mitchell

5.10

Amorium and Phytea (Map. 11)

Apart from Aezani, Amorium, located at the village of Hisarköy, is the only city of north Phrygia which has been systematically excavated,205 and one of the main discoveries has been a late Roman church, centrally located in the lower city.206 The original three-aisled basilica, with marble revetment on the walls, and a marble templon screen and ambo, was probably built in the late fifth century. After being damaged by fire it was reconfigured in the Middle Byzantine period into a domed basilica, with an opus sectile floor, glass 205 Between c.1989 and 2011. There is an excellent overview of the excavations by E. Ivison, in C. S. Lightfoot and E. A. Ivison (eds.), Amorium Reports 3. The Lower City Enclosure Reports and Technical Studies (Oxford 2012), 5–151. This could be the intra-mural καθολικὴ καὶ πρώτη ἐκκλησία at Amorium mentioned in the Life of Theodore of Sykeon, which also refers to an extra-mural Church of the Virgin Mary, Vita Theodori 107. 206 C. S. Lighfoot and E. A. Ivison, Amorium excavations 1994: the 7th preliminary report, AS 45 (1995), 105–20, and Amorium excavations 1995: the 8th preliminary report, AS 46 (1996), 97–102.

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mosaics in the ceiling, polychrome painted fresco decoration and liturgical furnishings.207 A restored inscription refers to one of the refurbishment phases and reveals that the church was dedicated to the Isaurian martyr St Κonon: ἐν ὀνόματι τοῦ Κ(υρίο)υ κὲ [δεσπ(ότου) | [Ἰησο]ῦ Χριστοῦ το[ῦ Θεοῦ]| [ἐγκαίνι]α τοῦ ἁγίου κὲ ἐ[νδόξου μά|τυρ]ος Κὀνωνος. The initial formula, if correctly restored, echoes the terminology of official documents introduced by the emperor Maurice, after around 582, and points to a date at the end of the sixth or beginning of the seventh century. The rest of this text probably mentioned a bishop, a priest and abbot ([πρεσβυτ]έρου κὲ ἡγουμ[ένου]), and implies that the work had been funded by collective donations, ὑπὲ[ρ σωτηρ]ίας τῶν καρπο­φ[ορούντω]ν εἰσπουδέων.208 A Middle Byzantine frieze fragment contains a text, perhaps three verses in dodecasyllables which record later restoration work in the church by another bishop: † Χ(ριστο)ῦ προφ[ητά … ἐπίσκο]πον φύλατε πήστι κ(αὶ) [π]όθο ἀνακ(αι)νοῦντι τὸ τίμιο ναό | σου ἰς λύτρον, ἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμα[ρτιῶν].209 The church, like the rest of the city of Amorium, was occupied and maintained throughout the Byzantine period until the later eleventh century. A miniature basket column capital has an inked dipinto naming two saints, [-Ἀ]βέρκιος (κὲ) Ἰωάννης with a possible creation date of 653× = 1022(+),210 and an inscribed fragmentary graffito scratched on the base of a cup found in a tenth or eleventh century context in the castle enclosure, identified the owner as Thomas, monk or priest of Spiliotou, presumably a cave settlement.211 Scrupulous excavation on the mound at Amorium, whose defences have been dated archaeologically to the tenth or eleventh century, has underpinned the extremely plausible hypothesis that this was one of the fortresses 207 C. S. Lighfoot, The public and domestic architecture of a thematic capital: the archaeological evidence from Amorium, in Η Βυζαντινή Μικρά Ασία (Athens 1998), 303–20 at 308; E. A. Ivison, Middle Byzantine sculptors at work: evidence from the lower city church at Amorium, in C. Pennas / C. Venderheyde (eds), La sculpture byzantine VIIe–XIIe siècles (Paris 2008), 487–513, at 489–91. 208 M. Ballance, in Anatolian Studies 42 (1992), 211; Feissel, Chron. 478; SEG 42, 1193; Lightfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 55 no. 134; (ICG 1315). Nowakowski, Saints, 522–4 Gal/05/01 restores the first two lines and suggests a late 6th/early 7th century date. 209 C. Mango, in Anatolian Studies 42 (1992), 212; Feissel, Chron. 478 (without a text); Ivison Middle Byzantine sculptors, 489–90 with n. 12 adds the fragment at the start of the inscription, an invocation to John the Baptist, and proposes a late ninth-century date; G. Pallis, Byz. Zeitschr. 2013, 783 no. 21; Lightfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 61 nos. 155–6 (ICG 1316); the reading and restorations are uncertain. 210 ICG 4515; Lighfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 137 M 20. 211 Ivison, Amorium Reports 3 (Oxford 2012), 82 n. 298, citing KST 2003, 523–5 fig. 3, Lighfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 124 G6: κρασίρον Θωμᾶ μ(ον)άχ(ου) Σπη(λιώτου) (reading T. Drew-Bear), ‘drinking-cup of Thomas the monk, Cave-dweller’. Lighfoot reads πρ(εσβυτέρου) Σπη(λαιώτου). ICG 4488.

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garrisoned by imperial Byzantine troops against Seljuk and Turkish attacks, and it offers a close comparison to the kastron which can now be archaeologically and epigraphically identified at Beycesultan/Choma.212 As would be expected from a site which has been excavated for over twenty years, more fragmentary stone inscriptions and inscribed small objects have been recovered from Amorium than from other locations. Although many are fragmentary, they give an impression of an environment in which obviously Christian written texts helped to shape local culture.213 Some name prominent individuals. Three fragments from the lower city church appear to refer to an archianagnostes who took responsibility for building at the church.214 There is a sixth-century tomb cover for an official called Aitherios, ἡρωεῖον Ἠθερίου εἱγτρ(ίου) Ἀμοριανοῦ carved in the arms of a cross standing on a globe, which served as the headstone for a multiple burial in the atrium of the lower city church. The term for Aitherios’s office is uncertain, but resembles both ἡγούμενος (monastic abbot) and ἡγήτωρ / ἡγήτηρ which were occasionally used to mean a bishop. The find location, quality of the monument and context favour a high ecclesiastical rank.215 Another text of the sixth or seventh century found in the same location was a cover slab commemorating Theophano, abbess, † ἐνθάδε κατάκητε Θεωφανὼ ἡγουμένη ἀσκητρία κὲ τελευτησασ(α) ἐν Χριστῷ. ἐτεληώθη ἡ δούλη τοῦ θεοῦ μηνὶ Ἰουνήῳ θ´´ἰ(νδικτιῶνος) ς´.216 Later burials appear to have taken place on or near the main mound at Amorium, the location of the Middle Byzantine fortification. A large sarcophagus with a domed lid, decorated with Latin crosses between palmettes, brought to Afyon Museum, contains the start of a verse epigram and refers to emperors on the lid, [ψή]φῳ ἀν(ά)κτω(ν) τῶν Ῥωμαίων μ(η)νὶ Νοενβρίῳ ρ ς. The beginning of the text was originally read as a proper name Ἐπιμίνης (Epimenes), but a better alternative is to interpret it as the start a verse text referring to the deceased at rest in the tomb, ἐπὶ κλινῆς κίμενον (figs. 56 and 57).217 A similar damaged sarcophagus cover found at Amorium contains the epitaph of a Syrian, δοῦλος

212 See E. Ivison, in Amorium Reports, 83–5 citing further literature and 383 n. 204 for ICG 1294, a possibly relevant inscription. For Choma, see 426–30. 213 Lighfoot, Amorium Reports 5, nos. 136–8, 141, 149–50, 154, 157–60 (lower city church, early Byzantine), 164 (lower city church, Middle Byzantine). 214 Lighfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 55–6 no. 135 (ICG 1807): the rear side of the stone reads [Θε]όδωρος ἀρχιαναγν(ώστης) ὑπούργησεν εἰς τὸν [ναόν ?]. 215 Lightfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 57 n. 139; SEG 58, 1501. ICG 4516. 216 Lightfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 58 n. 143; SEG 59, 1482. ICG 4517. 217 MAMA VI 386 (ICG 1012). N. Tsivikis, in Lightfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 73–8, suggests the revision of the text, which was an accented dodecasyllable verse.

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Figure 56 Amorium. Middle Byzantine sarcophagus, side. ICG 1012. Now in Afyon Museum Stephen Mitchell

Χ(ριστο)ῦ.218 The form, lettering and lay-out of both sarcophagi resemble that of Thomas at Afyon, while the find spot and the references to the ‘rulers of the Romaioi’ on the first text point to the tenth or eleventh century, and suggest that it was intended for a prominent official at Amorium during the Middle Byzantine revival.219 The excavators also recovered a reused stele in a post seventh-century context on the main mound with a funerary text, κύμησ(ις) Λακήα (?) δρουγαρήου. Droungarii, were high-ranking military officers in the Byzantine theme system in the seventh and eighth centuries but their status was downgraded by the Middle Byzantine period, and this modest and poorly

218 N. Tsivikis, in Lightfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 73–6; ICG 4518. There is no strong reason to restore the name [Κό]νων. 219 MAMA VI 386 where the last two letters of the inscription on the lid are interpreted as the figures for 100 and 6000, giving a date by the Byzantine or the Creation era of 6100 = 591/2, accepted by Lighfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 62 no. 162. But these eras are not attested in the region at this early date and the commentary to ICG 1012 suggests 400–550. Lightfoot in error illustrates the sarcophagus with a good photograph of the similar tomb of Thomas (ICG 1550).

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Figure 57 Amorium. Middle Byzantine sarcophagus, top. ICG 1012. Now in Afyon Museum Stephen Mitchell

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engraved stone probably dates to the tenth or eleventh centuries and may be an indication of Amorium’s military significance.220 Texts carved on portable objects include the familiar citation from Psalm 28 that the ‘Voice of the Lord is over the Waters’ engraved on the shoulder of a large jug found in a bath house, with two less common texts, Κ(ύρι)ε ἀνέβη ἠς οὐράνους, Κ(ύρι)ε ἐβρότησε, and more than thirty other fragmentary graffiti.221 Brick stamps dated to the sixth or early 7th century carry the names Ἐλιανοῦ and Εὐγενίου accompanied by crosses, both presumably the local owners of industrial kilns.222 Christian inscriptions occur in the villages around Amorium.223 A roughly cut Ionic capital was a family donation.224 Other texts were invocatory, including a small marble plaque at Demircili, decorated with an ornate cross around which the inscription reads ὁ μέγας Ἀρχ(άνγελος) Μηχ(αήλ) | Κ(ύριε) βοίθη τὸν δοῦλον [–].225 The assignation of villages in this area to the respective territories of Nacolea, Orcistus and Amorium is uncertain.226 The ancient settlements at Gülüşlü (Beyköy) and Bağlıca, which have produced many Roman imperial inscriptions, should be assigned to Orcistus or Amorium, probably the latter. A church or chapel was founded at Bağlıca by a priest who at the same time had the secular function of an oikonomos, and we can assume that the resources available to an estate manager or administrator helped to fund the religious 220 Lightfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 58 no. 145 (ICG 4519). See Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium I, 663 s.v. Droungarios (Eric McGeer). For the fortifications at Amorium see 383 n. 204 (ICG 1294) and 475–6. 221 Lightfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 123 G1, ICG 4520. 222 SEG 43, 933; Lightfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 128–131, G35–62; ICG 1387, 1388. 223 Lighfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 21 is a map showing villages in the territory of Amorium. They fall into a western group located between Orcistus (Ortaköy) and Bolvadin, around the ancient (Amorium) and modern (Emirdağ) regional centres, immediately north of the Emirdağları, and an eastern group between Asağı Piribeyli and Turgut, which lie in the steppic country north-west of Akşehir Lake. In this survey, I have only included material from the western group. 224 MAMA I 432 at Gömü; Lightfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 68 no. 184 (ICG 1693); perhaps 5th cent. The inscription is garbled, but was apparently put up by Antipatros for his wife Kyriake, their children, and the whole household. 225 MAMA I 434; Lighfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 68 no. 183; Nowakowski, Saints, 524 Gal/05/02; (ICG 1694); Middle Byzantine; Lighfoot dates it c.700–850. 226 T. Drew-Bear / T. Lochman, Grabreliefs aus Amorion, Orkistos und der antiken Siedlung von Bağlıca. Zeugen verlorengegangener Grabbauten, Arkeoloji Dergisi (Izmir) 4 (1996), 109–34. The presence of the tomb of Patrikios, bishop of Amorium, at Gülüşlü (now Kılıçlı Kavaklı by Beyköy), is an argument that nearby Bağlıca, a large settlement on the east edge of the Phrygian Highlands, belonged to the territory of Amorium.

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foundation.227 A highly unusual and lengthy text carved on a column at Bağlıca appears to contain sections of a liturgy, which should be dated to the Middle or Late Byzantine period.228 At Gülüşlü, now renamed Kılıçlı Kavaklı beside Beyköy, an ambitious verse epitaph in three elegiac couplets stated that Patrikios the father of Leontis had been the incumbent of an eminent priestly office (archiereus) for forty-eight years before entering the heavenly kingdom. The care of the stone-cutter is shown by the fact that the lines of verse correspond to the lines engraved and the beginnings of the pentameter lines were scrupulously indented: + Πατρικίου τόδε σῆμα θ(εο)υδέος ἀρχιερῆος ὃς μεθέπων ὀκτὼ[ι] κὲ σαράκοντα δ ̓ ἔτη θεσπεσίων πατέρων ἱερὸν κλέος ἔλλα[χεν α]ὖτις ναιτάειν αὐλῆς ἔνδοθεν οὐρανίης. θυγατέρος δ ̓ ἄρα τοῖο Λεοντίδος ἔνγυθι τύμβος λαιῇ παρακέκλιται σφωϊτέρο[ι]ο πατρός. This is the burial place of Patrikios, god-fearing high priest, who after pursuing his office for forty-eight years has obtained the holy distinction of the divine fathers, hereafter to dwell in the heavenly palace. Nearby is the tomb of his daughter Leontis, she lies on the left of her father.229 This verse text, the work of an experienced and educated local poet, resembles the numerous Christian verse inscriptions of mid- or late-fourth-century Lycaonia,230 but is at a more sophisticated linguistic level than most of them. It is very similar to a verse epitaph from Ağılcık, a village on the outskirts of modern Emirdağ, for another archiereus, Pientios, which also consisted of three elegiac couplets laid out in the same way on a tabula.231 τὸν σοφὸν ἀρχιερῆα Πιέντιον οὐράνιαι μὲν αὐλαὶ πνευματικῶς ἔνδον ἔχουσι πυλῶν, λείψανα δ’ αὖ σαρκὸς τηρεῖ τάφος οὗτος ὁ μικρός, εἰσόκ’ ἀναστάντος γεύσεται ἀμβροσίας· 227 MAMA VII 299a (ICG 1297). The combination of deacon and oikonomos was more common; see below, chapter 5, n. 254. 228 MAMA I 428 (ICG 1705). 229 MAMA I 412; SGO 3, 352: 16/42/02; Lightfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 67 no. 180; (ICG 1692). 230 See Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 480–514. 231 C. S. Lightfoot, AS 45 (1995), 135–6; Amorium Reports 5, 60–1 no. 152; SGO 3, 357–8: 16/43/06; AE 1995, 1510; SEG 45, 1722 (ICG 1806).

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Εὐσέβιος τόδε θῆκε γέρας πατρὶ βαιὸν ὁ βαιός, τῆς ἀμετρου χάριτος ἀντιδιδοὺς ὀλίγην. The heavenly palace contains the wise high priest Pientius in spirit inside its gate, but this little tomb guards the remains of his fleshly body until he tastes the ambrosia of resurrection. Modest Eusebios made this modest gift for his father, a small return for his immeasurable grace. The two epigrams, which employed some identical phraseology (οὐράνιαι αὐλαί; ἀρχιερεύς), were evidently the work of the same author, and the monuments, probably originally sarcophagi, were the work of the same stone-cutters. The term archiereus to denote a clerical office was not common, but almost invariably denoted a bishop. It was used four times in this sense by Theodoret of Cyrrhus,232 on inscribed verse texts from Parthikopolis in eastern Macedonia,233 Comana in Cappadocia,234 and Euchaita in Pontus,235 and on two Lycaonian prose epitaphs.236 The long-serving Patrikios and Pientios, who was presumably his successor, were bishops of Amorium. Their terms, together spanning at least half a century, must have fallen before or after that of Mysterios the bishop of Amorium who was present at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Their deaths were commemorated by an accomplished poet, and each seems to have been buried not at Amorium itself but in his native village. Patrikios of the first epitaph was named again as the bishop who presided over the dedication of a resplendent font at Türkmenköy, another village in the territory of Amorium. The inscription reads ☩ ἐκτίστη ἡ κολυνβήθρα ( front)| ☩ ἐφὶ ὁσιωτάτῳ [ἐπι]σκόπ[ῳ] ἡμῶν Πα|τρικίῳ. (right side) | ☩ ἐγὼ [ε]ἰμὴ ζωή· ἐγὼ εἰμὴ τὸ φῶς ☩ (rear). A secondary inscription on the upper surface referred enigmatically to [? Ἑρμ]ογένου κτῆμα. The design, with steps down to a square central pool, was designed for partial immersion. The front face 232 Feissel, Études d’épigraphie et d’histoire des premiers siècles de Byzance, 14, who cites the inscriptions and P. Canivet, Catégories sociales et titulature laique et ecclésiastique dans l’ “histoire Philothée” de Théodoret de Cyr, Byzantion 39 (1969), 209–50 (a remarkable evocation of 5th century Syria), at 231–2. 233 V. Besevliev, Spätgriechische und spätlateinische Inschriften aus Bulgarien no. 239; SEG 35, 763 (ICG 4142). 234 V. Yorke, Inscriptions from eastern Asia Minor, JHS 18 (1898), 318–9 no. 31. 235 C. Mango and I. Sevcenko, Three inscriptions of the reign of Anastasius I and Constantine V, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 65 (1972), 379–93 at 379–82. 236 For Lycaonia, see ICG 109 which marked the grave of a priest who had been elevated to the bishopric (read ἔντα κατάκι|τε π(ρεσβύτερος) κὲ ἀρχιε|ρεύς· τὸν θε|ον ἡμῖν (sc. ὑμῖν)· ὑ (sc. οἱ) ἀν|αγινώσο|ντες εὐξα|στε ὑπὲρ ἐ|μοῦ), and 426. ICG 519 is not Christian. Further discussion in Huebner, Klerus, 61–2 and Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 626–7.

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displayed a Latin cross in a circle with alpha and omega prominently cut in high relief in the lower quarters. On either side are reliefs respectively of an ass (?) and a ram, carved in a rustic but recognisable style that is reminiscent of animals figured on the Phrygian votive reliefs produced by the Docimian workshops of the third century. The right-hand face shows an arch with two fasciae enclosing a maltese cross and a cypress tree with columns and capitals shown at the corners. The arch design resembles that found on third-century grave steles; the rear face shows a large Latin cross in a circular frame which reaches the rim of the font at the top, flanked by two crested peacocks.237 This decoration, reminiscent throughout of late third-century work, should not be dated too late in the fourth century. In consequence, we should probably place the forty-eight-year tenure of Patricius as bishop of Amorium between c.350 and 400, or even a little earlier, and assign a shorter term for Pientius in the in the late fourth or first years of the fifth century. The funerary epigrams were accordingly composed shortly before or after 400. A stele found at Kemerkaya (formerly Çoğu), south-west of Amorium, carried a text headed by a large cross in relief, ending with a reference to the governor (consularis) of Galatia, which marked the boundary of the territory of the Phyteanoi according to an imperial decision, κατὰ θείαν κέλευσιν καὶ μεγίστην πρόσταξιν καὶ ψῆφον (fig. 58).238 This is the only clue to the ancient location of Phyteia, attested in 691, 787 and 879 as a suffragan bishopric subordinate to the metropolis Synnada. Roman imperial inscriptions, modest late Roman and Byzantine remains and a Middle Byzantine architrave for an iconostasis underline that this settlement, like Amorium itself, was continuously occupied throughout the first millennium.239 5.11

Docimium, Akroinos, Prymnessus and Polybotus (Map 10)

The marble quarries which produced the fine white/yellow marble used for decorative pieces in many of Phrygia’s churches in the fourth to sixth centuries

237 MAMA VII 300; Lightfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 66 no. 178; (ICG 1298); suggesting a date in the second half of the fourth century. For the animals compare the reliefs in Phrygian Votive Steles; for the arched niche, see many third-century steles from the area of Cadi, T. Lochman, “Deux reliefs anatoliens au Musee des Beaux-Arts de Budapest”, Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts 74, 1991, 11–24. 238 MAMA I 439; (ICG 1696); late 4th or early 5th cent. 239 MAMA I 435–8; TIB 7, 361–2.

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Figure 58 Amorium territory; Kemerkaya, (formerly Çoğ. Boundary marker of the Phyteanoi). ICG 1696 W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen

were close to the modest city of Docimium.240 There are Christian, as well as Jewish graffiti and other informal inscriptions in the quarries themselves.241 The town has produced a votive put up by Tryphon, a most humble priest, ἐλάχιστος πρεσβύτερος, and his son, for themselves and his dead parents,242 240 Niewöhner, Aizanoi, 115–34, suggests that production peaked in the later fifth and sixth centuries. 241 Ramsay CB 1.2, 745 no. 690 (ICG 1582); ICG 1586–90. See also a small stele with Jewish symbols at Docimium, κυμητήριν Ἰουσούα κὲ Σαμοὴλ υἱῶν Ἰακώβ, IJO II 183. 242 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 746 no. 692; (ICG 1583).

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and an unusually lengthy poem, carved on a column, denouncing the vice of jealousy, φθόνος: ‘Jealousy is the worst thing, but it brings the greatest benefit; it causes those who are jealous to rot away, punishing their bad deed. O jealous person, why are you jealous? You do nothing more than rot yourself. It is God who provides everything unstintingly to all those who put their hope in him. But you, I say, jealous man, can provide nothing even if you want to, and your jealousy achieves nothing. So, you are throttled by your evil conduct. God utterly detests evil and jealous men’.243 The popular morality embodied in these verses was not restricted to Phrygia, and versions of the first four lines were added to the Latin epitaph set up by Sex. Avius Hermeros, a Roman freedman, for his wife Lucretia Valeria at Lugdunum in Gaul, and appeared in the Palatine Anthology, although the Christian message of the final couplet was recorded only on the Docimian version.244 Two other verse texts, respectively in iambic trimeters and in dactylic hexameters, were the work of a doctor called Eunomios. The first recorded that he restored a tomb of one of his forebears, + ποιμένος ἀρίστου τῶν θεορρήτων λόγων | ἦν, παροδῖτα, μνῆμα, τῆς μνήμης χάριν. The cross and the imagery of the good shepherd imply that the tomb was for a Christian priest.245 The second, curiously, alluded to the restoration of a desolate piece of land and is only identifiable as Christian by the introductory cross.246 Two texts, dated by Ramsay to the fifth century, also probably referred to a single prominent individual, Mestrianus. The first, copied in Afyon, is a fragment of hexameter verse which identified him as the builder of a (funerary) tower (pyrgos) for his father,247 while the second at Docimium itself was a grave memorial, ‘in ornate letters’, for Mestrianus and his daughter: εἰς αἰῶνα τὸ μνημόσυνον | τοῦ τῆς λαμπρᾶς μνήμης | Μεστριανοῦ | καὶ τῆς τούτου | θυγατρὸς | Θεοσεβίης.248 Short votive texts, presumably from churches, were recorded at Iscehisar and the nearby village of Gebeciler.249 The study of small objects of the Byzantine period, some of them inscribed, has hardly begun in Turkey, so the publication of a circular terracotta bread stamp in the Afyon Museum, inscribed ΦΩϹ ΖΩΙ, is welcome. The editors

243 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 745 no. 689; SGO 3, 386: 16/53/06; (ICG 1581). 244 G. Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca 2533; P. Decourt, Inscriptions grecques de la France (2004), 215–7 no. 145; Anth. Pal. XI, 193. 245 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 742 no. 680; SGO 3, 385: 16/53/05 (ICG 1574). 246 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 743 no. 682; SGO 3, 385: 16/53/04 (ICG 1575); cf the text with a dedication of land to the church, ICG 1079, quoted at 425 n. 100. 247 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 743 no. 682; SGO 3, 388: 16/53/09 (ICG 1555). 248 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 743 no. 683 (ICG 1576). 249 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 744–5 nos. 686–8 (ICG 1578–80).

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suggest it is Middle Byzantine, but an earlier date in the fifth or sixth century should not be excluded.250 Afyon, has proved a collecting point for cut stone and antiquities brought from every direction, including the two nearest ancient cities, Docimium to the east and Prymnessus to the south. It is rarely possible to establish the provenance of inscriptions and architectural pieces that have been recorded there.251 However, an inscription published in 2004, with a text which reads ἀνεκ(αι)νίσθη ὁ πάνσεπτος ναὸς τοῦ ἀρχαγγέλου Μιχαὴλ ἐπὶ Κωνσταν(τί)νου μ(εγάλου) βασ[ι]λ(έως) κ(αὶ) αὐτοκράτωρος Ῥωμαίων τοῦ Πορφυρογεννήτου κ(αὶ) Νικήτου θεοφιλεσ(τάτου) ἐπισκό(που) Ἀκρο(ϊ)νοῦ τοῦ Σωζοπολί(του) μη(νί) [-], has confirmed that modern Afyon should be identified with the Byzantine Akroinos, and indicates that its most important church, dedicated to St Michael, was rebuilt at the end of the reign of Constantine VII, when he received the honorific name Porphyrogenetes, between 945 and 949. Bishop Niketas came from Sozopolis, in south-west Phrygia, an important Christian pilgrimage destination.252 The inscribed invocation ἅγιος ὦ θεός, ἅγιος [ἰσχυρός, ἅγιος ἀθάνατος]. † ἀρχάνγελε Μιχαηλ, ἐλέησον τὴν πόλι σου κ[α]ὶ ῥύση αὐτὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ πονήρ(ου), copied in an Armenian church at Afyon on a small column, which combines the trishagion prayer with an appeal to the archangel Michael to rescue the city from travail, and seems to be earlier in date, may have come from the same church before its restoration in this new polis, which grew to become the region’s most significant settlement in the middle Byzantine period.253 It is likely, therefore, that other Middle Byzantine texts copied at Afyon come from churches at Akroinos, rather than from Prymnessus or Docimium. These include a decorated architrave dated to the creation year 6446 (= 937/8): ἔτος ϛυμϛʹ, βασιλεύοντος Ῥομανοῦ Kω(νσταντίνου) Στεφά(νου) Κω(νσταντίνου) [- -],254 naming the co-rulers from 925 to 944, Romanos Lekapenos and his son Stephanos Lekapenos, who both took the honorific name Constantinos. Another Middle Byzantine templon architrave, 250 E. Lafli and M. Buora, A bread stamp with the expression of ΦΩϹ + ΖΩΙ in the museum of Afyon Karahisar, western Turkey, Talanta 52 (2020), 89–94 (ICG 4458). 251 Ramsay, CB 1.2,738; TIB 7, 177–8; C. S. Lighfoot, Bizans döneminde Afyonkarahisar, in Afyon Kütüğü I (Ankara 2001), 113–23. 252 J.-C. Cheynet, Th. Drew-Bear, Une inscription d’Akroïnos datant de Constantin Porphyrogénète, Revue des études byzantines 62 (2004), 215–228, identify the emperor; G. Pallis, Byz. Zeitschr. 2013, 785 no. 25; ICG 4507. 253 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 741–2 no. 678; Nowakowski, Saints, 438: Phr/11/02 (ICG 1552); according to Ramsay (1881), this was from a very old Armenian church, originally said to have been Greek. The usual trishagion formula can be restored. 254 MAMA IV 38, with H. Grégoire, Byzantion 8 (1933), 757–8; (ICG 1090); Pallis, Byz. Zeitschr. 2013, 784 no. 24, has overlooked Grégoire’s correction.

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decorated with four medallions containing the busts of saints, identified by inscriptions as ὁ ἅ(γιος) Φίληπος, ὁ ἅ(γιος) Μακάρεος, ὁ ἅ(γιος) Λουκᾶς and ὁ ἅ(γιος) Παντελεΐμον,255 and a votive appeal by a monk and his brotherhood: βωήθι Νηκολάωυ μοναχοῦ κὲ τῖς χ(ριστ)οαδελφ[ότη]τος αὐτοῦ.256 At this period the term brotherhood, unlike that of the third-century communities, denoted the monastic entourage around Nicolas, not the entire Christian community of Akroinos. Two other Αfyon texts may relate to a single individual. A half cylindrical sarcophagus lid, of Middle Byzantine date, originally inscribed with eighteen lines of dodecasyllabic verse, carries the appeal of the deceased, who described himself as the wretch Thomas, to be released from sinful bondage, an evil disposition and the destructive tumult of life, and admitted to the ranks of the blessed. The sign of the cross will cause the ranks of the demons to take flight (figs. 59 and 60).257 The size of the sarcophagus and the ambitious scope of the inscription show that Thomas was a prominent individual, and since the name was relatively uncommon, this was probably the same Thomas identified on a Middle Byzantine door lintel, probably from a templon screen, which expressed a similar sentiment: [Κύριε ἐκλῦσον (or σῶσον) Θ]ωμᾶν τὸν οἰκέτην σου πικρῶν βασάνων (fig. 61).258 Several other white marble decorated pieces of the same period recorded at Afyon almost certainly originated from buidings there. Akroinos, nestling under the needle rock from which it took its name, and placed like the modern city at one of the major route intersections of central Anatolia, had emerged in the tenth century as an important provincial town in the Byzantine empire. The inscriptions naming Romanos Lekapenos and Constantine VII imply close contacts with Constantinople, and the inscriptions and architectural pieces indicate that it had become an ecclesiastical centre. Christian monuments of the fifth or sixth centuries recorded at the villages of Nuribey (formerly called Mikhail after the archangel) and Işıklar, which are south of Sü(ğ)lün, should be assigned to Prymnessus. A lintel block at Işıklar, 255 MAMA IV 40 (ICG 1092); in Afyon Museum Inv. 1563; A similar Μiddle Byzantine frieze from Acmonia with a roundel depicting John the Baptist (Afyon inv. 1531 unpublished), was put up in memory of a monk. 256 ΜΑΜΑ IV 37, corrected at Bull.ep. 1967, 67 (ICG 1089); see Pallis, Byz. Zeitschr. 2013, 784 no. 23. 257 T. Drew-Bear and C. Foss, The epitaph of Thomas, Byzantion 39 (1969), 74–84; (SGO 3, 381: 16/52/99; ICG 1550); in Afyon Museum inv. 6375. 258 MAMA IV 36 (ICG 1088) suggests a 6th century date, but the carving is unquestionably Μiddle Byzantine, from the 10th or 11th century; see G. Barsanti, Milion 1 (1988), 279 and G. Pallis, Byz. Zeitschr. 2013, 784 no. 22. I photographed the text in Afyon Museum in 1977, another fragment is reported by Barsanti to be in Izmir Archaeological Museum.

section 5.11: Docimium, Akroinos, Prymnessus and Polybotus

Figure 59 Akroinos. Funerary sarcophagus of Thomas, left side of lid. ICG 1550. Now in Afyon Museum Stephen Mitchell

Figure 60 Akroinos. Funerary sarcophagus of Thomas, right side of lid. ICG 1550. Now in Afyon Museum Stephen Mitchell

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Figure 61 Akroinos. Middle Byzantine door lintel, referring to Thomas. ICG 1088. Now in Afyon Museum Stephen Mitchell

invoked God’s blessing on the local bishop, Auxanon: ☩ μνήσθητι [Κ(ύρι)]ε τοῦ ταπινοῦ ἐπισκόπου | Αὐξάνοντη ὅταν ἔλθις ἐν τῇ βασιλί|ᾳ σου. Prymnessus was represented at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 by a bishop Auxanon, and the style and letter forms of the inscription suit a fifth century date.259 A marble block at Nuribey with a longer text marked the tomb set up by Amarantos, a deacon, for his brother Kyriakos and their mother Sophronie, for themselves, their wives Papiane and Pancharie, their children and all the others who inherited their humble livelihood. The naming of the relatives in the text evokes the extended households commemorated in earlier texts from the Upper Tembris Valley, and the epitaph ends with a greeting to the reader which was common to Christians and pagans: ☩ βλέπε δὲ ὁ ἀναγινώσκων ὅτι ὁ θάνατος πᾶσιν ἡτύμαστε.260 But the whole inscription was introduced and concluded by Christian sentiments, ☩ ἐμὺ τὸ ζῆν Χριστὸς κὲ τὸ ἀποθανῖν κέρδος and εὔχεσθε [τὸ]ν θεὸν ὅπως ἰαθῆτε ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν. ☩ δίκευ χέροιτε. ☩ Amarantos, the dedicator, described himself as ἐλεεινὸς δοῦλος Κυρίου, humble servant of the Lord, and his final appeal to the righteous is unlikely to predate the fifth century.261

259 MAMA IV 35 (ICG 1095); TIB 7, 282–3. Note also MAMA IV 43, a 5th or 6th century column capital with eagles at the corners. 260 L. Robert, Sur une inscription chrétienne de Phrygie, Βλέπε, Revue de philologie 18 (1944), 53–56 (Opera Minora Selecta III, 1419–1422). 261 MAMA IV 39 (ICG 1094); cf. L. Robert, Hell. XIII, 272.

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Three more long texts copied at Afyon, which contain biblical citations, seem to have come from a single building. One of these presented extracts from the Psalms and was displayed on one of the faces of a combined architrave and frieze block of the imperial period, which had been cut back to receive the carefully carved text.262 There is no record of the appearance of the other two inscriptions, but they are comparable in their scale and content. Both quoted the book of Isaiah, the first with citations from I. 16–18, and the second from LXI.1, LXI.10 and XXV.6.263 Ramsay noted a fourth inscription of the same genre with the text of Isaiah LX. 1–3 on a block found at Akşehir and now preserved in Akşehir Museum.264 This is so similar in appearance to the group from Afyon that it might conceivably be a pierre errante from the same building, carted down the highway from Prymnessus, the presumed find-spot. Prymnessus – or Afyon – has produced a handful of other shorter texts, a marble block with a basin in the top and the oft-cited Psalm verse associated with baptism, φωνὶ Κυρίου ἔπὶ τῶν ὑδάτων,265 a building block with a text ending ἀπὸ θε[με]λλίων ἔκτισεν †,266 and another block which names a building’s donor as a minor imperial bureaucrat, Θεοδοσί|ου ἔργον | σκρινι|αρίου † (Fig. 62).267 A late sixth-century epitaph for a man from the pass that joined Serdica (Sofia) in Illyricum with Philippopolis (Plovdiv) in Thrace, copied at Afyon, prays for the Lord to receive him into the bosom of Abraham: ἐνταῦθα κεῖδε ὁ δοῦλος τοῦ Θεοῦ Ἀποατζῆς ἐκ κατὰ Φιλιποπόλεος χορίου Κλησούρας· καὶ ἀναπαύσι αὐτὸν ὁ Κύριος ἐν κόλποις Ἀβραάμ.268 A final reference point in the valley of the Akar Çay, which flows from central Phrygia past Afyon to the lake of the forty martyrs, was Polybotos, whose name is preserved by today’s Bolvadın. The ancient site was five kilometres WSW of the modern town, and became more important in the middle and later Byzantine period when a direct road leading south from Nacolea and east of Afyon, seems to have been heavily used and featured in accounts of

262 MAMA VI 385 (ICG 1008), citing Psalm 31,1 (lines 1–2), 33,9 (2–3), 33,6 (3–4), 26,1 (4–6) and 96,11 (6–7). 263 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 740 nos. 674 (ICG 1009, in Afyon Museum, carved on the back side of a white marble architrave) and 675 (ICG 1010). 264 CB I.2, 741 no. 676 (ICG 620). 265 MAMA IV 41 (ICG 1093), perhaps 6th cent. 266 MAMA IV 39 (ICG 1091). 267 MAMA IV 34 and VI 400 (ICG 1011). 268 Ramsay, CB I.2, 742 no. 679 (ICG 1554).

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Figure 62 Prymnessus. Donor inscription of the scriniarius Theodosius. ICG 1011. Now in Afyon Museum Stephen Mitchell

Arab campaigns.269 Two Christian inscriptions have been recorded here, both dating to the sixth century. One is carved on a door lintel above a delicately engraved floral pattern and identified the craftsman Eugenios.270 The other is a difficult broken text from the reign of Justinian relating to the intervention of an imperial a secretis and biokolytes, to protect imperial coloni from an abusive contractor.271 5.12

The Reckoning with Paganism in Northern Phrygia

What had become of the ebullient pagan beliefs of the northern region, which were documented in the second and third centuries by countless votive monuments from rural shrines for Zeus Alsenos, Petarenos and Orochoreities, for Zeus Bronton in northern Phrygia on grave monuments and in sanctuaries, for 269 TIB 3, 363–4. 270 W. M. Calder, Julia-Ipsos and Augustopolis, JRS II (1912), 253 no. 10; MAMA I 386; (ICG 1706): […] τὸ ἔργον τῶτο διὰ [χ]ιρὸς Εὐγεν[ή]ου ἐνδικτίωνος δευτέρας μ(η)ν(ὶ) τρίτ(ῳ). 271 Calder, JRS II (1912), 260–66 no. 21 (ICG 1707); D. Feissel, Les actes de l’état impérial dans l’épigraphie tardive (324–610). Prolégomènes à un inventaire, Documents, droit, diplomatique de l’ Empire romain tardif, 65 no. 57. Feissel has prepared a new edition of this text.

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the Dionysus cults of Dorylaeum, Nacolea and the Upper Tembris Valley, for Hosios and Dikaios, for Angdistis in the Phrygian highlands, for the Mother Goddess in many local incarnations, for the pantheon of anthropomorphic gods depicted on elaborate steles, and for the aniconic Theos Hypsistos? The initial answer is that the inscriptions and monuments of the fifth and sixth centuries contain no indications of this pagan heritage, and in the fourth century the only traces of non-Christian beliefs, almost intangible, are the fleeting references to ‘hypsistarians’.272 Paganism seems to have been erased from the record. This cannot be anywhere close to the whole truth. Generations and centuries of beliefs and traditions could not be wiped out from the mentality and memory of whole populations, even if they were not expressed on a public stage or in any form that has endured. Many facets of pre-Christian behaviour were certainly incorporated into everyday conduct and even into local forms of Christian ritual, although these appear only evasively, if at all, in the epigraphic record. A recent study of ritual deposits in domestic contexts during late antiquity at Sagalassus in Pisidia, has shown that individual coins, modest iron or decorative objects, or miniature vases were deliberately placed in spots which provided ritual protection for large dolia, storage jars, and their valuable contents. These ingrained local traditions, which we might call superstition, were in no way intrinsically Christian but evidently came as second nature to the Christian population. Pre-Christian attitudes and habits were not on display in public spaces, city centres or cemeteries, but retained in private homes and domestic behaviour.273 Two broader studies of Sagalassus in late antiquity have reached the conclusion that its public spaces were largely secular in the fourth and fifth centuries; Christian buildings and monuments did not set the tone for civic life which appears to have been essentially secular.274 This was certainly not true in every city in Asia Minor before the sixth century, but may provide an insight into the religious character of urban Aezani, which seems to have been only very 272 See 285–91. 273 I. Jacobs, Archaeology as an alternative source for late antique Christianity. The example of building and termination deposits, in R. Haensch and Ph. von Rummel (eds.), Himmelwärts und Erdverbunden. Religiöse und wirtschaftliche Aspekte spätantiker Lebensrealität (Rahden 2021), 87–100. 274 I. Jacobs and M. Waelkens, “Christians do not differ from other people”: the down-to-earth religious stance of late antique Sagalassus, in W. Ameling (ed.), Die Christianisierung Kleinasiens in der Spätantike (Bonn 2017), 175–99; P. Talloen, The rise of Christianity at Sagalassus, in S. Mitchell and P. Pilhofer (eds), Early Christianity in Asia Minor and Cyprus. From the margins to the mainstream (Leiden 2019), 164–201.

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superficially Christian in late antiquity, although its pagan shrines and temples had fallen into disuse. No other north Phrygian city has been investigated closely enough to allow certainty, but the pattern at Aezani seems exceptional, whereas the evidence from Cotiaeum and Nacolea indicates that their urban landscapes contained numerous churches. Centres varied from one another and could preserve their religious or secular character and individuality in late antiquity, as they had done at earlier periods of their history.275 The pagan Phrygian practice of tomb curses was transferred to the Christian population which used the Eumeneian formula and similar imprecations that invoked a reckoning with God to protect the grave. This illustrates an important measure of continuity in burial practices, although Christian examples of these imprecations decreased in number sharply after the fourth century. A remarkable survival occurs on an inscription recorded by Ramsay at Konya. It contains the confessions of the numberless deceits and defilements of his life by a ninth or tenth-century monk, Sabbas, who now sought absolution from the Immaculate Mistress, exactly as his pagan predecessors in Phrygia and Lydia set up inscriptions which confessed their delinquencies to Zeus or Mên seven centuries earlier. The inscription ends with an utterly traditional Phrygian sepulchral curse, that if anyone messes with the dust of his bones, let him face justice at the fearful and spine-chilling moment of resurrection: εἴ τις δὲ σκύλῃ τὴν κόνιν τῶν ὀστέων, δίκην λαβέτω ἐν τῇ φοβέρᾳ καὶ φρικτῇ ἀναστάσει. Continuity not only with an earlier epigraphic practice but with a traditional pattern of belief is here beyond question.276 Nevertheless, antipathy and hostility towards pagan belief and practice were an almost ubiquitous presence in Christian literature and often palpable in the archaeological record of late antiquity. There has been much discussion of evidence from cities in Asia Minor about the survival of pagan temples as places of workship, or conversely about their abandonment, destruction or conversion into churches. The well-informed and level-headed résumé by P. Talloen and L. Vercauteren emphasizes the diversity of the archaeological evidence, and concludes that the only overarching paradigm is one of abandonment and decline. ‘The Christians who rose to prominence in the fourth century did not find the temples the vibrant centres of activity that they had once been.’ There was no will from central authorities or local élites to maintain 275 Mitchell, Anatolia II, 62. 276 M. Lauxtermann and P. Thonemann, A Byzantine verse inscription from Konya in M. D. Lauxtermann and I. Toth (eds.), Inscribing Texts in Byzantium. Continuities and Transformations. Papers from the Forty-Ninth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies (London/New York, 2020), c.15; ICG 4508.

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them and legislation of the later fourth century or early fifth century made official pagan activity impossible, although it did not eliminate all cult and ritual activity in practice.277 The record of the temple at Aezani, where the temple seems to have been inactive in the fourth century, supports this conclusion, although it may require modification in the light of important recent findings from Hierapolis (Pamukkale), which show continued signs of pagan cult practice by private individuals at a renowned cult site, the Plutonium, which did not finally cease before the sixth century.278 The fate of ancient pagan statuary has also been treated as a litmus test of the transformation of ancient society from polytheism to Christian monotheism, but there was no simple rule book according to which Christian communities integrated or came to terms with their monumental pagan past, and the visual story could be ‘rewritten’ in different ways.279 Human and divine images on Phrygian funerary and votive monuments were often deliberately defaced. Two votive altars with verse inscriptions from a sanctuary on the east edge of the Phrygian Highlands were dedicated to the Greatest God Hosios; each of them displayed busts of the god of Justice, which have been deliberately and precisely effaced. These images of paganism were an affront and probably violently removed by Christians.280 The consecration inscription of 313/14 for the high-priest Athanatos Epitynchanos and members of his family is another clear example. The reliefs on all four sides have been defaced and a crude, but 277 P. Talloen and L. Vercauteren, The fate of temples in late antique Anatolia, in L. Lavan and M. Mulryan (eds.), The Archaeology of Late Antique ‘Paganism’ (Leiden 2011), 379. The basis for modern study of this complex topic is the comprehensive article by Béatrice Caseau, Πολεμεῖν λίθοις. La desacralisation des espaces et des objets réligieux paiens durant l’antiquité tardive, in M. Kaplan (ed.), Le sacré et son inscription dans l’éspace à Byzance et en Occident. Études comparées (Paris 2001), 62–123. 278 F. D’Andria, The Ploutonium of Hierapolis in the light of recent research, Journal of Roman Archaeology 31 (2018), 90–132 at 127–9; P. Panarelli, The Ploutonium of Hierapolis in Phrygia in the late ancient and proto-byzantine period, in T. Kaçar and C. Şimşek (eds), The Lycos Valley and Neighbourhood in Later Antiquity (Istanbul 2018), 325–40. 279 L. Lavan, ‘Political talismans’. Residual ‘pagan’ statues in late antique public space, in L. Lavan and M. Mulryan (eds.), The Archaeology of Late Antique ‘Paganism’ (Leiden 2011), 439–78; B. Caseau, Religious intolerance and pagan statuary, in L. Lavan and M. Mulryan (eds.), The Archaeology of Late Antique ‘Paganism’ (Leiden 2011), 479–504; T. M. Kristensen, Making and Breaking the Gods. Christian responses to pagan sculpture in Late Antiquity (Aarhus 2013), with Asia Minor evidence adduced in the review by P. Niewöhner, Classical Review 65 (2015), 262–3; I. Jacobs, Old statues, new meanings. Literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence for Christian reidentification of statuary, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 113 (2020), 789–836. 280 E. Akyürek-Şahin and H. Uzunoğlu, Neue Inschriften aus dem phrygischen Hochland, Gephyra 21 (2021), 179 nos. 1–2.

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emphatic cross was carved inside the wreath on the right-hand face, leaving no doubt that the action was a deliberate act, religiously motivated.281 Amid other examples of the Christian defacement of pagan monuments, the evidence for fanatical intolerance is clearest in two north Phrygian sanctuaries that have been archaeologically identified. Not a single votive monument from the more than a hundred recovered from the precinct of Hosios and Dikaios at Yayla Baba köy on the territory of Cotiaeum escaped destruction and survives intact. All the reliefs, which carried inscriptions and images of the divinities, were deliberately smashed into fragments in antiquity.282 The same fate attended around 120 small stelae found in the sanctuary at Yazıdere on the territory of Nacolea, including fifty-nine texts for Zeus Limnenos and twenty-four for Zeus Bronton. All were smashed into small pieces; none has been preserved undamaged.283 It is also worth noting that no buildings have recognisably survived at the important rural pagan sanctuaries of Zeus Thallos and Zeus Ampelites near Appia, or of Zeus Alsenos, Zeus Petarenos and Zeus Orochoreites beween Docimium and Amorium, even though their locations have been precisely fixed. In southern Phrygia, the sanctuaries of Mên Askaênos outside Antioch and that of the Xenoi Tekmoreioi at Sağır certainly suffered the same treatment. The temple of Mên Askaênos was systematically demolished down to the level of the stylobate.284 Blocks from the cella walls were used in the construction of a church on the site, probably during the fifth century,285 but the columns and decorative elements of the entablature vanished almost without trace, presumably having been broken up and reduced to lime, while the smaller monuments and dedications discovered during the excavation of the site before the First World War were smashed and scattered. Buildings and sacred enclosures, as well as the votive dedications displayed there, were also demolished. The fate and condition of the sanctuary at Sağır seems to have been similar. Nothing has survived of any buildings associated with the cult that was practised there, and the inscriptions that have been recovered are mostly in fragments, deliberately

281 See 279–83. 282 The publications of these texts by M. Ricl (1991, 1992 etc.) are corrected and supplemented by Lochman, Phrygien, 198–207 Exkurs: Hosios und Dikaios. 283 E. Akyürek-Şahin, Yazıdere (Seyitgazi). (Istanbul 2006), and Phrygia’dan yeni Zeus Bronton adakları, Arkeoloji ve Sanat 28, 122 (2006), 110–8 nos. 34–57; cf 65 n. 33. 284 S. Mitchell and M. Waelkens, Pisidian Antioch. The site and its monuments (Swansea 1998), 85–6, agreeing with W. M. Ramsay, Journal of Roman Studies 8 (1918), 121 and J. G. C. Anderson, Journal of Roman Studies 3 (1913), 107–45. 285 For the church see 447–8.

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smashed.286 Isolated votive monuments might, of course, have been broken by accident or for other reasons, but when entire deposits and sanctuaries were reduced to this condition, there can be no doubt that destruction and defacement were deliberate acts, attributable in these instances to Christians. Even more eloquent evidence for Christian intolerance of pagan figured monuments, and the steps that were taken to protect these, has been identified at Kovalık Hüyük, two kilometres north of Çavdarlı köyü, about fifteen kilometres east of Afyon. In 1964 bulldozers clearing ground for a new highway sliced into the mound and uncovered a deposit of thirty-six votive statues, thirteen fragmentary statues, nine votive steles, two votive altars, two busts, six statue heads and a table with animal heads, all made from Docimian marble. The divinities represented were Apollo (12), Nike (10), Men (3), Zeus (2), Kybele (2), Artemis (2), Eros (2), Asklepios (1), Asklepios with Hygeia (1), Leto (1), Herakles (1), King Midas (1) Mên Kazmenos (1) Thirty-nine of the votives were identified by Greek inscriptions. These were recovered by the staff of Afyon Museum.287 The Turkish architect and archaeologist Mahmut Akok subsequently carried out an excavation on the prehistoric levels of the mound, but the hoard of sculptures has never been published and evaluated in its entirety.288 Tomas Lochman has emphasized the contextual significance of this unique discovery: ‘Der immense Fundkomplex ist wahrscheinlich heidnischen Priestern aus spätantiker Zeit zu verdanken, die diese Statuetten und Stelen aus den umliegenden Heiligtümern zusammengetragen und vergraben haben mußten, um sie vor der Zerschlagung vermutlich durch Christen – zu bewahren’.289 Lochman infers that there had been numerous sanctuaries in the plain of the Akar Çay, including one or more shrines for Apollo and associated divinities, all well provided with votive sculptures and reliefs from the Docimian workshops. Buried or hidden deposits of pagan statuary are not 286 For the inscriptions of the Xenoi Tekmoreioi, see 76–82 and the comprehensive new edition of the texts by Gaetano Arena, Xenoi tekmoreioi. 287 M. Akok, Afyon Çavdarlı Hüyük Kazısı, TAD 14 (1965), 5–34. Information about the statues, which had been deposited in the upper levels of the prehistoric mound and were uncovered by bulldozers during road building, before the official excavation took place, was provided by the web-site https://afyondayiz.gov.tr/listesayfa/cavdarli-kovalik-hoyuk -kazisi, [checked 21.05.2021 but no longer available] and reported by M. Mellink, AJA 69 (1965), 143. 288 See L. Robert, Documents d’Asie Mineure, BCH 106 (1982), 309–78 at 373–8 for a relief dedicated to the Muses, and several items which were featured in the 1983 Catalogue of an exhibition in Istanbul’s Eirene Church, F. Edgü (ed.), The Anatolian Civilisations II (Istanbul 1983), 123–25, nos. B.339-B.346. 289 Lochman, Phrygien, 127; for a similar interpretation see T. Drew-Bear, Afyon Müzesinde bir heykel definesi, 10 AST 1992 [1993], 147–52; Mitchell, Anatolia II, 13 n. 22; T. Lochman, in Drew-Bear et al., Phrygian Votive Steles, 34 n. 42.

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altogether rare, and are subject to a range of explanations, but the excellent preservation of the Çavdarlı hoard, and the fact that none of the images seems to have been defaced, are strong arguments for the view that they had been buried in the upper levels of a prehistoric settlement mound, and put out of harm’s way to protect them from the fate that awaited other pagan sanctuaries in Phrygia.290 There is no secure indication of the date at which these Phrygian sanctuaries were threatened or destroyed. A continuous frenzy of religious violence throughout late antiquity between 350 and 600 can be safely ruled out, but shorter periods of acute hostility are well attested in the historical record. These include the anti-pagan crusade conducted in the dioecese of Oriens by the praetorian prefect Cynegius Maternus between 384 and 388, which inaugurated the repressive years at the end of the reign of Theodosius I and culminated in the destruction of the Serapeum at Alexandria, and the active measures taken in Asia in the 540s under Justinian to eradicate pagan shrines from parts of the province of Asia, which were spear-headed by the monophysite John of Ephesus.291 The period of active persecution at the end of the reign of Theodosius I might have provided the context for pulling down the hellenistic Artemis temple at Aezani, whose masonry was reused in constructing a new colonnaded street around AD 400,292 and for the demolition of the Mên temple near Antioch. It is plausible that the sanctuaries at Yaylababa köyü and at Yazıdere, as well as those in the Akar Cay valley were razed and destroyed, or abandoned between c.385 and 400. The fictitious and comic description of St Abercius smashing the statues in a pagan sanctuary at Hierapolis in the Sandıklı plain with a large wooden stick was probably composed in precisely this period.293 This outburst of Christian violence against pagan buildings and monuments largely preceded the extensive church building of the fifth and sixth centuries.294 290 See Caseau, Πολεμεῖν λίθοις, 112–116. Compare L. Robert, A travers l’Asie Mineure (Paris 1980), 397–9, for discussion of the burial of a similar hoard of pagan statues at Constantsa (ancient Tomis), including a famous image of the oracular god Glycon, to preserve them from Christian vandalism. 291 Literature and discussion in H. Leppin, Skeptische Anmerkungen zur Mission des Johannes von Ephesis in Kleinasien, in W. Ameling (ed.), Die Christianisierung Kleinasiens in der Spätantike (2017), 49–59, who argues that the account may largely be a literary construct and hardly reflects historical reality; but see 543. 292 K. Rheidt, Archäologie und Spätantike in Anatolien, in G. Brands / H.-G. Severin (eds), Die Spätantike Stadt und ihre Christianisierung (Wiesbaden 2003), 241–2. 293 See 488–9. 294 Further evidence from Asia Minor, including a recently excavated healing sanctuary at Miletus, where cult ceased at the end of the fourth century, is reviewed by P. Niewöhner,

section 5.13: Sebaste, Acmonia, and Dioclea

5.13

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Sebaste, Acmonia, and Dioclea (Maps 12 and 13)

A review of Christian settlements in western, central and southern Phrygia in the fifth and sixth centuries and the Middle Byzantine period can begin with the only ecclesiastical site in these regions which has been systematically excavated, at Selçikler, two kilometres south-west of Sivasli, ancient Sebaste, the Roman city which had been founded by Augustus.295 During field work between 1966 and 1970, Nezih Fıratlı from the Istanbul Archaeological Museum noted that the entire area between Sivasti and Selçikler was full of ruins indicating the location and extent of the ancient settlement. Two imperial dedications with virtually identical wording, put up between 363 and 378, perhaps in a precinct of the imperial cult, help to fix Sebaste’s place in a wider imperial perspective.296 The first has the inscription Ἀγαθῃ Τύχῃ. τὸν ἀνδρειότατον καἰ εὐσεβέστατον αὐτοκράτορα Φλ. Ἰοβιανὸν τὸν Αὔγουστον. However, Ramsay’s 1883 copy indicated that εὐσεβέστατον had been engraved over a half-erased ἐπιφανέστατον, and the last four words were also cut above an erasure. Julian’s name and titles, it seems, had been removed and replaced by Jovian’s.297 Strictly similar was a text for Valens: Ἀγαθῇ [Τύχῃ.] τὸν ἀνδρειότατον καὶ ε[ὐσε]βέστατον Φλ. [Ο]ὐαλένταν Σεβαστόν, which had also largely been cut above an erased text.298 Like Dorylaeum and Nacolea, Sebaste has produced documentation of a significant military presence in the late fourth century, including the Latin tombstone set up for his wife Ursinia by Flavius Buraido, a protector scholae peditum, dated by the consuls of 390, and the slightly earlier Greek grave monument put up by Ursinia’s father Ursinianus, a soldier from a different unit, ἀπὸ κώρτας σταβλησιανῶν, and his wife Florentia for another daughter called

295 296

297 298

Healing springs of Anatolia: St Michael and the problem of the pagan legacy, in B. Pitarakis and G. Tanman (eds), Life is Short, Art is Long. The art of healing in Byzantium. New perspectives (Istanbul 2018), 99–110. N. Fıratlı, Uşak- Selçikler kazısı ve çevre araştırmaları, TAD 19.2 (1970), 109–160; cf Ramsay, CB 1.2, 581. A. Filipppini, Fossili e contraddizioni dell’ era constantiniana: i signitari del culto imperiale nella tarda antichità e il suo ruolo nelle reforme religiose di Massimino Daia e Giuliano, in A. Kolb and M. Vitale, Kaiserkult in den Provinzen des römischen Reiches. Organisation, Kommunikation und Repräsentation (Berlin 2016), 409–75 gives a detailed overview of the evidence for the imperial cult in the fourth century. For other fourth-century texts from Phrygia honouring the emperors, compare Drew-Bear / Eck, Chiron 6 (1976), 290–291, Nr. 2–3 (SEG 26, 1363–1364) and MAMA X 481 from Ancyra Sidera for Constantine II, Constans and Constantius II; See at Apamea, CIL III 7054, a Latin dedication to Fl. Cl. Iobiano pio fel. Invicto pont max. semper Aug. CB I.2, 605 no. 481. CB I.2, 605 no. 482.

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Heliopolis (fig. 63).299 The deployment of Roman troops from Constantinople, probably of Thracian origin, complemented the Gothic military settlements in Phrygia of the same period. These military tombstones carried no indication of the religion of the soldiers or their family members. The excavation concentrated on a modestly-sized, three-aisled basilica church with a narthex, flanked on the south by two apsed side-chapels, fronted by an atrium to the west. There is evidence for building phases in the fifth-sixth and tenth-eleventh centuries. The outstanding relic of the earlier period was an impressive marble ambo, which remained in use when the building was restored, and the podium base carried an inscription which ran across two of its eight sides: † ὑπερὶ εὐχῆς Ὀμιανοῦ Ἡρακλίου κὴ Κυριακοῦ [τῶν] Θεοδώρου καρποφορού †|[ντων] κὲ παντὸς τοῦ ὔκου αὐτοῦ †.300 The church was refurbished in the tenth century, with decorated arches that linked the narthex with the three aisles, and an iconostasis with upright pillars and architraves. The deisis displayed images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist, flanked on the left by the archangels Gabriel and Raphael, and on the right by Michael and Uriel. These were combined with a row of busts which depicted the apostles and writers of the Gospels. A figure on the left was identified as St Eutychios, an obscure saint who may be the dedicatee of the church. Arches found in the narthex were decorated with roundels which displayed St Stephen, St Theodore tiro, and St Gregory the Illuminator of Great Armenia.301 The apse of another, larger church was uncovered to the south of the excavated area. The metrical inscription in dodecasyllables on the architrave of the Middle Byzantine templon related to the refurbishment of the church and should be restored to read, [ὁ ποι]μενάρχης Εὐστάθιος ἐμφρόνως ἔνθεν παλαίαν ἐξάρας δυ[σμορφία]ν, κόσμον τίθησι καινὸν ἐν τοῖς κοσμίταις, καταγλαΐζων ἐκ χρυσοῦ καὶ μαρμάρων, ἄλλης τε λαμπρᾶς καὶ διαυγοῦς τῆς ὕλης ναοῦ προσευ[χ/ξ -], ‘Eustathios, the leader of the flock has wisely removed from there the old unsightliness and places new ornamentation on the gable blocks, adorning it with gold and marble, and the rest of the splendid and shining fabric of the church’ The excellent quality of these verses matched the artistic aspiration of the design, and these features confirm the conjecture that the Eustathios responsible for the refoundation of the church was not the local city bishop but Eustathios, patriarch of Constantinople from 1019–1025.302 Sebaste was one of many Phrygian centres 299 Ursinia: MAMA XI 72; Ursinianus: BCC, JRS 1926, 92–3 no. 225 (ICG 1476). 300 Νiewöhner, Aizanoi, 282 no. 416 (ICG 1843). 301 TAD 19.2 (1970), 114–15, 139 figs. 34–6. N. Fıratlı, Découverte d’une église byzantine à Sébaste de Phrygie, Cahiers archéologiques: fin de l’antiquité et Moyen Âge (1969), 151–66. 302 C. Barsanti, Sculptura anatolica di epoca mediobizantina, Milion 1 (1988), 291–4; Pallis, Byz. Zeitschr. 2013, 783 n. 20 (ICG 4469).

section 5.13: Sebaste, Acmonia, and Dioclea

Figure 63 Sebaste. Military gravestone set up by Ursinianus, ICG 1476 W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen

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in the eleventh century which maintained close connections with the capital. As at Amorium and in other cities, the fifth- or sixth-century church at Sebaste had been restored in the Middle Byzantine period, indicating continuity of occupation and worship at the site. Much attention has been paid to an inscription, probably of the sixth century, copied at Payamalanı, the ancient village of Eibeos/n, a Roman and late Roman settlement with an extensive necropolis about six kilometres north-east of Sebaste.303 The text, found in the ruins of a small church at the south-east side of the mound and brought by Süleyman Göncer, its director, to Afyon Museum in 1951, should be restored to read † ἐνταῦθα κῖται | [ὁ] ἅγιος Παυλῖνος | [κτ]ίστης καὶ κοινωνὸς | [ἔχω]ν τὴν χάριν | [θ(εο)ῦ] ἔτη πεʹ. | ὁ ἅγ]ιος Τρόφιμος | [μά]ρτυς (fig. 64). The restoration [μο]ίστης suggested by the imaginative Henri Grégoire, is not supported by any parallels either from a Montanist context or from the region’s epigraphy, and the alternative [κτ]ίστης, proposed but later abandoned by Calder, is preferable and exactly in harmony with the find context.304 The inscription tells us that the aged (85) and saintly Paulinus was buried in the church that he had himself founded, and the last two lines of the text give the name of the church’s dedicatee.305 The martyr Trophimus was local, presumably to be identified with the Trophimus, whose remains were kept in an ossuary that has been recovered at Synnada.306 The definition of Paulinus as ‘holy’, hagios, is an indication that he belonged to the Montanist movement, as hagiosyne was a special quality to which Montanists aspired.307 This is reinforced by the title koinonos, since a letter of Jerome and a law in the Codex 303 See MAMA XI 65 with commentary; Fıratlı, TAD 19.2 (1970), 144–8 figs. 46–56. 304 Afyon Museum Inv. 2966; acquired 11.10.1951, copied by M. Gough and published by W.M. Calder and H. Grégoire, Paulinus κοινωνός de Sebaste en Phrygie, Bulletin de l’académie royale de Belgie 38 (1952), 163–83; W. M. Calder, AS 5 (1955), 37–8 no. 7; W. Tabbernee, Montanist regional bishops: new evidence from ancient inscriptions, Journal of Early Christian Studies I (1993), 249–80 at 269–72 no. 1; Mont. Inscr., 490–6 no. 80; Nowakowski, Saints, 429–31: Phr/07/01; (ICG 1363 with further bibliography); cf TIB 7, 246. C. Markschies, art. Montanismus, RAC 24 (2012), 1212, rightly endorses κτίστης. 305 See two Μiddle Byzantine examples of this phenomenon at Ancyra, I. Ankara 2, nos. 499 and 501 with comm. 306 As proposed by Calder. For Trophimos at Synnada see ICG 1378 with further bibliography and the discussion on 304–5, 466-7 and 480–5. W. Tabbernee, Journal of Early Christian Studies I (1993),271–72, followed by Nowakowski, Saints, 435 PHR/10/01, suggests that Trophimos was an otherwise unattested Montanist martyr, persecuted by orthodox Christians and buried alongside Paulinos, but no other Montanist victims of such persecution are recorded anywhere. There is a similar reference to [Π]ελαγίης μάρτυρ(ος) (genitive) at the end of an unpublished inscription in a rock-cut tomb chamber, which may have served as a cave-chapel, at Güzelce Kale in south Galatia. 307 See S. Mitchell, Apostle to Ankara, 216–7.

section 5.13: Sebaste, Acmonia, and Dioclea

Figure 64 Payamalanı (Eibeos), territory of Sebaste. Burial inscription of Paulinos. ICG 1363. Now in Afyon Museum Stephen Mitchell

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Iustinianus identified coenoni as high-ranking clergy among the Montanists, second to their patriarchs and superior to bishops.308 Other coenoni were mentioned in sixth century tombstones from Lydian Philadelphia, for Praylios, ὁ κοινωνὸς κατὰ τὀπον, and at the nearby village of Karakuyu for † Παύλου ἁγ(ί)ου Φιλαδέλφου κοινωνοῦ κατὰ τόπον †,309 geographical contexts not far distant from Pepuza where the presence of Montanists would naturally be predicted. Τhree probable fragments from a Middle Byzantine templon architrave, one with a fragmentary inscription, the other depicting eagles, have been noted at Payamalanı,310 as well as two decorated panels from a church of the same period, reported from a find-spot an hour away to the west.311 Another fifth- or sixth-century funerary inscription is the gravestone of an infant, the unnamed child of Antipater, recorded by Ramsay at Kırka, ancient Dioskome, about ten kilometres north of Sebaste, + ἀνελήμφθη τὸ πεδίον Ἀντίπατρος + ἰνδ(ικτιῶνι) ιʹ καὶ μηνὶ θʹ ιζʹ, ἡμ(έρᾳ) Κυρ(ιακῇ) + .312 The remains of a small church have also been noted nearby at Ballık Kaya on the banks of the Banaz Çay near Erice, including two fine column capitals and an architrave block of the tenth century.313 Late Roman and Middle Byzantine remains of church architecture have been reported west and south of Sebaste, at Hacim, a settlement which Ramsay identified with the road station Aludda and the obscure bishopric Elouza,314 and at a fortified late Roman site, discovered by Anderson seven kilometres south-south-east of Sebaste, perhaps to be identified with the west Phrygian settlement of Bria, which Hierocles listed between Sebaste and the Montanist stronghold of Pepuza.315 A Byzantine church dedicated by a certain Ioannes to John the Baptist (ὁ Πρόδρομος) is attested by an inscription at the nearby village of Tatar Köy. The language and orthography of this text indicate a date after antiquity, perhaps as late as the twelfth or thirteenth century.316 Acmonia was Sebaste’s northern neighbour. A Greek-Hebrew bilingual text and stones decorated with menorahs attest that its synagogue was still in use 308 Jerome, ep. 41.3; Cod. Just. 5.20.3; discussed by Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 267–74. 309 Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr., 509 no. 84, 513 nο. 85; discussed on 541–2. 310 TIB 7, 246; Pallis, Byz. Zeitschr. 2013, 803–4 1g, reading εὔχεσθ᾽ ὑπέρ [-]. ICG 4530. 311 MAMA XI 88 and 89; Fıratlı, TAD 19.1 (1970), 149 nos. 57–8. 312 Ramsay, CB I.2, 561–2 no. 454; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr., 494 no. 81 (ICG 1611). Tabbernee points out that Sunday 17 September in a tenth indiction matches a date in 517. 313 Fıratlı, TAD 19.2 (1970), 120 and 152 figs. 68–70. 314 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 585–7; TIB 7, 265; N. Fıratlı, TAD 19.2 (1970), 119. 315 TIB 7, 214–5; Anderson, JHS 17 (1897), 415–7. 316 A. Körte, Inscriptiones Bureschianae (Greifswald 1902), 36 no. 63; Anderson, JHS 17 (1897), 417 no. 19; Buckler, Calder and Cox, JRS 16 (1926), 89 no. 220; H. Grégoire, Byzantion 8 (1933), 56–8; (ICG 1020).

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in late antiquity.317 There were numerous churches in the late Roman city and its environs. A sixth-century inscription copied at Susuz, probably originating from Acmonia itself, contains a prayer for recovery and redemption from sin of the priest, perhaps called Auxanon, who should be identified, like the Montanist Paulinus, as a church-builder, and if the restoration [κτίσ]του is accepted, as the church’s founder: ☩ ὑπὲρ εὐ[χῆς κὲ σω]τηρήας κ[ὲ ἀφέσεως] το̑ν ἁμαρ[τιῶν Αὐξάν]οντος |π[ρεσβ(υτέρου) κὲ κτίσ]τοῦ, ὐκοδ[ομήσαν]τος τὸν [ὖκον τοῦ] ἁγίου Τ[-].318 Τhe saint’s name began with gamma or tau. Trophimos, similarly commemorated on the contemporary text at Payamalanı (ICG 1363) and on a Middle Byzantine inscription from Synnada (ICG 4493), is more likely that the alternatives, Tryphon and Georgios, which Ramsay had proposed. An inscription fragment from Susuz, decorated with a cross, foliage and birds, ends with a date ἔτους φοδ´ (574 Sullan era = 489/90) and a reference to an anonymised donor in the form [οὗ ὁ θεὸς οἶδε τ]ὸ ὄνομα.319 Another dated text, which has been misinterpreted, is carved on an inscribed marble support from an ambo, brought from a site between Gedikler and Öksüz. The inscription was first published in the form ἰ(ν)δ(ικτιῶνος) ζ´, ἔ(τους) | ͵ςφϙη´ | θ(εο)ῦ κε|λεύσ|ι ἐγέ|νετο | ὁ ἄνβ|ων ἐπ|ὶ Μεν|ᾶ πρω|τοπρεσβυτέ|ρου ☩,320 with the date understood as 6598 by the creation era, 1089/90. However, the supposed first figure of the numeral is carved as a normal cursive sigma, not a stigma, the excellent lettering would be remarkable on an eleventh-century inscription, and 1089/90 was not a seventh indiction. It should be read ἔ(του)ς φϙη´, 598 = 513/4, which was indeed a seventh indiction.321 A fragment at Erciş, north of Acmonia, identified Agapetos as the maker of a ciborium. The term describes the decorated curved arch above the altar.322 Another clue to the architectural pretensions of the Acmonian churches in the fifth and sixth centuries is provided by a finial or water spout, carved as a lion’s head from Docimian marble and inscribed with the name of the craftsman, a sawyer, ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς Κοσταν|τίν[(ου)] πρήσμονος.323

317 MAMA VI, 334; IJO II, 170; compare menorahs on CB 1.2, 651 no. 161, with a prayer for the well-being of the whole patris, and MAMA VI 347; see 15. 318 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 564 nο. 458 (ICG 1000) restored the second line incorrectly: π[ρεσβ(υτέρου) κὲ παντὸς] τοῦ ὐκοδ[ομήμα]τος τὸν [λαῶν ? τοῦ] | ἁγίου Τ/Γ [-]. Nowakowski, Saints, 428–9 PHR/06/01, cites an alternative restoration by D. Feissel. 319 MAMA VI, 337; (ICG 994); C. Roueché, Interpreting the signs. Anonymity and concealment in late antique inscriptions, in H. Amirav / R. B. ter Haar Romeny, From Rome to Constantinople. Studies in honour of Averil Cameron (Leuven 2007), 221–35. 320 MAMA XI 113; (ICG 1443). 321 Correctly recognized by D. Feissel, Bull. Ép. 2014, 578. 322 [-]ν τὸ κιβώρεν Ἀγαπητὸς ἐπή[εσεν] MAMA VI 339 (ICG 996). The formula favours a building inscription, not the suggestion in MAMA that the word ciborium came to mean a tomb. 323 MAMA XI 112; (ICG 1369).

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Acmonia and its territory continued to be important in the Middle Byzantine period. A building inscription from the reign of either Basil I (867–86) or more likely Basil II (976–1025), found at Banaz, refers to a church founded by a benefactor.324 Part of a templon architrave, also found at Banaz, has a text inviting the worshipper to pray when entering the altar precinct, [– ὅστι]ς ἔλθι λιτουρ|γῆσε | ἵνα | με μ|νιμ|νεύῃ | διὰ τὸν [Κ(ύριο)]ν̣.325 Ramsay copied a fragment at Kaylı with the inscription ὁ ἅγηος Ἀκίνδυνος on either side of a bust in a nimbus, evidently from a templon architrave. Akindynos according to legend was martyred at Nicomedia under Diocletian.326 Two very similar inscriptions perhaps of the sixth century from the same location, one carved on the rear side of a third-century gravestone, invoked the cross to protect the church, σταυρὸς φυλακτήριον ὔκου.327 These decorated stones came from a church or churches that were situated north of Acmonia itself, along the main road leading from central Phrygia towards the west. Like the numerous churches that were built or restored at Akroinos/Afyon they attest to the growing importance of this west-east transanatolian route in the Middle Byzantine period. The most extensive Acmonian text of late Byzantine date is an epitaph carved on a thin, re-used grey marble plaque, c.42 by 48 centimetres, now in Izmir Archaeological Museum. A crude, low cut relief, apparently of earlier origin than the inscribed text, displays two peacocks clambering up a vine and a plant with flowers, on either side of a triangle, decorated with a fleur de lys, above an arch which encloses the top of a Latin cross. The bottom half of the cross has been cut off. The inscription, cut in small, irregular, half-cursive letters, is the epitaph of Sergius, bishop of Acmonia in the province of Phrygia Capatiana: ☩ἔνθα κατάκητε ὡ τῖς μακαρήας μνίμης Σέργηως ἐπήσκωπος αὐτῆς τῆς θειοφυλακτοῦ Ἀκμωνηατῶν πόλην αὐτῆς τ(ῆς) Φρυγοκαπατιανὸν ἐπαρχήας. The epitaph continued with phrases, modelled on passages in the Psalms and the book of Genesis, which may have formed part of the funerary rite in the Phrygian church in the Middle Byzantine period. The name of the province, Phrygia Capatiana, reversing the initial consonants of the earlier form Pacatiana, occurs in the Synekdemos of Hierokles around 530 and in

324 MAMA VI 340; (ICG 997). The restorations are uncertain. 325 MAMA VI 338; (ICG 995); G. Pallis, Inscriptions on Middle Byzantine templon screens, Byz. Zeitschr. 106 (2013), 761–810 at 782 no. 17, dated to the 9th or 10th cent. 326 CB 1.2, 565 no. 464; ICG 1568; Destephen, Martyrs locaux et cultes civiques en Asie Mineure, 91. 327 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 564 nos. 459 and 460; (ICG 1562 and 1563).

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eighth-century lists, but a more decisive indication of a late date is the strongly itacizing Greek orthography, which could be as late as the thirteenth century.328 Acmonia’s south-east neighbour, about ten kilometres along a route leading to the Phrygian Pentapolis in the Sandıklı Ova, was Dioclea, located at the Turkish village of Doğla, now renamed Yazıtepe, a community of the Phrygian Moxeanoi, which acquired the status of an independent polis around 190.329 The discovery of inscriptions relating to the Oktakionion, probably a small basilica with eight internal columns at Uluköy on Dioclea’s territory, indicate the earliest church construction attested anywhere in Phrygia. Subsequently, a fragment from an early Byzantine church inscribed with the word ἀρχιστράτηγος from neighbouring Çalça confirms local worship of St Michael in the fifth or sixth century.330 A tenth- or eleventh-century architrave from a templon screen found at the village of Hocalar, probably also on territory of Dioclea, has roundels displaying the busts of Christ and John the Baptist, and a prayer addressed to an unknown saint for intercession on behalf of a monk (fig. 65).331 A further architrave fragment, which has been brought to Afyon from neighbouring Kozluca, has an inscribed citation from Psalm 117, † αὑτὴ ἡ πύλη [τοῦ Θ(εο)ῦ· δίκαιοι ἰ]σελεύσοτε ἐ[ν] α[ὐτῇ -], appropriate to mark the passage from the nave to the space before the altar, has The front is decorated with three roundels with inscriptions identifying the archangel Michael, Christ, and the angel Gabriel, with rosettes on either side of them above bands of simple moulding and a twisted rope pattern. The underside of the stone has a depression to fit the supporting column.332 A similar stone but from a different building at Yavaşlar portrays a beardless figure holding a book, identified as ὁ ἅγιος Φίλιππος, and carries an inscription which names the craftsman, ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς μαΐστορος Λέωντος.333 An unpublished inscription of the Roman period, found at Yavaşlar, which lay north-west of the Phrygian Pentapolis, about fifteen kilometres west-north-west of Eucarpia, mentions a κλῆρος ἡ πολιτικ[ή], and probably indicates the approximate location of the communities called the Kleros Orines and Kleros Politikes by Hierokles in the sixth century, which sent a bishop, Photios Klerôn, to the Council of Constantinople in 879/80. The name 328 ICG 4471; see 601 n. 108; G. Kiourtzian, Sergios d’Akmonia. Un nouvel évêque en Phrygie Capatienne, Revue des études byzantines 68 (2010), 191–200; SEG 60, 1425. 329 See MAMA XI xxi–xxii and comm. on no. 157. 330 See 191–2, and for St Michael at Çalça, ICG 5432. 331 MAMA VI 359; (ICG 999); Pallis, Byz. Zeitschr. 2013, 782 no. 18. 332 Pallis, Mid-Byzantine templons, Byz. Zeitschr. 2013, 808 2e; ICG 4473, copied in Afyon Museum 1977. The dimensions are hat 0.31; width 1.07; depth 0.42; letters 0.01–0.014. 333 MAMA XI 159; (ICG 1471).

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Figure 65 Dioclea, Hocalar. Architrave fragment of a Middle Byzantine templon screen. ICG 999. Now in Afyon Museum Stephen Mitchell

Kleroi was doubtless a distant allusion to the hellenistic settlement allotments of the Pentapolis, which were still recognized in the Roman imperial period.334 Other scattered Byzantine architectural fragments have been observed in the nearby villages as far north as Hocalar. 5.14

Kidyessos (Map 10)

The main highway through central Phrygia ran north-east from the Banaz Ova to Dumlupınar, and then east across the Sincanlı Ovası to Afyon. The ancient cities in this region were at Alia, in a secluded site near Kozvıran about twelve kilometres north-west of Dumlupınar,335 and at Kidyessos, in the region of Bal Mahmut.336 Christian texts of the fifth and sixth century and from the Middle Byzantine period are relatively frequent in the Sıncanlı Ovası but only a single, poorly inscribed votive text has been recorded near the site of the Roman polis

334 TIB 7, 308–9, ICG 4477. The inscription was discovered by T. Drew-Bear. 335 T. Drew-Bear, Problemes de la géographie historique en Phrygie: l’exemple d’Alia, ANRW II.7.2, 932–52; TIB 7, 181. 336 A milestone found at Bal Mahmut was marked one mile from Kidyessos (MAMA XI 161) and an imperial dedication, set up by ἡ Κιδυησσέων πόλις, recorded by Ramsay at the nearby village of Bulca (JHS 8 (1887), 468; CB I.2, 662 no. 625).

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itself, a trachyte block with a crudely engraved cross, and a text ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς κ[ὲ] σωτηρίας Εὐγενίου Κόνωνος, ἀμήν.337 The largest Byzantine settlement in the Sıncanlı Ovası extended across a hilly site in the south-west corner of the plain at Çayhisar. A re-used Roman bomos of Docimian marble, carried a series of invocations. On the front of this exceptional monument was the lapidary acclamation quoted from Matthew I.23, [Ἐμμανουήλ] | μεθ᾿ ἡμῶν ὁ | θ(εό)ς. Since the last two lines are at the bottom of the shaft, it is likely that a large cross was engraved above them. On the left-hand side was a semi-metrical appeal to the almighty, to rescue the homeland from perils, and bring prosperity: ῥύσεο πάτρην | [ἐκ τῶν]δε κακῶν, πανυπέρ|[τάτε, τῶν] δ᾿ ἀγαθῶν αὔξη|[σιν α]ὐτός γε θέλις. The author of the votive was a military officer from a unit of Constantiniani, part of the Palatine army. He was identified by the inscription on the right-hand side, an invocation to the Trinity: [ὁ λαμ]|πρ(ότατος) τριβ(οῦνος) νουμέρου [τῶν] | γενν(αιοτάτων) καὶ καθοσιω[μ(ένων)] | Κωνσταντινιανῶ[ν] | εὐξάμενος τῇ ἁγ[ίᾳ] | Τριάδι ἀνέστησα. The officer would not have had the senatorial rank of a lamprotatos before the fifth century, and this is confirmed by the letter forms, although the majuscule omega can hardly be later than c.450.338 The dangers that faced the country are a matter for conjecture, but the word πάτρη may be better understood not as a reference to to a local city, but to Constantinople or the Roman empire as a whole, and the perils might refer to the acute crisis of 447, when Constantinople was brought to its knees by a catastrophic earthquake and faced the immediate threat of invasion from the forces of Attila the Hun. A Middle Byzantine epistyle from a templon screen has also been recovered from Çayhisar, decorated with images of sanctified figures, including two local saints, Aberkios of Hierapolis and Pausikakos of Synnada, who kept company with St Nicholas of Myra, the apostle Thomas, the archangel Michael and the Mother of God.339 Pausikakos is reported to have been a native of Apamea who became bishop of Synnada at the turn of the seventh century and to have healed the emperor Maurice from an illness, thus earning tax relief for his bishopric.340 Two probably sixth-century inscriptions from church buildings have been noted at Çobanözü, west of Çayhisar: an incomplete fragment perhaps from an altar screen referring to construction,341 and a text cut on an irreg337 338 339 340 341

ΜΑΜΑ XI 172; (ICG 1468). MAMA XI 166; (ICG 1462); see D. Feissel, Bull. Ép. 2014, 577. MAMA XI 173; (ICG 1469). See Thonemann’s commentary to MAMA XI 173. MAMA XI 168; (ICG 1464): ἐγένετο τὸ ἔργον ἐπ[ί -].

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ular block, which, like so many other texts attested the prominence of the archangel Michael in Phrygia: θεοῦ προ|νύᾳ διὰ τοῦ | ἀρχανγέλου | Μιχαὴλ ἐγένετο τὸ | ἔργον ἐπὶ Ὑσυχίου εὐλο|[γ]ημένω, μηνὶ πρώτ(ῳ) ἐνδι(κτιῶνος) αι΄. Denis Feissel proposed the restoration εὐλο|[γ]ημένω in lines 5–6, echoed by εὐλογία in line 9, a judaising feature of the inscription, referring to the praises sung at Hesychius’s funeral, which had been the event that led to the building of the church. The rest of the text should be restored to read [ὑ]περὶ εὐχῆς Τροφίμου Τρο[φιμ|ιαν]οῦ κὲ παντὸς τοῦ ὔκου [αὐ|τοῦ·] εὐλογία πάσῃ τ[ῇ ἐκ|λησίᾳ,] ἀμήν. ̣ |[δ]ιὰ μαΐστορι Ζω[σίμῳ or -τικῷ] | [ἀμή]ν.342 A contemporary but better-carved slab of Docimian marble from the neighbouring village of Güney, decorated with a delicate relief of a date palm, quotes the Sanctus formula from Isaiah 6.3, preceded by a magical invocation of the vowels of the alphabet, and an allusion to Psalm 18.343 Two further Christian inscriptions have been copied in the village of Akçaşar. One, carved on a half column, reads [Θεοδ]όρου τοῦ γράψαντος. ☩Κύριε βοήθι τῷ προύκο Θεοδώρῳ. The large but uneven and thinly engraved lettering confirms the statement of the carved inscription, that this is the amateur work of Theodoros, one of the village headmen and landowners (πρόοικος). It could be part of the same building as a lintel stone which carried a vow by Alexandros for his whole family.344 A small epistyle fragment in the same village reading Νικιφόρου ὑπάτου has decoration resembling that on the churches at Selçikler, Yavaşlar, Çayhisar and elsewhere,345 and should belong to the eleventh century, when the title hypatos denoted a palatial office. It hints at the relationship that this part of central Phrygia maintained with Constantinople.346

342 MAMA XI 167, Nowakowski, Saints, 436–7: Phr/11/01; D. Feissel, Bull. Ép. 2014, 578; (ICG 1463). 343 MAMA XI 169; (ICG 1465); in papyri of the period, the vowels were sometimes used as a coded reference to the archangels; see D. Feissel, Bull. ép. 2014, 569 and 578; R. H. Cline, Archangels, magical amulets, and the defense of Late Antique Miletus, Journal of Late Antiquity 4 (2011), 55–78; Huttner, Early Christianity in the Cities of the Lower Maeander Valley. 344 MAMA XI 170; (ICG 1466); MAMA XI 171 (ICG 1467); dated in the MAMA edition to the fifth or sixth century. 345 J.-P. Sodini, La sculpture médio-byzantine: le marbre en ersatz et tel qu’en lui-même, in C. Mango and G. Dagron, Constantinople and its Hinterland (Aldershot 1995), 294–9. 346 MAMA XI 174; (ICG 1470).

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Western Phrygia: Temenothyrae to Dionysupolis (Maps 8 and 12)

Several Christian inscriptions of the fifth-sixth century and later periods have been reported at Temenouthyrae, north-west of Acmonia. A stone carried the name and title Δημητρίου ἐπισκόπου, above Α Ω in a circle, and probably dates before 550.347 There was an inscribed prayer to the Archangel (St Michael) to aid the donor, carved on the arms of a cross within a wreath, ἀρχάγγελε βοήθει τῷ δούλῳ σου, and a longer text around the wreath, which contained abbreviated citations from 1 Corinthians 1.24 Χριστὸν Θεοῦ δύναμιν καὶ Θεοῦ σοφίαν, and from Psalm 56.12, ἐπὶ τῷ Θεῷ ἠλπισα, οὐ φοβηθήσομαι τὶ ποιήσει μοι ἄνθρωπος.348 Α building inscription alluded to the work of a protopresbyteros in the Middle Byzantine period when the formula διὰ συνδρομῆς was a standard expression used to refer to the leading priest’s engagement in the project: ἐκαληουργήθη | τὸ ἔργον τοῦτο | διὰ συνδρομῆς | Λέοντος προτοπυτέρου.349 Until the recent identification of the probable sites of the Montanist centres Tymion and Pepuza, little survey work had been carried out in the territory of Temenouthyrae. Late Roman or Byzantine remains had only been observed at Elmacık, a place south of the city identified by a second-century inscription as the κατοικία Καυαληνῶν,350 and at Çizikdam, twenty-two kilometres SSE of Uşak in the direction of Sülümenli, the site of ancient Blaundus.351 However, the sparsely inhabited area between Temenothyrae and the Banaz Çay, the ancient Senarus, which flowed south-west often through deep canyons to join the river Maeander, has come into focus in the study of Montanism. The decisive clue pointing to the location of the Montanist centres was the discovery of a Latin rescript of Septimius Severus and Caracalla addressed to the tenants of an imperial estate at Tymion: colonis Tymiorum et Simoen[sium].352 The discovery was at a crossroads, 11.5 kilometres north of the river Senarus. Tymion must have been in the neighbourhood, and is convincingly identified with the ancient site five kilometres further south at Şükraniye. A survey by a team directed by P. Lampe and W. Tabbernee shows that this was a medium-sized 347 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 598 no. 443; (ICG 1620). 348 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 598 nos. 441–2; (ICG 1619); probably 6th cent. 349 CIG IV 8837 (ICG 2339); for the date cf Hübner, Der Klerus in der Gesellschaft des spätantiken Kleinasiens (Stuttgart 2005), 60 n. 300. The expression διὰ συνδρομῆς appears on the inscription of 1070/71, which marked the construction of the fortress Choma at Beycesultan, ICG 1458, see 428, and in MAMA VII 190 (Hadrianopolis, c.1000). 350 ΤΙΒ 7, 284. 351 TIB 7, 225. 352 C. Tanrıver et al., EA 36 (2003), 33–44; P. Lampe and W. Tabbernee, EA 37 (2004), 169–78; earlier speculation in C. Markschies, Nochmals: wo lag Pepuza? Wo lag Tymion? Nebst einigen Bemerkungen zur Frühgeschichte des Montanismus, JAC 37 (1994), 7–28.

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Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman settlement, now extending under the modern village, below a Late Bronze or Iron Age fortified hill-top.353 The funerary monuments found by the survey included a double arched stele for a couple represented respectively by writing implements and a mirror, with crosses cut in the arches above them at a later date.354 This appears to be designed for a husband and wife who did not initially identify themselves as Christian, but was marked subsequently as such, probably by their descendants.355 A Christian grave text of the fourth or fifth century was carved on the side of a Roman stele with an erased front panel, reading (christogram) Θεοδώρου κὲ Ἀκυνδυνίδος.356 Other Spolien include late column capitals and stones engraved with crosses. The ancient road which crossed the river Senarus at a surviving Roman bridge, continued towards the late Roman and Byzantine settlements around Dumanlı and Bekilli, which had previously been treated as the most likely locations of Pepuza and Tymion. The site proposed by Lampe and Tabbernee for Pepuza is eight kilometres south of Tymion in the Ulubey canyon, immediately west of the Roman bridge, and thus readily accessible by the Roman road from Temenothyrae. The main area of the settlement covered about two hectares on a terrace north of the river bed, above the potential flood level. Fresh water was brought not from the river but by an aqueduct from a spring located north-east of the Roman bridge. The remains on the site include two larger dwellings described as villae rusticae,357 and a structure discovered by electro-magnetic survey which might be a basilica church. The poor condition of the ruins could be due to the destruction of the site in the sixth century, or to subsequent stone-robbing 353 Another smaller settlement was about 2.5 kilometres north-east of the cross roads; perhaps this was Simoe; P. Lampe, The Phrygian hinterland south of Temenothyrai (Uşak), Early Christianity 7 (2016), 381–94, at 385–7. 354 Photo at AST 25.2. 355 Compare the addition of the word Chrestianos to the second-century tombstone set up by Auxanon ICG 1225; see 193–4. 356 See AST 27.2, 176 fig. 1 and 177 fig. 2 (SEG 60, 1448; ICG 4475); on p. 169 the inscription is wrongly transcribed as ΘΕΟΔΩΡΟΥΚΑΙΚΥΝΔΥΝΙΔΟϹ. The woman’s name Ἀκυνδυνίς was the counterpart of Ἀκίνδυνος, attested at Dorylaeum and Hierapolis (LGPN Vc, sv). LGPN VC, 219 registers the name as Κινδυνίς. The choice may have been inspired by the (male) martyr Akindynos at Nicomedia, who is attested in the Middle Byzantine period at Acmonia (see 414 n. 326). 357 Perhaps the terminology used by the excavators has been influenced by a reference in Augustine, De haeresiis 17: denique alii hanc Pepuzam non esse civitatem, sed villam dicunt fuisse Montani et prophetissarum eius Priscae et Maximillae, et qui ibi vixerunt, ideo locum meruisse appellari Jerusalem; cf. Praedestinatus I, 27; Philastrius, de haer. 49.

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and dilapidation. In an interesting, if conjectural study, William Tabbernee has drawn a comparison between the actual landscape that stretched between Tymion in the north, and Pepuza in the canyon to the south, and the description of the heavenly Jerusalem that was expounded in the prophetic chapters of the book of Revelation.358 For all the attention that has been paid to Pepuza and the Pepuziani by the written sources, there are no distinguishable characteristics of Montanism in the modest remains that have been identified at their two centres. Pepuza is occasionally described as a small polis; the first reference to their settlements in the anti-Montanist tract of Apollonius written around 210, called them small poleis in Phrygia.359 Epiphanius, writing in the 370s, referred to the district as an ἔρημος τόπος, and to a town which had recently been levelled by an earthquake, νῦν δὲ πόλις ἠδαφισμένη.360 Cyril of Jerusalem in the mid-fifth century described Pepuza as μικρότατον κωμύδριον ἐν τῇ Φρυγίᾳ.361 Hierocles’s Synekdemos of c.525 placed Pepuza in a list of west Phrygian settlements: Lounda (Blaundus ?), Molta (= Motella), Eumeneia, Siblia, Pepuza, Briana, Sebaste, Eluza and Acmonia. These references seem to be an accurate enough reflection of the historical decline of the main Montanist settlements in late antiquity.362 Pepuza and Tymion were never more than substantial villages, however vivid the quality of their religious life, and neither has yet produced remains of church architecture or building inscriptions to match the finds that occur in many other parts of Phrygia. After the destruction of the settlement in the 550s,363 Pepuza continued to exist as a monastery in the Byzantine period, and was represented by a hegoumenos Euthymius at the second council of Nicaea in 787. The Roman and Late Roman site in the canyon was overlooked from the west by a cave settlement, with over sixty inhabitable units, including a chapel, rooms where food was prepared and eaten, and dating evidence that points to occupation between the ninth and eleventh centuries. The existence of this Byzantine community, bigger than all the troglodytic settlements in the Phrygian Highlands except the caves at Ayazin, helps to corroborate the site identification, but 358 W. Tabbernee, Portals of the Montanist New Jerusalem: the discovery of Pepouza and Tymion, Journal of Early Christian Studies 11 (2003), 87–93. 359 Eusebius, HE V.18.2; see chapter 1.3. 360 Epiphanios, Pan. 48.1.1; 48.14.1. 361 Cyril Hier., Cat. 16.8 (PG 33, 929a). 362 See chapter 7.1. 363 Procopius, Secret History XI 14–23: (23) Μοντανοὶ δε, οἳ ἐν Φρυγίᾳ κατῴκηντο, σφᾶς αὐτοὺς ἐν ἱεροῖς σφετέροις καθείρξαντες, τούτους δὲ τοὺς νεὼς αὐτίκα ἐμπρήσαντες, ξυνδιεφθάρησαν οὐδένι λόγῳ, πᾶσα δὲ ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ ἡ Ῥωμαίων ἀρχὴ φόνου τε ἦν καὶ φυγῆς ἔμπλεως.

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there is no reason to think that the monks or other cave dwellers at this period were Montanists.364 Before the discoveries made by Lampe and Tabbernee, the search for the centres of Montanism had concentrated on the upland valley of Kırbasan (Karbasan), south of the river Senarus, south-east of Tabbernee and Lampe’s proposed Pepuza, and west of modern Çivril. The Turkish villages or towns of Medele (now Yeşiloba), Bekilli, Üçkuyu, Dumanlı, Buğdaylı, Karahallı and Kırbasan were surveyed by Calder and Buckler in 1929, and their epigraphic finds were included in a chapter of MAMA IV under the headings Motella and Pepuza.365 The area was revisited in the 1970s by August Strobel.366 His work and the research of Drew-Bear form the basis for many of the entries in TIB 7 for this region.367 The ancient communities at this western edge of Phrygia were mentioned in a Roman imperial inscription, copied at Bekilli, which was put up collectively by the demoi of Hierapolis, Dionysopolis, and Blaundus, and by the koinon of the Hyrgalian plain.368 Hierapolis, the major centre, lay south-west, beyond the Maeander, at Pamukkale. Blaundus was at Sülümenli, west of the Senarus river; the Hyrgalian plain, the moden Çal Ova, extended either side of the Maeander south of Bekilli at least as far as the village of Şapçılar.369 Dionysopolis has not been precisely located.370 The population of the region between the Hyrgalian plain and the Maeander valley at Çal across the upland valleys and hills as far as the Senarus, the Banaz Çay, lived in villages which had grown larger in the late Roman period. The main settlement seems to have been a ruin field south of the village of Dumanlı with a wide scatter of ancient cisterns amid otherwise indeterminate building remains and some important inscribed material. Two characteristic mid-third 364 See W. Tabbernee and P. Lampe, Pepouza and Tymion. The discovery and exploration of a lost ancient city and an imperial estate (Berlin 2008); Lampe, Early Christianity 7 (2016), 392, convincingly refutes the scepticism about the location of Pepuza of C. Markschies, Montanismus, RAC 24 (2012), 1202–4. 365 MAMA IV xvi and pp. 116–21. 366 A. Strobel, Das heilige Land der Montanisten. Eine religionsgeographische Untersuchung (Berlin and New York, 1980), 65–86, 117–27. Strobel reviewed the inscriptions discussed in this paragraph on pp. 71–74. 367 Because of the earlier consensus that Pepuza and Tymion were located here, W. Tabbernee included several of the Christian inscriptions from the region in his Montanist Inscriptions, although he recognised that the grounds for doing so were generally very slender; see 540–1. 368 MAMA IV 315. 369 See 32; Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 84–5. 370 L. Robert, Villes d’Asie Mineure (2nd ed. 1963), 140 suggested Üçkuyu, but a site south or west of the Hyrgalian plain is also possible; see C. P. Jones, Chiron 2009, 458–9.

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century funerary altars, which used the Eumeneian formula, point to a significant early Christian presence.371 From the fifth or early-sixth century there is part of a delicately decorated ciborium,372 and slabs from a screen, decorated with fish, birds and floral motifs and a fragmentary donor text with the names Eubios and Eustathios.373 A piece of a Middle Byzantine iconostasis points to continued site occupation to the tenth or eleventh century.374 Early Byzantine remains have been recorded in several nearby villages, including Hasköy, where there are also hilltop cave settlements, and a marble stoup inscribed with the name [? Πολύ]χρόνιο[ς],375 at Kırkyeren, where there are fifth or sixth-century column capitals,376 and Paşalar.377 Two mid-third century Christian funerary altars, similar to the pair found at Dumanlı, were copied at Sirikli and there was a Roman and late Roman site two kilometres NNW of the village, where early Byzantine capitals have survived from a church building, one carrying a fragmentary donor inscription.378 Another large settlement with pieces of church architecture dating from the late Roman to the Middle Byzantine period, lay east of Ikizbaba.379 An architrave from a templon screen found at Deşdemir, between Dumanlı and Bekilli, has an inscription marking the work of a bishop Michael in 556: ἔτ(ει) λ´ τῆς βασιλ(είας) Φλ. Ἰουστινιανοῦ τοῦ εὐσεβ(εστάτου) δεσπότου) ἔργον Μιχαὴλ τοῦ τῆδ᾽ ἐπισκοποῦντος.380 Michael may have been bishop in the diocese of Medele/Motella and he is probably identical with [Μ]ιχαὴλ ἐπισκ(ό)π(ου/οῦντος) attested on a broken piece of worked marble found at Bekilli.381 Another bishop, Kyriakos, is mentioned on an inscription of roughly the same period copied at Köselli, the next village north of Deşdemir, which reads ☩ ἰνδ(ικτιῶνος) δʹ κ(αὶ) μη(νὸς) αʹ ιζʹ, {Ι} ἀνέστη τὸ θυσιαστήριον ἐπὶ Κυριακοῦ τοῦ θεοφιλεστ(άτου) ἐπισκ(όπου). It was carved on the semi-circular arched canopy above the church altar.382 371 MAMA IV 356 (ICG 1071) and 357 (ICG 1072); see 143 nn. 198–9. 372 Niewöhner, Aizanoi, 292 n. 468 (ICG 1822), inscribed ὑπερὶ εὐχῆς Γα[-]. 373 Niewöhner, Aizanoi, 293–4 n. 474 (ICG 1823). 374 TIB 7, 242; Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 146–60. 375 Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 123: inscribed marble bowl with [–] ΧΡΟΝΙΟ [–] and 185–90; TIB 7, 267; (ICG 1149). 376 Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 182–4; TIB 7, 305. 377 Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 179–81; TIB 7, 356. 378 Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 122 and 197–9 (inscribed capital, ICG 1146); TIB 7, 384; MAMA IV 353 (ICG 1069) and 354 (ICG 1070); see 143 nn. 198–9. 379 Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 192–7; TIB 7, 277. 380 MAMA IV 312 (ICG 1082); for the site see Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 147; TIB 7, 233. 381 MAMA IV 323 (ICG 1076). 382 W. M. Ramsay / D. Hogarth, JHS 8 (1887), 396 no. 28, CB I.2, 542 no. 406 (ICG 1081).

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Strobel’s visits to Üçkuyu added four inscriptions to the tally of Christian texts: broken pieces of a funerary altar dated by the Sullan era to 327 (242/3) set up by Σατορνεῖνος δὶς Χρειστιανός,383 a simple, probably fourth-century grave monument, ☩Ἀλεξάνδρου,384 a fifth-sixth century text from a building, probably to be read ΠΙΟΝ πολλῦς (σ)ε χρόνυς ☩,385 and a fragment with the word ‘blessed.386 Two other items noted by Buckler and Calder in Üçkuyu could be much later in date: a roughly inscribed stone invoking the Lord’s help for the congregation, ἀμήν· Κ(ύρι)ε βοήθη τὸ ὖκον τουτῶν· ἀμήν,387 and a text on a pillar, which mentioned the ‘great general’, the archangel Michael.388 A large marble slab with an inset basin, said to have been brought from Üçkuyu to Bekilli, was inscribed on both sides with the donor’s name: ☩ Μοντανοῦ πρωτοδιακόνου ☩.389 The occurrence of the name is certainly not sufficient to establish this as part of a Montanist church. The village of Bekilli, part of the community of the Hyrgaleis, was an important regional settlement between the Hellenistic and Byzantine periods. There was a significant fortification at Asar Tepe a kilometer south of the modern village, with two ring walls enclosing a settlement, perhaps the site of ancient Dionysopolis. The date of this castle, first seen by Sterrett in 1883, is uncertain. August Strobel provided a full description, unfortunately without a plan, and proposed a pre-Roman origin, but Byzantine occupation also seems likely.390 The small Turkish town is the source of several Christian inscriptions. An unusual sculpture, representing a chair, is inscribed Διογένους Ι καὶ Ι Ἀπφίας Ι Χρειστιανῶν.391 A similar marble chair was seen by Ramsay at Haydan on the territory of Eumeneia,392 and it closely resembles the chair depicted on one of the earliest Phrygian Christian grave reliefs from Cadi.393 These should proba-

383 ICG 1142; see 143 n. 201. 384 Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 120; Tabbernee, Mont.Inscr., 161 no. 18; (ICG 1144). 385 Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 120; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr., 484 no. 772; cf. Feissel, Chron. 363; (ICG 1143). 386 Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 121 (ICG 1145). 387 MAMA IV 324 (ICG 1077). 388 MAMA IV 325; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr., 477 no. 72; Nowakowski, Saints, 439–40: Phr/13/01; (ICG 1078). Lines 2–4 seem to read οὐ βλέπι τὸν Ἀρχιστρ[vac?]|ιγον ΑΤΟΝ ἔχι διάδι|κον. Their meaning is unclear. 389 MAMA IV 321; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr., 480 no. 77; (ICG 1074). 390 Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 204–8; TIB 7, 210. 391 MAMA IV 320; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr., 359–63 no. 58; (ICG 1073). 392 ICG 1020; see 430–1. 393 ICG 1225.

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bly not be anachronistically interpreted as clerical or episcopal seats,394 but as an iconographic allusion to the structure at which later family members commemorated their dead at funerary meals, a very widespread pagan practice that was continued in the early Christian period.395 The date of the example at Bekilli is probably late third- or early fourth-century, not before 212. The simple epigraphic formula identifying the persons commemorated as Christians was cut on the side of a grave covering found at Medele, modern Yeşiloba, the site of Motella, seven kilometres further west,396 which concludes [- κα]ὶ (Maltese cross) Πολυχρονίου Χριστιανῶν.397 This might also be fourth-century. The community of Motella acquired the status of a town, Metellupolis, with a bishop in the Byzantine period.398 Several other inscriptions from churches have been noted at Bekilli, including a fragment carrying the date ἔτους φμδ´ ἰνδ. ιγ´ (544 Sullan era = 459–60),399 and an inscription ἐξεργάσθη | τὸ κτῆμα ἐπὶ διακόνου | Πρείμω (?), referred to the cultivation of a parcel of land, presumably a church possession. The text matches the crude, hardly worked stone on which it was cut.400 There was an important settlement at Karayusufdağı, occupied from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine period, six kilometres east of Kırbasan (Karbasan),401 where Strobel noted third- and fourth-century Roman coins, and copied a probably fifth- or sixth-century Christian text naming a ξενόδοχος at Karahallı. This hostel for travellers was located on the line of the ancient road which connected Hierapolis with Sebaste.402 In the southern hills towards the Maeander, there was a significant settlement at Süller, where early and Middle Byzantine architectural fragments and an inscription have been found,403 as well as the roughly carved imprecation 394 Calder, Byzantion 6 (1931), 423, Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr., 359 no. 58, and Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 70–71, thought the monument of Diogenes and Apphia was a cathedra belonging to a church, a bishop’s seat. 395 MAMA IV 320 (ICG 1073). For venerating the dead with libations and funerary meals, see the invaluable and richly documented survey by R. MacMullen, The end of ancestor worship: affect and class, Historia 63 (2014), 487–513. 396 See TIB 7, 339 s.v. Metellupolis. 397 MAMA IV 313 suggests a 5th or 6th century date; (ICG 1083). 398 Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 216–7; TIB 7, 339. 399 MAMA IV 322 (ICG 1065). 400 MAMA IV 326; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr., 484 no. 78; (ICG 1079); Feissel, Chron. 363 for the term κτῆμα. For a possible explanation of this abstruse inscription, see chapter 5.17 n. 208. 401 Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 190–2; TIB 7, 294. 402 Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 123 (ICG 1147). The ‘ulu yol’ indicated by Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 142 Abb. 9, is road D13 marked on French’s RRMAM 3.7 Eskişehir sheet; see 40 n. 71. 403 TIB 7, 390.

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Κ(ύρι)ε βωίθι τῷ πρ(εσβυτέρῳ) Λέωντι AΝΑΚΥΡ. (?) seen with another unintelligible text by Ramsay at Durhanlı Havuzu, along the road coming from Bekilli.404 Two Middle Byzantine fragments were noted at Gömce, perhaps from a site south of the village,405 and Byzantine spoils recorded at Yassıhüyük, about three kilometres south-west of Yamanlar,406 and at Kavaklar, the latter including a probably fifth-century inscription, ending [εἰς σ]ωτηρίαν τῶν πιστῶν, a near reminiscence of Rom. I. 16.407 Many early Byzantine fragments were found at Aşağışeyit and Şapçılar.408 At Sazak, west of the Maeander, the builders of a church of St Michael carved their appeal for the Lord’s protection onto a column that they had erected, Κύριος φυλάξι τοὺς ἐργαζομένους ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ τοῦ ἀρχανγέλου Μιχαήλ.409 This presumably came from the late Roman site a kilometre south-east of Sazak which has been identified as the ancient Mossyna, a bishopric at least from the time of the council of Chalcedon.410 The overall settlement pattern from the entire region between the Senarus and the Maeander resembles the picture familiar from the Aezanitis and other north Phrygian landscapes. During the early Christian period from the fourth to the sixth centuries the population grew and settlement density increased. There were many village communities now equipped with churches which can be distinguished by the survival of fragments of liturgical furniture and a significant number of corresponding inscriptions. The larger centres were also occupied in the Middle Byzantine period, although richer finds of ecclesiastical architecture, notably the numerous decorated templon screens of the tenth and eleventh centuries that were characteristic of the central zone between Acmonia and Akroinos, are so far lacking. 5.16

Choma, Eumeneia and Apamea (Maps 12 and 13)

At the western extremity of Eumeneian territory, beyond the southern outskirts of the modern town of Çivril, the excavation during the 1950s of the western 404 CB 1.2, 540 no. 402; MAMA XI 64; (ICG 1118). 405 Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 122, 200; TIB 7, 262. 406 Strobel, Land der Montanisten, 219; TIB 7, 414; for Roman inscriptions, see Drew-Bear, Nouvelles incriptions de Phrygie (Amsterdam 1978), Eumeneia nos. 9, 12 and 30. 407 TIB 7, 295; the inscription found five kilometres in the direction of Süller, MAMA IV 327 (ICG 1080). 408 TIB 7, 193 and 374. 409 MAMA IV 307; Nowakowski, Saints 431 Phr/08/01 (ICG 1084). 410 L. Castrianni and G. Scardozzi, Mossyna: the rediscovery of a ‘lost city’ in the territory of Hierapolis in Phrygia (Turkey), in 15th international Conference on Cultural Heritage and New technologies (Vienna 2010), 616–33; MAMA IV, xiv; L. Robert, Villes d’Asie Mineure2 (1962), 164.

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mound of the Bronze Age site of Beycesultan revealed three occupation levels apparently dating between the ninth and eleventh centuries. This Byzantine settlement occupied an important strategic position and controlled a ford that crossed the Maeander immediately to the east of the mound. The publications of the architect and archaeologist G. H. R. Wright, which appeared almost half a century after the excavations were concluded, include an east-west section drawing and a schematic site plan of the trenches, careful architectural drawings of pieces of ecclesiastical architecture, and the publication of a hoard of bronze objects which seem to have been deliberately stored or concealed in one place. All the stone work, which included decorated sculptured pieces and several capitals, mostly dating to the fifth-sixth centuries, fragments of a Middle Byzantine templon screen, and most of the bronzes appear to have an ecclesiastical provenance, although the excavations did not identify any church buildings. Since the associated structures were not identified in the excavation, it remains an open question whether these pieces come from two or more churches, or whether a single church was rebuilt, re-using elements from the earlier structure, as clearly happened at Amorium and at Sebaste.411 The perimeter wall of a rectangular fortress was also noted by the excavators as a ridge at ground level at the top of the western mound, which had been levelled for the purpose. It measured 150 metres square enclosing about two hectares, and was oriented according to the mound’s existing contours, parallel to a road which approached from the south after crossing a now dry tributary of the Maeander.412 The obvious place for a gate was in the east-west wall about sixty metres from this approach road which ran beween the two mounds at Beycesultan. The wall itself, excavated at a couple of points, was massive, three metres thick with a stone-faced scarp or glacis extending a further two or three metres beyond the exterior face. A small collection of unstratified late Byzantine and Turkish (Seljuk) glazed sherds, as well as the historical circumstances indicated a date in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The long-delayed reports on the Byzantine levels at Beycesultan were written before the publication of an important inscription, which subsequently came to light on the top of the mound and whose find-spot has been the subject of some confusion. The inscription was seen and photographed by Drew-Bear, who passed on information to Clive Foss and later to the TIB team, and it has been briefly mentioned in their publications.413 Unfortunately in the 411 TIB 7, 212; G. R. H. Wright, Beycesultan 1954. Some Byzantine remains, AS 47 (1997), 177–93; Some Byzantine bronze objects from Beycesultan, AS 50 (2000), 159–70; Beyce Sultan – a fortified settlement in Byzantine Phrygia, Anatolica 33 (2007), 143–68. 412 G. H. R. Wright, Anatolica 33 (2007), 156 fig. 4. 413 ICG 1458; J.-C. Cheynet and T. Drew-Bear, La forteresse de Soublaion en Phrygie (1070–1071), Revue des études byzantines 70 (2012), 209–20; TIB 7, 251–2 sv Eumeneia;

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transmission, the find spot was misunderstood as being at Eumeneia (Işıklı),414 and the TIB publication of the inscription refers only to a very summary preliminary notice of the archaeological finds at Beycesultan. Peter Thonemann’s important study of the region around Eumeneia, while taking account of the Beycesultan reports, was written before the epigraphic publication appeared, and he was unaware of the inscription’s true provenance.415 At the same time, Thonemann was responsible for publishing the right-hand fragment of a lintel block copied by Michael Ballance around 1954 (virtually at the same time as the Beycesultan excavations began) in a house yard at the village of Sökmen, as MAMA XI 61. This is none other than the right-hand end of the inscription from Beycesultan: the dimensions of the stones are compatible with one another, as Ballance’s fragment exactly completes the emperor’s name and seamlessly fits the restoration at the beginning of the second line. The text was carved in three lines on a large lintel slab in letters up to 6.5 centimeters high, but with many extreme abbreviations which make interpretation difficult. [ἀνεκ]ενήσ(θη) ἐκ βάθρω(ν) τὼ Θ(ε)ωφυλακτ(ον) κάστρον τοῦτω ἐπὴ βασηλ(έως) Ῥωμ[ανοῦ] τοῦ Διογένου καὶ οἰ|[κουμεν]ικοῦ π(α)τριάρ(χου) Ἰω(άννου) τοῦ Ξυφυλ(ίνου) διὰ συνδρομ(ῆς) Νικηφό(ρου) (πρωτοσπά)θ(α)ρ(ίου) κ(αὶ) ταξιάρχ(ου) ΤΟΥοΓΟΥ ἐξόδου πάσ[ην τὴ]ν οἰκοδ(ομία)ν καὶ μόνου | ἔτους ςφοθ´ἐπι(νεμήσεως) θ´† This castle, protected by God, was rebuilt from its foundations under the basileus Romanus Diogenes and the ecumenical patriarch Ioannes Xiphilinos through the contribution of Nikephoros, protospatharios and taxiarch of the.  … expenditure all the construction also alone (?). In the year 6579, 9th indiction (=1070/71). The first line, restored, stated that the fortification was rebuilt under the authority of the emperor Romanus IV Diogenes (1068–1071) and the patriarch Ioannes Xiphylinos (in office 1064–1075), by the efforts of Nicephorus, probably a protospatharios and taxiarches, an officer in charge of a substantial contingent of up to 1000 troops. Τhe next words were interpreted by Drew-Bear and Cheynet as τοῦ Σου(βλαίου). The text on the stone appears to read ΤΟΥοΓΟΥ, with the first ου ligatured in superscript above the tau. It is necessary to treat the small omicron as a mason’s error, the gamma as a mistake for a square C. Foss, The Defence of Asia Minor against the Turks, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 27 (1982), 153 (reprinted in Cities, Fortresses and Villages of Byzantine Asia Minor (Aldershot 1996), ch. V); see also C. Foss, Byzantine responses to Turkish attacks, in I. Sevcencko and I. Hutter (eds.), Ἀετός. Studies in honour of Cyril Mango (Stuttgart-Leipzig 1998), 154–71. 414 REB 2012, 209 n. 2; the same misunderstanding in G. H. R. Wright, Anatolica 33 (2007), 150. Feissel’s notice of the publication by Cheynet and Drew-Bear in Bull. ép. 2014, 574 has perpetuated the confusion by referring to ‘la dédicace de restauration du kastron byzantin d’Işıklı, sur le territoire d’Euméneia.’ 415 P. Thonemann, Maeander, 160–1.

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sigma, and accept the unusual, but not unparalleled use of the definite article τοῦ before the abbreviated toponym. Their attractive but not certain reading identifies the Beycesultan fortress and the taxiarch’s headquarters as the site of Soublaion, one of the important bastions of Byzantine defences against the Turks in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The inscription implies that there had been a previous fortification at the site, probably on a more modest scale. Soublaion/Siblia, which sent bishops to the councils of Chalcedon in 451, Nicaea in 787 and Constantinople in 879/80, and is mentioned in the tenth century Notitiae Episcopatuum, was the successor of the Roman settlement of the Silbiani (Sibliani).416 A century later in 1175 the emperor Manuel Comnenus rebuilt the fortifications of Dorylaion and Soublaion, before his forces were destroyed by the Seljuks at the battle of Myriokephalon in 1176.417 The historian Niketes Choniates, the main source for this information in a highly rhetorical passage written around 1200, compared the emperor’s work at Soublaion to the raising of Lazarus by Christ, similarly accomplished after Lazarus had been four-days dead. The comparison may be a hint that little further work was needed to repair the walls built a century earlier, where the original building inscription presumably still stood above the fortress gate.418 Regardless of whether Beycesultan was Soublaion, there is good reason to think that it had another vernacular name and should be identified with the military settlement known as Choma (‘the Mound’).419 Choma was the base of a unit of soldiers called the Chomatenoi which marched on Constantinople in 1077/78 in support of the revolt of Nikephoros Botaniates, a member of the prominent family from Synnada, and formed part of the imperial forces engaged in fighting the Turks in the following years. The excavations of the mound at Amorium, which was also surmounted by a rectangular castle constructed in the late tenth century, suggest very strongly that a similar imperial garrison was based there.420 The Beycesultan fort was mentioned in a series of twelfth-century sources as a significant strategic location and rebuilt again in 1192, when it was renamed Angelokastron by the emperor Isaac II Angelos.421 416 Ramsay, CB I, 221–31 got a great deal of the topography right. 417 Thonemann, Maeander, 161–70; A. F. Stone, Dorylaion revisited. Manuel I Komnenos and the refortification of Dorylaion and Soublaion in 1175, Revue des études byzantines 61 (2003), 183–99. 418 Niketes Choniates 176 (Berlin 1975). 419 The possibility is mentioned by Thonemann, Maeander, 161; further on Choma, H. Ahrweiler, Chôma-Aggélokastron, Revue des études byzantines 24 (1966), 278–83. 420 See 385–6 n. 212. 421 Full details in Thonemann, Maeander, 158–9.

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Georgios Tornikes, in a late twelfth-century panegyric delivered in the presence of Isaac II, provided a description of Choma/Angelokastron which matches the mound site at Beycesultan admirably: ὁποῖον ἐκ καινῆς ἐκεῖνο πρὸ βραχέος ἀνήγειρας ἐπὶ γηλόφου τινὸς εἰς μέτρον (sc. μέτριον?) ἀναβαίνοντος ὕψωμα καὶ κορυφούμενον ὡς εἰς βουνόν, ὡς καὶ τὴν χωματονοῦν (?) θέσιν εἰς κλῆσιν γενέσθαι τῷ τόπῳ παρὰ τοῖς ἀγχοτέρμοσιν. He recently refounded that (castle) such that it was like new on a hill that rises to a moderate height and comes to a summit in the manner of a tumulus (βουνός), so that the hüyük-like position has become the name of the place used by people living in the neighbourhood. (ed. W. Regel, Fontes rerum Byzantinarum 2. Petersburg 1917), 260–1). Isaac II’s intervention was doubtless necessary because the reconstruction under Manuel Comnenus had been hasty, and the military situation had in any case been transformed drastically for the worse by the Byzantine defeat at Myriokephalon in 1176. On this evidence, we can conclude that Choma, the mound at Beycesultan, was the popular name of the fortified hüyük beside the settlement called Siblia / Silbia / Soublaion, and the members of the garrison, led by a taxiarch and perhaps comprising a full contingent of 1000 men, took the name Chomatenoi. The site had a crucial role to play in the Byzantine-Turkish wars of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The British excavations of the 1950s leave no doubt that there were churches on the mound in the sixth and tenth/ eleventh centuries, whose remains include the bronzes and decorated stone work that they recovered. Since 2007 an archaeological team from Ege University, Izmir, has conducted new excavations at the site, and reported the discovery of Seljuk and early Ottoman as well as Byzantine levels, but their preliminary reports show no awareness of the earlier epigraphic and archaeological publications. These new excavations, which confirm the existence of a significant Middle Byzantine settlement, have not illuminated the plan of the site, but the finds include a Middle Byzantine bone figurine depicting a saint, and a mint-condition coin of Nicephorus III Botaniates (1078–81), found in situ on a floor of a rectangular room, doubtless once occupied by one of the Chomatenoi stationed in the garrison.422 After the extraordinary harvest of third-century Christian inscriptions from Eumeneia, the late Roman and Byzantine periods offer a very scanty contrasting picture. Ramsay recorded a marble chair with an inscription at Haydan köy: τὸν Θεὸν ὅπου πάντες τὴν ἐλπίδαν ἔχομεν. This might have been complemented

422 Eşref Abay, Beycesultan, Ege Üniversitesi Arkeoloji Kazıları (Izmir 2012), 43–52 with figs. 4–8. See also annual reports on the excavation in the Kazı Toplantısı Sonuçları since 2007.

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by another half sentence carved on a matching item of furniture.423 Another large block, conceivably from the same structure but of later date, carries the inscription [ἅ]γιον βῆμα Χριστοῦ | Α † Ω, a Christian text which was itself partly erased by a larger superimposed cross.424 Some Byzantine inscriptions have been found in the villages close to Beycesultan/Soublaion. Perhaps fourth century is a damaged bomos at Çöplü, with the simple name and patronymic Ὑπατίου Εὐδήμονος below a defaced cross,425 and there is an invocation on a column at Kocayaka, Κ(ύρι)ε βοήθη Κοσταντι[–].426 There is one dated text, a panel from a chancel screen at Eumeneia itself, with the inscription ἰνδ. ιβ´ἔτους χμη´, 648 = 563, οne of the latest examples of the Sullan era from the region.427 Probably somewhat earlier are two texts copied at Çivril, one carved on the underside of a reused architrave, attesting the engagement of an archdeacon, ἐπὶ τὸ ἀρχιδιακόνου Ἀλεξάνδρου,428 the other an invocation for absolution, beginning ὑπὲρ ἀνέσεως (ἁ)μαρ(τ)ήον followed by two scarcely legible names.429 Τhe text is in several respects problematic. With some imagination it could be translated into an invocation of the martyrs Quiricus and Iulitta, who are attested locally by a Middle Byzantine text, two joining fragments of an architrave brought during the Greek occupation of the region in 1922 from Emircik, (part of Emirhisar) east of Çivril to Smyrna which read a) [-] τον ἐνδόξον μαρτύρον Κυρήκου (κὲ) Ἠουλήτας· σκέπε, σόζε, φύλαττε τὴν δούλην σου Ἀρετή[ν].430 Another fragment from Emircik, probably from the same church, asked for the salvation of a man called Leo: [Κύριε, σ]ῷζε Λέοντα τὼ[ν? –].431 This is a meagre crop for a region whose villages had provided such a rich harvest of third-century Christian inscriptions. Ramsay offered the explanation that Eumeneia must have been the small town in Phrygia whose exclusively Christian inhabitants, according to Eusebius, had perished in an apocalyptic fire during the great persecution, and never recovered thereafter:432

423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430

CB 1.2, 533 no. 382; (ICG 1120); see ICG 1073 for a similar chair at Bekilli. CB 1.2, 533 no. 381; MAMA XI 57 (ICG 1455). MAMA XI 58 (ICG 1456). ΜΑΜΑ ΧΙ 59 (ICG 1457). Drew-Bear, Nouvelles inscriptions de Phrygie, Eumeneia no. 50; SEG 28, 1130 (ICG 1040). CB 1.2, 532 no. 383; JRS 16 (1926), 68 no. 190; (ICG 1046). BCC, JRS 16 (1926), 68 no. 191 (ICG 1047). F. Halkin, Anal. Boll. 71 (1953), 329/30; Pallis, Byz. Zeitschr. 2013, 778 no. 5; ICG 4466. D. Feissel, BCH 104 (1980), 516 n. 96 for this inscription and Middle Byzantine parallels for the formula. 431 JRS 16 (1926), 60 no. 181; (ICG 1045); we should probably restore a clerical office such as διάκονα or πρεσβύτερον after the article, rather than τῶ[ν κακῶν] as in the original edition. 432 CB 1.2, 505–9.

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ὄλην Χριστιανῶν πολίχνην αὔτανδρον ἀνφὶ τὴν Φρυγίαν ἐν κύκλῳ περιβαλόντες ὁπλῖται, πῦρ τε ὑφάψαντες, κατέφλεξαν αὐτοὺς ἅμα νηπίοις καὶ γυναιξί, τὸν ἐπὶ πάντων θεὸν ἐπιβοωμένοις ὅτι δὴ πανδημεὶ πάντες οἱ τὴν πόλιν οἰκοῦντες, λογιστής τε αὐτὸς καὶ στρατηγὸς σὺν τοῖς ἐν τέλει πᾶσι καὶ ὅλῳ δήμῳ, Χριστιανοὺς σφᾶς ὁμολογοῦντες, οὐδ᾽ ὁπωστιοῦν τοῖς προστάττουσιν εἰδωλολατρεῖν ἐπειθάρχουν. Armed soldiers encircled an entire small city of Christians in Phrygia with all its male inhabitants, set it on fire and burnt them to death together with the infant children and wives, as they cried out all the time to God; that is the entire population living in the city, the curator himself and the chief magistrate with all the persons in authority and the whole people, confessing themselves to be Christians, and they did not in any way at all obey those who ordered them to worship idols.433 Lactantius may have referred to the same episode, but made it the crime of a single arsonist, a drastic act of religious terrorism, but not an extreme and unparalleled form of organised state persecution: sicut unus in Phrygia qui universum populum cum ipso pariter conventiculo concremavit.434 Ramsay’s suggestion is not convincing. Although the epigraphic evidence supports the idea that many of Eumeneia’s inhabitants were Christian by 300, and there was a local Roman garrison in the third century, a potential source of soldiers to perpetrate the auto-da-fè, Eumeneia was not a small city and most of its inhabitants lived in the country villages. Even if there is a core of truth in the story, this gruesome act of religiously inspired incendiarism could not have wiped out the whole population to long-term effect. A more likely explanation for the lack of Christian monuments lies in the Byzantine-Turkish confrontations between the eleventh and early thirteenth centuries, when the upper Maeander valley was on a hotly contested frontier between raiding Turkish forces and Byzantine troops, fighting from their strongholds at Beycesultan-Choma, and Apollonia-Sozopolis. It is plausible that the churches of many of the Christian villages of Eumeneia and Apamea were razed to the ground and the stonework plundered over the following centuries to provide building material for new Turkish settlements at Çivril, Uluborlu, and Dinar.435 433 Eusebius, HE VIII.11. 434 Lactantius, Div. Inst. V. 11. 435 Note Ramsay’s own comment, CB 1.2, 447: ‘Apameia, open and defenceless, must have fallen easy prey to the nomad tribes, who gradually spread over the country and reduced it to a state of primitive barbarism.’

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Figure 66 Apamea. Burial inscription of the orthodox psalm-singers. ICG 975. Now in Afyon Museum Stephen Mitchell

The picture is broadly similar on the territory of Apamea, where a small number of fifth- and sixth-century Byzantine Christian inscriptions have been found, but architectural fragments are only very sporadically recoded. A column found in Dikici south of Apamea has a valuable dated text, ἐγένετο | ἡ ἁγιωτ(άτη) | ἐκλησία | ἰνδ. a´ (?) αἴτου|ς φγξ´, 563 Sullan era = 477/8.436 An unusual, probably fifth-century grave monument in private possession at Dinar but now in the museum at Afyon, refers to the collective tomb τῶν εὐλα|βεστάτων | ψαλτανα|γνωστῶν | τῶν ὀρθοδό|✝ξων✝,437 a description which not only indicates a church community that defined itself as orthodox, in implied contrast to a rival heresy, but also one of sufficient size to support a body of clerical choristers, which operated as a burial society (fig. 66). Ramsay noted a fifthor sixth-century gravestone at Gençali, [κ]ύμησις Ἀναστασίου,438 and a text which he restored as Νικόδημος μ(οναχός) carved in the rock beside a tiny cave-chapel overlooking the spring at Sheikh Arab at Dinar/Apamea, the source of the Maeander river itself. This appears to be a hermit’s retreat of

436 MAMA VI 238, with the reading ἰνδ. β´, the figure marked as uncertain; (ICG 976). 437 ΜΑΜΑ VI 237 (ICG 975); now in Afyon Museum. 438 CB 1.2, 533 no. 384 (ICG 1121); south-west of Dinar.

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the later sixth century.439 In the Dombay Ovası, east of the city, a rock tomb of the Roman period with a porch and a passage leading to a square chamber with burial couches on either side, may also have been occupied by a Christian ascetic who neatly inscribed the text Κ(ύρι)ε βοήθι Ἐπιφανίου † in the porch.440 These discoveries were literally overlooked by the much more important ruins of a church, built from excellent limestone ashlar masonry, which was located on the brow of the mountain east of the acropolis of Kelainai-Apamea, and commanded a spectacular view of the city and its territory. The building was first discovered by F. V. J. Arundell during visits of 1826 and 1832, and described in his accounts of those journeys.441 Gustav Hirschfeld and Ramsay visited the church in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and suggested that it stood on the site of an ancient temple, but produced no evidence for this.442 Georg Weber, based in Smyrna, wrote an excellent short monograph on Apamea in 1892, including a good map of the environs and an improved plan of the church.443 A revised plan and architectural drawings were made by a Russian team of architects working for the recent international Apamea research project.444 Another unpublished site plan and other details produced by Michael Ballance in 1996 and now preserved among his papers at the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, Oxford University, are invaluable, as more of the ruins were visible at the time of his visit (fig. 67). The position is on a terrace at a height of 1050 metres, about 150 metres below the summit of the ridge of Aydoğmuş Dağ, according to Pliny the ancient mount Signia (see 123 fig. 5).445 The naos was almost exactly square with external measurements 16 × 16 metres,446 and it was fronted on the west by a narthex. Square side chambers were accessible from each end of the narthex, and the southern one, containing a stepped font, was used as a baptisterion. The northern side chamber might have accommodated a stairway to an upper storey or gallery. There were central and northern entrances to the narthex 439 CB 1.2, 538 no. 398 (ICG 1124). 440 ΜΑΜΑ IV 365 (ICG 4463). 441 F. V. J. Arundell, A Visit to the Seven Churches of Asia (London, 1828), 110–11, 243; Discoveries in Asia Minor I (1834), 190–1, 217–18. 442 G. Hirschfeld, Über Kelainai – Apameia Kibotos, Abhandlungen der Akademie Berlin 1875, 24; Ramsay, CB 1.2, 467, 513 n. 2. 443 G. Weber, Dineir (Gueikler). Célènes. Apamée Cibotos (Besançon 1892). 444 V. Sedov / M. Vdovichenko / J. Fomicheva / E. Judina, The Early Byzantine church near Apameia-Kibotos (Dinar). A preliminary report, in A. Ivantschik, L. Summerer, A. von Kielein (eds), Kelainai-Apameia Kibotos: une metropole achéménide, hellénistique et romaine (Bordeaux 2016), 189 fig. 14 (photograph and drawing). 445 Pliny NH V. 106: Apamea sita est in radice montis Signiae. 446 According to the Russian team; Weber has a measurement of 14.90 metres.

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Figure 67 Apamea. Plan of Noah’s Ark Church by M. Ballance, 1995. Ballance added a note to his plan that the reconstruction of the basilica should have seven bays Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, Oxford University. Michael Ballance archive

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Figure 68 Apamea. Noah’s Ark Church, NE corner and the apse Peter Thonemann

from the exterior, and three portals, the middle one with a fine moulded frame and lintel, which led into the basilica. The central nave was twice as wide as the side aisles, and there was an exterior door in the south wall of the naos at the rear of the baptisterion. In the middle of the east wall there was a shallow apse, with small projections into the body of the naos (fig. 68). Corresponding projections in the west wall on either side of the central door indicate where the divisions of the main naos must have been, and Ballance noted three (out of six) rectangular pier bases separating the north nave and one on the south side. Only one of these was visible to the Russian team fifteen years later, and Weber’s 1892 plan showed no internal divisions. A small clearance excavation by the Russian team exposed a rectangular block with a Dübelloch next to the west wall, and some paving slabs which seemed to have formed the floor of the church itself.447 Blocks from arched vaults noted at the west end of the naos, and a block drawn by Ballance with the curve of an arch springing in opposed directions, decorated with a defaced maltese cross, must have been placed above the internal colonnades. Another Latin cross was carved on a wall block at the south end of the narthex. One of the fallen blocks from the 447 Sedov et al., The Early Byzantine church, 194 and fig. 26.

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church’s north wall carried a very prominent inscription Κύριε Βοήθει, an invocation which Ramsay judged to be contemporary with the construction of the church.448 The roof structure may have been made from cantilevered timbers. The distinctive square ground plan is noteworthy. The Russian team compared churches of similar design at Justiniana Prima, the birthplace of the emperor Justin I, in Serbia, at Binbirkilise and at Caniste in Macedonia. The profile mouldings on the main door frames and lintel resemble those on important Constantinopolitan churches of the Justinianic period, including St Eirene and Hagia Sophia and these detailed comparisons allow the church to be dated with some confidence to the period between 525 and 550.449 There are three crucial clues to the interpretation of this building: its architectural quality, its location and its ground plan. The church is one of the finest buildings in early Byzantine Anatolia, immaculately built from fresh-cut ashlar, with no use of Spolien and very little mortar. As the decorative details resemble those on prestige buildings in Constantinople, it is likely that architects, builders and perhaps also a patron from the capital had a hand in the design and execution. The church stands neither in a cemetery, as might be expected of a martyrium, nor in the city itself, but on the brow of a mountain, a stiff climb up from the ancient and modern town. The unusual ground plan gave the structure the appearance of an arca or a kibotos, a chest, and there is every likelihood that the church’s design was precisely the architectural realisation of Noah’s ark. This suspicion is strongly supported by the location. The structure appears as if beached on the foreshore, widely visible from all directions, and with a view that commanded the territory of Apamea looking northwards over the upper waters of the Maeander. Now that the Christian roots of the Noah’s ark story at Apamea have been established, we may be sure that the Apameans would have created a sacred topography in which to locate their foundation legend, just as their pagan counterparts had done for the stories of Apollo, Marsyas and Athena. They accordingly built the city’s finest church on the mountain terrace where they imagined the ark had come to rest after the floods began to recede.450 In the pious atmosphere and during the boom in church construction of the age of Justinian, attention turned to sites across the Christian world which marked high points in Biblical history or Christian tradition. Two outstanding examples were the tomb of Philip at 448 CB 1.2, 538 no. 397 (ICG 1123). 449 Sedov et al., The early Byzantine church, 182 fig. 8. 450 Gen. 8.3: καὶ ἐκάθισεν ἡ κιβωτὸς ἐν μηνὶ τῷ ἑβδόμῳ ἑβδομῇ εἰκάδι τοῦ μηνός, ἐπὶ τὰ ὄρη τὰ Ἀραράτ. The topography is excellently shown by the map and cross-section that illustrates Weber’s 1892 survey.

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Hierapolis, which formed the core of a fine sixth-century basilica and was the centre of a major pilgrimage site, and the resting place of John the Evangelist at Ephesus, converted into the great basilica by Justinian. The landing place of the ark at Apamea, where the Lord’s covenant was declared to Noah and his descendants, falls into the same category. Doubtless with the full support of higher Christian and secular authorities, the sixth-century descendants of the Christians who had succeeded around 200 in securing local recognition of the Christian flood legend, added this extraordinary church in its spectacular setting to the regional landscape of southern Phrygia.451 5.17

Sozopolis (Apollonia) and Antioch (Maps 14 and 15)

About fifteen kilometres from Apamea, a Roman road ran from the Roman garrison fort at Aulutrene at the east side of the Dombay Ovası,452 and climbed in a series of zig-zags to the boundary between the territories of Apamea and Apollonia. This was also the frontier between the proconsular province of Asia and the multiform province of Galatia in the early imperial period.453 Apollonia was one of the earliest cities of Asia Minor to shed its pagan theonym in late antiquity. A letter of Basil of c.377 addressed to the Sozopolitans uses the name which was attached to the city throughout the Byzantine period. He offered them doctrinal advice to contest Arian practices and beliefs that belittled or even denied the divinity of Christ.454 The new name was also used in the official records of the Council of Constantinople in 381.455 The circumstances of the name change are genuinely intriguing, but remain entirely obscure. The city ‘s significant Christian population in the third century included some of its most influential families, who will surely have played a role in bringing about this major shift in civic identity. Interesting, if largely unhistorical, sidelights on the city’s Christian history can be gleaned from versions of the passio of 451 The interpretation of the church as an architectural realisation of the Ark has been hesitantly mentioned in an unpublished note of Michael Ballance, and by G. F. Chiai, Phrygien und seine Götter (2020), 480: ‘In Apameia-Kibotos sind auf dem alten Akropolishügel die Reste einer Kirche entdeckt worden. Ihre Position auf der Akropolis (sic) scheint nicht zufällig zu sein, und könnte vielleicht in Verbindung mit der jüdischen Tradition der Landung der Arche Noahs in der Gegend gebracht werden’. The hypothesis is also suggested in Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apameia_Kibotos. 452 M. Christol and Th. Drew-Bear, Un castellum romain près d’Apamée de Phrygie (Vienna 1987). 453 Mitchell, Anatolia II, 154; see 31 n. 29. 454 Basil. Ep. 261. 455 TIB 7, 387–8.

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St Zosimus, supposedly a victim of persecution under the emperor Trajan.456 Local topographical details provided by these accounts imply that the story was based, as usual, on local topographical knowledge, although their dates of composition remain elusive.457 Sozopolis was a pilgrimage destination in the late sixth and early seventh century, when the life of the Galatian holy man St Theodore of Sykeon records that there was an icon in the Church of the Virgin Mary which exuded holy oil with curative properties (myros), used to cure eye infections.458 It happens that one of the few Christian inscriptions to have been recorded at Sozopolis dates to this period. It concerns the restoration of a building described as ‘the palace of the archangel’, doubtless a church of St Michael: [ἀ]νανεοῦτε | τὸ παλάτιν | τοῦ Ἀρχαν|γέλου ἔτους ἑ|ξακοσιοστοῦ | ἑβδομικοστ⟨ο⟩υ †.459 Following the Sullan era, the year 670 corresponds to 585/6.460 Sozopolis was continuously occupied through the Byzantine dark age: the icon of the Virgin was mentioned again around 725 and the settlement acquired military importance in the ninth century when it was the headquarters of a tourmarches.461 The fortifications, including many Spolien from the ruins of the Roman city, have been dated to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, largely thanks to an inscription carved on a re-used architrave which is very similar to the contemporary text at Beycesultan: [† ἀνεκενίσθη τὸ κάστρ]ον Σοζοπόλεος ἐπὴ Ῥομανοῦ | [βασίλεος τοῦ Δ]ιογένους ἐν ἔτη τῶ ςφοη´† , 6578 = 1069/70.462 Here too the garrison must have played an important role in the Byzantine-Turkish frontier wars of this period. Remains of Christian late antiquity in the villages around Apollonia, sandwiched between the north shore of Hoyran (Eğirdir) Göl and the passes through the Sultan Dağları which separated southern Phrygia from the Çöl Ova and central Phrygia, are as sparse as 456 P. Talloen / M. Prodanova, Zosimus of Apollonia-Sozopolis, Gephyra 21 (2021), 107–33. 457 Since the passio continually referred to the old name Apollonia it may have been partly based on fourth century sources, if not a fourth-century archetype; but it is also likely that it continued to be used locally long after the official name change. 458 A. J. Festugière, La Vie de S. Théodore de Sykéon (Brussels 1970), c.106–109. 459 ΜΑΜΑ IV 225; MAMA XI 8; G. Labarre et al., La collection du Musée d’Uluborlu: nouvelles inscriptions de Apollonia Mordiaion, Anatolia antiqua 20 (2012), 121–46 at 137 no. 28 (ICG 1139). 460 C. Foss, Two inscriptions attributed to the seventh century, ZPE 25 (1977), 282–8, established that the Sullan era was used at Apollonia-Sozopolis. The commentary in MAMA XI 8, followed by Nowakowski, Saints, 441–2 PSD/03/01, suggests reading the letter eta after the ordinal number, and that this should be treated as the number eight. This would move the date to 678 = 593/4, but only a single vertical stroke is visible and this is more likely to be part of a cross than a letter. 461 TIB 7, 387–8. 462 MAMA IV 149 (ICG 1130).

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those in the territories of Eumeneia and Apamea. Close to Uluborlu, a stone with a Maltese cross has been noted at Küçükkabaca (formerly Esendere), and an unintelligible, probably Byzantine inscription over the entrance to a rock tomb between Uluborlu and Inhisar.463 A few Byzantine spoils have been noted in Yassıören, close to the site of Tymandus, which had been raised to city status around 300 and sent bishops to the councils of Constantinople in 381, Ephesus in 449 and Constantinople again in 692.464 In contrast, numerous Christian remains have been recorded in the territory of Pisidian Antioch, where settlement density was high. There was Byzantine stone work in Gondane (Kumdamlı) and at Ayvalı.465 Inscriptions include an unpublished Christian boundary stone between Gondane and Kırkbaş,466 a slender votive column at Kırkbaş ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς Γαείου καὶ παντὸς τοῦ οἴκου αὐτοῦ, α large inscribed votive slab at Körküler, erected by a deacon called Doulos, in memory of his father Minneus, a priest, and his uncle Doulos, and a smaller fragment of a similar text at Sücüllü,467 all probably from the end of the fifth or the sixth centuries. South-west of Antioch there was a sixth-century church at Tokmacık, where a lintel block called on the Lord to protect all the congregation and those who had contributed to the construction: Κύριε βοήθι τοῖ[ς ε]ἰσπορευομένυς | ἰς τὸν ὖκον τοῦτ[ο]ν κὴ τοῖς καρπο|φοροῦσιν ὧν τὰ ὀν[ό]ματα, Κύριε, σὺ [οἶδας].468 An unprovenanced marble fragment in the Yalvaç Museum from the region also ended with the formula commending the anonymous donors.469 Early and Middle Byzantine stonework and bronze objects collected in the Yalvaç Museum, like those at Kütahya, come not only from the ancient city itself but from several villages in its territory. The most spectacular piece is a mid-sixth century ciborium, a highly decorated arch placed above the altar, inscribed with the text, † εὐχὴ χωρίου Πίδρων ἔστη τὸ ἔργον [ἐ]πὶ Δωροθέου ἡγουμένου καὶ ᾽Ασκληπιο[δότου -], brought from the village of Ileği (formerly Çiftlik), nine kilometres WNW of Yalvaç (fig. 69). Another fragment of a similar arch, perhaps from a different church in the same location, carries a worn but

463 464 465 466 467

G. Labarre et al., Adalya 16 (2013), 6 nos. 21 and 24. TIB 7, 408–9. TIB 7, 262–3 and 201. TIB 7, 262–3; not in ICG 4482. B. Levick, AS 17 (1967), 120–1 nos. 55–7 (ICG 1339, 1340, 1341). For the name Doulos in the region, see 332 n. 771. 468 Sterrett, Wolfe Expedition 276 no. 395 (ICG 1335). 469 SEG 55, 1437 (ICG 4483): [ὧν ὁ Θεὸς] τὰ ὀνόματα ὖδεν †.

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Figure 69 Pisidian Antioch territory, Pidron. Sixth-century ciborium from Ileği. ICG 4487. Yalvaç Museum Stephen Mitchell

unintelligible text.470 Monasteries and abbots, hegoumenoi, were not common in sixth-century Phrygia, but these two inscriptions and other decorated stonework indicate that there was a monastic centre in this village. Several decorated Middle Byzantine fragments are evidence for continuous occupation until the tenth and eleventh centuries, and the toponym is identifiable both as one of the villages listed in the records of the Xenoi Tekmoreioi in the midthird century,471 and as a kome called Pidra in the Thema Anatolikon, where the future emperor Leo V the Armenian (813–20) spent some of his childhood.472 In 803 the youthful Leo had been an accomplice of his relative Bardanios Tourkos, general in command of the troops of the Thema Anatolikon, in an unsuccessful coup d’état, which had been prophesied by a monk in the region of neighbouring Philomelion, and was supported by another general from the 470 V. Ruggieri (with an appendix by F. Hild), La scultura bizantina nel territorio di Antiochia di Pisidia, JÖB 56 (2006), 267–96; cf SEG 55, 1436 (ICG 4487). The second text reads ΔΗ – ΑΛΟΜΟΥ. 471 G. Arena, Communità di villaggio nell’Anatolia Romana. Il dossier epigraphico degli Xenoi Tekmoreioi (Rome 2017), 189–90. 472 F. Hild, appendix to Ruggieri, JÖB 56 (2006), 289–90.

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region, Michael of Amorium. This rebellion had its roots in Phrygia Paroreius; the prophetic monk may even have been based at Pidra.473 A small pilaster from a chancel screen and two capitals from window frames found at Çeleptaş, and several pilaster, architrave and chancel screen fragments recorded at Hüyüklü, suggest that these Antiochian villages had churches of the sixth and eleventh centuries respectively.474 Middle Byzantine finds from Antioch’s rural territory include a font and other decorated stone work from Yukarı Tırtar, twenty kilometres west of Yalvaç,475 as well as material from Sağır, where the find of a Jewish text and two menorah reliefs have been reported, Bahtıyar, Özbayat, Camharmam, Köstük, Sücüllü, and Kabacık. Byzantine bronze objects in Yalvaç Museum, mostly from the eleventh century, comprise an incense burner from Özgüney, a pectoral cross from Yarıkköy, a cross with pendants from Terziler, and reliquary crosses invoking the Theotokos from Bağıllı, as well as similar objects from Yalvaç/Antioch itself.476 The inscriptions, abundant architectural remains and other ecclesiastical finds sufficiently indicate that villages in Antiochian territory thrived in the fifth and sixth century, as they did across much of northern Phrygia, and that most of them were again prosperous in the Middle Byzantine period. This pattern can be observed at Antioch itself, which, in clear contrast to Aezani, did not slump into decline during late antiquity but continued to be a centre of power, first as metropolis of the new separate province of Pisidia from the beginning of the fourth century,477 and then as a beacon of imperial authority at least until the sixth century, as suggested by a statue base for the emperor Justinian which the city erected in a central location and has even been interpreted as referring explicitly to the emperor’s codification of the Roman law 473 Iosephos Genesios, Regum libri quattuor I, 6 (CFHB XIV, Berlin 1978 p. 7–8): αὐτὸς γοῦν ὁ Βαρδάνιος, ὅτε δὴ τοῦ τῆς Ἀνατολῆς ἐξηγεῖτο θέματος, βασιλείων ἄγαν διὰ φροντίδος ἐν ἑαυτῷ εἴχεν ἐπίθεσιν ὥστε τῆς βασιλείας ἐπιλαβέσθαι· ὅθεν ταύτην μονάχῳ τῶν ἐπειλημμένων προγνώσεως περιεσκκεμένως προσανέτιθει, τὴν διατριβὴν ποιουμένῳ πρὸς τινα χῶρον τοῦ Φιλομηλίου, συνίστορα τοῦ τοιούτου βουλεύματος κεκτημένος τὸν Λέοντα, ἄνδρα πολλοῖς ἐμπρέψαντα γενναιότητος προτερήμασιν, ἀνδρικὸν τὴν ὄψιν καὶ βλοσυρωπὸν τὸ κατάστημα, μεσήλικα καὶ εὐόμιλον ἐκτραφέντα τε τοῦ αὐτοῦ θέματος ἐπὶ τινι τόπῳ Πίδρᾳ προσονομαζομένῳ, σὺν αὐτῷ δὲ καὶ Μιχαὴλ τὸν ἐξ Ἀμορίου τυχάνοντα, κτλ. Other references in TIB 7, 359–60 sv Philomelion. 474 Ruggieri, JÖB 56 (2006), 275–89 nos. 1–14. 475 V. Ruggieri, La sculture bizantina nel museo archeologica di Antiochia di Pisidia (Yalvaç). Part I, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 70 (2004), 259–88 no. 13, and Part II, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 71 (2005), 59–95 no. 15. 476 V. Ruggieri, Manifatti bronzei bizantini ad Antiochia di Pisidia, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 75 (2009), 65–80. 477 M. Christol, / T. Drew-Bear Antioche de Pisidie capitale provincial et l’oeuvre de M. Valerius Diogenes, Antiquité Tardive 7 (1999), 33–71.

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codes.478 During the seventh and eighth centuries Antioch was repeatedly a target and victim of Arab raids, but its continued importance is shown by the fact that the forces of the Caliphs in 665, 667 and 713 chose it for their winter quarters, and it later provided an important interim station for the armies of the First Crusade in 1097.479 The resilience of the city at this date is confirmed by discoveries made by the Michigan excavations of 1924, which collected about forty Byzantine architectural pieces from the site or in Yalvaç itself, which have been conserved in the museum. Only four are provisionally dateable to the fifth or sixth century, the rest all appear to be Middle Byzantine work.480 Thanks to a century and a half of extensive epigraphic and archaeological research there is more direct material evidence for Christianity in late Roman and Byzantine Antioch than anywhere else in Phrygia. Three churches have been identified and excavated at the city site, and another was situated close to the mountain-top sanctuary of Mên Askaênos. The most important of the urban churches was the basilica located close to the west city wall, over fifty metres long and twenty-seven metres wide, dimensions appropriate for the cathedral in the metropolis of the province of Pisidia, and larger than any other church in Phrygia apart from in Laodicea on the Lycus.481 The 1924 excavations revealed two main phases. The earlier, from the late fourth century, had an extensive mosaic floor, mostly decorated with abstract geometrical designs. In the sixth century, the structure was rebuilt, probably after major earthquake damage, and the longitudinal axis shifted about forty centimetres to the north. The mosaic floors conformed with the original central line, while the apse with its polygonal external ground plan was aligned to the modified axis. The three aisles were divided from one another by colonnades resting on thirteen bases, divided into fourteen bays. A notable feature which was highlighted 478 C. Zuckermann, The dedication of a statue of Justinian at Antioch, in T. Drew-Bear et al. (eds), Actes du Ier Congrès internationale sur Antioche de Pisidie (Lyon 2002), 243–55, with Feissel, Chron. 377 (AE 2002, 1468; ICG 4521). The text is carved in a tabula on the statue base of a statue of Justinian. Feissel’s reading, [ἡ πόλ]ις Ἀντι[όχοιο στῆσε θ]εόστεφες ἕρμ[α] | θῖον Ἰουστινιανὸν ὅρ[ᾷ] κοσμήτορα κόσμου, conforms better with the traces on the stone than the alternative text proposed by Zuckermann, who restored Ἀντι[οχήων], ἕρκ[ος], and ὅρ[ων], the last being a metaphorical reference to Justinian’s Roman law code. 479 TIB 7, 185–7. 480 V. Ruggieri, La scultura bizantina nel museo archeologica di Antiochia di Pisidia (Yalvaç). A. B. Yalçın, La scultura mediobizantina di Yalvaç, in C. Pennas / C. VanderHeyde, La sculpture byzantine VIIe–XIIe siècles (BCH suppl. 49, Athens 2008), 139–59. I have not seen V. Ruggieri / M. Turillo, La scultura bizantina ad Antiochia di Pisidia (Orientalia Christiana Analecta 288, Roma 2011). 481 The newly excavated and restored cathedral church of Laodicea on the Lycus was built to a rectangular plan 41 metres long by 38 metres wide.

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in the design of the mosaic floor was a central solea, a processional way, one of the earliest examples of this liturgical feature to be noted in church architecture. Mosaic inscriptions with texts quoted from Psalm 43 (42), καὶ εἰσελεύσομαι πρὸς τὸ θυσιαστήριον τοῦ θεοῦ and πρὸς τὸν θε[ὸν] τὸν εὐφ[ραί]|νοντα τ[ὴν] νεότητ[ά μου], were placed along this passage leading to the chancel screen and the altar.482 Two other donor inscriptions were included in the mosaic floor, one the gift of a church reader Idomeneus, the other of a wealthy layman Eutychianus. Both begin with the formula ἐπὶ τοῦ αἰδεσιμωτάτου ἐπισκόπου Ὀπτίμου, dating the construction of the floor to the bishopric of Optimus, who was a correspondent of St Basil in the 370s and Antioch’s episcopal representative at the council of Constantinople in 381.483 The first phase of the church was completed in the last quarter of the fourth century. Despite extensive excavation it remains uncertain when the subsequent reconstruction took place. The size of the structure, one of the earliest dated churches of Asia Minor, indicates not only the importance of Antioch but also the scale of the Christian presence in the city before 400. No ancient evidence supports the suggestion that this church was dedicated to St Paul. A font, recarved from a Roman bomos, which was copied at a hamam in Yalvaç by the Italian B. Pace, has Middle Byzantine decoration and inscriptions with the traditional baptismal Psalm text [φ]ωνὴ Κ(υρίο)υ ἐπὴ τῶν ὑδά[των] and three invocations, ὁ ἅγιος Παῦλος, Ἰ(ησοῦς) Χ(ριστὸ)ς νήκᾳ, and ὁ ἅγηος Γρηγόρηος, but there is nothing to connect it with the church on the site. No discoveries from the excavation have been made to indicate that the large basilica was still in use in the tenth and eleventh centuries (figs. 70 and 71).484 The 1924 excavations also uncovered structural features of a smaller central church on the site, at the west end of the Tiberia Platea, a broad street which ran east to the Imperial temple at the heart of the Roman colony. The structure is undated and the plan made by the excavation’s architect F. J. Woodbridge is very hard to interpret. It probably includes several phases of rebuilding extending into the Middle Byzantine period, and it could have been the location where some of the later decorated architectural remains from the site were originally 482 D. M. Robinson, 57 (1927), 234–5 nos. 67–69; (ICG 1332, 1333, 1334); discussed by E. Kitzinger, A fourth-century mosaic floor in Pisidian Antioch, Mélanges Mansel I (1974), 385–95; V. Ruggieri / A. Filipovic, Antiochia di Pisidia. Qualche considerazione epigraphica e liturgica, Parola del Passato fasc. 357 (2007), 451–68 (Feissel, Bull ép. 2013, 523). 483 Basil, ep. 240; Cod. Theod. 16.1.3 (30 July 381): Asiana dioecesi Amphilochio episcopo Iconiensi et Optimo episcopo Antiocheno; Theophanes, Chron. a.m. 5866. According to Socrates, HE VII.36 Optimus had been translated from the otherwise unknown see of Agdamia in Phrygia to Antioch in Pisidia. 484 B. Pace, La zona costiera da Adalia a Side, ASAA 3 (1916–20, publ. 1921), 55 no. 43; S. Mitchell and M. Waelkens, Pisidian Antioch. The site and its monuments (1998), 215; V. Ruggieri, OCP 71 (2005), 84–7 no. 17 (ICG 1322).

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Figure 70 Pisidian Antioch. Middle Byzantine font; inscription citing Ps. 28. ICG 1322. Yalvaç Museum Stephen Mitchell

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Figure 71 Pisidian Antioch. Middle Byzantine font; inscription referring to St Paul. ICG 1322. Yalvaç Museum Stephen Mitchell

found.485 Recent Turkish excavations confirm the reports of the Michigan expedition that the church had a side as well as a central apse, and show that it had the form of a conventional basilica, probably with a narthex, but further details and chronology remain obscure.486 Excavation in recent years on the site has revealed another three-apsed basilica church with a narthex on the hill south of the nymphaeum where the aqueduct entered the city. Building phases have been assigned to the sixth and twelfth centuries. Few significant architectural features have been published, but a highly decorative and well carved inscription to be seen on a ‘youtube’ video of recent excavations at the site, reads ΗΤΟΥΘΕΟΥ | ΕΚΚΛ |ΗΣΙΑ. The first line, with the letters ΗΤ and ΟΥ in ligature, was cut vertically, while ἐκκλησία was inscribed horizontally in two 485 Mitchell and Waelkens, Pisidian Antioch, 206–10. 486 M. Özhanlı, Excavations at Pisidian Antioch 2012, Anmed (News of archaeology from Anatolia’s Mediterranean areas) 11 (2013), 14–20 at 19 fig. 7.

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Figure 72 Pisidian Antioch. Re-used architrave with inscription of 5th or 6th century for Paulus also called Dios, the founder of the church of the archangels. ICG 4523. Yalvaç Museum Stephen Mitchell

lines to the right. The text was perhaps displayed on the right-hand upright of a door frame (ICG 4484). Another church is identified by an inscription carved on a reused architrave frieze block of the third century but reinscribed in late antiquity with the text [-] ὑπὲρ μνήμης καὶ ἀναπαύσεως Παύλου ἐπικ(αλουμένου) Δίου ἀνέ[στῆσε] | [? καὶ ἔ]κτισεν τὸν ναὸν τῶν ἀρχανγέλων ϟ ἰνδ. γ´ (fig. 72), which documents the foundation of a church in memory of the deceased Paulos Dios. The dedication to collective archangels, not simply to their leader St Michael, is an unusual feature of this text, paralleled by the epitaph of another Paulos, πρεσβύτερος τῶν ἀρχανγέλων at Ancyra in Galatia.487 The other church known from Antioch lay outside the city close to the summit of the 1600 metre mountain-top sanctuary of Mên Askaenos, one of the best documented pagan centres of worship in central Anatolia.488 The build487 The church south of the nymphaeum, called the ‘aedilicius church’ by the Turkish excavators, was another basilica; M. Özhanlı, Excavations at Pisidian Antioch in 2015, Anmed 14 (2016), 9–15 at 12–13, and Pisidian Antiocheia excavation 2016, Anmed 15 (2017), 95–9 with fig. 1. For the church in the video, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KjnKrUhFKE (accessed 6.11.2022; ICG 4484). The inscription for church of the archangels (ICG 4523) is displayed in the Museum at Yalvaç; compare ICG 3722 (I. Ankara 2, no. 372) from Ancyra. 488 Mitchell and Waelkens, Pisidian Antioch, 37–90; G. Labarre, Le Dieu Mên et sa sanctuaire à Antioche de Pisidie (Brussels 2010); G. Labarre, Les origines et la diffusion du culte de

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ing was a three-aisled basilica with a transept in front of the apse, tending to the form of a Latin cross, probably with a baptistery in the south-east corner, and a narthex which could be entered on the short north side. The foundations were built of massive ashlar masonry, spoils from the Hellenistic temple of Mên, which stood about two hundred metres away on the hilltop. A distinctive feature of the church was an internal frieze of newly cut blocks, not spoils, decorated with vegetation, ducks and partridges, a single-handled jug, a chalice and crosses, of which twenty-two blocks survive. Two large blocks with Latin crosses were situated to the left and right of the arch which spanned the apse. This decorative scheme may date to the fifth century. The temple in the pagan sanctuary had been systematically demolished before the church was built, probably at the end of the fourth century. Most of the small free-standing votive reliefs relating to the cult were also smashed, and testify to an outbreak of anti-pagan violence which brought the same violent end to the the Mên cult at Antioch as can be observed in the rural sanctuaries of northern Phrygia. The significance of the eradication of this centre of pagan cult should not be underestimated, as Mên was the patrios theos of pre-Christian Antioch, and the rituals, ceremonies, contests and social feasting that took place around the temple had for centuries been a compelling part of the colony’s life. After the historical heart had been plucked from the sanctuary, the church, constructed with considerable care and expense, deliberately reclaimed the location for Christian worship. We simply do not know whether it in its turn attracted regular visitors and pilgrims, who made the five kilometre ascent from the city as their pagan predecessors had done.489 Relatively few Byzantine Christian inscriptions have been recorded from Yalvaç and the site of Antioch itself. There are two short funerary texts comprising a simple cross followed respectively by a name and a title in the genitive, † Ἁλεξάνδρου and † πρεποσίτου, a format suggestive of the later fourth century.490 A broken fragment of reused marble wall cladding decorated with a peacock and a staurogram, whose inscription can be restored to read [Αὐ]ξίβι(ο)ς | [εὐξά]μενος | [ἀπήρ]τισα [ἐκ θεμε]λίων | [κατὰ τὴν] βούλησι|[ν τῆς Οὐαλ]εντίλ|[λης], perhaps documents the restoration of a family funerary chapel in the fifth century (fig. 73).491 Votives were no doubt present in Mên, in H. Bru, S. Lebreton, F. Kirbilher (eds.), L’Asie Mineure dans l’Antiquité : échanges, populations et territoires. Regards actuels sur une péninsule (Paris), 389–414. See 60 n. 5 and 76–7. 489 J. Greenhalgh, in Mitchell and Waelkens, Pisidian Antioch, 201–6; modifications to the ground plan suggested by M. Ballance. 490 W. M. Calder, JRS 2 (1912), 97 nos. 27 and 28 (ICG 1320, 1321). 491 B. M. Levick, AS 17 (1967), 119 no. 52 (ICG 1336); for similar funerary chapels, compare I. Ankara 2, 338 and 363 with comm.

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Figure 73 Pisidian Antioch. Inscription of Auxibios. ICG 1336. Yalvaç Museum Stephen Mitchell

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every church. A threshold stone said to be from the large basilica was the donation of an estate official named after the Phrygian saint Abercius, εὐχὴ Ἀβερκίου κόμητος καὶ οἰκονόμου.492 Another inscription calling on the Lord’s help, headed the grave of an administrator of private holdings, Θ(ε)ὲ βοή(θη) μ|εμό|ριον | Ζωτ|ικοῦ | Δαμ|άλα | πραγ|ματ|ευτοῦ.493 There are similar prayer texts from churches set up by Paulus son of Romanus,494 and by a living couple for themselves and the resurrection of a relative.495 A more significant building inscription, known only from a copy made by Ramsay, reads,✝ Ἐπὶ τοῦ ἁγιωτάτου | κὲ μακαριοτάτου ἀρχι|επισκόπου ἡμῶν Ἰωάν|[νου] | κὲ Ἀνθεστιανοῦ τοῦ λα|ν|πρ[ο]τά[του] ΕΝΑΡΙ‖Α κὲ πατρός· ὁ τόπος | ἀνεν⟨ε⟩ώθη ὑπ[ὸ] | τοῦ ἐπισ(τάτου) Θεοδώρου ἀνα|[γνώ]στου κὲ διεκόνο[υ]. The division of the text into two parts suggests that it records two phases of construction. The original building was supervised by two men at the apex of Antiochian society in the sixth century: Ioannes, archbishop of the metropolitan see of Antioch, and the prominent layman Anthestianus, who was a member of the imperial aristocracy with the rank of clarissimus and a pater of the city, the title born by major civic officials involved in the organization of public construction works.496 This was followed by a restoration of the place (presumably associated with a church) by Theodore, a church-reader and deacon. The use of the verb ἀνενεώθη to describe thes work, is paralleled by the same term on the inscription from Apollonia/Sozopolis of 585/6, and probably implies that a church of earlier date was restored under Justinian or one of his successors.497 Two of the texts seen by Ramsay are Middle Byzantine. One is the votive of Sergius also called Pholeas, which combined allusions to Psalms 34, to avenge his enemies and Psalm 108, not to pass over his prayers in silence because he 492 SEG 46, 1767 (ICG 4486), repeated at 52, 1383 wrongly reports this as from a church of St George. E. Kitzinger, Mélanges Mansel (Ankara 1974) 385–395 indicated the correct provenance. 493 ΙΚ 67, no. 111 (ICG 1346). 494 M. Byrne and G. Labarre, Nouvelles inscriptions d’Antioche de Pisidie d’après les Note-books de W. M. Ramsay (IK 67), no. 107; (ICG 1343): εὐχὴ Παύλου υἱοῦ Ῥω[μ]αν[οῦ]; texts also in SEG 56, 1697. 495 Levick Anatolian Studies 17 (1967), 120 no. 53; (ICG 1337). 496 See D. Feissel, Trois fonctions muncipales dans l’épigraphie protobyzantine (curator, defensor, pater civitatis), in K. Bolle, C. Machiado and C. Witschel (eds), The Epigraphic Cultures of Late Antiquity (Stuttgart 2017), 473–500. This item from Antioch was added on p. 488 n. 104 to the list of 44 examples attested by inscriptions in the annex to his study. 497 M. Byrne and G. Labarre, IK 67, no. 110; SEG 56, 1697; Feissel, Bull. ép. 2006, 551 (ICG 1345); see 439 n. 460. Ramsay’s copy shows that the last three lines were more clumsily cut than the rest of the inscription, but the differences are not sufficiently clear to prove that they were a later addition.

section 5.17: Sozopolis ( Apollonia ) and Antioch

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had been maligned by a sinner and a thief: ✝ Εὐχὴ Σεργίου τοῦ λεγομένου Φολέα· δήκασο|ν, Κ(ύρι)ε, τὺς ἀδηκο͂ντας με· πολεμήσε τοὺς πολε|μο͂ντα (!) με· ὁ θ(εὸ)ς τὴν ἔνεσή μου μὴ παρασηοπή|σης ὅτη στόμα ἁμαρτολοῦ κὲ ἐστόμα δο|λήου ἐπ᾿ ἐμὲ ὐνύκθη.498 The orthography, reproducing the Septuagint koine, δίκασον, Κύριε, τοὺς ἀδικοῦντάς με, πολέμησον τοὺς πολεμοῦντάς με and ὁ Θεὸς, τὴν αἴνεσιν μου μὴ παρασιωπήσῃς, ὅτι στόμα ἁμαρτωλοῦ καὶ στόμα δολίου ἐπ᾿ ἐμὲ ἠνοίχθη, could be as late at the twelfth or thirteenth century. The other is a short acclamation carved on an entablature with floral decoration. The text has been misunderstood and should simply be read † νίκη τοῖς πρ(ωτο)μ(α)ρ(τυρ)σ(ιν).499 It called on the protection of the earliest martyrs of the Church, St Stephen and perhaps St Thekla,500 and might relate to a moment when the community at Antioch was threatened by the Turks. The most unusual of the Byzantine texts from Antioch was carved on a column capital, sometime after the mid-seventh century.501 It was a thank offering to God for the bountiful harvest achieved by a land-owner, the proprietor of twelve teams of oxen, † ζεύγει βοῶν δώδεκα ἔσπιραν μόδ(ια) ω´ ῥ(υπαρῶν) ν(ομισμάτων) ιϛ´, ἐγεόργησαν μόδηα γχ´. ὁ Κ(ύριό)ς μου οἶδεν ὡ γεοργὸς τοῦ κό[σμου] ὅτι οὐ ψεύδομει. ἐχάρισαν ἰδε[ῖν]. ‘Twelve yoke of oxen sowed 800 modii (at a cost of) sixteen nomismata rhypara; they harvested 3600 modii. My Lord, the cultivator of the universe, knows that I do not lie. They rejoiced to see it’. The text is a unique epigraphic testimony to the Lord’s beneficence in enabling the cultivator to achieve a high yield from his land, a proportion of yield to seed of 4.5:1, at least 50% more than a normal harvest.502 The measure used in the inscription was the modius castrensis of 8.9 kilograms, which was introduced in the third and fourth and remained in use until the eleventh century. Against the widely held assumption that grain products accounted for 70–80% of an individual’s caloric requirements in the ancient Mediteranean world, 498 IK 67 no. 109 (ICG 1344). 499 IK 67 no. 111 (ICG 1351), reading NΗΚΗΤΑϲ ΠΡ(ΩΤΟ)Μ(Α)Ρ(ΤΥ)ϲ. 500 Although the term was extended to other early martyrs, for instance the martyrs of Lyon, Eusebius, HE V.1.11. 501 C. Zuckermann, On a bountiful harvest at Antioch of Pisidia (with special regard to the Byzantine modios and to the Mediterranean diet), in O. Delouis / S. Métivier / P. Pagès (eds), Le saint, le moine et le paysan. Mélanges d’histoire byzantine offerts à Michel Kaplan (Byzantina sorbonensia 29; Paris 2016), 731–750 (ICG 4522); the capital, but not the inscription, appears in Ruggieri and Turillo, La scultura bizantina ad Antiochia di Pisidia (Rome 2011), 131–2 no. 69, where it is dated to the late 6th century. 502 A very rustic inscription copied near Bekilli in western Phrygia refers to a property that had been worked (ἐξεργάσθη) when Primus (?) was deacon (ICG 1079); see 425 n. 400. The context is obscure but, in the light of the Antioch text, this might have been carved to mark an exceptional harvest. There is another reference to a κτῆμα on a font in the territory of Amorium, ICG 1298; see 391–2.

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Constantine Zuckermann, in a remarkable analysis of the implications of the measures and quantities, has argued that a ‘normal’ harvest from dry-farmed cereals would only have met about 40% of the requirements of a small household of four to six persons, which would have to be supplemented with a greater quantity and wider variety of other foodstuffs than has been assumed in most recent studies of the ancient diet. The latest attestation of the currency unit known as the ‘soiled nomisma’ belongs to the seventh century, but the palaeography of the inscription hardly allows a date earlier than the 700. The text may belong to the eighth or ninth century and be one of the earliest Middle Byzantine inscriptions from Antioch. 5.18

Philomelium and Hadrianopolis (Map 15)

Philomelium, Antioch’s neighbour on the east side of the Sultan Dağları, was the most important town between Afyon and Konya through late antiquity and the Byzantine period, represented by bishops at all the ecumenical councils between 381 and 879/80. It was a staging point for the armies of the First Crusade in 1097 and the Third Crusade a century later, but at this period was on the hotly contested frontier between Byzantium and the Seljuks. After Philomelium definitively came under Seljuk control in the thirteenth century, it received its Turkish name Akşehir, and appears to have been comprehensively islamicized. No building remains of Roman or Byzantine antiquity that survived this transformation have yet been identified, and material remains of later Christianity are sparse.503 The most significant inscription from the early Byzantine period is the splendid grave monument which Besoulas, deacon of God’s ‘catholic and apostolic holy church’ under the most holy bishop Gregory, set up for himself (fig. 74). This invoked the protection of the Holy Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – in recognition of official post-Nicene theology, as befitted a text formulated by senior clergy.504 The deacon’s name is perhaps of Celtic origin but was cur503 TIB 7, 359–60; see also Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 304–22 for more details of Christian inscriptions from this region, dealing with material up to the fifth century. 504 IK 62, 23–4 no. 50; SEG 52, 1355; Feissel, Chron. 381; (ICG 619). Βεσούλας διάκων |τῆς καθολεικῆς | κὴ ἀποστολεικῆς | ἁγείας τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐκλη|σείας ὑπὸ τὸν ἁγειώτα|τον ἐπείσκοπον Γρη|γόρειον ζῶν κὴ φρο|νῶν τὸ μημόριον τοῦ|το. ε[ἰ] δέ τις βουληθῇ | κακὴν χῖραν προσε|νένκην, ἐσχήσει |πρὸς Πατέραν καὶ Υ|εἱὸν κὲ Ἅγιον Πνεῦ|μα. For the terminology describing the church, which is the same as that found in the letter about Polycarp, see 3–4. Μημόριον in this text, probably after 350, can be compared with μεμόριον in the epitaph of Abirkios the deacon at Prymnessus (ICG 1365; see 308–9).

section 5.18: Philomelium and Hadrianopolis

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Figure 74 Philomelium. Grave stele of the deacon Besoulas. ICG 619. Akşehir, Taş Medrese Stephen Mitchell

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rent in the German-speaking barbarian populations Europe in the late Roman period. It can be compared with the names of the Alemannic girl Bissula, a captive slave of the poet Ausonius, who freed her out of love and wrote charmingly besotted verses about her,505 and of Bessoulas, doubtless of Vandal origin, who was a deacon at Carthage, who attended the council of Ephesos in 431 and supported the one-nature theology of Cyril of Alexandria.506 The deacon at Philomelium might have been one of the Gothic colonists settled in Anatolian agricultural settlements by Theodosius I around 386.507 If so, he had transferred his religious allegiance from the Arianism of most ethnic Goths to the Orthodoxy which probably prevailed among those that were assimilated to imperial service, and had also adopted the local habit of protecting the tomb with an imprecation. The only other early Byzantine inscriptions recorded from the city or its territory are a scrap of a verse funerary epigram,508 and a fragment, possibly from a building inscription, copied at the village of Gölçayır (formerly Yasyan), which refers to the city of Philomelium, to a woman deacon and to a comes sacri consistorii from Constantinople.509 These are complemented by two Middle Byzantine inscriptions, an appeal for protection to St Michael, [Ἀ]ρχιστράτ(ηγε) βοήθ(ει) το̃ σο̃ δούλ(ῳ) Ν[ι]κολάῳ,510 and a prayer to the Lord carved on a lintel decorated with a vegetation frieze to protect a woman, Κ(ύριε) σο̃σον | 505 Ausonius, Bissula 4, 3–4: Nomen tenerae rusticulum puellae, | horridulum non solitis, sed domino venustum; Ausonius’s cycle of six poems about the girl was the inspiration for Felix Dahn’s romantic novel, Die geliebte Sklavin, and are the subject of a probing modern study, P. Dräger, Bissula  – Eliza  – Lolita: Priap als Sprachlehrer, Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft 4 (2001) 187–219. For the name’s probable Celtic origin, see P. Dräger, Decimus Magnus Ausonius. Sämtliche Werke 2. (Trier 2011), 437. 506 ACO 1.1.2, nos. 33–62 (pp. 3–64). 507 Zosimus 4.35, 38–9; Cons. Const. s.a. 386. These probably formed the barbarian alae in Phrygia which supported the rebellion of Tribigild and were settled near Nacoleia (Philostorgius XI.8; Zosimus V. 13.2; cf. PLRE II, 1125–6). For other Germanic names in Phrygia, see Feissel, Chron. 372, 383, 490; U. Huttner, Germanen in frühbyzantinischen Inschriften; A. Laniado, Une anthroponyme germanique; cf 362–3 and 377 n. 156. 508 SGO 3, 395: 16/55/99; SEG 51, 1805 (ICG 626). 509 SEG 35, 1397 (ICG 624); cross below the text. The find spot is 14 kilometres NW of Philomelion. Some form of the word [διακ]ονίσση where the copy has ΚΟΝΙϹϹΕΑΝ seems inevitable in line 2. If 1–2 letters are restored on the right, and 7–9 letters on the left of the preserved text, a possible reading might be [ἐν Φι]λομήλ[ίῳ |ἡ εὐλαβ. διακ]ονίσσ(η) Ἀν[α|στασία κα]ὶ ὁ μεγαλοπ[ρ. | κόμης το]ῦ θίου κονσι[σ|τωρίου –]. The final epsilon can be retained if line 2 referred to plural διακονίσσε (=αι), but this calls for much longer lines to be restored. 510 MAMA VII 207; Nowakowski, Saints, 440 PSD/01/01 (ICG 618).

section 5.18: Philomelium and Hadrianopolis

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τὶν δού|λι σου Ἀνα Πλακιδίνα τῆς πω[–].511 The last text belies its modest appearance. Anna Placidina’s double name implied that she belonged to one of the region’s leading families, who might have been responsible for building the church where the text appears, and which probably marked her burial place. Early and Middle Byzantine Spolien and inscriptions occur in several of the ancient villages south-east of Philomelium, along or close to the road leading to Lycaonia: at ancient Gaita (Turkish Akait, now Üçhüyük), where pieces of a Middle Byzantine ambon or chancel screen with an illegible inscription have been noted,512 Pissia (Turkish Bisse, now Çamlı),513 and Seilinda (Turkish Silint, near Ilyaslar).514 The most important of these places was Hadrianopolis, perhaps located at Koçaş,515 which sent a bishop to Nicaea and subsequent church councils until the ninth century, and was mentioned by Hierocles around 525 and in accounts of the Byzantine-Seljuk conflicts of the twelfth century. As well as inscriptions of the imperial period,516 there is an early Byzantine votive,517 and a building inscription carved in a single line on the templon architrave of an important church of the Theotokos, dating to the reign of Basil II (976–1025), restored by by Theodoros Karandenos, member of a prominent Byzantine dynasty: [†] ἀνεκενέσθι ὁ ναὸς ἱ ὑπεραγία Θ(εο)τ(ό)κος τοῦ κύρου Θεωδόρου κὲ μαγίστρου τοῦ Καρανδ(ηνοῦ) διὰ συνδρομῖς Ἰω(άννου) ὀστιαρίου κὲ ἐπισκεπτίτου βασιλεύωντ(ος) Βασιλίου. Theodoros, whose family presumably came from Hadrianopolis, is to be identified with the admiral in charge of the Cibyrrhaeot fleet, based at Attalea, after the suppression of the revolt of Bardas Skleros and the defeat of the latter’s naval commander Michael Kurtikios in 977 or 978 (fig. 75).518 The reconstruction of the church must be some decades later than this, and perhaps marked the time and place where Theodore was buried.

511 MAMA VII 206 (ICG 621); restore τῆς πώ[λεος ?]. 512 See the excellent map illustrating J. G. C. Anderson, A summer in Phrygia II, JHS 18 (1898), 81–128, and 340–44, text at 114–6; TIB 7, 254. 513 TIB 7, 362. 514 TIB 7, 378. 515 Anderson, JHS 1898, 117; TIB 7, 171–2. 516 MAMA VII 139, 142, 148–50, 154, 167, 170–1, 190, including a text naming a Hadrianopolites from the village of Karaağa, 17 kilometres away, Sterrett, EJ no. 160. 517 Sterrett, EJ no. 172, beginning [Κύ]ριε β[οή]θι (ICG 4489). 518 Sterrett, EJ 165; MAMA 7, 190; Pallis, Byz. Zeitschr. 2013, 802–1a (ICG 632); TIB 7, 171–2; Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit 27765; N. Mersich, Zur Person des Theodoros Karandenos. Anmerkungen zu einer byzantinischen Inschrift aus Pisidien, JÖB 37 (1987), 323–7; Pallis, Byz. Zeitschr. 2013, 801–2 no. 1a.

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Figure 75 Hadrianopolis. Templon architrave of Church restored by Theodore Karandenos. ICG 632 W. M. Calder Archive, University of Aberdeen

5.19

The Phrygian Pentapolis

Immediately east of Apamea two important roads ran respectively north and north-east from the Dombay Ovası to central Phrygia. The more important of these was the highway which crossed the Sandıklı Ovası, accessing the towns of Stectorium, Hierapolis, Eucarpia, Brouzos and almost certainly Otrous, which made up the Phrygian Pentapolis, which retained the name regio Pentapolitica at the time of the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in AD 536.519 Stectorium, at the south edge of the plain, occupied the substantial walled site of Kocahüyük between Menteş and Alamescid.520 There is a fragment of a ciborium arch at Menteş with an inscription of the late fifth or sixth century, to be restored mentioning a bishop, perhaps called Theoprepios,521 a side panel from an ambo stairway decorated with a fine relief of a peacock of the same period,522 and decorated archtitrave blocks of a Middle Byzantine 519 ACO IV.1.7 (no. 152). 520 TIB 7, 389; co-ordinates 38.3328N 30.1439E. 521 MAMA XI 151 (ICG 1480): † ἔτι [- ἐγένετο] | τοῦτ[ο ἔργον ἐπὶ] | ἐπισκ[οπου -] with a monogram ΘΕΠΡ ligatured ΟΥ. 522 MAMA XI 152; the photograph also shows a small Middle Byzantine pilaster.

section 5.19: The Phrygian Pentapolis

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templon screen built into the mosque wall. Foundation walls of a small church have been reported at a site west of the village.523 Hierapolis, the home town of Aberkios, which was represented by bishops at the councils of Chalcedon in 451 and Nicaea in 787, was located on the line of the Roman road west of Sandıklı. If we accept the veracity of the report in the Life of Aberkios that the saint’s funerary altar, part of which was re-used as a building stone at Hudai Kaplıcaları, stood outside the south gate of Hierapolis, this is valuable confirmation that Hierapolis was at Koçhisar, three kilometres to the north. Other early Byzantine material has also been noted at this thermal centre, the ancient Agros Thermon, where the hot water allegedly sprang from the ground thanks to Aberkios’s most conspicuous local miracle. It is possible that it was already the location of a second-century Roman bath-house.524 Continuous occupation of the bishopric is suggested by Middle Byzantine fragments reported from the edge of the village along the road leading to Çorhisar, and at Gürsü, formerly Davulköy, three kilometres to the west.525 Eucarpia, chief settlement of the pedion Eukarpitikon since hellenistic times, was located further west, probably at the fortified enclosure which formed an acropolis north-west of Emirhisar. Hamilton reported impressive remains in the 1830 but these had been denuded by the 1880s, when Ramsay explored the region.526 No early or Middle Byzantine inscriptions survive from the site’s environs, but architectural fragments of both periods have been reported at Emirhisar itself, as well as at villages to the south: Kırka, Murtaz Baştepe, Sorkun and Yurumca.527 Three kilometres east of Emirhisar early and Middle Byzantine fragments were built into the walls of an Islamic Tekke standing on a small mound.528 Substantial remains have been noted in and around Karasandıklı, ancient Brouzos, the northernmost town of the Pentapolis. Inscriptions include a text carved on a lintel or the coping of a chancel screen by the labourers who built a church of John the Baptist, probably in the tenth or eleventh century: ✝ Κ(ύρι)ε βοήθη τοὺς καλõς κάμοντα(ς) τὸ ἔργον τοῦ τημήου Προδρόμου✝.529 523 TIB 7, 389 with figs. 131, 132 and 134. 524 TIB 7, 172–3; vita Abercii 59–66; P. Thonemann, Abercius of Hierapolis (2012), 273 and 277. 525 TIB 7, 272–3 (ICG 4477). This entry includes a note provided by T. Drew-Bear of two otherwise unpublished inscriptions naming Hierapolis that had been copied at Kozluca, a location close to Dioclea, 24 kilometres NW of Koçhisar. 526 W. H. Hamilton, Researches in Asia Minor II (1842), 169 (identified as Euphorbium); Ramsay, CB 1.2, 690–1. 527 TIB 7, 250. 528 TIB 7, 226–7 and fig. 128; Ramsay, CB 1.2, 687–9, identified the place with Otrous. 529 MAMA XI 154 (ICG 1446).

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Other texts, which may be roughly contemporary with this, include another probable door lintel, with an inscription commemorating a donor who was buried in the church, [—]ΕΝΟΙΛΕΙΑΝ κὲ πᾶς τις ἄλλος τω[— — | – τ]ὸν ἐνθάδε ταφέντα Βασήληον, ζή|σαντ|α ἐν ἀ|μελίᾳ βί|ον †.530 A Middle Byzantine text copied in Sandıkli itself may have been carried from site of Brouzos and contains the toponym: πόλ(εως) Βού{υ}ζου.531 Other modest inscriptions of the tenth or eleventh century are calls to aid Nikeas, incised on a large storage jar at Kılandıras (Karadirek),532 and a white marble decorated plaque with a prayer to protect the neighbourhood at Dodurga, [βοή]θῃ τῆς γητωνίας.533 Fragments of church architecture have been seen at Kızık close to a well-preserved section of a road from late antiquity,534 in Karadirek, Başağaç, Ekinhisar, Ürküt, Dodurga,535 and Odaköy, the last a hexagonal pillar from a Middle Byzantine iconostasis, which closely resembles an example from Koçhisar.536 They might derive from the same structure, and were certainly produced in the same workshop. The fifth town of the Pentapolis was ancient Otrous, which might be identified with a large ruin field recorded by Hamilton at the north end of the Kufu Deresi, the pass running south to Eumeneia, near Yanıkören.537 The site may be the source of many of the antiquities seen on the western side of the Sandıklı plain.538 An inscription dated to creation year 6567, 1059, copied at Güreköy, but now moved to the Hudai Kaplıcaları, mentioned a bishop Leo, without naming his see: ἐκυμύθ(η) ὁ δοῦλος | τοῦ Θ(εο)ῦ Λέον ἐπίσκοπος ἐν ἔτι γ(ε)ν(έσεος) Ϛφξζ´ μ(η)ν(ὶ) Φε(β)ρουα|ρίου θ´ ἡμέρᾳ β´†539 Middle Byzantine fragments have also been reported from nearby Otluk.540

530 CB 1.2, 735 no. 663 (ICG 1573). 531 ICG 4478; reported by T. Drew-Bear at TIB 7, 215. 532 JRS 16 (1926), 53 no. 169 (ICG 1017): Κ(ύρι)ε Βοήθι τὸν δοῦ[λ]όν σου Ν[ι]κέαν. 533 JRS 16 (1926), 54 no. 170 (ICG 1018). 534 TIB 7, 305, with fig. 148. 535 TIB 7, 215. 536 MAMA XI 155 and TIB 7, fig. 129. 537 Hamilton, Researches II, 167–8; TIB 7, 415 notes the suggestion made by Drew-Bear to identify the site with ancient Lysias. 538 For the topography see Thonemann, Maeander, 139–43, 164–7. 539 MAMA XI 153; T. Drew-Bear, La localisation d’une ville byzantine de la Pentapole phrygienne: Otrous, Change in the Byzantine World in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries  – Byzantine Studies Symposium 2007 (Istanbul, 2010), 256–263; Feissel, Bull. ép. 2011, 720; (ICG 1473). 540 TIB 7, 415.

section 5.20: Metropolis and Synnada

5.20

459

Metropolis and Synnada

The other main route running from Apamea into central Phrygia followed the line of Strabo’s koine hodos, one of the most significant transanatolian routes. Anderson, who travelled from Dinar to Çay in 1898, observed that remains of antiquity were relatively sparse because the road had seen such heavy traffic and been a natural route for invasion.541 Byzantine-Turkish warfare seems to have taken its toll here as in the territories of Eumeneia, Apamea and Apollonia. About forty kilometres north-east of Dinar, between Apamea and Synnada, a Middle Byzantine templon architrave was seen at Kınık, perhaps ancient Euphorbium, three kilometres north of Tatarlı köy.542 Tatarlı itself, at the south edge of the Çöl Ovası, is on the site of the south Phrygian city of Metropolis, which is the source of many Roman imperial inscriptions and well attested as a bishopric through the Byzantine period, but has produced only a single Middle Byzantine monument, a fragment from a templon screen with a bust in a medallion identified as ὁ ἅ(γιος) Θομᾶς, with two partridges to the right.543 Off the main road in an upland valley of the Karakuşdağları was the ancient village of Banbula, until recently called Bambul. The ethnic is attested by a third-century Christian funerary text found at the village of Yassıören near Tymandos. Banbula itself is the findspot of a column with an unpublished early Byzantine commemorative text.544 A few Byzantine fragments have been recorded from Geneli,545 there are two Byzantine lintels at Armutlu,546 and inscriptions recording prayers for the family of Artemon (?),547 and for the community in general, ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς τοῦ χωρίου, at Oinan (Oynığan, the ancient Oeniae of the Tekmoreian lists).548 As in the Sandıklı Ovası it is entirely possi-

541 J. G. C. Anderson, JHS 18 (1898), 101: ‘The results, at least for the former half of the journey, are more meagre than we could have wished; but this is hardly surprising just because this district was the great artery of communication between east and west and was therefore exposed more than others to the destructive inroads of successive invaders. Especially is this true of the country at the head of Sultan Dagh and along its eastern slope.’ 542 TIB 7, 252; Anderson, JHS 18 (1898), 104. 543 TIB 7, 339–40; ΜΑΜΑ IV 135 (ICG 1127); Ramsay CB 1.2, 735 no. 664 bis (ICG 1626) also noted an indecipherable Christian text. 544 TIB 7, 205; for the 3rd cent. text from Yassıören, see Sterrett, Wolfe Expedition no. 564; (ICG 1140). 545 TIB 7, 257. 546 TIB 7, 191–2. 547 TIB 7, 354; CB 1.2, 735 no. 664; (ICG 1616). 548 Anderson, JHS 18 (1898), 108 no. 47 (ICG 4481).

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ble that some of these stones were moved a considerable distance from their original find spots and the ancient topography of the area is elusive. After the fourth century Synnada was the ecclesiastical metropolis of the province of Phrygia Pacatiana. In the early part of the reign of Theodosius II, Socrates reported an acute conflict over control of the see. The homoousion bishop, also called Theodosius, supposedly as much motivated by greed as by religious zeal, used violence and recourse to the secular courts in a campaign against Macedonian heretics, who had appointed their own bishop, Agapetus. Bishop Theodosius absented himself to petition Anthemius, the praetorian prefect in Constantinople, for further powers against the Macedonians, but this allowed Agapetus to occupy the main church in Synnada and prudently declare his own and his clergy’s allegiance to the Orthodox creed, thus winning the support of the diocese. Theodosius unsuccessfully petitioned Atticus, bishop of Constantinople, to secure his re-instatement. That would have been an interesting example of the patriarch of the capital using his authority to intervene in a provincial episcopal appointment, but Atticus preferred to maintain the status quo, requiring the vigorous but unscrupulous Theodosius to go into retirement.549 The actions of bishop Theodosius may have been encouraged by the example of John Chrysostom, who had intervened in episcopal appointments a dozen years earlier in Lycia, Phrygia and Asia,550 thus furthering the tendency of Constantinople to assert its political and ecclesiastical authority over the churches of Asia Minor, a trend which was already perceptible in the fourth century.551 The background to this episode remains wholly obscure. The ancient site of Synnada occupies a large hüyük which has never been scientifically excavated and there are no significant architectural remains in situ. Christian inscriptions from the early Byzantine period conformed to the general regional pattern. Most of them were cut on thin slabs of marble, certainly derived from the quarries at Docimium, and probably first used as wall cladding for buildings. The majority of these have been recorded in the villages 549 Socrates, HE VII.3. The source of this episode, which is not recorded elsewhere, is unknown. 550 Sozomen, HE VIII.6 (Ephesus, Nicomedia); cf Socrates, HE VI.11.8–10 (Ephesus); 15.8 (Asia and Ephesus). None of John’s dispositions mentioned by Sozomen or Socrates related to a specific Phrygian bishopric. 551 T. Kaçar, Constantinople and Asia Minor: ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the fourth century, in S. Mitchell and P. Pilhofer (eds.), Early Christianity in Asia Minor and Cyprus. From the margins to the mainstream (Leiden 2019), 148–63; S. Elm, The dog that did not bark: doctrine and patriarchal authority in the conflict between Theophilus of Alexandria and John Chrysostom of Constantinople, in L. Ayres / G. Jones (eds), Christian Origins: theology, rhetoric and community (London 1998), 68–93.

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of the Şuhut Ovası, rather than the town itself, but the exceptions include a small, well-cut plaque with an inscription in a tabula ansata, which marked the tomb of a priest in the late fourth or early fifth century, † ἡρώιον διαφέρον | Θ[εο]φίλου | πρεσ[βυ]τέρου, the name and the clerical office carved in larger letters.552 The term heroon had been used for a Christian tomb in the region on an earlier burial from Anayurt, on Synnada’s territory.553 Only two other fourth- or early-fifth-century fragments have been copied in the town, respectively part of a family epitaph,554 and a scrap of reused marble relief alluding to the joys of eternity, χάραν | ἐόνος | ἐπιθοῖτο.555 Another small piece, inscribed on the curve of an arch, may be part of a ciborium with a familial dedication, [† ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς Δ]όμνας κὲ ἀναπ[αύσεως -].556 All the pieces from Şuhut are portable and might have been carried from other locations. Epigraphically the most productive villages in the plain are at Bedeş (now Kayabelen), Anayurt and Atlıhisar, the last two along the Roman road south of Synnada. At Bedeş a column carved in memory of the deacon Maximus, a smaller fragment with a similar text for Alexander, a decorated piece perhaps of a chancel screen naming the donor’s wife Eirene, [–] κὲ τῆς συνβήου αὐτοῦ Ἐρήνης, no doubt related to church benefactors in the late-fifth or earlysixth century,557 and there is a plea for the remission of sins on a fragment probably from a white marble ciborium, surely the work of Docimian craftsman who delicately decorated the spandrels with an eagle with outstretched wings, as well as a Latin cross.558 The outstanding item recorded in the village is an excellently cut marble plaque, which dates from January 571, the sixth year of the emperor Justin II.559 The epitaph began with an appeal to the Lord, ✝Κ(ύρι)ε μὶ παρίδη τὴν δέησιν τῆ|ς δούλις σου. Here lay Κύριλλα θυγάτηρ Εὐτυ|χίου πρεσβυτέρου γαμετὶ | γεναμένη Ἀρτέμωνος ὁ β. | Βοτανιάτου ἐπίκλην Κρουβ|ελη. After the text there are three crosses, symbolizing the trishagion and two objects which probably 552 553 554 555 556 557

MAMA IV 93 (ICG 1098). MAMA XI 181 (ICG 1482): [εἴ τις τούτ]ῳ ἡ[ρ]ῴ[ῳ κακὸν | ἐποίησε]ν ἕξει πὸς τ[ὸν θεόν]. MAMA IV 103 (ICG 1108); excellent lettering combined with poor grammar. MAMA IV 104 (ICG 1109). ΜΑΜΑ ΧΙ 183 (ΙCG 1483). MAMA IV 97; (ICG 1102); MAMA XI 184; (ICG 1484); MAMA IV 107; (ICG 1113); TIB 7, 209 reported architectural fragments from all Byzantine periods re-used in an Islamic türbe and the village cemeteries. 558 MAMA XI 185 (ICG 1485). There is another damaged church fragment of lower quality from neighbouring Güneytepe, MAMA XI 200 (ICG 1487). 559 For the dating formula in which the regnal year is combined with a post-consular date, see D. Feissel, Chron. 418; and Ktema 18 (1993, publ. 1996), 184.

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represent a chalice and a patena (Fig. 76).560 The priest’s daughter Kyrilla was married to the earliest attested member of one of Byzantine Synnada’s most prominent families, the Botaniatae. Several descendants became imperial officials in the ninth and tenth centuries, and the family’s eminence was sealed when Nikephoros III Botaniates, born in 1002, became emperor between 1078 and 1081.561 The siglum ὁ β. after the father’s name is puzzling. Georgina Buckler was surely right to say that the nominative ὁ has simply been substituted for the grammatically correct τοῦ, but β is hard to explain. Louis Robert doubted whether this could be a late example of the use of the numeral ‘2’ to indicate that Artemon was son of Artemon, a common practice in secondand third-century inscriptions.562 An alternative is to treat this as an abbreviation of β(ασιλικός), the usage found on a Middle Byzantine inscription in the Phrygian Highlands to denote the status of local imperial agents,563 where the form Κοσταντίνου β. Καλονᾶ to describe Constantine from the Kalonas family, provides a close parallel for Ἀρτέμωνος ὁ β. Βοτανιάτου. This would be the earliest attestation of the word basilikos in this sense by about two centuries, but matches the tenor of the whole inscription, which gave prominence and imperial recognition to the Botaniates family in the late sixth century long before its eminence in the Middle Byzantine period. The epitaph of Kyrilla has three prominent crosses at the end of the inscription, and this same feature appears on part of a templon screen found at the neighbouring village of Anayurt, placed above a medallion inscribed Φῶς ζωή and punctuating a votive dedication, [(?) ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς Ζωσί]μου ☩ ☩ ☩ καὶ ὑπὲρ ἀναπαύσεως τῶν γονέων αὐτοῦ· ἀμή[ν].564 This was another non-verbal representation of the trishagion formula, which was presented in full on four sides of a column capital copied at Atlıhisar, which was decorated with crosses and an Α Ω monogram, and dedicated by a donor called Alexander: A. ☩ ἅγηος ὁ θεός. B. [☩] ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς. C. ἅγη[ος ἰσ]χυ[ρός] | Ἀλέξανδρ(ος) | D. ἅγηος ἀθάνατος.565 Many other Byzantine architectural fragments have been

560 MAMA IV 94; SEG 46, 1676 (ICG 1099); for the chalice and patena see D. Feissel, Étude d’épigraphie et d’histoire, 92 n. 25. 561 G. Buckler, A sixth century Botaniates, Byzantion 6 (1930), 405–10, the editio princeps of the inscription with Calder’s excellent photograph; for the emperor see the well-referenced article in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikephoros_III_Botaneiates. 562 L. Robert, Noms indigènes dans l’Asie Mineure gréco-romaine (Paris 1963), 141–2. 563 ICG 1641; see 373 n. 138. 564 MAMA IV 98; MAMA XI 186 (ICG 1103). 565 MAMA IV 110 (ICG 1114).

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Figure 76 Synnada, Bedeş. Funerary inscription for Kyrilla, wife of Artemon Botaniates. ICG 1099. Now in Afyon Museum Stephen Mitchell

reported at Atlıhisar, and there was an ancient necropolis south-west of the modern village.566 The trishagion capital from Atlıhisar, thirty centimetres high, was similar in size and format to four other inscribed capitals found at Anayurt, only one kilometre to the north, and all appear to have been brought from the same church. The simplest had the formula Φῶς ζωή cut in large letters in the arms of a Latin cross.567 The next example had an elegant sixth-century inscription with several ligatures placed above a fine rosette cut to resemble a maltese cross, which reads ☩ ὑπὲρ μνήμης κ(ὲ) ἀναπαύσε|ος Ἑρμῆ μουστρικοῦ. Hermes was a spoon-maker, a craft still typical of Anatolian towns and villages.568 The third and fourth capitals in the series carried longer inscriptions carved round the members of a large Latin cross, and were erected on behalf of families. One reads ☩ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς Πολυ|χρονίου φωλευτοῦ | κ(ὲ) τῖς συνβήου αὐτοῦ | κ(ὲ) τῶν πε|δίων αὐτῶν. The mysterious φωλευτοῦ was interpreted by Ramsay as a variant of βουλευτής, but the appearance of a city councillor in the mid- or later 566 TIB 7, 195. 567 CB 1.2, 736 no. 670; MAMA IV 99 (ICG 1104). 568 CB 1.2, 735 no. 667; MAMA IV 100 (ICG 1105).

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sixth century is unexpected. Perhaps the word was derived from the Latin fullo, a fuller, which is attested in the Greek forms φώλλων and φούλλων.569 The other, carved by a different mason with remarkably elegant lettering, was dedicated by a wife on behalf of herself and two surviving sons in commemoration of her deceased husband and three other male children: ☩ὑπερὶ εὐχῆς [․․․․․]|ς κὲ τῶν πεδίων αὐτῆς [Εὐ]|ριμέδοντο[ς]| κὲ Γανγίου κὲ ὑπὲρ ἀνα|παύσεος Γανγίου κὲ | τῶν πεδίων αὐτοῦ | Τροφίμου κὲ Ἐπιφαν(ί)ου [κ(ὲ)] | Μαύρου.570 The lettering on these capitals varies between the examples, but resembles the style seen on the epitaph of Kyrille of 571, and is consistent with a mid- or late sixth century date, attesting the epigraphic competence of the Docimian workshops at this period. They could also be connected to another well-cut fragment of an inscription, copied in Anayurt, which records church construction, [☩ἐγ]ένετο τὸ ἔργον | [τοῦτ]ο ἐπὶ Ἐνγενήτου | [δια]κό(νου) κὲ ὐκονόμου. The name Engenetos is scarcely attested elsewhere, but should be understood as a variation on Eugenetos, also an unfamiliar form. As often, the deacon involved in church construction was a person of substance and standing in the community, perhaps an estate administrator for one of the region’s major families.571 The next substantial sixth century settlement south of Anayurt and Atlıhisar was at Karaadıllı, where the Roman road joined the ancient east-west highway running between Çay and Dinar, and this community also had a church or churches of comparable pretensions to those of its northern neighbour. Two inscriptions have been noted from the early Byzantine period, both for priests. One was a prayer for the well-being and safety of Paulos also known as Karterios.572 The other has the same introductory formula and reads ✝ ὑπερὶ εὐ|χῆς κὲ σω|τηρίας Κάσ|τωρος πρε(σβυτέρου) | ὁ κτήσας τὸν | ἅγιον Κύρικον | κὲ Νυνης δη|ακοννύσης θυ(γατρὸς) | Κάστωρος κὲ Δη|μητρίου Βουσίου ✝.573 The text commemorates a cleric who undertook to build a church for a named saint, St Quiricus, the child martyr of Tarsus, whose cult was often combined with that of his mother Iulitta. Castor’s daughter Nine, who held the office of deacon, must have been in full adulthood and was probably married to Demetrios son of Bousios (or Demetrios Bousios). Castor accordingly will have been an old man, and the inscription both marked him as the donor, and served as a memorial ante mortem of a pious family. The pattern of a senior family 569 CB 1.2, 736 no. 669; MAMA IV 101 (ICG 1106). 570 CB 1.2, 736 no. 668; MAMA IV 102 (ICG 1107). 571 MAMA XI 179 (ICG 1481), with the notes of Thonemann and Huttner, who refers to S. Hübner, Der Klerus in der Gesellschaft des spätantiken Kleinasiens (Stuttgart 2005), 53, for four other examples of deacons who were oikonomoi. 572 MAMA IV 120 (a) (ICG 1116). 573 MAMA I 323a; MAMA IV 120b; Nowakowski, Saints 438–9 Phr/12/01; (ICG 1115).

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member using his resources to fund a church which would serve as a memorial was a common one. The monument resembles the inscription for Paulinos from Eibeos near Sebaste, founder of a church of St Trophimus, which also served as his grave marker. There is an even closer analogy with a lengthy text which marks the foundation of another martyr church of St Quiricus, probably in the late sixth century, by an extended family numbering several priests and their wives near Laodicea Catacecaumene.574 A text commemorating a builder, which appears to be roughly contemporary with the Anayurt group but must come from a different structure, was copied north of Synnada at Ağzıkara, ✝ ὑπὲρ μνήμης καὶ ἀναπαύ|σεως Αὐξιντίου ἀρχιτέκτ|ονος καὶ ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς Ὑπα|τίας καὶ Ἀνδρέου καὶ Εὐσιβία[ς] |καὶ εὐξαμένη τὴν εὐχὴ[ν | ἐξ]ετέλεσαν✝.575 The grammar of εὐξαμένη puzzled Ramsay, but this rendered εὐξαμέναι, the feminine nominative plural of the participle, relating to the trio of Hypatia, Andreas and Eusebia, probably respectively the wife, son and daughter of Auxentios, two of whom were women. Inscriptions from the same village include the gravestone of Γριγόριος πρ(εσβύτερος), inscribed beneath a cross,576 a block with Εμμανουήλ engraved in the arms of a Latin cross,577 and a small column, presumably from a chancel screen, inscribed Θεοῦ | χά|ρις | †.578 There was another late Roman or Byzantine settlement in the north part of the plain of Synnada at Belkaraören, near Efeköy.579 Byzantine remains are indicated south and south-east of Synnada at Mahmut köy and Hallaç. West of Synnada there were relief sculpture and arcosolia tombs at Ortapınar (formerly Kürtler),580 rock tombs at Burnu,581 rock dwellings of a large refuge settlement in the neighbourhood of Bin In, where there are also remains of a basilica church, and architectural pieces at nearby Sınırköy.582 Other rock dwellings, some decorated with crosses, have also been noted at Hüseyin Inleri outside Balçıkhisar, but there is apparently no trace of the Roman road reported here by Ramsay.583 A large fortification with towers 574 MAMA I 323 (ICG 145); the date is variously estimated by Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 334 (earlier than the reign of Heraclius), 558 (6th cent., perhaps earlier), 720 (7th century). 575 Legrand and Chamonard, Inscriptions de Phrygie, BCH 17 (1893) 288–9 no. 93; CB 1.2, 735 no. 665; (ICG 1617). 576 CB 1.2, 735 no. 666; (ICG 1618). 577 ΜΑΜΑ IV 105; (ICG 1110). 578 MAMA IV 105a; (ICG 1111). 579 TIB 7, 244. 580 TIB 7, 395. 581 TIB 7, 216. 582 TIB 7, 213 and fig. 68. 583 TIB 7, 204–5; cf Anderson, JHS 18 (1898), 103–105.

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and gates at Tekke Kalesi, twelve kilometres WSW of Synnada, commanded the mountain pass between Şuhut and the Sandıklı plain and probably dates to the Byzantine-Turkish wars of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.584 Synnada’s bishops are relatively well documented in the Middle Byzantine period until the end of the eleventh century.585 Kosmas in 680/1, Michael at Nicaea in 787, who undertook embassies on behalf of the emperor Nicephorus with two other churchmen to Charlemagne in 802/3 and in 811, and to the Caliph Harun Ar-Rashid in 806 to secure terms after the fall of Heracleia to the Arabs, before he was exiled in 816 to Eudokias in Pontus for his iconodule theological views and died there in 826.586 A metropolitan bishop Theodoros is attested by seals in the eighth century, a bishop Nicholas represented Synnada at the council of Constantinople in 869/70, and a bishop Philetas received correspondence from Theodoros Daphnopates in the mid-tenth century.587 Leo of Synnada, who occupied the see at the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries, was himself the author of a collection of letters addressed to the emperor Basil II and court officials, which have been an important source of information about conditions in Synnada and Asia Minor at this period.588 Other eleventh century bishops include Kosmas and David, attested by documents of the 1030s, Michael between 1072 and 1079, and Niketas in 1094. It is likely that bishop David was mentioned in an inscription which was brought from Phrygia to Smyrna in the period of the Greek occupation of Asia Minor, and published with other Christian monuments: Κύριε βωήθει τῷ σῷ δούλῳ Δα(ουὶ)δ μητροπολίτῃ Συνάδων τῷ κτησαμέν(ῳ) αὐτό.589 The origin of the inscription has been reported as Cotiaeum, but it seems far more likely to have been brought from Synnada itself. Probably slightly later is the fragment of a templon screen copied at Şuhut with a date, creation era 6573 = 1064/5, and an enigmatic allusion to John the Martyr, [-] γʹ ἰ(ν)δ(ικτιῶνος) ἔτους ϛφογʹ ✝ Ἰω(άννῃ) μ(ά)ρ(τυρι).590 A more impressive inscribed Middle Byzantine tem584 TIB 7, 399–400 with figs. 1–6. 585 Excellent summary in TIB 7, 393–5. 586 Theophanes 482; Prosopogr. Mittel-Byzantinisch. Zeit (PMBZ) Michael 5042; J. Pargoire, Saints Iconophiles, Echos d’Orient 4 (1900/1), 347–50. 587 Thedore Daphnophates, ep. 29 (ed. Darrouzes- Westerink 1978); see further https://en.wiki pedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Daphnopates. 588 L. Robert, Sur des lettres d’un metropolite de Phrygie au Xe siècle, Journal des Savants 1961, 97–166; 1962, 5–74. 589 A. Orlandos, Sculptures chrétiennes du Musée de Smyrne, Ἀρχεῖον βυζαντινῶν μνημείων τῆς Ἑλλάδος 3 (1937), 128–152, at 141–142 no. 19 (ICG 4492); D. Feissel, Bull. ép. 2009, 636, comments that the proposed date in the 7th or 8th century appears too early. 590 MAMA IV 95 (ICG 1100).

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Figure 77 Synnada. Templon architrave from a church dedicated by Apphe to St Trophimos. ICG 4493. Now in Afyon Museum Stephen Mitchell

plon screen, brought from Synnada to Afyon Museum, has medallions depicting John and Baptist and the archangel Gabriel, on either side of a monogram in a shield which reads Ἀπφη Τρ(ο)φ(ιμῳ), a text which appears to identify the founder of the church, who still carried the old Phrygian Lallname Apphe, and its dedicatee, the Synnadan martyr Trophimos. The damaged text above the medallions has been partly restored to read [-] εἰδῶν τε πολλῶν εὐπρεπῶς ἠσκημένων † καὶ κάλλ[ει c. 6 ν]ῦν ἔμφυτον κεκτη[μένων -] (fig. 77).591 The mid-eleventh century revival is implicit outside the city in a finely carved piece of a marble lintel from Atlıhisar, which contains a reference that seems to refer not to Synnada as such but to the family that derived its name from the city, the Synadeni, apparently as co-owners of property with John Doukas Caesar, brother of the emperor Constantine X Doukas (1059–67). The text, which may be in verse, defies convincing restoration.592

591 TIB 7, 395 citing information from Drew-Bear and Sodini; J.-P. Sodini, La sculpture médio-byzantine, 299, 302 fig. 6; Pallis, Byz. Zeitschr. 2013, 781–2 no. 15 (ICG 4493); for the martyr Trophimos see 304–5 and chapter 6.2. 592 MAMA IV 96; (ICG 1101): [κτῆμα τὸ Συν]άδον κὲ Ἰω(άννου) Κέσαρος | [? σὺν τοῖς τοῦ Σεβα]στοῦ ἡάσι | κὲ γαμροῦ Δ[ιογέ|νους ? οἷς μέγα κλέος | ἐφ]ή̣νατο Κ(ύριο)ς τῖς ☩ Μη[τρὸς χάριν]. The restoration by Grégoire, Byzantion 8 (1933), 758–9 is pure fantasy; F. Dölger, Byz. Zeitschr. 1934, 248 suggested the reading in the first line.

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5.21

Chronology and Continuity in Phrygia’s Byzantine Inscriptions

The problem of the chronology of Phrygia’s late Roman and Byzantine inscriptions has been flagged at the start of this discussion (p. 347). It is methodologically important to consider the inscriptions as a collection. About twenty-seven of the texts can be dated by the precise information they contain, in many cases by the Sullan era beginning in 85/4 BC, which was still occasionally in use to the end of the sixth century, and by the Christian creation era, anno mundi, reckoning from 5509 BC, which was first introduced in the seventh century, but does not occur in the Phrygian material before the tenth and eleventh centuries. In addition, a military epitaph from the fourth century carries a Roman consular date, eight inscriptions name persons identified in other sources, which give reasonably precise information about when they were active, and three others can be assigned to imperial reigns. The pattern that emerges is as follows: Date

Place

Dating criterion

Reference

356 c.380 c.380 c.380 c.460 c.460 459/60 c.475 c.475 477/8 489/90 513/4 527–c.542 556 563/4 571 585/6 937/8 945–49 c.1000

Nacolea Antioch Antioch Antioch Yağdiğin (Aezani) Prymnessus Bekilli Kümbet (Meiros) Kümbet (Meiros) Dikici (Apamea) Acmonia Gedikler (Acmonia) Polybotus Bekilli Eumeneia Synnada Apollonia Afyon (Akroinos) Afyon (Akroinos) Hadrianoupolis

Consular date Bishop Optimus Bishop Optimus Bishop Optimus Sullan era Bishop Auxentios Sullan era Epidikos Dikaia, wife of Epidikos Sullan era Sullan era Sullan era Justinian (early) Sullan era Sullan era Sullan era Sullan era Creation era Constantine VII Theodoros Karandenos

ICG 1440 ICG 1332 ICG 1333 ICG 1334 ICG 1312 ICG 1095 ICG 1065 ICG 1652 ICG 1653 ICG 976 ICG 994 ICG 1443 ICG 1707 ICG 1082 ICG 1040 ICG 1099 ICG 1139 ICG 1090 ICG 4507 ICG 4490

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Date

Place

Dating criterion

Reference

c.1000 1019–25 1059 1059–67 1064/5 1069/70 1070/71

Acmonia Sebaste Otrous Synnada Synnada Apollonia Choma/Beycesultan

Basil II (976–1025) Patriarch Eustathios Creation era Constantine X Creation era Creation era Creation era

ICG 997 ICG 4469 ICG 1473 ICG 1101 ICG 1100 ICG 1130 ICG 1458

In his corpus of Asia Minor inscriptions relating to the cult of the saints, Pawel Nowakowksi aptly quoted a sentence probably written by August Boeckh, the founding father of Greek epigraphical studies, which appeared in one of the commentaries in Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum IV, devoted to Christian epigraphy: ‘No one living in this world is capable of judging from the style of extremely short inscriptions, whether they were carved in the fourth or fifth century. Anyone who has ever made a claim that he was or might be able to achieve such a thing deserves to face a charge of recklessness.’593 Faced with such a judgement, the writer can only proceed with two words of advice, caveat lector. Boeckh’s observation, which applied to texts of the fourth and fifth centuries, is no less apt a warning for the entire late Roman and Byzantine periods. Dating texts and monuments which contain no decisive chronological indicators is hazardous and speculative. Nevertheless, by collecting over 250 texts and monuments from one region it is possible to make internal comparisons and establish parallels between the individual monuments, and the range of possibilities can be narrowed when a range of chronological criteria can be identified and brought into play. Indications of date can be cautiously inferred from several factors: the find location; the context related to other inscriptions from the same place; the type and style of the monument; the orthography, grammar, and vocabulary of the inscription; the style and quality of the lettering and epigraphic lay-out; and the use of abbreviations. Several criteria may be applied to the same monument, increasing the possibility of obtaining a reliable result. These impressionistic criteria are inadequate and insufficient to suggest a date for 593 P. Nowakowski, Saints, 149, citing CIG 9674 comm.

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individual items, but in bulk they are useful in representing the broad chronological distribution of the material. As a first step in this treacherous terrain, after applying whatever clear or approximate criteria are available, here is a list of the inscriptions across the chronological range between 300 and 1200, organised in bands of 50, 100 or 200 years. These chronological batches include the precisely dated inscriptions tabulated above. Numbers enclosed in square brackets refer to building texts discussed in chapter 4, but do not include the substantial batch of Upper Tembris Valley epitaphs, which are there dated between 280 and 310. 5.21.1 Late Roman/Early Byzantine 300–400: 1073, 1083, 1144, [1158, 1161, 1163, 1164, 1196, 1202,] 1190, 1321, 1574, 1575, 1634, 1635, 1683, 1692, 1825, 4497, 4498, 4511 (Total 21). 350–400: 1120, 1207, 1332 (c.380), 1333 (c.380), 1334 (c.380), 1440 (356), 1456, 1476, 1581. (Total 9). 350–450: 626, 1098, 1108, 1297, 1425, 1618, 1696, 1836, 4491; 4475, 4491; (Total 11). 400–450: 1094, 1109, 1115, 1116, 1312 (433), 1336, 1462, 1555, 1576, 1688, 1692, 1806 (Total 11). 400–500: 620, 979, 1008, 1009, 1010, 1046, 1047, 1080, 1181, 1185, 1209, 1210, 1213, 1217, 1220, 1416, 1430, 1617, 1636, 1693, 1701, 1815 (Total 22) 450–500: 976 (477/8), 994 (489), 1065 (459/60), 1095 (c.460), 1394, 1652 (c.475), 1653 (c.475). (Total 7). 450–550: 624, 996, 1046, 1047, 1074, 1102, 1111, 1113, 1121, 1143, 1145, 1182, 1188, 1211, 1214, 1218, 1219, 1221, 1222, 1302, 1304, 1305, 1309, 1310, 1337, 1339, 1340, 1341, 1343, 1382, 1412, 1414, 1415, 1418, 1419, 1420, 1423, 1426, 1432, 1465, 1480, 1483, 1484, 1485, 1487, 1611, 1616, 1620, 1685, 1686, 1687, 1703, 1822, 1823, 1843, 4481, 4487, 4506. (Total 58). 500–550: 1216, 1298, 1345, 1370, 1398, 1401, 1443 (513), 1707 (527–42), 4521. (Total 9). 500–600: 1000, 1011, 1078, 1079, 1084, 1091, 1093, 1103, 1110, 1114, 1162, 1165, 1170, 1180, 1185, 1194, 1199, 1201, 1223, 1293, 1335, 1346, 1363, 1438, 1439, 1455, 1457, 1463,

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1468, 1562, 1563, 1576, 1577, 1578, 1619, 1626, 1681, 1682, 1706, 4486, 4489, 4504. (Total 42). 550–600: 1040 (563), 1076, 1081, 1082 (556), 1099 (571), 1124, 1139 (585/6), 1223, 1315, 1466, 1467, 1552, 1554, 1582, 1583, 1839, 4463. (Total 17). 550–650: 1077, 1118, 1428. (Total 3). 5.21.2 Middle Byzantine 800–900: 1316; 4522. (Total 2). 900–950: 1090 (937/8), 4509 (945–9). (Total 2). 900–1100: 618, 621, 684, 995, 999, 1017, 1018, 1045, 1088, 1127, 1291, 1294, 1322, 1345, 1436, 1446, 1471, 1550, 1573, 1641, 1642, 1694, 2339, 4458, 4466, 4477, 4478. (Total 27). 1000–1050: 997 (c.1000), 1307, 1308, 4469 (1019–25), 4490 (c.1000), 4492. (Total 6) 1000–1100: 997, 1089, 1090, 1092, 1100 (1064/5), 1101 (1059–65), 1130 (1069/70), 1176, 1236, 1405, 1406, 1469, 1470, 1473 (1064/5), 1458 (1070/71), 4493. (Total 16). 1100–1200: 1020, 1344, 1351, 1705, 4471. (Total 5). These figures can be redistributed into fifty-year segments, on a strictly mechanical basis, as follows: the half-century from 300 to 350 takes 11 of the 20 monuments assigned to 300–400. The following half-century takes the other 10 items dated 300–400, all 9 texts dated 350–400, and 5 of the 350–450 batch, making a total of 24. The total for 400–450 comprises 5 of the 350–450 group, 6 dated 400–450, and half the total dated 400–500, ie 11, giving a total of 29, and so forth. In addition to these overall figures, this summary also shows the number of firmly dated texts in each half century. Late Roman/Early Byzantine. (Total 205). 300–350: 11. 350–400: (10+9+5) = 24 [4 dated texts]. 400–450: (5+6+11) = 22 [1 dated text]. 450–500: (11+7+29) = 48 [6 dated texts]. 500–550: (29+9+21) = 59 [2 dated texts].

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550–600: (21+17+2) = 40 [4 dated texts]. 600–650: 1. Middle Byzantine. (Total 57). 800–850: 1 850–900: 1. 900–950: (2+7) = 9 [2 dated texts]. 950–1000: 7. 1000–1050: (7+6+8) = 21 [3 dated texts]. 1050–1100: (7+8) = 15 [5 dated texts]. 1100–1150: 3. 1150–1200: 2. The gap between the late Roman / early Byzantine texts and those of the Middle Byzantine period could hardly be clearer from this chronological survey. Only a handful of inscriptions, mostly fragmentary texts from the Amorium excavations, can be hesitantly assigned to the three hundred years between c.600 and 900. This large lacuna also exists in the monumental record, since no distinctive decorative elements from churches or other buildings are dateable to these centuries without reference to pieces which can be fixed by epigraphic texts. There was certainly not a complete settlement gap over this long period, as is shown by results from the two urban sites, Amorium and Hierapolis, that have been scientifically excavated on a sufficient scale to yield robust results,594 but almost no new monumental architecture can be assigned to this ‘dark age’ in Phrygia. Byzantine and Arab sources provide information about repeated Arab campaigns across Anatolia from the mid-seventh to the mid-ninth century, which certainly had a major impact on Phrygia, especially along the routes used by the Muslim invaders which led to major cities and to the great prize of Constantinople. The impact of these campaigns on regional populations has never been evaluated systematically, but Marek Jankoviak has pointed out in an interesting study that the proportion of bishoprics in the dioecese of Asiana (ie western Anatolia, including Phrygia) that sent representatives to the Council of Constantinople in 681 was much lower than those from the east Anatolian dioecese of Pontica, and that fewer sees were represented at this council than those which appear in the first of the Notitiae Episcopatuum, 594 See especially E. Ivison, Amorium Reports 3. The Lower City Enclosure (2012), 5–151 for a comprehensive overview and extensive bibliography.

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which probably dated to 661/2. He suggests that this reflected the impact of Arab raids in Anatolia attested during the 660s and 670s. However, the conclusion is paradoxical in that most of the physical and documentary evidence for Arab raiding suggests that the greatest effect was felt in central Anatolia, not in Asiana. A more plausible explanation for the higher participation of bishops from Pontica at the council of 681 was that their towns lay close to the main transanatolian highway from Constantinople to Syrian Antioch and that they could take advantage of transport provided along this major military and administrative artery of communication.595 It is generally assumed that one of the responses of the reduced Anatolian rural population in the face of these raids was to take refuge in the secluded and protected cave settlements which have been recorded across central Turkey. Some of these, as at Ayazin in the Phrygian highlands and in the valley of the Senarus river next to ancient Pepuza, were very extensive. It has been beyond the scope of of this study to examine these troglodytic settlements in any detail, but Haspels’s exemplary survey of the Phrygian Highlands, where many of these refuges were concentrated, identified chapels and rock churches in almost all of them. There is an obvious comparison to be made between ‘Highland Phrygia’ and the better documented cave settlements and refuges of ‘Rocky Cappadocia’. Both in Cappadocia and in Phrygia these will have played a crucial, perhaps decisive role in ensuring the resilience and survival of the Christian population. It would be misleading to say that other forms of settlement completely vanished from the seventh to the ninth centuries, but they left only scanty recognizable historical footprints. The region’s population was reduced and, apart from cave settlements, its communities are archaeologically unrecognizable after their conspicuous presence in the period up to the sixth century. This is not a new observation. This Byzantine Dark Age has become a historian’s cliché, and as such rightly the subject of critical examination and skepticism.596 595 M. Jankoviak, Notitia I and the impact of Arab invasions on Asia Minor, Millennium 10 (2013), 435–61. 596 The notion of demographic and economic collapse after the sixth century is unfashionable, and dismissed as entirely misplaced by J. Haldon, Social Transformation in the 6th–9th c. East, in W. Bowden, A. Gutteridge, and C. Machado (eds), Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity (Leiden 2006), 603–47. However, nuanced discussion of the meagre archaeological evidence by no means rules the idea of decline out of court, and the whole topic is dogged by the problems of dating the material remains. There is a big credibility gap between the sparsity of material information about settlement and society in central Anatolia in the 7th–9th centuries, and the hypothesis of a strong Byzantine state, ‘able to impose its will on the localities’. See the interesting but largely hypothetical discussion of J. Howard-Johnston, Authority and control in the interior of Asia Minor: cities, villages and fortresses, in A. Delattre et al., (eds), From Antiquity to Islam in the Mediterranean and

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Is the virtual collapse of organized community life in the Byzantine empire a real phenomenon, or an illusion due to misapprehension or misunderstanding of the evidence? If real, what are the reasons for the drastic implosion of sixth-century prosperity in the provincial heartlands of Asia Minor, and, conversely, for the clear signs of recovery in the tenth century? Traditionally three main explanations have been developed, separately or in combination, to account for settlement poverty in the seventh and eighth centuries. One is the Great Plague of 542–5 and its repeated recurrences which lasted until the end of the eighth century and had immeasurable consequences not only for the survival of populations in the face of massive morbidity, but also for their ability to sustain organized community life. The second is the impact of the Sassanian invasions and sustained regional warfare in Asia Minor at the beginning of the seventh century, which is documented in a patchy kaleidoscope of written and archaeological sources. The third are the repeated Arab raids and larger campaigns targeting Constantinople and other Anatolian population centres which unfolded across the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries.597 To these explanations, we can add a recent scholarly pre-occupation with climate change as a neglected factor and the potential cause of deep-seated social and economic change over a long period after c.300.598 A lengthy evaluation of these hypotheses would be out of place, since none of the Christian inscriptions and monuments from Phrygia, which have been dealt with this book, individually makes a direct contribution to any of these debates. However great the impact of plague, warfare, or environmental change, the Near East (Leiden 2019), 128–75. He concedes that ‘there is a striking dearth of source material about the interior of Asia Minor in the seventh-ninth centuries’ (p. 143); the point is also admitted by J. Haldon, Die byzantinische Stadt – Verfall und Wiederaufleben von 6. bis zum ausgehende 11. Jht, in F. Daim and J. Drauschke (eds), Hinter den Mauern und auf dem offenen Land. Leben im byzantinischen Reich ((Mainz 2016), 9–22. 597 For an introduction to the first two themes in relation to Asia Minor, see respectively S. Mitchell, The Great Plague of Asia Minor in late antiquity (pp. 27–36), and G. Greatrex, The impact on Asia Minor of the Persian invasions in the early seventh century (pp. 13–26), and for a critical look at the extent of the ‘dark age’ collapse, M. Whittow, The end of antiquity in the Lykos valley: setting a new agenda (pp. 37–53), in T. Kaçar and C. Şimşek, The Lykos Valley and Neighbourhood in Late Antiquity (Istanbul 2018). M. Meier’s magnum opus, Geschichte der Völkerwanderung. Europa, Asien und Afrika vom 3. bis zum 8. Jahrhundert n.Chr. (München 2019), 953–1088 provides a detailed synthesis. A modern re-appraisal of the impact of Arab raids and campaigns in Anatolia is a desideratum. 598 This is the focus of work led by J. Haldon and collaborators in numerous publications, with a strong underlying agenda to downplay the significance of plague as a major factor. Scepticism about the plague has been robustly refuted by P. Sarris, New approaches to the ‘Plague of Justinian’, Past and Present 20 (2022), 315–46.

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and however drastic the human response may have been to these factors, there are hardly more than a handful of obscure and imprecise specific allusions to them in the epigraphy and archaeology, before the beginning of the conflicts with the Turks in the eleventh century. Nevertheless, while the absence, or at least abrupt decline in the quantity of the finds of architectural decoration and inscriptions shows the poverty of settlements in the region from c.600 to 900, the combination of documentary, epigraphic and settlement evidence decisively demonstrates continuity between the late Roman/early Byzantine period of the fourth to sixth and the Middle Byzantine revival of the tenth and eleventh centuries. All the substantial sites or settlements where significant remains of late antiquity are recorded have also produced evidence for Middle Byzantine occupation. The location of Middle Byzantine fortifications is an indication of essential settlement continuity. The massive towers and walls of Byzantine Cotiaeum, dated by Clive Foss to the ninth century, were probably the earliest important Middle Byzantine defences to be constructed in Phrygia. Since the walls contain very little material re-used from the late Roman city which extended beneath the castle walls, it is a reasonable to assume that the earlier settlement was mostly intact at this date. The construction of the castle at Cotiaeum, a very large operation, may be roughly contemporary with the major work undertaken by Michael III at Smyrna, Nicaea and Ancyra in the late 850s, an enormous imperial effort which seems to have heralded widespread civic recovery in the tenth and eleventh centuries.599 Late Roman or early Byzantine remains found at Synaus, Ancyra Sidera and Tiberiopolis, the small towns of north-west Phrygia, can be matched with neighbouring castles of the Midddle Byzantine period, notably the impressive eleventhor twelfth-century stronghold of Akrokos (Eğrigöz), the later counterpart of Tiberiopolis.600 The Byzantine fortification wall on the mound of Choma at Siblia, which apparently replaced earlier defences, was erected by the emperor Romanus IV Diogenes in 1070/71. There had certainly been an early Byzantine church on the site601 Apollonia/Sozopolis had been an important pilgrimage destination around 600, and benefited from imperial defences in 1069/70 (ICG 1130). The fortifications of the large mound at Amorium, a Byzantine theme capital, where the excavations have revealed direct evidence for continuous occupation between the sixth and ninth centuries, are also dated to the 599 See 361–2. 600 See 358 n. 45. 601 Chapter 5.16 nn. 117–8. See 430.

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tenth and eleventh centuries and may be the result of central imperial intervention, like the similar enceintes at Choma and Sozopolis. It is a plausible suggestion that an inscription found at the apparently unfortified site of Orcistus, which refers to a gate in a fortification wall and is probably to be dated around 970, had been carried twenty-five kilometres from Amorium for later re-use.602 However, continuity was not restricted to these fortified strongholds. Middle Byzantine inscriptions or decorated architectural pieces have been recorded at most of the major settlement sites of the late Roman/early Byzantine period: Aezani (ICG 1307), Soa (ICG 1176), Nacolea (ICG 1436), Amorium (ICG 1316), Eibeos (Payamalanı) on the territory of Sebaste (ICG 1020), Acmonia (ICG 995), Dioclea (ICG 999), Çayhisar on the territory of Kidyessos (ICG 1469), Temenothyrae (ICG 2339), Eumeneia (ICG 1045), Metropolis (ICG 1626), Philomelium (ICG 618, 621), Pisidian Antioch (ICG 1344, 1345, 1351) and in the towns of the Phrygian Pentapolis (ICG 1017–8; 1473). This evidence is by no means confined to the largest settlements, and can be observed in the material from the Phrygian Highlands, from the territory of the Hyrgaleis around Bekilli in western Phrygia, and in the northern villages around Dorylaeum. Afyon (Akroinos), which appears not to have had civic status in the late Roman period, became an important settlement in the Middle Byzantine period thanks to its position in the Phrygian communications network. The clearest evidence that the settlements of Phrygia in the tenth and eleventh centuries were literally built on earlier foundations is provided by the repeated use of the terminology of renewal in the inscriptions found on Middle Byzantine churches and fortifications. Church foundation inscriptions from the fourth to sixth centuries use the normal vocabulary relating to building (οἰκοδομέω),603 foundation (κτίζω),604 or simply coming into existence (γίγνομαι).605 Only one inscription, dated to 585 at the end of the early Byzantine period, referred not to primary construction but to the restoration of a church at Sozopolis, ἀνανέωσις.606 The same vocabulary was used in a building text from Antioch, ὁ τόπος | ἀνεν(ε)ώθη ὑπ[ὸ] | τοῦ ἐπισ(τάτου) Θεοδώρου ἀνα|[γνώ] 602 E. Ivison, in C. S. Lightfoot and E. A. Ivison (eds), Amorium Reports 3 (Oxford 2012), 80–84. The Orcistus inscription is ICG 1294; see 383 n. 204 and 386 n. 212. 603 ICG 1312; ICG 1000. 604 ICG 918 (Hierapolis), 1091 (Prymnessos?), 1297 (Amorium), 1363 (Payamlanı). 605 ICG 1436: ἐγένετο τὸ ἔργο[ν] τοῦ Ἁγίου Στεφάνου; ICG 1637: ἐγέν[ε]το τὸ ἔργον τοῦτ[ο]; ICG 1443; ICG 1463: ἐγένετο τὸ | ἔργον ἐπὶ Ὑσυχίου εὐλο|[γ]ημένω; ICG 1464: ἐγένετο τὸ ἔργον ἐπ[ὶ - -]; ICG 976: ἐγένετο | ἡ ἁγιωτ(άτη) | ἐκλησία; ICG 1481: [✝ἐγ]ένετο τὸ ἔργον | [τοῦτ]ο ἐπὶ Ἐνγενήτου | [δια]κό(νου) κὲ ὐκονόμου. 606 ICG 1139: [ἀ]νανεοῦτε | τὸ παλάτιν | τοῦ Ἀρχαν|γέλου (AD 585, Sozopolis).

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στου κὲ διεκόνο[υ] (ICG 1345). In the Middle Byzantine period rebuilding was almost always described not by the term ἀνανεοῦμαι but by ἀνακαινόω, a verb used by Paul and in later Greek with reference to spiritual or personal renewal.607 In the tenth and eleventh centuries this became the epigraphic vox propria for the restoration of earlier foundations: at Ancyra Sidera, ἀνεκεν[ίσ]θ[η] ὁ [ναὸς τοῦ ἁ]|[γί]ου Θεοδόρ[ου] (ICG 1236); at Aezani, ἀνεκ(αι)νήσθη ὁ ναώς οὗτ(ος) παρὰ Μιχ(αὴλ) ἀρχ(ι)διακό(νου) (ICG 1307); at Nacolea, ἀνεκ[ενισ]θι ὁ ναὼς τοῦ Σ[τεφάνου ?] (ICG 1436); at Amorium, where a verse hailed the restoring work of a bishop, [ἐπίσκο]πον φύλατε πήστι κ(αὶ) [π]όθο ἀνακ(αι)νοῦντι τὸ τίμιο ναό (ICG 1316); at Akroinos, ἀνεκ(αι)νίσθη ὁ πάνσεπτος ναὸς τοῦ ἀρχαγγέλου Μιχαὴλ (REByz. 62 (2004), 215); and at Hadrianopolis: [†] ἀνεκενέσθι ὁ ναὸς ἱ ὑπεραγία Θ(εο)τ(ό)κος (MAMA VII 170). The term was also applied to the eleventh century fort at Choma, [ἀνεκ]ενήσ(θη) ἐκ βάθρω(ν) τὼ Θ(ε)ωφυλακτ(ον) κάστρον τοῦτω (ICG 1458), and restored on the parallel inscription at Sozopolis, [† ἀνεκενίσθη τὸ κάστρ]ον Σοζοπόλεος (ICG 1130). Eloquent verses on the restored church at Sebaste told of the eleventh-century Constantinopolitan patriarch Eustathios removing the unsightly remnants of the old building and restoring its pristine beauty, [ὁ ποι]μενάρχης Εὐστάθιος ἐμφρόνως ἔνθεν παλαίαν ἐξάρας δυ[σμορφία]ν, κόσμον τίθησι καινὸν ἐν τοῖς κοσμίταις.608 This evidence from Phrygia contradicts the conclusion reached by Philip Niewöhner in a recent survey of fortifications and church building in Byzantine Anatolia, summed up in the following paragraph: ‘Das gleiche Bild ergibt der anatolische Kirchenbau, der während der mittelbyzantinischen Epoche hinter dem zurückblieb, was zuvor während der sogenannten Dunklen Jahrhunderten gebaut worden war. So gesehen brachten es die anatolischen Städte in mittelbyzantinischer Zeit zu kaum mehr als einer oberflächlichen Instandsetzung. Eine substantielle Erneuerung des Städtewesens lässt der archäologische Befund nicht erkennen’.609 The epigraphy of the tenth and eleventh 607 See LSJ s.v., citing 2Cor. 4.16 (of a person’s internal renewal), Col. 3.10 (of putting aside the old persona, and adopting a new one). The Lexicon der Byzantinischen Gräzität has entries for longer cognate variants of the verb that occur in literary texts, but not the simple form which is characteristic of the inscriptions. 608 ICG 4469; Barsanti, Milion I (1988), 191. 609 P. Niewöhner, Archäologie und die dunklen Jahrhunderte im byzantinischen Anatolien, in J. Henning (ed.), Post-Roman Towns, Trade and settlement in Europe and Byzantium, vol. 2. Byzantium, Pliska and the Balkans (Berlin 2007), 119–57. Note, however, his cautious and cautionary conclusion on p. 145: ‘The understanding of the Dark Ages will probably only come to a breakthrough once ceramics of the period can be identified. Until then any interpretation is bound to end with about the same words: Maybe it all happened quite differently’.

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centuries does not support this assessment. The wave of reconstruction across Phrygian communities in this period marked an age of renewal, breathing new life into communities whose existence had not been extinguished but was certainly imperilled both by depopulation and external threats in the intervening centuries. The church had played a crucial, almost certainly a decisive role in ensuring their survival.

Chapter 6

Phrygian Saints 6.1

Phrygian Hagiography

Saints, holy men, martyrs, miracle workers and an archangel make the headlines in the history of early Christianity during late antiquity and the Byzantine period, to a disproportionate degree.1 These figures, some of whom were fictitious, generated an immense literature, covered by the modern term hagiography, a genre which is much more diverse than at first appears. Exhaustive research and discussion of all the saints with a Phrygian connection would break the bounds of proportionality, but a selection of these martyr acts and saints’ lives not only demonstrates how diverse these narratives are, but also illuminates facets of the lives and culture of Phrygia’s Christians that can scarcely be detected in the other evidence. This small treasure chest of Anatolian saints’ lives also has some remarkable surprises to offer and may offer welcome variety after the intensive epigraphic diet of the core evidence for Phrygian Christianity.2 The circumstances in which Saints’ lives were written are usually obscure or unknown. The authors are almost always anonymous, the period of composition uncertain and often disputable, and the audiences or readers for whom they were first intended difficult, or impossible, to identify. Saints’ lives accordingly lend themselves particularly well to an approach recommended regularly by the late Fergus Millar to his graduate students, simply to read the texts, without preconceptions, simply to establish what they say, without, at first, posing more specific questions or using them to demonstrate other hypotheses.

1 See R. MacMullen, The place of the Holy Man in the Later Roman Empire, HTR 112, 2019, 1–32, applying a sober reality check to Peter Brown, The rise and function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity, JRS 61, 1971, 80–101. 2 The best orientation is provided by S. Destephen, Martyrs locaux et cultes civiques en Asie Mineure, in J.-P. Caillet, S. Destephen, B. Dumézil and H. Inglebeart, Des dieux civiques aux saints patrons (IVe–VIIesiècle) (Paris 2015), 59–116; Nowakowski, Saints, dealing with the inscriptions in detail, has a narrower focus. Moden studies build on the extraordinary Bollandist project; see H. Delehaye, The Work of the Bollandists through Three Centuries 1615–1915 (English translation Princeton 1922).

© Stephen Mitchell, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004546387_008

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Trophimos and Marina: Metropolitan Martyrs

During the reign of the Roman emperor Probus (276–82), a pagan festival on the birthday of the god Apollo was celebrated with much revelry at Pisidian Antioch in the presence of the ‘vicarius’ Attikos, also known as Heliodoros. Among the bystanders were two men from another region, Trophimos and Sabbatios, whose conduct left no doubt that they were Christians, and they were arrested. Both were interrogated by Attikos. Sabbatios was tortured at the stake and perished after refusing to sacrifice. Attikos then wrote a letter explaining what had happened and sent the obdurate Trophimos to be tried by Dionysius Perennius, governor of Phrygia Salutaris, who was resident at Synnada. The prisoner had iron shoes nailed to his feet for the journey, which took three days. At his trial Trophimos refused the invitation to prolong his life by making a pagan sacrifice, responding that all men are bound to die, but that the blessings of everlasting life, which cannot be seen, heard or even perceived in the human heart, far exceeded the temporary and diminishing pleasures of mortal existence. Torture and interrogation culminated in Trophimos being set on fire, before he was removed from the stake and transferred to prison, his feet bound to a wooden beam. Trophimos was visited in prison by Dorymedon, one of the leading city councillors, who tended his injuries, for a while unobserved. However, at the festival of the Dioscuri, attended by all the members of Synnada’s council, Dorymedon’s absence was brought to the attention of Dionysius. The governor’s security men rounded up the reluctant councillor, who explained that as a Christian he could not participate in sacrifices to statues and demons, although he never hesitated to obey other instructions. God found no fault with his refusal, only with the one who gave such orders. The governor was astounded, as this was the last thing he expected of Dorymedon, and placed him in custody. The interrogation took place on the next day. The governor suggested that it was a disgrace for a councillor to refuse to participate in honouring the gods; the councillor responded that the trappings and uniform of power, lofty sentiments expressed in the council chamber, inanimate stone or bronze statues of gods and goddesses made by the hands of men, meant nothing to him. It was shameful even to call such things to mind, and they were not worthy even of reprimand; one should pass over in silence the hellfire which would destroy idol worshippers, the unspeakable darkness, the worms that would consume them for eternity, the pain that could never be set aside of those who denied the true God. This speech was capped by a torrent of abuse from Dorymedon, who was inspired by Christ’s words that the Lord had provided a tongue and wisdom to his followers who wished to refute their

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opponents (Luke 21.14–15). The governor’s slave attendants applied all manner of torture until Dorymedon was cut down and taken back to prison. Trophimos was now threatened with being thrown to the beasts in the arena, if he did not change his tune. He was subjected to renewed torture on the stake and blinded before being incarcerated again. Finally, both Christians were brought out into the full view of a crowded theatre. In succession, a ferocious she-bear, a leopard and a lion did no more than lie at the feet and lick the wounds of the two martyrs. When the lion instead turned on governor himself, Dionysius called the show off and ordered that the men be beheaded. Their martyred remains were surreptitiously removed to safety by their followers and hidden away.3 This short passio contains ingredients that are found in innumerable early Christian martyr acts, usually of uncertain date and authorship. Based on the premise that no Christian would agree to conduct a pagan sacrifice, most acts related the martyrs’ refusal to do so in the context of a libertine pagan festival. This scenario was followed by arrest, imprisonment, interrogation, and dialogues between the magistrate or Roman governor (in this case both) and the accused men and women, which demonstrated the opposed religious and political stances of the authorities and their victims. Torture, usually described in gruesome detail, and the capacity of the martyrs to transcend this, were central to all these scenes. Death might follow as a direct result of the torture (as with Sabbatios), of exposure to wild beasts in the arena, or by simple execution. The bodies of the victims were then recovered by their followers and become available as relics for a subsequent martyr cult. Martyr acts usually located the events of the narrative quite precisely in time and space. The historical moment when the events occurred was fixed by reference to the reigning Roman emperor or emperors, since the rulers and their officials were recognisably the agents of the martyrdom. The day of death, in this case 19 September, was also prominently recorded for this was the cue for an annual celebration of the martyr’s cult. Geographical details in the narratives revealed the writers’ local knowledge, and gave even blatantly spurious or fictitious accounts a flavour of authenticity. The cities named in this passio, the major regional centres Antioch and Synnada, were about eighty kilometres distant from one another, corresponding well with the three-day journey required to transfer Trophimos between them. However, other information, for example the naming of specific pagan cults and festivals, and the identification of official positions held by magistrates and other authorities, was often pure invention. There is no independent evidence for a festival of 3 Martyrium SS. Martyrum Trophimi, Sabbatii et Dorymedontis, PG 115, 733–48.

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Apollo Daphnaeus at Pisidian Antioch or of the Dioscuri at Synnada,4 and both seem to be the products of imaginative fiction. It was almost impossible for the writers, if they were concerned about such things, to avoid anachronism in creating a historical background for the martyr-acts. The office of vicarius held by Attikos-Heliodoros at Antioch did not exist in the third century, and Phrygia Salutaris, the province governed by Dionysius Perennius, is not attested by this name before the mid-fourth century. The generic nature of the narrative and the errors of detail found in the passio of Trophimos and his fellow martyrs indicate that this was not a trustworthy account of an historical event, but it does not lack historical value.5 It testifies to the importance and vigour of the saint’s cult at the time of its composition – perhaps in the fifth or early sixth century.6 It underscores the importance of martyrdom stories in forging Christian values and a Christian identity. All three victims were confronted by brutal judicial torture, and these scenes dominate the narrative. From the comfortable position of a triumphant church, through their depictions of pagan festivals and the interrogation dialogues martyr acts illustrated Christian fortitude, and a crude view of the ideological battles between Christianity and the religion of a pre-Christian Roman state and of pagan Greek cities. They established the culture of churches and their congregations, and a climate of religious excitement or enthusiasm at the moments when their heroes and martyrs were commemorated. As a literary genre which shows remarkably little variation across the entire Christian world of Late Antiquity and Byzantium, martyr acts, written in Greek and Latin, and translated into the numerous other languages to be found in and on the fringes of the Roman world, were a major force for the cohesion and unity of Christian communities, whatever their doctrinal divisions. The passio of Trophimos and his fellow Christians is in one respect almost unique. It is an extremely rare case where the actual occurrence of martyrdom in the third century has been confirmed by material evidence. In early summer 1907 a farmer looking for flat stones to make a laundry basin (‘pierres à lessive’) on the outskirts of Şuhut, ancient Synnada, uncovered an intact ossuary or ostotheke, in the form of a miniature sarcophagus, which contained fragments of a skull and was inscribed with a text which identified the contents 4 The Disocuri appear on a hellenistic coin of Synnada, U. Huttner, Christianisierungsprozesse im spätantiken Phrygien, 161 n. 135. 5 P. McKechnie, Christianzing Asia Minor, 196–203 has an interesting discussion of the Acta Trophimi and inclines to accept the veracity of the details about the city councillor Dorymedon. 6 I can see no decisive criteria for fixing a date; comparison with other similar saints’ lives is a useful tool to add to the internal evidence found in each passio.

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as the bones of the martyr Trophimos.7 Even more remarkably, this chance discovery was reported to the authorities and the relic, accompanied by a circumstantial account of how and where it had been found, was transferred to the nearest museum, at Bursa, which had been opened three years before in September 1904. The culmination of this good fortune was the engagement of Gustav Mendel, curator of the Ottoman Museums in Constantinople, to prepare a full catalogue of the objects in the new Museum, and so the discovery was published in exemplary fashion in 1909. Miracles are not only a phenomenon in Christian antiquity! The form of the ossuary, a miniature Docimian sarcophagus, and the use of the Eumeneian formula together point to a date between the middle and the end of the third century. This is consistent with information in the martyrdom that the passio occurred during the reign of Probus between 276 and 282. The fact that Probus was not generally remembered in Christian tradition as a persecuting emperor arguably increases the likelihood that this is an accurate historical detail. In any case, whoever commissioned the production of this distinctive monument and its inscription did so in the belief that the remains that it contained were those of the martyr Trophimus. They presumably served as a focus of cultic attention for the Christians of Synnada from the later third century. The surviving martyr-act itself was certainly composed for the community’s benefit and edification, perhaps two or three centuries later. How much trust should be placed in other details, including the persecution and death of Sabbatios in Pisidian Antioch, and the involvement and eventual execution of the city councillor Dorymedon, is entirely a matter of conjecture. The written version of the passio shows that the story remained in the focus of Christian attention through late antiquity, and another inscription, a middle Byzantine templon fragment from a church, with an inscription implying that it was dedicated by a woman called Apphe to Trophimos, attests that the cult remained important at Synnada in the tenth or eleventh century.8 Trophimos was also venerated outside the city where he died. A koinonos named Paulinos founded a church of St Trophimos at Payamalanı near Sebaste.9 Since Paulinos held a senior priestly office that was characteristic of the Montanist church, it is possible that Trophimos himself had been a Montanist, or at least a saint whose martyrdom made him an object of veneration by later Montanists. However, there is no hint of this in in the wording of the 7 ICG 1378; see 304–5. It is pure coincidence that the Turkish place name Şuhut derived from the Arabic Shuhûd, plural of Shahid, ‘martyr’. 8 TIB 7, 395; ICG 4493, see 467. 9 ICG 1363, see 410.

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ossuary text or in the surviving passio. The latter appears to be an uncontroversial product of the Orthodox Church, but since it only contains a modicum of verifiable historical information, this can hardly be used to prove or disprove Trophimos’s Montanist origins. The narrative of Trophimos’s arrest and trial would fit the profile typical of defiant and provocative Montanism, but even if he did belong to the movement, it would not be strange that the mainstream Church at Synnada chose to claim him as an authentic martyr in the following centuries. The simplest interpretation is that he was recognised as a prominent Phrygian martyr both inside and outside the Orthodox church.10 Martyrdom was a real factor in the historic lived experience of early Christians, although it is notoriously difficult to assess the scale of the phenomenon. In a famous study of the early persecutions, the ancient historian G. E. M. de Ste Croix argued that although the number of victims of persecution was quite considerable, outbreaks must usually have been brief in duration.11 Pliny when governing Bithynia around 110 would have condemned some Christians to death, and these are victims of persecution who, for us, remain anonymous martyrs.12 One Asia Minor inscription, a monument from south-west Lycaonia, which is probably a little earlier than the ossuary of Trophimos, also simply described the deceased as a martyr with no further details: Νουννος | καὶ Οὐαλέ|ριος ἐκόσ|μησαν Παῦ|λον τὸν μάρ|τυραν μ(νήμης) χ(άριν).13 Paulus will not have been the only Christian to die at the hands of persecutors, who was commemorated only by his close kin, not by the whole community. The name Martyrios began to be adopted by Christians before the end of the third century, for example in Lycaonia in the first half of the third century on a sarcophagus from Iconium, put up by Futius Aelius Martyris for

10

Further discussion in W. Tabernnee, Fake Prophecy and Polluted Sacraments. Ecclesiastical and imperial reactions to Montanism (Leiden 2007), 236–8. Compare M. Wallraff, ZAC 1 (1997), 254 n. 7 and Vig. Chr. 29 (1998), 1–2, citing the discussion of the mainstream Church taking over heterodox martyrs by H.-C. Brennecke, Studien zur Geschichte der Homöer. Der Osten bis zum Ende der homöischen Reichskirche (Tübingen 1988), 114–57. 11 G. E. M. de Ste Croix, Why were the early Christians persecuted? Past and Present 26 (1963), 6–38, revised reprint in Christian Persecution, Martyrdom and Orthodoxy (ed. M. Whitby and J. Streeter, Oxford 2006), c. 3. 12 Pliny ep. X. 96. 3–4: Interrogavi ipsos an essent Christiani. Confitentes iterum ac tertio interrogavi supplicium minatus; perseverantes duci iussi. Neque enim dubitabam, qualecumque esset quod faterentur, pertinaciam certe et inflexibilem obstinationem debere puniri. Fuerunt alii similis amentiae, quos, quia cives Romani erant, adnotavi in urbem remittendos. Those who refused to recant their Christian faith were punished; Roman citizens among them were sent to Rome for trial. 13 ICG 664 with bibliography; Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 554–8.

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himself and his wife Aelia Zoe,14 and, probably a little later, on the gravestone set up by Aelius Martyrius son of Eudromius for τῷ ἀειμνηστῷ ἀδελφῷ Εὐνομίῳ, perhaps his ‘brother-in-Christ’ rather than a son of the same parents.15 It is a sign of the strength and self-confidence of the growing Christian population of the mid- and later third century, that victims of persecution could be made objects of cult and reverence, and the ossuary of Trophimos marks a stage in this new development. Sylvain Destephen has drawn attention to the fact that the martyr cults of Asia Minor tend to concentrate in the capital cities of the provinces, and thus even obviously fictitious examples pay some attention to the historical reality that trials of Christians involving provincial governors were held in the regional capitals or assize centres.16 The passio of Trophimos and his companions oscillates between two provincial centres, Antioch, metropolis of Pisidia since the beginning of the fourth century, and Synnada, metropolis of Phrygia Salutaris. Antioch also provided the setting for the lengthy passio of Marina, a work of some literary quality, edited with great learning and a light touch by one of the giants of late nineteenth-century German philological scholarship, Hermann Usener.17 The almost completely legendary tale of the young virgin Marina, set ἐν πόλει Ἀντιοχέων τῆς πρώτης Πισιδίας, was the work of a certain Theotimos. Unusually, the only date mentioned was the day of her martyrdom, 17 July, without an indication of the ruling emperor when the persecution took place. The writer, gripped by profound attachment (στοργή) to the suffering saint, claims to have given a few coins from his modest means to the stenographers who had written the account of her martyrdom, ὀλίγα νομίσματα δεδωκὼς ἐκ τῆς πενίας μου εἴληφα τὰ ὑπομνήματα παρὰ τῶν ταχυγράφων τῶν ὄντων ἐν τοῖς καιροῖς ἐκείνοις καὶ τῶν τὰ γράμματα διὰ χειρὸς πεπιστευμένων. Similar appeals to an apparently authoritative but certainly fictitious source appear in many martyr acts.18 In fact, the passio of Marina contains no section recording the detailed interrogation of the saint by the governor, a defining feature of a few authentic martyr acts, and one which was commonly reproduced in fictitious

14 15 16 17

LGPN Vc, 271; RECAM IV, 60 no. 183; (ICG 319). MAMA VIII 319; (ICG 475). Destephen, Martyrs locaux, 64–7, and DHA Supplément 18 (2019), 101–2. H. Usener, Acta S. Marinae et S. Christophori, published ceremonially in the Festschrift zur fünften Säcularfeier des Carl-Ruprechts-Universität zu Heidelberg (Bonn 1886), 3–14 (editorial introduction), 15–46 (text and critical apparatus). 18 Usener, however, athetizes a later remark in which Theotimos appears to say that he visited the girl in prison to bring her bread and water on the night before her execution.

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reconstructions, thereby creating the false impression of being based on original court protocols. Marina, the only daughter of Aedesius, a priest of one of the demons (pagan gods), has been entrusted to a foster-mother and lived in the countryside fifteen miles (σημεῖα) outside the city. After Marina’s mother died, the foster-mother, a Christian, took full charge of her. She returned from this pastoral home with other young girls as the persecution of the holy martyrs was taking place in the city. The Roman governor Olybrius, dumb-struck by her beauty, determined that she should become either his wife, if she were free-born, or his mistress (παλλακίς) if she were a slave. First, however, she must make a sacrifice. The rest of the story is predictable in outline but full of extravagant and dramatic detail. Marina rejected all requests to offer sacrifice, affirming her Christianity. She was interrogated and submitted to torture which so disfigured her that the governor could no longer bring himself to look at her: ὁ δὲ ὠμότατος καὶ ἀναιδὴς ἔπαρχος μετὰ τῆς χλαμύδος ἔκρυβεν τὴν ὄψιν καὶ τὸν νῶτον ἀπέστρεφεν πρὸς αὐτήν (p. 23). In prison, she was confronted by a dragon, an incarnation of Satan, μέγας καὶ φόβερος σφόδρα ποικίλος τῇ χρόᾳ, with a golden crest and beard, eyes that flashed silver, and a sword for a tongue. The monster swallowed her whole, but by making the sign of the cross Marina caused Christ to appear and split the dragon’s belly apart, so that she could emerge unscathed (p. 24–27).19 Satan now appeared to her in another form as Beelzebul, against a backdrop of three earthquakes; Marina gamely took a hammer and repeatedly battered her demonic foe, eventually forcing him to back away and leave her. She emerged from prison to face a more conventional trial before a judge, who ordered her to sacrifice to three so-called gods: Zeus, Kalandion and ‘Big Red’ (p. 38).20 When she defied him, she was removed to a cauldron of boiling water. The torment finally concluded when she was beheaded.

19 English translation of these sections by Daniel Ogden, Dragons, Serpents and Slayers in the Classical and Early Christian Worlds: a Sourcebook (New York and Oxford). 20 The New Year festival of Kalandion, one of the most important holidays throughout the Roman empire, largely replaced the festivals associated with individual pagan gods in late antiquity and was treated as a desacralized occasion for popular festivities, decried by moralists but tolerated by imperial decrees in the fourth and fifth centuries, and celebrated by Christians as enthusiastically as by pagans; R. Macmullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (Yale 1997), 36–9. Μέγας Ῥοῦφος is a mystery, but I am grateful to Ulrich Huttner for the observation that in Medieval Latin ruffus or rufus sometimes had the meaning malicious, ‘bösartig’; see E. Habel / F. Gröbel, Mittellateinsches Glossar (Paderborn 1989), Sp.346.

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The main historical value of this fantastic tale emerges in the final pages, which establish the relationship between Theotimos’s composition and the foundation of the martyr’s church. Marina, before her death, addressed a final prayer to the Lord, asking Him, since so many persons had expressed a desire to take her to their country and to hear about her martyrdom, to grace them with forgiveness for their sins, as they had written an account of her passio; ἐπειδὴ πλειστοί εἰσιν οἱ βουλόμενοι εἰς τὴν πατρίδα αὐτῶν ἀγαγεῖν με καὶ τῆς ἀθλήσεως μου κατακοῦσαι, χάρισον αὐτοῖς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν διὰ τῶν ἐγγραφῶν τῆς ἀθλήσεως. The composition of the martyr act is specifically linked to the foundation of a church, and includes a plea for forgiveness for the founder of the church and the writer of the passio: καὶ τῷ οἰκοδομοῦντι ἠ κτίζοντι ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματι μου οἶκον εὐκτήριον καὶ γράφοντι ἐν αὐτῷ τὴν ἄθλησίν μου συγχώρησον αὐτῷ τὰς ἁμαρτιάς. This section was followed by a passage listing the spiritual rewards for various other acts of piety, and concluded with the repeated promise, καὶ εἴ τις δ᾽ ἂν τὸ μαρτύριον μου γράψῃ ἐκ τῶν κόπων αὐτοῦ, καὶ εἴ τις αὐτὸ κτήσεται γενεθήτω τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ ἐν τῇ βίβλῳ τῆς ζώης (pp. 42–3). In the last paragraph of the whole work, the focus again reverted to the collection of the saint’s relics (τὸ λείψανον τῆς ἀθλοφόρου μάρτυρος), the foundation of the church, and the gathering of the local Christian community at its inauguration: καὶ ἐν τῷ ἐπιτελεῖν με τὴν μνήμην τῆς ἁγίας πάντες προθύμως παρεγένοντο εὐωχούμενοι ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματι αὐτῆς ἐν τῷ κτισθέντι μαρτυρίῳ εὐχαριστοῦντες τῷ Κυρίῳ (p. 46). The vocabulary and expresssions found in this final part of the passio (ἄφεσις ἁμαρτιῶν, συγχωρέω, οἰκοδομέω, οἶκος εὐκτήριος, εὐχαριστέω, εὐωχέω, κτίσις and κτίζω) exactly correspond to the vocabulary found in the votive and building inscriptions of Byzantine Phrygia, and should be linked to a church built at Pisidian Antioch in this period. They indicate the circumstances which led to the work’s composition, and suggest that it was written during late antiquity when this vocabulary was epigraphically commonplace. The literary quality of the passio is high, despite a tendency to repetitiveness. The writer Theotimos, presumably resident at Antioch, was highly educated and wrote excellent Greek which avoided popular language and the Latinisms which often infected descriptions of official business and technical matters. The only two words of Latin derivation in the long text described instruments of torture: λάμνα (lamina) for the heated metal plates applied to the girl’s body, and σκάμνιον or σκάμνον (scamnum) for the bench or stocks to which she was strapped while the torture took place. Usener judged that the original Greek version had been composed in the late fourth or fifth century. The composition soon attracted attention and Latin versions were produced, some as early as the fifth or sixth centuries, in all but one of which the girl’s name was changed from Marina

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to Margarita. The story’s popularity in the Latin West increased in the Middle Ages, and the passio of St Margaret of Antioch became a popular subject of European painting and sculpture.21 6.3

Aberkios and Ariadne: Small-town Entertainers

The next works for consideration are the Life of Aberkios of Hierapolis and the martyrdom of Ariadne of Prymnessus, which have both received more historical attention than the passio of Trophimos and the martyrdom of Marina, not least because they appear to draw directly on documentary sources of the Roman imperial period. Aberkios’s life in reality, as we have seen, is attested by his epitaph, which is partially preserved and cited in full in the vita.22 The eighty chapters of this life reveal themselves to be a genuinely entertaining work of fiction, which defy any reader’s normal expectations of early Christian hagiography.23 Like the passio of Trophimos and his companions, it begins with an order sent by the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus to Publius Dolabella, governor of ‘Little Phrygia’, to conduct public sacrifices at a festival. However, this is the first and last point of resemblance to the normal format of a martyr act. Aberkios, bishop of Hierapolis in the Pentapolis, has a vision of a handsome youth, who instructs him to enter the temple of Apollo and destroy the cult statue and other divine images. Armed with the largest stick that he can carry, he breaks into the temple at night and and snorting with zeal and fury smashes the statues, scornfully telling the temple attendants that the gods who had attended yesterday’s festival had destroyed themselves in their drunken revels, and that the statue fragments should be consigned to 21 D. Ogden, Drakon. Dragon myth and serpent cult in the Greek and Roman worlds (Oxford 2013), 401 n. 76, suggests a ninth-century date, but this is based on a misunderstanding. The manuscript including the Greek text is dated to 890, and contains scholia (recommending to clergy that they should remove the more gruesome and prurient torture scenes when telling the story to lay congregations) written by Methodius, patriarch of Constantinople 842–6. 22 See chapter 4.2. 23 The ground-breaking edition of Th. Nissen, Abercii Vita (Lepizig 1912) contains the full text of the three long recensions of the life, printed respectively on pp.1–55, 57–83, and 85–123, the last being based on early manuscripts of the Menologion Metaphrasticum. Seeliger and Wischmeyer chose the version in the Menologion of Symeon Metaphrastes for their modern edition with German translation, Märtyrerakten (Berlin 2015), 407–68. The publication is more than welcome, although it sits awkwardly in a collection of martyr acts. There is now an English translation of the first recension edited by Nissen by McKechnie, Christianizing Asia Minor, 263–87.

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the lime kiln. While Aberkios returns home, the priests and temple wardens make for the city council to lay a charge against him, and the bishop was summoned so that he could be delivered to be tried by the governor Dolabella. The mass of the people, incensed by the destruction of the statues, were for setting Aberkios’s house on fire, but were restrained by the councillors who fear that the blaze might engulf the property of innocent neighbours. Ignoring the advice of his followers to flee, Aberkios preaches in the town. He is again threatened by an enraged mob, but three young men among them are seized by epileptic fits. By a dramatic exorcism Aberkios forces the demons to give up their victims and concludes by baptizing the three men. On the next day 500 new followers, including men from the neighbouring regions of Great Phrygia, Asia, Lydia and Caria, were baptised into the Church.24 Thereafter, the reader is presented with an entertaining narrative about the feats of the great Aberkios. The vita has more in common with comic and picaresque novels, ancient or modern, than with the literature of pious instruction. The preceding summary of the first section leading to the mass baptism, does no justice to the many comic twists introduced to the story which may provoke more than a simple smile from the hearer. Several episodes in the life are not merely comic, but slap-stick. As reportage, the historical content is negligible, but vivid episodes, exaggerated and enhanced through a lens of virtual reality, could have been based in actual experience – the threat of a city blaze spreading from one house to the next; the smashing of the pagan idols which were then thrown into the lime kiln.25 The next section begins with a miracle, as Aberkios restores the sight of Phrygella, one of his own followers and the mother of Euxeinianos Pollio, a leading citizen of Hierapolis and friend of the emperors. The curing of the blindness of Phrygella and of three other old women is acclaimed by the people of Hierapolis and brings a grateful Euxeinianos into contact with Aberkios. In the most serious part of the whole vita they discuss in lucid, non-philosophical

24 V. Abercii 1–19. 25 Seeliger/Wischmeyer, Märtyrerliteratur, 465: ‘Der große Mittelteil zeigt am ehesten eine Verwandschaft zu den romanhaften apokryphen Apostelakten’. In fact, there are closer parallels with the narrative content and techniques of the Greek novels of Xenophon of Ephesus, Chariton and Heliodorus. Socrates, HE V.22 has a story that Heliodorus had written his romantic novel, the Aithiopika, as a young man, but when he subsequently became bishop of Trikka in Thessaly, introduced a ruling that clergy who slept with their wives after their ordination would be defrocked. The novelist had later become a bishop.

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language, the topic of human free will, and how it comes to be that the Christian God can allow men to be sinners and commit evil acts.26 In a short interlude, Aberkios and the companions who are his constant followers, visit the neighbouring villages which are riddled with disease and suffer from having no bathing facilities. At a place called Agros Potamon, Aberkios kneels and his prayer is rewarded by the appearance of a hot spring, where he instructs the villagers to dig water basins. In another comic scene, the devil appears to Aberkios as a young woman. The saint is not deceived by this ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’, but promptly twists his ankle painfully and is mocked by the devil, who now announces that he is none other than the fearful ‘Centurion’, and causes one of Aberkios’s young companions to have a fit. As the youth recovers, the devil says that this will not be his last word and prophesies to the saint that he will undertake an unwanted journey to Rome.27 This is the introduction to the central episode in the life, Aberkios’s visit to Rome. Now it is no longer the devil but God who appears in a dream and tells him that he must go to the capital and make the Lord’s name known in the city. Meanwhile, the devil is one step ahead and has taken possession of Lucilla, the beautiful sixteen-year-old daughter of Marcus Aurelius (Antoninus) and the empress Faustina. She was engaged to be married to Lucius Verus, who had been sent off to conduct a campaign against the Parthian king Vologaeses, but it had been agreed that the couple should be married at Ephesus in the temple of Artemis. As Verus hurried back to Ephesus from the eastern front, Marcus Aurelius sent him a letter announcing the postponement of the wedding until the next year, pleading that he himself had a war on his hands with the Germans. A despondent Lucius Verus makes his way back to Antioch in Syria. Lucilla’s anxious parents consult priests and soothsayers from the length and breadth of Italy, but her condition only worsens, until the devil causes the girl to utter the mysterious message, that he will continue to occupy her until Aberkios comes from Hierapolis in Little Phrygia. The praetorian prefect Cornelianus reminds the emperor that his trusted friend Euxeinianos is a Hierapolitan, and Marcus writes a letter to him, asking him to arrange for Aberkios to come to Rome.28 As Peter Thonemann has observed in an influential paper, the first half of this invitation has the appearance of an authentic late-second-century document, a letter addressed by Marcus to Euxeinianos Pollio expressing thanks and appreciation for the assistance he had rendered at Smyrna, when it was 26 V. Abercii 20–38. 27 V. Abercii, 39–42. 28 V. Abercii 43–49.

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struck by a great earthquake, a service which had been endorsed by a report sent to the emperor by the imperial procurator Caecilius. The second half of the letter, asking for help in sending Aberkios to Rome to cure his daughter, is betrayed as a fiction by several expressions found only in formal correspondence of the later empire. The authentic first part of the letter lands the writer in a serious chronological muddle, since the reference to the Smyrna earthquake and the titulature of the emperor are precisely appropriate for the years 177–78, while the betrothal and marriage of Lucilla to Lucius Verus occurred in the mid 160s, and Faustina died in the winter of 175/76.29 Discussion of the significance of this use of an authentic second-century document in the life can be deferred and considered alongside the similar compositional technique found in the life of another Phrygian saint, Ariadne of Prymnessus. Valerius and Bassianus, two official messengers (magistriani), take the emperor’s letter via Byzantium to Synnada and, by chance, the first person they meet in the town is Aberkios himself, whom they ask to guide them to Euxeinianus, another comic episode involving a flare-up between Valerius and the bishop, before misunderstandings are resolved at the meeting with Euxeinianus. The journey back to Rome takes the form of a race between the magistriani, following the same route as on the outward journey, and Aberkios who goes by road to Attalea before taking ship to Rome and arriving two days before the crestfallen couriers. In another comic digression, Aberkios without warning summons a local farmer, Trophimion, from his road-side vineyard to be his travel companion. Liquid refreshment for the journey was carried in a magic goat-skin bag, filled with wine, oil and vinegar, which delivered the wrong liquid to anyone who opened the bottle without the saint’s permission. Alighting from the ship they are reunited with the messengers who take Aberkios to the prefect Cornelianus.30 As the emperor is absent in Germany, Cornelianus takes Aberkios to the girl’s mother Faustina, who implores him to heal her beloved daughter, promising great rewards despite being torn by the thought that circumstances compelled her to seek help from someone who worshipped the one true God. Aberkios pre-emptively declines the offer of financial reward, while Faustina rushes to carry Lucilla out of her bed-chamber. The devil who possessed her throws her to the floor and boasts that he had brought Aberkios to Rome, just as promised, cueing the reply that he would get no satisfaction from this. The girl is now taken to the hippodrome, which is secured by troops, as the devil continues to announce that he was not simply all mouth, but had by his own powers 29 Thonemann, Aberkios, 264–8. 30 V. Abercii 50–58.

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compelled Aberkios to cross land and sea and come to the city. Ordered to leave the girl, the devil pleads not to be banished to the wilderness but sent home. In one of the most bizarre scenes of the whole work, an episode for a children’s comic book, Aberkios orders him to take a large stone altar to Hierapolis and place it in front of the south gate.31 The devil frees the girl, heaves the altar onto his shoulders and staggers through the hippodrome, to the astonishment of a full house of spectators, and transports it miraculously back to Phrygia. The girl to her mother’s consternation is flung apparently lifeless to the ground but brought to her feet by the saint. Mother and daughter fall into each other’s arms in a storm of tearful kisses. After seeing enough of these intimacies, Aberkios politely declines other recompense but asks Faustina to build a bath house at the hot spring outside the city, in future to be called Agros Thermon, and to set up a corn dole to feed 3000 destitute persons. Faustina promptly passes the request directly to the prefect Cornelianus, to avoid the usual delays to be found among the diaconate, unquestionably a sly poke at clerical inefficiency and reluctance in distributing poor relief in the time of the writer. This is confirmed by the next sentence, that ‘men by their nature and disposition are more gratified by those who decline to receive gifts than those who are eager to accept them, as they hold the latter in contempt for being inferior to the donors, while they are delighted by the formers’ high-mindedness.’32 An architect is sent without delay to the governor of Phrygia, with an order to draw whatever funds were necessary from the budget to complete the building. 3000 modii of grain are allocated for the poor of Hierapolis, a dole that continued until it was abolished in the time of the impious emperor Julian, who grudged the provision of this Christian charity.33 The fun continues throughout this section: Faustina’s qualms about dealing with a Christian benefactor, the devil drily ticked off by the saint, transcontinental altar transport, a display of embarrassing intimacy between mother and daughter, instantly recognisable mockery of the failings of church deacons, and an unexpected reminder to readers of the misdeeds of the pagan emperor Julian. This last comment establishes a terminus post quem in 363 for the composition of the vita, and the work was probably written not very many years later, probably before 400. Aberkios spends some further time preaching to the Christians in Rome, a routine matter after the other adventures, before the Lord appears instructing him to pay some attention to the Syrian regions. Reluctant to lose her 31 This would become the saint’s grave marker. 32 V. Abercii 66: ὥστε μὴ ἀμβλῦναι τὴν χάριν τῶν τάχεως ὑπεσχεθέντων βραδύτητι διακονίας. 33 V. Abercii 59–66.

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daughter’s protector, the empress nevertheless instructs Cornelianus to provide him with a ship. A seven-day voyage brings Aberkios to Antioch, Apamea and the other cities, where he reconciles their conflicts, as they wrestled among themselves with the evil effects of the heresy of Marcion,34 before he crosses the Euphrates and visits all the churches around Nisibis and in Mesopotamia. Financial rewards are again declined, being as appropriate to Aberkios as offering heavy shoes to a sprinter, or thick clothing to a naked wrestler. The famous Christian philosopher of second century Edessa, Bardesanes, now makes a cameo appearance, advising his fellow citizens that offering money to Aberkios is both demeaning to him and unprofitable for themselves, but asking them to pass a decree giving him the title ‘isapostolos’, since no one since the star figures among Christ’s disciples have done so much to spread the Christian message by land and sea.35 Despite the tone of comic fiction which pervades these chapters, it is noteworthy that the writer’s allusions to the controversial teachings of Marcion (died c.160) and the influence of the Edessan Christian philosopher Bardesanes/Bardaisan (died c.225) consciously evoke the world of the second and third century church without serious anachronism. Aberkios returns to his home, travelling through the two parts of Cilicia, Lycaonia, and Pisidia until he reaches the Phrygian metropolis Synnada, where he is entertained as a guest by local Christians. A final absurd scene takes place on the last stage of his journey as he crosses the mountains from Synnada to Hierapolis, pausing at a windy place called Aulon, an upland pass, where he encounters a party of villagers threshing their grain. The farmers refuse to break off when the wind blows chaff into the saint’s eyes, and so he causes the wind to drop anyway, forcing them to take a meal break. When they refuse to get up from eating and offer him water, he condemns them in future never to feel full however much they eat, which the author describes as humane punishment for inhumane behaviour. Aberkios is joyfully welcomed back to his home city where he continues to preach, heal the sick and exorcise demons, and where he writes a book of his teaching so that his direction will still be available to the priests and deacons in the community after his death. Another excursion into the mountains makes him terribly thirsty and he miraculously causes another spring to appear by sinking to his knees and praying for water, a place subsequently called Gonyklisia, ‘Knee Bend’.36

34

See the remarkably comprehensive entry in Wikipedia with recent bibliography, https:// de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcion (consulted 6.11.2022). 35 V. Abercii 67–70. 36 V. Abercii 71–75.

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God now appears again in a dream to Aberkios, telling him that the time has come to cease from his labours. He tells his followers and arranges for the altar which the devil had brought from Rome to be inscribed with his epitaph, which is then cited in full, although the writer notes that the passage of time had made parts of it difficult to read. After gathering his followers, the bishop tells them that the end of his life has arrived and he must go to the place that he has always longed for, but that they must choose his successor. They accordingly select the leading priest, also called Aberkios, and their choice is sealed by the blessing of his predecessor. The old bishop raises hands and eyes to heaven and is carried aloft to join Christ, accompanied by choirs of angels. The people of the town gather around his body, sing hymns, and carry it as if it were their common treasure to the gravestone; the day is 22 October. Prayers to God are offered up as his successor is inaugurated.37 This lengthy summary is necessary to give a feel not only for the contents but also for the style and literary flavour of the vita. It is a fair assumption that the only authentic source of information about Aberkios’s life was the epitaph. This described his Christian virtues and missionary activities in allusive poetic language, and identified two specific journeys, to Rome, and to Syria and Mesopotamia. These were given due prominence in the vita. The visit to Rome becomes a mission to exorcise a demon from the emperor’s daughter, and gives a leading role to Marcus Aurelius’s wife, Faustina the younger. Commentators offer the explanation that the author misunderstood the words βασιληΐς or βασιλεία in line 7 and βασίλισσα in line 8 of the inscription as allusions to the empress, and was thus inspired to write the imaginative fiction about Faustina and Lucilla. Given the art and humour of the work as a whole, and the writer’s alertness in his use of other evidence about the second century, I prefer to think that the figurative use of the words in the epitaph, the allusion to Rome ‘queen of cities’, and to the queen as a metaphor for Babylon and its corruptions, were clear to the writer, but spurred his imaginative ingenuity in writing the romance about Lucilla. If we need a term to describe the genre to which the life belongs, we should call it entertainment literature rather than martyrology or even hagiography. Aberkios is of course a Christian hero, but the portrait provided in the life, although not mocking, is decidedly irreverent. The approach of the writer is that of a novelist, not a chronicler. Thonemann, curiously, reaches the conclusion that the life provides a biography not so much of a man, but of his home town, and that it provided a Christian history for a city that was still, at the time of writing, ‘all too visibly pagan … littered with the debris of the Roman imperial period: baths, theatres, inscriptions and statues’. 37 V. Abercii 76–80.

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This could be an account of Ephesus or Pergamum, but hardly applies to a town in Phrygia like Hierapolis or its neighbours, where few such monumental traces are in evidence. Even the presence of public inscriptions from this period is not as clear cut as he argues.38 A more promising approach to understanding the intentions of the writer and the expectations of the readers is to pursue the comparison made by the life’s first modern editor, Theodor Nissen, between the vita Abercii and the apocryphal acts of the apostles, as may even be hinted at by the title ‘equal of the apostles’ conferred by Bardesanes on Aberkios.39 However, if Christian literature is set aside, the combination of romance, miracles and humour in a pot-pourri of episodic encounters with a quasi-historical background is more easily found in the Aithiopika of Heliodorus, a work which some scholars would also date to the late fourth century, and whose author according to the church historian Socrates, was none other than the Christian bishop of Trikka in Thessaly. The three long recensions of the Life of Aberkios, which survive in manuscripts from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, indicate its popularity up to the end of the Byzantine age. The much shorter μαρτύριον τῆς ἁγίας Ἀριάδνης is known only from a Vatican palimpsest of the late ninth or early tenth century, first edited by Pio Franchi de’ Cavalieri.40 Like the life of Aberkios this has attracted attention because it makes extensive use of apparently genuine documents of the Roman imperial period.41 However, again, it is important to appreciate the story of Ariadne in its own right before considering the problem of the sources from which the author may have drawn his information. From a modern perspective the fictive nature of the work is evident in the first sentence, Ἁδριανὸς καὶ Ἀντωνίνος βασιλεῖς ἐξαπέστειλαν εἰς πᾶσαν τὴν ὑποτεταγμένην αὺτοῖς βασιλείαν, ὥστε πάντας τοὺς θρησκεύοντας τὴν εὐσεβῆ τοῦ Χριστοῦ θρησκείαν μεταβαίνειν αὐτοὺς τῶν νόμων καὶ μιαρῶν ἀπογευσάμενους ἐδεσμάτων σώζεσθαι, τοὺς δὲ ἀντιλέγοντας τοῖς δικαστηρίοις παραδίδοσθαι, ‘The rulers Hadrian and Antoninus sent orders to the entire empire that was subject to them, that all those who observed the pious worship of Christ should change course from 38 Thonemann, Aberkios, 275; see below. 39 Th. Nissen, Die Petrusakten und ein bardesanischer Dialog in der Aberkios vita, Zeitschrift für Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 9 (1908), 190–203 and 315–28. 40 Franchi de’ Cavalieri, I martirii di S. Teodoto e di S. Aradne (Studi e Testi 6, Rome 1901), 91–133; with additional commentary in Note agiographiche, (Studi e Testi 8, Rome 1902), 3–21. 41 L. Robert, La pierre phrygienne dans la passion de sainte Ariadne à Prymnessos, A travers l’ Asie Mineure (Paris 1980), 244–56; P. Thonemann, The martyrdom of Ariadne of Prymnessos and an inscription from Perge, Chiron 45 (2015), 151–70.

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these laws and seek salvation by tasting polluted foods, and those who opposed this should be handed over to the courts’. Neither emperor is attested by reliable sources to have issued any such order, and they were never co-rulers. The next sentence introduces the heroine: ἡ μακαρία ἀμνὰς τοῦ Χριστοῦ Ἀριάδνη τοῖς τῆς ὁμολογίας ἀγῶσιν ἐφαιδρύνετο, ‘the blessed lamb of Christ Ariadne shone out in the contests of Christian confession.’ Who would have thought that the victim of a Christian martyrdom would be called Ariadne, named after the abandoned lover of Theseus, legendary king of ancient Athens?42 She was a slave in the household of a certain Tertullus, a leading citizen of Prymnessus in Phrygia Salutaris, but through and through a free subject of Christ, ὅλη διόλον ἐλευθέρα ἐν Χριστῷ. Tertullus was celebrating his child’s birthday including a sacrifice to impure and reviled demons, but Ariadne left the meat untouched and was reported by a fellow slave. When asked by her mistress to explain why she was not joining the feast she replied that she was a Christian of Christian parents; Jesus Christ had invited her to a feast in heaven – no, he was her bridegroom – and her mistress might have charge of her body but not her soul. The party for the child of the house might be celebrated with feasting, dance, wild singing and joyful shouts, but at a Christian festival there was fasting, holiness, moderation and spiritual chants Ariadne’s mistress passes her on to her husband who orders the girl to be flogged in the presence of the whole household, as the tainted food is put in front of her.43 This treatment continued for a month before word that the leading man in the city had a Christian girl in his house reached the Roman governor Gordius, who for fear of imperial recriminations summoned Tertullus to answer for himself in the presence of all the councillors and people at his tribunal in the Sebasteion. He read out the emperors’ order to their subjects to sacrifice or be executed. The language makes clear that this is a comic parody. The emperors have heard reports περὶ ἑτεροδιδασκαλούντων ἀθρόως ἀναφυσώντων παρὰ τὸν θέσμον τῶν μεγίστων θεῶν, ‘about the alien teachings of persons who one and all blow hot and cold against the ordinance of the greatest gods’. ‘They desire that all men possessing a single form of worship out of love of mankind should propitiate the divine being and not wander off like dumb animals’, θέλομεν δὲ πάντας ἀνθρώπους τῇ φιλανθρωπίᾳ μίαν ἔχοντας θρησκείαν οὕτως ἐξευμενίζεσθαι τὸ θεῖον καὶ μὴ ὡς ἄλογα ζῷα ῥέμβεσθαι.44 42

According to LGPN Vc, 52 the name can be read on a sarcophagus from north Lycaonia (MAMA XI 280), perhaps on a third-century inscription from Aezani (MAMA IX 134 + SEG 52, 1259), and very doubtfully on a Byzantine text in the Upper Tembris valley. 43 Mart. Ariadnae 1–2. 44 Mart. Ariadnae 3–4.

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The governor is perplexed by what to do with these instructions, but the members of the council help him out and beseech him to apply the order in a merciful way. The governοr has the order proclaimed, and Tertullus’s cousin Nicagoras, an advocate (scholasticus), who has been instructed by the council and especially by other family members to represent his distinguished relative before the governor, is told to make his case at dictation speed, without gabbling: τὰ λεγόμενα ἐγγραφῶς λεγέσθω καὶ μὴ ὡς ἐν παραδρομῇ. He starts with a grotesquely flattering address to the governor: ὁ τῆς ἐπαρχίας πρύτανις, Ὀ ἑωσφόρος πάντων ἡμῶν, ἡ δεξία τῶν κατερραγμένων, ὁ εὔδιος λιμήν, τὸ φῶς ἡμέτερον, ὁ ἀρχηγὸς τῆς εὐδοκίας τῶν δεσπότων τῆς οἰκουμένης, τῶν ἀηττήτων βασιλέων, ὧν νόμοι τε καὶ φωναὶ ἐπετήρησαν εἰς εὔδιον λιμένα, ᾽President of the province, our Morning Star, Hand that puts right catastrophes, Haven of calm, our Shining Light, Standard-bearer of the reputation of the masters of the universe, the unconquerable rulers’.45 His plea and testimonial for Tertullus takes the form of an extended list of the offices he has held, his services to the community, and his admirable and loyal disposition towards the rulers. Apart from a few phrases of rhetorical presentation, this mostly consists of expressions and language found in honorific inscriptions of the Roman empire.46 The governor Gordios interrupts this fulsome eulogy and asks defence council to keep to the point, ἀποκρίνου περὶ τοῦ ἐνεστῶτος πράγματος. The following interrogation, directed, after the initial questions for Nicagoras, at Tertullus himself, establishes that Ariadne is a house-born slave of now dead Christian parents. Nicagoras interrupts to offer the defence that Tertullus did not persist in forcing Ariadne to sacrifice, because the more he pressed, the more the girl stuck to her family’s religious principles. After further questions and extensive consultation, the governor yields to the unanimous pleas of the council members in support of their leader. Ariadne herself is now interrogated. Her speech and most of the subsequent interrogation are lost in a lengthy lacuna in the manuscript, but the session ends with her repeated refusal to make sacrifice and her resolution to face the awaited torment. The governor gives orders that she should be strung up and tortured, but this time it is not, as for Tertullus, the council, but the people of Prymnessos who riotously chant and demand that the governor desist, ἀδίκως κρίνεις, ἀδίκως βασανίζεις, so loudly that the houses themselves seem to be chanting in unison. They ask that in the spirit of imperial clemency Ariadne be given a three-day grace period in which to change her mind. Gordios makes this offer to the girl, and she responds by 45 Robert, A travers l’Asie Mineure, 245 and Thonemann, Chiron 45 (2015), 153, miss the tone of comic exaggeration. 46 Mart. Ariadnae 5.

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asking that her master should not be held to blame for her conduct. Gordios tells her that Tertullus will be released without charge, and that Ariadne herself will be rewarded with a home, other gifts and her freedom if she does what is asked of her. She remains obdurate and is sent back into custody.47 The final scene is worthy of a baroque opera, culminating in a vivid aria for the fugitive slave. Ariadne, after climbing down from the stake and crossing herself, ‘demurely trips away to the martyr’s fate that awaits her’, δρόμῳ εὐταξίας χρωμένη ἔσπευσεν ἐπὶ τὸ προκείμενον αὐτῇ τέλος τοῦ μαρτυρίου. But inspiration for an escape comes from the words of the Psalmist, ‘I raised up my eyes to the mountains, from where my help will come, the help of the Lord who made heaven and earth’ (Ps. 120. 1–2). No sooner has she spoken than she is running away to the nearby mountain, which greets her with joy, as though she were entering the gates of Paradise. Her pursuers are gripped by lethargy, but come after her. On the verge of exhaustion, she begins her aria with cries to the Lord Christ to save her, as he had saved the three young men from the fiery furnace in Babylon, Daniel from the lion’s den, and Jonah from the belly of the whale. She pleaded with him who could give sight to the blind, who would come in glory to judge the living and the dead, and who gave succour to those who were beyond help, to receive her soul. At the end, on God’s command, a crag gapes open and enfolds her, like a nurse taking a child to her bosom. Her baffled pursuers rush hither and thither on the mountain, as though looking for lost treasure, finding only three tassels from the hem of her veil, which they take back to the governor.48 The enraged and humiliated governor orders the leading temple warden to take an excavation party to dig out the crag, and an announcement in the city centre attracts a crowd of volunteers to avenge their goddess and turn the place where the girl had vanished upside down. Suddenly two fearful mounted warriors, with lances like flaming torches, appear amid thunder, lightning and an earthquake, strike some of the search party dead, and chase the rest of them back to the temple, where the temple-warden, clutching at the portals, breathes his last, and fire descends to set ablaze the building and its statues, along with many of the impious worshippers; 2700 were killed or seriously injured. The rest of the inhabitants, numbering 3000, rush to the city shouting, ‘Great is the God of the Christians!’, and imploring his forgiveness. That was the end of the persecution of the famous martyr Ariadne, commemorated on 4 October according to the Asian calendar.49 The only internal clue to the 47 Mart. Ariadnae 6–7; 12–13. 48 Mart. Ariadnae 14–16. The cleft rock swallowing up a fugitive is a familiar folkloric motif. 49 Mart Ariadnae 17–18.

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date of writing is the reference to Phrygia Salutaris, suggesting a terminus post quem around 350.50 There is no obvious reason to place composition after 400, although the fifth century is not to be ruled out. The location at Prymnessus is indicated at the start expressis verbis by the statement that Tertullus was one of its leading citizens, and later by a subtle allusion to the goddess Artemis as Dikaiosyne, ‘Justice’, the personified virtue which was worshipped as the city’s chief divinity under the Roman empire.51 As with the life of Aberkios, a summary of the supposed martyrdom of Ariadne gives some impression of the sort of literature that entertained Christians at the end of the fourth century. Apart from the stock elements of an imperial order, a persecuting governor, a trial scene and a Christian victim, this bears almost no resemblance to a typical martyr act. The imperial order is tongue-in-cheek, the Christian slave is given the name of a lovelorn heroine from classical mythology, the language and the staging of the trial scene are intentionally comic, the governor hesitates to carry out imperial instructions and is easily dissuaded from doing so, one of those charged is acquitted through the intervention of other leading citizens, and, after the reader’s expectation of gruesome torture scenes has been deftly deflated, the slave girl runs away and disappears. The Ariadne romance, as we should call it, shares the irreverent and often comic tone of the Aberkios life and was probably written at the same period.52 It is also set in a neighbouring small town of Phrygia, as Prymnessus and Hierapolis were respectively on the east and west sides of the same mountain range.53 The two works have one stand-out common feature, the use of official Roman imperial documents as important source material in shaping their plots, and they have both been the object of brilliant modern studies by Peter Thonemann. Thonemann’s examination of Aberkios’s life has demonstrated that not only the famous epitaph of Aberkios but other Roman documents 50 Apparently, the earliest documented use is on an imperial rescript dated between 359 and 361, CTh. I. 6. 1 and 10; C Just. VII. 62.23; further information in TIB 7, 48–9. 51 Robert, A travers l’Asie Mineure, 252-4; Thonemann, Chiron 45 (2015), 156 n. 20. 52 Pio Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Intorno al alcune reminiscenze classiche nelle legende agiographiche del secolo IV, Hagiographica (Studi e testi 19, Rome 1908), 123–64 at 131 no. 2 comments that it cannot be much later than the fourth century, and that a later Latin adaptation, the passio Mariae ancillae, also should date to the fifth or sixth century. 53 S. Destephen, Passions de dames aux temps des persecutions, Dialogues d’histoire ancienne 18 (2019), 91–113 at p. 101 notes that this is the only surviving Greek passio exclusively concerned with a slave girl, and that Ariadne is the only female martyr from Phrygia (setting aside St Marina from Pisidian Antioch). In almost every detail the story of Ariadne departs from the mainstream stereotypes of female martyrs which are characterized in Destephen’s excellent synthesis of the genre.

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can be detected in the composition. According to the vita the mother of Phrygella, whose blindness was cured by the saint, was a leading citizen called Euxeinianos Pollio, usually referred to simply as Euxeinianos. The hook in the plot which leads the emperor and Faustina to send for Aberkios to cure their daughter at Rome, as he had cured the mother of Euxeinianos, is an earlier communication between Marcus Aurelius and Euxeinianos, expressing the emperor’s appreciation for his help in the restoration of the city of Smyrna after the devastating earthquake of 177. Αὐτοκράτωρ Καῖσαρ Μάρκος Αὐρήλιος Ἀντωνῖνος Σεβαστὸς Γερμανικὸς Σαρματικὸς Εύξεινιανῷ Πολλίωνι χαίρειν· ἔργῳ πειραθέντες τῆς ἀγχινοίας περὶ ὧν κατ᾽ ἐπιτρόπην ἡμετέραν ἔναγχος διεπράξω κατὰ τὴν Σμυρναίων πόλιν ὡς ἐπικουφίσαι τοις ἐκεῖσε οἰκοῦσιν τὴν συνπᾶσαν αὐτοῖς συμφόραν ἐκ τοῦ κλόνου τῆς γῆς τὴν σὴν ἀγρυπνίαν καὶ ἐπιμέλειαν ἐθαυμάσαμεν, μάλιστα καὶ Καικιλίου τοῦ ἡμετέρου ἐπιτρόπου σαφῶς ἀπαγγείλαντος ἡμῖν τὰ περὶ τούτου, δι᾽οὗ καὶ τὴν ἀναφόραν τῶν ἐκεῖσε ἐποπτευθέντων παρά σου ἀπέστειλας ἡμῖν, δι’ ὃ καὶ συνομολογοῦμεν ὑπὲρ τούτου τὰ μέγιστά σοι εὐχαριστεῖν. This is an unimpeachable transcript of a real imperial letter, dated by Marcus Aurelius’s titles to 177/8, sent to Euxeinianos Pollio after the earthquake, details of which had been supplied in a report written by Pollio, which had been forwarded by the emperor’s procurator Caecilius. The latter is identifiable as a known provincial procurator, M. Caecilius Numa, attested in another late second-century inscription from Asia. Euxeinanos Pollio, moreover, was indeed the leading citizen in Hierapolis in this period, and should be identified with Q. Claudius Pollio, who financed five coin issues in the city between 161 and 169, when he held the prestigious provincial post of Asiarch, and who is named in an honorific inscription from nearby Acmonia as Quintus Claudius Pollio, son of Tiberius Claudius Euxenos. The siglum Euxeinianos of the imperial letter and the vita was an alternative way of rendering ‘son of Euxe(i)nos’.54 In the Life of Aberkios, when the demon blurts out that Lucilla can only be cured by Aberkios of Hierapolis, the prefect Cornelianus reminds Marcus that the excellent Euxeinanos was a native of this city, and thus enables the imperial summons to be brought to the right destination. The rest of the letter containing this summons is, of course, an easily recognisable fiction. Thonemann, who is followed by Seeliger and Wischmeyer in their recent edition, concludes that the author’s inspiration was a real inscription at Hierapolis containing the letter. This is certainly possible, but it is not an inevitable inference. Although letters by Roman emperors to private persons were sometimes displayed in inscribed form in the recipients’ home cities, letters to individuals were less commonly published in the form of inscriptions than 54 MAMA XI 100 with commentary; other details in Thonemann, Abercius, 266–72.

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letters to the city authorities or other official bodies.55 The letter to Euxeinianos Pollio, surely in any case a treasured possession, might have been preserved in a family archive, or collected in a historical dossier of official correspondence.56 This alternative explanation gains substantially more credibility in relation to the documents found in the Ariadne romance. Thonemann’s search for the source of the ‘speech’ in defence of Tertullus convincingly leads to a lengthy civic inscription from Perge in Pamphylia, which shows so many similarities to the hagiographic text, that their close affinity is beyond question.57 The beginning of this inscription is missing, but it refers to the honorand as the son of Tertullus and Vibia, and his full name was Ti. Claudius Vibianus Tertullus, attested by other inscriptions as one of Perge’s grandees, who was noted not only for his benefactions to the city but for a glittering imperial career which included holding the influential equestrian position of ab epistulis Graecis, state secretary for the emperor’s Greek correspondence between 175 and 177. He may have become a Roman senator and held the consulship in 184. Inscriptions were set up in his honour in several other Asia Minor cities, including Ephesus, Pergamum (at the Asklepieion), and at Melli (ancient name unknown) and Selge in Pisidia.58 Although the name is common, it is highly likely that a verse inscription which commemorates the donation of gladiatorial games and venationes at the Pisidian metropolis Sagalassos also honoured this Tertullus.59 Thonemann divides the encomium in the speech of Nicagoras into fourteen subsections, which describe Tertullus’s general and specific benefactions, offices, and services, six of which, apart from the common name of the honorand, show close and significant similarities with the Perge inscription. These 55 A Phrygian exception to this rule is Nero’s letter to Menophilos of Aezani, OGIS 475. 56 Thonemann’s hypothesis has induced an error in Seeliger and Wischmeyer’s translation. In the metaphrastic text of V. Abercii 31 (Nissen p. 102) Euxeinianos muses on what reward could be offered to Aberkios for curing his mother’s blindness, τὶ ἃν δὲ τῆς δωρεᾶς ταύτης ἀμειψαίμεθα κατὰ λόγον; τὶ ἄλλο γε ἢ ἀναγραπτά σοι τὰ τῆς εὐεργεσίας κείσεται παρ᾽ ἡμῖν; which is translated ‘Was gibt es anderes als dass Dir eine Inschrift in Erinnerung an die Wohltat bei uns angesetzt wird?’ But ‘Inschrift’ translates the Greek ἐπιγράφη; ἀναγραπτά were things formally registered, and the author (at least of this metaphrastic version; the wording is not found in the other long recensions) certainly did not have an inscription in mind. 57 S. Şahin, Die Inschriften von Perge I, 193; SEG 49, 1890; Thonemann, Chiron 45 (2015), 160–61 with fig. 1; SEG 65, 1409. 58 Thonemann, Chiron 45 (2015), 158 nn. 26–29; citing I. Ephesos 651 (ILS 1344); Alt v. Pergamon VIII. 3 (I. Askl.) 28; SEG 53, 1582 (Melli); I. Selge 13. 59 L. Robert, Les Gladiateurs dans l’Orient Grec (Paris 1940) no. 148; SGO IV, 114–7: 18/08/01. The attribution to Tertullus, the ab epistulis Graecis, is contested by the editors of I. Sagalassos no. 117.

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are the imperial high priesthood (speech 1, repeated at 7 and 12 ~ I. Perge 193, restored at the beginning of the text and recorded in line 17), the tenure of the civic magistracy of demiourgos (speech 1 ~ I. Perge 193, 4); the supervision of a donation of Phrygian marble for a bath house (speech 3 ~ I. Perge 193, 8–11); the sponsoring of imperial contests known as μεγάλοι Καισάρειοι πενταετηρικοὶ ἀγῶνες (speech 12 ~ I. Perge 193, 1); sponsorship of gladiatorial combats (speech 13 ~ I. Perge 193, 1–3); the conduct of several embassies (speech 3 and 14 ~ I. Perge 193, 5–7); and a priesthood of Artemis of Perge (speech 8 ~ I. Perge 193, 3–4). Thonemann correctly stresses that the most distinctive likeness between the encomium (despite some corruption of the Ariadne manuscript at this point) and the honorific inscription are the details about obtaining Phrygian marble for the building of a bath house. The Perge inscription appears to be almost the only epigraphic example so far recorded from the Greek East explicitly to document this occurrence.60 It is surely correct to conclude that the information in the two sources, both relating to Tertullus, can be connected directly or indirectly to the achievements and services of the same individual, but the correspondences are by no means exhaustive. The encomium does not relate Tertullus’s achievements in the same order and lists several benefactions that do not appear in the inscription: other generalized gifts and benefactions to his native city (speech 2 and 6), the office of gymnasiarch (speech 7), the sponsoring of public feasts for his fellow citizens and visitors to the city (speech 9), his pious and loyal disposition towards the gods and emperors (speech 10). Conversely, the inscription mentions advocacy on behalf of his city (I. Perge 193, 7–8), supervising the construction of a two-storey stoa in the market (I. Perge 193, 11–12), and the building of a hall for ball games in the gymnasium (I. Perge 193, 13–14), none of which is mentioned in the speech. Thonemann’s own restoration of the Perge monument correctly assumes that the text began with Tertullus’s tenure of the imperial high-priesthood and the sponsorship of games associated with this office, a protocol in honorific texts which is supported by innumerable parallels. It is not conceivable that lesser honours and services could have intruded at the start of the inscription. He accordingly conjectures that details missing in I. Perge 193 might have been extracted from another sister inscription at Perge, which is no longer preserved. This is theoretically possible, but purely hypothetical. More attention should be paid to the differences between the speech and the inscription, since these do not support the hypothesis that the writer of the 60 Thonemann, Chiron 45 (2015), 163–4.

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romance of Ariadne was working directly with an epigraphic model. He treats the material repetitively and pleonastically. The imperial high priesthood (speech 1, 7 and 12), and unspecified gifts and generosity to his city (speech 2, 6 and 11) are mentioned three times, and embassies on behalf of the city twice (speech 3 and 14). There is a vague and unspecific sentence about Tertullus’s eminence which rests on no plausible epigraphic parallel (speech 4), and several rhetorical interjections that are purely the work of the writer (speech 5 and 11). On the assumption that the raw material available to him did originate in Perge, we can see that the writer has contributed local Prymnessan colour by referring to a goddess πάρθενος Ἄρτεμις ἄσυλος Δικαιοσύνη (speech 8). If the writer was simply adapting the wording of an inscription which he could copy directly, and thus working from a direct transcript of an inscription, the redundancies and repetitions are hard to explain. Thonemann himself judged that ‘the text as we have it is a composite of some kind, perhaps drawn from more than one honorific inscription, or at least substantially reworked and re-ordered’.61 Louis Robert, aware of the verse text from Sagalassus but writing before the Perge honorific inscription was known, thought that an epigraphic template was certain but could not imagine how matters had come together in the Ariadne text, ‘Singulière et la discordance de certains détails d’ institutions dont l’un mène directement à Prymnessos comme on l’attend d’après le récit, tandis qu’un autre conduit au moins vers la Pisidie (Sagalassos), un autre vers la Pamphylie … Mais comment a-t-on pu amalgamer un document de Prymnessos et … de Perge?’62 Robert’s and Thonemann’s dilemma can be resolved by supposing that the writer was not directly copying an inscription but other written forms of the various commendations for Tertullus that were available to him. For these, the author would have had to turn to a library or an archive. Ti. Claudius Vibianus Tertullus, perhaps by birth a man from Perge in Pamphylia, whose presence and influence are attested by inscriptions in several cities of southern and western Asia Minor, some of which gave him honorary citizenship, held the high imperial office of ab epistulis Graecis both under Marcus and in the combined rule of Marcus and Commodus from 177.63 61 Chiron 45 (2015), 156. 62 Robert, A travers l’Asie Mineure, 256. 63 S. Mitchell, Inscriptions from Melli (Kocaaliler) in Pisidia, AS 53 (2003), 139–59 at 146–8 no. 8 with commentary; Thonemann, Chiron 45 (2015), 158. M. Christol, La Tabula Banasitana un demi-siècle après sa presentation: les données prosopographiques, Africa Romana 20 (2015), 1050 confirms that the two emperors under whom he served must be Marcus Aurelius and Commodus in 177, not Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus c.169, as

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He was responsible for imperial correspondence to the Greeks. A man in this position will not only have supervised the archives of the imperial bureaucracy, but also certainly preserved official and very likely unofficial documents relating to his own position and career, a practice that was certainly not confined to holders of the office of ab epistulis Graecis among the Roman ruling aristocracy. The evidence suggests that his most important home base was at Perge, but he was well known among the inland cities of southern Asia Minor: Selge, Melli, Sagalassus and very probably Prymnessus. This last connection is likely to have been of service when he obtained marble from the nearby Docimian quarries for a prestigious building in Perge. He might have been born and had his early upbringing in any one of these cities, but his extensive family links and a high-flying career would not have tied him down in later life. It is not simply a plausible suggestion but a virtual certainty that his private papers, containing details of honours that he had received and career appointments, were retained by his family after his death. The writer of the romance of Ariadne had access to them; he was probably a direct descendant of the powerful imperial secretary. We can dare to go a little further than this. The only other hagiographic text known to us which makes such transparent use of official Roman documents is the life of Aberkios, which cites the imperial letter to Euxeinianos Pollio. The emperor’s titles show that this was written soon after the Smyrna earthquake of February in early 177, before Marcus was joined by Commodus as co-ruler later in the year. This was in the last year of Tertullus’s term of office as ab epistulis Graecis. He personally would have been responsible for formulating the text. Is it a pure coincidence that the man honoured in the Perge and other inscriptions which underlie the speech in the story of Ariadne was the same man who would have prepared the letter to Euxeinianos for the emperor to sign? There are excellent reasons to think not, based on circumstantial evidence. First, the life of Aberkios and the romance of Ariadne share so many common features, and differ so significantly from other saints’ lives from Asia Minor, that they are likely to have been written by the same person. Both relate to small neighbouring Phrygian cities, both were likely composed towards the end of the fourth century, and both are written in an irreverent, often comic tone. Their author ingested something of the spirit of the age which had inspired the style and approach of the writer at the end of the fourth century of the famous Historia Augusta, imperial biographies whose elusive suggested by T. Carboni, La parola scritta al servizio dell’ imperatore (Bonn 2017), 53–5, and other scholars.

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factual foundations are subverted by the author’s comic or parodic intentions. The writer of the Aberkios life was apparently well-read and well-informed both about earlier Roman rule in Asia Minor, and the early years of Levantine Christianity.64 The Ariadne text has no such displays of erudition but deploys a wide and humorous Greek vocabulary. The author in both cases can be characterised as a highly-educated Christian, a skilled writer, and devoid of all solemnity.65 Second, as well as the likelihood that the prototype for the Tertullus of the Ariadne romance was none other than the minister who drafted the imperial letter quoted in the Aberkios life, we can reasonably suppose a close relationship at least of friendship and probably of kinship between the families of Ti. Claudius Vibianus Tertullus, with demonstrated links to Perge, Selge, Melli, Sagalassus, Prymnessus, Pergamum, Ephesus and Rome, and that of Q. Claudius Pollio (Euxeinianus), son of Ti. Claudius Euxenos, with links to the smaller Phrygian Hierapolis, Acmonia, Smyrna and Rome. Both were prominent, active and well-networked members of the Asian élite in the middle and later Antonine period between c.150 and 180.66 It would not be cynical to think that the former’s influence in the imperial court ensured that the latter received a highly unusual letter of commendation from Marcus Aurelius. This would certainly have been a treasured possession in any family archive, and, thus preserved, arrived in a descendant’s hands two hundred years later to serve as raw material for the inventive talent of a writer, who was responsible for two unique and unusual saints’ lives. That the writer copied and quoted inscriptions in these two lives is an illusion, the construct of modern scholarship for whom inscriptions are almost the only available source of information for so much of the history of Asia Minor. A cultivated writer of the fourth century did not need to supplement reading in his family papers with epigraphic field work.

64 See the playful use of the names of the Asian proconsuls of 43 BC Lentulus Spinther and Cornelius Dolabella in v. Abercii 51, and the allusions to Marcionites in Syria and to Bardesanes, the Christian philosopher of Edessa (v. Abercii 69 and 70). 65 In this connection, note the observation of Bishop Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers II.1 (London 1889), 499–500 that the writer of the Life of Abercius, which he also dated around 380, might also have been the author or someone close to the author of the spurious Life of Polycarp (see 7 n. 18), ‘which is equally lavish in the miraculous’. 66 For illuminating discussion of social networking in exactly this period by wealthy, upwardly mobile families from cities in the middle Maeander region, see Thonemann, Maeander, ‘The nobility of Mount Cadmus’, 203–42.

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Tryphon and Menas: Invention and Plagiarism

It is hard to account for the popularity of some saint’s lives in relation to others. The more often a story was rewritten or retold, the harder it becomes not only to establish its conventional historicity in a literal sense, which was usually very limited, but also to follow the complications of the tradition. Hagiography is a labyrinth. The traditions about Tryphon are connected to his upbringing in Apamea, miracle-working in Rome, martyrdom in Bithynian Nicaea, and the return of his remains to Apamea. The works about St Tryphon, which were edited for the Acta Sanctorum with colossal authority by the Bollandist scholar Hippolyte Delehaye, consist of a Greek passio (the earliest full source), an account of Tryphon’s life and miracles, a second Greek version of the passio, two encomia of the saint delivered by the Byzantine emperors Leo and Theodore Dukas Laskaris, and three Latin vitae.67 The Greek passio is set in the reign of the emperor Gordian. His only daughter, whom he had educated in the palace, had grown up to be a beautiful young princess with many suitors, but was possessed by an evil spirit, which cried out the name of Tryphon, the goose-herd. The emperor sent out decrees far and wide through the empire, including τὰ μέρη Φρυγίας καὶ τῆς Ἀπαμέων πόλεως, to find this person. Soldiers combed every city of the realm, following the orders of two consuls with the elaborate fictitious names Fricius Petronius Pompeianus Volcacius, and Aemilianus Praetextatus. Countless men named Tryphon were arrested and brought to try their luck at healing the girl  – in vain. The military search parties continued and found the blessed youth, tending geese near the village of Sampsas (Sampsados) on the marshy banks of a lake.68 Tryphon was rushed to Rome, and such were his powers that the demon left the girl with a great cry when Tryphon was still three days from the city. He was then required by a sceptical emperor to prove his agency by summoning up the demon that he had successfully exorcised. In dialogue with Tryphon the demon conceded that he was the son of Satan and obligingly listed all the vices of mankind for which Satan was responsible. At the conclusion of the interview, the emperor, crowds of his friends, members of the senate, the wise men and grandees of Rome gave thanks to God. Many pagans (Ἕλληνες) in 67 The manuscript evidence for the various lives and the traditions relating to his cult are reviewed in detail by H. Delehaye, Acta Sanctorum November IV (Brussels 1925), 318–29; the lives and encomia themselves fill eighty-eight double columns of printed text on pp. 329–73. 68 Ramsay, CB 1.2, 450 suggests that the name of Samsado-kome was preserved in the Turkish Samsun Dağ, the mountain that separated Apamea from Beşpınar, the head springs of the Maeander.

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attendance now declared their faith in Jesus Christ. Tryphon was sent home by a grateful ruler, with a cart laden with goods, which he distributed to the destitute during his journey.69 The fairytale of a miracle worker being fetched from Phrygia to expel a demon from the king’s daughter is calqued transparently on the Aberkios story. This version probably dates to the mid-sixth century, when the writer and his readers were still familiar with the polyonymous naming practice of Roman aristocrats. One detail of vocabulary, the word βασταγή meaning a laden waggon and not attested in earlier literature, seems to support this dating.70 However, the tale of expelling the demon who possessed the king’s daughter clearly fell short of the requirements for a major saint, and the story was extended into a full-blown martyr act. The emperor Gordian died and the reign of Philip passed uneventfully, but was followed by the accession of the most notorious anti-Christian emperor of the mid-third century, Trajan Decius. His edict that required everyone to sacrifice to the gods stirred up persecution throughout the empire, and was enforced in Anatolia by pastiche Roman officials called Tiberius Gracchus and Claudius Aquilinus. Tryphon was denounced and arrested by an eirenarch at Apamea called Fronto, who delivered him for trial at Nicaea, where he was imprisoned, interrogated and repeatedly tortured before being decapitated. The mortal remains were transported back to his home village near Apamea where they became a source of cures, exorcisms, and other miracles to strengthen the belief of the faithful.71 Another work, the vita et miracula Sancti Tryphonis described several miracles dating back to the saint’s childhood. It seems to be a sign of local Apamean colour that one of these involves a merchant (ἔμπορος), and another a visit to Caesarea, an indication that the city’s commercial links with Cappadocia were as strong in the later as in the earlier empire, while the healing of a blind woman suggests continued influence from the Life of Aberkios.72 The cult of St Tryphon was well established in the reign of Justinian by 550.73 Procopius noted that he had a splendid church in Constantinople,74 and a monastery is 69 Acta Sanctorum November IV (Brussels 1925), 329–31. 70 LSJ has one attestation, from John Lydus; the word becomes commoner in Byzantine Greek. 71 Acta Sanctorum November IV (Brussels 1925), 331–36. 72 Acta Sanctorum November IV (Brussels 1925), 337–43. 73 R. Janin, La géographie ecclésiastique des grands centres byzantines I (Paris 1969), 488–90; Nowakowski, Saints, 178. Janin refers to a μονὴ τοῦ Τρύφωνος in Chalcedon as early as 488. 74 Procopius, de aed. I. 9: καὶ Τρύφωνι δὲ ἀνέθηκεν ἱερὸν μάρτυρι πόνῳ τε καὶ χρόνῳ πολλῷ ἐς κάλλος ἀποτετορνευμένον ἀμύθητον ὅλως ἐν τῇ τῆς πόλεως ἀγυιᾷ ἣ τοῦ Πελαργοῦς ἐπώνυμός ἐστι.

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attested by an inscription across the waters of the Bosporus at Chalcedon.75 A sixth-century inscription from the Troad records a church or other foundation of St Tryphon, who was the patron of several villages.76 Churches doubtless existed at Apamea itself and elsewhere in Phrygia, but are not securely attested epigraphically.77 It is hardly possible to detect the original seed from which the tale of Tryphon had sprouted, but the shape which it eventually took is entirely fictititous. The composition of the passio of St Menas of Cotiaeum is even more reprehensible. Cotiaeum had emerged to become the most important city of northcentral Phrygia in the fifth century. It had no significant hagiographical tradition and the need to identify a martyr as a focal point for local worship seems to have been supplied during the appointment of Cyrus, one of the most prominent cultural and political personalities of the age of Theodosius II, as bishop in 442. Cyrus, from the city of Panopolis in the upper Nile delta, was probably responsible for introducing the cult of the Egyptian saint Menas to Phrygia.78 The relatively short Greek passio of Menas is a contradictory document.79 The setting is the second year of the reign of Diocletian and the first of Gaius Galerius Valerius Maximianus, the successors of Numerian. This appears to suggest AD 285, when Diocletian and Maximianus were joint rulers, but Diocletian’s colleague then was the western ruler Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maximianus, and the mistake with the name implies that he had been conflated with Gaius Galerius Valerius Maximinanus, colleague of Diocletian in the East and historically one of the initiators of the Great Persecution in 303. After this historical and chronological blunder, the setting of the martyrdom was given as Cotiaeum, metropolis of Phrygia Salutaris, when Argyriskos was governor, and Firmilianus the taxiarch of the ἀριθμοῦ Ῥουτιλλιανῶν (or Ῥουτιλλιακῶν), an otherwise unattested military regiment. An imperial letter, as usual, prescribed worship of the pagan gods, to be enforced by provincial governors (ἄρχουσι) and city officials, τοῖς κατὰ πόλιν στρατηγοῖς. Menas, a soldier who hailed from Egypt, deserts and hides in the wilderness. Some time later, at God’s bidding, he returns to the city during an imperial festival where a horse-race is taking place. The provincial governor, now Pyrrhos who seems 75 Nowakowski, Saints, 317 HLS/02/01; I. Chalcedon 97. 76 Nowakowski, Saints, 317 HLS/02/01; I. Alexandreia Troas 187. 77 See Nowakowski, Saints, index s.v. Tryphon for references; ICG 1000 from Acmonia, discussed on 413 n. 318, is unlikely to refer to Tryphon. 78 See chapter 5.5. 79 Text edited by K. Krumbacher, Miscellen zu Romanos (Abhandlungen der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse 24.3.1, Munich, 1907), 31–43.

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to have succeeded Argyriskos, asks who he is, and Menas declares that he is a Christian. Former regimental colleagues confirm that he had been one of the Rutilliani. He is imprisoned and brought out for trial on the following day. Symmachus, the court recorder, commentariensis, presents him to the governor, who repeats the interrogation of the previous day, receiving the same responses. Menas explains that he was an Egyptian soldier who had deserted the army to serve the heavenly ruler and had been living in the desert. Pyrrhos offers Menas a pardon for his desertion if he makes a sacrifice. Menas declines and is flogged, resisting also the invitation to recant presented by the princeps Pegasios. He is now lashed to a wooden frame and lacerated. The interrogation under torture takes the form of a dialogue between Pyrrhos and Menas, with the former insisting on the emperors’ orders being obeyed, and the latter proclaiming God’s superior authority. Torture and questioning continue for several hours, with the governor being surprisingly (and implausibly) impressed by an ordinary soldier’s knowledge of scripture. Eventually a curiosus (special agent) in the governor’s retinue called Heliodorus reminded Pyrrhos that Christians were always notoriously obdurate and suggested that Menas should simply be executed. After a final plea to Menas and consultation with his advisors Pyrrhos duly passes the verdict that he should be beheaded and the body burned. The execution takes place at a place called Potamia, witnessed by the whole population. The burned relics are then collected from the pyre by other Christians so that they could be placed in churches, ἐν ἁγίοις εὐκτηρίοις. Despite the attempt to make the passio of Menas credible by listing several Roman officials who participated in the arrest and trial, the narrative is banal. Two very similar Greek versions of the life of Menas summarized here were edited simultaneously in 1884, an anonymous passio found in a tenth-century manuscript by the Bollandist scholar G. Van Hooff,80 and a slightly later account written by Theophilos Ioannu, published in a Greek hagiographical collection.81 In 1907 the Byzantinist Karl Krumbacher produced an edition of a hymn (kontakion) to St Menas attributed to the sixth-century poet and composer, Romanos Melodos, which reproduced the story in verse form. Its content closely matches the prose accounts.82 Krumbacher saw that the hymn by 80 G. van Hoof, Analecta Bollandiana 3 (1884), 258–70. 81 Μνημεῖα Ἁγιολογικά (Venice 1884), 284–98. 82 K. Krumbacher, Miscellen zu Romanos, 31–43. The attribution of this work to Romanos itself is now considered implausible, see P. Maas, / C.A. Trypanis, Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica. Cantica Dubia (Berlin 1970), 108–115 nr.75 and 202.

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Romanos implied the existence of an earlier, now lost prose version, which was also the archetype of the two later Byzantine texts. However, he missed the key point that this archetype itself had been created by a blatant act of plagiarism. Pio Franchi de’ Cavalieri immediately recognized that both the earlier verse and the two later prose accounts bore a striking resemblance to an early, and much better known passio, St Basil’s encomium of Gordius,83 which had been written in the 370s and delivered at Caesarea in Cappadocia on the anniversary of the saint’s death. The writers of the Menas texts made no attempt to expand the essential narrative framework beyond the original structure: imperial order; defiance of Menas/Gordius, retreat to the wilderness, return to an imperial celebration, introduction to the governor, arrest, imprisonment, trial, torture, execution, and gathering of the martyr’s remains. Franchi de’ Cavalieri’s meticulous analysis showed not only that the stories of Menas and Gordius were the same in all important respects, but also that much of the wording of all three surviving Menas versions simply copied the passio of Gordius.84 It is logical to conclude that the lost early prose account of the martyrdom of Menas was even closer to the Basilian archetype. The Egyptian statesman Cyrus, who had been forced to relinquish his political career in Constantinople by political rivals and became bishop of Cotiaeum between 442 and 449 seems to have been responsible for this. According to the sixth-century accounts, Cyrus’s appointment may have been overshadowed by doctrinal conflict, and followed a period in which four bishops had been violently put to death by the citizens of Cotiaeum. It is intriguing to speculate why there was such a pressing need to supply Cotiaeum with a martyr’s cult. Perhaps the atmosphere in Phrygia was simply too contentious to allow the choice of a home-grown figure like Trophimos at Synnada.85 The account of the soldier Menas/Gordius filled the lacuna. We may perhaps exempt the exiled Cyrus from committing this blatant act of plagiarism himself, but it must surely have been perpetrated by a hack writer at the great man’s behest. 83 Basil, Passio Gordii, PG 31, 489–508; English translation by Pauline Allen, Basil of Caesarea, in J. Leemans (ed.), Let us die that we may live. Greek Homilies on Christian Martyrs from Asia Minor, Palestine and Syria (London 2003), 55–77 at 56–67; recent discussion by Aude Busine, The origin and development of the cults of St Gordius and St Mamas in Cappadocia. 84 Pio Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Osservazioni sulle legende dei SS. martiri Mena e Trifone, Hagiographica (Studi e testi 19, Rome 1908), 9–42. 85 The entry for Menas (http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E06942) on the Cult of the Saints web-site does not mention Basil’s passio of Gordius, Franchi de’ Cavalieri’s publication, or the likely link between the Menas cult in Phrygia and Cyrus of Panopolis’s term as bishop of Cotiaeum.

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We might allow ourselves a more alluring explanation, that Cyrus was having a sly joke at the expense of his new congregation. When Cyrus had first arrived in Cotiaeum shortly before Christmas, the feast of the Holy Nativity, he encountered a hostile reception from a congregation which suspected that he might be a Hellene (pagan), and demanded that he preach a Christmas sermon. The new bishop simply proclaimed that the birth of the Lord was best honoured by silence, since the Virgin had conceived the Logos by listening. Cyrus reference to the Theotokos in this briefest of sermons confirmed his Orthodox credentials against the Nestorians. Providing his constituents with an ersatz Saint’s Life, borrowed from the model of one of the great Cappadocian patristic writers, may be evidence for the same sense of humour.86 6.5

Agapetos of Synaus, a Priest in a Dark-age Parish

The life of St Agapetos, a saint with a regional base in north-west Phrygia, is known only from a single tenth-century manuscript.87 The genre on which it is modelled is that of the miracle-working local saint, and the prototype is the Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus, the expanded and edited version of a sermon delivered in the Pontic metropolis Neocaesareia to the assembled bishops of the region on 17 November 379, and one of the small number of saints’ lives from late antiquity which can be ascribed to a well-known author, Gregory of Nyssa.88 The longest and most important example of this genre from Asia Minor is the Life of Theodore of Sykeon, an extraordinarly detailed account of a holy man’s activities in north-western Galatia, Nicomedia and Constantinople in the late sixth and early seventh centuries, written by one

86

For Cyrus, see PLRE II, 336–9 Cyrus 7 and 365–6. The main sources for the Cotiaeum story are Malalas 14.16, 361–2, Chron. Pasch. I, 588 and Theophanes, Chron. a.m. 5937 (the latter two locating the exile to Smyrna). An independent fifth-century source, the Life of Daniel the Stylite 31–2, confirms the location as Cotiaeum. For the sermon see T. E. Gregory, ‘The remarkable Christmas homily of Kyros Panopolites’, GRBS 16 (1975), 317–24. 87 The only modern edition is by A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Varia Sacra Graeca (St Petersburg 1909), reprinted with an introduction by J. Dummer (Leipzig 1975), 114–29. 88 S. Mitchell, The life and lives of Gregory Thaumaturgus, 128; P. Maraval, in the introduction to Éloge de Grégoire le Thaumaturge / Grégoire de Nysse (Paris 2014).), 14 n. 24, 160 ff.), agrees with the dating but suggests that the sermon was preached at the small town of Ibora, but this is based on a misunderstanding, see S. Mitchell, art. Sebaste, Reallexicon für Antike und Christentum 30 (2019), 70–87 at 82.

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of his close followers.89 There are other comparable biographies including the mid-fifth-century Life and Miracles of Thecla,90 and the sixth-century Life of St Nicholas of Sion,91 which provide rich material for the regional study respectively of Isauria and of inland Lycia in late antiquity. The preserved version of the Life of Agapetos, clearly intended for oral delivery on the day of the saint’s death, 18 February, derived some of its content from earlier accounts composed in late antiquity. Some information about the saint may have featured in a now lost part of Philostorgius’s fifth-century Church History, cited by Photius in the ninth century, and referred to in the Suda.92 The flimsy chronological setting of the life suggests that Agapetos was active under Licinius but escaped persecution and was elected to the bishopric under Constantine after Licinius’s death in captivity in Thessalonica.93 The narrative contains seemingly exact information about Parthenios, prominent bishop of the Hellespontine city of Lampsacus under Constantine, and his predecessor Marcianus.94 However, the final chapter starts with a blessing upon the reigning emperor and a prayer for victory in his struggles against the lawless Hagarenes, the Muslim Arab invaders of Asia Minor, which indicates that it was delivered in the Byzantine dark ages, probably in the eighth or in the

89 A. J. Festugière, La Vie de Théodore de Sykéon (Subs. Hagiograph. 48; Brussels 1970, two vols.), which has been exploited by every historian of Byzantine Asia Minor; in most detail, S. Mitchell, Anatolia II (1993), 122–50. 90 G. Dagron, Vie et miracles de sainte Thècle (Subs. Hagiograph. 62, Brussels 1978); B. Kollmann / B. Schröder, Pseudo-Basilius von Seleukeia. Vita et Miracula Sanctae Theclae (Freiburg 2021). 91 G. Anrich, Hagios Nikolaos, der heilige Nikolaos in der griechischen Kirche, Texte und Untersuchungen (Leipzig/Berlin, vol. 1: 1913; vol. 2: 1917); H. Blum, Vita Nicolai Sionitae (Bonn, 1997); English translation, I. Ševčenko, and N. Patterson-Ševčenko, The Life of St. Nicholas of Sion (Brookline, Mass. 1984); see C. Foss, Cities and villages in Lycia in the Life of Saint Nicholas of Holy Sion, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 36 (1991), 303–339. 92 Suda s.v. Ἀγαπητός (Philostorgius HE 2 fr. 8a): ἐπίσκοπος Συνάδων, ὂν ἐν ἐπαίνῳ πολλῷ τίθεται Εὐσέβιος ὁ Παμφίλου, καὶ θαυμάτων αὐτοῦ ἐξαισίων [*][*]νάδων ἐπίσκοπος ὕστερον· περὶ γοῦν τούτου πολλὰ τερατολογῶν, νεκροῦς τε αὐτὸν ἀναστῆσαι λέγει καὶ πολλῶν ἄλλων παθῶν φυγαδευτὴν γενέσθαι καὶ ἐλατῆρα, οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ παραδόξων ἄλλων ἔργων δημιουργόν· καὶ πολλοὺς ἐξ Ἑλλήνων εἰς τὸν Χριστιανισμὸν μετατάζασθαι παρασκευάσαι. The Suda entry confused the little-known Synaus with the Phrygian metropolis Synnada. 93 V. Agapeti 11, a surprisingly circumstantial historical detail which suggests that there was some basis for dating the original bishop Agapetos to this period. 94 V. Apapeti 23 (Marcianus the predecessor of Parthenius as bishop) and 50: κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν καιρὸν καὶ Παρθενίου τοῦ Λαμψακηνοῦ προέδρου ἐπὶ τὴν τῆς ἀρχιερωσύνης μέλλοντος ἀναβιβασθῆναι καθέδραν.

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first half of the ninth century.95 The vita preserves a distant echo of the age of Constantine in the Middle Byzantine period.96 Agapetos is introduced as a Christian from Cappadocia, born of Christian parents, who spent his early youth in a large monastery in the mountains near the west Phrygian town of Synaus, a location which was confused by the other sources which mention him with the much larger central Phrygian city of Synnada. His career, as described, started with religious upbringing in a monastery, located on a mountain outside Synaus, where he was singled out by the archimandrite Abraham, and sent to be instructed by a bishop, and later selected for the priesthood by doubtless the same bishop, whom he succeeded in office.97 Less plausibly, the life inserts a spell of military service between the monastic novitiate (supposedly under Diocletian and Maximianus) and recruitment to the clergy immediately after the death of Licinius under Constantine.98 Two of the most outlandish miracles ascribed to the saint, including the destruction of a flying dragon controlled by a magus,99 relate to this imagined period of military service. Most of the saint’s subsequent accomplishments are more prosaic, but it is a revealing comment that he had to defend himself against charges that his powers were not derived from black magic, but divine energeia.100 The biography, if we may call it that, mainly consists of anecdotes about the ‘great man’, sometimes grouped by loose association with one another, but with no significant attempt to achieve chronological or thematic order. Several stories relate to Agapetus’s responsibilities and duties as a bishop. He twice participates in the election or inauguration of fellow bishops, of Cyzicus and,

95 V. Agapeti 58: Πρόστηθι τοίνυν καὶ βασιλέως ἡμῶν τοῦ πιστοῦ καὶ πᾶσι κεκοσμημένου τρόποις τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς, καὶ χάρισαι τούτῳ ὧδε μὲν μῆκος ζωῆς χαριεστάτης καὶ ἀπαθοῦς, ἰσχὺν κατ᾽ἐχθρῶν, χώρας αὐτῶν τὴν κατάλυσιν, Ἀγαρηνῶν ἀνομούντων τὴν ἐξολόθρευσιν καὶ πάσης νικοποιοῦ δυνάμεως παροχήν. 96 See S. Lieu, From history to legend and legend to history: the medieval and Byzantine transformation of Constantine’s vita, in S. Lieu and D. Montserrat (eds), Constantine. History, historiography and legend (London and New York 1998), 151–60 on the hagiographic lives of Constantine composed in the tenth and eleventh centuries. 97 V. Agapeti 2 (monastery and episcopal instruction): ἔν τινι μοναστηρίῳ τῶν κατὰ τὴν Συναὸν ὀρέων κειμένῳ, μεγίστῳ μὲν εἰς ἀρετῆς λόγον, μεγίστῳ δὲ καὶ τῷ πλήθει τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ συνειλεγμένων θείων ἀνδρῶν; 12–13 (becomes priest and bishop). 98 V. Agapeti 4. 99 V. Agapeti 7: ἀστραπαὶ δὲ φρικωδεῖς … τὸν φαινόμενον ἐκεῖνον θῆρα σὺν τῷ μάγῳ διελικμήσαντο. The verb διαλικμάω is not classical. 100 V. Agapeti 2: ὡς γοητείαις Ἀγαπητὸς τὰς ἰάσεις οὐκ ἐνεργείᾳ διαπράττοιτο θείᾳ.

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more memorably, of the famous Parthenios of Lampsacus.101 These references indicate that Synaus, at least at the time of the Life’s composition, had regular connections by routes which following the valleys of the Macestus and the Aesepus to the Hellespontine region, presumably because it was part of the same ecclesiastical province as the coastal cities around the sea of Marmara. On another occasion, Agapetus is supposed to have responded to an invitation from Parthenios’s predecessor Marcianus, to settle a dispute among the monks of Lampsacus.102 Matters of church discipline were a recurrent theme. A priest who had committed a violent assault was only acquitted from severe punishment by the pleas of fellow clergy.103 A deacon by origin from the major Propontic harbour city of Heracleia (Perinthus) admitted to having sex with a nun, but obtained a pardon from the bishop, an anecdote that was repeated with less detail in another chapter of the Life.104 Another deacon, previously held in high esteem, was excused punishment despite having stolen an ox.105 Agapetus ensured that an itinerant cleric, a periodeutes, who had bequeathed a plot of land for growing vegetables to the church, bided by his undertaking.106 He urged that a repentant nun who had broken her vow of chastity, should be accepted back by her fellows.107 His own nephew Marcellus, perhaps another churchman, suffered forty days illness having molested a widow.108 The monks, presumably of his former monastery, benefitted from his counsel and good advice, both when they were disturbed by the temptations of evil spirits, and when he pointed out that the lavish town houses on which they were casting envious eyes would be laid low by a coming earthquake.109 101 V. Agapeti 16: τοῦ προέδρου Κυζίκου (πόλις δὲ αὐτὴ τῆς Ἑλλησπόντου) τῶν τῇδε μετακεχωρηκότος, ὁ μέγας οὗτος ἅμα τῇ συνόδῳ τὴν πόλιν κατέλαβεν, ἐφ᾽ᾧ τὸν προστησόμενον προχειρίσονται; and 50. 102 V. Agapeti 23. 103 V. Agapeti 20: ταῖς τοῦ κλήρου παντὸς ἐπικαμφθεὶς ἱκεσίαις ἔλυσε τῷ ἀνδρὶ τὴν ὀργήν. 104 V. Agapeti 18, repeated at 33: καὶ γὰρ διάκονόν τινα τῆς ὑπ᾽αὐτὸν ἐκκλησίας φθορέα γνοὺς παρθένου γεγενημένον οῦκ ἀπώσατο μέν, ἐπαίδευσε δὲ λόγοις σοφοῖς καὶ διὰ μετανοίας τὴν σωτηρίαν αὐτῷ προεξένησε, τοῦ ἱερᾶσθαι μόνον κατὰ τοὺς ἱεροὺς κανόνας κωλύσας αὐτον. 105 V. Agapeti 33. 106 V. Agapeti 29. For periodeutai, see Feissel, Études d’épigraphie et d’histoire des premiers siècles de Byzance (2020), 14–17, pointing out (17 n. 81) that they were not all priests, but were sometimes lesser clerics who assisted the bishop in administering the churches in his dioecese. 107 V. Agapeti 31. 108 V. Agapeti 19. 109 V. Agapeti 32: καί τισι δὲ μοναχοῖς περί τινος διηγουμένοις πόλεως, ὡς μεγάλοις καὶ λαμπροῖς κεκόσμηται οἰκοδομήμασιν, ὁ τοῦ θεοῦ ἱεράρχης σεισμῷ προλέγει ταύτην καταστραφῆναι· ὃ δὴ καὶ μετά τινα χρόνον ἐγένετο.

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There were similar quasi-judicial interventions in lay matters, and the informal enforcement of moral norms. When a group of creditors harrass a widow for the repayment of debts which are said already to have been paid by her husband, the bishop engages in miraculous conversation with the corpse, which tells him that the debt has been cleared, before returning to sleep.110 A rich man is prevented from seizing the land of a poor neighbour.111 He assists in forcing a confession from a man being tried by a neighbouring bishop for serious misdemeanours.112 Sins and impure behaviour were not usually a matter for judicial action. He senses when individuals are about to err and teaches them to repent for the good of their souls.113 By inducing light attacks of illness he prevents clergymen and lay people from falling into moral jeopardy. A woman slips away fom home to commit a lustful act, Agapetus ensures that the horse pulling her cart slips its bit and bridle, and she is forced to beg forgiveness for the frustrated escapade.114 Not all such stories end happily. A wealthy woman with her daughter from Nicomedia seek his blessing, but Agapetos learns that she is committing adultery with a house slave, and warns her to leave off this sinful practice and repent. She seeks his blessing, but is keen to get home to congratulate her son on being promoted to high office by the emperor. The saint tells her not to hurry as her son has died before he could accept the promotion.115 The perils and corruptions of big cities are an underlying moral theme, implicit in Agapetos’s declining to accept promotion to become bishop of Constantinople.116 In obvious imitation of the Aberkios archetype, the daughter of a noble was possessed by a demon, and Agapetos, having received an invitation brought by the girl’s father from the emperor himself, to intercede with a cure, avoided the trap set by the demon and did so from a safe distance, by giving the father a letter of blessing which cured the girl when she touched it.117 Other tales concerned churches and church construction. One miracle was to clear a rocky outcrop obstructing the building of a martyrs’ church at Synaus. These were presumably Victorinus, Dorotheus, Theodoulos and Agrippa who were said to have been martyred during the time of Agapetos’s own military service. Perhaps a duplicate version of the same story relates how his prayers 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117

V. Agapeti 25: ὁ νεκρὸς ἀνέστη καὶ τὴν ὀφειλὴν ἀποδοῦναι διεβεβαίου καὶ αὖθις κεκοίμητο. V. Agapeti 35. V. Agapeti 22. V. Agapeti 52, cf. 49. V. Agapeti 49. V. Agapeti 17. V. Agapeti 14. V. Agapeti 26.

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caused a hillock beside a church that blocked out the morning sun to collapse into an adjacent hollow and allow in the light.118 A black story relates how he raised from the dead a work-shy labourer building a church who had collapsed suddenly, and ordered him not to leave his work. When the man again tried to get away, he was struck by a severe eye infection, and his sight was only restored by the saint’s touch when his companions start to carry him off. It was only by using the saint’s belt as a strap that the labourers could shift huge columns for the construction.119 Non-Christians formed part of the environment, at least as imagined, and furnished converts. He raised a Jewish youth as from the dead, and expelled a demon from a young pagan, so that they, their family members and companions became Christians.120 The inhabitants of a pagan village (Ἕλληνες) became Christian after he steered the stream that threatened to wash away their settlement through a gap in the mountains.121 Similar stories about averting floods include the request from the bishop of Silandus, the formerly Mysian town in the upper Hermos valley, to divert a river from its old bed and thus spare the houses on its banks and especially the town church.122 An alternative version suggests that the townsmen’s houses were washed away by a raging torrent but the church was spared.123 Agapetos himself is characterised as humble, gentle and mild of manner – τὸ δὲ ταπεινὸν τοῦ δικαίου, τὸ δὲ ἥμερον, τὸ δὲ πρᾷον τὶς ἂν παραστήσειε λόγος; – as illustrated by a story of a visit to the bath-house, when he is first assailed by a man who does not recognise him, and then ignored by the attendants when he looks to them for a bath-robe. On another occasion, he gives his own coat to a naked beggar.124 The perils of the rural environment included venomous snakes, locust swarms and mosquito infestation around the local lake and river, the former a distinguishing feature in the territory of Synaus.125 Life and labour in the fields was unrelenting, and poverty ever present. The saint predicted the imminent death of an old man labouring on his plot, and chased off a demon who molested, and even strangled, passing travellers.126 He intervened 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125

V. Agapeti 10 (martyrdom), 15 (church), 53 (hillock levelled). V. Agapeti 47 and 48. V. Agapeti 24 and 46. V. Agapeti 40. V. Agapeti 21. V. Agapeti 30. V. Agapeti 42–43. V. Agapeti 38, 27 and 28. For the lake at Synaus, see L. Robert, Documents d’Asie Mineure, BCH 106 (1982), 352–9. 126 V. Agapeti 43–45.

section 6.6: Hagiographic Credibility

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to chase the demons from a man who was tormented as if being whipped,127 another who seemed paralysed or shackled, and a group of seven unmarried girls, perhaps troublesome teenagers, who were then duly baptised.128 There is a circumstantial and convincing account of an old woman being cured of a tape worm which passed from her anus after thirteen months in her intestines, or, as the life puts it, a dragon which crumbled to ashes and cinders in a storm of thunder and lightening as it was expelled from her body.129 Modern readers may form their own judgement about the nature of these events, and so, likely enough, did ancient listeners to these tales. They lack the extraordinary contextual richness of the descriptions found in the life of Theodore of Sykeon, which make it possible to use this as the basis for a social anthropological analysis of the relationship of the holy man to both the local and wider community of sixth- and seventh-century Galatia. But, within their limits, the tales told about Agapetos offer a recognisable, if not strictly realistic picture of a bishop in a small Phrygian town sometime during the Byzantine dark ages, a pastoral figure, engaged in imposing moral order with a surprisingly light touch, attempting to resolve disputes, offering advice and support to fellow churchman, and keeping his distance from the business of the empire’s capital. We cannot know that Agapetos was typical of all the bishops of his ilk, since we lack other comparable narratives from the region, but essentially the biography presented a life that was exemplary not only of a saintly man, but of the environment in which he lived and worked. 6.6

Hagiographic Credibility

The lives of saints and martyrs pose an obvious question. How far, if at all, are they credible? Did the authors think they were telling the truth about these holy men, and if so, what sort of truth? All of them offered accounts of miracles, that is of events and actions for which there was no explanation except the revelation of God’s will embodied in the action of the saint. Many of them described superhuman feats of endurance and resilience of martyrs, whose faith made them impervious to the torments to which they are subjected. Questions about the credibility of miracles and of more than human behavior, which play a major part in modern discussions of hagiographical sources, are

127 V. Agapeti 41. 128 V. Agapeti 36–37. 129 V. Agapeti 54.

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by no means a modern invention.130 Origen rebutted the charge of Celsus that Christ’s miracles were fictitious with the somewhat flimsy defence that the gospel stories should be believed precisely because they were so implausible that no one could have invented them.131 Thoughtful theologians were careful in the way they deployed the evidence of miracles, so as not to undermine their credibility. In an excellent recent study, Claire Rachel Jackson has drawn attention to a passage at the end of Gregory of Nyssa’s life of his saintly elder sister Macrina, which illustrates contemporary awareness of the problem of credibility.132 Gregory relates the story which was told to him by a military officer and his wife whom he had met on the road departing from Macrina’s funeral. The couple had visited Macrina’s monastic community at Annesoi in Pontus with their infant daughter, who had a serious disfiguring eye condition. While the husband joined the men around Gregory’s younger brother Peter, his wife spent her time with the women attending the saint. Macrina kissed the child, a natural thing to do (οἷα εἶκος), and promised that she could provide a medication which would help the condition. The couple set out on the return journey, talking to one another about their experiences, until the wife remembers that she has failed to collect the eye-salve which had been promised. The soldier sent a man from his retinue back to collect the medicine, but at this moment the child looked up at his mother, and they saw that the eye affliction had been cured, as by a miracle. The soldier explained the healing by his own Christian belief: ‘Is it too great that sight is restored to the blind by the hand of God, when through faith in him his handmaid now accomplishes the same healing, and has worked something not much short of those miracles?’ Macrina, by a normal act of love and affection, could be seen to have exercised an otherwise incredible power of healing. Gregory concluded the work with a general reflection on the credibility of miracles. I do not think it advisable to add to my narrative all the other stories like this that we have heard from those who lived with her and knew her life accurately. For most men, judging the credibility of what they are told 130 See the lucid study by Paul Turner, Truthfulness, Realism, Historicity. A study in late antique spiritual literature (London 2012). 131 Origen, Contra Celsum 2.48. 132 Claire Rachel Jackson, Believable lies and implausible truths: negotiating late antique concepts of fiction in Heliodoros’s Aithiopika, Transactions of the American Philological Association 151 (2015), 203–35 at p. 225.

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by their own measure, mock anything that transcends the capacity of the hearer with suspicions of falsehood and exclude it from the truth. … (3) There were indeed other events more astonishing than these: the healings of diseases and casting out of demons, and foreseeing of future events that did not lie. All are credited as true by those who have investigated them accurately, even though they may be incredible. (4) But they are considered by the more fleshly minded to exceed the limits of what is acceptable – by those, that is, who do not realize that the distribution of spiritual gifts is ‘according to the analogy of faith’ (Rom. 12.6), with the result that little is given to those with little faith, and much to those who make generous room within themselves for the faith. (5). In order that the more incredible stories do not harm those who do not believe the gifts of God, I have refrained from a consecutive narrative of these sublime wonders, deeming that what has been already said is sufficient to bring to a conclusion what concerns her life.133 Rational doubts about miracle cures were clearly a normal fourth-century reaction to extraordinary stories. Gregory is careful, therefore, not to stretch the credulity of his hearers or readers, although he does so with the deft excuse that this was a device to spare doubters the risk of exposing their unwarranted scepticism. Gregory of Nyssa’s account of Macrina took the form of a long letter sent to several addressees in the autumn of 379. On 17 November of the same year he delivered and soon afterwards published a revised version of his Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus. In the life of Macrina, Gregory confined himself to expounding a single miracle, the healing of the child, while in the case of his namesake, the third-century bishop of Pontic Neocaesareia, he made miracles the central feature of the long narrative and thereby set an important precedent for the new hagiographical genre. The final chapter contained a disclaimer, which was virtually identical to the one in the Life of Macrina, not to add further miracle stories so as not to throw doubt on their veracity. ‘There are also other miracles of the great Gregory which have been preserved in memory up to today, but we we have kept them back from disbelieving ears, so that people, who confronted with the mightiness of what has been said, consider truths to be falsehoods, may be protected from harm, and we have not added them to the those which

133 Greg. Nyss., Vita Macrinae 42 in the translation of Anna Silvas, Macrina the Younger. Philosopher of God (Turnhout 2008), 148.

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have been presented above’.134 However, there were other circumstantial differences which affected his decision to relate only one miraculous story about his sister, but many about his namesake and predecessor. Macrina was a contemporary figure, known to his readers; Gregory the Wonder-worker had died over a century before and knowledge of his life derived largely from an inventive oral tradition. However, far more important than this was the disposition of the hearers or readers. The miracles of Gregory Thaumaturgus were retold to an audience of bishops, gathered to celebrate the day of the saint’s death. These were exactly the reverse of the people ‘with a less spiritual view’, who might have been unconvinced by such tales. The same bishops on this occasion were presented not only with the stories of their great predecessor’s many miracles, but with the highly controversial wording of the Creed, namely that this text, which could be consulted in Gregory’s autograph version, had been delivered in a dream revealed to Gregory Thaumaturgus by John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary themselves. Circumstantial evidence shows that this ‘divine document’ had almost certainly been drafted by Gregory of Nyssa himself in the months preceding his address, as was surely known to the assembled bishops. However, the higher truth, that this ‘document’ conveyed God’s will and intention, transformed the mundane facts about the Creed’s authorship into a matter of secondary importance. The circumstances of the address demanded that the assembled bishops suspended any doubts that they may have had about the theological implications of the Creed, and any disbelief that they may have fleetingly harboured in the wonders worked by the saint.135 The contexts in which martyr acts and saints’ lives were composed and presented to audiences and readers were crucial to the way in which they should be interpreted. The dedication of a church, or the annual celebration of a saint’s death, when he passed from temporal to eternal life, were occasions when even less spiritual members of congregations would repress any doubts they may have harboured about the credibility of the stories they heard. The aim of most hagiographic writing was not to persuade the less credulous but to preach to the converted.

134 Greg. Nyss. Vita Greg. Thaum. 104: ἔστι δὲ καὶ ἄλλα τῇ μνήμῃ μέχρι τοῦ δεῦρο διασωζόμενα τοῦ μεγάλου Γρηγορίου θαύματα, ἅπερ φειδόμενοι τῆς ἀπιστούσης ἀκοῆς, ὡς ἂν μὴ βλαβεῖεν οἱ τὸ ἀληθὲς ἐν τῷ μεγέθει τῶν λεγομένων ψεῦδος οἰόμενοι, τοῖς προγεγραμμένοις οὐ προσεθήκαμεν. 135 Silvas, Macrina the Younger, 12–17, has traced the theological basis of the creed through Macrina the Elder, Basil and Gregory’s grandmother, who belonged to a generation that could have imbibed the teaching of Gregory Thaumaturgus.

section 6.7: St Michael: Beyond Description

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St Michael: Beyond Description

Pawel Nowakowski in his monograph on the saints of late antique Anatolia has underlined the distinctive position occupied by the archangel Michael.136 St Michael, archangel and archistrategos, commander of the sacred hosts, was neither part of the Apostolic or New Testament traditions, nor a creation of more recent Christian history and experience, like the martyrs and other local Christian heroes who make up the ranks of the sancti or hagioi in Asia Minor, but was drawn from a Jewish background. St Michael was not treated hagiographically, as were other soldier saints in Anatolian Christianity,137 but was repeatedly identified as a supernatural source of protection. There are accounts of miracles performed by St Michael, but none of his life. Excepting the Lord himself, Michael was the object of more prayers and invocations in central Asia Minor than any other supernatural figure, including Christ and the Theotokos. According to Sozomen, the Michaelion, the first church of St Michael at Constantinople, which was located on the European side of the Bosporos near Arnavutköy, had been built by Constantine himself. This is unverifiable, but the cult surely dates to the fourth century, and Sozomen narrated two healing miracles performed at the sanctuary, with which he was closely acquainted.138 In due course there were more than a dozen churches of St Michael in Constantinople and its environs.139 Ritual appeals to the archangel occur at many locations, but the two most famous cult centres were located on the fringes of Phrygia, slightly beyond the perimeter of the Phrygian circle which defines the scope of this book. One was the early Byzantine religious centre of Germia at the edge of the north-east quadrant, a settlement barely large enough to qualify for designation as a town, but which became an autocephalous archbishopric in the seventh century.140 A Middle Byzantine text, the Miracles of Saint Michael written by a deacon 136 Nowakowski, Saints, 200–203. 137 Hippolyte Delehaye, Légendes grecques des saints militaires (Paris 1909); Monica White, Military Saints in Byzantium and Rus, 900–1200 (Cambridge 2013). 138 Sozomen, HE II.3. 139 P. Canivet, Le Michaelion de Huarte et le culte syrien des anges, Byzantion 50 (1980), 85–117, at 100, citing R. Janin, Les Églises et les Monastères des Grands Centres Byzantins (Paris 1969), 349–64. 140 K. Belke, Tabula Imperii Byzantini 4. Galatien und Lykaonien, 166–8; P. Niewöhner et al., Bronze Age höyüks, Iron Age hilltop forts, Roman poleis and Byzantine pilgrimage in Germia and its vicinity. ‘Connectivity’ and a lack of ‘definite places’ on the central Anatolian high plateau, AS 63 (2013), 97–136 for an archaeological and topographical study. I am sceptical of the argument that Germia’s northern neighbour was a town called Mantalos.

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called Pantoleon, explained that Germia had become celebrated through the patronage and benefactions of the Constantinopolitan magnate John Studios, consul in 454, who had witnessed the curative powers of holy water brought from its hot springs. He thereupon built a magnificent church, a rest home for the elderly, and guest accommodation, and diverted revenues from his estates for their upkeep, transforming a local Kurort into a major religious healing spa.141 The church dedicated to St Michael, a mid-fifth-century three-aisled building, was expanded into a colossal five-aisled basilica in the Justinianic period, one of the largest churches in Anatolia, and an important magnet for pilgrims, including the aged emperor Justinian in person.142 Many outsiders to the region were buried at the place.143 Its fame as a centre of pilgrimage, host to countless pious visitors, gave impetus to the spread of Churches of St Michael to Constantinople and other regions. The other Phrygian sanctuary of comparable stature was the Church of St Michael at Colossae in the Lycus valley, a cult which subsequently became attached to the Late Byzantine fortress of Chonai. This was another focal point for pilgrims and the centre of one of the largest regional fairs of the Late Byzantine period.144 St Michael’s Anatolian homeland was Phrygia. The name is still perpetuated in modern Turkish toponymy – the towns of Mihaliççik towards Galatia, Mihalgazi, near the Propontis, and Mihaliç on the Bithynian frontier. There was a village near Afyon called Mikhail. Michael was the personal name of a mid-sixth-century bishop at Motella (ICG 1076, ICG 1082), and of the archdeacon responsible for rebuilding the temple at Aezani in AD 1005 (ICG 1307), although it occurred less commonly in the region’s onomastics than one 141 C. Mango edited excerpts from 10th and 11th century manuscript copies in Δελτιον τῆς χριστιανικής αρχαιολογικής εταιρείας 12 (1984), 47–9. John Studios’s foundations are described as follows: τότε ὁ περιφανὴς ἀνὴρ καὶ ἔνδοξος Στούδιος μεγάλαις εὐχαριστίαις τὸν τοῦ θεοῦ μέγαν άρχιστράτηγον Μιχαὴλ έμεγάλυνε, καὶ ἀπευχαριστῶν ἀνῳκοδόμησε καὶ κατεκόσμησεν τὸν πανσεβάσμιον αὐτοῦ καὶ ἔνδοξον ναόν, κτίσας ἐν τοῖς πέριξ αὐτοῦ γηροκομεία καί ξενοδοχεία πλείστα ὡς καὶ ἐν Κωνσταντινουπόλει εἰς μνημόσυνον τῆς ευσέβειας αὐτοῦ, προσκυρώσας ἐν αὐτοῖς ἀγρῶν πολλῶν προσόδους, καὶ ὑπέστρεψεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ χαίρων καὶ δοξάζων τὸν θεὸν καὶ τὸν παμμέγιστον αὐτοῦ ἀρχιστράτηγον Μιχαήλ. 142 C. Mango, The Pilgrimage Centre of St Michael in Germia, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 36 (1986), 117–32; Germia: a postscript, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 41 (1991), 297–300; P. Niewöhner and K. Rheidt, Die Michaelskirche in Germia (Galatien, Türkei), Archäologischer Anzeiger 2010, 1, 137–60. 143 A. V. Walser, Chiron 43 (2013), 527–620: 563 no. 15, 567 no. 20, 569–70 no. 21, 575 no. 27, 580 no. 31, with Feissel, Bull.ep. 2014, 581. 144 Ramsay, CB 1.1, 213–6; U. Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 372–7; P. Thonemann, The Maeander, 77–83. A. H. Cadwallader, The Story of the Archistrategos St Michael of Chonai, in A. Cadwallader and M. Trainor (eds), Colossae in Time and Space: linking to an ancient city (Göttingen 2011), 323–30 (legends of St Michael in English translation).

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might have expected compared with the number of votive texts and church dedications.145 The late Roman and Byzantine settlements contained more churches dedicated to the archangel than to any other saint or holy figure. There was a church at Nacolea founded by John Studios around 450,146 a church under construction at Mossyna (ICG 1084),147 the Justinianic church probably built by a patron from Constantinople at Karaköy north of Cotiaeum (ICG 1216),148 a sixth-century church at the large site of Çayhisar near Kidyessos (ICG 1464),149 the ‘palace’ restored at Sozopolis in 585 (ICG 1139), and the ‘most sacred temple’, πάνσεπτος ναός, which was rebuilt under the patronage of the emperor Constantine Porphyogennitos at Akroinos in 945–9 (ICG 4507).150 These were all major foundations, probably the most important churches in their respective communities. Appeals to the archangel occurred in all parts of Phrygia, and it is reasonable to assume that there were corresponding churches in most of the places where these inscriptions have been recorded. At Haci Mahmut near Aezani a head of household offered fulsome gratitude to the archangel for the preservation of his family and the recovery of a child (ICG 1302), and there are simpler appeals for help in a village of the Upper Tembris Valley (ICG 1199), at Üçkuyu (ICG 1078), and on a Middle Byzantine text from Philomelium (ICG 618). A fragment of marble decoration from Çalça near Dioclea simply refers to the archestrategos (ICG 4532). In the Tavşanlı region St Michael may have been invoked alongside St Sisinnios, the Persian soldier saint who protected childbirth (ICG 1223). At Temenothyrae the prayer to the archangel for succour was subsidiary to an unusually explicit plea for Christ’s intervention: ✝ Χριστὸς θεοῦ δύναμις κὲ θεοῦ σοφία, κύριος, ἐμοὶ βοηθός, καὶ οὐ φοβήσομαι τί ποιήσει μοι ἄνθρωπος (ICG 1619). Revenues from a church of St Michael helped pay for a memorial for the members of a pious family at Bozüyük in the western part of the territory of Dorylaeum (ICG 1421). A text from Ephesus vividly illustrates both popular veneration of St Michael and one of the routes of transmission whereby the cult made its way from Phrygia to the major Roman administrative centre in Asia. A gaming board of the sixth century found close to the agora at Ephesus carries invocations to two manifestations of St Michael, with churches respectively in the villages Doryloskômê and Paukômê, the former, whose name evoked the city of Dorylaeum, certainly, and the latter probably 145 146 147 148 149 150

LGPN Vc, 297 lists six examples (all Byzantine) s.v. Μιχαήλ, Μιχαήλης and Μιχαήλιος. See 380. See 426. See 360–1. See 417–8. See 395.

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Phrygian toponyms. The first appeal, according to a brilliant conjecture, was for the archangel to come to the aid of the watch and the jailor at the prison in Ephesus, posts that were occupied by migrant workers from Phrygia.151 Explanations of the popularity of the cult of St Michael first have to surmount an apparent contradiction. A significant strand of early Christianity deplored the worship of angels. This can be traced back to Paul’s epistle to the Colossians – later the location of one of the most important churches of St Michael – and the verse in which he admonished the recipients of the letter to ‘let no one voluntarily pass negative judgement on you by a play of humility and the worship of angels, pacing around (and laying claim to) what he has seen, randomly puffed up by the designs of his flesh, and not in control of his senses’.152 Predictably enough, Paul’s obscure condemnation of angel worship was picked up and reiterated by orthodox ideologues in late antiquity, with or without reference to the letter to the Colossians.153 The bishops who assembled at the Council of Laodicea in the fourth century explicitly declared the worship of angels to be anathema: ‘Christians must not foresake the church, and go away and call on angels by name (ἀγγέλους ὀνομάζειν) and summon assemblies, as these things are forbidden. If any one shall be found engaged in this covert worship of idols, they shall be anathema’.154 It should be noted that this canon occurred among several other resolutions that condemned fraternization or shared worship with Jews, heretics and schismatics: canon 29 was directed against those who refused to work on the Sabbath, canon 37 against those who took part in Jewish festivals, and canon 38 against those who observed the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread; canon 31 outlawed marriage with heretics, canon 34 forbade the veneration of false martyrs, canon 33 condemned those who worshipped in the company of schismatics, and canon 36 was directed against clergy who practiced magic or astrology. The first three of these directly concerned judaising Christians, and the others dealt with other 151 I. Ephesos IV, 1347; Nowakowski, Inscribing the Saints, 335–6; D. Feissel, Invocations chrétiennes à Éphèse, Tyche 35 (2020), 35–45, restores the text: [† Θῖε ἀρχάγγελε] Μιχαὴλ Δορυλοσκωμῆτα, βοή|[θησον τῆς κουστ]οδίας ταύτης καὶ τοῦ καβικλαριοῦ· θῖ|[ε Μιχαὴλ ἀρχάγγ]ελε Παυκωμῆτα, βοήθησον τῆς ὐτα|[ξίας ?] ταύτης. 152 Col. II. 18 μηδεὶς ὑμᾶς καταβραβευέτω θέλων ἐν ταπεινοφροσύνῃ καὶ θρησκείᾳ τῶν ἀγγέλων, ἃ ἑόρακεν ἐμβατεύων, εἰκῇ φυσιούμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ νοὸς τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ, καὶ οὐ κρατῶν τὴν κεφάλην. The translation is difficult. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians 348 deduces that ἐμβατεύων was a term derived from pagan cult. It could also refer to the work of land surveyors, pacing the bounds and thereby establishing ownership of a property, and occurs in this sense in LXX Ios. 19.49 and 2 Macc. 2.20 (I owe these references to D. Migeotte). 153 Augustine, Civ. Dei 19, 23; de vera rel. 110; see already Origen, Contra Celsum V. 6–9. 154 Can. Laodic. 35.

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unacceptable practices.155 Theodoret, who commented on the Pauline passage in the mid-fifth century, underlined the regional prevalence of angelolatry and referred precisely to the Laodicean canon: ‘those who were advocates of the law were introducing them to the worship of angels, saying that the law was given through angels. And this has been a long-abiding disposition in Phrygia and Pisidia. It was for this reason that the synod which met at Laodicea in Phrygia has prohibited by a canon that prayer should be offered to angels. Even to-day churches of St. Michael can be seen among them and their neighhours’. It is difficult to interpret the first allusion to ‘the law’ in this passage as to anything other than Jewish law, embodied in the Old Testament.156 Theodoret’s observations imply that the legitimacy of worshipping St Michael was still a live issue, but the regional evidence shows that the battle to suppress his cult was being fought in vain. Roubes, the Christian luminary from the semitic Near East, who had settled with a leading family at Eumeneia by the mid-third century, was invoked after his death as a guardian angel.157 Christ himself was addressed as the ‘first angel’ in a hymn inscribed on the gravestone of a Novatian priest at Laodicea Catacecaumene (ICG 52). Angels had made early headway in Christian thought and ritual in Anatolia and paved the way for near universal acceptance and reverence for their greatest instantiation, St Michael. Why was this veneration so prevalent in central Asia Minor? Four explanations have been suggested in recent studies, usually in combination with one another. First, that the cult of St Michael was ultimately derived from that of a pagan predecessor. Second, that it was associated with thermal springs, centres of well-being, whose healing qualities had been recognised and used throughout antiquity. Third, that worshipping Michael as the pre-eminent Christian angel drew upon regional pagan beliefs and practices, which recognised angels as intermediate divine beings in a hierarchy who served as messengers between mankind and a supreme divinity or divinities. Fourth, that it was rooted in Jewish beliefs and teachings. 155 See chapter 8.2 and 8.3. Canivet, Byzantion 50 (1980), 100–103 underlines the connection between these texts and the cult of St Michael. 156 Theodoret, Comm. On Col. II. 18: οἱ τῷ νόμῳ συνηγοροῦντες καὶ τοὺς ἀγγέλους σέβειν αὐτοῖς εἰσηγοῦντο, διὰ τούτων λέγοντες δεδόσθαι τὸν νόμον. ἔμεινε δὲ τοῦτο πάθος ἐν ῇ Φρυγίᾳ καὶ Πισιδίᾳ μέχρι πολλοῦ. οὗ δὴ χάριν καὶ συνέλθουσα σύνοδος ἐν Λαοδικείᾳ τῆς Φρυγίας νόμῳ κεκώλυκε τὸ τοῖς ἀγγέλοις προσεύχεσθαι· καὶ μέχρι δὲ τοῦ νῦν εὐκτήρια τοῦ ἀγίου Μιχαὴλ παρ᾽ ἐκεινοις καὶ τοῖς ὁμόροις ἐκείνων ἔστιν ἰδεῖν (PG 82, 613). In Comm. On Col. III.17 Theodoret again referred to the Laodicea canon with the comment that thanks should be paid through Christ not through the medium of angel messengers, καὶ τῷ Θεῷ δὲ καὶ Πατρὶ τὴν εὐχαριστίαν δι᾽αὐτοῦ, φησίν, ἀναπέμπετε, μὴ διὰ τῶν ἀγγέλων (PG 82, 620). 157 See chapter 4.5.

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Cyril Mango drew parallels between the veneration of Michael the archangel and cults of the Phrygian god Attis, partly based on the resemblance between Byzantine depictions of angels and images of the youthful fertility god Attis in Roman art. He was also impressed by the geographical proximity of the great pilgrimage church of St Michael at Germia to the hellenistic cult centre of Attis and the Mother Goddess at Pessinus, sanctuaries that were located respectively on the east and west sides of Mount Dindymus.158 However, although Attis played a prominent role in Phrygian mythology, at least as retold by Greek and Latin writers and depicted in the visual arts, there is little indication that he was worshipped in Roman Phrygia outside Pessinus, and the iconographic parallels are not compelling. A variation of this suggestion is that the deity who prepared the way for St Michael’s later popularity might have been the Anatolian-Persian god Mên, who had numerous sanctuaries in Phrygia, Lydia, Galatia, Pisidia and other Anatolian regions, including one located close to Germia, devoted to the cult of Mên Mantalenos.159 Germia, with its hot springs, was already an important Christian healing shrine by the fifth century, and the curative properties of its waters are still recognised.160 Accordingly, the hypothesis that St Michael stepped into the shoes of pagan predecessors and fulfilled a role or met needs that Attis, Mên or other gods had provided for a pre-Christian population, has been combined with the argument that worshippers venerated a divine being at Germia, first pagan and later Christian, because of the healing qualities of the springs. There is no problem with this argument at a general level, for hot springs and waters with curative properties, which at Germia were combined with the attention of doctor fish to immersed patients, have been a focal point for cult in many cultures and periods. However, the hypothesis does not explain why any specific deity in Phrygia or elsewhere should be singled out as a forerunner of St Michael. Additionally, the link between St Michael and healing springs at certain prominent locations does not explain the readiness with which St Michael was adopted in so many other cities, towns and villages where no thermal or healing institutions existed. Another line of investigation has been to link the popularity of the St Michael with pre-existing veneration for pagan angels.161 Angels occupied 158 C. Mango, St Michael and Attis. 159 A. V. Walser and H. Woith, in Niewöhner et al., AS 2013, 106–10. 160 P. Niewöhner, Healing springs of Anatolia: St Michael and the problem of the pagan legacy. 161 A. R. R. Sheppard, Pagan cults of angels in Roman Asia Minor Talanta 12/13 (1980/81), 77–100.

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an important place in the religions of the Near East in late antiquity,162 particularly within Judaism. The recent exhaustive examination of the epigraphic evidence from Asia Minor by Horsley and Luxford leaves no doubt that some of these inscriptions have no recognisable connections to Judaism or Christianity, but were embedded in indigenous pagan beliefs. The role of such angels, as their name indicates, was usually that of messengers and intermediaries between a higher realm of divinities and the men and women who worshipped them. Conceptually they generally are judged to have had a marginal role to play in the worship of more important gods, although on another interpretation they can be seen to be instantiations or projections of the powers and personalities of these gods.163 However, they occurred only sporadically in the cults of pre-Christian Asia Minor. Inscriptions record examples associated with Mên Axiottenos on some of the confession inscriptions of eastern Lydia, with Zeus Hypsistos at Carian Stratonicaea, and occasionally with the cult of Hosios and Dikaios in Phrygia.164 These examples come from broadly the same period as the angel of Roubes, who was mentioned on a Christian gravestone from Eumeneia, or the intriguing series on gravestones, which were also almost certainly Christian and named personal angels at Thera,165 but there is little to suggest any specific reciprocal influence in either direction between these pagan and Christian examples.166 G. F. Chiai has drawn attention to the resemblance of a passage from the anonymous Byzantine account of the miracles of St Michael at the healing shrine at Chonai with the aretalogies of pagan gods. Christian miracles of curing the sick were narrated in a similar language and style as stories about pagan divine intervention. When the daughter of a wealthy pagan of Laodicea was cured of her dumbness by the intervention of St Michael, her first words took the form of an acclamation which can be paralleled by many pagan examples: παραχρῆμα ἀνεβόησεν ἡ παῖς καὶ ἔκραξεν λέγουσα· ὁ θεὸς τῶν Xριστιανῶν ἀληθῶς, μεγάλη σου ἡ δύναμις, Μιχαὴλ ἀρχιστράτηγε. Christians in later antiquity employed acclamatory terms to exalt God and his saints which closely 162 G. W. Bowersock, Les anges païens de l’Antiquité tardive’ Cahiers du Centre Gustave Glotz 24 (2013), 91–104. 163 N. Belayche, Angeloi in religious practices of the Roman Imperial East, in Ancient Judaism and Christianity in their Graeco-Roman Context: French perspectives (Henoch 2, 2010), 45–65 at 65: ‘a modality of mundane intervention of supernatural powers that is expressed through a personalized form.’ 164 G. H. R. Horsley and J. M. Luxford, Pagan angels in Asia Minor, 145–6 nos. 3a and 3b, 152–5 nos. 4a–4e, 157–8 nos. 7a and 7b. 165 See discussion in chapter 4.5. 166 G. F. Chiai, Phrygien und seine Götter (2020), 505–14 summarises the evidence and the recent literature.

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resembled those used by pagans to extol their divinities,167 but the use of similar ritual language did not presuppose that their conception of God and his angels was calqued on pagan precursors. The concept of messengers or intermediaries between mortals and immortals was a simple one, capable of taking shape in many religious systems,168 and it is misleading to search for pagan influence on later Christian practice in Asia Minor, when the origins could be found directly in their own cultural tradition. The obvious explanation for the popularity of St Michael in Phrygia did not derive from analogies with pagan divine messengers, or a syncretic assimilation by Christians of the powers and characteristics of pagan gods from an earlier era,169 but quite straightforwardly from the Jewish traditions which permeated so many facets of early Christianity in Asia. Paul’s admonitions against angelolatry in Colossians are perfectly intelligible as being directed against practices found among the Jews of the Lycus valley communities. Without making direct reference to Paul, Origen refuted Celsus’s attack on Christians for their beliefs about angels. Both Celsus’s criticism of the Christians, dating to the 170s, and Origen’s authoritative refutation seventy years later, clearly took for granted that this reverence for angels derived from a Jewish religious heritage.170 Close and unwanted association between Christians and Jews was transparently the reason why the naming of angels was anathema to the Council of Laodicea. Jews and Christians not only drew on the same heritage but retained much in common with one another in Phrygia in the imperial period. Their shared belief in angels was not disturbed by Paul’s oblique criticism or by the efforts of orthodox churchman in late antiquity. St Michael had little difficulty, it 167 A. Chaniotis, Megatheism: the search for the almighty god and the competition of cults, (p. 112–40) and N. Belayche, Deus deorum … summorum maximus. Ritual expressions of distinction in the divine world in the imperial period (. 141–66) in S. Mitchell and P. Van Nuffelen (eds), One God. Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire (Cambridge 2010). 168 E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge 1968), 38: ‘Virtually everyone, pagan, Jewish, Christian or Gnostic, believed in the existence of these beings and in their function as mediators, whether he called them daemons or angels or aions or simply “spirits” (πνεύματα).’ R. Cline, Ancient Angels. Conceptualizing Angeloi in the Roman Empire (Leiden 2011), 52–3 criticizes my conception of pagan angels and their association with Theos Hypsistos. In fact, I would not dissent from his own sensible formulation, ‘Rather, the dedications … reveal that similar beliefs about angeloi existed among several distinct religious traditions, all of which used the common Greek term angelos to express the identity and function of a mediator between man and god.’ This interpretation of angeloi as hierarchically subordinate messengers is critically examined but not refuted by N. Belayche, ‘Angeloi in religious practices’. 169 As suggested by Chiai, Phrygien und seine Götter (2020), 515–7. 170 Origen, Contra Celsum V. 2–9.

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seems, in overcoming his critics and was absorbed into mainstream orthodox Christianity in and beyond Asia Minor by the end of the fourth century. According to four crucial verses in The Book of Revelation, the favoured text of Asia’s Christians, Michael and his angels prevailed over the angels of the Dragon, the forces of Satan, and established the archangel as commander (archistrategos) of the heavenly host,171 a role that was already clear in the Book of Daniel, which presents Michael as the protector of God’s people, and other Jewish apocalyptic literature from the third and second centuries BC.172 While other judaising aspects of Phrygian Christianity were officially rejected in the later fourth and fifth centuries, St Michael’s popularity expanded, as he assumed the role of a universal protector of families and communities against enemies of all descriptions, above all the ravages of illness and plague. 171 Rev. 12. 7–10. 172 Daniel 10. 13, 21; 12. 1–3. For a succinct modern summary see the entries by various authors, ‘Michael I–IV’, in the Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception 18 (2020), 1124–31.

Chapter 7

Heretics, Schisms and Dissenters 7.1

The Montanists in Later Antiquity

The first chapter of this book examined the early years of the New Prophecy, Montanism.1 For a brief period in the late second century this small breakaway movement had an institutional organisation, with officials as well as inspired leaders, who collected money and attracted a devoted regional following. It was localised in a thinly-settled area of western Phrygia, in the villages of Tymion and Pepuza, in the valley of the Senarus river, south of Temenothyrae2 but already in the first decades of the movement Montanists were attested in Galatian Ancyra, at Lugdunum in Gaul, at Ephesus and in cities on the west Black Sea coast. Leadership was provided by ecstatic prophets, who claimed to be a mouthpiece for direct divine revelation. The surviving oracles of Montanus included one in which he described himself as the plectrum that struck the strings of a lyre, and another, that his utterances were not those of a messenger or an ambassador, but the words of God himself. He was a medium for the divine will.3 The anonymous fourth-century author of the ‘Dialogue between Montanus and an Orthodox Believer’ suggested that Montanus had been a priest of Apollo. Didymos the Blind in De Trinitate repeated that he had been a pagan priest, and his pupil Jerome, in a letter to Marcella written in 385, alleged that he was a eunuch, by implication one of the castrated priests of Cybele.4 These unreliable hostile observations have been taken up in modern scholarship with the conjecture that the inspired prophecy of Montanus, Priscilla and Maximilla was a practice derived from Phrygian pagan cults.5 Ancient writers consistently suggested that ecstasy was an important feature of Phrygian religious behaviour, 1 See chapter 1.3. 2 Eusebius, HE V.16.9; Epiphanios, Pan. 48.14. 3 Epiphanios, Pan. 48.4: ἰδού, ὁ ἄνθρωπος ὡσεὶ λύρα κἀγὼ ἐφίπταμαι ὡσεὶ πλῆκτρον; 48.11: οὔτε ἄγγελος οὔτε πρέσβυς, ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ κύριος ὁ θεὸς πατὴρ ἦλθον. See F. Blanchetière, Revue des sciences religieuses 53 (1979), 2–3; H. E. Mader, Montanistische Orakel und kirchliche Opposition. Der frühe Streit zwischen den phrygischen „neuen Propheten“ und dem Autor des vorepiphanischen Quelle als biblische Wirkungsgeschichte des 2. Jh. n. Chr. (Göttingen 2012), 190–7. 4 Dialogue between a Montanist and an Orthodox, 4.5 (Apollo), cf. 4.6 (‘priest of an idol’); Didymus, Trin. 3. 41.3; Jerome, ep. 41.4 (semivir). 5 Notably V. Hirschmann, Horrenda Secta. Untersuchungen zum frühchristlichen Montanismus und seinen Verbindungen zur paganen Religion Phrygiens (Stuttgart 2005).

© Stephen Mitchell, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004546387_009

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especially among the followers of Attis and Cybele, but these observations are for the most part the product of Greek and Roman fantasies about an exotic and unfamiliar culture,6 and there is almost no evidence that prophets were a regular part of the cults of Roman Phrygia (see 74–5). The allegation that Montanus had been a pagan prophet of Apollo before converting and applying his prophetic gift to Christianity is implausible. The Montanist prophetesses themselves claimed that they belonged in a succession which came exclusively from the Jewish or Christian tradition.7 Spirit possession certainly occurred at moments of religious excitement or exaltation in rural Asia Minor,8 but there is no reliable evidence that Montanus and his companions had themselves been pagan religious specialists before they began their inspired Christian mission. According to a largely hostile ancient tradition the false doctrines of Montanism subsequently played a prominent, even dominant role in Christian Phrygia. Eusebius’s first reference in the Church History to the Montanist movement is to ἡ τῶν Φρυγῶν αἵρεσις, and he subsequently mentions ἡ λεγομένη κατὰ Φρύγας αἵρεσις and ἡ κατὰ Φρύγας καλουμένη αἵρεσις,9 and Constantine, quoted by Eusebius in the Vita Constantini, had used virtually this formulation in his letter of around 324 outlawing all heresies.10 The early source used by Epiphanius, probably Miltiades, retained similar terminology, ἑτέρα αἵρεσις τῶν Φρυγῶν καλουμένη,11 but Epiphanius, like Eusebius, usually referred to the heresy’s followers as οἱ κατὰ Φρύγας καλούμενοι.12 This was an anomalous formation which turned a preposition with an accusative noun into an indeclinable noun phrase ᾽κατἀ Φρύγας᾽. This was converted back into a declinable proper noun by fourth-century Latin writers, including Philastrius of Brescia, who spoke of the Cataphryges in provincia Phrygia habitantes around 380,

6

The best and best known example of this is the wonderful virtuoso poem, Catullus 63. See Y. Ustinova, Imaginary Phrygians: cognitive consonance and the assumed Phrygian origins of Greek ecstatic cults and music, JHS 141 (2021), 54–73, whose argument is that ‘the ecstatic practices attributed to the Phrygians were developed by the Greeks and had nothing to do with Phrygia.’ 7 Eusebius, HE V.17.4. 8 Mitchell, Anatolia II, 139–50 for spirit possession in 6th / 7th century Galatia. 9 Εusebius, HE 4.27; V.16, V.18.1, V. 22. 10 Eusebius, Vita Constantini III.64: Ἐπίγνωτε νῦν διὰ τῆς νομοθεσίας ταύτης, ὦ Ναυατιανοί, Οὐαλεντῖνοι, Μαρκιωνισταί, Παυλιανοί, οἵ τε κατὰ Φρύγας ἐπικεκλημένοι, καὶ πάντες ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν οἱ τὰς αἱρέσεις διὰ τῶν οἰκείων πληροῦντες συστημάτων, ὅσοις ψεύδεσιν ἡ παρ’ ὑμῖν ματαιότης ἐμπέπλεκται κτλ. 11 Εpiphanius, Pan. 48.1. 12 Epiphanius, Pan. 48.1.3; 12.4; 14.2, 49.1. 1 and 5; 49.2.1; 51.33.3. See Mader, Montanistische Orakel, 34–5.

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Augustine, in the work on heresies which he compiled at the end of his life,13 Rufinus in his translation of Eusebius, and Jerome, who produced the variants Cataphrygarum haeresis and Cataphrygae heretici.14 John of Damascus, writing in the eighth century, coined a declinable variant in Greek and called them the Καταφρυγασταί.15 The Greek expression had originally meant ‘among the Phrygians’, but by being rendered as a single word it implied that they were Sub-Phrygians or ‘Underphrygians’. For hostile outsiders, Phrygian Christianity was little more than their distorted understanding of Montanism. The heresiologists called out the Montanists by other names derived from their founders or the location where these prophets were buried. In the mid 370s Basil, in his canonical letter to Amphilochius bishop of Iconium, classified the Pepuzenoi with the Manichaeans, Valentinians, and Marcionites as heretics, whose disagreements regarding the faith made them ineligible for baptism.16 This echoed rulings made at the councils of Iconium around 235, that rebaptism was mandatory for Montanists admitted back into the Church,17 and at Phrygian Laodicea in the mid-fourth century, where a canon laid down that their supposed clergy, seasoned churchmen, should submit to careful instruction before being baptised again by priests or bishops, although schismatic groups, including Novatians, Photinians and Quartodecumani, were exempted from this.18 A spurious canon added to the decisions of the Council of Constantinople in 381 reiterated this decision.19 Montanism was the forty-eighth heresy in Epiphanius’s collection, and his account seems to have been largely derived from a prominent theological controversialist of the 170s and 180s, Miltiades.20 The two books of Miltiades acknowledged that the Montanists recognised the entire canon of the Old and 13 14 15 16 17 18

Augustine, Haer. 26; ep. 252. Hieronymus, ep. 41. John Damasc., Haer. 48. Basil, ep. 188.1. Firmilian to Cyprian, in Cyprian ep. 75.7 (AD 256). Laodicea canon 8; compare canon 7; remarkably re-iterated in a medieval inscription from Bethlehem in Palestine, CIG IV 8953 (Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 302). For the council and the context of this decision, see Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 291–301. 19 Ps-canon 7 (Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers (2nd series) 14, 185); this was endorsed again, wholly anachronistically, as canon 59 at the Council of Constantinople of 692. Gennadius of Massilia, Lib. Eccl. Dogmatum 22, at the end of the fifth century, observed that Montanists had to be rebaptized, and Timothy of Constantinople around 600 (PG 81a, 69) reiterated this for the Tascodrogitae, the Artotyritae and the Pepuzans. 20 See discussion at 14–5, based on the convincing proposal of Mader, Montanistische Orakel, endorsed in the review by W. Tabbernee, Journal of Early Christian Studies 26 (2018), 495–7; Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 50–53, without identifying an author, used the name ‘Anti-Phrygian’ for Epiphanius’s source, to avoid confusion with the ‘Anti-Montanist’, the

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New Testament and the doctrine of the Resurrection, but erred into excessive asceticism, including celibacy and extreme fasting,21 and denounced them as being ‘addicted to the spirits of error and the teachings of demons’.22 Miltiades cited many of their sayings and oracles so that their errors and falsehoods could be revealed, and is accordingly the largest source of information about these false prophecies.23 One of the arguments used against them was that the supposed inspired predictions of the original prophetic trio, and especially the words of Maximilla that there could be no prophecy after her, only the end of time, simply had not come to pass.24 Epiphanius picked up this cue himself, and confirmed that at the time he was writing, in the twelfth year of the reigns of Valentinian and Valens and the eighth of Gratian (377), the prediction remained unfulfilled.25 For him the Montanists were still an active group, and he provided a summary of the extent of the movement in his time. Their holy place, which they revered and where the heavenly Jerusalem had alighted, was still Pepuza, which had been a city but was now a ruined village. There they conducted their mysteries and regarded themselves as a sanctified people, as they had taken possession of the holy city. Their kind were to be found in Cappadocia, Galatia and Phrygia, but also in Cilicia and above all in Constantinople.26

21 22 23 24

25

26

anonymous first source of Eusebius, HE V. 16, and suggested that the work had been written in or soon after 210. Epiphanius, Pan. 48.8.7–9; Mader, Montanistische Orakel, 81–4. Epiphanius, Pan. 48.1: ἀπέσχισαν δὲ ἑαυτούς, « προσέχοντες πνεύμασι πλάνης καὶ διδασκαλίαις δαιμονίων », λέγοντες ὅτι « δεῖ ἡμᾶς, φησί, καὶ τὰ χαρίσματα δέχεσθαι ». Mader, Montanistische Orakel, 145–216. Epiphanius, Pan. 48. 2: φάσκει γὰρ ἡ λεγομένη παρ’ αὐτοῖς Μαξίμιλλα ἡ προφῆτις ὅτι, φησί « μετ’ ἐμὲ προφήτης οὐκέτι ἔσται, ἀλλὰ συντέλεια ». ἰδοὺ δὲ ἐκ πανταχόθεν φαίνεται τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα καὶ τὰ πνεύματα τῆς πλάνης; see above c.1 c); Mader, Montanistische Orakel, 162–9, and the link to Jesus’s sermon on the end of time, Matt. 24. Epiphanius, Pan. 48.2: αὕτη δὲ εἶπε μετ’ αὐτὴν εἶναι συντέλειαν, καὶ οὔπω συνετελέσθη, μάλιστα τοσούτων βασιλέων γενομένων καὶ τοσούτου χρόνου ὑπερβεβηκότος. ἔτη γάρ εἰσιν ἔκτοτε πλείω ἐλάσσω διακόσια † ἐνενήκοντα ἕως τοῦ ἡμετέρου χρόνου, δωδεκάτου ἔτους Οὐαλεντινιανοῦ καὶ Οὐάλεντος καὶ Γρατιανοῦ βασιλείας, καὶ οὔπω ἡ συντέλεια κατὰ τὴν αὐχήσασαν ἑαυτὴν προφήτιδα, μὴ γνοῦσαν μηδὲ τὴν ἡμέραν τῆς αὑτῆς τελευτῆς. The number ἐνενήκοντα must be corrupt, and a plausible emendation is ἀνἠκοντα (‘extending to’) since almost exactly two hundred years had intervened between the death of Maximilla, c.178/9, and the completion of the Panarion in 378; see 16 n. 55 and 22 n. 92. Epiphanius, Pan. 48. 14: τιμῶσι δὲ οἱ τοιοῦτοι καὶ τόπον τινὰ ἔρημον ἐν τῇ Φρυγίᾳ, Πέπουζάν ποτε καλουμένην πόλιν, νῦν δὲ ἠδαφισμένην, καί φασιν ἐκεῖσε κατιέναι τὴν ἄνωθεν Ἱερουσαλήμ. ὅθεν ἐκεῖ ἀπερχόμενοι μυστήριά τινα ἐπιτελοῦσιν ἐν τῷ τόπῳ καὶ ἁγιάζουσιν , ὡς ὑπολαμβάνουσιν. ἔστι γὰρ καὶ τὸ γένος ἐν τῇ Καππαδοκίᾳ καὶ Γαλατίᾳ καὶ ἐν τῇ προειρημένῃ Φρυγίᾳ, ὅθεν κατὰ Φρύγας ἡ αἵρεσις καλεῖται· ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν Κιλικίᾳ καὶ ἐν Κωνσταντινουπόλει τὸ πλεῖστον.

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For the sake of completeness, Epiphanius added information about another closely related group, the Tascodrougitai, who he thought were either a class of Montanists, or equivalent to the Quintilliani, the Priscilliani or the Pepuziani, groups which he classified as the forty-ninth heresy, and which were barely distinguishable sub-sets of the Phrygian heresy: Κυϊντιλλιανοὶ δὲ πάλιν, οἱ καὶ Πεπουζιανοὶ καλούμενοι, Ἀρτοτυρῖται τε καὶ Πρισκιλλιανοὶ λεγόμενοι, οἱ αὐτοὶ μὲν ὄντες κατὰ Φρύγας καὶ ἐξ αὐτῶν ὁρμώμενοι, διῄρηνται δὲ κατά τινα τρόπον; ‘then come the Quintilliani, also called the Pepuziani, the Artotyritai (the ‘bread and cheese people’) and the so-called Priscilliani, who themselves are ‘among the Phrygians’ and issue from them, and are distinguished from them in a certain manner’.27 Epiphanius explained that the odd name Tascodrougitai was a translation of Passalorhynchitai (‘Nose-peggers’), so-called because they placed a finger on the nose during their prayers.28 The Tascodrougitai lived in Galatia, probably in Ancyra. In 386 Jerome, commenting on Paul’s admonition of the ‘foolish Galatians’ in his commentary on Galatians, asserted that Ancyra, which he may have visited when travelling to Antioch in 373, was still torn apart by schismatic groups and depraved by false dogma. These provoked him to a rhetorical flourish: Omitto Cataphrygas, Ophitas, Borboritas, et Manichaeos; nota enim iam haec humanae calamitatis vocabula sunt. Quis umquam Passaloryncitas et Ascodrobos et Artotyritas et cetera magis portenta quam nomina in aliqua parte Romani orbis audivit? ‘Leaving aside the Sub-Phrygians, Ophitae (Snake men), Borboritae (Mud-dwellers) and Manichaeans, familiar names for ruined humanity, who ever heard of Passalorhyncitae (‘nose-peg people’), Ascodrobi, Artotyritae and others, more portents than names, anywhere else in the Roman world’.29 The form Ascodrobi, was a corrupt Latin variant of Tascodrogi or Tascodrogitae.30

27 Epiphanius, Pan. 49.1. 28 Epiphanius, Pan. 48.14: περὶ τοῦ Τασκοδρουγιτῶν ὀνόματος αὖθις ἐροῦμεν· ἔστι γὰρ τὸ ὄνομα τοῦτο ἢ ἐν αὐτῇ ταύτῃ ἢ ἐν τῇ μετ’ αὐτὴν τῶν Κυϊντιλλιανῶν καλουμένῃ· ἀπ’ αὐτῶν γὰρ τούτων ὁρμᾶται καὶ τοῦτο τὸ ὄνομα. καλοῦνται δὲ διὰ τοιαύτην αἰτίαν Τασκοδρουγῖται· τασκὸς παρ’ αὐτοῖς πάσσαλος καλεῖται, δροῦγγος δὲ μυκτὴρ εἴτ’ οὖν ῥύγχος καλεῖται … ἐκλήθησαν ὑπό τινων Τασκοδρουγῖται τουτέστιν πασσαλορυγχῖται. ἐν ταύτῃ δὲ τῇ αἱρέσει ἢ ἐν τῇ συζύγῳ αὐτῆς τῇ τῶν Κυϊντιλλιανῶν εἴτ’ οὖν Πρισκιλλιανῶν καὶ Πεπουζιανῶν καλουμένῃ. 29 Hieronymus, Comm in ep ad Galatas 2.3 (PL 10, 382; English translation and commentary, A. Cain (CUA press 2010)); see Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 331–4; C. M. Trevett, Fingers up noses and pricking with needles: possible reminiscences of revelation in later Montanism, Vig. Christ. 49 (1995), 258–69, heroically tries to identify and explain the origins of the practice. 30 Apart from the reference by Jerome, the form Ascodrobi (vel. sim.) occurs only in Latin sources, Philastrius, Haer. 48 and 75; and Leg. nov. Theod. 3.1.9.9. Philastrius, Haer. 75,

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Remarkably, the Tascodrogitae were named in Roman legislation, a decree of Theodosius I on 20 June 383 sent to the vicarius of the dioecese of Pontica, resident at Ancyra, which permitted members of the sect to live undisturbed so long as they did not gather for worship.31 The Roman authorities clearly did not regard them as a serious threat to orthodox religious practice, and Ancyra was the only location where they are attested. They were, nevertheless, cited five more times in imperial legislation, once in a catch-all decree issued by Theodosius II and his western co-ruler Valentinian III on 30 May 428, issued to the praetorian prefect Florentius at Constantinople, which outlawed an entire menagerie of heretical groups,32 and four times in laws of Justinian between 527 and 531.33 All these orders were issued centrally at Constantinople, not as responses to specific information or denunciations about the presence or practices of heretical groups. They were, rather, rhetorical imperial pronouncements designed to defend the unity of the Catholic church. The harmless religious eccentrics of Ancyra had become fossilized exhibits in fifth and sixth century legal collections. offered the bizarre explanation that this was a sect known for dancing around wine-skins (ἀσκός). 31 CTh. XVI.5.10: Constantiano vicario dioeceseos Ponticae. Tascodrogitae a sedibus quidem suis minime propellantur, ad nullam tamen ecclesiam haereticae superstitionis turba conveniat. 32 CTh. XV.5.65.2 (CJust 1.5.5 pr.): Post haec, quoniam non omnes eadem austeritate plectendi sunt, Arrianis quidem, Macedonianis et Apollinarianis, quorum hoc est facinus, quod nocenti meditatione decepti credunt de veritatis fonte mendacia, intra nullam civitatem ecclesiam habere liceat; Novatianis autem et Sabbatianis omnis innovationis adimatur licentia, si quam forte temptaverint; Eunomiani vero, Valentiniani, Montanistae seu Priscillianistae, Fryges, Marcianistae, Borboriani, Messaliani, Euchitae sive Enthusiastae, Donatistae, Audiani, Hydroparastatae, Tascodrogitae, Fotiniani, Pauliani, Marcelliani et qui ad imam usque scelerum nequitiam pervenerunt Manichaei nusquam in Romano solo conveniendi orandique habeant facultatem; Manichaeis etiam de civitatibus expellendis, quoniam nihil his omnibus relinquendum loci est, in quo ipsis etiam elementis fiat iniuria. R. Flower, ‘The insanity of heretics must be restrained’: heresiology in the Theodosian Code, in C. Kelly (ed.), Theodosius II. Rethinking the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge 2013), 172–94 argues persuasively that this constitution deliberately subsumed all previous rulings against heretics into a definitive statement that they were outlawed by imperial Orthodoxy. It is ironical that Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, may have had a hand in compiling and drafting the catalogue, shortly before his own theology was condemned as heretical at the Council of Ephesus in 431. 33 CJust. 1.5.19.4 de poenis paganorum et Manichaeorum et Morboritarum et Samaritarum et Montanistarum et Tascodrogorum et Ophitarum ceterorumque haereticorum causa; 1.5.21.1 Samaritis nihilo minus et qui illis non absimiles sunt, id est Montanistis et Tascodrogis et Ophitis; 1.5.21.2 Manichaeis et Borboritis et paganis nec non Samaritis et Montanistis et Tascodrogis et Ophitis.

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Epiphanius’s remarks about the forty-ninth heresy concentrated on the supposed feminist aspects of these Montanist sub-groups, which had been inspired by the leadership of the prophetesses Priscilla and Quintilla, the latter an obscure figure, not mentioned in the sources available to Eusebius, and perhaps a doublet of her near namesake. One of the two  – Epiphanius was uncertain which – had experienced a vision of Jesus Christ dressed in shining woman’s clothing, who had revealed that Jerusalem was descending from heaven and had alighted at this holy place, i.e. Pepuza.34 Thereafter women played a leading role in the movement: they paid special reverence to Eve, and declared that Moses’s sister had been a prophet, a harbinger of the female clergy of later times, among them the four prophetic daughters of Philip. It was their custom for seven women, dressed in white robes and carrying torches, to prophesy and to trick congregations into lamentation and a pitiful state of repentance, by bewailing mankind’s fate in a sort of enthusiastic trance. More prosaically, Epiphanius summarized that, as Christ made no distinction between male and female, they had women bishops, women priests etc., ἐπίσκοποί τε παρ’ αὐτοῖς γυναῖκες καὶ πρεσβύτεροι γυναῖκες καὶ τὰ ἄλλα,35 but added drily that if it were really the case that women among them held clerical office, they should pay heed to the word of the Lord, that ‘you should have recourse to your husband and he will instruct you.’36 The conditional form of Epiphanius’s comment implies considerable scepticism about the apparent facts that he was reporting. The Priscillianistae, followers of the first prophetess Priscilla, sometimes combined with allusions to the Fryges, the Montanistae, or the Pepyzitae, were outlawed in several decrees issued between 405 and 411 by Theodosius II to the city prefect or the praefectus praetorio at Constantinople, without any indication that it was to be applied to Phrygia, or to any other individual province or imperial dioecese.37 This, too, was general legislation that simply reflected 34 Epiphanius, Pan. 49.1: φασὶ γὰρ οὗτοι οἱ Κυϊντιλλιανοὶ εἴτ’ οὖν Πρισκιλλιανοὶ ἐν τῇ Πεπούζῃ ἢ Κυΐντιλλαν ἢ Πρίσκιλλαν (οὐκ ἔχω ἀκριβῶς λέγειν), μίαν δὲ ἐξ αὐτῶν ὡς προεῖπον ἐν τῇ Πεπούζῃ κεκαθευδηκέναι καὶ τὸν Χριστὸν πρὸς αὐτὴν ἐληλυθέναι συνυπνωκέναι τε αὐτῇ τούτῳ τῷ τρόπῳ, ὡς ἐκείνη ἀπατωμένη ἔλεγεν· « ἐν ἰδέᾳ, φησί, γυναικός, ἐσχηματισμένος ἐν στολῇ λαμπρᾷ ἦλθε πρός με Χριστὸς καὶ ἐνέβαλεν ἐν ἐμοὶ τὴν σοφίαν καὶ ἀπεκάλυψέ μοι τουτονὶ τὸν τόπον εἶναι ἅγιον καὶ ὧδε τὴν Ἱερουσαλὴμ ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ κατιέναι ». 35 Epiphanius, Pan. 49.2. 36 Epiphanius, Pan. 49.3: κἄν τε γὰρ γυναῖκες παρ’ αὐτοῖς εἰς ἐπισκοπὴν καὶ πρεσβυτέριον καθίστανται διὰ τὴν Εὔαν, ἀκούσωσι τοῦ κυρίου λέγοντος « πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα σου ἡ ἀποστροφή σου καὶ αὐτός σου κυριεύσει ». 37 CTh. XVI.5.40 pr (405) to Senator, praefectus urbi: Manichaeos vel Frygas sive Priscillianistas; XV.5.43 (407) to Curtius, praetorian prefect: Manichaeos sive Priscillianistas; XVI.5.48

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the imperial intention to suppress heresies. It provides no evidence for any actual Montanist activity in Phrygia or elsewhere, or that the law-makers in the capital possessed any knowledge of the current state of the sect, or even of its existence. Accordingly, the only late Roman law directed at Montanism or any of its supposed sub-sects which may have been drafted in response to a specific local or regional issue, was the modest interdict issued at Ancyra in the Pontic dioecese which prevented the Tascodrogitai from conducting communal worship. The names that appeared in the imperial edicts are familiar from the heresiologists, but these are valueless as a guide to the presence of Montanists in their Phrygian heartlands or anywhere else at the time that the heresy collectors published their works. Around 385 Philastrius repeated the names he found in Epiphanius’s Panarion.38 Augustine’s compilation, unfinished at the end of his life in 428/9, took its information from Philastrius and a lost list of heresies reputedly compiled by Jerome. He alleged that in his day Montanists could still be found in Phrygia, but not in Africa.39 Optatus during the 360s had already asserted that Cataphrygians had only existed in Africa in the distant past.40 The works of the Praedestinatus in mid-fifth century Italy,41 and Isidore of Seville in seventh-century Spain reproduced what they had taken from Augustine.42 Theodoret of Cyrrhus compiled information about the origins of the heresy and its beliefs but observed that there were no Montanists in Syria in his day.43 Tabbernee has summed up his detailed examination of the heresiological tradition with the judgement that the ‘Books of Heresies … for the most part … merely repeat the information provided by earlier heresiologists, but occasionally … supply some new (but not necessarily accurate) data concerning Montanism. Not one … indicates that its author had had some direct

38 39 40 41 42 43

(410) to Anthemius, praetorian prefect: montanistas et priscillianistas et alia huiuscemodi genera nefariae superstitionis; XVI.5.59 (423) to Asclepiodotus praetorian prefect: Manichaei et Fryges, quos Pepyzitas sive Priscillianistas vel alio latentiore vocabulo appellant; Leg. nov. Theod. 3.1.9.9 (428) to Florentius, praetorian prefect: quae in Manichaeos deo semper offensos, quae in Eunomianos haereticae fatuitatis auctores, quae in Montanistas, Frygas, Fotinos Priscillianistas Ascodrogos Hydroparastatas Borboritas Ofitas innumerabilibus constitutionibus lata sunt. Philastrius, Diversarum Haereseon liber 48–49; 75. Augustine, Haer. 26 and 27; Cataphrygians again in serm. 252.4 and ep. 118, 12 (to Dioscorus). Optatus, Adv. Donatist. 1.9. Praedestinatus, Haer. 1. 26–8, 86. Isidore of Seville, 8.5.27. Theodoret Cyrrh., Haereticarum Fabularum compendium III.1 (PG 89).

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contact with the movement or had personally defended ‘orthodoxy’ against a group of contemporary Montanists’.44 The mid-fifth-century church historians are a little more helpful. Socrates reported that at the time of the Council of Nicaea, bishops exchanged letters with one another about the doctrine of consubstantiality, the homoousion, being anxious that those who accepted the doctrine risked favouring the outlawed views of Sabellius and Montanus. However, the discussion among the bishops appears to have concerned Sabellian and Montanist writings, and implied no contact with contemporary members of these sects.45 Sozomen was a little more forthcoming in his comments on the letter of Constantine that outlawed heresies. He contrasted the fate of the Montanists with that of the Novatians, who had enjoyed Constantine’s protection (see below), and noted that ‘the Phrygians suffered the same treatment as the other heretics in all the Roman provinces except Phrygia and the neighbouring regions, for here they had, since the time of Montanus, existed in great numbers and do so to the present day’.46 He believed that Montanists, despite being outlawed like other heretical groups, continued to thrive in Phrygia in the mid-fifth century. He remarked that the Novatians and the Montanists among the Phrygians, and also communities in Arabia and Cyprus which he had witnessed himself, had village bishops,47 and in the same section of his work, which dealt with the regional diversity of church customs, added that the Montanists had a shorter Lenten fast than other churches, only two weeks rather than the

44 Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 274. See also C. M. Trevett, Montanism. Gender, Authority and the New Prophecy (Cambridge 1996), 215 (and cf. 226–31): ‘The fact is that scarcely any of the anti-Montanists who wrote after the age of Constantine would actually have known such a creature, apart from an occasional bishop (eg Innocent I in Rome) or front-line opponnents such as John of Ephesus and Jerome perhaps. From the third-century onwards the opposition was increasingly of an academic kind – condemnation from a distance, with repetition of what were becoming stereotyped descriptions. Montanism entered the annals of heresies and so was cited in lists of abhorrent teachings, regardless of the writer’s ignorance of its true nature.’ 45 Socrates, HE 1.23.7; cf. Sozomen II.18. There are similar historical allusions to the beliefs of the Montanists at II. 37 (in a letter of Athanasius) and VII.32.30. 46 Sozomen HE II.32.6: Φρύγες δὲ κατὰ τὴν ἄλλην ἀρχομένην, παραπλήσια τοῖς ἄλλοις ὑπέμειναν, πλὴν Φρυγίας καῖ τῶν ἄλλων ἐθνῶν τῶν ἐκ γειτόνων· ἔνθα δὴ ἐκ τῶν κατὰ Μοντανὸν χρόνων πλῆθος ἀρξάμενοι καὶ νῦν εἰσι. 47 Sozomen HE VII.19.2: ἐν ἄλλοις δὲ ἔθνεσίν ἐστιν ὅπη καὶ ἐν κώμαις ἐπίσκοποι ἱεροῦνται, ὡς παρὰ Ἀραβίοις καὶ Κυπρίοις ἔγνων, καὶ παρὰ τοῖς ἐν Φρυγίαις Ναυατιανοῖς καῖ Μοντανισταῖς. The observation about their village bishops may indicate that he had seen these for himself, but ἔγνων should probably be construed as relating to the Arabians and Cypriots, both of which would have been familiar to Sozomen, a native of Gaza.

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canonical forty days or longer practices found elsewhere.48 He also reported in his learned and detailed discussion of the church calendar and the calculations about fixing the date of the Easter festival especially in Asia, that the ‘Montanists, also called Pepuzites and Phrygians’, had an unusual method of calculating the date of the Passover, according to the solar calendar. Although the Montanists took this distinctive position, they do not appear to have had a major role in this dispute.49 There are two unexpected footnotes to be added to the history of the Montanist centre Pepuza in the fourth century. It was designated as a place of exile for two important church figures during their disputes with the Arians under Constantius II in the 350s. Hilary of Poitiers, who was exiled himself for four years to Phrygia from 356 to 359, remarked that Paulinus bishop of Trier had been banished to Phrygia, transported to a place ‘beyond the Christian name’, and died in Pepuza in 358, thus being polluted by contact with the heretics Montanus and Priscilla.50 In the same year, Aetius of Antioch, a leading theoretician in the Anomoean movement, fell victim to the party led by Basil, the semi-Arian bishop of Ancyra, and was exiled to Pepuza, ‘a small village of Phrygia’, a banishment apparently confirmed by Constantius in 360. He presumably remained there until bishops exiled during the ecclesiastical controversies of the 350s were recalled to their sees by order of Constantius’s successor Julian.51 Pepuza seems to have been singled out for its remoteness and obscurity. If anything, the choice of the Montanist heretical centre as a fit place for the exile of two churchmen who opposed the Arian cause, indicates that it was now a place of no political account. The attenuated evidence for the survival of Montanists in fourth-century Phrygia appears at first sight to be contradicted by the imposing collection of epigraphic testimony presented by Tabbernee in his corpus of Montanist inscriptions and testimonia, but closer inspection shows that this is misleading. Tabbernee, for the sake of completeness, included many texts attributed to the Montanists on very slender grounds, many of which he himself regarded as unconvincing. In conclusion, he considered only seventeen of around 100 texts to be Montanist for certain. There are good arguments for reducing this figure further. He, surely correctly, excluded all the well-known ‘Christians for 48 Sozomen HE VII.19.7. The observation is surprising in view of the Montanists’ earlier reputation for excessive fasting. 49 Sozomen HE VII.18.2: Μοντανισταὶ δέ, οὒς Πεπουζίτας καὶ Φρύγας ὀνομάζουσι, ξένην τινα μέθοδον εἰσαγάγοντες, κατὰ ταύτην τὸ Πάσχα ἄγουσι. 50 Hilarius Pict., ad Constantium 1. 11. 51 Philostorgius, HE 4.8; T. D. Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius. Theology and politics in the Constantinian empire (Harvard 1993), 136.

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Christians’ texts,52 and other pre-Constantinian inscriptions which explicitly named the persons commemorated as Christian.53 A group of inscriptions carrying the formula τὸν θεόν σοι· μὴ ἀδικήσεις, is certainly pagan.54 Three Christian gravestones respectively for two women called Mo(u)ntana, and one set up by an archdeacon called Montanus, should hardly be considered Montanist for that reason alone.55 The gravestone of Mountane from Dorylaeum is headed by a line which reads Π † Π, possibly to be resolved as πνευματικοὶ πνευματικοῖς and interpreted as a reference to the Montanist community who were distinguished in some patristic texts from other Christians as pneumatici, but the interpretation of the abbreviation is anything but certain.56 The archdeacon Montanus appears on one of five late inscriptions found in the area of Bekilli, which have been brought into consideration because this was thought at the time of their discovery to be the likely location of Pepuza. None has any recognizable Montanist characteristics.57 Four distinguished clerical figures buried near Laodicea Catacecaumene probably belonged to schismatic ascetic groups, but none is likely to have been Montanist.58 A verse epitaph from Cotiaeum which seems to mention baptism, and a child’s grave near Sebaste which alludes to resurrection, convey nothing that is not to be found on orthodox Christian epitaphs.59 A building inscription from Phrygian Hierapolis (Pamukkale) documented the foundation of a large and central sixth-century church erected during the office of the archbishop and patriarch Gennadius. Ulrich Huttner, however, has shown that this is not an allusion to the Montanist patriarchy (attested only by Jerome), but an unofficial arrogation of this title by the bishop of Hierapolis, which had acquired metropolitan status since the council of Ephesus in 431.60 Six early funerary inscriptions from Temenothyrae have usually been assigned to the Montanists for the sole reason that one of them names a female priest, a presbytera. Women presbyterai, however, are to 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. nos. 24–31, 38–52, 60–2. Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. nos. 9–10, 12–13, 17, 19–20, 22–3, 32–4, 36–7, 57–8. Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. nos. 64–6; see 268–72. Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. nos. 21, 63, 77. Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. no. 63; see 299 n. 688 on ICG 1439. Tabbernee rejected a Montanist interpretation of the single letter pi, which appears in Mont. Inscr. nos. 54–5. Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. nos. 76–9. Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. no. 56, 69–71. Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. nos. 67 and 81. Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. nos. 82; U. Huttner, Die Bauinschrift in der Pfeilerkirche von Hierapolis und der Patriarchentitel im frühen Christentums, in J. Fischer (ed.), Der Beitrag Kleinasiens zur Kultur-Geschichte und Geistesgeschichte der griechisch-römischen Antike (Vienna 2014), 211–30; D. Feissel, Études d’épigraphie et d’histoire des premiers siècles de Byzance (2020), 11.

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be found in Jewish communities at this date, and the fourth-century Council of Laodicea issued a general interdict on women clergy in canon 11, without specific reference to the Montanists, who were nevertheless mentioned in canon 8 on baptism. This single indication is not sufficient to classify the whole group of inscriptions, which were set up for wealthy and established citizens of Temenothyrae, as Montanist.61 This leaves a small number of possible or probable Montanist inscriptions from Phrygia, and about half a dozen found elsewhere in Asia Minor.62 One candidate is the prophetess Nanas, whose fourth-century gravestone, recorded at Akoluk in the Phrygian Highlands, reveals a woman of extraordinary piety and influence. She is the only Christian figure in Phrygia, male or female, to have been designated a prophet after the foundation years of Montanism at the end of the second century. The nature of her prophecy is unknown,63 and if she was a Montanist this contradicts the claim of Maximilla to have been the last of the prophets before the end of time.64 Other likely Montanist inscriptions are of later date. A church which probably marked his own grave was built near Sebaste in the sixth century by ‘the holy Paulinus’, who held the rank of κοινωνός. This clerical office, as far as we know, was confined to the Montanist church, and the use of hagios to highlight the virtue of living persons was also one of the group’s specialities.65 Two other inscriptions of the same period marked the graves respectively of Praylios at Philadelphia and Paulos at Bagis, both hagioi who were also coenoni.66 The geographical concentration of these three texts in western Phrygia and north-east Lydia, none of them more than fifty kilometres from Pepuza, is striking. All of them are 61 Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, nos. 3–8; for the non-Montanist interpretation, see S. Mitchell, An epigraphic probe into the origins of Montanism, 184–5 and 191–7, and above in chapter 4, 180–5. Note Laodicea canon 11: περὶ τοῦ μὴ δεῖν τὰς λεγομένας πρεσβύτιδας ἤτοι προκαθημένας ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ καθίστασθαι, discussed by Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 311–2. 62 Cf Mitchell, Anatolia II, 104–5, treating the Temenothyrae group as Montanist. 63 Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. no. 68; ICG 1635; see 295–7. Her identity as a Montanist is questioned by Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 717 n. 11. 64 But compare the letter of Firmilian, bishop of Cappadocian Caesarea, about his encounter with an ecstatic female prophet in the 230s, who may have been Montanist; (Cyprian) ep. 75; C. Trevett, Spiritual authority and the heretical woman; Firmilian’s word to the Church in Carthage, in J. W. Drijvers and J. Watt (eds), Portraits of Spiritual Authority (Leiden 1999), 45–62. 65 Hieronymus, ep. 41. 66 Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, nos. 85–6; W. Tabbernee, Montanist regional bishops: new evidence from ancient inscriptions, Journal of Early Christian Studies I (1993), 249–80, reasonably suggests that Montanist coenoni were the equivalent of the village bishops noted by Sozomen.

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very likely to be Montanist. The church founded by Paulinos was dedicated to the martyr Trophimos, almost certainly an allusion to the Trophimos, whose late-third-century ossuary has been discovered at Synnada. At least in the sixth century, the Montanists claimed him as a member of their movement, although there is no indication of this in the passio which commemorates his arrest, trial and execution.67 Outside Phrygia itself, apart from the two coenoni from eastern Lydia, we can probably include the fragmentary epitaph of an ἐπίσκοπος [ἅγ]ιος πνευματικός found at Bandırma on the Propontic coast near Cyzicus,68 and a group of texts found at Ancyra in Galatia with certain or possible Montanist connections. The most eloquent of these is the gravestone of another Trophimos, probably from the early sixth century, who is described as an apostolos, an envoy, and who uniquely is identified by his ethnic as a Πεπουζεύς. Several features of his grave monument leave no doubt that he was indeed a follower of the New Prophecy.69 A roughly contemporary grave monument from Ancyra for an abbess called Stephania should, however, probably be discounted.70 There are some grounds for thinking that St Theodotus, buried at the village of Malos beside the river Halys east of Ancyra, was also a Montanist, in which case two inscriptions found there may also be interpreted in this sense, but the case is not conclusive.71 The spectre of a widespread and dangerous heresy that is raised by a rapid reading of the imperial edicts and the heresiologists proves to be a chimaera. These interdicts and denunciations were designed to provoke revulsion or to consolidate the orthodox base. The epigraphic evidence broadly confirms the impression that can be gleaned from Sozomen and Epiphanius, that there was a Montanist presence in Asia Minor during late antiquity, but it was not 67 Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. nos. 35 (ICG 1363); see above chapter 4.13 n. 10, and chapter 6.2 for the passio. 68 Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. no. 86. The example is doubtful. [ἅγ]ιος is a plausible but not certain restoration, and the identification also depends on the unwarranted view that all the pneumatici named in Christian inscriptions of late antiquity were spiritually inspired Montanists; see Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. nos. 55 and 63 (both assuming the resolution of the abbreviation π(νευματικός), 72 (an emigrant from a Galatian village to Rome), 93 (Rome; for Alexander ἰατρὸς Χριστιανὸς καὶ πνευματικός; however, a class of doctors called themselves pneumatici and the term may have not a religious connotation here), 95 (Clusium, Italy). 69 S. Mitchell, An apostle to Ankara from the New Jerusalem, Studia Classica Israelica 24 (2005), 207–23; (Mitchell and French, I. Ankara 2, 411; ICG 3761); for the Jewish associations of this text, see chapter 7.3 nn. 169–70. 70 Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. no. 87; Mitchell and French, I. Ankara 2, 378 (ICG 3728). 71 Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr. nos. 88–9 (ICG 2381 and 2382); S. Mitchell et al., Church building and wine-making east of Ancyra, Gephyra 21 (2021), 199–229 at 214–24.

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large. Epiphanius’s observation that the sect survived at Pepuza, while followers could be identified in Cappadocia, Galatia, Phrygia, Cilicia and above all in Constantinople is confirmed at least for Galatia and Phrygia by surviving inscriptions. The distribution of the coenoni in central and eastern Lydia and western Phrygia suggest that Pepuza was a central hub, with regional outposts that extended east to Sebaste, north to Bagis and west to Philadelphia. The community at Galatian Ancyra, which had been established during the first generation of the movement by the early 190s, endured until the sixth century. Perhaps there were similar pockets in Cappadocia and Cilicia, for which we have no epigraphic confirmation. Given the scale of migration from the Anatolian provinces to Constantinople between the fourth and the sixth centuries, it can be safely predicted that Montanists were among them, but there is no independent evidence for their churches in the capital. It remains to evaluate the surviving reports about Justinian’s suppression of the heresy. Procopius devoted a chapter in the Secret History to the persecution of religious dissidents in the mid sixth century and singled out two groups for detailed attention, the Samaritans in Palestine, and the Montanists.72 While other groups targeted by Justinian were destroyed by military action or committed suicide, and the majority fled into exile, ‘the Montanists, who lived in Phrygia, fortified themselves in their sanctuaries, forthwith set fire to their churches and perished with them for no good reason’.73 Other versions of the destruction of the Montanist heartland, evidently Pepuza, were recorded by Syriac chronicles respectively of the eighth and twelfth centuries which drew on earlier Syriac accounts, especially the ecclesiastical history of John of Ephesus, who had led religious crusades against pagans and heretics in Asia Minor at the behest of the Justinian.74 The chronicle of Ps-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre has an entry dated to 861 of the Seleucid era (AD 550), to the effect that ‘by the encouragement of the holy John, bishop of Asia, there were found 72

For the repression of the Samaritans, which was a major undertaking, see S. Mitchell, A History of the Later Roman Empire 284–641 (2nd ed. 2015), 138–9. 73 Procopius, Secret History XI.23: πολλοὶ μὲν οὖν πρὸς τῶν στρατιωτῶν διεφθέιροντο, πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ σφᾶς αὐτοὺς διεχρήσαντο εὐσεβεῖν μάλιστα ὑπὸ ἀβελτερίας οἰόμενοι, καὶ αὐτῶν ὁ μὲν πλεῖστος ὅμιλος γῆς τῆς πατρῴας ἐξιστάμενοι ἔφευγον, Μοντανοὶ δέ, οἳ ἐν Φρυγίᾳ κατῴκηντο, σφᾶς αὐτοὺς ἐν ἱεροῖς τοῖς σφετέροις καθείρξαντες τούτους τε τοὺς νεὼς αὐτίκα ἐμπρήσαντες, ξυνδιεφθάρησαν οὐδένι λόγῳ. There may be a confused recollection of the suicide of the last Montanists at Pepuza in the entry of Theophanes, Chron. a. 6214 (AD 712), that ‘in this year the emperor forced the Jews and the Montanists to accept baptism … As for the Montanists they made divination among themselves and, after determining a certain day, entered the houses appointed for their false worship and burnt themselves’ (trans. Mango and Scott). 74 See 406 n. 291.

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the bones of Montanus, the one who used to say of himself that he was the Spirit, the Paraclete and the Qr’tys (meaning uncertain), and Maximilla and Priscilla his prophetical agents. And he burned them with fire and uprooted their temples unto the foundations’.75 The twelfth century Chronicle of Michael the Syrian has a longer account, which begins with a very similar report about the destruction of the shrine. ‘In the region of Phrygia there is a town called Pepuza, in which the Montanists used to have a bishop and clergy. They call it Jerusalem and they were killing Christians in that place. When John of Asia came, he burned up their assembly place with fire by commandment of the king’. This was followed by a more elaborate description of the defiling of the shrine where the bones of Montanus and the prophetesses were housed and the burning of their holy books, concluding with the building of a new, presumably orthodox, church.76 No military operation was needed to destroy Pepuza. The scant survivors, perhaps inspired by the suicide of the movement’s founders, barricaded themselves in their churches before burning them to the ground. John of Ephesus ensured that the relics of Montanus, Priscilla and Maximilla suffered the same fate. In the seventh and eighth century, the cliffs that overlooked Pepuza were transformed into a honey-comb of cave dwellings and provided an important refuge during the period of Arab invasions, perhaps a monastery as well as a settlement, but there is no indication that either this community, or Theophylakt, the praeses of Pepuza, who attended the second council of Nicaea in 787, was Montanist.77 7.2

The Novatians

The Novatians formed the other main distinctive Christian group attested in Phrygia in late antiquity.78 The movement’s theological stance was uncomplicated and orthodox. They supported the homoousion and the credal statement 75 Ps-Dionysius, Chron. 861; the translation in Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr., 28–35 testimonium 1, here slightly altered, is by R. A. Taylor. 76 Michael the Syrian, Chron. 9.33, dated between 554 and 557; Tabbernee, Mont. Inscr., 35–47 testimonium 2 (slightly modified), has a full discussion of other aspects of this later Syriac tradition regarding the burial, safeguarding and desecration of the Montanist relics. 77 For the later site, see P. Lampe and W. Tabbernee, Pepuza and Tymion. The Discovery and archaeological exploration of a lost ancient city and an imperial estate (Berlin 2008). 78 Mitchell, Anatolia II, 96–100; M. Wallraff, Geschichte des Novatianismus seit dem vierten Jahrhundert im Osten, ZAC 1 (1997), 251–79; V. Hirschmann, Die Kirche der Reinen. Kirchenund Sozialhistorische Studien zu den Novatianern im 3. bis 5. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart 2017).

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agreed at the Council of Nicaea, and accepted that it was fully consistent with the early doctrines of the apostolic church which had been the lode-stone of their beliefs. However, they chose not to share communion with the rest of the pro-Nicene Church because they disagreed about its powers to forgive sinners.79 Their founder, a priest based in Rome called Novatus or Novatianus who was martyred in 257,80 had argued that baptised Christians who had agreed to renounce their religion during the persecution of Trajan Decius could not be readmitted to communion by the absolution of a priest.81 During the fourth century the precedent of Christian behaviour during the persecution became irrelevant in a practical sense, but, as with the Donatists of Africa,82 the question of how to treat Christian lapsi came to symbolise a more comprehensive approach to the forgiveness of mortal sins, and the Novatians stuck to the austere and moralistic doctrine, that only God could forgive such transgressions.83 Although they were not named, the Novatians were one of the churches which were outlawed by Constantine’s letter of 324, which hardened into the law against heresies issued on 1 September 326.84 Less than a month later, in response to an urgent petititon, an exception was made for them in another decree, which explicitly recognised their church as an ecclesia.85 An imperial audience with the leading Novatian churchman at the time of the Council of Nicaea doubtless created the setting, real or fictitious, for Constantine’s famous quip, ‘Take a ladder, Akesios, and climb up to heaven on your own’. 79 Socrates, HE 1.10; Sozomen, HE 1.22. 80 Philostorgius VIII.15 (sceptically reported by Photius) said that Novatus was by origin a Phrygian; for arguments against this, see P. Mattei, review of Hirschmann, Die Kirche der Reinen, ZAC 21 (2017), 422–9 at 427–9. 81 For the stigmatisation of Novatus in the west, especially by Cyprian, see Mar Marcos, The making of Novatian the heretic and the early geography of Novatianism, Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 85.1 (2019: Loca Haereticorum), 77–94. 82 Epiphanios, Pan. 59.13 made this obvious comparison. 83 Socrates, HE IV. 28 for early Novatian history. 84 Eusebius, Vita Constantini 3.64; CTh. XVI.5.1: Imp. Constantinus a. ad Dracilianum. privilegia, quae contemplatione religionis indulta sunt, Catholicae tantum legis observatoribus prodesse oportet. Haereticos autem atque schismaticos non solum ab his privilegiis alienos esse volumus, sed etiam diversis muneribus constringi et subici. proposita kal. Sept. Gerasto Constantino a. vii et Constantio c. conss. (1 Sept. 326). 85 CTh. XVI.5.2: ad Bassum. Novatianos non adeo comperimus praedamnatos, ut his quae petiverunt crederemus minime largienda. Itaque ecclesiae suae domos et loca sepulcris apta sine inquietudine eos firmiter possidere praecipimus, ea scilicet, quae ex diuturno tempore vel ex empto habuerunt vel qualibet quaesiverunt ratione. sane providendum erit, ne quid sibi usurpare conentur ex his, quae ante discidium ad ecclesias perpetuae sanctitatis pertinuisse manifestum est. dat. vii kal. Oct. Spoleti Constantino a. vii et Constantio c. conss. (25 Sept. 326).

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This encounter was first reported by Socrates, whose Church History, completed by the early 440s, is the basis of most of our knowledge of the Novatians in the fourth and fifth centuries. Remarkably, he claims to have heard of the meeting with Constantine from a very old man, who had been present and ‘was never known for telling falsehoods’.86 This was the priest Auxanon, who had been with his father while no more than a boy in the company of Akesios, and he told the story during the reign of Theodosius II, when Socrates himself was a very young man.87 If Auxanon had been fifteen-years-old in 325 at the council of Nicaea, he would have been almost a hundred at the accession of Theodosius II in 408, μακροχρονιώτατος.88 Another of Auxanon’s early recollections concerned a Novatian called Eutychianus, who lived as a hermit on Mount Olympus in Bithynia and had been Auxanon’s mentor when he was being trained as a monk at a very tender age.89 Auxanon had accompanied Eutychianus to a prison in the neighbourhood where one of Constantine’s domestici was imprisoned in intolerable conditions on suspicion of treason. Although the prison guards refused to open the jail, Eutychianus’s miraculous powers caused the door to open of its own accord and the chains to fall from the prisoner’s limbs. Auxanon then went with Eutychianus to Constantinople, where he successfully petitioned the emperor in the palace to release and pardon the prisoner.90 This tale bears the hallmarks of early Christian hagiography – torture and imprisonment, a miraculous intervention, an implausible imperial audience, solemn affirmations that the scene had been witnessed by the writer – and Socrates hardly expected his readers to believe it.91 It is possible that Auxanon’s father, as a priest, attended Akesios at his imperial audience with Constantine and took his young son with him, but doubts are legitimate, and they are reinforced by the incredible tale of the monk. We do better to treat the Akesios story as a

86 Socrates, ΗΕ 1.10: ἐγὼ δὲ παρὰ ἀνδρὸς ἤκουσα οὐδαμῶς ψευδομένου, ὅς παλαιός τε ἦν σφόδρα. 87 Socrates, HE 1.13: Αὐξάνων τις τῆς Ναυατιανῶν ἐκκλησίας πρεσβύτερος μακροβιώτατος γέγονεν· ὃς καὶ τῇ ἐν Νικαίᾳ συνόδῳ, κομιδῇ νήπιος ὢν, ἅμα τῷ Ἀκεσίῳ παρέβαλλε, καὶ τὰ κατὰ Ἀκέσιον ἐμοὶ διηγήσατο. Οὗτος ἐξ ἐκείνων τῶν χρονῶν ἄχρι τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ νεοῦ Θεοδοσίου ἐξέτεινε, καὶ νεωτέρῳ μοι σφόδρα τυνχάνοντι τὰ περὶ Ευτυχιανοῦ διηγήσατο. 88 Socrates, HE IV.28. T. Urbainczyk, Socrates of Constantinople. Historian of Church and State (Ann Arbor 1997), 18–19 dates the meeting of Auxanon and Socrates to around 395, but by her reckoning Socrates would then have been only fifteen years old and the younger Theodosius was not even born. 89 Eusebius, HE 1.13, νέος ὢν πάνυ. 90 There are parallels with the story of St Agapetus; see 513. 91 HE 1.13: ἐρῶ μετ᾽ ἀκριβείας, καὶ οὐκ ἀποκρύψομαι, κἂν δόξω τισιν ἀπεχθάνεσθαι, ‘I tell the story word for word and will conceal nothing, even if I believe that this may annoy people’.

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foundation myth of the fourth-century Novatian church, retold to credulous hearers by the community’s most venerable priest in the early fifth century. Comfortable tolerance of the Novatians by Constantine supposedly reverted to much rougher treatment under Constantius II. Socrates devoted a long chapter to the monstrous crimes of the Arian bishop Macedonius perpetrated at the summit of Arian ecclesiastical authority in the capital during the later 350s and the radical violence inflicted on pro-Nicene followers of the doctrine of the homoousion, including the Novatians. Auxanon was again the key witness. He told Socrates that he had been tortured himself, while his comrade, Alexander, a fellow monk from Paphlagonia, had died after repeated beatings in custody. Alexander was treated as a martyr since his tomb, on the right-hand bank of the Golden Horn, was subsequently marked by a church named after him.92 Auxanon related more atrocities perpetrated in the capital. The bishop Agelios fled, prominent members of the community were physically humiliated to serve as a warning to others, men were forced to take Arian communion by having their mouths prised open with wooden tongs, while women and children submitted to beatings if they refused to do likewise. Other women were encased in a box and had their breasts sawn off, or their genitals cut away with a knife or cauterized.93 These ghastly details were again based on Auxanon’s testimony, lifted from the playbook of contemporary Christian hagiography, and cast the Constantinopolitan Novatians of the 350s in the role of Christian martyrs of the Great Persecution.94 According to Auxanon when Macedonius ordered the demolition of one of their four churches in Constantinople, in the Pelargos close to the Golden Horn, the Novatian constituents and their supporters transported it stone by stone across the water to Sykai (Galata), and re-erected the building; Julian gave permission afterwards for it to be transferred back to the original site. Macedonius’s malign persecution of Novatians extended beyond the capital. 92 Socrates, HE II. 28: ταῦτα δὲ ἐγὼ παρὰ τοῦ μακροχρονιωτάτου Αὐξάνοντος ἤκουσα, … ὃς πρεσβύτερος μὲν ἦν τῆς τῶν Ναυατιανῶν ἐκκλησίας. Πεπονθέναι δὲ ἔλεγε καὶ αὐτὸς οὐκ ὀλίγα παρὰ τῶν Ἀρειανιζόντων κακά, οὔπω τηνικαῦτα τῆς τοῦ πρεσβυτέρου ἀξίας λαχών, ἅμα δὲ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ Παφλαγόνι συνασκοῦντι αὐτῷ εἴς τε εἱρκτὴν βεβλῆσθαι καὶ πληγὰς ὑπομεῖναι πολλάς. Ἐνεγκεῖν μὲν τὰς βασάνους αὐτὸς ἔλεγεν, Ἀλέξανδρον δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν πληγῶν ἐν τῇ εἱρκτῇ τελευτῆσαι. 93 Socrates, HE II. 38: φεύγει μὲν αὐτῶν ὁ ἐπίσκοπος Ἀγέλιος … πολλοὶ δὲ τῶν ἐπισήμων ἐπ᾽εὐλαβείᾳ συλληφθέντες ᾐκίζοντο, ἐπεὶ μὴ ἐβούλοντο μετέχειν τῆς κοινωνίας αὐτοῦ· μετὰ δὲ τοὺς αἰκιζομένους, βίᾳ τῶν μυστηρίων μετέχειν τοὺς ἄνδρας ἠνάγκαζον· ξύλῳ γὰρ διαιροῦντες τὰ στόματα τῶν ἀνθρώπων τὰ μύστηρια ἐνετίθεσαν … γυναικῶν γὰρ τῶν μὴ ἀνασχομένων μετασχεῖν τῶν μυστηρίων τοὺς μαστοὺς ἐν κιβώτῳ ἀπέπριον, ἄλλων τε γυναικῶν τὰ αὐτὰ μόρια, τοῦτο μὲν σιδήρῳ, τοῦτο δε ᾠοις εἰς ἄκρον πυρὶ θερμανθεῖσι προσφέροντες ἔκαιον. 94 They were omitted by Sozomen, HE IV. 20.

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His associate Eleusios, the bishop of Cyzicus, was responsible for razing the Novatian church there to the ground, while Macedonius himself, when he learned that Novatians formed the Christian majority in Paphlagonia, prevailed on the emperor to send four contingents of soldiers to Mantineion, a rural district in the border country between Bithynia and Paphlagonia, to force local compliance with Arian dogma. This ended in heavy casualties on both sides as the Novatian farmers used scythes and axes against the weapons of the soldiers.95 Socrates said that he had heard details from a Paphlagonian peasant who had been present at the battle, and that this was confirmed by many other Paphlagonians.96 Here too, there are good reasons to be sceptical. Auxanon, not the peasant eye-witness, would have provided the information about the role of Macedonius and the four military units, while the peasant and his confrères, who can hardly have been younger than eighty when they shared their memories with Socrates, are likely to have now been resident in Constantinople.97 This event too could be part of an embroidered legend about Novatian heroism, told and retold among the community which was now displaced, like so many other rural Anatolians, to the rapidly growing capital.98 In another supposed Arian atrocity Valens’s praetorian prefect Modestus contrived the ship-wreck and drowning of eighty Orthodox clergy in the bay of Astakos at Nicomedia. In punishment, God inflicted a famine on Phrygia, causing the starving peasants to resettle in the capital, where food, provided by the annona system, was always plentiful.99 Agelios, renowned as a champion of the primitive apostolic church and for his asceticism, was still Novatian bishop under the emperor Valens, who was

95 Socrates, HE II. 28 Μακεδόνιος … πυθόμενος γὰρ κατὰ τὸ Παπφλαγόνων ἔθνος πλείστους εἶναι τῆς Ναυατιανῆς θρησκείας καὶ μάλιστα κατὰ τὸ Μαντίνιον … τέσσαρας ἀριθμοὺς στρατιωτῶν γνώμῃ τοῦ βασιλέως ἐπὶ τὴν Παφλαγονίαν πεμφθῆναι πεποίηκεν, ὅπως φόβῳ τῶν ὁπλιτῶν τὴν Ἀρειανὴν δόξαν προσδέξωνται.; Sozomen, HE 4.21. Fourth-century Paphlagonians had a brutish reputation, see Libanius I.85. 96 Socrates, II. 38.30: ταῦτα ἐγὼ παρὰ ἀγροίκου Παφλάγονος ἔμαθον, ὃς ἔλεγε παρεῖναι τῇ μάχῃ· λέγουσι δὲ ταῦτα καὶ ἄλλοι Παφλαγόνων πολλοί. 97 T. Urbainczyk, Socrates of Constantinople, 17 assumes that Socrates collected this information in Paphlagonia itself. 98 Sozomen, HE IV. 20–21 retold the stories about moving of the Novatian church from Pelargos to Sykai, and the razzia in Mantinion, but omitted the gruesome details of persecution. 99 Socrates, HE IV.16. The moral message is far from clear. An Arian crime was punished by a flood of non-Arian, famine-driven migrants to the capital, who placed an unwanted burden on the state food supply. The implication was that most people, including the writer, would have preferred them to stay away.

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also regarded as a champion of Arianism in orthodox Christian tradition.100 Like Constantius the emperor was said to have closed Novatian churches but the decision was reversed thanks to the intervention of an ex-soldier, turned Novatian priest, called Marcianus, who had been hired as a grammaticus to instruct Valens’s daughters, Anastasia and Carosa.101 Socrates, followed by Sozomen, and in the eighth century by the entry in Theophanes’s Chronicle anno mundi 5867 (367),102 then reported a synod in Phrygia, held in the time of Valens at a village called Pazon near the sources of the Sangarius by breakaway Novatians, who resolved to celebrate Easter at the time of the Jewish Passover, although their calendar had previously been aligned with the Orthodox Church. Remarkably, the leading Novatian bishops of Constantinople, Nicaea, Nicomedia and Cotiaeum were absent from a meeting which can hardly have had official status, even within the sect. Socrates’s informant, not actually named, was described as an ἀνὴρ παλαιός and the son of a priest, who had also attended the event. There is not much doubt that the source was again Auxanon. He would have been over fifty himself and his father might have been around eighty at the time of the gathering.103 The next reference to the Novatians shifts to an entirely different environment, a council summoned in Constantinople by Theodosius in June 383, at which the leaders of the Nicenes, the Novatians, the Eunomians and the Homoeans were required to make statements about their beliefs for imperial approval. Agelios and Nectarius, respectively the Novatian and Catholic bishops of Constantinople, were recognised as the leaders of the Homoousians, and the Novatians subsequently had their churches and right of worship restored to them.104 Socrates, who alone mentioned the restoration of the churches, provides a remarkably partisanal picture of the influence wielded by the Novatians in establishing Nicene orthodoxy.105 Bishop Agelios, him100 R. M. Errington, Christian accounts of the religious legislation of Theodosius I, Klio 79 (1997), 398–443 shows that Valens’s Arian leanings have been exaggerated. 101 Socrates, HE IV.9. 102 Socrates, HE IV.28; Sozomen VI. 24.7–8; Theophanes, Chron. a. 5867: ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ χρόνῳ τινες τῶν Ναυατιανῶν ἐν Φρυγίᾳ τὸ πάσχα ἤρξαντο ποιεῖν μετὰ τῶν Ἰουδαίων συνέλθοντες ἐν Πάζῳ τῇ κώμῃ, καὶ νόμον ἐξέθεντο μετὰ Ἱουδαίων πασχάζειν. ἐκ τούτων οἱ λεγόμενοι Σαββατιανοὶ ἀπὸ Σαββατίου τινος ἀνεφύησαν. 103 Socrates, HE IV.29. 104 See P. Van Nuffelen, Un heritage de paix et de piété. Étude sur les histoires ecclésiastiques de Socrate et de Sozomène (Leuven 2004), 385, and 386–8 where he throws doubt on the historicity of this council and suggests that it may be a product of pro-Theodosian propaganda, on which Socrates and Sozomen drew independently. 105 T. Graumann, The synod of Constantinople, AD 383: history and historiography, Millennium 7 (2010), 133–68 defends the historicity of the council but stresses the extent

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self an unsophisticated churchman, handed the initiative in discussions to a church reader Sisinnios, a highly-educated man who had studied under the philosopher Maximus around 350 with the future emperor Julian.106 Sisinnios persuaded Theodosius that the best strategy to define orthodoxy was to ask the competing sects if they accepted the teachings of the original gospels, written long before the dispute about the nature of the Trinity had arisen. Any group that rejected the teaching of the Gospels could count on being immediately repudiated; those who said that they accepted them, would have any view of theirs which implied division or differentiation of the Trinity exposed as contradicting this acceptance. According to Socrates and Sozomen, this sophistry achieved its aim in sidelining the theological disputations of the Arians, Eunomians, Macedonians and other dissenters, and establishing Nicene Catholics and Novatians as the only legitimate Church.107 Agelios died in 386 after forty years as bishop of Constantinople. In his last days, respecting the tradition of Apostolic succession, he laid hands on an anointed successor, the agile Sisinnios, now a priest, but was confronted by opposition from the Novatian laity, who demanded instead that they be led by the pious Marcian, former tutor of Valens’s daughters. Agelios acceded and nominated first Marcian and then Sisinnios to be bishops in succession to himself.108 Marcian became embroiled in the conflict that had split the Novatians under Valens. A former Jew called Sabbatios, whom Marcian had appointed to the priesthood in Constantinople, formed a party with two other priests, Theoktistos and Makarios, to adopt the practice agreed at Pazon and celebrate Easter during the Jewish Passover festival. Marcian called another synod to discuss the issue at the port of Angarum on the Asiatic side of the Propontis, a convenient central meeting point for the clergy of Constantinople, Bithynia and Phrygia. The convention witnessed a showdown between Marcian’s followers from the capital, and Sabbatios, who clearly had substantial support in the Anatolian hinterland, and had made no secret of his ambition to become the senior bishop of the Novatian church. In a remarkable compromise, it was agreed that if Sabbatios renounced his aspirations to become bishop of Constantinople, unity over the date of Easter was not necessary. The Constantinopolitans followed the Orthodox pattern, while the Sabbatianists, to which knowledge about it is almost entirely dependent on the persuasive force of Socrates’ narrative. 106 Socrates, HE V.21.3; cf VI.22, which alluded to Sisinnios outwitting Eunomios; Sozomen, HE VII.12.4. 107 Socrates, HE.V.10; Sozomen VII.12. 108 Socrates, HE V. 21; cf Sozomen, HE VII. 14.

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especially in Phrygia and Galatia, for many years conformed with the Jewish sacred calendar, celebrated Passover and then attended Easter worship.109 The practice was, nevertheless, abhorrent to the state, as shown by a ruling of Honorius and Theodosius II issued in 413, which outlawed the practice of these ‘deserters and refugees from the collegium of the Novatians’, who now wished to be known as Protopaschistae, since choosing an alternative date for Easter was tantamount to recognising that there was another Son of God than the one who was universally worshipped.110 The division was still visible in the anti-heretical imperial constitutions of 423 and 428.111 Sisinnios followed Marcian as Novatian bishop of Constantinople at the end of 395, as laid down by Agelios. Socrates, who was probably born around 380, recalled that Sisinnios adopted a white robe in place of the habitual clerical black, treated himself to baths twice daily, and wittily deflected criticism that came from fellow bishops in the Orthodox church.112 Under Sisinnios, the breakaway group under Sabbatius worshipped separately at a place called Xerolophos near the Forum of Arcadius, and there was a catastrophe at an Easter vigil held over the night of the Passover by the group in conformity with the Jewish calendar, when seventy worshippers, crowded into a tight space, presumably their church, were crushed in a stampede. Socrates’s account does not reveal whether the loss of life was the result of a siege and assault by other Novatians or, as seems possible, by imperial troops. This was surely an act of terror, not an accident.113

109 Socrates, HE V.21; Sozomen HE VII.14; see chapter 7.3. S. Stern, Calendars in Antiquity (Oxford 2012), 417–21 and especially 422 n. 180 argues that this conformity with the Jews was purely calendrical and that the judaizing interest of the Novatians and Quartodecimans ‘has been grossly overstated in modern scholarship’. 110 CTh. XVI.6.6.1 to Anthemius praet. praef.: Illud etiam, quod a retro principibus dissimulatum est et in iniuriam sacrae legis ab exsecrandis hominibus agitatur et ab his potissimum, qui, Novatianorum collegio desertores ac refugae, auctores se quam potiores memoratae sectae haberi contendunt, quibus ex crimine nomen est, cum se Protopaschitas appellari desiderent, inultum esse non patimur. Sed si alio die Novatiani, quam quo Orthodoxorum antistites, praedicandum ac memorabilem saeculis diem paschae duxerint celebrandum, auctores illius conventionis deportatio pariter ac proscriptio subsequatur, contra quos acrior etiam poena fuerat promulganda, si quidem hoc delicto etiam haereticorum vesaniam superent, qui alio tempore quam quo Orthodoxi paschae festivitatem observantes alium paene dei filium, non quem colimus venerantur. Dat. xii kal. April. Constantinopoli Lucio v. c. cons. (21 March 413). In this year, Orthodox Easter fell on 6 April. 111 CTh. XVI.5.59, 9 April 423 to Asclepiodotus, praet. praef.; CTH. XVI.5.65.2, 30 May 428 to Florentius, praet. praef. 112 Socrates, HE VI.22; Sozomen, HE VIII.1. 113 Socrates, HE VII.5.

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Sabbatios is said to have lost support, but this did not prevent him from breaking the promise that he made at the Angarum synod, and attempting a coup in 412 to take over the Constantinopolitan church. This attempt to have himself ordained as Sisinnios’s successor by what Socrates described as a group of insignificant bishops, was forestalled by the Church’s establishment, which called instead on one of the most senior members of their community, Chrysanthus, son of the former bishop Marcian, who had previously been a military officer and a high ranking imperial administrator, and was living in retirement in Bithynia.114 Sabbatios’s fate was to be sent into exile, presumably by the imperial government, to Rhodes, where he died. His followers, however, brought his body back to Constantinople and his grave became a place where they prayed, a practice that continued until the remains were removed in a night-time operation ordered by the Orthodox bishop Atticus.115 In 419 Paul, who had taught Latin and then founded a monastery, followed Chrysanthus. In the pious environment of the Constantinople of Theodosius II, he re-affirmed the ascetic traditions of the Novatians, by eating no meat, observing rigorous fasts and periods of self-imposed silence, supporting the poor and being a regular prison visitor.116 The most dramatic moment in his career came when a terrible fire destroyed large parts of Constantinople and threatened to engulf the church called Anastasia, precisely the structure which had been moved to Sykai by the Novatians under Constantius II and restored in the Pelargos under Julian. It is not to be confused with the great Anastasia Church which was rebuilt in precisely this period with contributions from Paul’s successor Marcian (see below). Paul’s prayers on the altar of the imperilled Novatian building on 17 August 433 were treated as a miracle, and cause for annual celebration afterwards.117 Socrates, who wrote a detailed anecdotal character sketch, certainly knew him personally, and attended his funeral on 21 July 438, one of the latest events in his history. He added an account of how Paul first nominated, and then organised the approval of his successor by the clergy, the choice falling on another Marcian, summoned to the capital from the obscure north Phrygian city of Tiberiopolis.118

114 Socrates, HE VII.5; for Chrysanthus’s dates of office, see HE VII.17. 115 Socrates, HE VII.25. 116 Socrates, HE VII.27. 117 Socrates, HE VII.39. 118 Socrates, HE VII.46; Urbainczyk, Socrates of Constantinople, 124–5 points out that the episode is presented as a prime example of peaceful episcopal succession. Marcian might well have been a grandson of his namesake, who had held the office fifty-two years previously, but this is hard to reconcile with the persuasive hypothesis of M. Wallraff (see

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Socrates’s history of the Novatian movement in the fourth and early fifth centuries is more limited in scope than first appears. He derived almost all his information about the movement before his own lifetime from the venerable Auxanon, whose testimony was not only highly anecdotal but coloured in the telling by strong hagiographical overtones. It would be a reasonable guess that Auxanon, who had first been a monk and then a priest, and his father, also a priest, were part of the Paphlagonian community in Constantinople, like Auxanon’s fellow monk Alexander, the victim of Arian violence in the 350s. The old man who had witnessed the battle between Constantius’s soldiers and the Novatians at Mantineion was almost certainly another migrant to the capital. All the episodes involving Novatians up to the rural synod at Pazon under Valens are derived from accounts given by Auxanon or anonymous oral sources which were close to him. A written account may lie behind the reports provided by Socrates and Sozomen of the council in Constantinople in June 383, at which Sisinnios, still a priest, refuted the heresies which were unwelcome to Theodosius I,119 but most of the pen portraits of the heads of the church, the bishops of Constantinople, from the accession of Sisinnios in the 395 to Paul’s nomination of the second Marcian in 438, were drawn from Socrates’ own direct experience of these men. Socrates himself not only looked on the Novatians with favour, but had almost certainly been a member of the Church himself, perhaps even a priest or a deacon.120 All of these sketches imply that their Church was well integrated with the Orthodox hierarchy of the capital city. The bishops were establishment figures, who came from respectable, highly educated backgrounds. The first Marcian had been tutor to the emperor’s daughters, Sisinnios was a notable ecclesiastical sophist, Chrysanthus had held high administrative offices before becoming bishop, and Paul had learned and taught Latin, no doubt as a tutor to lawyers and senior civil servants. Excepting a clash between Sisinnios and John Chrysostom, they were, as far as we can judge, on good terms with the Orthodox community. Socrates was at pains to project this version of the reality. As Peter Van Nuffelen puts it, his objective throughout was to reduce the distance that separated the Novatians from the Nicaeans.121 The picture is not a false one, but is one-sided. It makes no secret of the fundamental divide n. 130) that the second Marcian is to be identified with the oikonomos responsible for Orthodox church building after c.458. 119 P. Van Nuffelen, Un heritage de paix et de piété, 384–8. 120 M. Wallraff, Der Kirchenhistoriker Sokrates. Untersuchungen zur Geschichtsdarstellung, Methode und Person (Göttingen 2014), 221–57; Van Nuffelen, Un heritage de paix et de piété, 37–46. 121 Van Nuffelen, Un heritage de paix et de piété, 44–5.

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between the Novatians in the Anatolian hinterland and the capital city, but also casts a veil over substantial internal differences within the Church at Constantinople The tolerance shown from the time of Constantine was reflected in Canon 8 of the Council of Nicaea regarding the Cathari, the name by which the Novatians were commonly known in their inscriptions and in the discussion of the sect by Epiphanius.122 This canon has been transmitted in a form which was drafted after the initial heretical judgment had been revoked in September 326, and it dealt with conditions imposed on Novatian clergy who transferred their allegiance to the Catholic Church. Former Novatian presbyteroi were required to make a written declaration that they would allow twice-married persons into communion and agreed to restore those who had lapsed during the persecution, but could then retain their priestly status after the simple laying on of hands rather than an elaborate procedure of re-ordination.123 Following the principle that no city should have more than one bishop, a transferring Novatian bishop would not retain this rank in a see where there was a Catholic incumbent, but since there were many villages and cities which were only served by Novatian clergy, even this title could be retained. In any case, senior clergy were eligible to be received into the office of a chorepiscopus or a priest.124 The decision taken at Nicaea set a low barrier between the Orthodox and Novatian Church, and there was give and take between the religious communities. As the actual circumstances of the persecutions receded into the past, the question of absolution remained a real matter of division.125 John Chrysostom repeatedly attacked the Novatian gold standard of moral conduct, which not even their most devoted followers could live up to. He probably had the example of his rival Sisinnios in mind.126 The Novatians soon differed among themselves about how to deal with second marriages. Around the time of the rural council of Pazon under Valens, Socrates reported that only the Novatians 122 Wallraff, ZAC 1 (1997), 253–6. Rufinus in his Latin version of Eusebius’s Church History, HE 1.6, for western readers referred to catharos, qui apud nos Novatiani sunt. 123 Conc. Nic. Canon 8: ἔδοξε τῇ ἁγίᾳ καὶ μεγάλῃ συνόδῳ ὥστε χειροθετούμενος αὐτοὺς μένειν ἐν τῷ κλήρῳ; analysed by Wallraff, ZAC. 1 (1997), 258–9 n. 25. 124 Conc. Nic. Canon 8; ἔνθα μὲν οὖν πάντες εἴτε ἐν κωμαῖς εἴτε ἐν πόλεσιν αὐτοὶ μόνον εὑρίσκοιντο χειροτονηθέντες; Wallraff, ZAC 1 (1997), 259 n. 26 points out that this clause was omitted in Rufinus’s translation, HE X.6, presumably because this situation could not be envisaged in the Latin West. 125 The anonymous sermon De ieiunio, de Davide (PG 62, 759–64) set out the Orthodox arguments against the Novatians and their practical implications; Wallraff, ZAC 1 (1997), 266–7. 126 Wallraff, ZAC 1 (1997), 263–5.

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in Phrygia did not receive the twice-married into communion,127 those in Constantinople made no clear regulation, while the western Novatian Church explicitly permitted the practice. The difference lay in circumstantial decisions taken by influential church leaders.128 The two communities almost became one during the period of Arian persecution around 360, when the Orthodox joined the Novatians in common worship in the three Novatian churches that remained open, and unity was only blocked by the opposition of hard-line Novatian traditionalists. Sozomen less sympathetically commented that it was bewitchment by a few which prevailed on the majority to maintain their separate status.129 The decision that the Constantinopolitan Church should celebrate Easter at the same time as the Orthodox, while the Sabbatianists of Phrygia and Galatia chose Sunday after the Passover, ie the first Sunday after 14 Nisan, probably contributed more than anything else to bringing about their union with Orthodoxy. It would have been difficult for the Novatians of the capital, including many high-ranking and eminent members of society, to maintain barriers between themselves and the Orthodox Catholic majority during the Easter festivities, as they adhered to the same calendar. It was logical, therefore, that Sabbatios yielded no ground on this issue to unite his supporters against the Novatian establishment. The career of Marcian, the last Novatian bishop of Constantinople in Socrates’ sequence, as brilliantly reconstructed by Martin Wallraff, seems to show that the Verschmelzung of the mainstream Novatians in Constantinople with the Orthodox Church was finally achieved in the years following the Council of Chalcedon, about a century after this had almost occurred under Constantius II.130 The life of ‘Markianos, who became priest and oikonomos of the great Church of Constantinople’, a hagiographical text written before 500 which exists in three extensive but very similar versions, ostensibly commemorated 127 See Epiphanios, Pan. 59.4 for Novatian opposition to remarriage. 128 Socrates, HE V.22.60: οἱ Ναυατιανοὶ οἱ περὶ Φρυγίαν διγάμους οὐ δέχονται· οἱ δὲ ἐν Κωνστανινουπόλει οὔτε φανερῶς δέχονται οὔτε φανερῶς ἐκβάλλουσι· ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἑσπέροις μέρεσι φανερῶς δέχονται. Αἴτιοι γὰρ, ὡς ἡγοῦμαι, τῆς τοιαύτης διαφωνίας οἱ κατὰ καιρὸν τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν προεστῶτες. Compare, Basil, ep. 188.1 on the question of re-baptism, observing that until a universal rule should be established in the church, the matter should be left to local custom. Baptism carried out by the Cathari was explicitly acceptable. 129 Socrates, HE II.38.14–26: μικροῦ τε ἐδέησεν ἑνωθῆναι αὐτοὺς, εἰ μὴ Ναυατιανοὶ φυλάττοντες ἀρχαῖον παράγγελμα παρῃτήσαντο; Sozomen, used a different conditional clause, HE IV. 20.7–8: εἰ μὴ βασκανία ὀλίγων τὴν τοῦ πλήθους προθυμίαν ἔβλαψεν, ἀρχαῖον εἶναι λόγον ἰσχυριζόμενον παραιτεῖσθαι τοῦτο ποιεῖν. See Mitchell, Anatolia II, 97 n. 198 and P. Van Nuffelen, Un heritage de paix et de piété, 79–82. 130 M. Wallraff, Markianos: ein prominenter Konvertit von Novatianismus zur Orthodoxie, Vig. Christ. 52 (1998), 1–29.

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a prominent figure in the Constantinopolitan Church in the third quarter of the fifth century, who died in the mid 470s. All the versions of Marcian’s life emphasized that, apart from his personal piety, his achievements as a commissioner of church building were responsible for his saintly reputation, and he was closely associated with the construction and dedication of the Anastasia Church. This was the enlargement of a previously modest structure from the time of Valens, which had been used by Gregory of Nazianzus. Socrates, however, had referred to this as one of the prestige imperial projects of the 430s, more than twenty years before the period when Marcian was oikonomos,131 and the Life of Markianos is marked by a puzzling discrepancy between the early construction date of the church, and the much later period when Marcian held this office. The Life has suppressed the crucial detail that Marcian was a mid-life convert from the Novatians, a fact that is made clear in two other sources, the sixth-century Church History of Theodoros Anagnostes,132 and the hagiographical Life of Auxentius, a contemporary of Marcian.133 Marcian came from a wealthy and pious family, which was closely associated with the imperial house, and joined other members of the Constantinopolitan elite, include the Arian general Aspar, in the building of the Anastasia church, an enterprise which had the effect and probably also the purpose of uniting the separate Christian communities, but his most significant engagement had happened before, not after his conversion. Two versions of the Auxentios life noted that Marcian, previously a layman, had become the Novatian bishop, and leave no doubt that Marcian, oikonomos of the Great Church in the second half of his life, was none other than the bishop who was summoned from his retreat in Phrygian Tiberiopolis to be ordained in 438.134 We cannot, of course, assume that all his congregation converted to Orthodoxy when he did, but the 131 Socrates, HE V.7.1: τότε δὴ Γρηγόριος ὁ Ναζιανζοῦ μετατεθεὶς ἔνδον τῆς πόλεως ἐν μικρῷ εὐκτηρίῳ τὰς συναγωγὰς ἐποίειτο, ᾧτινι ὕστερον οἱ βασιλεῖς μέγιστον οἶκον εὐκτήριον προσσυνάψαντες Ἀναστασίαν ὠνόμασαν; cf Sozomen, HE VII.5.1. 132 Theodore Anagnostes 106, 9–10 (GCS III, 1995, ed. Hansen): οἰκονόμον τῆς τῶν Καθαρῶν ὄντα θρησκείας καὶ εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν μετελθόντα. 133 Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca 199, a life of Auxentios written soon after the saint’s death in 473, has been edited with commentary and Italian translation by P. Varalda, Vita sancti Auxentii (BHG 199). Editio princeps (Hellenica 64; Alessandria, 2017), non vidi. 134 Wallraff, Vig. Christ. 52 (1998), 17 n. 47 citing Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca 199–203, especially BHG 1032, 259, 30–32, 1033, 272b, 9–14, and the text at PG 114, 1380b: Μαρκιανῷ τῷ τηνικαῦτα λαικῷ ὄντι τῆς τῶν Ναυατιανῶν θρησκείας, μετ᾽οὐ πολὺ δὲ τῇ καθολικῇ πίστει ἑνωθέντι καὶ τὴν οἰκονομίαν τῆς ἁγιωτάτης μεγάλης ἐκκλησίας Κωνσταντινουπόλεως ἐμπιστευθέντι. This description continued in two other versions of the life (BHG 202 and 203) with the supplementary clause, ᾧ τοσοῦτον τὰ τῆς πίστεως ἐνεστήρικτο, ὡς καὶ διδασκάλου τάξιν λαχεῖν καὶ τὸν τῆς Κωνστανιουπόλεως θρόνον καρπὸν τῆς εὐσεβείας λαβεῖν.

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switch of this very prominent churchman, who was closely linked to the similarly pious imperial household of Theodosius II and his elder sister Pulcheria, surely swayed many of his fellow Novatianists to join the Orthodox camp. Thereafter, the Novatians disappeared almost without trace as a separate community in Constantinople.135 The history of the Novatians in Phrygia followed a different trajectory from the mainstream, although the two communities in Anatolia and in Constantinople were not insulated from one another. From his viewpoint in the capital, Socrates was aware of the activities of Novatians in Asia, Lydia, Phrygia, Paphlagonia, the Hellespont, Bithynia and Scythia (the west shore of the Black Sea).136 Marcian himself had been summoned from remote Tiberiopolis, Chrysanthus from a retreat in Bithynia, and Sabbatios’s supporters in the capital were predominantly from rural Phrygia. Auxanon was in close contact with the Paphlagonian Novatians, most likely those who had migrated to and settled in the capital. The site for the council at the modest harbour town of Angarum (now Engere) on the Asiatic side of the Propontis,137 was convenient for all parties. Chrysanthus, bishop in Constantinople, organised the ordination of one of his priests, Ablabius, to be bishop of Bithynian Nicaea,138 while Sisinnios intervened with Leontius, the orthodox bishop of Ancyra who was visiting the capital, to restore the Novatian churches in his city.139 The Novatians were noted not only for their doctrinal rigour but for their ascetic habitus.140 This aspect was repeatedly emphasized by Socrates in his account of the leaders of the Constantinopolitan church, excepting only Sisinnios, whose faddish clothes and taste for material comforts made him a noteworthy exception.141 Agelios went barefoot, clad in a single chiton, Paul’s 135 The dissident Sabbatianoi, who maintained the Jewish calendar, still had followers in the sixth century, see Van Nuffelen, Un heritage de paix et de piété, 44 n. 244. 136 References in Wallrath, ZAC 1 (1997), 271–2 n. 83. 137 A village close to Helenopolis, where the mother of Constantine was buried; see TIB 13.1, 595–8, and S. Mitchell, The cities of Asia Minor in the age of Constantine, in S. Lieu and D. Montserrat, Constantine. History, historiography and legend (London and New York 1998), 52–73, at 52 and 68 n. 2. 138 Socrates, HE VI.12.10. 139 Sozomen, HE VIII.1. 140 H. J. Vogt, Coetus Sanctorum. Der Kirchenbegriff des Novatian und die Geschichte seiner Sonderkirche (Bonn 1968). 141 Socrates, HE VI.22; τρυφῶν τε ἐν ἐσθῆτι λευκῷ καὶ δὶς τῆς ἡμέρας ἐν λούτροις δημοσίοις λουόμενος διετέλει; cf Sozomen, HE VIII.1. ἐγένετο δὲ σώφρων τὸν βίον, ὡς κρείττων τῆς διαβολῆς· περὶ δὲ δίαιταν ἁβρὸς καὶ ποίκιλος, ὡς τοὺς ἀγνοοῦντας ἀπιστεῖν εἰ σωφρονεῖν δύναιτο, τοσοῦτον τρυφῶν.

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asceticism and penchant for good works stood out even in the fashionably pious environment of Theodosian Constantinople in the 430s.142 However, with the exception of Agelios, who was presented as a simple and unsophisticated church leader throughout his long term of office, the Novatian leaders in the capital came from families of high standing or had impressive professional qualifications in state service or in high culture. Social status and wealth had been no obstacle to their preferment; riches and piety were comfortably aligned with one another in the age of Theodosius II. The church’s stance on wealth appealed both to rich families in Constantinople and to prosperous peasants in Anatolia.143 Socrates himself, who is never known to have spent time outside Constantinople, formed a revealing and often quoted assessment of the Anatolian Novatians,144 Φαίνηται δὲ καὶ τὰ τῶν Φρυγῶν ἔθνη σωφρονέστερα εἶναι τῶν ἄλλων ἐθνῶν, καὶ γὰρ δὴ καὶ σπανιάκις Φρῦγες ὀμνύουσιν. Ἐπικρατεῖ γὰρ τὸ μὲν θυμικὸν παρὰ Σκύθαις καὶ Θρᾳξί, τῷ δὲ ἐπιθυμητικῷ οἱ πρὸς ἀνίσχοντα ἥλιον τὴν οἴκησιν ἔχοντες πλέον δουλεύουσι, τὰ δὲ Παφλαγόνων καὶ Φρυγῶν ἔθνη πρὸς οὐδέτερον τούτων ἐπιρρεπῶς ἔχει. Οὐδὲ καὶ ἱπποδρομίαι οὐδὲ θέατρα σπουδάζονται οὖν παρ᾽αὐτοῖς. Δι᾽ὅ μοι δόκει μᾶλλον ἐπινενευκέναι τούτους τε καὶ τοὺς οὕτω φρονοῦντας πρὸς τὰ τοῦ Ναυάτου τότε γραφόμενα· ὡς μύσος καὶ ἐξαίσιον παρ᾽αὐτοῖς ἡ πορνεία νομίζεται. Καὶ γὰρ δὴ οἱασδήποτε ἄλλης αἱρέσεως σωφρονέστερον βιοῦντας Φρύγας καὶ Παφλαγόνας ἔστιν εὕρειν. The Phrygian peoples are demonstrably more restrained than any other peoples, and certainly the Phrygians very seldom swear oaths. Hot temper is prevalent among the Scythians and Thracians, and those whose homes lie to the East are more enthralled to desire, but the Paphlagonian and Phrygian peoples incline in neither direction. Accordingly, neither the hippodrome nor the theatre are things that they are keen on. For this reason, I think that these peoples and those who think like them are especially prone to accept the old precepts of Novatus. They think that 142 Socrates, HE IV.9 (Agelios); VII. 46 (Paul). 143 There are striking analogies with the current form of Sunni Islam in early twenty-first century Turkey, with its powerful appeal both to traditional populations in Anatolia and to the burgeoning metropolitan business class, which has been the driving force of the country’s economy and forms the core support of the ruling political party, the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; the Justice and Development Party). 144 Socrates, HE IV. 28.9–12; see L. Robert, CRAI 1978, 267–9; Mitchell, Anatolia I, 189 and II, 97.

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fornication is lawless defilement. It is manifest that the Paphlagonians and Phrygians have a soberer life-style than any other sect. Socrates’s judgment that Novatian asceticism was in some way ethnically predetermined reflected a widespread ancient understanding of innate characteristics which remained integral to theological thinking in late antiquity, particularly among the heresiologists,145 but he clearly understood that the community’s ethics were a matter of choice, not necessity, and the outcome of their choice was even more marked in the provincial communities than in the capital. The name that they adopted themselves, Cathari, reflected their strict views about sexual purity, and there was a continuing dispute inside the community about re-marriage. The Phrygian Novatians did not recognize second marriages, while their counterparts in the capital were permissive.146 Epiphanios deplored the embargo and set out the Orthodox arguments against outlawing second marriages,147 while Gregory of Nazianzus pleaded for tolerance againt strict Novatians, who did not even permit young widows to remarry. He also pointed out that while the sect’s founder Novatus had abhorred fornication with an exaggerated prurience, he had no criticism to make of greed, πλεονεξία: ‘And why should Novatus’s want of charity be a rule for me? He never punished covetousness, which is a second idolatry; but he condemned fornication as though he himself were not flesh and body’148 Although Socrates’s account implies that there was a substantial Novatian presence in Phrygia, individual and specific attestations are unusual except for the notable cluster of gravestones of Cathari or Navatiani recorded at Laodicea Catacecaumene, assembled in a classic study by W. M. Calder, which have been repeatedly discussed in recent years.149 Only three examples have been recorded in central Phrygia. One is the late-third- or early-fourth-century funerary altar from Altıntaş, recording the deaths of Aur. Trophimos and his wife Aur. Tatia, their daughter Ammia and Kyriakos, who was betrothed to Ammia’s sister Nonna. The central figure in this elaborate text was Ammia, who died after a grievous illness that had lasted nine days, was baptized in 145 The relationship between classical ethnography and heresiology is illuminated in the remarkable book of Todd S. Berzon, Classifying Christians. Ethnography, Heresiology and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity (Berkeley 2016). 146 Socrates, HE V.22.60; see nn. 125–6. 147 Epiphanios, Pan. 59.3; cf. Theodoret, PG 82, 285b. 148 Greg. Naz., or. 39, 18: οὐδὲ τὰς νέας γαμίζεις χήρας; 39.19, translated by Browne and Swallow, Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser. Vol. 7. 149 Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 750–66; V. Hirschmann, Die Kirche der Reinen, 138–70.

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extremis, and taken to be a bride of Christ in lieu of the earthly marriage that she never achieved. The poet has provided Ammia with a moving monologue in which she addresses her grieving parents.150 There is no reason to think, as Calder argued, that she was at odds with her Orthodox parents, and it is impossible to tell whether she as a Novatian, or the other members of her family, belonged to a minority Christian group, or represented the mainstream of the Upper Tembris Valley Christians around 300.151 Another Novatian inscription from a central area of Phrygia is the fourth- or early-fifth-century gravestone of Alexander, a reader in God’s holy church of the Novatians, and his unnamed son (presumably an infant or small child). The find-spot at Erten, north of the village of Malos in the Highlands, may have been close to the unlocated village of Pazon where the Phrygian Novatians held their synod under Valens.152 A third inscription for the church of the Cathari is in the museum of Afyon.153 7.3

Sabbatianoi, Tessareskaidekatitai and the Date of Easter

In the early eighth century, Theophanes in his Chronographia recalled that Novatians in Phrygia in 367 after holding the synod at the village called Pazon, began to celebrate Pascha at the same time as the Jews, and made a law that they should celebrate Easter (πασχάζειν) with them.154 The source for Theophanes was Socrates’s account of the Pazon synod, to the effect that ‘a few insignificant bishops from the Novatians in Phrygia organized a synod at the village of Pazon … and issued a canon that, as the Jews observed the festival of the unleavened bread (τὰ ἄζυμα), they should celebrate the Easter festival (πάσχα) with them.155 The canons of the Council of Laodicea, which was also held in the middle years of the fourth century, attempted to suppress the common worship of Christians and Jews. Christians should not follow Jewish practice and rest on the Sabbath, but should observe the Lord’s Day, Kyriake, as their holiday (canon 29). They should not accept gifts from Jews or heretics or

150 ICG 1689; see 257–8. 151 Calder, JRS 17 (1927), 57–58; BJRL 1929, 262–63; Hirschmann, Die Kirche der Reinen, accepts Calder’s interpretation; but see A. Wilhelm, Grabepigramme aus Kleinasien, esp. 821–23. 152 ICG 1688; see 375 n. 147. 153 ICG 4491; See 376 n. 149. 154 See 549 n. 102. 155 Socrates, HE IV.28.17: σύνοδον γὰρ ἐν Πάζῳ κώμῃ … ποιήσαντες ὀλίγοι τινες καὶ οὐκ εὔσημοι τῶν περὶ Φρυγίαν Ναυατιανῶν ἐπίσκοποι ὅρον ἐκφέρουσιν, ὥστε Ἰουδαίους ἐπιτηρεῖν ποιοῦντας τὰ ἄζυμα και σὺν αὐτοῖς τὴν τοῦ πάσχα ἐπιτελεῖν ἑορτήν.

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celebrate their festivals, share the Passover meal (canon 38), or accept eulogiai (commemorative praise of the dead) from heretics (canon 32).156 The crucial issue which divided the churches was the question of the date of Easter, whose complexities were as much a challenge to theologians in antiquity as they have been to mathematicians in modern times. Without introducing a very long digression, we cannot do much better than quote the current entry in Wikipedia: ‘Determining this date in advance requires a correlation between the lunar months and the solar year, while also accounting for the month, date, and weekday of the Julian or Gregorian calendar. The complexity of the algorithm arises because of the desire to associate the date of Easter with the date of the Jewish feast of Passover’.157 Resolving this question approached the heart of the disagreements among the churches, sects and heresies in Asia Minor from the third century, and the Church historians of the mid-fifth century, among many other contemporaries, devoted some of their longest chapters to describing and analysing their differences.158 The traditional practice of Christians in second-century Asia Minor was to mark the day of Christ’s resurrection as 14 Nisan, the first day of Passover (Pascha), the week-long festival of Unleavened Bread, τὰ Ἅζυμα.159 14 Nisan corresponded with full moon of the first month of the Jewish lunar year, and Christians who observed Easter on this day, regardless of the weekday on which 14 Nisan fell, became known as the Tessareskaidekatitai or Quartodecumani. The practice provoked intervention from Constantinople by John Chrysostom and Nestorius who reportedly closed their churches and persecuted their communities.160 A dossier associated with the Acts of the first council of Ephesus in 431, which resulted in the deposition and exile of Nestorius, documented the transition of twenty-four heretics from the Lydian city of Philadelphia and its villages from their former beliefs to Orthodoxy.

156 This may be an allusion to the Jewish practice of praise for the dead, which had been adopted by Phrygian Christians; Robert, Hellenica XI/XII, 394; W. Ameling, IJO II, 68. 157 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_of_Easter (consulted 6 October 2021). 158 Socrates, HE V. 22; Sozomen, HE VII.18. See E. Schwartz, Osterbetrachtungen, Zeitschrift für Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 7 (1906), 1–33; A. Strobel, Ursprung und Geschichte des frühchristlichen Osterkalenders (Berlin 1977). On the division between the Orthodox and the Novatians, Wallraff, ZAC 1 (1997), 273–7, with a rich bibliography. There is a full modern discussion of these calendrical issues and the problem of the date of Easter by S. Stern, Calendars in Antiquity. Empires, states, societies (Oxford 2012), 380–424, esp. 412–22. 159 Eusebius, HE V.24. 160 Socrates VI.11.13 (John Chrysostom closed churches of the Quartodecumani and the Novatians in Asia), and VII.29.2 (Novatians were spared by the intervention of the emperor Theodosius II, but the Quartodecumani suffered).

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Twenty-one of these were described as Tessareskaidekatitai, two as Novatians and one as a Katharos.161 The Novatians were guided by the traditional Jewish calendar, but differed from the Tessareskaidekatitai in celebrating Christ’s resurrection, according to the Passion narratives, on the Sunday that followed 14 Nisan.162 After the synod at Pazon the Anatolian Novatians reaffirmed their allegiance to this tradition by synchronizing their Easter celebration with Jewish Passover.163 This was confirmed by the practice of the Constantinopolitan priest Sabbatios, described in virtually the same words by both Socrates and Sozomen. He observed the Jewish lunar calendar, fasted and held a vigil on the Sabbath, and then celebrated Easter communion with the entire congregation on the following day. This was the established pattern among the Phrygians and Galatians.164 It seems likely that the imperial decree of 413 against the Protopaschitai, the ‘first to celebrate Pascha’, was targeted at them.165 On the other hand, since their schism had emerged in the third century, mainstream Novatians had aligned themselves with the Easter calender of the Roman and Alexandrian Churches, which conformed to the soli-lunar system, deliberately breaking all ties with the Jewish festival.166 This reckoning was confirmed as Orthodox at the Council of Nicaea. After the synod at Angarum it was agreed that the Novatians in Constantinople should follow this Roman practice, while most of the Anatolian Novatian Church continued to observe the traditional practice 161 F. Millar, Repentant heretics in fifth-century Lydia: identity and literacy, Studia Classica Israelica 23 (2004), 111–30. He registers the additional complexity that some of these schismatics unwittingly embraced another heresy, Nestorianism, thus jumping ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’, ἐκ βόθρου πεπτώκασιν εἰς χείρονα βόθρον. 162 See an anonymous sermon of 387, F. Floeri / P. Nautin, Homélies paschales (Sources Chrétiennes 48, Paris 1967), 78–89, c. 8: δουλεύουσι μὲν γὰρ καὶ αὐτοὶ τῇ προθεσμίᾳ τῶν Ἰουδαίων καὶ πρῶτον μῆνα, ὡς ἐκείνοι νομίζουσι, καὶ τεσσαρεσκαιδεκάτην κατὰ σελήνην τὴν παρ᾽ ἐκείνοις μεταδιώκοντες, ἀλλ᾽ οὐχ ἕως τούτου γε ἵστανται, αλλ᾽ὅταν τούτοις γένωνται, καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν τριήμερον ἔρχονται. 163 Wallraff, ZAC 1 (1997), 276 n.99, argues that this should be understood as the Novatians celebrating Easter at the time of the Passover, not that they worshipped in common with the Jews. 164 Socrates, HE V.21.17; Sozomen, HE VII.18: ἐξ ἐκείνου δὲ Σαββάτιος τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις ἑπόμενος, εἰ μὴ κατὰ ταὐτὸν συνηνέχθη πάντας ἄγειν τὴν ἑορτὴν, φθάνων ὡς ἔθος ἐνήστευε, καὶ καθ᾽ἑαυτὸν διὰ τῶν νενομισμένων ἐπετέλει τὸ Πάσχα· τῷ δὲ Σαββάτῳ ἀφ᾽ἑσπέρας ἐπὶ τὸν δέοντα καιρὸν ἐν ἀγρυπνίᾳ καὶ ταῖς προσηκούσαις εὐχαῖς διαγενόμενος τῇ ἑξὴς ἡμέρᾳ κοινῇ πᾶσιν ἐκκλησίαζε καὶ τῶν μυστηρίων μετεῖχε. Canon 29 of the Council of Laodicea forbade Christians to fast on the Sabbath. 165 CTh. XVI.6.6.1: to Anthemius, 21 March 413, cited on 551 n. 110. In 413 the date of the Orthodox Easter was 6 April. 166 Socrates, HE V.22.

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tied to the Jewish calendar. They were joined by the followers of Sabbatianus in Constantinople itself until his break-away church was suppressed. The Montanists offered another variation, which used the solar calendar but combined the Jewish and the Roman approaches, by celebrating Easter on the Sunday following the fourteenth day after the spring equinox (21 March), that is the eighth day before the Kalends of April.167 The fact that the Novatian and Montanist calendars were not aligned with one another provides a strong reason to doubt the hypothesis suggested by some scholars, that the Novatians should in some respects be seen as a heirs to the Montanists.168 Apart from their shared asceticism, the two groups had little in common, and remained loyal to their separate traditions. Both groups eventually disappeared not because they absorbed one another, but because, either by consensus or yielding to pressure, they fused with the Orthodox Church. Celebrating the Easter festival at a date that was aligned closely to the Jewish Passover is an indication that many Christians in the central regions of Asia Minor still had a strong affinity with their Jewish origins.169 Most of the Novatians in Phrygia and Galatia, as well as the Tessareskaidekatitai, were in this category. It is interesting to note that the Tessareskaidekatitai at Philadelphia in Lydia, who converted to orthodoxy at the Council of Ephesus, substantially outnumbered the group of Novatians from the same territory who converted with them. Even though the metropolitan Novatian church controlled the bishoprics of Nicomedia, Nicaea and Cotiaeum, the inhabitants of smaller cities and rural communities were numerous enough to resist the pressure to conform with Constantinople. The Montanists were a smaller community than either the Novatians or the Tessareskaidekatitai in the fourth and fifth centuries, but they too were not uprooted from their Jewish background. The Montanist compromise formula for fixing the date of Easter also aligned the festival approximately to 14 Nisan, although they shifted the start date for their calculations back to the spring equinox. The resultant calendar date would always have been close to 167 Sozomen, HE VII.18.12–14; Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 366–9. 168 Calder, Philadelphia and Montanism, BJRL 7 (1923), 309–54 at 321; Tabbernee, Fake Prophesy, 397; F. Blanchetière, Le christianisme asiate aux IIe et IIIe siècles (Lille 1981), 399–407. 169 We should note the counter-argument of Stern, Calendars in Antiquity, 412–22, esp. 422 n. 180, that Christian celebration Easter on the day after the Passover should be interpreted as part of their search for authenticity, that the choice of different days to celebrate Easter was a way of creating a dissident identity (‘playing heresy’), and that the juxtaposition of the Jewish and Christian festivals emphasised their difference, not their similarity.

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the Jewish Passover. More significantly, one of the very few unambiguously Montanist inscriptions of the late empire, the gravestone of Trophimos of Pepuza found at Galatian Ancyra, betrays strong Jewish influence. The inscription uses the indeclinable Hebrew form Σαβάθ, for the day of death in place of the usual Greek Σαββάτιος, and Trophimos himself appears to have been a religious envoy or missionary, described as an ἀποστόλος, a term that was used by Jews who fulfilled this function but never otherwise applied to Christian clergy. It is even the case that the only clear-cut parallel for the dekania, the association which was responsible for Trophimos’s burial far from his home, was the dekania of the lovers of learning and universal praise-singers, the funerary association which was responsible for the fifth or sixth-century Jewish foundation inscription of Aphrodisias.170 Institutionally, the Montanist church, at least in its later years, seems to have modelled itself on Jewish communal organisation.171 It may be possible to pick up the trail of a Christian group in Phrygia with Jewish associations in the Athinganoi, a group which was apparently mentioned in the work of Timothy the presbyter, a heresiologist who was probably writing in the late sixth or early seventh century in Constantinople. They were a Phrygian group equated with or identical to the Melkisedekites, followers of the Jewish high-priest Melchisedek, who were classified as neither Jew nor gentile, who observed the Sabbath but were not circumcised.172 Further information is found in Theophanes’s Chronographia, which referred to the Paulicians of Phrygia and Lycaonia and to the Athinganoi who supported the revolt of Nikephoros in the early ninth century.173 Under Michael I, membership of both groups was held to be a capital offence,174 but the latter were allegedly numerous at Amorium in the reign of Michael II, who was a native of the city and was sometimes later said himself to have belonged to the sect.175 Virtually everything that is known about their beliefs and practices is derived from the anathemas of an anonymous heresiologist of the tenth or eleventh century: they observed the Sabbath, while rejecting both circumcision and baptism; they resorted to charms, divination and magic, called down demons by name, and tried to instrumentalise the power of the stars; their asceticism and aspirations to purity taught them to be misanthropic, and they shunned 170 SEG 36, 970; IJO II 72 72 ff: δεκανία τῶν φιλομαθῶ[ν] τῶν κὲ παντευλογ(οῦντων ?) 171 S. Mitchell, An apostle to Ankara from the New Jerusalem. Montanists and Jews in late Roman Asia Minor, Studia Classica Israelica 25 (2004), 207–23. 172 PG 86, 33. 173 Theophanes, Chron. a.m. 6303. 174 Theophanes, Chron. a.m. 6304. 175 Theophanes Continuatus, PG 109, 57–9, 65; Genesios, PG 109, 1025–8.

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defilement by undergoing rituals of bathing and purification.176 Despite the overlap between some of this behaviour and that of the Sabbatianoi of the fifth century, the evidence is too slender to demonstrate continuity between these groups, still less their identity.177 It is not helpful to use the ambiguous term Judaeo-Christians to describe these groups, but their connection to Jewish traditions is clear, and the contacts between Jews and Christians clearly reach back much earlier than the fourth century. Some of these connections appear fleetingly in the epigraphic evidence from Asia Minor. The common Jewish custom of using isopsephisms, numbers corresponding to words to convey meaning with religious content, most famously appears in Christian writing in the book of Revelation, where the number of the beast, 666, was a code which is generally thought to denote the persecuting emperor Nero.178 Another isopsephism appears in the earliest inscribed evidence from the region, the Christian graffito carved on a column in the Smyrna agora, perhaps in AD 179/80.179 Isopsephisms were an affectation of educated Phrygian Christians, which occur on the mid-third century epitaph at Eumeneia for the lawyer Gaius and his family, and their guru and mentor, Roubes,180 on the Novatian gravestone at Laodicea Catacecaumene of the well travelled priest Eugenios at the start of the fourth century,181 and on the grave of an Asian, probably Phrygian, Christian called Tatianos, who was buried by a local priest in the third century at Thracian Philippopolis.182 Although the Eumeneian formula is usually a clear indicator of Christianity, we cannot exclude occasional use by Jews.183 However, more important than these epigraphic details are the rich shared religious heritage of Asian 176 PG 106, 1033–6. 177 J. Starr, An eastern Christian sect: the Athinganoi, Harvard Theological Review 29 (1936), 93–106; P. Gardette, The Judaizing Christians of Byzantium: an objectionable form of spirituality, in R. Bonfil et al. (eds), Jews in Byzantium. Dialectics of minority and majority cultures (Leiden 2012), 587–612. 178 Rev. 13.18. Isopsephism was not restricted to these religious contexts; the code could also be used playfully, as is shown by other examples from the Smyrna graffiti (next note). 179 R. Bagnall, Everyday Writing in the Graeco-Roman East (Berkeley 2012), 22ff. suggested an early second century date but this has now been revised to the late second century: R. Bagnall et al., Graffiti from the Basilica in the Agora at Smyrna (New York 2016), 40; R. S. Bagnall, Christianity in the Smyrna graffiti, Early Christianity 9 (2018), 215–8. If the apparent date 210 is calculated from the Actian era of 31 BC, the graffito was cut in 179/80, perhaps on a column that had been repaired and newly plastered after the earthquake that devastated Smyrna in 177 (cf 500 n. 54). 180 ICG 1028; see 161. 181 ICG 52; Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 755–8. 182 ICG 4298. 183 See above chapter 4.3.

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Christianity, which drew on the Old Testament, and placed such emphasis on the Johannine tradition of the book of Revelation. Our ignorance is far greater than our knowledge about the relations between Jews and heretical or schismatic Christians in late Roman Phrygia, but it is incontestable that there were many points at which the communities came in contact and influenced one another.

Chapter 8

The Development of Christianity in Phrygia 8.1

How and When did Christianity Reach Phrygia?

This study has dealt for the most part with inscriptions, the contemporary documentary evidence for Christians living in the communities of Phrygia, or with literary accounts that unambiguously relate to them. The earliest inscriptions hardly date before 200. The literary sources allow glimpses into a century and a half of earlier Christian history in Asia Minor from around 50, but pose systemic problems of interpretation. Except the Pauline letters, including those whose authorship is now generally doubted, and the second-century letters of Ignatius, whose authenticity and date are even more a matter of controversy,1 other written sources, in so far as they affect or relate to Phrygia at all, were all composed significantly later than the events they describe. None of them provides any direct insight into the ways in which Christianity first came to the region and was adopted by its inhabitants. The origins of Phrygian Christianity are obscure. Paul’s journeys did not lead to the heartlands of Phrygia, and he had no attested contacts with any of its communities outside the Lycus valley, except with those of the Lycus Valley and with Pisidian Antioch. For him and his travel companions most of the region was at best a transit zone. This is not the occasion for another analysis of the sections of the Acts of the Apostles or the Letter to the Galatians that relate to Pisidian Antioch. Paul’s first missionary excursion into Anatolia led from Perge in Pamphylia to Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe, without mentioning Phrygia. Acts related that after Paul’s second visit to Derbe and Lystra, small towns in the Lycaonian part of the Roman province of Galatia, he was instructed by the Holy Spirit, presumably in a dream or by an intuition, unless this allusion is understood simply as a narrative device by the author of Acts, not to journey into Asia, that is to go west towards the Aegean coast. Instead he travelled in the company of Silas through Phrygia and the Galatian country, received another divine message not to enter Bithynia, and passed through Mysia, before reaching the harbour

1 U. Huttner, Early Christianity in the Cities of the Lower Maeander Valley (2023), 3.1.2.

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city of Alexandria Troas, where they embarked for Samothrace and Philippi.2 These geographical details are coherent and suggest that the route from Lystra would have run to Iconium, perhaps to Antioch again in Phrygia Paroreius, or perhaps simply through Philomelium along the main route to Afyon and Eskişehir (Dorylaeum), and then to Hellespontine Mysia, the southern hinterland of the Sea of Marmara, from where they could take the coastal road to the Troad. By any geographical definition and by any interpretation of the text, this journey traversed a part of Phrygia, but allowed for no extended stop there. The brief allusions to Paul’s third journey across Anatolia recount that he passed through ‘the Galatian country and Phrygia’, strengthening his disciples, and summarised this as ‘having traversed the upper regions’, before reaching Ephesus.3 Since Paul’s party had started at Syrian Antioch, it most likely took the road through the Cilician Gates, crossed Lycaonia with stops at Derbe and Lystra, and then followed the northern section of the Augustan highway, the via Sebaste, from Iconium to Pisidian Antioch.4 The route doubtless continued west to Apollonia, took the mountain crossing to the Dombay Ovası and Apamea, and then the familiar path of the koine hodos past the cities of the Lycus and Maeander valleys towards their main destination, Ephesus.5 The entire stretch between Pisidian Antioch and the Lycus valley ran through southern Phrygia. The roads taken were quite different from those of the previous journey. 2 Acts 16. 6–10: διῆλθον δὲ τὴν Φρυγίαν καὶ Γαλατικὴν χώραν, κωλυθέντες ὑπὸ τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος λαλῆσαι τὸν λόγον ἐν τῇ Ἀσίᾳ, ἐλθόντες δὲ κατὰ τὴν Μυσίαν ἐπείραζον εἰς τὴν Βιθυνίαν πορευθῆναι καὶ οὐκ εἴασεν αὐτοὺς τὸ πνεῦμα Ἰησοῦ· παρελθόντες δὲ τὴν Μυσίαν κατέβησαν εἰς Τρῳάδα. 3 Acts 18. 23–4: διερχόμενος καθεξῆς τὴν Γαλατικὴν χώραν καὶ Φρυγίαν, στηρίζων τοὺς μαθητἀς; 19.1: διελθόντα τὰ ἀνωτερικὰ μέρη ἐλθεῖν εἰς Ἕφεσον. 4 There is little scholarly agreement about what is meant by the imprecise expression ἡ Γαλατικὴ χώρα in the two passages where it occurs. I assume that the author’s use of the same terminology in both should be referred to the same region, namely the parts of the JulioClaudian province of Galatia which Paul had visited in his first journey, including the named cities of Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe; see Mitchell, Anatolia II, 3–5. 5 U. Huttner, Early Christianity in the Cities of the Lower Maeander Valley (2023), 3.1.1.1 n. 1180, adopts the view that since the phrase τὰ ἀνωτερικὰ μέρη cannot be applied to the lower part of the Maeander valley, Paul and his company probably took a more northerly route through the Coga­mus Valley and Sardis. But the vague and obviously ambiguous phrasing of Acts 19.1 was quite appropriate to describe the passage from Lycaonia through southern Phrygia as far as Laodicea and Hierapolis, and this was the natural route for overland travellers heading for the Aegean from Syria, and its central section was already familiar to Paul. Strabo often used the term ἀνώτερος in a broad geographical sense simply to mean ‘inland’; see K. Clarke, Between Geography and History. Hellenistic constructions of the Roman world (Oxford 1999), 206–7.

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The author of Acts reported no interactions with the cities in the Lycus valley, and Paul’s known contacts with the communities there were by correspondence: the letters to the Colossians, usually judged to be non-Pauline, and to Philemon, regarding Paul’s follower, the slave Onesimus. The letter to the Colossians bore witness to the fact that Epaphras, Paul’s most important local disciple, had laboured mightily not only at Colossae, but also at Laodicea and Hierapolis, its larger neighbours.6 The evidence of these letters and other early traditions have been examined in Ulrich Huttner’s study of the region and require no further examination here,7 but the information in the New Testament about the earliest Christian missions to Pisidian Antioch and Colossae do not themselves open up obvious lines of enquiry about how Christian communities emerged either there or in the rest of Phrygia, and there are remarkably few signs of Pauline influence in the region’s Christian epigraphy. The most significant of these was the appearance of Paul’s name in the epitaph of Abercius. According to the most convincing conjecture of a damaged line of text, Abercius claimed that he had ‘Paul on his carriage’ during his journeys to Rome, Syria and Mesopotamia. He thus cast himself as Paul’s follower in his travels and missionary activity.8 The Phrygian Pentapolis, where Abercius was based, happens to have been about equidistant between Colossae and Pisidian Antioch, although the journey westwards along the main road through Apamea to the Lycus Valley was significantly easier and carried heavier traffic than the mountainous roads across southern Phrygia to the East. The movement of people was critical to the spread of the new religion. A recent study has emphasised the ‘Ortsgebundenheit’ of native Phrygian religious practice, embedded in the local sanctuaries where local divinities were worshipped,9 but this should not be allowed to obscure the fact that these sanctuaries, including those of Apollo Lairbenos, of Zeus Thallos and Zeus Ampelites, and above all that of the Xenoi Tekmoreioi, attracted worshippers from a wide region. Internal and external mobility indisputably played a significant part in the introduction of new religious ideas. Phrygians journeyed both to sustain their livelihoods and to open their social and therefore their religious 6 Col. 4. 12–13: ἀσπάζεται ὑμᾶς Ἐπαφρᾶς ὁ ἐξ ὑμῶν ἐν ταῖς προσευχαῖς ἵνα σταθῆτε τέλειοι καὶ πεπληροφορημένοι ὲν παντὶ θελήματι τοῦ Θεοῦ. μαρτυρῶ γὰρ αὐτῷ ὅτι ἔχει πολὺν πόνον ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν καὶ τῶν ἐν Λαοδικείᾳ καὶ τῶν ἐν Ἱεραπόλει. 7 Huttner, Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 81–148. 8 See 92 and 98 n. 40. 9 G. F. Chiai, Die Ortsgebundenheit des Religiösen:Das Paradigma der ländlichen Heiligtümer Phrygiens in der Kaiserzeit, in Christoph Auffarth (ed.) Religion auf dem Lande. Entstehung und Veränderungvon Sakrallandschaften unter römischer Herrschaft (Stuttgart 2009), 133–60.

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horizons. Travel from farms and villages to larger towns and cities was an everyday reality for countless men and a much smaller number of women during the second and third centuries. The information revealed by inscriptions and relief sculptures, much of which has been cited earlier in this study, confirm that Phrygia was an economically dynamic region. Most of the inhabitants were engaged in farming, tilling, sowing and harvesting the land, and marketing the produce or supplying surplus to the Roman state.10 The road network not only linked the cities but also connected Phrygia’s regions with one another. The famous Phrygian quarries and marble workshops, and the associated transport logistics, employed a large and mobile workforce. Many well-off country people were involved in commerce, working as muleteers and waggon-masters who transported agricultural produce and other valuable resources to the large urban markets of Asia Minor’s west and south coasts, to the harbours of the Propontis, and, from the fourth century onwards, to Constantinople. Within Phrygia itself the dedications in pagan sanctuaries, and above all the lists of the Xenoi Tekmoreioi, show that rich farmers frequently travelled from their home villages on social or religious business, thereby increasing the volume of economic activity. Wealthier merchants had overseas contacts, especially with Italy’s Mediterranean and Adriatic ports. The large entrepôts of western Phrygia at Apamea and Acmonia were dominated by immigrant communities of Roman citizens in the first century BC, who retained close connections with their Italian origins. The slave-trade alone will have generated much travel and exchange, not only delivering bodies from the region to new owners, but attracting dealers and their retinues to the big slave markets. Phrygians were to be found in numbers abroad. Since the third century BC, if not earlier, there had been hundreds of thousands of slaves of Phrygian origin in Rome, Italy and elsewhere in the western Mediterranean, including many who had obtained their freedom and founded families. It is likely that a significant minority of them re-established contact with their native region. Phrygians of their own volition had been settling in Rome since the late Republic empire. The Lycus-Maeander route from Phrygia to the coast at Miletus and Ephesus seems to have been the most important funnel for emigration from the Asian province. From the tiny sample of Asia Minor immigrants to Rome directly attested by surviving inscriptions, numbering sixty-three, the biggest fraction of ten, including mentions of a builder, a painter and a poet, were from Laodicea. At the start of this migrant movement in the late second or early first century BC the people of Laodicea had erected a statue of the 10 Mitchell, Anatolia I, 241–59.

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personified populus Romanus at Rome in gratitude for their benevolence,11 and the reciprocal relationship continued into late antiquity. There was a remarkable concentration of migrants to Rome from other cities in this part of Asia, including Tripolis and Hierapolis in the Lycus, and Eumeneia and Tralles in the Maeander valleys, and from their Carian neighbour Aphrodisias, and the generic ethnic Phrygian was applied to another distinctive batch of settlers in Rome, who could have originated anywhere in the region.12 The movements of Roman soldiers and administrative staff also accounted for the circulation of people on a substantial scale, especially at the eastern frontier of the Asian province around the headwaters of the Maeander. Military units were stationed during the second and third centuries at the fort of Aulutrene in the Dombay Ovası on Apamean territory and at Eumeneia, its neighbour to the south.13 A transient population of officials, attested by inscriptions at Amorium, Apollonia, and Apamea, manned the customs stations at the eastern frontier of Asian province.14 A small but influential cadre of administrators formed the staff of the imperial procurator, based at Synnada, who took charge of the imperial estates in Phrygia.15 Christians in person could have reached Phrygia from all points of the compass, including from Rome and the western Mediterranean. In practice, it is likely that there were frequent travellers from the major Near-Eastern centres of Caesareia in Palestine, Antioch in Syria, and Edessa in north Mesopotamia. Intensive traffic certainly came from Perge and the Pamphylian ports on the south coast of Asia Minor, from Miletus, Ephesus, and Smyrna, the big cities on the Aegean coastline, and any of the seven Churches of Asia, all of which were home to active Christian communities in the first and early second centuries. The famous description of Roman assizes at Apamea by Dio Chrysostom, around 100 confirms that this Phrygian gateway city annually attracted throngs of visitors from the heavily populated regions of west and southern Asia Minor,

11 CIL VI 374 = 30925. 12 David Noy, Foreigners at Rome (Swansea 2000), 231 (‘Laodicea is indicated by the inscriptions to have been the most important city in sending Asians to Rome’), and 291–3; for Asia Minor emigrants to Italy in late antiquity, the largest number from Galatia, see Feissel, Études d’épigraphie et d’histoire, 409–21. See also Thonemann, Maeander, 187–90 for the dynamism and wide contacts of the trading community at Laodicea and Hierapolis. 13 See Thonemann, Maeander, 131–3 (Aulutrene), 151–7 (Eumeneia). 14 MAMA IV 113 and I. Laodikeia no. 102 (referring to the Apollonia station); SEG 47, 1725 (Amorium). 15 M. Vitale, Imperial Phrygia: a ‘procuratorial province’ governed by liberti Augusti? Philia 1 (2015), 33–45.

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and from Cappadocia.16 The evidence for Christian travellers in the second century, as diverse as Ignatius under military escort from Antioch to meet a martyr’s death at Rome and Abercius undertaking a missionary journey to the Syrian cities and to Nisibis, is a minute sample of the overland traffic between the Semitic Near East and western Asia Minor which passed through Apamea. There were strong bonds between the cities at the headwaters of the Maeander and the commercial power-houses of textile production at Laodicea and Hierapolis in the Lycus valley. For all its exposure to visitors from east Anatolia and the Near East, Apamea received the greatest influx of traders and was most exposed to cultural and economic influence from the West. Eusebius’s account of the origins of the Montanist dispute, derived from his anonymous late second-century source, indicated that clergy from Apamea, Eumeneia and the Phrygian Pentapolis were at the forefront of opposition to the New Prophecy.17 They had joined forces with Claudius Apollinaris, the bishop of Hierapolis (Pamukkale), the leading ecclesiastical figure of the Lycus Valley in the 170s and 180s, and with other church leaders in western Asia Minor and at Rome.18 Laodicea on the Lycus and Apamea on the Maeander-Lycus route, and to a lesser degree Temenothyrae and Acmonia on the Hermus route from the Aegean, were the most important land-based hubs in this extended network of communications, and more exposed and therefore more receptive to outside influences than any other parts of Phrygia. It is unlikely to be a coincidence that Christians were an influential part of Apamea’s population at an earlier date than anywhere else in Phrygia, and the measure of their impact was unique and without parallel. Leading Christians at Apamea had sufficient local standing to persuade the city authorities as early as 200 to issue coins illustrating the Old Testament version of the Flood legend, depicting the story of Noah’s Ark and God’s covenant to men after the denizens of the Ark were saved. The type was retained until the mid-third century when local minting at Apamea, as in most other Asia Minor cities, ceased. The earliest of the many Christian gravestones at Apamea date approximately to the time of the first Noah coin issues (ICG 974, 1122). The names and other details of these inscriptions reveal that these people were not themselves newcomers to the region but local people. Some of those commemorated in the first half of the third century were evidently new converts. 16

See chapter 4.4; Thonemann, Maeander, 99–117; for the booming Apamean economy at an earlier period, see A. Bresson, From Xerxes to Mithridates: kings, coins and economic life at Kelainai-Apameia, in Z. Archibald/ J. Haywood (eds), The Power of Individual and Community in Ancient Athens and Beyond (Swansea 2019), 285–310. 17 Eusebius V.16.5, 17, and 22. 18 See chapter 1.3.

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There is less information about Temenothyrae, the other Phrygian centre which has provided evidence for socially prominent Christians at an early date, but some comparison with Apamea can be made. The earliest Christian inscriptions here date to the period 180–200, probably contemporary with the first Apamean texts. There is no evidence as spectacular as the Noah’s Ark coins, but the funerary monuments of bishop Artemidorus, his successor Diogas, the presbytera Ammion and the prominent lay people associated with them, were all monuments of conspicuous quality, of a type used by families that helped form the city council, and this Christian group must be classified as local gentry. They were not hesitant about proclaiming their religion with the prominent motif of a cross emblazoned on a radiate sun motif or a victory crown. Like Apamea, Temenothyrae was located on the margin of Phrygia, accessible by the main road which ran from the coast up the Hermus valley through Lydia, passing through the ancient city of Sardis, and directly between Thyateira and Philadelphia, three of the seven churches of Asia which received letters quoted in the Book of Revelation and homes to some of the earliest Christian communities in Asia. Temenothyrae itself was a city of local rather than supra-regional importance, but Acmonia, its nearest significant neighbour was, next to Apamea, the other major trading centre and magnet for Roman settlement in western Phrygia.19 Temenothyrae and Acmonia offered northern counterparts to Apamea and Eumeneia at the head of the Maeander valley. 8.2

The Early Growth in Christian Numbers

By the mid-third century, the graves of Christians from the cities of south-western Phrygia (but not those of the Lycus valley), were routinely identified by the Eumeneian formula. The growth of the Christian population of the region cannot be numerically quantified, but the emergence of the community, which by this time was clearly visible in the epigraphic evidence, is unmistakeable. In assessing this development, it is useful to think with the categories used in modern sociological research to define the adoption of new developments by a population, which have been applied by Anna Collar in her study of networks and religious innovation in the Roman empire.20 These are defined and hypothetically quantifiable as innovators (2.5%), early adopters (15%), early 19 20

See chapter 4.6 nn. 24–34. Anna Collar, Religious Networks in the Roman Empire. The spread of new ideas (Cambridge 2013), 16–19, applying the model of Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (4th ed. New York 1995), to religious innovations.

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mainstream (35%), late mainstream (35%), and laggards (12.5%). For the innovators, we turn necessarily to Paul, Epaphras and the earliest adherents of the Christian mission in the mid- and later first century, but thereafter there was a long silence. Sources of any kind relating to Phrygia are lacking until the third quarter of the second century, when intimations of a more assertive community can be inferred from the birth of the Montanist movement and the first wave of reliably documented persecutions in the 170s and 180s. Roughly in the middle of this time span, around 110, Pliny in his famous letter was able to report to the emperor Trajan that Christians were to be found in town and country in another part of Asia Minor, the province of Pontus, in sufficient numbers to attract denunciations and to cause disquiet in the local population.21 It is hard to assess the accuracy of this report, especially regarding Christian numbers, and hazardous to generalise from these observations, which may have been made in the region around Amastris on the Black Sea coast, to other parts of Asia Minor. In Phrygia, the Christians revealed by inscriptions at Apamea and Temenothyrae before the universal grant of Roman citizenship in 212, should be assigned to the category of early adopters. However, by 250 Christianity, manifest in the widespread use of the Eumeneian formula, had become an early mainstream religious choice. The late mainstream appears to follow with the texts from the Upper Tembris Valley which can be dated between about 280 and 330. These inscriptions were characterised by the more demonstrative adoption of Christian iconographical motifs and descriptive expressions, and their frequency conveys the impression that Christians now comprised most of the population. The laggards, already a clear minority by 320, followed during the fourth century. This schema shows both similarities with and divergences from the pattern of growth in the Christian population proposed in Rodney Stark’s influential sociological study of the rise of Christianity across the entire Roman empire. Stark hypothesised a population of c.7,500 Christians at the end of the first century, 40,000 by c.150, 200,000 c.200, and 2,000,000 c.250, from a total imperial

21 Pliny ep. X. 96.9: Visa est enim mihi res digna consultatione, maxime propter periclitantium numerum. Multi enim omnis aetatis, omnis ordinis, utriusque sexus etiam vocantur in periculum et vocabuntur. Neque civitates tantum, sed vicos etiam atque agros superstitionis istius contagio pervagata est; quae videtur sisti et corrigi posse. 10 Certe satis constat prope iam desolata templa coepisse celebrari, et sacra sollemnia diu intermissa repeti passimque venire victimarum, cuius adhuc rarissimus emptor inveniebatur. K. Hopkins, Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998), 189–90: ‘In my view Pliny’s account is either inaccurate and/or describing something atypical’.

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population of around sixty million.22 Keith Hopkins, inspired and influenced by Stark but also drawing on figures proposed by Adolf Harnack in Mission und Ausbreitung, offered somewhat lower, although equally conjectural figures: 1000 Christians c. AD 40; 7000 c. AD 100; 200,000 c. AD 200; 1,000,000 c. AD 250; 6,000,000 c. AD 300.23 This hypothetical modelling suggests a pattern of innovators, and early adopters, up to c.250, when the empire-wide population may have reached one million (Hopkins) or two million (Stark). The increasing Christian population in the first half of the third century was a phenomenon which corresponds to the observation of Origen in the Contra Celsum, about the rapid expansion of Christian numbers up to 230.24 Thereafter, we need a different perspective to accommodate the explosive growth through the late third and the entire fourth centuries especially in the eastern Roman empire, so that by 400, at least in the East, only a laggard proportion, perhaps around 10%, had not become Christian. It is important not to overlook the differences between this hypothetical empire-wide pattern based on modelling, and developments in Phrygia through the third century. Hopkins’s figures of one million Christians c.250 and six million c.300 represent respectively about 1.2% and 10% of the entire population of the Empire. The frequency of Christian inscriptions found at Apamea/Eumeneia around 250, and in the Upper Tembris Valley around 300, suggests that the Christian percentage of the population in these parts of Phrygia was much higher than these estimates. Tomas Lochman’s catalogue of decorated grave monuments from the Upper Tembris Valley includes thirty-one pagan and fourteen Christian examples between 240 and 310. These fourteen ‘Christians for Christians’ monuments are dated between 280 and 310, and their design closely resembles that of the Bogenfeldstelen from the so-called Champaign group, which produced fifteen figured steles for pagan customers in the same period, a balance of 48% Christian to 52% pagan examples. The Christian steles in this sample comprise only half the total number of ‘Christians for Christians’ monuments, and about a third of the Christian gravestones from the region up to the early fourth century. A closer-grained analysis would probably indicate a Christian majority in the period 270–310.25 22 Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity. A sociologist reconsiders history (Princeton 1996), 7–10. 23 K. Hopkins, Christian number and its implications, Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998), 185–218; citing Harnack at 192 n.11. 24 Origen, Contra Celsum III.10. 25 MAMA X (1993) collected all the epigraphic material recorded by C. W. M. Cox and J. R. Cullen in their survey of the Upper Tembris valley 1926. It contains about 150 pagan grave monuments from the Upper Tembris Valley villages, dating between the

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Robust quantification is impossible, but figures from Eumeneia suggest that Christians were in a clear majority there by the mid-third century,26 while in the Upper Tembris Valley 60% can be cautiously inferred from the numbers of Christian inscriptions recorded at these periods.27 In other words, there is a big disparity between the high numbers of early converts in Apamea, Eumeneia, and the Upper Tembris Valley, and the much more generalised conclusions about global Christian numbers as a percentage of the empire’s entire population. The claim made by the people of Orcistus that their entire community was Christian when they petitioned Constantine in the late 320s may have been somewhat exaggerated, but it was not unrealistic. Christianity in certain parts regions of Phrygia was part of the mainstream, and had become the dominant religious movement by the time Constantine’s sole reign. This was not the whole story, because there is virtually no indication of a Christian presence in the same period in other parts of Phrygia, notably at Aezani and the small cities of the north-west Phrygo-Mysian region, and in the north Phrygian cities and villages around Dorylaeum and Nacolea. There was pronounced regional variation in the third century, and a uniform Christian religious culture did not take shape before the later fourth century. The closer we look at the details of the evidence, the harder it becomes to make historical generalisations about developments. A convincing analysis of the historical role and impact of early Christianity in Phrygia must be based on the local mid-second and the end of the third century, but this figure represents less than half of the full total known from the area. The 46 Christian monuments discussed in chapter 4.8 all belong to the later part of the age range c.250–320. For other important collections, partly overlapping with the inscriptions recorded in MAMA X, see Anderson, SERP, 200–220; Buckler, Calder and Cox, JRS 15 (1925), 141–75 (monuments recorded in Cotiaeum, but many from the UTV villages); JRS 18 (1928), 21–40; F. and H. Miltner, Epigraphische Nachlese in Ankara, JÖAI 30 (1937) Beiblatt 9–66; E. Gibson, The Rahmi Koç Collection: Inscriptions. Part I, Grave Monuments from the Plain of Altintaş, ZPE 28 (178), 1–34; E. Gibson, Inscriptions in Kütahya Museum, TAD 25. 1 (1980), 59–85. There are many examples, mostly found in Turkish Museums, in Pfuhl-Möbius, Ostgriechische Grabreliefs. Lochman, Phrygien, catalogue part II lists over 297 votive and funerary reliefs, many of them previously unpublished. M. Waelkens, Türsteine, included all the Altıntaş Type C1 and 2 doorstones known to him, and provided the descriptions and analysis of the iconography of the ‘Bogenfeldstelen’ in MAMA X. While working on MAMA X, he had reached a provisional conclusion that by 300 80% of the surviving funerary texts were Christian, but never published his analysis. 26 68 funerary inscriptions of the 3rd – early 4th centuries, listed in MAMA XI, have been found on Eumeneian territory, 46 Christian, 19 pagan and 3 uncertain. 2 dated examples of 229 and 231 are pagan, and 7 dated between 246 and 283 are all Christian. 27 McKechnie, Christianizing Asia Minor, 238 adopts the estimate of R. MacMullen that the Christian population of the Upper Tembris Valley before 300 did not exceed 20%.

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evidence, properly contextualised, and not on the abstractions generated by modelling Christianity across the entire empire. 8.3

Jews and Christians

What were the conditions or stimuli which caused low Christian numbers around 200 to grow sharply over the following half century? Conditions then occurred which triggered what Anna Collar has described as a cascade in the information network.28 In an earlier section of this book I tried to reconstruct the cultural context in which Christianity rapidly took hold and established itself as part of Phrygia’s religious mainstream. The half century between 250 and 300 was marked by religious innovations and developments not only among the Christians but also within the pagan community. The votive monuments which were visible evidence for the worship of traditional gods, including the overwhelmingly dominant Zeus cults, vanished completely and abruptly around the middle of the century. Votive monuments, probably in smaller numbers, continued to be set up for abstract impersonal divinities, notably Theos Hypsistos, and gods associated with Holiness and Justice (Hosios and Dikaios), which had already been important in the second century, but now emerged as a dominant strain in Phrygian religious culture. The later third century was a period of experimentation by religious specialists, including members of priestly families who were responsible for developing hybrid and syncretic cults, perhaps in reaction to the apparent retreat of the public and visible veneration of the traditional pantheon. We should be careful not to exaggerate their influence, since the number of monuments related to this form of ‘late paganism’ is small. It is likely that many such experiments, in thought and practice, were a private matter for individual households and small communities. In the period that Christians were palpably coming out, the most important elements of traditional pagan practice were receding from public view, creating a space for change.29 The other vital context that needs to be investigated is the relationship between Christians and Jews. Christianity originated as a branch of Judaism, whose followers were distinguished from other Jews by their belief that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and the Messiah, sent in fulfilment of divine prophecy to provide redemption for mankind. The evolution whereby Christians emancipated themselves from their origins to establish themselves as a 28 Collar, Religious Networks, 13–16, 19–22. 29 See chapter 4.10.

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separate religion is a central issue for theologians as well as historians, and poses difficult conceptual and historical questions. The answers to these questions, however they are formulated, contribute directly to an understanding of Christian identity. The roots of Christianity as a separate religion can be traced back to the time when its followers began to identify themselves as Christians, a development which according to Acts had already taken place during the Claudio-Neronian period,30 and which is implied by Tacitus’s famous report that the Christians were scapegoated at Rome by Nero at the time of the great fire of 65.31 The veracity of this episode has been called into question by Brent Shaw, who suggests that the episode is a Tacitean invention,32 and Mischa Meier.33 The latter interprets the emperor’s action at the time of the great fire in the light of earlier anti-Jewish measures at Rome, arguing that Nero, like his predecessor Claudius, brought charges against the Christians as an uncontrolled splinter-group among the Jews, whose dangerous anti-social behavior invited punishment. Following the sceptical trend of many New Testament scholars regarding the composition date and historicity of Acts,34 Meier also assumes that the followers of the new religion were not recognised or named as Christians by Roman authorities before the early second century, and that it was only a historical construct by Tacitus to connect them to the fire at Rome. However, it is both arbitrary and historically implausible to suggest that the Romans made no distinction at all between Christians and Jews in the middle of the first century, and that the use of the term Christian by Tacitus was anachronistic, and the assertion conflicts with the explicit evidence of Acts 11.26 and 26.26–7.35 More convincing is the 30 The key references are the reported remarks of Herodes Agrippa, hearing the case about Paul in Caesarea (Acts 26.27–8), and the observation that Syrian Antioch was the first place that Christians used the striking Roman adjectival form Christianus, analogous to Caesarianus, of themselves (Acts 11.26). The best analysis is by H. Botermann, Das Judenedikt des Kaisers Claudius. Römischer Staat und ‘Christiani’ im 1. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart 1996). 31 Tacitus, Ann. XV.44. 32 Brent Shaw, The myth of the Neronian persecution, JRS 105 (2015), 73–100 has argued that Tacitus’s allusion to the the Chrestiani was anachronistic and that the terminology first became current around 120. 33 Mischa Meier, Die neronische Christenverfolgung und seine Kontexte (Heidelberg 2021). 34 K. Backhaus, Zur Datierung der Apostelgeschichte. Ein Ordnungsversuch im chronologischem Chaos, Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 108 (2017), 212–58 will be helpful to newcomers. 35 See Botermann, Judenedikt, rightly followed by C. P. Jones, The historicity of the Neronian persecution: a reply to Brent Shaw, New Testament Studies 63 (2017), 146–52. Further discussion by B. van der Lans and J.N. Bremmer, Tacitus and the Persecution of the Christians: An Invention of tradition? Eirene 53 (2017), 299–331.

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reconstruction suggested by A. Giovannini, that at Rome in 65 the Christians, already recognisable as a separate religious group, had singled themselves out by publicly and joyfully greeting the fire as a clear sign of the Messiah’s second coming, and thus made themselves scapegoats in the subsequent police action to establish who had been responsible for the catastrophe. Their link to the fire was thus real, and was doubtless reported by Tacitus’s lost Flavian sources, and not an unexplained and inexplicable Tacitean fiction. Giovannini argues that their arrest, trial and execution were followed by a senatus consultum, which should be identified with the institutum Neronianum of Tertullian, ad Nat. I.7, which specifically outlawed Christianity for the future. This would certainly have used the term Christiani or Chrestiani to identify the group.36 By the early second century, Pliny’s letter to Trajan, the letters of Ignatius, and other sources leave no doubt that Christians used and were known by that name, but this, in itself, is not sufficient to show that they had achieved an identity distinguishable from their Jewish origins. The followers of Christ, in their own eyes and those of others, might be no more than a branch of Judaism. The question of ‘the parting of ways’, accordingly, remains highly controversial, amid views that range from the perspective of Shaye Cohen, who has argued that from the start of the second century not only were the two religions quite distinct at a social and personal level, but had little to do with one another,37 to the provocative contention that the ways never parted at all.38 The highly nuanced diversity of answers to this question that is to be found in the modern literature derives in part from the way in which the question has been framed. Is it the objective to establish the differences between the abstractions Christianity and Judaism, in all their conceptual ramifications, or to establish the material and observable differences between individuals 36 A. Giovannini, Tacite, l’incendium Neronis et les chrétiens, Revue des études augustiniennes 30 (1984), 3–23; A. Giovannini, L’interdit contre les chrétiens: raison d’état ou mesure de police, Cahiers du Centre Gustave Glotz 7 (1996), 103–134, modifies his earlier suggestion that the SC might have been initiated by the emperor, with the more plausible conjecture that the action would have been instigated by the praefectus vigilum. For Christiani/Chrestiani in this context see J. Bremmer, Ioudaismos, Christianismos and the parting of ways, in J. Schröter / B. Edsall / J. Verheyden (eds), Introduction, in Jews and Christians. Parting Ways in the First Two Centuries CE? Reflections on the Gains and Losses of a Model (Berlin 2021), 57–87 at 73–6. 37 Shaye Cohen, The ways that parted. Jews, Christians and Jewish-Christians ca 100–150 CE, in J. J. Schwartz and P. J. Tomson (eds), Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: the interbellum 70–132 CE (Leiden 2018), 309–37. This important essay poses the question from a Jewish perspective and deals mostly with Rabbinic evidence. 38 A. H. Becker and A. Y. Reed (eds), The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in the Early Middle Ages (Stuttgart 2003).

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and defined social groups, between specific beliefs and ritual practices, and the actual drawing of boundaries between Christians and Jews?39 Amid the shifting complexity of first- and second-century Christian and Jewish communities, common patterns of collective behaviour, even with hindsight, can neither be discerned nor predicted.40 The contributors to a recent collection of essays on the topic for the most part address the issue from the perspective of actual boundary definition, and the editors in their introduction highlight an ensuing difficulty, that ‘in the period of emerging Christianity there were no fixed entities called ‘Judaism’ or ‘Christianity’ or clear-cut social groups of ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’, but complex and often overlapping social phenomena which have led to the use of more flexible metaphors in modern scholarship, e.g., “a criss-crossing of muddy tracks”, “a multi-lane highway”, or “a dance”.41 The debates about ‘the parting of ways’, are hardly to be distinguished from questions about Jewish and Christian identity, a focus for theological research, notably the challenging studies of Judith Lieu, which constitute some of the most extensive applications of modern theories of identity to a body of material from the ancient world.42 Reductionist answers to the question what a Jew or a Christian was contribute little to this discussion. Defining the substantive reality of ‘the parting of the ways’ to account for all Jews and Christians, let alone all Judaism and all Christianity, can only, if at all, result in formulas of paralysing banality which are little more than tautologies: Jews worshipped only Yahwe; Christians recognised Christ’s divinity. Modern arguments are therefore grounded in discourse analysis: the claims and assertions made by contemporary Jews and Christians, how these were received, and what impact they had, or might have had at a social level. The methodology has been succinctly described by Averil Cameron: ‘if ever there was a case for the construction of a reality through text, such a case is provided by early Christianity. Christians 39

The options are posed by Cohen, The ways that parted, 309–11, and discussed in a valuable article by J. Lieu, ‘The parting of the ways: theological construct or historical reality?’ Journal for the Study of the New Testament 56 (1994), 101–19. 40 T. Niklas, Parting of the Ways? Probleme eines Konzepts, in S. Alkier / H. Leppin (eds), Juden – Heiden – Christen? Religiöse Inklusionen und Exklusionen im Römischen Kleinasien bis Decius (Tübingen 2018), 21–42. See the balanced appraisal of the theological issues by R. A. Norris, Articulating Identity, in F. Young et al. (eds), The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature (Cambridge 2004), 71–90. 41 J. Schröter / B. Edsall / J. Verheyden (eds), Introduction, in Jews and Christians. Parting Ways in the First Two Centuries CE? Reflections on the Gains and Losses of a Model (Berlin 2021), 1–18 at 3–4. 42 J. Lieu, Image and Reality. The Jews in the World of Christians in the Second Century (Edinburgh 1996), and Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford 2004).

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built themselves a new world … partly through practice … and partly through a discourse that was constantly brought under control and disciplined’.43 Christian identity was constructed through the writings and discussions of early Christian writers as a fluid and constantly changing redefinition of ‘the other’, a narrative that was grounded in social realities which are only accessible to us through the surviving texts. Judith Lieu has explicitly located this approach in the context of selfhood and the other, dominating themes of modern identity studies: ‘The fashioning of Christian identity finds itself within the broader dynamics of the contemporary search for identity, where we are being urged to discover and to honour the value of difference and diversity, to give ear to the voices from the margins, to acknowledge the integrity of “the other”, and our need for them, and, only so, to affirm our own as well as their integrity’.44 Arguments and identity claims derived from discursive literary and theological texts, usually produced by members of a highly-educated minority, and intended as an expression of individual viewpoints and perspectives, have relatively few points of contact with case studies based on a mass of burial inscriptions produced by a homogeneous society. Fluidity and constantly shifting perspectives are not the first attributes that describe the dozens of inscriptions set up by third-century Christians in Asia Minor. Aggregated, these inscriptions form a substantial body of coherent documentary evidence fixed in time and place and related to specific communities. The epigraphic evidence from Phrygia and other parts of inner Asia Minor has an objectivity very different from the modes of expression of Christian apologists or Jewish rabbinic sources. The inscriptions of the third century offer only rare glimpses into the thoughts and mental conceptions of believers, and say little about their rituals, but they project in a simple form the religious identities of individuals and their families. Since inscriptions are grouped by association with one another, they do not present isolated cases, or the complex and idiosyncratic views of an individual writer, but the culture of a religious collective. Within the obvious limitations of inscribed funerary texts, they illustrate how this Christian society identified and represented itself. The groups not only presented themselves in the same ways as one another – witness the Christians for Christians texts, or those that used the Eumeneian formula  – but also demonstrably acted together at the burials which these inscriptions commemorate. They were products not of an abstract ‘Christian community’ but of actual communities. This makes it a simpler matter to 43

Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire. The development of Christian discourse (University of California, 2004), 21. 44 Lieu, Christian Identity, 316.

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investigate the relationship with other groups, in this case the Jews, and avoids to a considerable degree the trap that ‘to speak of a separation of “Jews” and “Christians” in the first centuries CE is an abstraction that is likely to simplify the complex relationships of Synagogue communities and Christ groups in the Roman Empire’.45 It is less easy to be precise about their counterparts, Phrygia’s Jewish communities, but in principle the same condition applies. At Hierapolis, the best documented case, the Jews attested by inscriptions had standard Graeco-Roman nomenclature, identified themselves as did the Christians by a religious label, in their case ‘Ioudaios’, came to all appearances from the same social class, and were buried in similar tombs to one another in the city cemeteries.46 The identification of the other large group of Jews in Phrygia, at Acmonia, is less clear-cut and depends on a mélange of distinguishing characteristics, but this is at least in part due to the fact that there were god-fearers as well as Jews at Acmonia, and the community that attended the synagogue was a mixed one.47 In short, it is possible to say with some confidence who the Phrygian Christians were, and with rather less certainty who the Jews were, and in what contexts they were to be found. What, then were the characteristics of the Phrygian Christians that they shared with the Jews? This question can in part be answered from the evidence that has been collated in earlier parts of this book. – Christians used a formula to protect their graves, namely an invocation that those who interfered with the burial would have to reckon with God, which was also perhaps used by Jews in a very small number of cases. Moreover, the elaborated versions of this expression, that wrongdoers would face God’s judgement and the prospect of everlasting life or damnation in the hereafter, revealed beliefs about the Last Judgement that Christians and Jews in general shared with one another.48 – Most Christians in Phrygia celebrated Easter at a date which was synchronised with the Passover and the Jewish lunar calendar and continued to do so long into late antiquity. The Quartodecumani followed strict Jewish calendrical practice by doing this on 14 Nisan, regardless of the weekday on which this fell. Others, including the Phrygian Novatianists, did so on the Sunday following 14 Nisan. Others again, including Montanists, adopted a hybrid method, but still one that was calibrated with Jewish practice.49 45 46 47 48 49

Schröter et al. (eds), Jews and Christians, 2. E. Miranda, La communità giudaica di Hierapolis di Frigia, Epigraphica Anatolica 31 (1999), 109–56. See 144– and 150–2. See chapter 4.3 and pp. 154–5. See chapter 7. 3.

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– Educated Christians from Phrygia and elsewhere in Asia Minor used the coded language of isopsephism, rendering significant words by a numerical formula, for religious purposes. This was a practice they shared with the Jews, and is most prominently attested in the book of Revelation.50 – The original Montanists, inspired by the Book of Revelation, declared in the 170s that their Phrygian settlements were the New Jerusalem, after the Jewish holy city had been re-founded as a Roman colony in 135, and they thus perpetuated Jewish tradition and history on Phrygian soil. Some Montanists in late antiquity  – admittedly a small minority of Phrygia’s Christians – adopted institutions and terminology used by Asia Minor Jews in the same period and used the Hebrew form of the word for the Sabbath.51 – Fourth- and fifth-century sources indicate that Christians recognised and may even have celebrated the Passover, presumably in the company of Jews. This was explicitly outlawed at the council of Laodicea in the fourth century,52 but attested as a current practice in Phrygia by Church historians a century later.53 – Sabbath observation was widespread among Asia Minor Christians until the fifth century, and was still a practice of the heretical Athinganoi of the Amorium region in the Middle Byzantine period.54 Already in the midthird century the martyr Pionius at Smyrna, in his final speech had admonished his fellow Christians not to accept the invitations of Jews to attend their synagogues.55 – Christian worship of angels, a practice condemned at the Council of Laodicea, was almost certainly adopted from Jewish practice, and perpetuated en grand style in the ubiquitous cult of the archangel Michael, by far the most popular saint in Byzantine Phrygia from the fifth century.56 There were, therefore, important similarities between Christian and Jewish practice in Phrygia. Outsiders in some contexts chose not to differentiate between Jews and Christians at all.57 How and when this alignment occurred 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

See 565. ICG 3761; S. Mitchell, An apostle to Ankara from the New Jerusalem. See 560–1. See 549. See 564–5. Vita Pionii 13. See chapter 6.7. Although at other times he shows awareness of the difference between Christians and Jews, Galen, de Puls. Diff. 2. 4 (Kühn VIII, 579) and 3. 3 (Kühn VIII, 657), grouped the followers of Moses and Jesus together, resistant to accepting new ideas; see R. Flemming, Galen and the Christians, in J. C. Paget and J. Lieu, Christianity in the Second Century. Themes and developments (Cambridge 2017), 171–87.

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and developed is largely a matter of historical speculation. There had been Jewish settlements in Phrygia since the late third century BC, which generated considerable wealth and income in the Roman assize districts of Apamea and Laodicea around 60 BC, and doubtless formed the origin of the well documented communities at Acmonia and Hierapolis under the Roman Empire.58 Although they must have been substantially more numerous than the growing Christian communities until sometime in the second century,59 most of the Jews of Roman Asia are epigraphically invisible because, almost to a man or woman, they used Graeco-Roman rather than Semitic names and are thus not distinguishable from the rest of the population.60 This was also generally true of Christians, who adopted only a small number of distinctively Christian names in the third century. It may be that Jewish numbers in Asia were swelled by refugees from the terrible events of the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, the Jewish uprising against Rome between 115 and 117, which enveloped the Eastern Mediterranean and part of the Near East from Cyrenaica to Mesopotamia, and the War of 132–5 which suppressed the revolt of Bar-Kochva and culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem.61 Much of the Jewish population was either annihilated or fled from the catastrophe. It is not unlikely, but nowhere clearly attested, that many of them will have taken refuge with their fellow Jews in Asia. There are also indications that these disasters caused some Jews to lose faith in their religion and looked for other affiliations, to the Christians or to pagan cults.62 The first Christian groups who had formed in western Phrygia, ‘early adopters’ stimulated by contact with pioneering figures, are likely to have looked to the long-established Jewish settlements, and adopted or adapted some of their institutions. Paul and his companions on their missionary travels in the first century made their first appearances in the local synagogues, wherever these existed, to preach their new version of the faith. Despite the hostile reception that this often provoked, the pattern was repeated and surely imitated by subsequent generations of Christians in local contexts, regardless of 58

E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ. III.1, revised edition by G. Vermes, F. Millar and M. Goodman (Edinburgh 1986), 27–32. 59 See Hopkins, Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998), 212–16. 60 M. H. Williams, Semitic Name-Use by Jews in Roman Asia Minor and the Dating of the Aphrodisias Stele Inscriptions, in E. Matthews (ed.), Old and New Worlds in Greek Onomastics (Oxford, 2007), 173–197; and other papers reprinted in Jews in a Graeco-Roman Environment (Stuttgart 2013), 289–387. 61 E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ. I, revised edition by G. Vermes, F. Millar and M. Black (Edinburgh 1973), 529–57. 62 Hopkins, Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998), 213 n. 61.

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whether these new adherents had previously been Jews or non-Jews. At a minimum, Jews and Christians will have been well acquainted with one another. Perhaps the isolated, very early attestation of a female priest at Temenothyrae, imitated Jewish practice.63 Followers of the new religion, with no fixed places of worship of their own beyond their open-air gatherings or their own houses, may have been attracted to attend the synagogues and respected the Jewish Sabbath as an organising principle, without abandoning their own convictions about Christ’s divinity. We know that god-fearers did so, and there are clear indications in Acts that some of the earliest Christian converts had previously been god-fearers.64 In the synagogues they had access to their sacred written texts in a period before the New Testament canon had been created. All this is speculation, but it remains indisputable that the Christian movement in Phrygia, as elsewhere, had grown from Jewish roots, respected the same prophetic traditions, revered the same sacred books, and had a similar concept of God’s final judgement. The more recent history of the Christians was beginning to steer them along a different path, but between the second and the fifth centuries they lived with a mixture of beliefs, worship and bible understanding that preserved many distinctive Jewish features and remained faithful to Jewish traditions. 8.4

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At the end of the second century Christian gravestones for the first time began to identify their religion. This was a novelty not simply for Christians but for any of the population of the Roman empire. Until this point religion had almost never been used as a primary identity marker in pagan populations.65 What led Christians to do this? This identification obviously achieved two things. First, it established their attachment to their own group, something that was most obviously achieved by the ‘Christians for Christians’ inscriptions. The 63 ICG 1372; See 180–1, 183 n. 327, and 185. ICG 3761, one of the few indisputably Montanist inscriptions of a much later date, shows palpable Jewish influence, which could have been transmitted to Montanism during the brief early floreat of the New Prophecy. 64 Mitchell, Wer waren die Gottesfürchtigen? 55–6: ‘Die ersten Konvertiten der christlichen Mission stammten vorwiegend aus [nichtjüdischen Synagogen-Besuchern]’. 65 The argument has been developed by J. North in several studies: The development of religious pluralism, in J. North, J. Lieu and T. Rajak, The Jews among Pagans and Christians (London 1992), 174–93; Pagans, polytheists and the pendulum, in W. V. Harris (ed.), The Spread of Christianity in the First Four Centuries: studies in explanation (Leiden 2005), 125–44; Pagan ritual and monotheism, in Mitchell and Van Nuffelen (eds), One God, 34–52, esp. 47–52.

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Χριστιανοὶ Χριστιανοῖς formula asserted the cohesiveness of the Upper Tembris Valley Christians, and their collective participation in one another’s burials. This mutual solidarity certainly extended to communal worship and to many other aspects of life beyond the burial of the dead, and the importance of projecting this cohesion should not be underestimated. Early Christian communities in general took pride in the way that they supported the weak who were unable to care for themselves, notably elderly widows and orphaned children, and reached out to support the poor and disadvantaged, as Jesus’s teaching and the Gospels told them to do. Their readiness to base their conduct on love of their fellows cut across the lines of class and social status, and transcended family allegiances. These moral qualities were emphasised in some of the earliest surviving epitaphs, even before these were distinguished by other more demonstrative signs of Christianity.66 Phrygian epitaphs of the third and fourth centuries offer numerous examples of outsiders being included in a family burial, of entirely non-related persons being buried together, or of a burial incorporating a fellow-Christian of a different social status.67 The emperor Julian in his letter to Theodorus, pagan high priest of Asia, had singled out three qualities which underpinned Christian success: their acts of charity, their care for the dead and their generally virtuous conduct.68 These had long been the calling cards which provided Christians with a reason for proudly identifying themselves as belonging to the group. Second, assertions of identity, including the use of symbols and less explicit verbal formulas, clearly differentiated Christians from others, and specifically from followers of other religions. The differentiation created boundaries on two fronts. One was between Christians and pagans, the overwhelming majority of the population in the second and much of the third centuries, who themselves did not use religion as an identity marker. This was achieved positively – by sharing rituals and highly cohesive mutually supportive social conduct – and by negative action, namely absence and withdrawal from pagan worship.69 The other was between Christians and Jews, who across the empire were certainly 66 E.g. ICG 4462 (love and faith; see 132); ICG 961 (generosity, love of fellow men, lack of deceit); ICG 1086 (care for the elderly). 67 Non-kin added to a family burial: ICG 965, 972, 1031, 1055, 1063, 1288, 1366; burial of distant relatives, ICG 969, 1157, 1256; 1364; 4467; persons of different social status in burial, ICG 4464; simple burial of unrelated person, ICG 1287, 1477. 68 Julian, ep. 84, 429d–430a (Bidez), highlighting the virtues of φιλανθρωπία, προμηθεία (in respect of burials), and σεμνότης. 69 Well noted by M. Goodman, Mission and Conversion, 105: ‘Withdrawal from cult immediately separated Christians from the surrounding society. Each day they marked their difference from their non-Christian neighbours simply by abstention, for pagan cult infringed upon every aspect of life. It was probably precisely the pressure of such

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more numerous than Christians around 200 but whose numbers had probably been overtaken a century later. It would be mistaken to argue that the stimulus for Christians to use a religious identity marker came exclusively or mainly from one or the other direction. Christians had reasons to distance themselves from both groups and their motivation should not be reduced to a single pressure point. However, there is much to be said for the argument that Christians were more concerned to mark their difference from the Jews, with whom they objectively had so much in common, than from pagans.70 The use of the distinctive designation Christian, which was recognised by others, including the Roman authorities, probably from the mid-first and certainly from the start of the second century, provided an indispensable tool to distinguish them from the Jews. In places and regions where Christians were already influential, notably in second- and third-century Hierapolis (Pamukkale),71 the grave inscriptions of the Jews themselves deployed the adjective Ioudaios, which now had the religious connotation applied to a Jew of the diaspora rather than the ethnic connotation of a Jew from Judaea. This action seems to have been broadly contemporary with the Christian practice of self-identification, and can be explained in the same way. With some significant exceptions,72 most Christians and Jews in Asia Minor used names in the third and early fourth centuries that were no different from those current in the general population. Two personal names, however, did separate them from one another from an early period. Kyriakos and the female equivalent Kyriake began to be used from the early third century exclusively by Christians who recognised the holiness of the Lord’s Day, itself called Kyriake. The name Sabbatios, in origin denoting a person who celebrated the Sabbath, became popular at the same period. A famous passage of Ignatius in the second century, which implored the Christians of Magnesia to stand fast by ‘Christianity’ and avoid consorting with Judaism,73 specifically emphasised the importance of the competing days of worship: εἰ οὖν οἱ ἐν παλαιοῖς πράγμασιν separation from ordinary people that led Christians to stick together to form their alternative communities’. 70 It is unlikely that the reason was purely religious, to signify one’s religious status to God. The identities of men and women as well as their transgressions were known to the Lord, as is clear from the formula which often appeared on later inscriptions, ὧν τὰ ὀνόματα ὁ θεὸς οῖδεν. 71 McKechnie, Christianizing Asia Minor, 45–67. The steps taken by bishop Claudius Apollinarius around 180 to mark the funerary herôon of the apostle Philip as a cult site may have been an important step in normalizing the Christian presence in the city. 72 For instance, see 126 n. 144 (Pancharia), 4.6 n. 51 (Theodoule), 250 (Akakios). 73 Ignatius, ep. ad Magnesios, 10: Χριστιανισμός (the earliest use of the abstract noun for Christianity), Ἰουδαϊσμός.

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ἀναστραφέντες εἰς καινότητα ἐλπίδος ἦλθον, μηκέτι σαββατίζοντες ἀλλὰ κατὰ κυριακὴν ζῶντες, ἐν ᾗ καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἡμῶν ἀνέτειλεν δι᾽αὐτοῦ καὶ τοῦ θανάτου αὐτοῦ, ὅν τινες ἀρνοῦνται· δι᾽οὗ μυστηρίου ἐλάβομεν τὸ πιστεύειν, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ὑπομένομεν, ἵνα εὑρεθῶμεν μαθηταὶ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ μόνου διδασκάλου ἡμῶν· πῶς ἡμεῖς δυνησόμεθα ζῆσαι χωρὶς αὐτοῦ; ‘if then those who were engaged in old practices have come to the newness of hope, observing the Sabbath no longer but living according to the Lord’s Day, on which our life also rose up through him and his death, which some people deny; through the mystery by which we obtained our faith and to which we adhere so that we may may be acknowledged as disciples of Jesus Christ our only teacher; how shall we be able to live without him?’74 Ignatius, of course, thereby confirmed the fact that not all persons called Sabbatios were Jews, as the name was also used by Jewish sympathisers and Christians in Asia Minor, who acknowledged the sanctity of the Sabbath. This adoption of names that signified a primary religious allegiance in the context of Jewish and Christian worship, was a helpful and unambiguous supplement to the use of the terms Christianus and Iudaeus as religious identity markers. Visual symbols and verbal expressions were also adopted alongside the name Christian with similar purposes and to a similar effect to mark the religion of Christian graves, which accordingly became identifiable for the first time.75 The geographical distribution of the pre-Constantinian Christian inscriptions which can be identified either because they explicitly designated the tomb’s occupant(s) as Christian, or by a combination of other robust criteria, is astounding and clear cut. Sylvain Destephen has compiled a check-list of 275 texts, which includes precisely seven inscriptions from coastal regions.76 The Christians who lived alongside pagans and Jews in other parts of the 74 Ignatius, ep. ad Magnesios 9. 75 See 202–3 and the discussions of individual monuments. These criteria of Christianity, some of which are certain but others less clear cut, have been repeatedly discussed, most recently by Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Lycaonia, 8–20; in ambiguous cases, it is essential to take account of the contexts in which the symbols appear. 76 S. Destephen, La christianisation de l’Asie Mineure, 159–94 (list at 177–90). The coastal exceptions are two texts from Amisos in Pontus, three from Nicomedia in Bithynia, two from Cyzicus (both erected for persons of Phrygian origin), and one from Smyrna. The subsequent publication of thirteen third-century Christian texts from a catacomb beneath the Church of the Seven Sleepers at Ephesus by N. Zimmermann, Das SiebenSchläfer-Zömeterium in Ephesos. Neue Forschungen zu Baugeschichte und Ausstattung eines ungewöhnlichen Bestattungskomplexes JÖAI 80 (2011), 365–407 (cf Feissel, Bull. Ép. 2013, 516), represents a tradition of early Christian catacomb burials which was imported from Rome and not closely related to central Anatolian practice. The discovery only marginally affects the statistics.

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ancient world, including the western and coastal parts of Asia Minor, have remained invisible.77 The choice of Christians in the interior regions to identify themselves by advertising, even sometimes flaunting the new religion represents a radically different practice, and is a serious anomaly from the norm which was observed not only in coastal and western Asia Minor but also everywhere else in the Roman Empire, apart from in the earliest catacombs in Rome itself. It is misguided to interpret any of the Christian texts as trying to conceal the religion by operating in a deliberately guarded way, when there was no obligation to mention or indicate their religion at all. That was the option chosen by most Christians in the large cities of western and southern Anatolia, to say nothing of the rest of the Roman Empire.78 The unbalanced distribution of texts reveals an active choice by Christians in central Anatolia to come out which needs further discussion and explanation. Why should it be normal for Christians in central Asia Minor but almost unknown for their counterparts in the Aegean region to identify themselves as Christians on their monuments in the third century? A contemporary analogy may be helpful, the experience of being gay in the late twentieth and twentyfirst century. The place of homosexuality in modern European and North American society provides some useful parallels with the status of Christianity inside the eastern Roman empire of the second and third centuries, sufficient perhaps to explain some of the social issues of Christian identity at this period. Homosexuality was illegal in most modern European and North American countries until after the middle of the twentieth century, and remains so in many parts of the world today. Christianity was illegal in the Roman Empire from the first until the later years of the third century. Being LGBQ*T, like being Christian, is both an individual and a societal disposition. In most cases, when a person claims to belong to these categories, this is not simply an affirmation about sexual preferences or orientation, but a statement of belonging to a well-defined and distinctive segment of society. Such assertions are strong 77

The historical significance of ‘invisible Christians’ is a central theme of Douglas Boin’s perceptive and thought-provoking study, Coming Out Christian in the Roman World. How the followers of Jesus made a place in Caesar’s Empire (New York and London 2015). This category has been largely ignored by scholars who have attempted to estimate the global numbers of Christians in the Roman world. 78 See 200–5 on the crypto-Christian hypothesis. McKechnie, Christianizing Asia Minor, 213–6 makes the point that measures initiated by Trajan Decius and Valerian against the Christians in 250 and 258 made no visible impact on Christians using the Eumeneian formula, since the dateable examples occurred immediately before or during this decade. The phenomena of state persecution and Christian funerary commemoration had little or nothing to do with one another.

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identity statements that have both personal and wider cultural significance. They convey information that defines the individual and helps to sharpen understanding of the world to which the individual belongs. The illegal component of homosexuality lay essentially in being homosexual, just as the illegality of Christianity was simply the fact of being Christian. Declaring oneself to be Christian in the Roman Empire before 270, or gay in the United Kingdom before 1960, were therefore also statements that involved at least nominal law-breaking. Homosexuality in the United Kingdom, as elsewhere, has progressed from being criminal and punishable by the penal code as late as the early 1960s to legality and growing social acceptability in the late 20th and 21st centuries. Indeed, legislation now points in the other direction, making it a crime to discriminate against an individual on grounds of their sexuality, and the terminology has changed to make appropriate differentiation across the entire non-cis population. Homosexuality, however, for most of the time when it was illegal, was usually seen as potentially criminal, a latent criminal disposition rather than as an active form of criminal behaviour. It was very often tolerated by state authorities, especially if discretion was observed, but certain situations, or changes in the political and social climate, might trigger repression, arrest and punishment, and certainly caused (and causes) increased tension and anxiety among homosexuals. Like many devout Christians in relation to their religion, LGBQ*T people also regard and have regarded their sexuality as being integral to their personal identity, although there were and are wide differences within the LGBQ*T community about how far to make this visible and known to others. There has also been a broad spectrum of responses in the cis community to LGBQ*T, ranging from strong positive approval and the celebration of gender diversity, to abhorrence. This range of responses is by no means mainly a matter of individual choice. The views of whole sections of society align in predictable ways. In the United Kingdom, it remains very difficult for high-profile male practitioners of professional team sports to come out as homosexuals. Conversely, within the creative cultural world, being LGBQ*T encounters little opposition and may work in reverse as a career or social asset. The same attitudinal split also can be seen geographically. Being gay in South Wales (where I spent most of my own career during the 1980s and 1990s), called for a lot more discretion than being gay in parts of metropolitan London or in some other large cities. Geographical and social factors had and still have a major influence on gay persons’ choices then, or those of LGBQ*T people now, about when and where to make this part of their public identities.

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This comparison is not concerned with the substantive content of gayness or Christianity, but is intended to make the point that the consequence of being gay in twentieth century Britain, or Christian in the second-century Roman empire, generated a strikingly analogous relationship between individuals in these groups and the rest of society. Being or becoming Christian and making this known to others was determined by a person’s sensibilities and convictions, but it was a state of being or a preference that had an immediate impact on an individual’s place within the community. The consequence of outing oneself had significant implications about the way in which a person was integrated into wider society, and was usually a major step, fraught with social consequences. This can be compared with coming-out in the LGBT*Q community which was and is both a psychological matter, important to the individual, and a sociological one. Establishing this new, and sometimes hazardous, relationship between society and the individual often determined whether and in what ways the gay person or the ancient Christian made their disposition or their belief public. So far from being deterred by Roman legislation, the ‘crime’ of religious identity, of acknowledging the nomen Christianum, became a central feature of Christian self-assertion. The context in which the claim was made also reinforced its impact. The rite and commemoration of burial was a public affair which involved the whole community and presented all Christians, at the moment of their earthly demise, with the opportunity to assert both their expectation of resurrection to a new life and their place in the new Christian society. As attachment to their religion was for them a central part of their identity, it located the tombs’ owners, for us the earliest ordinary Christians who are accessible to historical enquiry, at the beginning of a process which separated the mentality of late antiquity from that of the earlier Roman empire. Religious acts also become identity statements. As coming-out in the recent past, both before and after the legalisation of homosexuality, has become a collective phenomenon, it has been recognised as an important and effective tool in establishing and furthering LGBT*Q rights. What we can describe by the shorthand description ‘gay pride’ has been a key to establishing the social as well as the legal acceptability of gays and subsequently the entire non-cis community. This movement can be paralleled by the attention which modern scholars of the classical world now pay to the importance of self-representation, Selbstdarstellung, in the material and written record of antiquity. While more ephemeral forms of self-representation are mostly out of reach to modern scholars, except occasionally and to a limited extent through close reading of and between the lines of texts, the sensitive

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interpretation of visual evidence and the forms of text and monument chosen for the public display of inscriptions are a critical medium for seeing how individuals or groups presented their identities in a political and societal context.79 Inscriptions that identified their subjects as Christians at a time when this was a significant novelty take us nearer to answering the question what it meant to be a Christian in Roman society. In an earlier paper, I tried to demonstrate developing modes of expression in Christian monuments from Phrygia between 200 and 400, with shifts of emphasis over these two centuries, which corresponded to Christianity’s own changing position in society.80 The picture drawn there, tracing an evolution from hesitant and unobtrusive claims in the earlier texts to much more strident identity statements in the later ones, was excessively schematic. The first example chosen was probably not Christian,81 and the very prominent crosses in wreaths of the Christians from Christians inscriptions in the Upper Tembris Valley from the end of the third century already had counterparts in the Temenothyrae group almost a century earlier. More account should be taken of local contexts and regional variation within Phrygia. However, the essence of the argument can be restated. The Christian monuments asserted that their owners belonged to the movement and were proud to do so. They expressed both group solidarity and differentiation from other groups in a way that was publicly visible and intelligible, and they developed modes of expression that became more confident and differentiated over the generations and as the communities grew larger. The composite doorstones of Phrygian Temenothyrae around 200 and the splendid stelae of the Upper Tembris Valley three generations later, must have been on display in the main necropoleis of these communities and were designed for some of its wealthiest inhabitants, who were fully accepted by wider society. Clerical titles were a source of pride and status. It was unusual for third-century clergy to use the Aurelius name borne by other family members, as this indication of Roman citizenship was overshadowed by their status as church officials. To return to the analogy with the recent history of homosexuality, Christians made a show of their beliefs for similar reasons to those of the LGBQ*T community, when it celebrates 79 It should be said that understanding the spectrum of identities and behaviours related to sexual orientation in antiquity is even more challenging than separating Jewish from Christian identity, for broadly similar reasons. 80 S. Mitchell, Epigraphic display and the emergence of Christian identity. 81 ICG 1224; see 194–7.

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its cultures and identities at Gay Pride marches and festivals. Coming out as Christian was already normal in Asia Minor long before Constantine. Coming out, self-assertion and self-representation have caused major shifts in contemporary societal attitudes to the LGBQ*T community. The timescale of this change, roughly from 1950 to the present, is not dissimilar to the timescale of growing Christian acceptability in third-century Phrygia, say between AD 180 and 250. But the acceptance of homosexuality has not been universal, and is heavily dependent on the context where gay and LGBQ*T culture has sought to make headway. Comparably, the explanation of the dramatic contrast between inner Anatolia, where Christianity made such conspicuous and visible progress, and the coastal regions, where Christians, at least on their tomb monuments, did not show their face, was also strongly influenced by the characteristics of the non-Christian population. The social and religious environment of inner Anatolia in the second and third centuries was receptive to open declarations of Christianity in a manner and to a degree which was not matched in the coastal areas, or in the long hellenised regions of west and south Asia Minor. Pre-Christian religious beliefs in Phrygia and other parts of inner Anatolia had many features that matched those of early Christians, including a concept of the afterlife and the immortality of the soul, and a sense of social morality and justice embodied in the widespread worship of specific divinities in the local pantheon associated with holiness and justice, as well as those linked to the life of the soul after death. The rural social structures and the pagan religious environment of inner Anatolia were not those of major Graeco-Roman cities. The regional evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates a strong emphasis on ‘bottom-up’ piety. In place of the classic polis religion of the Roman empire, which was supported by the benefactions of richer families, with its temples, priesthoods, and contests, Phrygian beliefs were expressed in countless individual votive dedications, expressing the vows or thanks to the gods of single persons, families and small communities, and these were prominently displayed in the rural shrines of central Anatolia. Individuals showed their devotion in this way as a matter of course. It was a relatively short step from this practice to the custom of advertising religious, specifically Christian belief as part of personal identity. The increasing number of Phrygians who were attracted to and adopted Christianity made their presence known in this environment, and accelerated the pace of religious change in the third century through pride and self-assertion.

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From the Third Century to Byzantium

The detailed accounts in chapters four and five of Phrygia’s Christian monuments are based on an obvious division between the earlier epigraphic material c.180 and 330, and the inscriptions and church architecture from a much longer period between c.350 to 1000.82 The two chapters have not been organised into the same geographical subdivisions as one another. One of the reasons for this is that it is remarkably difficult to establish any direct link between the third- and the fifth-century Christian communities in Phrygia’s towns and rural districts. The Upper Tembris valley and the cities and territories of Apamea and Eumeneia, which were the source of most Phrygian Christian documents in the third century, are less rich in inscriptions and architectural pieces from the fourth and later centuries. The north Phrygian cities and territories of Dorylaeum and Nacolea which were devoid of third-century Christian inscriptions have yielded abundant later texts and other remains. Nonetheless, as might be expected, a continuous tradition, can be traced across the divide between the earlier and later periods at a handful of locations. The earliest evidence for a church in the Upper Tembris Valley, columns with dedication texts for an early or mid-fourth century church near Altıntaş, were found in the same villages that produced many verse inscriptions for prominent local families at about the same period, and both include allusions to men who held magistracies, probably in the small nearby polis of Soa.83 The church which had been built by a veteran Roman soldier near Dioclea perhaps before 300 was located close to the burial place of two Christian Roman veterans and their families attested in the mid-third century.84 The lacuna in the evidence is partly a consequence of the fact that fourth-century inscriptions or monuments were less abundant than third- or fifth-century texts, but formally it is rarely possible to see continuity between the types of Christian texts found in the early Byzantine period after 400, many of which relate to buildings, and the pre-Constantinian funerary inscriptions. The presence of the familiar Christian clerical hierarchy also bridged the chronological gap, but it is remarkable how few of the earlier inscriptions and other sources from the region provide information about clergy and we should 82

The twenty-year gap deliberately advertises the impossibility of drawing a definitive chronological boundary in the epigraphic evidence from the second quarter of the fourth century. 83 ICG 1267 and the associated funerary verse texts, perhaps dating to the first quarter of the fourth century (see 236–9), and ICG 1158, 1161, 1163, 1164 and 1202 perhaps dating to the middle of the fourth century (261–2). The names on these inscriptions, Eutropios, Patrikios, Makedonios, Zotike and Onesimos, were all common in the third century. 84 ICG 4511 and ICG 998; see 190–2.

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not assume that there was a uniform picture all over Phrygia. Apart from the lists of church leaders who attended the Church Councils of Nicaea in 325,85 and Serdica in 343,86 few bishops before the mid-fourth century are attested from Phrygia outside the Lycus valley cities. Eusebius mentioned Atticus bishop of Synnada in 220,87 and alluded in his report of events surrounding the Montanist controversy to the bishops Julianus of Apamea, the puzzling Zoticus of the village Coumana, and Thraseas bishop of Eumeneia, who was martyred at Smyrna around 180.88 Abercius may have been bishop of Hierapolis at the end of the second century, as recorded in his vita, but did not think that this was important enough to warrant mention in his epitaph (ICG 1597). Artemidorus (ICG 1371) and his successor, the former presbyteros Diogas (ICG 1371–3), were bishops between c.180 and 215 in Temenothyrae. Around the middle of the third century, Aur. Valens the shoemaker was bishop at Apamea (ICG 972), Metrodorus (ICG 1043) and Aur. Glykon (ICG 1049) in neighbouring Eumeneia. The youthful eunuch Heortasius may have been bishop two or three generations later at Appia or another town in the Upper Tembris Valley.89 Presbyters and deacons were also only sparsely attested. In the Phrygian Pentapolis, Eusebius referred to Zoticus of Otrous around 192,90 and a mid-third century inscription from Stectorium mentions the priest Aur. Dionysius (ICG 1612). A funerary doorstone which may have been transported between the territories of Sebaste and Eumeneia, commemorated a burial set up by Eugenios πρεσβύτερος for his sister Procla, and the stone then registered another Christian burial for Tryphon about a century later in 350 (ICG 1039). The only πρεσβύτεροι who were mentioned in the third- and early fourth-century inscriptions of the Upper Tembris Valley were the priest who baptised the Novatian virgin Ammia (ICG 1689), and Chrysos and Alexandros, the two sons of the great solder Domnus at Ayrkırıkçı, Χρηστιανοὶ πρεσβύτεροι 85

86 87 88 89 90

Ten Phrygian bishops were present at Nicaea (Ancyra Sidera, Apamea, Aezani, Dorylaeum, Eucarpia, Hadrianopolis, Hierapolis, Laodicea, Metropolis, Sanaos) out of a traditional total attendance of 318; in fact, the sources account for about 220 bishops or their deputies, 115 from the Asia Minor provinces; see H. Gelzer / H. Hilgenfeld / O. Cuntz, Patrum Nicaenorum nomina Latine Graece Coptice Syriace Arabice Armeniace (Stuttgart-Leipzig, 1898; new edition, ed. C. Markschies 1995). See the useful summary of bishops from Phrygia attending church councils in Chiai, Phrygien, Reallexicon für Antike und Christentum XVII (2016), 709–12. Five Phrygian bishops were at Serdica (Ancyra Sidera, Docimium, Dorylaeum, Hierapolis, Lysias). Eusebius, HE VI.17.9; VII.7.5. Eusebius, HE V.16.16 and V. 17.13. SGO 3, 242: 16/31/11 (ICG 1190); see 260. Eusebius, HE V.16.5.

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λαοῦ πρεστάμενοι (ICG 1270). The phrase πατρίδος προϊσταμένος appeared on another inscription of the neighbourhood referring to secular leadership (ICG 1977). One priest is named among the third-century epitaphs from Docimium (ICG 1577), a father and son, both priests, on a gravestone of Amorium,91 and one from Apollonia (ICG 1134). Ammion, a devout elderly Christian woman associated with bishops Artemidorus and Diogas at Temenothyrae, held the title or office of πρεσβύτερα at Temenothyrae (ICG 1372). The earliest deacon so far attested in Phrygia may have been Eugenios, named on an early fourth-century text at Sevdiğin in the Upper Tembris Valley (ICG 1160). None of the other clerical offices or ranks of the early church or associated institutions (anagnostes, kanonikos/e, monachos, chorepiskopos, periodeutes) was mentioned in texts between 200 and 400. The essential offices of the church of the first three centuries were present in some form in Phrygia, but the community of active Christians, represented by the names on the tombstones, was egalitarian rather than hierarchical. The use of the term Christian on inscriptions of the third century occurred time and again in contexts which identified individuals as part of this community. Avircius Marcellus, a wealthy and highly educated Roman citizen, regarded his fellows in this way, describing them as συνόμαιμοι, kinsfolk, or as συνῳδοί, ‘members of the chorus’. The most potent analogy was that of a brotherhood, ἀδελφότης, which was attested once or twice in this abstract form (ICG 922 (restored), 1613), but more commonly by applying the terms ἀδελφός / ἀδελφή to fellow Christians who were not family members. The range of clerical offices naturally expanded in the early Byzantine period.92 Bishops were probably present in every see, although they are only occasionally directly attested in the regional epigraphy. The sources for Church councils up to the middle of the sixth century list about 383 bishoprics in Asia Minor, of which 33 were in Phrygia Pacatiana and 31 in Phrygia Salutaris. Three other bishoprics in the area covered in this study, Amorium, Orcistus and Trocnades, were in Galatia Salutaris.93 Fourteen Phrygian representatives

91 ICG 4514; see Lighfoot, Amorium Reports 5, 52 no. 123. 92 S. Destephen, L’apport de la prosopographie à la connaissance des clercs: l’exemple du diocese d’Asie, in P.G. Delage (ed.), Les pères de l’ église et les ministères (La Rochelle 2008), 279–94 is an excellent mise-en-scène resting on a solid statistical base, with important observations about the familial status, wealth and education of the various clerical orders. 93 For comprehensive details of the organisation, documentation and attendance figures at councils, see S. Destephen, Actes conciliaires, listes de souscriptions et notices épiscopales, ou du bon usage des sources ecclésiastiques, in H. Bru et G. Labarre (eds), Anatolie des peoples, des cités et des cultures (Paris 2013), 207–28, and the map p. 214.

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were present at the Council of Constantinople in 381,94 followed by much weaker representation at the two Ephesian councils of the fifth century, seven in 431,95 and four at Ephesus in 449.96 These low figures reveal the influence and impact of Cyril of Alexandria, who had instigated both councils in direct challenge to the Church in Constantinople which largely exercised authority over the bishops in the Asia Minor dioeceses of Asiana and Pontica. There was a fuller contingent of thirty-four Phrygian bishops at Chalcedon in 451,97 but this dropped to ten at the council assembled by the patriarch at Constantinople in 536,98 and eighteen at Justinian’s council of 553.99 The epigraphic record only covers a fraction of the widespread ecclesiastical organisation in the Asia Minor provinces.100 On the ground, inscriptions refer to bishops as having oversight of church construction in the episcopal centres of Antioch (the Pisidian metropolis) in the late fourth (ICG 1333, 1334) and sixth centuries (ICG 1345), Amorium (ICG 1315), Stectorium (ICG 1480), and Appia (ICG 1839), and in villages dependent on Aezani (ICG 1310), Amorium (ICG 1298), and Meiros (ICG 1637). Three building inscriptions in the region of Bekilli (Dionysupolis) mentioned sixth-century bishops (ICG 1076, 1081, 1082 dated to 556/7). Two bishops of Amorium were buried in their home villages at the end of the fourth or the start of the fifth century (ICG 1692, 1806), and others of the same period appear on inscriptions at Temenothyrae (ICG 1620) and Prymnessus (ICG 1095). The pattern continued in the Middle Byzantine period. Sylvain Destephen has drawn attention to the fact that the sources for cities that ceased to be bishoprics in the seventh and subsequent centuries, do not indicate a substantial reduction in numbers: ‘À la lecture de cette seconde carte, il apparaît que le 94

Pisidian Antioch, Apamea, Appia, Bruzos, Eucarpia, Hadrianopolis, Eumeneia, Metropolis, Philomelion, Sozopolis, Tymandos. 90 Asia Minor bishops out of a total of 150 attended this council; see C.H. Turner, Canons attributed to the Council of Constantinople, AD 381, together with the names of the bishops, from two Patmos MSS ΠΟΒ’ ΠΟΓ’, Journal of Theological Studies 15 (1914), 161–178. 95 Synnada, Cotiaeum, Dioclea, Docimium, Hierapolis, Laodicea, and Sozopolis (in the province of Pisidia), from a total of 125 Asia Minor and a total of 260 bishops. 96 Synnada, Cadi, Kidyessos, Sozopolis, from 55 Asia Minor and a total of 150 bishops. 97 290 Asia Minor and a total of 480 bishops or their representatives were present at Chalcedon. 98 60 Asia Minor and a total of 90 in total. 99 The 553 council was attended by 90 Asia Minor and a total of 175 bishops or their representatives. 100 D. Feissel, L’Évêque, titres et fonctions d’après les inscriptions grecques jusqu’au VIIe siècle, Études d’épigraphie et d’histoire (2020), 3–25, an introductory survey of bishops attested by Greek inscriptions up to the seventh century.

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phénomène de désurbanisation ou plutôt de “dépoliadisation” reste très limité, ce qui repousse le déclin brutal des cités d’Asie Mineure au-delà de la première moitié du 7e siècle’.101 About seventeen bishops from Phrygian communities took part in the councils of Constantinople in 681 or 692, forty at Nicaea in 787, and thirty-six at Constantinople in 869 or 879.102 Middle Byzantine inscriptions referred to church building supervised by bishop Niketas at Akroinos (ICG 4507), Sergius at Acmonia (ICG 4471), Leon at Otrous (ICG 1473), David at Synnada (ICG 4492), and a bishop whose name is not preserved at Amorium (ICG 1316). Construction work in the early and Middle Byzantine periods was often initiated or completed under the supervision of archdeacons, deacons or female deacons, and their inscriptions almost always implied that they came from richer families. Two early examples, which stand out for the quality of their grave monuments, probably belong before the end of the fourth century: Abirkios son of Porphyrios at Prymnessus (ICG 1365), and Besoulas at Philomelium (ICG 619). An elaborate inscription of 433 from a village near Aezani marked the foundation of a church in memory of a diakonissa, no doubt by virtue of a family legacy (ICG 1312). Nyne, female deacon at Synnada, her husband Demetrios, and her father Castor, a priest, were buried in a church of St Quiricus in Karaadıllı, south of Synnada. Castor was named as the church’s founder which had also surely been built with the family’s resources (ICG 1115). Doulos, a deacon at a village on the territory of Pisidian Antioch, was also son of a priest (ICG 1340). A deacon responsible for building at Synnada combined this with the office of oikonomos, responsible for church finances (ICG 1481). In the late fourth or early fifth century the family of the prominent and pious Amarantus, διάκων ἐλεεινὸς δοῦλος Κυρίου, was commemorated with an elaborate funerary inscription near Prymnessus (ICG 1094), a deacon and his family were responsible for highly decorated church architecture in a village attached to Dorylaeum (ICG 1825), and two deacons with their children were buried in a sarcophagus in another Dorylaeum village (ICG 1420). A protodiakonos was mentioned on an Aezani gravestone of the fifth or sixth century (ICG 1314), and the protodiakonos Montanos dedicated a water stoup in a church at Bekilli 101 Destephen, Actes conciliaires, 227 with fig. 2. For the possible impact of the Arab invasions on council attendance in the seventh century see 472–3. This leaves open the question whether the continued existence of some of these bishoprics was more a matter of appearance than reality. For a more pessimistic assessment of the evidence from Pisidia, see S. Mitchell, The settlement of Pisidia in late antiquity and the Byzantine period, in K. Belke et al. (eds), Byzanz als Raum (Vienna 2000), 139–52. 102 These counts are approximate since many of the later locations are obscure and insecurely located.

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(ICG 1074), where another inscription mentioned a deacon in connection with ‘worked land’ (ICG 1079). Alexander an archidiakonos supervised the building of a church in Çivril near Siblia (ICG 1046), and a διακονίσσα appeared alongside an imperial official, a comes sacri consistorii, on a building inscription near Philomelium (ICG 624). Theodoros combined the offices of reader and deacon when he restored the church at Antioch that had been built in the sixth century by the efforts of the bishop Ioannes and the pater of the city Anthestianus (ICG 1345), and an archidiakonos supervised the renovation of the church in the old temple at Aezani in 1005 (ICG 1307). Apart from wealthy female deacons, the only women to be recognised with a distinct status in the church were the parthenos Zotike in the Upper Tembris Valley (ICG 1164) and the Novatian teenager Ammia, whose short life was cut short as she commended herself to become a bride of Christ (ICG 1689). Inscriptions, by their nature a public genre of evidence, seriously underrepresented the part played by women in society. Priests  – presbyteroi  – were ubiquitous, but not overwhelmingly frequent in the epigraphic record as they are in Lycaonia. Three separate individuals called Patrikios were attested as priests in the early Byzantine inscriptions of the Upper Tembris Valley (ICG 1158, 1170, 1196). The first example from Kuyucak was the son of an archon, a civic magistrate in the nearby town, presumably Soa, and this inscription from the early or mid-fourth century exemplified the fact that priests, like deacons, usually came from families of good secular standing. An exceptional example was Eutychus, the father of Kyrilla from the aristocractic family of the Botaniatai at Synnada, named on a funerary inscription of 571 (ICG 1099). A verse text on a high quality funerary stele marked the grave of Maximos of Vaza, using the poetic synonym ἱερεὺς θεοῦ to mark his priestly office (ICG 1703). Wealthy priests and their heirs were able to found churches, which served as their own memorials, as shown by the example of Auxanon at Acmonia (ICG 1000) and Photion, son of the priest Eugenios, at Ortaköy near Orcistus (ICG 1293). They can be compared with the Montanist koinonos Paulinos, who founded the church in the territory of Sebaste which marked his own burial place (ICG 1363). Christophoros, a priest at Amorium at the end of sixth century, was at the same time abbot (ἡγούμενος) of a monastic community and partly responsible for the restoration of the important city church of St Konon (ICG 1315). Inscriptions which provide less context for presbyteroi have been recorded in the Phrygian Highlands on the territory of Meiros (ICG 1681, 1704), Dorylaeum (ICG 1398), Nacolea (ICG 1432), Synnada (ICG 1098, 1116), and in the territory of the Hyrgaleis in Phrygia’s south-west corner (ICG 1118). One protopresbyteros who paid for part of the decoration, was recorded on a small dividing post, perhaps from a chancel screen, in

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AD 513/4 on the territory of Acmonia (ICG 1443), to be followed by a Middle Byzantine example at Temenothyrae, who authorised the construction of a church (ICG 2339). The rank of presbyteros hardly appears in the Middle Byzantine inscriptions, and the dedication texts carved on templon screens of the churches at this period usually mentioned only higher clergy such as the patriarch of Constantinople Eustathios, who commissioned the rebuilding of the church at Sebaste (ICG 4469), and the bishops who were responsible for most of the other renovations. Another office that appeared first after the mid-fourth century but then became frequent was that of reader, ἀναγνώστης. Alexander was a reader in the Novatian church who was commemorated by a rock inscription and relief of a Latin cross at Ertem in the north Phrygian Highlands, which probably overlooked his family estate (ICG 1688). An unpublished fourth century text in Afyon Museum refers to the the town magistrate (archon) and clergy of the Novatian Church, including a diakonos and an anagnostes.103 Onesimos, another reader, was buried with an unrelated Christian companion at Akoluk (ICG 1636), and the clergy who joined forces to build a church at the town of Malos under the oversight of bishop Ioannes of Meiros, included a πρωταναγνώστης called Asklepios (ICG 1637 and 1638). The earliest recorded example from the region was the ἀναγνώστης Idomeneus responsible for part of the mosaic floor of the large church at Pisidian Antioch which was dedicated under bishop Optimus around 380 (ICG 1332). These individual readers should clearly be distinguished from the ψαλταναγνωσταί ὀρθόδοξοι whose grave monument (heroon) was marked by a collective burial inscription at Apamea (ICG 975). These remained anonymous and may have only required well-trained voices to qualify for membership of the choir. The anagnostai on the other hand must have been men of high status, educated to read the Bible for the benefit of the less privileged or illiterate members of the congregation. Like all the other members of the clerical hierarchy most of them would have enjoyed relatively high social standing thanks to their wealth or education The appearance of readers as regular parts of the church hierarchy presupposed the availability of written biblical texts. This could certainly not be taken for granted at earlier periods. Biblical citations or recognisable allusions to Old or New Testament texts were almost completely absent from the inscriptions of the third and early fourth centuries. Even the curses ‘written in (the book of) Deuteronomy’ at Acmonia were not taken in a straightforward fashion from a written exemplar, although we may suppose that a text of the Jewish Bible, in Greek, was housed in the synagogue at Acmonia. Abercius 103 ICG 4491; see 376 and 560.

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metaphorically took Paul on his travels, and his educated follower Eutropius may have alluded to Psalm 119 on epitaph, but there is little more to be gleaned from the earlier texts.104 There was greater access to the Bible in the Byzantine period and citations were commoner, although by no means routine.105 A text at Nacolea cited Psalm 67 and the second letter to Timothy (ICG 1428). Extracts from Psalms 26, 31, 33 and 96 were engraved on a large block from a church probably built at Akroinos, and three other blocks which almost certainly came from the same building contained similarly extended quotations from Isaiah.106 The verse from Psalm 28, φωνὴ Κυρίου ἐπὶ τῶν ὑδάτων, was often carved on baptismal fonts in Phrygia and elsewhere, but was so familiar that it is unlikely that clergy or stonemasons had to look up the reference.107 This also surely was the case for the trishagion and Emmanuel acclamations from Isaiah and Matthew 24, which would have been familiar from the liturgy (ICG 1462, 1103, 1114). A mosaic inscription in the large late fourth-century church at Antioch provided an apt citation from Psalm 43 relating to the liturgical use of the passage leading the congregation to the altar (ICG 1334), while a sixth-century invocation to St Michael at Temenothyrae contained accurate quotations of the first letter to the Corinthians and Psalm 56, although these were rendered in Phrygian dialectal spelling (ICG 1619). A very late epitaph for a bishop of Acmonia para­ phrased passages from the Psalms and Genesis, the two most familiar parts of the Old Testament for clergy in the Byzantine period,108 and an inscription from Antioch of the same period combined allusions to Psalms 34 and 108 (ICG 1344). Psalm 117 was cited on another Middle Byzantine templon fragment from central Phrygia.109 This is a small harvest of citations or quotations from biblical texts even in the deeply Christian environment of the fifth and sixth centuries and in later Byzantine periods. Most of the sentiments and expressions found in Christian inscriptions, ranging from invocations of God’s final judgement to appeals for the Lord’s help or Christ’s mercy can also be found in Old and New Testament 104 See 152–3; ICG 1597 and 1445, discussed at 92, 98 and 109. 105 For the wider context, see D. Feissel, La Bible dans les inscriptions grecques, in C. Mondésert, Le monde grec ancient et le Bible (Paris 1984), 223–31; and the comprensive corpus of over 800 citations in A. Felle, Biblia epigraphica: la sacra scrittura nella documentazione epigrafica dell’ Orbis Christianus antiquus (III–VIII secolo) (Bari 2006). 106 ICG 1008, 1009, 1010 (Afyon) and 620 (Akşehir). 107 ICG 1093, 1322; Feissel, Chron. 436. 108 ICG 4471; see 414 for the popularity of the Psalms and Genesis, see Mitchell and French, I. Ankara 2, commentary on no. 347 (p. 107) and no. 349 (p. 120–1). 109 ICG 4473; Pallis, Byz. Zeitschr. 2013, 808 2e; see 415.

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contexts, but it is unlikely that there was a direct connection between these passages and the formulas that commonly appeared on inscriptions. The formula ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς which introduced innumerable votive texts carved on columns and the liturgical furniture of churches suggests that the prayers of the spoken liturgy rather than the written words of the Bible were a more likely source of influence on the expressions that appear repeatedly on the monuments.110 The moral message of the Bible, in simplified form, was no doubt familiar to all Phrygia’s Christians, but it is unlikely that more than a small minority had access to, still less direct knowledge of the biblical texts themselves. It would be unsafe to assume that every church possessed a copy of the text, or that readers were to be found in every congregation.111 The record relating to church construction between the fourth and sixth centuries does not provide a detailed chronological picture of the development of the ecclesiastical landscape. The finds of early Byzantine architectural fragments in so many villages where no inscriptions have been recovered suggests that almost every settlement possessed a church, although the reuse and movement of stones in modern times makes this inference uncertain. Towns and cities certainly had multiple churches by the sixth century, but it is rarely if ever possible to establish the moment at which the original Christian communities of the third century, which seem to have worshipped communally, became divided into several churches or parishes, and whether this was the result of growing Christian populations or can be traced to other social causes. It was clearly common practice for the entire community to contribute either funds or actual labour, as in the church that was built to honour the memory of the deacon Epiphania near Aezani (ICG 1312).112 One significant element was the tendency of wealthy and devout families to build churches that served as their own memorials, as of Paulinos at Payamalanı (ICG 1363), Castor at Synnada (ICG 1115), Auxanon at Acmonia (ICG 1000) Photion at Orcistus (ICG 1293), and Arinthaios at Dorylaeum (ICG 1383). Monks or other male ascetics were only infrequently recorded in Phrygian inscriptions, mostly from the Middle Byzantine period. The records include a 110 The classification of this formula has been a source of confusion, see Haensch, Kirchenbau in Asiana, 334–5. 111 Breytenbach and Zimmermann, Early Christianity in Lycaonia, 679–83, adopt a much more optimistic estimate of familiarity with the Bible as text. 112 This was certainly very often the case in the dioecese of Oriens, as shown by the exceptional documentation of more than 1000 mosaic and building inscriptions. See R. Haensch, Le financement de la construction des églises pendant l’antiquité tardive et l’ évergétisme antique, Antiquité Tardive 14 (2006), 47–58 and other studies cited at Haensch, Kirchenbau in Asiana, 333–4 n. 14.

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silver-plated copper box from Bozüyük dedicated to the health, survival and redemption of a monk called Ioannes (ICG 1422), a fragment of a drinking cup belonging to a monk called Thomas excavated at Amorium (ICG 4488), an invocation on a doorlintel at Akroinos (Afyon) for the monk Nicolas and his Christ-brotherhood (Χριστοαδελφότης) (ICG 1089), and a rock inscription which probably marked the cell of a solitary monk near Apamea (ICG 1124). Leaders of ascetic communities like Nicolas and the two abbots (hegoumenoi) mentioned by Phrygian inscriptions doubtless came from backgrounds of higher status than other monks. One of these was Christophoros, priest and abbot at the Church of St Konon in Amorium, the other was Dorotheos, hegoumenos at the important monastery of Pidron near Pisidian Antioch, responsible for commissioning his church’s ciborium, a showy piece of church decoration (ICG 4487). What had changed between the third century and the Byzantine period? The transformation of the settlements by church building was the most obviously durable aspect of Christianisation. Nothing speaks more clearly for a large Christian population in the late Roman/early Byzantine period, settled in the villages as well as the towns and cities, than the ubiquitous architectural débris and Spolien from churches which have come to light in almost every Phrygian locality which has been seriously investigated. Here there was both continuity and change. Earlier funerary and later building inscriptions occurred in town and country contexts. However, both the habitat and the habitus of the Phrygian communities was transformed between c.350 and 500. Between 200 and 330 Phrygian Christians had come out into public view, and in some important areas were decisively the dominant social group of their locality. Although gatherings of several hundreds are unlikely ever to have been a phenomenon in Phrygian Christianity outside the largest churches at Laodicea, Hierapolis and Pisidian Antioch, the numbers of these growing brotherhoods, which assembled for common worship and to attend burials of the dead, had outgrown the tens of of worshippers, who shared the agape meal in their private houses. Their gatherings for weekly prayers and for funerals must have been conspicuous events. The first half of the fourth century appear to have seen a first wave of church building, initiated by wealthy individuals. Some of these, like M. Iulius Eugenios at Laodicea Catacecaumene, and the ex-beneficiarius at Dioclea, followed a little later by the comites from Sagalassus at Pisidian Bindaios, had a background in imperial or military service before they returned to their home towns and villages.113 This early phase in Phrygia can be compared with the 113 See 191–2, 349, 350, and 352.

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better-documented spread of church construction in northern Syria across the territory of Syrian Antioch in northern Syria between 350 and 375.114 These buildings, like the church of M. Iulius Eugenios, were funded by wealthy individuals, and the earliest church foundations began not only to create a new built environment but also heralded a dominant role for Christians in society. The church in the Upper Tembris Valley which was probably roughly contemporary with that founded by a former soldier at Dioclea, had columns that carried votives of a local archon and his cousin, a priest, a deceased family head on behalf of his entire household, and a dedicated virgin and her pious father (ICG 1158, 1161, 1164). These were all local people of means and standing. The religious politics of the reign of Theodosius I, especially from the later 380s, were marked by a high level of intolerance and aggression against pagans, Jews and heretics. Christians in central Anatolia may now have felt sufficiently empowered to attack and destroy pagan shrines. The archaeological evidence for these violent onslaughts is palpable, although the dating remains uncertain. If most of the religious violence is provisionally dated to the 380s and 390s, it must have followed the first generation of church building, but preceded the major expansion in construction which took place in the fifth century. The intensity of attacks on pagan monuments was uneven. The pagan temple at Aezani remained intact, while the temple of Mên Askaênos near Antioch was comprehensively demolished. The fifth and sixth centuries, at least until the outbreak of the Great Plague in 542, were a period of peace and stability in Asia Minor, enjoyed by a growing and generally prosperous population.115 This assessment depends almost entirely on the archaeological evidence from excavations and surveys in Turkey that have led to an entirely fresh perspective on the region in late antiquity. In contrast with a previous model of depression and decline, it is now generally accepted that the density and scale of human settlement in Anatolia was higher around 500 than at any earlier period of its history. This is conspicuously demonstrated by the extraordinary quantity of secular and church building in the southern coastal regions from Cilicia to Caria, where permanent constructions in highly resilient stone and mortar survive abundantly in settlements, large and small. However, a similar story is revealed by excavations on large urban sites in western, and to a lesser extent in central Anatolia, which show 114 F. Trombley, Hellenic Religion and Christianization II (Leiden 1994), 247–83, updated in I. Sandwell / J. Huskison (eds), Culture and Society in Later Roman Antioch: (Oxford 2004), 59–85. 115 Mitchell, The Later Roman Empire (ed. 2), 363–9; I. Jacobs, A tale of prosperity. Asia Minor in the Theodosian period, Byzantion 82 (2012), 113–64.

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that city life flourished as never previously. Whereas the cities of the second and third centuries were marked by showy public building, the cities of the late empire had larger areas of private houses and urban villas, often lavishly decorated, as well as churches and public bath-buildings. This urban development is reflected in the great catalogue of ninety-four provinces and 935 cities of the Roman empire ruled from Constantinople compiled by Hierocles around the start of Justinian’s reign in 525. There were thirty-nine cities in Phrygia Kapatiana (Pacatiana, essentially south and west Phrygia with its metropolis at Laodicea) governed by a consularis, and twenty-three cities in Phrygia Salutaris (north and east Phrygia, metropolis at Synnada), also governed by a consularis, not to mention seven or eight cities in Phrygia Paroreius which then belonged to the province of Pisidia, including its metropolis Pisidian Antioch, and at least one city, Amorium, which was part of Galatia Salutaris.116 Nevertheless, this very positive picture has not yet been confirmed throughout Phrygia by the same scale of archaeological discoveries that have made such an important contribution to our perceptions of other regions of Asia Minor, especially the big urbanised population centres of the lower Maeander valley and the Aegean coastline. There is no question that Laodicea and Hierapolis in the Lycus Valley thrived in the manner of their westerly neighbours Nysa, Tralles, and Magnesia, but the recent excavations of other Phrygian cities including Aezani, Amorium and Pisidian Antioch, although they have demonstrated continuous occupation, do not demonstrably support the view that these cities achieved a climactic phase of their development in late antiquity. On the contrary, precisely in Aezani, the evidence points to a shift in balance between the city and the surrounding village settlements, in favour of the 116 Full edition by A. Burckhardt (Leipzig 1893), comprehensive edition with commentary, E. Honigmann, Le Synekdèmos d’Hiéroklès et l’opuscule géographique de Georges de Chypre (Brussels 1939). See Hierocles, Synekdemos 664.6–668.16 (Phrygia Pacatiana: [Laodicea, Hierapolis, Mossyna, Attuda, Trapezupolis, Colossae, Ceretapa, Themisonium, Valentia, Sanaos, Koniupolis, Situpolis, Krassos, Lounda = Blaundus], Motella, Eumeneia, Siblia, Pepuza, Briana, Sebaste, Ilouza, Acmonia, Alioi, Sioucharax, Dioclea, Aristion, Kidyessos, Appia, Eudokias, Aezani, Tiberiupolis, Cadi, Theodosiana, Ancyra, Synaus, Temenothyrae, Traianopolis, Pulcherianupolis) 676.7–678.7 (Phrygia Salutaris: Eukarpia, Hierapolis, Otrous, Stectorium, Brouzos, Kleros Orinês, Kleros Politikês, Debalikia, Lysias, Synnada, Prymnessos, Ipsos, Polybotus, Docimium, Meiros, Nacolea, Dorylaeum, Midaeum, and four demoi, respectively Lykaon, Auroclia, Alamassos, Prypniassos); 672.1–673.4 (Pisidia: including Antiochia, Laodicea Catacecaumene, Tyriaeum, Hadrianupolis, Philomelium, Apollonia, Tymandus and Apamea); 697.7 (Galatia Salutaris: Amorium). I have normalised the spellings and readings as I understand them. Unlocated or highly uncertain identifications are in italics and places not included in this study are in square brackets; Cotiaeum is a conspicuous omission from Hierocles’s list, no doubt by oversight.

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latter.117 Neither Amorium nor Antioch appears to have grown during the fifth and sixth centuries. The evidence, limited as it is to medium-scale excavations at these sites, suggests that they retained a place in the settlement hierarchy comparable to that of earlier centuries, when the cities of Phrygia had rarely been focal points for dynamic urban development, but rather were an integral component of an intricate and dense pattern of occupation that linked town and country dwellers together, without giving extravagant advantages to the former. Finds of decorated architectural pieces from villages throughout Phrygia in late antiquity, derived from fifth- and sixth-century churches, tend to confirm Niewöhner’s conclusion that growth and prosperity was at least as much a rural as an urban phenomenon. Church building, documented by these architectural remains as well as by inscriptions, provides the most tangible evidence for this hypothesis. Inscriptions for church construction in the Middle Byzantine period, primarily in the 10th and 11th centuries, provide in many cases the only tangible local indication that the rural sites established in late antiquity between the fourth and sixth centuries continued to be occupied until and beyond the Turkish conquests. In the absence of other archaeological and epigraphic evidence, the history of Phrygia and of most of central Anatolia between the seventh and tenth centuries is largely reduced to the very patchy Greek, Syriac and Arabic sources which document Arab raids and campaigns between the mid-seventh and the mid-ninth centuries.118 These highlight the roles played by the important northern centre of Dorylaeum, which had been a military focal point in the early Byzantine period,119 of Amorium, already a well-defended fortress which resisted Arab raiding in the mid-seventh century and became the headquarters of the Byzantine thema Anatolikon in the eighth and ninth centuries,120 and of Pisidian Antioch which repeatedly provided secure winter quarters both for Arab and Crusader armies campaigning in west central Anatolia.121 The common feature of all these strongholds was that they occupied strategic locations close to or along the main route from Syria which crossed central Anatolia on the west side of the steppic central plateau leading towards Constantinople. Amorium and Dorylaeum respectively were advanced positions 117 See chapter 5.3, drawing on the work of Philip Niewöhner. 118 The fullest documentation is the compressed but detailed summary by K. Belke, in TIB 7. Phrygien und Pisidien, 83–102. 119 TIB 7, 238–42 s.v. Dorylaion. 120 See the excellent synthesis of E. A. Ivison, Amorium in the Byzantine Dark Ages (seventh to ninth centuries), in J. Henning (ed.), Post-Roman Towns, Trade and Settlement. 2. Byzantium, Pliska and the Balkans (Millennium Studies 5.2; Berlin 2007), 25–59. 121 See 443; TIB 7, 181–3.

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designed to protect the Byzantine capital against Arab invasions from the south-east. The settlements of the interior of Phrygia, west of this route, were less threatened by Arab raiding and are only rarely mentioned in the sources, but the population was sufficiently affected by the threat to resort on a large scale to secluded cave dwellings which can be identified throughout Phrygia, in the honey-combed volcanic outcrops of the Phrygian Highlands between Nacolea, Meiros, Docimium and Akroinos, in the steep cliffs of the canyon of the river Senarus at Pepuza, and at other underground settlements across the region.122 Most of these have been plausibly but provisionally dated to the Byzantine dark ages. 8.6

Constantinople and Phrygia

The most important development of the Byzantine period to affect Phrygia’s Christians and all other aspects of Phrygia’s life, was the foundation and rapid growth of Constantinople as an imperial centre and the capital of the eastern empire after 330. There is no evidence for a significant relationship between Phrygia and Byzantium in the third and early fourth century, before Constantinople was founded, although Phrygians and other Christians from Asia played an important role in bringing their religion to Thracian cities in the third century,123 but thereafter the transformation was rapid. Persons from the provinces, whether motivated by opportunity or driven by need, flocked to the capital, especially from the country districts. Immigration of mostly rural inhabitants to the metropolis was received in predictable ways at the highest political level. Justinian in 539 prefaced a law by deploring the depopulation of the provinces and the inconvenience to Constantinople of having to take in so many poor country folk, while Heraclius in 617 regretted that the ranks of the clergy and the city monasteries were overcrowded with migrants from provincial villages and market towns, although he took pride in the fact that Constantinple was now the shared patris of people from the whole world.124 The epigraphy of Constanantinople is pitifully under-represented compared with that of Rome, but has at least yielded a few of the gravestones of these migrants, including Phrygians who were usually identified by their 122 TIB 7, 427 index s.v. Höhlen, Höhlensiedlungen. 123 See, exempli gratia, ICG 4298 and 4312 from Philippopolis; ICG 4494 from Perinthus. 124 Justinian, Nov. 80 praef.; Heraclius, Nov. 2 praef., both quoted by D. Feissel, Aspects de l’immigration à Constantinople d’après les épitaphes protobyzantines, in C. Mango and G. Dagron (eds), Constantinople and its Hinterland (Aldershot 1995), 367–77 = Études d’épigraphie et d’histoire des premiers siècles de Byzance (Paris 2020), 103–15, at 109.

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village of origin.125 The sources for Novatian history in the fourth and fifth centuries present a more sweeping general impression of the relations and exchanges between the movement’s abundant followers across Phrygia and their co-religionists in the capital, with whom they were often in dispute.126 The inscriptions and buildings in Phrygia itself provide further useful clues about the nature and development of the relationship between the capital and its central Anatolian hinterland. Although there was large-scale immigration from rural areas to Constantinople between the fourth and the sixth centuries, the settlement evidence from Aezani and its territory and from most of northern Phrygia makes it clear that the rural population was increasing, leading to the expansion and growth of villages and to land being cultivated in hilly territory as well as the plains which had been densely occupied by villages and estates in the second and third centuries. Demographic growth was not only indigenous, but also resulted from settlement in the late fourth and fifth centuries of Goths and other Germanic colonists, who can be recognised by their names which occur in inscriptions from Cotiaeum, Dorylaeum, Nacolea, Pessinus and Philomelium, and other former soldiers with origins in the Balkans.127 Members of these families had all served in the armies that were based in Constantinople and were Christians. Some of the Gothic veterans had probably been Arians, like most of the fourth-century barbarian contingents which entered the western empire or were established at Constantinople, but the example of Besoulas, deacon at Philomelium τῆς καθολεικῆς κὴ ἀποστολεικῆς ἁγείας τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐκλησείας shows that their clerical leaders were turning to orthodoxy.128 Military veterans are the only visible category of the population which moved from Constantinople to the rural hinterland, and it is not chance that many of them settled in Dorylaeum or Nacolea, the north Phrygian centres closest to Constantinople.129 Members of the Constantinopolitan aristocracy will have owned property in Phrygia, and many wealthy families had Phrygian roots. This probably was the reason why John Stoudios, consul in 454, founded churches dedicated to St Michael at Nacolea and at Germia in west Galatia, the latter an important 125 D. Feissel, Notes d’épigraphie chrétienne IX, BCH 118 (1994), 277–90 at 277–83: Phrygians from the villages of the Andaietai (Cotiaeum), Okopsoda (Dorylaeum), Malos (Meiros), Bruzos and Docimium (2); see chapter 8.2. See also D. Feissel, Notes d’épigraphie chrétienne X, BCH 118 (1994), 375–89 at 379 n. 17 for the Phrygian Sôzôn from the village of Nêtos near Nacolea, who was buried at Selymbria in Thrace. 126 See chapter 7.2. 127 See 363–4. 128 See 452–4. 129 See 377 and 380.

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magnet for pilgrims.130 An impressive church in rural territory north-west of Cotiaeum had internal décor and inscriptions that may have been inspired by prestigious Justinianic churches, and could have been another foundation of a Constantinopolitan family with important local connections.131 Cyrus, statesman and poet from Panopolis in Egypt, was forced by political circumstances to spend most of the 440s in Cotiaeum as bishop, before returning to the capital.132 Soon after his death around 470 Epidikos, patrician, consul and praetorian prefect of Oriens, and his wife Dikaia were honoured with statues by the landowners of Meiros for his benefactions. He and his family came from this part of Phrygia.133 An unusually prominent inscription which can plausibly be dated to the mid-fifth century was set up at an important site near Kidyessos by a tribune, a ranking officer of a unit of Constantiniani based in the capital, which invoked the Holy Trinity for the salvation of the country. This should probably be interpreted as a thank offering on behalf of the capital city, or indeed the whole empire, rather than of the modest Phrgian community where it was found.134 The intervention of the highest church authority in the eastern Church is attested in Phrygia by the verse inscription on the renovated church at Sebaste, commissioned by Eustathios, patriarch at Constantinople from 1019–25.135 Four local landowners appear to have built a church in the Kümbet valley on the territory of Meiros in the tenth or eleventh century. Two of them were identified as ‘royal agents’, basilikoi, and one bore the name Kalonas, belonging to a prominent political family in the capital.136 Other landed families are attested locally but became prominent in Constantinople, including the Botaniatai and Synadenoi from near Synnada, and the Karandinoi from Hadrianopolis south of Philomelion. The epitaph of Kyrilla daughter of Artemon Botaniates not only identifies her as a member of an aristocratic family which half a millennium later produced the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros III Botaniates (1078–81), but also showed the link to Constantinople by dating the text to the post-consulate and sixth regnal year of Justin II, 571. Her father may be the first recorded example of a man with the title royal agent, basilikos, which occurs later among the group of landowners from Meiros.137 The Synadeni were 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137

See 380. ICG 1216; see 360–1. See 364–6. ICG 1652 and 1653; see 371. ICG 1462; see 417. See 408. ICG 1641; see 373. ICG 1099; see 461–2.

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mentioned again in a mid-eleventh inscription which seems to have recorded them as co-owners with the brother of the emperor Constantine X Doukas of a property south of Synnada.138 This modest gathering of evidence from the Christian inscriptions of both the early and middle Byzantine periods illustrates the relationship and engagement of military settlers, landowners, officials and ecclesiastical authorities at Constantinople in the affairs of the Christian communities of Phrygia. At the beginning of the fourth century John Chrysostom began active efforts to bring the churches of Asia Minor under the authority of the bishop of Constantinople.139 Long before the eleventh century they all fell under the long shadow of the eastern patriarchy. 138 ICG 1101; see 467. 139 Sozomen, HE VIII.6; S. Elm, The dog that did not bark: doctrine and patriarchal authority in the conflict between Theophilus of Alexandria and John Chrysostom of Constantinople, in L. Ayres/ G. Jones (eds), Christian Origins: Theology, Rhetoric and Community (London 1998), 68–93. For fourth-century antecedents, see T. Kaçar, Constantinople and Asia Minor: ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the fourth century, in Mitchell / Pilhofer (eds), Early Christianity in Asia Minor and Cyprus (Leiden 2019), 148–63.

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List of Inscriptions Cited from the Database Inscriptiones Christianae Graecae (https://icg.uni-kiel.de) ICG Christian inscription c. 180–330; *ICG Christian inscription 350–1100; §ICG certainly or very likely not Christian.

Achaea Athens *ICG 2105 154 Sparta *ICG 3368 154

Galatia Ancyra ICG 3704 154, 166 n.266, 315 *ICG 3728 542 n. 70 *ICG 3761 542 n. 69, 564 Kalecik *ICG 2381 542 n. 71 *ICG 2382 542 n. 71 Pessinus ICG 2317 154 Soğulca ICG 2391 154

Lycaonia Alkaran (Yenisu) ICG 784 168 n. 279 Aydoğmuş (Dorla) ICG 811 325 n. 277

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Database Çeşmelisebil ICG 1497 166 n. 270 Çukurkavak ICG 829 122 n. 231 Devecikliköy *ICG 109 272 n. 572, 391 n. 236 Göcü ICG 1504 124 n. 135 Gözlü *ICG 145 465 n. 574 Ilgın ICG 171 317 n. 742 Kuyulu Sebil ICG 349 250 n. 516 Iconium ICG 312 154, 319 n. 752 ICG 319 485 n. 14 *ICG 4508 402 n. 276 Laodicea Catacecaumene ICG 52 169 n. 284 ICG 154 168 n. 279 ICG 210 156 n. 250 ICG 270 249 n. 514 ICG 274 154 ICG 349 250 n. 516 ICG 361 132 n. 163 ICG 371 350 n. 14, 353 *ICG 383 154 ICG 1521 156 n. 252 Meydan ICG 422 176 n. 307 ICG 425 176 n. 307 Perta ICG 1528 168 n. 279 Zazaddin Han ICG 475 485 n. 15 *ICG 480 102 *ICG 481 102 Zengen ICG 593 168 n. 279

651

652 Lydia Blaundus *ICG 4509 104 n. 58, 182 n. 326

Macedonia Parthicopolis *ICG 4142 391 n. 233 Philippi ICG 3258 154

Phrygia Acmonia ICG 991 147 n. 216 ICG 990 148 n. 218 *ICG 4471 415 n. 228, 601 n. 108 Ahat ICG 1285 144 n. 203, 189 n. 355 Banaz (Islamköy) ICG 988 148 n. 219, 156 n. 248 *ICG 995 414 n. 325 *ICG 997 414 n. 324 *ICG 1369 414 n. 323 *ICG 1562 414 n. 327 Emiraz ICG 990 148 n. 217 Erciş *ICG 996 413 n. 322 Gedikler *ICG 1443 413 n. 320; 600 Gümle ICG 993 144 n. 204 Hasanköy §ICG 986 270 n. 577, 271 n. 585 Hatıplar §ICG 987 270 n. 578

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Datebase

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Database Kaylı *ICG 1568 414 n. 326 Kızılcasöğüt ICG 1284 144 n. 202, 189 n. 355 Susuz ICG 985 148 n. 221; 191 n. 363 *ICG 994 413 n. 319 *ICG 1000 418 n. 318, 508 n. 77, 599, 602 ICG 1001 146 n. 213, 155 Yenice ICG 1002 150 n. 224 Aezani, including the Tavşanlı district ICG 4512 192 n. 368 *ICG 1307 355 n. 33, 381 n. 185, 522, 599 *ICG 1308 355 n. 34 *ICG 1314 356 n. 36, 598 *ICG 1385 356 n. 36 *ICG 4513 356 n. 36 Haci Mahmut *ICG 1302 357 n. 39; 523 *ICG 1304 357 n. 39 *ICG 1305 357 n. 39 *ICG 1309 357 n. 39 Tepecik ICG 1310 358 n. 42; 597 Yağdığın *ICG 1312 357 n. 37; 598, 602 Zobu ICG 1301 192 n. 367 Çarşamba *ICG 1213 360 n. 60 *ICG 1214 360 n. 59 Domur *ICG 1219 360 n. 62 Göçebe *ICG 1217 360 n. 61 Ilicak Su *ICG 1221 360 n. 56 *ICG 1222 360 n. 56

653

654

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Datebase

Karaköy *ICG 1216 360 n. 65; 523 n. 148 Kozluca *ICG 1218 360 n. 59 Ömerler *ICG 1210 360 n. 57 Peşemit *ICG 1220 360 n. 63 Üçdereağzı *ICG 1223 360 n. 64; 523 Yorguç *ICG 1211 360 n. 58 Akroinos (Afyonkarahisar) *ICG 620 399 n. 264; 601 n. 106 *ICG 1008 399 n. 262; 601 n. 106 *ICG 1009 399 n. 263; 601 n. 106 *ICG 1010 399 n. 263; 601 n. 106 *ICG 1011 399 n. 267 ICG 1086 307 n. 715 ICG 1087 305 n. 713, 328 *ICG 1089 396 n. 256; 603 *ICG 1090 395 n. 254 *ICG 1091 399 n. 266 *ICG 1092 396 n. 255 *ICG 1093 399 n. 265; 601 n. 107 *ICG 1550 387 n. 219; 399 n. 257 *ICG 1552 395 n. 253 *ICG 1554 378 n. 164; 399 n. 268 *ICG 1555 394 n. 247 *ICG 4507 381 n. 185, 395 n. 252, 523; 598 Afyon Museum *ICG 4491 376 n. 149; 560 n. 153; 600 n. 103 *ICG 4458 395 n. 250 Amorium *ICG 1012 386 n. 217, 387 n. 219 ICG 1295 314 n. 732 *ICG 1315 385 n. 208, 597, 599

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Database *ICG 1316 381 n.185, 385 n. 209, 598 *ICG 1387 389 n. 222 *ICG 1388 389 n. 222 *ICG 1807 386 n. 214 *ICG 4488 385 n. 211; 603 ICG 4514 314 n. 733, 596 n. 91 *ICG 4515 385 n. 210 *ICG 4516 386 n. 215 *ICG 4517 386 n. 216 *ICG 4518 387 n. 218 *ICG 4519 389 n. 220 *ICG 4520 389 n. 221 Ağılcık *ICG 1806 390 n. 231; 597 Davulga ICG 1810 313 n. 730 Demircili *ICG 1694 389 n. 225 Gömü *ICG 1693 389 n. 224 Gülüşlü ( Kılıçlı Kavaklı) *ICG 1692 390 n. 229, 597 Kemerkaya (Çoğu) *ICG 1696 392 n. 238 Piribeyli ICG 1811 314 n. 713 Türkmenköy *ICG 1298 392 n. 237, 451 n. 502 Ancyra Sidera Bahtıllı ICG 1238 197 n. 282 Boğazköy (Kiliseköy) *ICG 1236, 359 n. 47, 381 n. 185 Antiochia ICG 1317 319 n. 754 *ICG 1320 448 n. 490 *ICG 1321 448 n. 490 *ICG 1322 444 n. 484, 601 n. 107

655

656

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Datebase

ICG 1324 319 n. 751 §ICG 1327 270 n. 582 ICG 1331 320 n. 758 *ICG 1332 352 n. 24, 444 n. 482, 600 *ICG 1333 352 n. 24, 444 n. 482, 597 *ICG 1334 352 n. 24, 444 n. 482, 597, 601 *ICG 1336 448 n. 491 *ICG 1337 450 n. 495 *ICG 1343 450 n. 494 *ICG 1344 451 n. 498, 601 *ICG 1345 450 n. 497, 597, 599 *ICG 1346 450 n. 493 §ICG 1347 305 n. 712, 320 nn. 759–60 ICG 1348 319 n. 755 ICG 1349 320 n. 757 ICG 1350 319 n. 756 *ICG 1351 451 n. 499 *ICG 4483 440 n. 469 *ICG 4484 447 n. 487 *ICG 4486 450 n. 492 *ICG 4521 443 n. 478 *ICG 4522 451–2 *ICG 4523 447 n. 487 Ileği *ICG 4487 440–1, 603 Kırkbaş *ICG 1339 440 n. 467 *ICG 4482 440 n. 466 Körküler *ICG 1340 440 n. 467, 598 Sücüllü *ICG 1341 440 n. 467 Tokmacık *ICG 1335 440 n. 468 Apamea ICG 959 130 n. 161 ICG 960 125 n. 138, 131 n. 162, 156 n. 249, 204 n. 216, 329 ICG 963 125 n. 138, 129 n. 151 ICG 964 126 n. 143, 139

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Database ICG 965 125 n. 138, 128 n. 147, 586 n. 67 ICG 967 130 n. 156 ICG 968 125 nn. 138–9 ICG 969 125 n. 51, 156, 204 n. 216, 586 n. 67 ICG 970 129 n. 55 ICG 971 129 n. 54 ICG 972 131 n. 62, 166 n. 270, 214 n. 438, 329, 586 n. 67, 595 ICG 973 125 nn. 38, 40, 190 n. 360 ICG 974 126 n. 141, 189 n. 359, 326 *ICG 975 437 n. 433, 600 ICG 977 121 n. 125 ICG 978 128 n. 146, 129 n. 153 ICG 979 130 n. 157 ICG 980 126 n. 145 ICG 981 126 n. 144, 128 n. 146 ICG 982 130 n. 158 ICG 1122 124 n. 134, 326 *ICG 1123 437 n. 448 ICG 1368 129 n. 150 ICG 1571 133 n. 166, 174 n. 300 ICG 4459 118 n. 114 ICG 4462 132 n. 164, 175 n. 302, 585 n. 66 ICG 4524 130 n. 159 Dikici ICG 961 117 n. 111, 132 n. 165 ICG 962 118 n. 112 ICG 966 128 n. 148, 328 *ICG 976 433 n. 436 Dombay ovası *ICG 4463 434 n. 440 Gençali *ICG 1121 433 n. 438 Sheikh Arab *ICG 1124 434 n. 439, 603 Apollonia / Sozopolis *ICG 1130 439 n. 462 ICG 1134 322 n. 767, 594 ICG 1135 324 n. 770 ICG 1136 323 n. 768

657

658

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Datebase

ICG 1137 325 n. 773 ICG 1138 323 n. 769 *ICG 1139 439 n. 459, 523 ICG 1441 322 n. 766 Appia, see Upper Tembris Valley Brouzos, see Phrygian Pentapolis Cadi ICG 4474 136 n. 177 ICG 1225 188 n. 351, 193 n. 369, 326, 420 n. 355, 424 n. 393 Çeltikçi §ICG 1224 194–7 Cotiaeum ICG 1355 249 n. 513, 272 n. 593 §ICG 1356 268 n. 567 §ICG 1834 268 n. 568 §ICG 1358 269 n. 570 §ICG 1391 269 n. 571 *ICG 4506 362 n. 76 Çömlekçi §ICG 1283 219 n. 450, 250 Dereköy ICG 1208 274 n. 599 Şahmelek *ICG 1209 367 n. 101 Dioclea Çalça *ICG 4532 415 n. 330, 523 Çepni ICG 1362, 144 n. 205, 308 n. 717, 328 Hocalar ICG 998 149 n. 202, 191 n. 362, 204 n. 216, 222 n. 460, 594 n. 84 *ICG 999 415 n. 331 Kozluca *ICG 4473 415 n. 332, 601 n. 109 *ICG 4477 416 n. 334

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Database Uluköy ICG 4511 191–2; 261 n. 545 Tokuşlar ICG 4510 189 n. 354 Yavaşlar *ICG 1471 415 n. 333 Dionysupolis (?) and Motella Bekilli *ICG 1065 425 n. 399 *ICG 1073 424 n. 391, 425 n. 395, 431 n. 423 *ICG 1076 423 n. 381, 522, 597 *ICG 1079 425 n. 400, 451 n. 502, 597 Deşdemir *ICG 1082 423 n. 380, 522, 597 Dumanlı ICG 1071 143 n. 199, 155 n. 246, 157, 165, 423 n. 371 ICG 1072 143 n. 198, 157, 423 n. 371 *ICG 1822 423 n. 372 *ICG 1823 423 n. 373 Durhanlı havuzu *ICG 1118 426 n. 404, 599 Hasköy *ICG 1149 423 n. 375 Karbasan ICG 1068 143 n. 200 Kavaklar *ICG 1080 426 n. 407 Köselli *ICG 1081 423 n. 382, 597 Sazak *ICG 1084 426 n. 409, 523 n. 147 Sirikli *ICG 1146 423 n. 378 ICG 1069 143 n. 199, 155 n. 246, 157, 165, 423 n. 378 ICG 1070 143 n. 198, 157, 165, 423 n. 378 Üçkuyu *ICG 1074 424 n. 389, 598–9 *ICG 1077 424 n. 391 *ICG 1078 424 n. 388, 523

659

660 ICG 1142 143 n. 201 *ICG 1144 424 n. 384 *ICG 1143 424 n. 385 *ICG 1145 424 n. 386 Yeşiloba *ICG 1083 425 n. 397 Docimium *ICG 1574 394 n. 245 *ICG 1575 394 n. 246 *ICG 1576 394 n. 248 ICG 1577 313 n. 726, 596 *ICG 1578 394 n. 249 *ICG 1579 394 n. 249 *ICG 1580 394 n. 249 *ICG 1581 394 n. 243 *ICG 1582 393 n. 241 *ICG 1583 393 n. 242 *ICG 1586 393 n. 241 *ICG 1587 393 n. 241 *ICG 1588 393 n. 241 Gebeciler *ICG 1589 393 n. 241 *ICG 1590 393 n. 241 Dorylaeum *ICG 1370 299 n. 689, 377 n. 152 *ICG 1394 377 n. 154 *ICG 1395 299 n. 689, 377 n. 155 *ICG 1397 378 n. 165 *ICG 1398 378 n. 164, 599 *ICG 1400 378 n. 163 *ICG 1412 378 nn. 157, 161 *ICG 1414 378 n. 159 *ICG 1415 378 n. 158 *ICG 1416 378 n. 165 *ICG 1417 378 n. 165 *ICG 1418 378 n. 160 *ICG 1419 378 n. 161 ICG 1439 299 n. 688, 540 n. 54

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Datebase

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Database Akkaya *ICG 1420 379 n. 170, 598 Avdan *ICG 1404 379 n. 171 Bozüyük *ICG 1421 379 n. 167, 523 *ICG 1422 379 n. 168, 603 *ICG 1825 378 n. 166, 598 Hasırca *ICG 1409 379 n. 173 Karaşehir *ICG 1403 379 n. 169 Mutalıp *ICG 1401 299 n. 689; 377 n. 153 Sultandere *ICG 4529 379 n. 177 Süpören *ICG 1405 379 n. 171 *ICG 1406 379 n. 171 Yenisofça *ICG 1383 299 n. 689, 323 n. 80, 377 n. 156, 602 Eucarpia, see Phrygian Pentapolis Eumeneia ICG 1030 136 ICG 4464 135 n. 172 Beyköy ICG 1038 141 nn. 189, 190 Choma (Beycesultan) *ICG 1458 427 n. 413, 428 Çivril *ICG 1046 431 n. 428, 599 *ICG 1047 431 n. 429 ICG 1048 139 n. 187 Çöplü *ICG 1456 431 n. 425 Emirhisar (Dedeköy) ICG 1031 157–71, 242 n. 502, 326, 586 n. 67 ICG 1041 141 n. 189

661

662

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Datebase

ICG 1042 136 n. 176 ICG 1043 141 n. 190, 184 n. 330, 294 n. 413, 595 *ICG 1045 431 n. 431 ICG 1063 134 n. 169; 586 n. 67 ICG 1364 135 n. 173 *ICG 4466 431 n. 430 Haydan (Yeşilyaka) ICG 1028 157 n. 253, 171–5, 565 n. 180 ICG 1064 141 n. 189 *ICG 1455 431 n. 424 Iğdir ICG 4467 136 n. 175, 586 n. 67 Işıklı ICG 1025 139 n. 185, 143 n. 195, 156 ICG 1027 136 n. 180 ICG 1029 139 n. 182 ICG 1030 136, 141 n. 188 ICG 1033 174 n. 301 *ICG 1040 431 n. 427 ICG 1049 141 n. 191, 155 n. 246, 166 n. 267, 180, 202 n. 403, 214 n. 438, 595 ICG 1050 139 nn. 184, 185, 186, 188, 329 ICG 1056 136 n. 178, 154, 184 n. 330 ICG 1059 136 n. 179, 154 ICG 1062 136 n. 181, 166 n. 268 ICG 1063 134 n. 169 ICG 1454 141 n. 192, 166 n. 269 ICG 4465 135 n. 174 Kocayaka (Karayusufdağı) *ICG 1457 431 n. 426 Ömerli ICG 1036 139 n. 183 Sarılar ICG 1055 139 nn. 186, 187, 586 n. 67 ICG 1066 139 n. 186 Seraserli (Sarıhisarlı) ICG 1032 136 ICG 1035 139 n. 186 Menteş ICG 1039 178, 195

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Database Sökmen ICG 1037 141 n. 154, 155 n. 246 ICG 1043 141 n. 190, 184 n. 330, 204 n. 413 Yakasımak ICG 1052 136 n. 175 ICG 1053 184 n. 330 ICG 1054 139 n. 184 ICG 1057 141 n. 189 ICG 1065 141 n. 192 Yalınlı ICG 1034 184 n. 330 Hadrianopolis (Pisidia, Koçaş), see Philomelium and district Hierapolis (Pamukkale) ICG 922 189 n. 357, 596 Hierapolis (Koçhisar) see Phrygian Pentapolis Kidyessos ICG 1461 189 n. 354 *ICG 1468 417 n. 337 Akçaşar *ICG 1466 418 n. 344 *ICG 1467 418 n. 344 *ICG 1470 418 n. 346 Çayhisar *ICG 1462 417 n. 338, 609 n. 134 *ICG 1469 417 n. 339 Çobanözü *ICG 1464 417 n. 341, 523 *ICG 1463 418 n. 372 *ICG 1464 418 n. 343 Laodicea Gümüşler ICG 945 153 n. 239 Meiros, see Phrygian Highlands

663

664

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Datebase

Metropolis (northern), see Phrygian Highlands Metropolis (southern) *ICG 1127 459 n. 543 *ICG 1626 459 n. 543 Oynağan *ICG 1616 459 n. 547 *ICG 4481 459 n. 548 Nacolea *ICG 1014 382 n. 192 §ICG 1424 300 n. 692 *ICG 1425 382 n. 189 *ICG 1426 382 n. 190 *ICG 1427 381 n. 186 *ICG 1428 381 n. 188; *ICG 1429 381 n. 187 *ICG 1436 381 n. 185 *ICG 1440 380 n. 180 *ICG 1386 380 n. 183 ICG 4489 300 n. 693 •ICG 4500 382 n. 191 Bardakçı *ICG 4501 382 n. 194 Doğançayır *ICG 1438 382 n. 198 *ICG 1439 382 n. 198 Kuyucak *ICG !423 382 n. 197 *ICG 1432 382 n. 196, 599 Türkmenbaba *ICG 1685 382 n. 193 *ICG 1686 382 n. 193 *ICG 1687 382 n. 193 Orcistus *ICG 1291 383 n. 203 ICG 1292 314 n. 735 *ICG 1293 383 n. 202, 599, 602

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Database *ICG 1294 383 n. 204, 386 n. 212; 476 n. 602 *4531 383 n. 203 Bağlıca ICG 1290 315 n. 737 *ICG 1297 390 n. 227 *ICG 1705 390 n. 228 Kırkpınar ICG 1289 190 n. 361, 314 n. 736 Otrous, see Phrygian Pentapolis Philomelium and district ICG 616 317 n. 746 ICG 617 317 n. 746 *ICG 618 454 n. 510, 523 *ICG 619 363 n. 82, 452 n. 504; 598 *ICG 621 455 n. 511 ICG 622 317 n.747 *ICG 626 454 n. 508 Gedil ICG 623 317 n. 746 Gölçayır *ICG 624 316 n. 745, 454 n. 509, 599 Hadrianopolis (Koçaş ?) *ICG 4489 455 n. 517 *ICG 632 455 n. 518 Koraşı ICG 625 154, 317 n. 747, 319 n. 752 Phrygian Highlands Akoluk *ICG 1634 371 n. 127 ICG 1635 295–7 371 n. 127, 541 n. 63 *ICG 1636 371 n. 128, 599 Başaran *ICG 1703 207 n. 427, 375 n. 144, 599 *ICG 1704 375 n. 143, 599 Erten *ICG 1688 375 n. 147, 560 n. 152, 600

665

666

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Datebase

Güllüdere *ICG 1683 371 n. 131 *ICG 1684 371 n. 131 Han *ICG 1701 375 n. 145 *ICG 1702 375 n. 146 Inli *ICG 1641 373 n. 138, 462 n. 563, 609 n. 136 *ICG 1642 373 n. 137 Gökçeyayla (Kilise-Orhaniye) *ICG 1637 375 n. 142, 597, 600 *ICG 1638 375 n. 142, 600 Kümbet *ICG 1652 371 n. 132, 609 n. 133 *ICG 1653 371 n. 132; 609 n. 133 *ICG 1654 373 n. 134 *ICG 1655 373 n. 136 *ICG 1659 373 n. 134 *ICG 1660 373 n. 134 Sandıközü *ICG 1380 371 n.130 *ICG 1682 371 n. 130 Yapıldak ICG 1656 273 n. 596, 298 n. 681 ICG 1658 297 n. 677, 299 n. 683 Yenice Göcenoluk *ICG 1681 371 n.129; 599 Phrygian Pentapolis ICG 4476 107 n. 73 Alamesçit ICG 1019 106 n. 67 Başkuyucak ICG 1460 106 n. 66 Brouzos (Karasandıklı) ICG 1445 107 n. 74, 328, 601 n. 104 *ICG 1446 243 n. 505, 457 n. 529 *ICG 1573 458 n. 530

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Database Çevrepınar ICG 1472 106 n. 68 Dodurga *ICG 1018 458 n. 533 Eucarpia (Emirhisar) ICG 1448 106 n. 64 Güre (Otrous?) *ICG 1473 458 n. 539, 598 Hierapolis (Koçhisar) ICG 1597 88–99, 326, 328, 595, 601 n. 104 Karadirek ICG 1598 99–101, 326 *ICG 1017 458 n. 532 Sandıklı ICG 1599 105 n. 59, 150 n. 223 *ICG 4478 458 n. 531 Stectorium Mağacıl ICG 1612 150 n. 61, 595 Menteş ICG 1478 105 n. 63, 106 n. 70 *ICG 1480 456 n. 521, 597 ICG 1613 105 n. 62, 596 ICG 1614 106 n. 69 Polybotus *ICG ICG 1706 400 n. 270 *ICG ICG 1707 400 n. 271 Prymnessus ICG 1094 126 n. 144 ICG 1365 308–10, 452 n. 504, 598 ICG 1377 270 n. 581 ICG 1474 305 n. 702 Işıklar *ICG 1095 398 n. 259, 598 Nuribey *ICG 1094 399 n. 261, 598

667

668

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Datebase

Sebaste ICG 1022 176 n. 303 *ICG 1476 408 n. 299 ICG 1609 176 n. 305 ICG 1610 176 n. 305 *ICG 1843 408 n. 300 ICG 4468 176 n. 304 *ICG 4469 410 n. 302, 477 n. 608, 600 *ICG 4530 412 n. 310 Erice ICG 1286 176 n. 306 Kırka ICG 1477 176 n. 308, 189 n. 356, 586 n. 67 *ICG 1611 412 n. 312 Payamalanı *ICG 1363 170 n. 289, 239 n. 492, 411 n. 304, 483 n. 9, 542 n. 67, 599, 602 Tatar ICG 1020 402 n. 316 Soa, see Upper Tembris valley Stectorium, see Phrygian Pentapolis Synaus Naşa §ICG 1233 198 n. 387 Yemişli §ICG 1229 198 n. 383 §ICG 1230 198 n. 384 §ICG 1231 198 n. 385 §ICG 1232 198 n. 386 Synnada ICG 1096 304 n. 707 *ICG 1098 461 n. 552, 599 *ICG 1099 373 n. 139, 462 n. 560, 599, 609 n. 137 *ICG 1108 461 n. 554 *ICG 1109 461 n. 555 *ICG 1110 466 n. 590 ICG 1378 304 n. 748, 329, 412 n. 306, 483 n. 7

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Database *ICG 1483 461 n. 556 *ICG 4492 466 n. 589, 598 *ICG 4493 467 n. 591, 483 n. 8 Ağzıkara *ICG 1110 465 n. 577 *ICG 1111 465 n. 578 *ICG 1617 465 n. 575 *ICG 1618 465 n. 576 Anayurt *ICG 1103 462 n. 564 *ICG 1104 463 n. 567 *ICG 1105 465 n. 575 *ICG 1106 464 n. 569 *ICG 1107 464 n. 570 *ICG 1481 464 n. 571, 610 n. 138 *ICG 1482 461 n. 553 Atlıhisar *ICG 1101 467 n. 592, 610 n. 138 *ICG 1114 462 n. 565 Bedeş *ICG 1099 462 n. 560 *ICG 1102 461 n. 557 *ICG 1113 461 n. 557 *ICG 1484 461 n. 557 *ICG 1485 461 n. 558 Güneytepe *ICG 1487 461 n. 558 Karaadıllı *ICG 1115 464 n. 573, 598, 602 *ICG 1116 464 n. 572, 599 Temenothyrae ICG 1288 184 n. 330, 185–8, 213, 568 n. 67 ICG 1371 180, 326, 595 ICG 1372 181, 595, 596 ICG 1373 181, 595 ICG 1374 183 ICG 1375 183 ICG 1376 183

669

670

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Datebase

*ICG 1619 419 n. 348, 523, 601 *ICG 1620 419 n. 347, 597 *ICG 2339 419 n. 349, 600 Şükraniye *ICG 4475 419 n. 356 Tiberiopolis Eğrigöz *ICG 4504 358 n. 45 Traianopolis ICG 1287 188, 213, 586 n. 67 Tymandus ICG 1140 320 n. 762, 459 n. 544 Büyükkabaca ICG 4502 322 n. 763 Pise ICG 1141 320 n. 761 Upper Tembris Valley Kütahya Museum §ICG 1007 232 n. 492, 279–83, 329 ICG 1156 234 n. 481, 264 n. 556 ICG 1255 228 n. 470 ICG 1256 226 n. 469, 264 n. 556, 586 n. 87 ICG 1259 226 n. 468, 264 n. 556 ICG 1360 247–50 ICG 1366 231 n. 476, 233 n. 477, 264 n. 556, 327, 586 n. 67 Appia (Abya / Pınarcık), ICG 1151 212 n. 433, 264 n. 556 ICG 1152 212 n. 432, 264 n. 556 ICG 1260 213 n. 435 ICG 1268 236 n. 483 *ICG 1839 369 n. 118, 597 ICG 4525 234 Adaköy ICG 1379 221–3, 264 n. 556, 328 Akçaköy §ICG 1191 269 n. 574

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Database ICG 1192 251 n. 523, 255–6, 264 n. 556, 327 ICG 1254 223 n. 462, 264 n. 556 Alibey ICG 1177 223 n. 463, 224 n. 466, 264 n. 556 §ICG 1178 269 n. 753 ICG 1179 272 n. 591 *ICG 1180 369 n. 121 *ICG 1181 369 n. 116 *ICG 1182 369 n. 115 Altıntaş town (Kurd köy) ICG 1264 211 n. 429, 240 n. 495 ICG 1689 251 n. 524, 256–9, 326 ICG 4526 261 n. 551 Aslanapa ICG 1205 228 n. 472 ICG 1206 243 n. 503 Aykırıkçı ICG 1258 219 n. 451, 224 n. 464, 264 n. 556 ICG 1267 238 n. 490, 239, 261 n. 544, 594 ICG 1269 238 n. 477, 239, 264 n. 556, 272 ICG 1270 236 n. 484, 239, 240 n. 495, 264 n. 556, 272, 282, 296 n. 674, 329, 596 §ICG 1838 270 n. 575 Beşkarış §ICG 1168 269 n. 572 ICG 1169 214 n. 438, 264 n. 556 Çakırsaz ICG 1159 246, 264 n. 556, 326 ICG 1265 239, 240 n. 497, 264 n. 556, 272, 296 n. 674, 329 ICG 1266 239, 241 n. 499 ICG 1977 246 n. 508, 264 n. 556, 272, 326, 329, 596 ICG 1978 109 n. 77, 243 n. 504, 244, 246, 247, 261 n. 544, 272, Çal ICG 1154 233 n. 479 Çukurca ICG 1202 261 n. 551, 349 n. 10, 594 n. 83 Doğalar ICG 1197 226 n. 467 Eymir ICG 1261 230 n. 474, 264 n. 556 *ICG 1194 369 n. 120

671

672

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Datebase

Gecek ICG 1263 369 n. 120 Gökçeler ICG 1198 368 n. 111 *ICG 1199 368 n. 111, 523 Hacıbeyli §ICG 1361 270 n. 580 Karaağaç ICG 1155 233 n. 480, 262 n. 553, 264 n. 556 ICG 1163 261 n. 550, 594 n. 83 ICG 1164 192 n. 365, 261 n. 548, 594 n. 83, 599 *ICG 1165 369 n. 121 *ICG 1188 369 n. 112 ICG 1189 211 n. 431 §ICG 1837 270 n. 576 Keciler ICG 1190 260 n. 542, 595 n. 89 ICG 1253 213 n. 436, 240 n. 495, 262 n. 553 Kuyucak ICG 1157 211 n. 430, 240 n. 495, 586 n. 67 ICG 1158 192 n. 365, 261 n. 546, 594 n. 83 Murathanlar *ICG 1170 369 n. 114, 599 Nuhören ICG 1200 234 n. 482, 262 n. 553 *ICG 1201 369 n. 119 Olucak §ICG 1004 270 n. 109 Oysu *ICG 4527 368 n. 109 Sevdiğin ICG 1160 204 n. 507, 264 n. 556, 594 ICG 1161 261 n. 547, 594 n. 83 *ICG 1162 369 n. 121 Soa (Altıntaş village) ICG 1006 259 n. 538, 264 n. 556 ICG 1173 242 n. 501, 264 n. 556 ICG 1174 242 n. 500, 328 *ICG 1176 369 n. 113

List of Inscriptions Cited from the Database ICG 1262 215 n. 440, 240 n. 495, 262 n. 553, 264 n. 556 ICG 1689 171 n. 292, 256–8, 326, 560 n. 150, 595, 599 Terziler *ICG 1207 368 n. 110 Üçhüyük ICG 1257 224 n. 465, 264 n. 556 Yalnızsaray ICG 1153 213 n. 477, 264 n. 556 Yapılcan ICG 1184 251 n. 552 *ICG 1185 369 n. 117 Zemme (Çayırbaşı) ICG 1979 215 n. 439, 264 n. 556 §ICG 1195 206–8, 326 ICG 1196 261 n. 549, 599 ICG 4497 259 n. 536, 264 n. 556 ICG 4498 4259 n. 537, 267 n. 552

Thrace Perinthus ICG 4494 607 n. 123 Philippopolis ICG 4298 128 n. 147, 565 n. 182, 607 n. 123 ICG 4496 134 n. 169, 607 n. 123

673

Index 1. Sources (where the text is quoted in the original language or in translation.) Aelius Aristides Or. 31 266 Anonymous sermon of 387 (Sources chrétiennes 48, 79–89) 8 562 n. 162 Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca 1032–3 PG 114, 1380b 556 n. 134 Cicero Pro Flacco 68–9 145 Codex Justinianus CJust. 1.5.5 pr. 535 n. 32 CJust. 1.5.18.3 535 n. 33 CJust. 1.5.19.4 535 n. 33 CJust 1.5.21.2 535 n. 33 Codex Theodosianus CTh. XV.5.1 545 n. 84 CTh. XVI.5.2 545 n. 85 CTh. XV.5.65.2 535 n. 32 CTh. XVI.5.10 535 n. 31 CTh. XVI.6.6.1 551 n. 110 Council of Nicaea Canon 8 554 nn. 123–4 Epiphanius Pan. 48.1 17 n. 59; 23 n. 96; 533 n. 22 Pan. 48. 2 22 n. 92; 533 nn. 24 and 25 Pan. 48.14 533 n. 26 Pan. 49. 1 534 n. 27 Pan. 49.2 .2 23 n. 96 Eusebius Church History (HE) IV.27.1 20 n. 81 V praef. 8 n. 21 V. 1. 14 11 n. 31 V. 1. 33 11 n. 32 V.1.44 10 V.2.7 12 V.3.2 13 n. 39 V.3.4 13 n. 43 V. 16.3 16 n. 52 V. 16.3 24 n. 101 V. 16.7 17 n. 60

V.16.17 18 V. 18.2 19 n. 75; 23 n. 97 V. 19.2 21 n. 83 v.20.4 10 n. 27 VIII.11 432 n. 433 Georgios Tornikes, Oratio ad Isaacium Angelum imperatorem, (ed. W. Regel, Fontes Rerum Byzantinarum 2. Petersburg 1917) 254–80 pp. 260–1 430 Gregory of Nazianzus Or. 39. 18 559 n. 148 Gregory of Nyssa Life of Gregory Thaumaturgos 104 520 n. 134 Life of Macrina 42 518–9 Herodian 7. 73 42 n. 85 Homer, Il. 2, 862–4 42 n. 84 Ignatius Ep. ad Magnesios 9 588 n. 74 Inscriptions (not Christian) 23 AST 2 (2006), 37 (Cadi) 195 n. 376 JHS 19 (1899), 127 no. 142 (Galatia) 66 n. 39 MAMA IV 362 (Apamea) 67 n. 42 MAMA V 134 (Dorylaeum) 66 n. 38 MAMA V 135 (Dorylaeum) 66 n. 37 MAMA V 225 (Dorylaeum) 67 MAMA V 232 (Nacolea) 66 n. 39 MAMA X 517 (Synaus) 67 n. 41 SEG 26/27, 1355 (Acmonia) 150 n. 226 SEG 26/27, 1356 (Acmonia) 150 n. 227 SEG 36, 970 (Aphrodisias) 564 n. 170 SEG 38, 1244 (Tabala) 38 SEG 47, 1745 (Tyriaeum) 45 SEG 47, 1749 (Sebaste) 33 SEG 50, 1225 (nr Juliopolis) 64 n. 25 TAM V.2, 1067 (Thyateira) 67 n. 45 For all Christian inscriptions, consult the list of citations from ICG. Iosephos Genesios, Regum libri quattuor I. 6 442 n. 473 Jerome (Hieronymus) Latin version of Eusebius Chron. 288f 17 n. 58

Index

Comm. in ep. ad Galatas 2.3 (PL 10, 382) 534 n. 29 Lactantius de Mort. Pers. 12 348 n. 7 Div. Inst. V. 11 432 n. 434 Michael the Syrian, Chron. 9.33 544 n. 76 New Testament Col. II. 18 524 n.152 I Cor. 1.24 419 Matt. 1.23 417 Rom. 1.16 426 Old Testament Numbers 23 302 n. 697 Ps. 29 444 Ps. 34 450 Ps. 43 444 Ps. 56.12 419 Ps. 108 450 Ps. 117.1 415 Ps. 119.20 109 Ps. 119.26 109 Ps. 120.1–2 498 Zach. 5 149 Oracula Sibyllina 1, 261 118–9 Peutinger Table Route 30 38 n. 63, 40 n. 78 Route 31 41 n. 79 Route 48 39 n. 68 Route 55 38 n. 61 Route 60 40 n. 73 Route 61 40 n. 75 Route 62 41 n. 80 Pionius Mart. Polycarp. 1 1 Mart. Polycarp. 5 1, 2 Mart. Polycarp. 22 7 Pliny the Younger Ep. X.96.9–10 574 n. 21 Plutarch Eum. 8. 4–5 45 Ps.-Dionysius, Chron. 861 543–4 n. 75 Origen, Contra Celsum 8.44 11 n. 30 Pliny the elder NH V. 95 2 n. 3 Pliny the younger ep. X. 96 347 n. 3. Procopius De aed. I.9 507 n. 74 Anecdota XI. 23 543 n. 73

675 Rufinus Church History (GCS n. F. 6.1, 459.25– 463.3) 21 n. 85 Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica I. 10 546 n. 86 I. 13 546 nn. 87, 91 II. 38 547 nn. 92–3 II. 38.14–26 555 n. 129 II. 38.29 548 n. 95 II. 38.30 548 n. 96 IV. 28.9–12 558 n. 144 IV. 28.17 560 n. 155 V. 22.60 555 n. 128 V. 7.1 556 n. 131 VI. 22 557 n. 141 Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica II. 32.6 538 n. 46 IV. 20.7–8 555 n. 129 VII.18 562 n. 164 VII.19.2 538 n. 47 VIII. 1 557 n.141 VIII.18.2 539 n. 49 Strabo X.3.22, 473 42. n. 85 XII.8.14, 577 2 n. 2 Suda s.v. Ἀγαπητός (= Philostorgius HE fr. 2a) 512 n. 92 Tertullian Scap. 5.1 18 n. 68 Theodore Anagnostes 106, 9–1 556 n. 132 Theodoret Comm. on Col. II. 18 525 n. 156 Theophanes, Chron. a. 6214 543 Chron. a. 5867 549 n. 102 Vita Abercii (ed. Nissen, 1912) 77 90–1 Vita S. Agapeti (ed. A. PapadopoulosKerameus 1909) 2 513 n. 97 and 100 7 513 n. 99 16 514 n. 101 18 514 n. 104 20 514 n. 103 23 512 n. 94 25 515 n. 110 31 514 n. 109 58 513 n. 95

676 2. Ancient Places Accilaeum 26, 52 Achaeans 53 Acmonia 33, 37, 39, 42, 49, 50, 51, 53, 57, 500, 505, 572 birthplace of Zeus 63 Jews at 113, 121, 144–52, 167, 287, 582 Middle Byzantine 476 public offices at 147 Rosalia 146, 155 synagogue 150, 151, 152–3, 413 Adada Xenoi Tekmoreioi 78 Aegean sea 31 Aesepus River 288, 514 Aezani 35, 36, 38, 39, 42, 52, 72, 362, 605 Artemis temple 356, 406 assize centre 39 birthplace of Zeus 63 early Christian texts 192, 576 god-fearer 290 Middle Byzantine 476, 522 religious character 401 Theos Hypsistos 288 Zeus temple 35, 53, 62, 354, 604 as church 355, 477 Aezanitis 354–8, 426 rural growth 356–8, 367, 608  Africa 7 Agros Potamon 490 Agros Thermon 467, 492 Akroinos 370, 396, 414, 477 Middle Byzantine 476 Akrokos castle 475 Alexandria 171, 365 Church of Abu Mena 365–6 Serapeum 406 Alia 33, 417 Alouda (Elouza) 412, 421 Amaseia 301 Amastris 574 Amorium 28, 40, 52, 54, 70, 370, 383, 384–9, 472, 605 Athinganoi at 564 birthplace of Zeus 63 bishops 385, 390–2, 477 11th cent. fortress 429, 476 territory 389–91

Index Theme capital 475, 606 villages 313 Anava, Lake 40 Ancyra (Galatia) 15, 16, 37, 40, 154, 155, 542, 543, 564 Eumeneian formula 315 fortifications 475 Ancyra Sidera 34, 178, 193, 197, 358, 475, 477 Angarum 550, 559, 562 Angelokastron 429 Annesoi 518 Antimacheia 40 Antiochia on the Maeander 117 Antiochia (Pisidian) 30, 40, 52, 76, 77, 82, 270, 305, 315, 480, 605 Eumeneian formula 319 harvest thank-offering 451 imperial cult 53 main basilica 352, 443–44 Mên temple 406 demolished 447, 604 Middle Byzantine 476 other churches 445–8 synagogue 152 Xenoi Tekmoreioi 78 Antiochia (Syrian) 37, 473, 490, 493 Golden Church 349 Apamea (Cibotus, Kelainai) 31, 32, 37, 40, 49, 51, 52, 53, 57, 63, 102, 156, 303, 417, 572 assize (Roman) 571 Christian community 115–33, 575 clergy 348 early adopters 574  ἡ Κιβωτός 116 Persian satrapy 116 Roman dioecesis 9 and St Tryphon 506 territory 433, 438 Turkish conflict 432 Xenoi Tekmoreioi 78 Apamea-Myrleia 38 Apamea (Syria) 493 Ἀπελλοκωμήται 65 Aphrodisias 94 Jews and god-fearers 290 synagogue 152 Apollonhieritai 51

677

Index Apollonia (Sozopolis) 30, 40, 167, 315, 322, 432, 475 boundary with Apamea 438 Eumeneian formula 319 pioneering Christian 324 Xenoi Tekmoreioi 78 Appia 35, 39, 68, 70, 198, 211, 234, 369 magistrate at 258–9 nomothetai 282 Aragua 369 Ardabau, Mysian village 16, 34, 179 Ἀρκτοκωμήτης 65 Asia (province) 2, 3, 8, 489 east boundary 315, 438 Lower Asia 10 upper regions 568 Asiana (dioecese) 472–3 Astakos, bay of 548 Athens 53, 154 Athos, Mount 42 Attalea 455, 491 Atyochorion 75 Augustodunum 168 Aulutrene 40, 438, 571 Axylon 29 Bagis 33, 38, 39, 50, 179, 541, 543 Banbula 459 Βειτηνοί 65 Bethlehem Holy Sepulchre 350 Berytus 171 Bindaios 352, 355 Bithynia 25, 63, 65, 82, 285, 290 Blaundus 32, 50, 51, 53, 54, 75, 419, 422 Bria(na) 412, 421 Brouzos 31, 99, 103, 107, 112, 456, 458 Brundisium 139 Bryges 42 Byzantium 37 Cadi 34, 36, 38, 63, 179, 188, 193, 358, 359, 424 Caesarea (Cappadocia) 118, 507 Caesarea (Palestine) 171 Cappadocia 31, 37 ‘Rocky’ 473 Caria 489 Caystrus, River 29, 36

Choma 40, 386, 429–30, 475, 476, 477 Chomatenoi 430 Chonai 522 Cibyra 9, 74 Cilician Gates 37 Cillanian plain 76, 77 Claros, Oracle at Oinoanda 287 Colossae 39 St Michael cult 522 Comana (Cappadocia) 391 Constantinople 37, 94, 366, 370, 377, 396, 472 Anastasia Church 552, 556 Apostles Church 349 Arcadius forum 551 Church of St Tryphon 507 crisis of 447 417 foundation 349, 607 Novatian churches 547 and Phrygian Highlands 371–2 relation to Phrygia 518, 607–10 rural migrants 548 St Michael Churches 521, 522 Sykai (Galata) 547, 552 Xerolophos 551 Corycus 154 Cos 290 Cotiaeum 35, 36, 38, 39, 52, 73, 215, 268, 272, 540 Arians at 362 bishops 364–5 churches 362 city council 273 fortifications 361–2, 475 Goths at 362–3 growing population 367 Novatian bishopric 362, 376 religious character 402 territory 359, 367 Cyzicus 38, 513 Dacia (province) 64 Daldis 49 Dascylium 43, 286 Deultum 21 Dindymus Mt (Pessinus) 27, 526 Dindymus Mt (W. Phrygia) 35, 73

678 Dioclea 34, 149, 190, 192, 308, 349, 415 Middle Byzantine 476 Dionysopolis 32, 37, 39, 75, 155, 157, 165, 422 perhaps Asar Tepe 424 Dioskome 33, 412 Docimium 28, 29, 31, 39, 40, 41, 47, 52, 77, 311, 394, 395 marble 70, 370, 405, 414, 418 quarries 40, 41, 55, 303, 307, 356, 393, 460 sculptor 246, 292, 356, 464 Dorylaeum 26, 28, 34, 36, 37, 39, 49, 52, 67, 72, 370, 377–9 early Christian texts 299, 540, 576 Hosios and Dikaios 302 Middle Byzantine 476 military presence 606 surveys 377 territory 359 Theos Hypsistos at 289 Edessa (Mesopotamia) 493 Eibeos 33, 410, 465 Middle Byzantine church 476 Eizikos 375 Elemia 46 Ephesus 37, 38, 501, 505, 530 John Evangelist church 350, 438 Temple of Artemis 490 Epioikion 255 Eucarpia 31, 103, 106, 415, 456 pedion Eukarpitikon 457 Euchaita 154, 391 Eumeneia 31, 32, 33, 37, 40, 47, 52, 154, 155, 157, 240, 421, 428, 431 Achaean kinship 53 Apollo Propylaios 75 bouleutai 139 Christian majority 575–6 clergy 348 Middle Byzantine 476 Roman garrison 134, 571 Turkish conflict 432 and Xenoi Tekmoreioi 78 Euphorbium 459 Euphrates River 98, 493

Index Forty Martyrs, Lake of 29 Gaita 455 Galatia (province) 3, 26, 63, 65, 112, 392, 438 Gallus River 27, 53 Gaul 8 Germa 27, 40, 526 Germia 27 autocephalous bishopric 521 John Studios at 522 and Justinian 522 St Michael cult 521 ‘Gonyklisia’ 493 Gordium 26, 27, 36, 40, 43, 44, 46, 47 textile production 43 Gordus (village) 69 Grimenothyritae 180 Hadriani 74, 266, 288 Hadrianopolis 455, 477 Hadrianutherae 266 Hermus River 33, 35, 37, 38 Hierapolis (Pentapolis) 16, 31, 87, 94, 95, 96, 103, 104, 112, 406, 456, 457 bath-house 492 in life of Aberkios 488 and Q. Claudius Pollio 500, 505 Hierapolis (Pamukkale) 17, 35, 39, 117, 348, 422, 472, 571, 605 anti-Montanist synod 22 archbishop and patriarch 540 brotherhood at 189 Church of St Philip 438 Jews at 121, 167, 582 Hyrgaleis 143, 424 Hyrgaletici campi 32, 39 koinon 422 Middle Byzantine 476 Iconium 3, 154 anti-Montanist synod 24 Ida (Crete), Mount 63 Isauria 512 Iskome 69, 255 Iulia 52 Xenoi Tekmoreioi 78 Iulia Gordus 34

679

Index Jerusalem 22, 97 Jewish Temple 144 Juliopolis 63 Κασσηνός 240 Kavala δῆμος Καυαληνῶν 419 Kleonnaion 47 Kidyessos 50, 51, 52, 94, 189, 416–8, 476 Κydisseis 178 Kleroi Orine 415 Politike 415 Lampsacus 37 Laodicea Catacecaumene 3, 4, 29, 154, 156, 465, 540, 559, 565, 572 Laodicea ad Lycum 35, 37, 39, 75, 117, 605 4th cent. churches 350–1 birthplace of Zeus 63 emigration to Rome 570–1 Large basilica 443 Roman assize 6, 9 and Rome 570–1 Laodicea (Syria) 168 Laszeddioi 51 Limne 65 Lounda (Blaundus ?) 421 Lugdunum (Lyon) 8, 10, 13, 168, 394, 530 Lycaonia 9, 37, 41, 112, 272 conventus 316 martyr 484 Lycia 512 Lycians at Apollonia 322 Lycus River 31, 37, 110, 117, 528 Lydia 32, 33, 34, 38, 39, 41, 82, 178, 489 Lyendos 179 Lysias 29 Macestus River 35, 36, 38, 514 Malos (Galatia) 542 Malos (Phrygian Highlands) 375, 560 Malos and Xenoi Tekmoreioi 78 Maeander River 31, 32, 37, 75, 110 ford at Choma 427 Upper Maeander 432

Mantalos 382 Mantineion 548 Marlakkos 383 Meirus 28, 39, 52, 283, 370 territory 375 Melos 173 Mesopotamia 98, 104, 493 Metropolis (Yazılıkaya) 28, 73 Metropolis (Tatarlı Köy) 31, 40, 52, 303, 304, 459 Middle Myzantine 476 Midaeum 26, 36, 52 Mokadene 33, 50, 178–9 Mokkadenoi 178 Mordiaion 322 Mossyna (Tembris Valley) 69 Mossyna (near Hierapolis) 426 Motella 32, 75, 82, 421, 422, 423, 425 later Metellupolis 425 Xenoi Tekmoreioi 78 Moxeani 34, 190, 415 Myriokephalon, battle 429–30 Mysia 96, 266 Mysoi Abbaitai 34, 179 part of Phrygia 16 Nacolea 28, 29, 36, 39, 40, 52, 64, 73, 82, 84, 314, 380–1 defensor civitatis 381 few early Christians 576 religious character 402 John Studios at 380  Middle Byzantine 476, 477 Theos Hypsistos 289, 299 territory 382 Naeis 51 Na[..]ta 69 Neocaesareia 171, 511, 519 Nicaea fortifications 475 territory 65 St Tryphon 506, 507 Nicomedia 38, 349, 515, 548 Jewish inscriptions 154 Nicopolis ad Istrum 285 Nisibis 104, 493

680 Oeniae 459 Oinoanda 287 Olgassys, Mt 36 Olympus, Mt (Bithynia) 546 Orcistus 29, 40, 84, 314, 383, 476, 576 brotherhood at 190 mansio 40 Otrous 31, 456, 458 Ouaza 375 Pamphylia 501 craftsmen 352 Panopolis 365 Panormus 38 Paphlagonia and Novatians 547–8  Pappa Tiberiopolis 352, 354 Parthikopolis 391 Pas(s)ita 69 Pazon 376, 549, 560 Peltai 47 Penkalas River 35, 53, 63, 356 bridges 354 Pepuza 18, 22, 24, 32, 179, 412, 419, 422, 530 Byzantine occupation 421, 473 New Jerusalem 19, 33, 421, 533, 583 site 420 Pergamum 37, 501 birthplace of Zeus 63 Perge 501, 505 ‘Tertullus’ inscription 501–3  Perinthus (Heracleia) 112, 154, 514 Pessinus 27, 29, 37, 40, 47, 53, 154, 221, 526 Philadelphia 1, 10, 412, 541, 543 Tessareskaidekatitai 561–2 Philippopolis 399, 565 Philomelium 1, 2, 5, 29, 30, 37, 41, 52, 76, 315, 317, 441, 452–455 bishops 3 Middle Myzantine 476 Roman assize 9 Phrygia administrative district 9 circle 25, 29 Epictetus 36 ‘Great’ 489 Hellespontine 35 Highlands 27, 28, 39, 43, 294–9, 370–6, 476

Index κοινόν 117 landed families (Byzantine) 609 language 79, 112 ‘Little’ 488, 490 migrants from Thrace 42, 43 Neo-Phrygian 29, 30, 57 Pacatiana (Capatiana) 414, 460 Paroreius 30, 112, 442 Pentapolis 32, 40, 87–110, 111, 117, 416, 456–8, 476 Salutaris 482, 496, 498 village growth 356–8, 606 Phyteanoi 392 Pidra 441, 442 Pisidia 30, 36, 76, 442 Pissia (Tymandus) 320 Pissia (Philomelium) 455 Polybotus 29, 399 Pontica (dioecese) 472–3 Pontus and Bithynia (province) 11 Pontus (province) 171, 518–9 Potamia 509 Prizeis 51 Propontis 29, 112 Proseilemmene 315 Prymnessus 31, 40, 41, 52, 94, 270, 305, 308, 320, 395, 396, 399, 505 in Life of Ariadne 496, 497 Rhodes 290, 552 Rhyndacus River 35, 36, 288, 359 Rome 97, 505, 507 Acmonians at 148 as Babylon 97, 98 Christians under Nero 578–9  Church of St Peter 349 citizenship 96 imperial capital 96 Sagalassus 352, 501, 505 ritual deposits 401 secular public spaces 401 Sagara 69 Sampsas 506 Sangarius River 25, 26, 29, 36, 40, 63 Sardis 37, 50 assize district 179 synagogue 152

681

Index Sebaste 33, 39, 139, 412, 421, 477, 483, 540 church excavated 407 city counsellor 176 and Constantinople 410 Middle Byzantine 476 Seilinda 455 Selge 501 Senarus River 33, 37, 419, 422, 473 Serdica 399 Sereanoi 382 Siblia (Silbia, Soublaion) 40, 421, 429–31, 475 Side 37 Signia Mt. 434 Σικκουδηνοί 65 Silandus 33, 34, 50, 179, 516 Sillyum 167 Siocharax 34 Smyrna 1, 2, 6, 9, 35, 37, 505 Christian graffito 565 earthquake in 177 504, 565 fortifications 475 Soa 35, 39, 52, 198, 215, 259, 283, 369 magistrate at 239, 246, 258–9, 349 Middle Byzantine 476 nomothetai 282 Soenoi 198 Soublaion, see Siblia Sozopolis 322, 438, 476, 477 pilgrimage to 439 see Apollonia Sparta 53 Spore 357 Stectorium 31, 102, 103, 106, 139, 456 Steunos 63 Strymon, River 42 Synaus 34, 36, 38, 193, 197, 358, 475 Synnada 9, 30, 31, 40, 42, 53, 57, 303, 305, 410, 429, 480 ‘Aulon’ 493 bishops at 304, 417 cult of St Trophimus 483 episcopal metropolis 460 prominent families 462, 467 site 460 Synadeni 609 Xenoi Tekmoreioi 78 Syria 98, 104

Tabala 38 Tembris River 26, 35, 36, 39, 198, 367 see also Upper Tembris Valley Temenothyrae 33, 34, 39, 52, 179, 348, 419, 572 early adopters 574 Christian inscriptions 180–7, 540, 573 Middle Byzantine 476 Temnus, Mt. 34 Thema Anatolikon 441 Thera 173 Thermai Theseos 179 Thermenoi 288 Thessalonica 512 Thrace Phrygian influence 607 province 21, 285 region 42, 43 Thyateira 154 Tiberiopolis 34, 288, 475, 552, 559 Toupa 69 Traianopolis 33, 50, 52, 179, 188 Tralles birthplace of Zeus 63 Tripolis 37, 75 Tyana 4 Tymandus 30, 52, 320, 440, 459 Tymion 22, 32, 419, 530 imperial estate 179, 419 New Jerusalem 19, 33, 421 Tyriaeum 45, 46, 47, 315 Upper Tembris Valley 28, 35, 55, 56, 66, 69, 73, 102, 198–264, 268, 269, 272, 348, 367–9, 398 Christianity mainstream 574  imperial estates 54 Theos Hypsistos in 289 Vienna (in Gaul) 8, 10 Village of the nine springs 69 Οὐεβροκωμήται 65 Ζαννασ[..η]νός 65 Zemmea 69

682 3. Modern Place Names Abaş 357 Abya (Pınarcık) 35, 68, 198, 211, 234 Acıgöl 40 Adaçal 27 Adaköy 221, 237 Afyonkarahisar (Afyon) 2, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31, 36, 39, 40, 41, 46, 94, 103, 370, 394, 395, 399 Middle Byzantine 476 Museum 234, 311, 376, 386, 394, 433, 466 Ağarı 288, 357 Ağzıkara 41, 465 Ağılcık 390 Ahat 151 Ahır Dağ 33 Ahırlar 73 Akait (now Üçhüyük) 455 Akar Çay (Caystrus) 29, 36, 39, 307, 311, 399 imperial estates 54 pagan sanctuaries 406 Akçaköy 68, 207, 223, 251, 269 Akçaşar 418 Akdağ 34 Akkaya 379 Akoluk 295, 300, 370, 371, 541 Aksaray 46 Akşehir 2, 29, 317, 399, 452 Göl 29, 36, 316 Alamescid 456 Alibeyköy 224, 264, 269, 369 Alpanos 379 Sarayören 383 Alpu 26 Altıntaş 69, 241, 242 quarries 240, 292 town 36, 198, 368 village 35, 215, 237, 259, 273, 369 workshops 278 Anayurt 461, 462–3, 464 Ankara 26 Arayıt Dağ 27 Armutbaşı Tepe 29 Armutlu 459 Arnavutköy 521 Arslankaya 43 Arslanlı 367

Index Asartepe 75, 424 Aslanapa 228, 242, 289 Aşağı Ilıca 383 Aşağışeyit 426 Atlıhisar 303, 304, 461, 462–3, 467 Avdan 370, 379, 383 Avlağı Dere 304 Ayazin 370, 421 Aydoğmuş Dağ 434 Aykırıkçı 224, 236, 238, 239, 240, 264, 269, 272 Ayvalı 440 Autun (France) 98 Bağıllı 442 Bağlıca 315, 390 Bağören 383 Bahtıllı 197 Bal Mahmut 416 Balçıkhisar 465 Ballıkkaya 412 Bambul 459 Banaz 278 Çay 33, 39, 419 Ova 416 Bandırma 38, 542 Bardakçı 382 Barla Dağ 36 Başağaç 458 Başaran (Başören) 302, 370, 375 Başkuyucak 106 Bedeş (Kayabelen) 461 Bekilli 420, 422, 423, 425, 426, 476 Belkaraören 465 Belkavak 370 Beşkarış 199, 214, 263, 269 Beth Shearim 155 Beycesultan 386, 427–431, 432 Beyköy 390 Beyşehir 29, 76 Bin In 465 Bisse (now Çamlı) 455 Bilecik 26 Black Sea 29, 65, 112, 530 Boğazköy (Kiliseköy) 359 Bolvadın 29 Bozalan 360 Boz Dağları 25

683

Index Boz Tepe 27 Bozüyük 26, 38, 359, 378, 524 Brussels Museum 280, 282 Buğdaylı 422 Burdur Museum 118 Burnu 465 Bursa 26, 38 Museum 238, 290, 304, 483 Büyükkabaca 320 Cabrail 357 Camharmam 442 Çakırsaz 236, 239, 240, 243, 244, 272 Çal 37, 39 Dağ 27 Ova 422 Çal Köy (Girei) 218 Çalça 415, 524 Çamlıca 383 Çandır 40 Çandıraz Dere 295 Çarık Köy 50, 179, 188 Çarşamba 360 Çarşamba Su 122, 325 Çatalağıl 29 Çatmalı Dağ 33 Çavdarhisar 35 Çavdarlı 405 Çay 29, 31, 37, 41, 303, 459 Çayhisar 417, 418, 476, 523 Çayırbaşı (Zemme) 70 Çeleptaş 442 Çeltikçi 194 Çepni 144, 310 Çifte Pınarlar 382 Çileközü 29 Çivril 32, 40, 426, 431, 432 Çizikdam 419 Çobanözü 417 Çoğu 392 Çorhisar 457 Çorum 150, 287 Çölovası 31, 40, 439, 459 Çömlekçi 219, 357 Çökeles Dağ 32 Çöplü 431 Çukurağıl (Yazıdere) 383 Çukurca 360 Çukurhisar 379

Davulga 313 Davulköy 457 Demircili 389 Demirli 379, 383 Dereköy 273 Deşdemir 423 Dikici 117, 128, 133, 433 Dinar 31, 123, 126, 433, 459 Dodurga 359, 360 Dodurga (Pentapolis) 458 Doğalar 224 Doğançayır 382 Doğanlar 231 Doğ(an)arslan 297, 370 Doğla (Yazıtepe) 415 Dombay Ovası 116, 434, 438, 456 Domur 360 Dorla 325 Dumanlı 420, 422, 423 Dumlupınar 39, 40, 416 Durhanlı Havuzu 426 Eber Göl 29, 36 Eceköy 360, 465 Eğridir (Eğirdir) Göl 30 Eğrigöz 34 fortress 358, 475 Dağ 34 Ekinhisar 458 Eldere (Pınarbaşı) 31 Elmacık 419 Emet 358 Emir Dağları 27, 28, 29, 70 Emircik 157, 431 Emirdağ 27, 28, 314, 390 Emirhisar 103, 106, 457 Erciş 413 Erenköy 360 Erice 412 Erikli 370 Dağ 68 Erten 370, 375, 560 Esendere 440 Esenmez 360 Eskişehir 26, 46, 71, 74, 302 Museum 300 Eyerli Dağ 27 Eymir 278, 369

684 Fındos 352 Gavurdağı 29 Gazlıgöl Kaplıca 371 Gebeciler 394 Gecek 213 Gedikler 413 Gedil 317 Gediz 34, 37 Çay 33, 35, 368 Gençali 433 Geneli 459 Geriz Malatyası 295 Gondane 440 Göçebe 360 Gökçeler 368 Gökçeoğlu 379 Gökler 359 Gömce 426 Göynükören quarries 242 Güllüdere 371 Güllüsaray 382 Gülüşlü (Beyköy) 389–90 = Kılıçlı Kavaklı 390 Gümüş Dağ 35 Güney 418 Güreköy 458 Gürsü 457 Hacibeyli 270 Haci Kebir 288 Haci Mahmut 357, 523 Hacım 412 Hallaç 465 Hamam Çay 32, 40 Hanköy 370 Khosrev Paşa Han 375 Hasanköy 144, 270 Hasanlar 288 Hasırca Çiftliği 379 Hasköy 423 Hatıplar 270 Haydan 157, 424, 430 Haydarlar 199 Haymana 315 Hıdırlar 64 Hisarköy 28, 383, 384

Index Hisarcık 288 Hocalar 191, 415 Hoyran Göl 30, 76, 320, 439 Hudai Kaplıcıları 87, 103, 104, 457, 458 Hüseyin Inler 465 Hüyüklü 442 Iğdir 135 Ikizbaba 423 Ileği 440 Ilgın 29 Ilıcak Su 360 Ilkburun 339 Ilyaslar 455 Imişehir 379 Inhisar 440 Inli 373 Islamköy 33, 144 Işıklar 396 Işıklı 134, 428 Göl 32 Ismail 41 Istanbul (Constantinople) Koç Collection 218, 223 Museum 99, 483 Izmir 279 Museum 414 Kabacık 442 Kafa Dağ 29 Kadınhan 29 Kaklık 39 Kanbut Çiftliği 379 Kandamış 382 Karaadıllı 303, 464 Karaağaç 211, 233, 270, 369 Karaay 379 Karaçam 27 Karahallı 422, 425 Karahüyük 26 Karaköy 360, 523 Karakuşdağları 459 Karakuyu 413 Karapazar 379 Karasandıklı 99, 103, 106, 457 Karasu 26 Karaşehir 379 Karayusufdağı 425

685

Index Karbasan 40 Kayacık 383 Keçiler 211, 260 Kemerkaya 392 Kerkenes Dağ 43 Keskin 379 Kılandıras (Karadirek) 88, 96, 99, 103, 458 Kınık 304, 459 Kıravdan 379 Kırbasan (Karbasan) 422, 425 Kırgıl 288 Kırgıllı 367 Kırka (Pentapolis) 457 Kırka (Phrygian Highlands) 370 Kırka (Sebaste) 176, 412 Kırkaş 440 Kırkpınar 314 Kırkyeren 423 Kızık 458 Kızıl Dağ (Tepe) 33, 63 Kızılcasöğüt 144, 189 Kızılsaray (Dorylaeum) 360 Kızılsaray (Nacolea) 382 Kilise Köy 34 Kilise Orhaniye  = Gökçeyayla 375 Koca Su 35, 36, 359 Koca Tepe 31 Kocahüyük 456 Kocayaka 431 Koçaş 455 Koçhisar 87, 457, 458 Konya 29, 41, 402 Koraşı 317 Kovalık Hüyük 405 Kozluca 360, 415 Kozvıran 416 Körküler 440 Köselli 423 Köstürk 442 Kufu Çay (Hamam Çay) 134, 458 Kumdamlı 440 Kurd Köy (Altıntaş town) 198, 208, 261 Kureyişler 357 Kurudere 70, 82 Kuyucak 299, 382 Kuyulu Sebil 250 Küçüğüm 379

Küçükçeşmece 94 Küçükkabaca 440 Küçükköy 360 Kükürt Dağ 31 Kümbet 28, 295, 299, 371, 373–4 Çay 297 Kütahya 207, 277 Museum 73, 219, 226, 231, 247, 272, 289, 361, 367, 370 Lyon (France) 9, 13 Mağacıl 105 Mahmuthisar 316 Mahmut Köy 465 Marmara, Sea 514 Medele (now Yeşiloba) 32, 75, 423, 422, 425 Megiddo 192 Melekgazi Türbesi 383 Melli 501, 505 Menteş 102, 178, 456 Mihailgazi 522 Mihaliç 522 Mihaliççik 522 Mikhail 522 Murat Dağ 35, 36, 37 Murathanlar 369 Murtaz Baştepe 457 Musalar 383 Mustafalar 357, 369 Mutalıp 377 Naşa 197 Nuhören 234, 369 Nuribey (Mikhail) 396, 398 Odaköy 458 Oinan (Oynığan) 459 Olucak 270 Oluk Dağ 27 Ortaköy 314 Ortapınar (Kürtler) 465 Osmanbey Yaylası 383 Otluk 458 Oturak 279 Orta Köy 29, 383 Osmaniye 379 Oynaş 370, 371

686 Oysu 368 Öksüz 413 Ömerler 360 Örencik 357 Özbayat 442 Özgüney 442 Pamukkale Museum 161 Paşalar 423 Payamalanı 412, 483 Pazarcık 357 Peşemit 360 Pınarbaşı 357 Piribeyli 313 Pise 320 Porsuk Çay 26, 36, 198 Pullar 357 Rome Vatican 90, 92 Sağır 30, 76, 79, 81, 442 Sandıklı 40, 87, 88, 103, 105, 150, 458 Ovası 456, 466 Sandıközü 371 Saraycık 360 Saraycık Çiftliği 383 Sarı Süngür 379 Sarıkavak 379 Sarıöküz 383 Sazak 426 Selçikler 407, 418 Sevdiğin 244, 289, 369 Sevinç 379 Seydi 379 Seyitgazi 64, 380 Seyit Su 28, 295 Seyitömer Hüyük 45, 367 Seyrecek 370 Sheikh Arab 433 Silint 455 Simav 34, 36 Çay 35 Dağ 34 Sinanpaşa 46 Sıncanlı Ovası 416–7

Index Sinekçiler 357 Sirikli 423 Sivrihisar 27 Sıvaslı 407 Sorkun 457 Susuz 413 Söğüt 26, 38 Sökmen 367, 428 Suğlun 31, 305 Sultandağları 29, 37, 41, 316, 439 Sultandere 379 Sücüllü 440, 442 Süller 425 Sülümenli (Blaundus) 32 (Antimacheia) 40, 311 Sündiken Dağ 25, 63 Süpören 379 Şahmelek 367 Şam Dağ 70 Şapçılar 422, 426 Şaphane Dağ 27, 34 Şıhalı 369 Şuhut 30, 304, 461, 466 Ovası 40, 461 Şükraniye 179, 419 Taşköprü 379 Taştepe 25 Tatarlı Köy 459 Tavşanlı 35, 36, 38, 74, 288, 359, 360, 523 Tatarköy 412 Tekeciler 379 Tekke Kalesi 466 Tepecik 74, 358 Terziler 278, 368, 442 Tokat Dağ 29 Tokmacık 440 Toprak Tepe 29 Tunçbilek 359 Türkmenbaba Tepe 25, 382 Türkmendağları 27 Türkmenköy 391 Uluabad Lake 359 Uluborlu 30, 432, 440 Uluköy 191, 415

687

Index Umraniye 29 Uşak 33, 178 Museum 73 Üçdereağzı 360 Üçkuyu 422, 523 Ürküt 458 Yağarslan Dağ 25 Yağcılar 73 Yağdığın 356 Yalnızsaray 230 Yalnızsaray (Girei) 357 Yalvaç 30, 442, 448 Museum 440, 442 Yamanlar 426 Yanıkören 458 Yapılcan 69, 369 Yapıldak 297, 299, 370 Yarıkköy 442 Yassıhüyük 426 Yassıören 459 Yavaşlar 415, 418 Yaylababa 406 Yazıdere 64, 65, 66, 406 Yazılıkaya (Midas Şehri) 28, 43, 73, 295 Yediler Tepe 27 Yellice Dağ 35, 39 Yemişli 197 Yeni Dodurga 360 Yenice 150, 152, 287 Yenice Göcenoluk 371 Yenicearmutcuk 357 Yenigüney 357 Yenisofça 377 Yeşildere 357 Yoncaağaç 288 Yorguç 360 Yukarı Tırtar 442 Yunak 46 Yurumca 457 Yürük Kırka 370 Zazaddin Han 102 Zemme 206, 214, 258, 262, 278 Zemzemiye 379 Zirve Tepe 27 Zobu 192, 358

4. Persons Aberkios (Abercius) 87, 88, 91, 92, 93, 98, 99, 102, 109, 118, 122, 457 Avircius Marcellus 14, 15, 16, 20, 87, 95, 117, 308 epitaph 87–99, 488, 494 Life of Aberkios 87, 88, 103, 488–95, 499–501, 504–5 and apostolic acts 494 date of 492, 504 missionary 572 Ablabius, Novatian bishop of Nicaea 557 Aelius Aristides 266, 267, 291 ‘Aemilianus Praetextatus’, fictive consul 506 Agapetus, bishop of Synnada 460 Agelios, Novatian bishop of Constantinople 547, 548, 557 Alcibiades, Montanist ascetic, 12–3 Alexander of Cotiaeum 266, 291 Alexander the Great 46, 103 Alexander, martyr at Apamea 19, 117 Alexander, martyr at Lyon 9 Aelius Publius Iulius, bishop 21 Agapius, Arian bishop in Ephesus 364 Akesios, Novatian cleric 545, 546 Alexander, Novatian monk 547 Ammia, prophetess 17 Amphilochius of Iconium 532 Anicia Iuliana 361 Anthemius, praet. praef. 460 Antiochus III 33, 121, 145 Antoninus Pius, emperor 286, 495 Apollinarius, bishop of Hierapolis 16, 20, 117, 572 letter about Montanism 21 Apollonius, source of Eusebius 18, 19, 20 Apollonius of Tyana 57 ‘Argyriskos’, supposed governor 508 Ariadne of Prymnessus, romantic heroine 495–505 Ariarathes VI 48 Aristonicus 48 Aspar, Theodosian general 556 Asterius Urbanus, Montanist 18 Athanasius 204 Attalus of Pergamum, martyr 9, 10, 11, 13 Attalus II 134 Attalus III 47, 48

688 Atticus, bishop of Constantinople 460, 552 Attila the Hun 417 Atticus, bishop at Synnada 304 Augustine, Civitas Dei 97 on heresies 532 Augustus, emperor 27, 53, 322, 407 Aurelius Athenodotus, sculptor 246–7, 250–1 Aurelius Quirinius 21 Auxanon, Novatian priest source for Socrates 546, 547, 548, 549 Auxanon, bishop of Prymnessus 398 Basil of Caesarea 352, 444, 532 Encomium of St Gordius 510 Basil I, emperor 414 Basil II, emperor 414, 455, 466 Bardanios Tourkos, rebel 441 Bardas Skleros, rebel 455 Bardesanes 493 Biblis, martyr at Lugdunum 11 Blandina, martyr at Lugdunum 11 Botaniatae 462 Caecilius Numa, procurator 491, 500 Caius Gracchus 48 Caracalla, emperor 419 Castrius Constans, Roman governor 134 Charlemagne 466 Chrysanthus, Novatian bishop 552, 557 Chrysaphius, eunuch 365 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 3, 49, 145, 316 Quintus 49 ‘Claudius Aquilinus’, fictive consul 507 Claudius Pollio ‘Euxenianus’, Q. 500, 505 Claudius Vibianus Tertullus, Ti. 501, 503–5 Commodus, emperor 504 Constantine 1, emperor 7, 84, 512 church building 349, 353 on heresies 545 Orcistus petition 314 Constantine VII, emperor 395 Constantine X Doukas, emperor 467, 610 Constantius II and the Arians 547 ‘Cornelianus’, praet. praef. 490, 500 Cynegius Maternus, praet. praef. 406

Index Cyrus of Panopolis bishop at Cotiaeum 364–5, 509–11, 609 Christmas sermon 511 and passio of St Menas 508–9  Didymos the Blind 530 Diocletian, emperor 221, 508 Great Persecution 222, 348, 366, 508 ‘Dionysius Perennis’, supposed governor 480, 482 Domitian, emperor 33, 35, 41, 50 Dorotheus, Arian bishop of Antioch 364 ‘Dorymedon’, fictive councillor at Synnada 480–1 Eleutherus, bishop of Rome 13 Epaphras, follower of Paul 569 Epictetus 271 Epidikos, praet. praef. 371, 609 Epiphanius 531 Epitynchanos Athanatos 239, 280, 283, 403 Eteoneus, elogium for 266, 272 Eugenios, M. Iulius, bishop 350, 353 Eumenes II 36, 45, 134 Eustathios, patriarch 408, 477, 609 Eutychianos, Novatian hermit 546 Euxeinianos Pollio 489 see Claudius Polemo  Faustina, empress 490, 491 ‘Friconius Petronius Pompeianus Volcacius’, fictive consul 506 Gaius, on Polycarp’s martyrdom 6 Gaius, martyr at Apamea 19, 117 Galerius Valerius Maximianus, C., emperor 508 Gordian, emperor 507 ‘Gordius’, governor 496, 497 Gratus, proconsul of Asia 16 Gregory, father of Gregory Naz. 288 Gregory Nazianzus 288, 301, 556 on marriage and greed 559 Gregory, bishop of Neocaesareia 171 Panegyric of Origen 171 see also St Gregory Thaumaturgos Gregory of Nyssa 511, 519, 520

689

Index Hadrian, emperor 285, 286, 495 Harun Ar-Rashid 466 Heliodoros, Aithiopika 495 bishop of Trikka 495 Heraclius, emperor 607 Hierocles, author of Synekdemos  on Phrygian cities 421, 605 Ignatius, Christian martyr 572 Letters 567  Ioannes Xiphilinus, patriarch 428 Irenaeus, bishop of Lugdunum 6, 10 Isaac II Angelos, emperor 429 Isidore of Seville 537 Jerome (Hieronymus) on Montanists 530, 532 John Chrysostom 460, 553, 554, 561, 610 John of Damascus 532 John Doukas 467 John of Ephesus 406, 543 John Studios 380, 522, 523, 608 Jovian, emperor 407 Julian the apostate, emperor 81, 407, 492, 550 Julian, bishop of Apamea 18, 117 Justin II, emperor 461, 609 Justinian 400, 442, 507, 523, 607 church building 437 and Theodora 361 Iulianus Euteknios, missionary 168 Lactantius 222 Leo, bishop of Synnada 466 Leo, Pope 92 Leo V, emperor 441 Leontius, bishop of Ancyra 557 Licinius, emperor 512 Lucilla, imperial princess 491 Lucius Verus, emperor 488, 490, 500 Lucullus, L. 50 Macedonius, Arian bishop 547 Manius Aquillius 37, 48 Manuel Comnenus, emperor 429 Marcian, emperor 365

Marcianus (I), Novatian bishop 549, 550 Marcianus (II), Novatian bishop 555–7 Marcianus, bishop of Lampsacus 512, 514 Marcion, heretic 493 Marcus Aurelius, emperor 9, 11, 19, 488, 490, 504 imperial letter 491, 500, 505 philosopher 271 wars 23 Marinus, Arian bishop in Thrace 364 Maurice, emperor 385, 417 Maximilla, Montanist prophetess 16, 17, 18, 19, 183, 296 Maximianus, M. Aurelius Valerius, emperor 508 Maximinus Daia, emperor 282 Maximus, philosopher and tutor 550 Melito of Sardis 20 Michael I, emperor 564 Michael II, emperor, 442, 564 Michael III, emperor 475 Michael, bishop of Motella 522 Michael Bourtzes 383 Michael Kurtikios 455 Midas, Phrygian king 26, 42 Miltiades, anti-Montanist writer 14, 15, 532–3 Mithridates V 48 Modestus, praet. praef. of Valens 548 Montanus, heretic prophet 13, 16, 17, 18, 34, 530 ‘Dialogue with Orthodox believer’ 530 Mucius Scaevola, Q. 49 Murat II, Sultan 92 Nectarius, bishop of Constantinople 549, 561 Nikephoros, 9th cent. rebel 564 Nikephoros III Botaniates 429, 462, 609 Niketas, bishop of Sozopolis 395 Niketes Choniates, historian 429 Novatus (Novatianus) 258, 545 ‘Olybrius’, supposed governor 486 Optatus 537 Optimus, correspondent of Basil 444 Origen 171, 518 on angels against Celsus 528 as lay preacher 304

690 Pantaenus, missionary 98 Parthenios, bishop of Lampsacus 512, 514 Paul 92, 98 and Abercius 569 Anatolian journeys 567–9 I Corinthians 234 little influence in Phrygia 569 Lycaonian mission 317 at Pisidian Antioch 146, 567 Philemon 75, 569 Romans 112–3 theology of 204 Paul, Novatian bishop 552, 557 Paulinus, bishop of Tyre 350 Pausanias 178 Pertinax, emperor 38 Philastrius of Brescia 531 Philip (apostle) 32 daughters of 17, 296, 536 Philip (emperor) 69, 507 Philostorgius, church historian 512 Pionius, martyred priest 3, 583 vision of Polycarp 6 Pliny, governor of Bithynia 205 on Christians 574 Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna 1, 317 martyrdom 4, 5 teacher of Irenaeus 10 Ponticus, martyred at Lugudunum 11 Pothinus, martyr at Lugdunum 10, 11 Praedestinatus 536 Priscilla (Prisca), prophetess 16, 19, 183, 296 Probus, emperor 305, 480 Procopius, usurper 380 Protesilaus, first to fall at Troy 249 ‘Publius Dolabella’, fictive governor 488 Pulcheria, empress 557 ‘Pyrrhos’, fictive governor 509 Quadratus, prophet 17 Quintilla, prophetess 183, 296 Quintus of Phrygia 1, 4, 5, 7 Romanos Lekapenos, emperor 395 Romanos Melodos, hymn writer 509–10 Romanus IV Diogenes, emperor 428, 475 Roubes at Eumeneia 139, 165–71, 565 angel of 139, 171–2, 525, 527

Index Rufinus, translator of Eusebius 532 Sabbatios, judaising Novatian priest 550, 552 and Easter festival 562 Sabbatianoi 565 Sanctus, martyred deacon of Vienna 10 Selinas, bishop of the Goths 364 Septimius Severus, emperor 419 Serapion, bishop of Syrian Antioch 21 Silas, companion of Paul 567 Silenus 42 Sisinnios, Novatian bishop 550 and John Chrysostom 553, 554 penchant for luxury 551, 557 Socrates, church historian on Novatians 546–553 on Polycarp’s martyrdom 6 Sozomen, church historian on Montanists 538 on Novatians 555 Sornatius Barba, C. 50 Statius Quadratus, proconsul of Asia 1 Stephanos Lekapenos, emperor 395 Tacitus on Christians 578–9 Teimeas, sculptor 68, 72, 268 Tertullian Apologeticum 204 convert to Montanism 22–3, 206 Institutum Neronianum 579 praises Miltiades 15 ‘Tertullus’, of Prymnessus 496, 500, 501, 505 see Claudius Vibianus Tertullus, Ti. Themison, Montanist 18 Theodoret of Cyrrhus 537 Theodoros Karandenos 455 Theodosius I, emperor 377, 406, 549, 604 Theodosius II, emperor 364, 460, 508 Theodosius, bishop of Synnada 460 Theodotus, Montanist 13 epitropos 18 shoemaker 22 Theophylakt, praeses of Pepuza 544 Theotimos, author of passio of Marina 485, 487 Thraseas, bishop of Eumeneia 19

691

Index Tiberius, emperor 41, 55 Tiberius Gracchus, fictive consul 507 Timothy the presbyter, heresiologist 564 Trajan, emperor 41, 205, 285, 439 Trajan Decius, emperor persecution 258, 507 Tribigild 380 Ulfila 363–4 Valens, emperor 352, 380, 407 and Novatians 549 Vettius Epagathus, martyr 11 Xanthos of Sardis 42 Zelas, sculptor 68, 72, 268 Zeno, emperor 365 Zoticus, priest at Otrous 16, 117 Zoticus, bishop of Coumane 18

5. Topics a secretis 400 ab epistulis Graecis 501, 503–4 Acclamation, Christian 498, 528 Achaemenids in Anatolia 295 Actian era 136 Aether 287 After-life, Phrygian concept 205, 259, 268, 291, 329 similarity with Christianity 301–2 Agape 134 ἅγιος 170, 410, 541 Ambo 357, 369, 408, 456 seventeen in Aezanitis 358 Anagnostes 600 ἀνακαινόω 476–7 ἀνανέωσις 476 Angdistis 73, 401 Angels Christ ‘first angel’ 525 at Melos 173  pagan 525, 526–7 of Roubes 171–2, 527 at Thera 173 Anonymity, in hagiography 479

Anti-Christian organisation 81 Anti-heretical legislation 535, 536–7 Aphierosis (Kathierosis) 278 not post mortem 281 Apocalyptic writings, Judaeo-Christian 97 Apollo 73, 75, 122 in Aberkios’ life 488 ‘Daphnaeus’ 482 Kareios 75 Lairbenos 32, 33, 75, 82, 83 Propylaios 75 Theos Xyreos 74 Apostles ‘isapostolos’ 493, 494 Apostolic succession 550 ἀποστόλος (Montanist) 564 Arabs campaigns in Anatolia 400, 443, 472, 473, 474, 606–7 Hagarenes 512–3 winter at Antioch 443 Archangels 408, 529 churches of 447 archianagnostes 386 archidiakonos 431, 599 archisynagogoi 144 Aretalogies 528 Arians 363, 454, 550, 608 opposed by Basil 438, 444 Artemis identified with Dikaiosyne 499, 503 Asceticism, Montanist 13 Asiarch 131 Athena 122 Athinganoi 564, 583 Athletes 139 Attis 72, 268, 526, 531 Αurelius names 65, 106, 223, 262, 308, 316 Baptism 249, 273, 559 mass in Aberkios’ life 489 of heretics 532 βασιλικός 373, 462 Biblical allusions and citations in Byzantine period 601–2 knowledge limited 602 rare before 4th century 328, 600 Biokolytes 400

692 Bishops before 4th cent. 595 early Byzantine period 596 and church construction 597, 598 at Church Councils 597 Middle Byzantine 598 Blacksmith 139 Bogenfeldstele 215, 218, 267, 268, 575 Book of Daniel 529 Brotherhoods, Christian 105, 135, 176, 327, 348, 596 at Acmonia 149–150 at Apollonia 325  brother-in-Christ 134 in Phrygian Pentapolis 150 in Upper Tembris Valley 2 Butcher 126, 234 Burial  at Apamea 124, 126, 130 and Christian community 250, 256, 581 at Eumeneia 134, 135, 136 ‘Christians for Christians’ 212 Byzantine ‘Dark Age’ 473 settlement continuity 475–476 Byzantine-Turkish (Seljuk) conflicts 429– 30, 432, 439, 452, 455, 466, 475 Care for the old 307 Cataphryges (κατὰ Φρυγάς) 531–2 Cathari, see Novatians Cave and troglodytic settlements 421, 423, 473, 607 Cerberus 72, 268 Chalice 130 Chrysea Parthenos 74, 279 Christ as bridegroom 258 depicted 415 ἴχθυς 98–9, 117 as shepherd 97, 102, 394 Χρι/η/ειστιανοί 125, 143, 144, 188–90 Christians all social levels 329 aniconic burial monuments 128, 218, 228, 259, 263, 294, 326, 328 collective culture 581 distribution of inscriptions 589 earliest inscriptions 180–200 326 egalitarian not hierarchical 596

Index identity formation 580–2 growing numbers 573–6, 603 human image shown 307, 313, 316 intolerance 604 mobility 571–3 and pagan monuments 278, 402–3, 488 regional variation in 3rd cent. 576 and Sabbath observation 583 in synagogues 584 Christogram 112, 136, 141 Chronology Byzantine 468–70 Church construction in 4th cent. Asia Minor 347–54 and deacons 598 early at Megiddo 192 early in Phrygia 191, 261, 594 as family memorials 602 in Life of St Agapetos 515–6 Middle Byzantine renewal 606 multiple in 6th cent. 602 in south Asia Minor 604 transformed settlements 603 vocabulary 476, 487 ciborium 413, 456, 603 Cibyrrhaeot fleet 455 City foundations Flavian period 49–50 Clergy 348 discipline of 514 hierarchy 595 offices after 400 596 sparse early evidence 327 Climate change 474 Coenoni (κοινωνός) 412, 483, 541543 Coinage bronze 48 cistophori 48 Comes sacri consistorii 454 Commentariensis 509 Confession texts 75, 82, 83 Conversion  at Apamea 126 νεόθηροι 128 in Upper Tembris Valley 257 as social transformation 291 Corybantes 62 Council (Church) 204 Iconium c. 235 532

693

Index Ancyra 358 351 Ephesus 431 561, 597 Ephesus 449 597 Chalcedon 451 3, 94, 315, 391, 398, 429, 457, 555, 597 Constantinople 381 3, 438, 444, 597 Constantinople 383 549, 553 Constantinople 536 456, 597 Constantinople 553 597 Constantinople 681 598 Constantinople 868/70 466 Constantinople 879/80 415, 429, 598 Laodicea, mid 4th cent. 351, 524, 532, 541, 560, 583 Nicaea in 325 356, 455, 538, 545, 554 Nicaea in 787 421, 429, 457, 544, 598 Credibility of miracles 517–20 Creed of Gregory Thaumaturgos 520 Crimes of Christians 11 Crucifixion depicted 122 Crusade 606  First 443, 452 Third 452 Crypto-Christians 85, 86 theory of 200–5 Curiosus 509 Customs officials, Roman 571 Cybele 73, 115, 213, 531 Curses, funerary 29, 58, 79, 112, 205, 219, 402 at Acmonia 148, 149, 151, 152 in Phrygian Highlands 299 see also Deuteronomy Defacement of monuments 129 Dekania 564 Deuteronomy, Book of 121, 147, 148, 151, 152 Devil 490 Di Manes 67 Diakonissa 356–7, 454, 598, 599 Diakonos (Deacon) Diaconate mocked 492 at Philomelium 453–4 in Upper Tembris Valley 244, 596 Dikaiosyne 74 Dike (goddess) 71, 74 Dionysus Dionysiac cult 278, 283

Dioscuri 482 Donatists 7, 8, 545 Doorstones 30, 54, 267 δοῦλοι τοῦ Θεοῦ 154, 307 Dove 130 Dragon 513, 529 incarnation of Satan 486 as tapeworm 517 Droungarii 387 Earthquake 121 Easter, date of 561–4 among Montanists 539, 563, 583 source of Novatian division 549, 550–1, 555 and Passover 549, 561, 562 Eirenarch 507 Ekklesia 346–7 Emporium 48 Energeia (divine) 513 Eternity 132, 155, 329 eternal punishment 141–2, 143 Eumeneian formula 106, 112–5, 134, 143, 203, 304, 327, 402, 565 at Acmonia 143, 147 at Amorium 143 at Antioch 143 at Apamea 117, 126–30, 143 at Docimium 143, 311 at Philomelium 143 at Sebaste 143 early mainstream choice 574 symbolic protection 205 Eunomians 549, 550 Eunuch bishop 260 Exorcism 489, 494, 506 Fiction, comic 492, 496 Fine (funerary) 101, 112, 126, 129, 132, 191, 204–5, 290 and Eumeneian formula 136, 139 symbolic 98, 109, 147 Fish not as Christian symbol 314 Flood at Apamea 121 Funerary sculpture 56, 72, 267, 292 Funerary speech 266

694 Gabriel, angel 415 Galatians 26 land owners 47 Tolistobogii 27 Gay and LGBT*Q culture analogy with Christians 589–93 Genesis, Book of 118, 414 Gerousia at Eumeneia God-fearers 290, 584 at Acmonia 145, 148, 150, 152, 287 Goths 364, 408, 608 in Constantinople 363 at Cotiaeum 373 at Dorylaeum 362 foedus 363 at Laodicea Catacecaumene 363 at Nacolea 377 at Pessinus 363 at Philomelium 363 Grabplatten 378 Greek language 78 literary culture 97, 266, 291 mythology 243, 249, 268, 293 Phrygian dialect 57, 78 spoken by Macedonians 46 translation of Hebrew 149 Greengrocer (lachanopoles) 135 Healing springs 525, 526 Hebrew at Acmonia 151 Hegoumene 386 Hegoumenos 386, 441, 603 Hekate 67, 73, 280 Black Hekate 73, 112 Helios 71, 72, 73, 268 Hellenes (pagans) 516 Hercules (Herakles) 71, 72, 74, 268 offspring 74, 279 Hermes 71, 72, 277 Heresiologists 14 Hierocles, Synkedemos 421, 455 Historia Augusta 504 Ηomeric verses used for prophecy 297 Homoeans 549 Homoousion 538, 544 Homoousians 549 Honoured by God 239, 325

Index Hosia 74 Hosios 74 Hosios and Dikaios 71, 74, 279, 401, 403, 527, 576 at Dorylaeum 303 in Lydia 293 at Nicopolis ad Istrum 285 similar to Jewish/Christian ideas 301–2 at Yaylababa Köy 218, 293, 404 Hypatos, Byzantine palatial office 418 Identity Christianity as marker 327 religious 85, 86, 585–7 Italian/Roman settlers 267, 570 at Acmonia 144, 146 at Antioch 320  in Asia Minor 33, 49, 50, 51, 54 Imperial cult 9, 144, 322, 407, 508 Sebasteion 496 Imperial documents anti-heretical 536, 542 as source for saints’ lives 495, 499–504 Imperial officials as church builders 261, 352 Innovation spread 573–4 in pagan practice 576 Interrogation of Christians 481, 485 Isaiah, cited in inscriptions 399 Isis 85 Isopsephism 161, 170, 565, 583 Jews 516 and angels 524–9 Asia Minor settlements 33 blessing (eulogiai) 154 communities in Phrygia 582, 584 at Docimium 393 and Eumeneian formula 113–5 Ἰουδαῖοι at Hierapolis 121, 582  Jewish War 132–5 22, 286, 584 names 584 Pascha (festival of Azyma) 560–1 Passover and Christians 549, 561–2, 583 relations to Christians 113–5, 524, 528–9, 565–6, 577–85 relations to Romans 146 revolt 115–7 584

Index John the Baptist 408, 415 church at Brouzos 457 and Gregory of Nyssa 520 John the Evangelist Basilica at Ephesus 438 Jonah and the whale 122 Justice of bishops 515 gods 71, 74 Kalandion (pagan divinity) 486 Kastron (fortress) 386 at Choma 426–30 at Sozopolis 439 Katoikia 33, 45, 46, 47, 315–6 Koimeterion 141, 143, 320 Kronos 62 κτίστης 410, 413 κώρτη σταβλησίων 407 Kubaba 73 Lapsi 10 Last Judgement 154, 583 God as judge 136, 154–5 Latin language 9, 22 Lions 213 Liturgy 602 Lover of the poor 273 Macedonian conquest 35 settlers 44, 46, 315–6 Macedonians (Arians) 550 Magic 524 black 513 invocation 418 Magistriani 491 μακάριος 325 Manes Daes 280 Marsyas 118, 122 Martyr Acts 481, 498 false 524 historical value 482, 487, 520 Martyrdom 12, 23, 110 under Diocletian 414 rare in Phrygia 329 voluntary 5

695 Megas Rufus (pagan divinity) 486 Melchisedekites 564 μεμόριον 308 Mên 73, 132, 293, 526 Askaênos sanctuary 76, 77, 80, 82, 447 Axiottenos 527 Mantalenos 526 Menorah 151, 413 Migration 607–8 Missionary activity 494 Mithras 85 Monks 385, 396, 415, 602–3 at Apamea 433 at Bozüyük 379 Χριστοαδελφότης 603 at Konya 402 at Lampsacus 514 monasteries 441 near Synaus 513 monastic community 396, 518 Montanists 5, 8, 23, 32, 33, 84, 117, 197, 410, 422, 483–4 Cataphryges 531–2, 537 not ‘Christians for Christians’ 206 chronology of 16 clerical hierarchy 412 distribution in Asia Minor 533, 542–3 eschatology 22 feminism 536 inscription numbers reduced 539–41 Jewish background 563–4, 583 marriage 19  origins of 14, 572, 574 prophecy 530–1, 533 ‘Phrygian Heresy’ 5, 531 in Phrygian highlands? 296 not at Temenothyrae 185 Mother Goddess 28, 62, 72, 401 Μητὴρ Κικλέα 72 Μητὴρ ἀπὸ Κρανὸς Μεγάλου 72 Μητὴρ ἀπὸ Σπηλέου 72 Μητὴρ Στευνηνή 72 at Killanion 76 at Pessinus 27, 47, 48 Movement of people 569–72 see also Migration Mystical initiation 239

696 Names largely restricted to Christians  262–3, 328, 584, 587–8 Ἀγαπώμενος 134 Ἀκάκιος 250 Εὐσέβιος 224 Εὐστάθης 133 Θέκλα 318–9 Θεοδούλη 189 n. 354 Κυριακή/Κυριακής 224, 237, 244, 587 Κυριακός 192, 231, 587 Μαρτύριος 484–5 Μυρισμός 132 n. 164 Νόννα 257 Πανχάριος 126 n. 144 Names linked to Jews Sabbatios 587–8 New Testament canon 24, 584 Nicenes 549, 550 Nischenstelen 307, 308, 310, 311 Noah coin 119, 120 fig. 4 flood legend 116–24, 326, 572 Noah’s Ark church 434–8 Nomen sacrum 132, 165–6 Notitiae Episcopatuum 472 Novatians 4, 169, 170–1, 532 Anastasia church moved 552 asceticism 552, 557–9 identified as Cathari 376, 554, 559, 560, 562 churches in Constantinople 547–8 distribution 557 internal divisions 554 and hagiography 546, 547 and Orthodox Church 553–4, 555 Phrygian bishoprics 563 in Phrygian Highlands 375 on second marriage 554–5, 559 in Upper Tembris Valley 258, 273 Novels and Saints’ lives 489 Numbers of Christians 574–6 Paganism and Christian beliefs 593 receding 577 religious practice 60–83 Palatine Anthology 394 πάνμουσος 237

Index Pantheon 292, 401 παντοπώλης 176  Papas 73 Parthenos 599 ‘Parting of ways’ 579–81 Pater tes poleos 450, 599 Patriarchate (Contantinople) 363, 609, 610 Paulicians 564 Peace (eirene) 12, 105 greeting 100, 104 Periodeutes 514 Persephone 72, 268 Persian conquest 44 Phoebus 280 oracles 280 Photinians 532 Plagiarism in life of St Menas 510 Plague 474, 604 Pluto 72 πνεῦμα 300 Pneumatici 540 Portraiture 272, 292 Pothos 369 Pragmateutes 131, 156, 450 Prayer for maker of tomb 98, 124 Presbeutissa 289 Presbytera 183, 540 Presbyters 599–600 before 4th cent. 595–6 Procurator In Phrygia 9, 571 Prophecy 74 Montanist 13, 16, 17, 20, 530–1 Protector scholae peditum 407 Protodiakonos 356, 424, 598 Protopaschitai 562 Protopresbyteros 419 Protospatharios 428 Psalms 414 Ps.18 418 Psathyrians 364 Pyrgos 394 Quarries 218, 267, 292 at Aezani 356 See also Docimium

Index Quartodecumani (Tessareskaidekatitai)  532, 561–3 Religious innovation 328 Reliquary 304 Renewal, Middle Byzantine 478 Resurrection 221, 259 Revelation (Apocalypse), Book of 529, 565, 566, 573, 583 Rhea 62 Rider god 280 Roman roads 3, 37–42, 102 Apamea-Apollonia 438 from Hierapolis to Sebaste 425 at Meiros 295 network in Phrygia 570 in Phrygian Pentapolis 101, 456–7 via Sebaste 30 Roman soldiers 149, 236, 299, 311, 608 attack Novatians in Paphlagonia 548 Christian veterans 190–1, 221, 377 Constantiniani 417, 609 at Dorylaeum and Nacolea 608 on east frontier of Asia 571 κατάλογος (ἀριθμὸς) Ῥουτιλλιανῶν 366, 508 and miracle of Macrina 518 misidentified 195 at Nacolea 380 Palatine troops 356, 377 at Sebaste 407–8 St Agapetos as 513 Sacred topography 437 Saint Abercius 384, 417, 448 Akindynos 414 Eutychios 408 Gordius 366, 510 Gregorius 444 Gregory the Illuminator 408 Gregory Thaumaturgos 511 Ioannes 385 Konon 385 Luke 396 Macrina 518–9 Makarios 396 Marina of Antioch 485–8

697 Menas 365–6, 508–11 Michael 360 at Akroinos 395 in Aezanitis 357 at Bozüyük 378 at Çayhisar and Çobanözü 417–8 on Dioclea territory 415 at Germia 27, 608 at Gökçeler 368 at Karaköy 361 at Mossyna 426 at Nacolea 380, 608 at Sozopolis 439 at Temenothyrae 419 at Üçkuyu 424 Nicholas 417 Nicholas of Sion 512 Panteleimon 396 Paul 444 Pausikakos 417 Philip 396, 415, 437–8 Polyeuctus 360–1 Quiricus and Iulitta 431, 464 Sergius and Bacchus 360–1 Sisinios 360, 378, 523 Stephen 358, 378, 408, 451 Thekla 382, 451, 512 Theodore of Sykeon 439, 517 Thomas (apostle) 417 Theodore Tiro 408 Trophimos 304, 410, 413, 467, 480–4, 510, 542 Tryphon 506–8 Zosimus 439 Sassanian Invasions 474 Scholasticus 497 Selene 71 Septuagint 150, 156 Shoe-maker (skyteus) 130 Sociology of early Christianity 574–7 limitation of models 576–7 Slaves 46, 56, 57 household 11 market 50 Phrygian 38, 44, 570 sacred 75 trade 570

698

Index

Spirit possession 17, 531 Staurogram 94 Stockwerkstele 267 συντέκνοι 238 Symbolism 205 ‘coded’ 202–3 Christian 130, 256 Jewish 151

at Cotiaeum 511 and Gregory of Nyssa 520 at Hadrianopolis 455 at Sozopolis 439 Votive reliefs buried 405 evidence of individual piety 593 smashed 403, 404

Tascodrougitai, Montanist sect 534–5, 532 Taxiarches 428 Tekmor 76, 78, 79 Tetradrachms 46 Theos Hypsistos 285–94, 577 at Acmonia 150 fire altar 290 hypsistarians 288, 294, 297, 298, 401 impersonal 289, 294, 401 at Nicopolis ad Istrum 285 as pantokrator 313 τὸν θεόν σοι· μὴ ἀδικήσεις 271, 272, 292, 540 Torah at Acmonia 151, 153 Torture of Christians 481, 482, 485, 487, 509 Tourmarches 439 Transport 41, 107, 221, 233, 263, 303, 570 Treaty of Apamea 36 Trinity 3, 417, 452 Trishagion 261, 462

Xenodocheia 82 ξενόδοχος 425 Xenoi Tekmoreioi 76–82, 319, 441, 569, 570 sanctuary destroyed 404 ΧΜΓ 298

Urbanisation and urbanism 35, 47 in early Byzantine period 604–5 Verse inscriptions 100, 102, of Aberkios 82–98 at Apamea 124, 132–3 at Docimium 394 at Eumeneia of Gaius 161–6, 169–71, 174–5 of Pektorios 98–9 poor quality 242, 297 in Upper Tembris Valley 236–62 Village bishops 538 Virgin Mary (Theotokos) 378, 408, 417, 442, 521

Zeus 486 Akreinenos 64 Alsenos 70, 404 Ampelites (Ampelikos) 65, 66, 68, 71, 82, 83, 207, 215, 218, 267, 292, 404 Andreas 68, 293 ἐξ αὐλῆς 62 Bennios 68 birth of 62 Bronton 62, 65, 66, 67, 404 in North Phrygia 301, 303 of the cedar trees 64 Chryseos 71 Hippikos 62 honoured by Zeus 207 Hypsistos 527 Kalokagathios 79 Limnenos 65, 82, 404 Manes Daes Heliodromos 280 Narenos 64 ὀροχωρείτης 70, 404 Petarenos 70, 404 Patrôos 65 Sarnendenos 63, 82, 301 of seven villages 64 Thallos 62, 65, 66, 68, 70, 71, 82, 218, 267, 292 Zeus-Herakles 279 Zodiac 286