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Early-Christian Epitaphs from Phrygia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

W. M. Calder
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Extract

The earliest Christians of Phrygia were the nameless converts made by Paul the Apostle when he preached to a congregation of Jews and “Godfearing” gentiles (the latter being Greek or Greco-Phrygian incolae or cives of the colonia and Greek-speaking members of Roman colonial families in the synagogue at Colonia Caesareia Antiocheia in A.D. 49; and before Paul's death the Christian mission to Phrygia had been launched from bases both in the east (Iconium and Antioch) and in the west (Laodicea, Hierapolis and Colossae). Between the middle of the first and the end of the second century, five generations of Phrygian Christians (as Paul expressed it on the same occasion) “fell on sleep and were laid unto their fathers”—in surface family sepulchres along the roads outside the cities and in country graveyards throughout all the hellenised districts of Phrygia. During this period the strong conservatism of Phrygian sepulchral custom, reinforced by the prudence in the face of persecution or proscription held to be enjoined by Scripture (had not Jesus himself withdrawn into Gethsemane?), precluded the open display on tombstones—in all ages the consecrated tokens of sorrow and of hope—of any trace of the Christian profession.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 5 , December 1955 , pp. 25 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1955

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References

page 25 note 1 Acts 1314–43.

page 25 note 2 Called “Pisidian Antioch”, ibid. 14. Antioch was a Phrygian city “over against Pisidia” ((πρὁς Πισιδίᾳ, Strabo).

page 25 note 3 e.g. by Schultze, , Altchr. Städte und Landschaften, II, Kleinasien, I, pp. 425 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 25 note 4 The (largely legendary) Vita Abercii places Avircius' visit to Rome (mentioned in the epitaph) in the reign of M. Aurelius and L. Verus (A.D. 161–169). The anti-Montanist tractate in Eusebius, , Eccl. Hist., V, 16 ff.Google Scholar, dating about A.D. 192, is addressed to Avircius (in 16, 4 read ἑκάοτοτε for ἓκαστά τε). The epitaph of Avircius, composed in his 72nd year, antedates that of Alexander of Hieropolis (dated in A.D. 216).

page 25 note 5 Text of the epitaph in Ramsay, , CB, p. 722Google Scholar, as corrected in JRS, XXIX, 1939, p. 1Google Scholar (where Ramsay's βασιλῆαν in l. 7 is shown to be illusory, and support is given to Grégoire's συνομήμους in l. 11). The δισΧείλια and Χείλια Χρυσᾶ of the fine have been universally taken to mean 2,000 and 1,000 pieces of gold (aurei). That would be Χρυσοῖ, and about 20 times the largest fine usually prescribed in Phrygia at this period. Understand (δηνάρια) Χρυσᾶ “denarii payable in gold”. The symbol for denarii may have been omitted by the Byzantine copyist of the epitaph, or more probably—metri gratia—by Avircius himself. On rare instances of payment of fines in Χρυσοῖ during the Imperial period see CB, p. 722, quoting Hirschfeld in Königsberger Studien, i, p. 144Google Scholar. Occurring in a poem, the expression (δηνάρια) Χρυσᾶ need not be technical; the requirement is I think unparalleled in a penalty-clause of this period, and deserves the attention of numismatists.

page 26 note 1 The device by which the modern printer distinguishes God from god or the god had no counterpart on ancient tombstones. The letters ΠΡΟΣΤΟΝΘΕΟΝ might refer indifferently to Jehovah, to the God of Acts 14 15, or to the god of the neighbouring pagan temple.

page 26 note 2 Anatolian Studies … Buckler, pp. 15 ff., where references to Kaibel, etc., are given.

page 26 note 3 See Addendum, p. 38.

page 27 note 1 Philadelphia and Montanism (reprinted from Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, VII, 1923, pp. 309 ff.)Google Scholar; cf. ibid. XIII, 1929, pp. 266 ff.

page 27 note 2 Byzantion, I, 1924, p. 708Google Scholar; cf. Bulletin JRL, XIII, 1929, p. 266Google Scholar.

page 27 note 3 Les Persécutions dans l'Empire romain (1951), p. 18Google Scholar.

page 27 note 4 MAMA, I, No. 70, ll. 13 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 28 note 1 This Scoticism is an exact equivalent (there is none in English) of the Χρηστὴ πατρίς with which Avircius closes his epitaph; he begins it with ἐκλεκτῆς πόλεως ὁ πολείτης “citizen of a Chosen City”.

page 28 note 2 JRS, XVI, 1926, p. 73, No. 200Google Scholar.

page 29 note 1 I pointed this out in Philadelphia and Montanism, pp. 25 ff., unaware that I had been anticipated by Renan. Grégoire agrees, and by accepting the Eusebian date for the Martyrdom strengthens our joint case (Analecta Bollandiana, LXIX, p. 22)Google Scholar.

page 29 note 2 They even interlock; see MAMA, VI, No. 234.

page 30 note 1 Philadelphia and Montanism, p. 45.

page 31 note 1 MAMA, IV, No. 313.

page 31 note 2 Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres … (Academie royale de Belgique), XXXVIII, 1952, pp. 167 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 32 note 1 I have left γηροκομηθην, which scans and is therefore deliberate, without accent; Akakios means γηροκομηθῆναι.

page 32 note 2 See e.g. CR, LXII, 1948, p. 10Google Scholar, and remember Basil's dissertation on Classical Reading for Young Churchmen.

page 32 note 3 In view of the contrast implied in v. 15, τύμβοις ἰδίοισι should be so taken, rather than as an early example of the later use of ἴδιος: “the same grave.”

page 32 note 4 v. 19. Here ἐκέλευσεν·ἤ is also possible, but I think less likely.

page 33 note 1 See Philadelphia and Montanism, p. 33.

page 33 note 2 In the gap in v. 23 there is barely room for two letters. Ἀβραάμ, LXX, Gen. 175, is too long. Cf. Ἀβραμίοις κόλποις in MAMA, VII, no. 587 = MAMA, I, p. XXVIGoogle Scholar.

page 33 note 3 Text in MAMA, I, No. 157. See Wilhelm, Gr. Grabinschriften aus Kleinasien (1932) p. 37Google Scholar, and my criticism in Gnomon, X, 1934, p. 503Google Scholar.

page 33 note 4 Mustafa Bay, Librarian of the Vahid Library at Kutahia told me he had been schoolmaster at Gediz, and brought the stone to Kutahia.

page 34 note 1 See Cameron, in Anatolian Studies … Buckler, p. 28Google Scholar.

page 37 note 1 The inscription of Dineir published ibid., p. 111, as from my copy was not copied by me. I first recorded inscriptions at Dineir (Apameia) in 1930.