The main epigraphic evidence for the water-supply of Aphrodisias in Roman times is to be found in the fragmentary inscriptions published by Doublet and Deschamps in BCH XIV (1890), 611–13, nos. 7–10, and CIG 2782, ll. 40–2. From the former group of texts it has been assumed that two water-systems were installed, one in the time of Vespasian and the other in the time of Domitian; I hope to show that these texts refer to one water-system only, that built in the time of Domitian. From the latter passage it has sometimes been thought that M. Ulpius Carminius Claudianus paid for the laying-on of the waters of the river Timeles to the city in the age of the Antonines. This assumption rested on the false reading ὲλ[ειο]δ[ι]ὰκτο[υ]ς introduced by Boeckh. The word ὲλειοδὶὰκτος is taken to mean a ‘conduit for draining marshes’ (LS9, s.v.). Sherard's copy preserves the true reading ἒλ <α> ια δρακτοῖς πολλὰκις τεθεικὸτα. All that can be proved by the inscription is that Carminius Claudianus made several distributions of oil ὲν τῶ̣ καιρῶ̣ τῆς τοῦ Τε<ι>μὲλου ποταμοῦ εἰσαγωγῆς (l. 41); there is no proof that he paid for the construction of the aqueduct.

The epigraphic evidence for the earlier water-system rests on the reconstruction of the text of which BCH XIV (1890), 611–13, nos. 7 (cf. REG XIX (1906), 223–4, no. 126), 8 and 9 are fragments; no. 10 seems to be part of another copy of this, or a similar, inscription. Of these fragments the only one found by the expedition led by Professor Calder in 1934 was no. 7; the improved readings in this inscription are from a photograph.