We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2013
The Βοσπορανοί said to be located in S.W. Caria in the Rhodian Peraea have given rise to some discussion in connection with the location of the demcs of the Rhodian Peraea. The evidence for them rests on one inscription of the Imperial period (wrongly stated by Fraser and Bean, Rh.Per. 61, to rest on two inscriptions: the same inscription was first referred to in one place, and then published in another), namely that mentioned by the brothers Michael and Niketas Chaviaras in Arch.Eph. 1907, col. 217, and subsequently published by them in Arch.Eph. 1911, 64 no. 58.
1 The reading is very clear on the excellent photograph of the squeeze given by them, ibid., and reproduced here from a fresh photograph of the same cliché (PLATE Xa). The stone, of the usual greyish limestone, originally salvaged from an islet near Buzburun in the Gulf of Syme by Demosthenes Chaviaras, was taken to Syme, and was still in the Chaviaras Collection there, when I saw it in 1972. I gave a photograph of the stone in Rhodian Funerary Monuments (Oxford 1977)Google Scholar fig. 54c; a new reproduction (PLATE Xb), from the same negative, shows the class of monument to which it belongs, and also the extent of the deterioration of the stone since it was originally published, partly as the result of the application of a coat of plaster at some time.
2 Rh.Per. 61. A coastal trip (1983) in the area has confirmed that, as Dr E. E. Rice originally pointed out to me, of the three large harbours along the north-western coast of the Peraea, that of Buzburun is both the most sheltered from the north and provides a good anchorage. This gives the area a good claim to be regarded as the site of a coastal deme-settlement (i.e. the Tymnioi): see Map II at the end of Rh.Per. (the later map in Bean, and Cook, , BSA lii [1957] 59Google Scholar, is of the north-eastern part of the Peraea only). There is a good sketch-map of the entire Peraea in Meyer, Ernst, Die Grenzen der Hellenistischen Staaten in Kleinasien (Zurich/Leipzig 1925)Google Scholar Blatt 1, but many of the identifications with ancient localities are obsolete.
3 There is already a selection of the abbreviations and brachygraphies used for Rhodian demotics in Index xi to IG xii.1 (p. 240). For further examples see e.g. NS 343, 2: NE 
= Νεοπολίτας (ditto, ASAA ii [1915] 158 no. 68) I; ibid. 344: = Πολίτας (or Ποντωρεύς?); ASAA ii (1915) 146 no. 18: ΠΑΛΑ (? = Παλαιοπολίτας); ibid. 156 no. 54: ΛΑΔ = Λαδάρμιος (for variant forms see IG xii.i loc. cit. s.v.); Cl.Rh. ii 229, no. 108: ΠΑΛ ( = Παλαιοπολίτας). In Tit.Cam. 4 (ASAA xi–xiii [1952] 157 ff.), the latest continuous section of the lists of damiourgoi, many of the demotics are abbreviated by suspension, not by a monogram (see p. 158, fig. 8a, b; ibid. 4k, 
= Κυμισαλεύς; ibid. no 57, Σιλ(ύριος); Suppl. Epig. Rod. no. 15, Βρυκο(ύντιος). Generally speaking, both on tombstones and in subscription-lists etc. the demotic is more frequently written in full.
4 A, however, might be taken as perhaps an indication of the elder Hestiodoros, but it is never so used in Rhodian territory, and where it is used (at Halicarnassos: see BMI 893, 30; 898, with n. ad loc.; BSA xlvii [1952] 137 no. 47) it stands for the more familiar B. I am therefore very hesitant to accept this reading or interpretation.
5 See e.g. IG xii.i 46 (c. 68 BC) line 18: ῾Αγήσανδρος ῾Αγησάνδρου τοῦ ᾿Αθανοδώρου; ibid. line 158: Διονύσιος [Διονυσί]ου τοῦ Εὐπ[ολέμου] (cf. ILind. 1, s. ann. 72 BC); ILind. ibid. s. ann. 83 BC: Εὐπόλεμος Εὐπολέμου τοῦ Τιμοκράτευς. An exact parallel, with letter and name, is ibid. 398 (c. AD 10): Πανσανίας [Β το]ῦ ῾Αγησάρχου.
6 E.g. in IG xii.1 46, the longest list of Rhodian names (some 500 different entries with patronymics largely preserved), no letter-symbols are used. On the other hand in ILind. 378 (27 BC) all instances of homonymity are denoted by letter-symbols (Β–Δ), but no second-generation relationships are recorded.
7 On a mummy-ticket, SD 835: Αὐρήλ(ιος) Τριπτόλεμος ὁ καὶ ᾿Επίμαχος, ἐτῶν κα εὐψύχι. The fem. Τριπτολέμα, ibid. 8284 (OGIS 699; republished, unbeknown to SB, in BSAAlex. xxxii [1938] 64). Paton restored [Τριπ]τͺολε[μος ] in a gladiator-relief, IG xii.2 455 (Robert, L., Les Gladiateurs [Paris 1940] 223Google Scholar no. 281) but the restoration is desperate. Note that a Λητόδωρος occurs in the Peraean deme of the Hygasseis, NS 91.
8 Apart from, e.g., the foreign sculptors (listed ILind. cols 51 ff.; cf. Rh.Fun.Mon. (n. i) n. 246), who obtained the title of ῾Ρόδιος after having passed through the phase of one ὧι ἁ ἐπιδαμία δέδοται, there are one or two cases in which actual demesmen seem to have foreign parentage: e.g. IG xii.1 1064, where a Kasia married an Ephesian and the children are Kasioi; the inscription is of a late date. The most familiar example is that of Hermogenes of the Lindian deme of the Brasioi, who himself was, like his father Philokrates (ὧι ἁ ἐπιδαμία δέδοται) an Ilian by origin: see IG xii. 1 189; Cl.Rh. ii 177 no. 6, line 70.
9 For Βοσπορανοί see IG xii.1 11; NS 166, both without patronymics (noted Rh.Per. 61). Morelli, , Studi Class. e Orient. v (1955) 126 ffGoogle Scholar. in his list of foreigners in Rhodes, includes Hestiodoros as a foreign Bosporanos.
I now note with pleasure that Dr J. Papachristodoulou, Ephor of Antiquities of the Dodecanese, also doubts the interpretation of the monogram in question: see his Ioannian dissertation, Συμβολή στήν ἱστορική καὶ ἀρχαιολογική ἔρευνα τῶν δήμων τῆς ἀρχαίας ῾Ροδιακῆς πολιτειάς, i: Ἰαλνσία (Athens 1983: shortly to be published in Athens in revised form) 70–1, with n. 305. Previous doubts as to the status of the Βοσπορανοί (e.g. Hiller, RE Suppl. v 753; Meyer, ibid. s.v. ‘Peraia’ 574; Robert, , Gnomon xxxi [1959] 19Google Scholar) have not led to a reconsideration of the text of the inscription.
