¹ An earlier version of this paper was read to the Ancient History Seminar at the Institute of Classical Studies in London on 3 May 1990. I would like to thank the members of the Seminar and the Editorial Committee of JRS for their comments and criticisms of the paper. I alone am responsible for the ideas expressed in this paper, which I would like to dedicate to O.A.R.

In addition to the usual abbreviations, the following will be used:

Gauthier (1985): P. Gauthier, Les Cités grecques et leurs bienfaiteurs (IV^e–I^er siècle avant J.-C.) (1985).

IvE: Wankel, H., Die Inschriften von Ephesos, vol. Ia (1979)Google Scholar.

Jones (1990): C. P. Jones, ‘A new Lycian dossier establishing an artistic contest and festival in the reign of Hadrian’, JRA 3 (1990), 484–8.

Mitchell (1990): Mitchell, S., ‘Festivals, games, and civic life in Roman Asia Minor’, JRS 80 (1990), 183–93Google Scholar.

Rogers (1991): Rogers, G., The Sacred Identity of Ephesos: Foundation Myths of a Roman City (1991)Google Scholar.

Wörrle (1988): Wörrle, M., Stadt und Fest im kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien: Studien zu einer agonistischen Stiftung aus Oinoanda (1988)Google Scholar.

Veyne (1976): Veyne, P., Le Pain et le cirque: sociologie historique d'un pluralisme politique (1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

Veyne (1990): Veyne, P., Bread and Circuses, trans. Pearce, B. (1990)Google Scholar.

² The order and prizes of the competitions are set out in lines 38 to 46 of the foundation dossier as published by Wörrle (1988), 8.

³ Translation of lines 38–46 by Mitchell (1990), 184–5.

⁴ Translation by Mitchell (1990), 185–6 of lines 68 to 80 of the dossier.

⁵ Wörrle (1988), 257–8: ‘Demosthenes dürfte mit dem musischen Agon, den er seiner γλυχυτάτη πατρίς schenkte, also die Absicht verfolgt haben, Oinoanda eine Gelegenheit zur Selbstdarstellung als griechische Polis zu geben; sie sollte ihre Identität in der Besinnung auf die hellenische Tradition finden, die den Festteilnehmern durch das Programm in bunter Fülle vor Augen trat, aber eben nicht als Vergangenheit besichtigt, sondern in der Gemeinsamkeit des Feierns vergegenwärtigt wurde. Ungeachtet ihrer tatsächlichen ethnischen Herkunft eröffnete sich den Τερμησσεῖς von Oinoanda mit dem agonistischen Austausch ein wichtiger Zugang zur griechischen Kulturgemeinschaft der umgebenden Städte, was so sehr im Sinne Hadrians war, daβ dieser die Initiative nur begrüβen konnte. “Discontent with the present” läβt sich als Motiv des ehemaligen Procurators Demosthenes nicht feststellen, und das Fest scheint griechische Tradition und Kaiserkult in spannungsloser Selbstverständlichkeit miteinander verbunden zu haben.’

The arguments presented in this paper about the specific issue of what the foundation has to tell us about the relationship between Greek tradition and the imperial cult at Oenoanda do not alter my judgement that Wörrle has provided ancient historians with the most thorough, learned, and accurate explication of any single inscription from the Roman empire, and an invaluable bibliographical resource for further research on the cities of Asia Minor during the imperial period.

⁶ For the text of the Salutaris foundation see IvE no. 27.

⁷ See Mitchell (1990), 190.

⁸ Mitchell (1990), 189.

⁹ See the comments of Jones, A. H. M., The Greek City from Alexander to Justinian (1940), 247ff.Google Scholar; Veyne(1990), 1–3; Gauthier (1985), 1–6.

¹⁰ Wörrle (1988), 257–8; the model Wörrle and others have used to explain how such benefactions were created might be called the philotimia model. In this model, a benefactor, motivated by religious sentiment, regard for fellow citizens, and the desire for posthumous prestige, bequeaths a relatively limited range of objects, usually money or income-bearing land, to a city or some subdivision of it, in exchange for the increased status or posthumous glory which the city could confer. (For another recent example of the use of this model see Johnston, D., ‘Munificence and municipia: bequests to towns in classical Roman law’, JRS 75 (1985), 105–25.Google Scholar) This model is essentially utilitarian in its conception of social action, and, for our purposes, the key assumption of this model — encoded in historians' use of the Greek abstract noun philotimia to describe a whole variety of social acts — is that it was the benefactor who not only initiated the exchange, but determined the objects of the exchange, and their symbolic value. Scholars who have employed this model usually have underemphasized or completely ignored the extent to which, as Mauss, M. pointed out long ago (originally in ‘Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaîques’, Année n.s. 1 (1925), 30–186Google Scholar; translated by Cunnison, I. as The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (1967)Google Scholar), in such exchanges the city, or groups of beneficiaries, could impose obligations and values upon benefactors both through demands for certain kinds of services and amenities, as well as the act of receiving them. In few of the cases where this kind of model has been employed to describe euergetism in the Graeco-Roman World (and this is probably still the dominant model), are there references to the demoi, or bodies of citizens, playing active roles in these gift-giving exchanges.

¹¹ Line 12 in Wörrle's text.

¹² Line 47 in Wörrle's text.

¹³ Line 51:

¹⁴ Robert, L., Hellenica 1 (1940), 50–1Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Lines 3–4, …

¹⁶ Lines 58–9, …

¹⁷ Line 100, …

¹⁸ Lines 100–1, …

¹⁹ These technical arrangements, which I do see as an amplification of provisions made in the first proclamation, included detailed provisions for the agonothete to choose subordinate officials of the festival (panegyriarchs, sebastophoroi, mastigophoroi, agelarchs), the privileges of the agonothete (especially his exemption from liturgies), and the tax-free status of the festival, confirmation for which was to be sought from the Roman governor, as well as provision for inscribing and publicizing the documents.

²⁰ It is true that in the original plan of the festival on the fifth day, a competition for writers of encomia in prose was set up (lines 39–40). The inscription, however, does not say that these encomia were for the emperor,

²¹ Wörrle (1988), 234–6.

²² Jones (1990), 486.

²³ Lines 42–3.

²⁴ Line 27.

²⁵ Lines 52–3.

²⁶ Non-Greek names of villages and farmsteads of course do not necessarily imply that non-Greeks lived in these villages.

²⁷ Line 68 f.

²⁸ Price, S., Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (1984), 1 f.Google Scholar

²⁹ Veyne (1990), 12. According to Veyne, the euergetes provided collective benefits to all who both wanted and expected them, without discrimination. The betterment the euergetes brought was the same for everyone, whoever it was that was making the sacrifice to provide the benefits for the cities. The key assumption about the success of the institution is that the euergesiai, or collective benefits, were undifferentiated within the cities, and therefore did not give rise to potential divisions among the demoi, or citizen assemblies.

³⁰ Line 68 f.

³¹ Wörrle (1988), 100.

³² Wörrle (1988), 103 sees the position of the civic priest of the emperors and the priestess in the hierarchy of offices as an indication of their importance and high rank in the city, which he believes is confirmed throughout the Demosthenes-dossier (p. 105). The problem with this view is that the civic priest and the priestess simply cannot be found in the original proclamation of 25 July AD. 124. They only appear in those parts of the dossier dated to 5 July A.D. 125, or after. Nor can I agree with the assertion (p. 104) that there was no meeting of the boule, no assembly, no agon thinkable at Oenoanda without sacrifice to the emperor. Surely this is precisely what the first proclamation presents us with evidence for: an agon with no sacrifices to or for an emperor involving any priest or priestess of any emperor at all.

³³ Unfortunately there are few Hellenistic inscriptions which would help us to date the origins of the civic institutions of Oenoanda. We do know, however, that the cult of Zeus was well-established in the city at least by the early second century B.C., according to the numismatic evidence, as Wörrle himself points out (p. 107). As for the other offices and institutions included in the list of sacrificers, Wörrle adduces parallels for them in other Lykian cities, often dating to the Hellenistic period, but it must be admitted that our information for these bodies at Oenoanda specifically comes from inscriptions of the second and third centuries A.D. (that is, after the date of the Demosthenes’ foundation).

³⁴ See the remarks of J. Coulton, PCPS 29 (1983), 17.

³⁵ For the first reference to a temple and priest of Caesar during the Augustan era, set IGRR III (1906), no. 482.

³⁶ Gauthier (1985).

³⁷ Especially Gruen, E., JHS 107 (1987), 230CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ For the importance of Veyne's attempt to refute the Marxist idea of the ‘dépolitisation’ of the masses in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, see the original review of Veyne (1976) by F. Millar in the TLS (24 March 1978), 356.

³⁹ IvE no. 27, 419–25.

⁴⁰ Geography XIII.4.17.

⁴¹ See Rogers (1991), Ch. 4.

⁴² See Rogers (1991), Chs 2 and 3.

⁴³ Rogers (1991), Ch. 5.