Dio in his imperial narrative has a distinctive technique of evaluating emperors, based on how he saw the informational constraints of the monarchical state. He tends to frame his assessments of emperors as descriptions of how they were perceived by contemporaries rather than as his own unique insights into how they ‘really’ were. This chapter applies James C. Scott's concept of ‘public transcripts’ and ‘hidden transcripts’ to Dio’s methodological statements and then his narrative of the Julio-Claudian, Flavian and Antonine emperors. Dio is a self-consciously acute and skeptical observer of the performance of imperial power and the reception of that performance by contemporary observers. This for him is a major component of what historiography exists to record in an environment where the actual realities of power politics cannot be fully known or discussed. The chapter concludes by looking at how this narrative stance changes in Dio’s contemporary narrative, in which he is a personal witness, but the emperors are youthful figureheads, whose performances become ever more detached from either the realities of politics or the experience of the senatorial aristocracy.

This chapter examines the roles of the Vedii in the cult of Artemis, Ephesos' premier goddess. Members of the family were priestesses, prytaneis, kouretes, and festival presidents. In the late second century they gave major material gifts to the goddess: the so-called stoa of Damianus, which I argue was actually paid for by his wife, Vedia Phaedrina, a dining hall in the Artemision, and an inheritance. These gifts to Artemis show that the cult of Artemis was alive and well in late second century Ephesos. Furthermore, supporting the cult of the goddess in various ways allowed the members of the family to publicly demonstrate their devotion to the city's protectress, and to gratify their fellow citizens with festivals, banquets, and buildings.

This chapter argues that Ephesos was a milieu de mémoire in the Noran sense, and that ancient Ephesians experienced its monuments (i.e buildings and inscriptions) in a way that elided distinctions between the past, present, and future. The material products of euergetism or public benefaction, that is, builidngs and statue monuments, embodied individual, family, and civic identities, and commemorated them in the landscape of the city.

This chapter focuses on the honorific monuments that professional and neighborhood-based associations raised to members of the Vedii family. Studying their linguistic formulae, and their archaeological and historical contexts, it clarifies the social situation, and hints at the economic relationships that the Vedii had with the makers and sellers of goods in Ephesos, who were part of the plebs media. These inscriptions allow us to see these associations as key constituents of the urban community and the Vedii as having economic interests in them. Furthermore, we are able to map physically the influence of the family on the city Ephesos by locating the places of the neighborhood associations that honored them.

The Vedii and the Flavii Vedii were major builders of civic buildings in Ephesos certainly by the second half of the second century CE. Members of the family constructed or renovated the bouleterion, Vedius' bath-gymnasium, the East bath-gymnasium, the Baths of Varius, and built harbor works. In this chapter I argue that each benefactor's choice of the kind of structure to build, together with its epigraphic and statue program, were key to his and his family's image construction. The chapter also considers the social groups or neighborhoods that a particular structure benefitted, who were its users, and how did they experience it. By the end of the second century the Vedii and the Flavii Vedii had imprinted their presence on the landscape of the city, from one end to the other.

This book started with the idea that the ancient urban environment was a landscape of memory (milieu de mémoire) where individual, family, and collective identities were constructed and evoked in the epigraphic and built environment. It has taken as a case study the best-known Ephesian family, the Vedii and their descendants the Flavii Vedii, who are commemorated in different kinds of inscriptions, and in buildings from the late first to mid-third century. They are a rare case in the provinces where we have good evidence for the activities of seven generations of an elite family. Their impact on the physical environment of Ephesos and their enduring legacy is remarkable. If we look beyond the words inscribed in stone, or the persons figured in static statues, or the gleaming marble of their structures, we see that the men and women of the family were active and visible members of their community and that they affected their city’s daily life. They walked its streets; they organized its festivals; they attended the meetings of its civic bodies; and they were recognized and acclaimed by its citizens. Inscriptions and buildings only vaguely hint at the relationships between members of the Ephesian community. However, it is through the close study of the inscriptions and the buildings that we ever so slightly lift the curtain, and glimpse the internal relations of a Romanized Greek city in the Eastern Empire.

This chapter provides a short history of the Vedii family and their descendants, the Flavii Vedii. It traces the origins of the Ephesian Vedii to Italy and probably to the family of P. Vedius Pollio. Using the earliest inscriptions naming Vedii in Ephesos, it highlights their shifting cultural affiliations. It also traces the strategies of adoption and marriage that members of the family employed to continue the family name, and their economic and social viability in Ephesos. It analyzes a long genealogical inscription to demonstrate how naming was an important commemorative practice for elite families.

Around 50 BCE a certain P. Vedius disembarked ship in Ephesos. He was Italian and a Roman citizen of free or freed status, and like many others, he came to Asia to make his fortune. He found success and stayed, setting down firm roots in its fertile soil. He married and had children and grandchildren, and he prospered. By the late first century CE,1 his descendants were among the wealthiest and most prominent citizens in Ephesos. Members of the family achieved the highest magistracies in the city, serving as grammateis and prytaneis, as priests and priestesses, and festival presidents. By the mid-second century, the Vedii became senators of Rome. However, this success did not cause them to cut ties with their adopted patris, Ephesos, where they had landed wealth, houses, business interests, and an affection for their new homeland. They continued to contribute their fortunes to Ephesos as euergetai (benefactors) in a series of building projects and in more ephemeral activities, such as sponsoring festivals. By the late second century this prolific family, having intermarried with another distinguished family of Ephesos, the Flavii, had Roman consuls in its ranks, and at least one house in one of Rome’s wealthiest districts. At the end of the Severan age they disappear from the historical record, like so many other individuals and families.2 Natural disasters and the political instability of the third century affected Ephesos deeply. An earthquake shook the city in 262. The following year, a band of Goths raided the city and burned the temple of Artemis to the ground. But even before this cataclysm, the epigraphic habit dropped off, a sign of political and economic malaise, and of social change. Civic authorities and individuals were no longer interested in raising honorific monuments to honor and commemorate benefactors, possibly because benefactors were no longer interested in demonstrating their philotimia (generosity, munificence) through office-holding, the sponsorship of festivals, and the financing of buildings. Thus by the mid-third century, we lose sight of the Vedii, although we know that some of their buildings and statues stood until the fifth century.