II DATE AND PROSOPOGRAPHY

The inscription is dated ‘Year 91’ (line 23). Since the Sullan era (from autumn 85 b.c.) was in use at Akmoneia, our text can be firmly dated to the year A.D. 6/7.Footnote ¹¹ Corroboration is provided by the fact that two of the individuals mentioned in this inscription also appear on the contemporary coinage of Akmoneia. Krates son of Menokritos (lines 16–17), one of the three men responsible for the erection of the monument (and possibly Tatia's brother), is attested as a mint-magistrate at Akmoneia in the latter years of the reign of Augustus, and Menodotos Sillon (lines 6–8), Tatia's husband, minted one of the last issues of ‘autonomous’ brass coinage of Akmoneia (bust of Athena in Corinthian helmet and aegis/eagle alighting on thunderbolt, between two stars).Footnote ¹² The precise dating of the autonomous bronze and brass coinage of Akmoneia has hitherto been uncertain (late second/first century b.c.); this prosopographical connection now allows us to say with confidence that the end of the series immediately precedes, or even overlaps with, the earliest Roman provincial coinage of Akmoneia, around the turn of the era.

No fewer than three out of the five individuals mentioned in this inscription carried an additional name (ὁ καί/ἡ καί). Many such additional names probably originated as nicknames, as is explicit in an inscription from Kelenderis in Kilikia: ‘Here lies the son of Synegdemos, 18 years old; his mother and father named him Synegdemos, but everyone else called him Billos’; the name Βίλλος is an obscene nickname meaning ‘Balls’, ‘Ballsy’.Footnote ¹³ The additional name Σίλλων (here, line 8) is likely to be a nickname of exactly this type, meaning ‘Squint-eyed’ (<σιλλός).Footnote ¹⁴ The female name Τρυφῶσα (line 5) seems to have been widespread as a nickname (‘Dainty’).Footnote ¹⁵

Publius Petronius Epigenes (lines 19–20) seems not to be attested elsewhere. Given his Greek cognomen, it is likely that Epigenes (or his father) had gained the Roman citizenship by manumission through a member of the gens Petronia . The most likely candidate is perhaps Publius Petronius, an Italian negotiator on Delos in the early first century b.c.Footnote ¹⁶ Other Petronii continued to be prominent in the region of Akmoneia down to the third century a.d.: at neighbouring Diokleia, a certain Q. Petronius Capito Egnatianus was jointly responsible for the erection of a statue of the emperor Septimius Severus (a.d. 96/7), and at the village of Dioskome, on the territory of Sebaste, a Publius Petronius was jointly responsible for setting up a monument dedicated to the emperor Philip I (a.d. 248).Footnote ¹⁷

III GREEKS AND ROMANS AT AKMONEIA

The specification ‘both Greek and Roman’ appears on a handful of inscriptions from central Phrygia and eastern Lydia in the early Imperial period. In a dedicatory inscription from the reign of the emperor Tiberius, the inhabitants of a village on the territory of Akmoneia are described as τοῖς κατοικοῦσιν ἐν Πριζει Ῥωμαίοις καὶ Ἕλλησιν, ‘those living at Preizos (?), both Romans and Greeks’.Footnote ¹⁸ A dedication to the emperor Domitian from the vicinity of Blaundos, dated to a.d. 88, was set up by οἱ ἐν Ναει κατοικοῦντες Ῥωμαῖοί τε καὶ [Ἕλληνες], ‘those living at Naos (?), both Romans and Greeks’.Footnote ¹⁹ Finally, an honorific inscription of the late first century b.c. or early first century a.d. from the territory of Hyrkanis in eastern Lydia was set up by ὁ δῆμος [ὁ Λα?]σζεδδίων Ἕλληνέ[ς] κα [Ῥ]μαῖοι, ‘the demos of the Laszeddioi, both Greeks and Romans’.Footnote ²⁰ The phraseology of this last monument is particularly significant, implying as it does that the demos of the Laszeddioi was entirely composed of ‘Greeks and Romans’; that is to say, the term Ἕλληνες was used to refer to all those in the community who were not Romans, not merely to the ethnically ‘Greek’ inhabitants of the village (as opposed to its indigenous Lydian population). At Akmoneia, therefore, the phrase ‘Greek wives’ (αἱ γυναῖκες Ἑλληνίδες) is best understood as a way of referring to the wives of all male Akmoneian citizens, whatever their ‘real’ ethnic origin. The corporate body of ‘the Greek and Roman wives’ (αἱ γυναῖκες Ἑλληνίδες τε καὶ Ῥωμαῖαι) thus corresponds precisely to the male decision-making body of the city, ‘the boule and the demos (of the Akmoneians) and the resident Romans’ (ἡ βουλὴ καὶ ὁ δῆμος [ὁ Ἀκμονέων] καὶ οἱ κατοικοῦντες Ῥωμαῖοι).Footnote ²¹

Groups of ‘resident Romans’ (οἱ κατοικοῦντες Ῥωμαῖοι) are known at numerous cities of inland Asia Minor in the late Republican and early Imperial period, often organized into formal ‘associations of Roman citizens’ (conventus civium Romanorum ). In a handful of instances, these associations are explicitly described as consisting of businessmen (conventus civium Romanorum qui … negotiantur ).Footnote ²² Very little is known about the rôle played by these communities in the civic government of their host cities. At Apameia-Kelainai in southern Phrygia, public decisions seem regularly to have been made in the name of ‘the boule, the demos, and the resident Romans’ well into the latter half of the second century a.d.Footnote ²³ From the mid-first century a.d. onwards, members of these immigrant communities are occasionally attested holding civic office at the cities in which they resided. An inscription from Apameia dated to a.d. 45/6 commemorates the first occasion on which Roman citizens held all five posts in the Apameian civic archon -college; four of these five posts were held by expatriate Italians.Footnote ²⁴

The involvement of the resident Romans in the civic affairs of Akmoneia is neatly illustrated by the career of M. Iunius M.f. Sab. Lupus, an Italian domiciled at Akmoneia during the reign of Nero. Iunius’ name appears on two Greek public inscriptions of Akmoneia, one dated to a.d. 64, in which he appears as one of the city's three dogmatographoi, the other dated to a.d. 68, in which he appears as one of the city's three archontes, holding that office for the second time.Footnote ²⁵ In each case, Iunius is the sole Roman citizen mentioned in the text; the other two dogmatographoi (Artemon son of Artemon, Patron son of Demades, grandson of Asklepiades) and the other two archontes (Menekrates son of Kokos, Glykon son of Menophantos) all have good Greek names. By a happy coincidence, Iunius Lupus’ tombstone was discovered by Michael Ballance in 1956 at the village of Susuz, c. 5 km west of Ahat.

Ballance archive no. 1956/61 (Susuz). White marble block with tabula ansata, apparently complete. Ht. 0.65 m; W. 0.73 m; Th. –; letters 0.022–0.028 m. Date: late first century a.d.Fig. 3.

FIG. 3. Funerary monument of L. Aelius Venustus, Tyrannia Veneria, M. Iunius Lupus and Aelia Marcella (Susuz: Akmoneia).

This tombstone appears to be the only monolingual Latin inscription from Akmoneia.Footnote ²⁶ The fact that a single tombstone was used for both couples is best explained on the assumption that Aelia L.f. Marcella, the wife of M. Iunius Lupus, was the daughter of the other couple named in the inscription, L. Aelius L.f. Venustus and Tyrannia Veneria. We have already seen that Iunius Lupus was a prominent figure in the civic government and public life of Akmoneia, holding local office alongside native Akmoneians who did not possess the Roman citizenship. As we learn from his tombstone, Iunius chose to marry the daughter of another Italian expatriate at Akmoneia, L. Aelius Venustus; when preparing their funerary monument, the two men chose to have it inscribed in Latin, not in Greek. To judge from Iunius Lupus’ behaviour, as late as the 60s a.d., Akmoneia remained a culturally and linguistically ‘bilingual’ community, in which even those resident Romans who were best integrated into the local civic government still chose, in the private sphere, to privilege their Latin, non-Akmoneian origins.

The prominent Roman presence at Akmoneia in the early Imperial period is best explained in relation to the town's geographical position, controlling one of the two major west–east routes across the Asia Minor peninsula. This road begins at Sardeis in the lower Hermos valley, and climbs east-north-east through the gentle hill-country of the upper Hermos river (the modern Gediz Çayı) as far as the ancient town of Temenouthyrai (modern Uşak). Here the road skirts the southern flank of the imposing massif of Mt Dindymos (Murat Dağı), running north-east through the fertile Plain of Doias (the Banaz ovası), before reaching the fringe of the Anatolian plateau at modern Afyon Karahisar.Footnote ²⁷ The site of Akmoneia overlooks this road from the south, at the point where it passes through a narrow bottleneck along the valley of the Banaz Suyu (the ancient river Sindros), between the Murat Dağı and Çatma Dağı mountain ranges. Akmoneia was thus particularly well situated to control the commercial traffic between the lowlands of western Asia Minor and the Anatolian plateau to the east.Footnote ²⁸

FIG. 4. Map of Central and Southern Phrygia.

The earliest evidence for Akmoneia's development as a commercial centre dates to the period of the Mithradatic wars.Footnote ²⁹ In the late 70s or early 60s b.c. a slave-market (statarion) was established at the city. The statarion was paid for by C. Sornatius C.f. Barba of Picenum, Lucullus’ legate in Asia Minor during his campaigns against Mithradates; the original function of this slave-market may well have been to process the vast numbers of war-captives from Lucullus’ Asiatic campaigns.Footnote ³⁰ This slave-market was still in existence in a.d. 68, when a certain Demades son of Dionysogenes set up a statue of Hermes and other dedications ‘at the statarion’.Footnote ³¹ The Akmoneians had a patron at Rome in the late Republican period, Q. Decimius Q.f., about whom nothing is known.Footnote ³² By the late 60s b.c., Akmoneia was a wealthy place. In the course of his governorship of Asia in 62/1 b.c., L. Valerius Flaccus was said to have extorted 206,000 drachmae from the city of Akmoneia; this enormous sum, which was supposedly paid by an individual citizen of Akmoneia, a certain Asklepiades, is some indication of the prosperity of Akmoneia during this period.Footnote ³³ It may have been around this time that Akmoneia began minting its own bronze and brass coinage, on the same denominational structure and with similar types to the much larger coinage of Apameia-Kelainai, 75 km south-east of Akmoneia.Footnote ³⁴

The large number of Italian businessmen resident at Akmoneia in the late Republican and early Imperial period can be inferred from the unusually wide variety of non-imperial gentilicians attested at Akmoneia in the first three centuries a.d. Some of these gentilicians were relatively common in the Greek world (Atilius, Aufidius, Calvisius, Clodius, Furius, Naevius, Papirius, Vibius); others were distinctly rare, or even unique (Afranius, Catilius, Clutorius, Mevius, Musetius, Pacilius, Titedius, Trollius, Turronius).Footnote ³⁵ Most of these families were presumably the descendants of freedmen of Italians in business at Akmoneia in the last century of the Republic and the early years of the Principate.

In one instance, it may be possible to trace the origins of a prominent family at Akmoneia to the activities of one specific late Republican businessman. In the course of the second and early third centuries a.d., several individuals with the gentilician Egnatius appear at Akmoneia. The earliest attested member of the family seems to be L. Egnatius L.f. Teretina Quartus, who pursued an equestrian military career in the first half of the second century a.d.Footnote ³⁶ Quartus was a native of Akmoneia, where he was honoured as ‘founder and benefactor of his homeland’.Footnote ³⁷ An Egnatius Rapo and an Egnatius Vitellianus are also attested at Akmoneia, and four Egnatii appear on an inscription from the village of Dioskome, close to the south-western borders of Akmoneian territory.Footnote ³⁸ An inscription from neighbouring Diokleia dated to a.d. 196/7 mentions a certain Q. Petronius Capito Egnatianus and his son Marcus; the cognomen Egnatianus should derive from his mother's nomen Egnatia.Footnote ³⁹

The tribal affiliation of L. Egnatius L.f. Teretina Quartus provides us with a clue to the origins of the Akmoneian Egnatii. A haruspex and magistrate by the name of L. Egnatius L.f. T[er.] Mamaecianus is attested at Venafrum in the first century b.c., but there is no reason to suspect that he had any connection with the province of Asia.Footnote ⁴⁰ A more interesting possibility is that the Akmoneian Egnatii might ultimately be connected to the equestrian financier L. Egnatius Rufus, whom Cicero could describe as ‘the closest to me of all Roman equites’.Footnote ⁴¹ It is very likely that Egnatius Rufus belonged to the tribe Teretina, since he is probably identical with the Egnatius Sidicinus (i.e. a native of Teanum Sidicinum) with whom Cicero had financial dealings in early 50 b.c.Footnote ⁴² Between 51 and 46 b.c., Cicero wrote several letters recommending Rufus to various Roman officials in the provinces of Asia, Cilicia and Bithynia-Pontus. He urged the governor of Cilicia to look favourably on the activities of Egnatius’ local agent in the region, a certain Q. Oppius, who was based at Philomelion in Phrygia Paroreios. In the province of Asia, Egnatius’ interests were represented by his slave Anchialos, whom Cicero recommended to the provincial quaestor.Footnote ⁴³ Given L. Egnatius Rufus’ business activities in the province of Asia (and the neighbouring part of Cilicia, Phrygia Paroreios), it is very attractive to suppose that the Egnatii of Akmoneia might be descended from one of Rufus’ freedmen.

IV THE WOMEN OF AKMONEIA

As we have seen, the chief point of interest in the inscription is the honouring body in lines 1–3 of the text, ‘the Greek and Roman wives’. The existence of a corporate body of this type is not in itself unprecedented. In the small towns of Italy and the Greek world in the late Republican and Roman Imperial periods, ‘the wives of the citizens’ could, in certain contexts, be conceptualized as a separate corporate group within civic communities. A number of inscriptions from the sanctuaries of Lagina and Panamara on the territory of Stratonikeia in Karia refer to a πολίτευμα τῶν γυναικῶν, a ‘civic body of adult women/wives’.Footnote ⁴⁴ Similarly, at Lanuvium in Latium, at an uncertain date in the Roman Imperial period, a curia mulierum is attested as receiving an epulum duplum; the term curia here, like politeuma in the inscriptions from Lagina and Panamara, probably marks the status of the women as wives of the male members of a curia at Lanuvium.Footnote ⁴⁵ At Stratonikeia, the politeuma of women seems to have existed solely for the purpose of receiving cash-distributions and participating in banquets; in one inscription, a priest at Panamara is said to have ‘summoned the politeuma of wives, and given to each of them, along with the customary things, one denarius per head; and likewise to those local [i.e. non-citizen] and foreign wives who come up to the sanctuary with their husbands…’.Footnote ⁴⁶ A comparable distinction between different classes of female recipients of cash-distributions appears in an inscription from Carsulae in Umbria of the late second or third century A.D., in which a distribution of one denarius per head is offered to the mulieribus matron(is) et libertin(is). Footnote ⁴⁷

What is so surprising about the new Akmoneian inscription is not the existence of a corporate body of ‘wives of the citizens’ per se ; the extraordinary element lies in the women's behaviour as active political agents. Even though the collective body of ‘citizen wives’ could be conceptualized as possessing a political personality, as suggested by the use of terms such as politeuma or curia to describe them, the rôle played in civic life by these women was, under most circumstances, a purely passive one.Footnote ⁴⁸ ‘At this stage in their lives, women, as a civic category, clearly have no formal role to play any more beyond that of recipients of distributions or participants en groupe in processions and in civic and religious banquets’.Footnote ⁴⁹ To this generalization, the decree of the citizen wives of Akmoneia for the high-priestess Tatia stands out as a lonely and baffling exception.

Tatia herself is a figure of a familiar type. The banquets and cash-distributions from which these corporate bodies of women benefited were often provided at the expense of (or at least in the name of) individual female benefactors.Footnote ⁵⁰ A statue-base from Veii in Etruria honours Caesia Sabina for having provided a banquet for ‘the mothers of the centumviri, and their sisters and daughters, and the wives of the municipes of every ordo ’.Footnote ⁵¹ In an honorific decree of the mid-first century a.d., the local benefactor Epameinondas of Akraiphia in Boiotia is said to have provided a midday meal for the entire citizen population of Akraiphia, along with their male children and slaves, over a ten-day festival period; his wife Kotila similarly provided a midday meal for ‘the wives of the citizens and the unmarried girls and the female slaves’.Footnote ⁵² A statue-base from Herakleia under Salbake in Karia describes the offices held and benefactions performed by Ammia, daughter of Charmides, wife of C. Aburnius Eutychianus, ‘having also herself provided distributions for all the wives of the bouleutai and citizens’.Footnote ⁵³ The phraseology (δοῦσαν καὶ αὐτὴν διανομάς) makes it clear that Ammia's cash distributions to the women of Herakleia are mirroring distributions made by her husband to the male bouleutai and citizens of Herakleia.Footnote ⁵⁴

Such ‘mirrored’ husband-and-wife benefactions may provide some help in explaining the context of the honours voted by the Greek and Roman wives of Akmoneia for Tatia. In lines 6–8 of our inscription, Tatia is situated in relation to her husband Menodotos Sillon, who (as we have seen) was a prominent member of the civic élite of Akmoneia around the turn of the era. In the Roman Imperial period, husband and wife (or mother and son) pairs who had held office together, particularly as priest and priestess, were frequently honoured with twin statues and twin honorific inscriptions.Footnote ⁵⁵ It is possible that the surviving monument is one of a pair of honorific stelai, set up simultaneously for Tatia and her husband Menodotos. If this were the case, it would be attractive to suppose that Menodotos might have been honoured by the men of Akmoneia (ἡ βουλὴ καὶ ὁ δῆμος ὁ Ἀκμονέων καὶ οἱ κατοικοῦντες Ῥωμαῖοι) for his benefactions to them, while Tatia was honoured by the women (αἱ γυναῖκες Ἑλληνίδες τε καὶ Ῥωμαῖαι).

Nevertheless, none of this renders the honorific inscription for Tatia from Akmoneia any less remarkable. As we have seen, for a corporate body of women to take either sole responsibility or joint responsibility with the male members of their community for a public monument of this kind is entirely unprecedented in the cities of the Greek world under the Principate. The best parallels for the Akmoneian monument come from Italy in the Roman Imperial period, where a handful of monuments show corporate bodies of women dedicating statues of benefactors, both male and female. At Trebula Mutuesca in Latium in the mid-second century a.d., the mulieres Trebulanae dedicated a statue of Laberia Hostilia, and at Carsulae in Umbria in the late second or early third century, the mulieres matronae et libertin(ae) dedicated a statue of C. Tifanus Agricola.Footnote ⁵⁶ At Tuficum, also in Umbria, a statue of Camurena C.f. Celerina was dedicated by the municipes et incol(ae) Tuf(icani) utriusque sexus, and at Surrentum, the matronae dedicated a statue of a priestess of Venus.Footnote ⁵⁷ From the eastern half of the Roman Empire, the only remotely parallel case is a bilingual private monument of the Severan period from Colonia Iulia Augusta Diensis in Macedonia, in which ‘the wives of the coloni and incolae ’ honour a female benefactor (Anthestia P.l. Iucunda) with a statue.Footnote ⁵⁸ However, the stele for Tatia from Akmoneia is not a private, but a public monument, as lines 15–23 (concerning the erection of the monument by civic officials) make clear; the women of Akmoneia are acting, with male approval and support, as a public body in their own right.

It is at least possible that the explanation for this unique document of collective activity by the corporate body of women at Akmoneia might lie in the specific circumstances of the time at which the monument was erected. As we have seen, the inscription is dated to the year a.d. 6/7. The reign of Caesar Augustus had seen significant changes in the rôles played by women in Roman public life. In particular, the institutionalization of the family of Augustus as the central organ of the Roman state had brought with it an increasingly prominent public rôle for his wife Livia as princeps femina, ‘first lady’ among Roman women.Footnote ⁵⁹ This symbolic status was reflected in numerous public acts and benefactions by Livia on behalf of the women of Rome. On the occasion of Tiberius’ triumph over the Germans in 7 b.c., Dio informs us that Tiberius offered a feast for the Senate on the Capitol, while Livia feasted ‘the women’ (presumably the senators’ wives) on her own account (ἰδίᾳ).Footnote ⁶⁰ Many years later, when the widowed Livia planned to invite the senators and equestrians and their wives to a banquet to mark the dedication of an imago of Augustus, Tiberius issued the invitations to the male guests in his own name; Livia, as princeps femina, could appropriately offer a banquet only to the wives of the Roman élite.Footnote ⁶¹

It would be surprising if this new way of conceptualizing the position of women in the Roman state — as symbolically organized into an ordo matronarum, with a single woman at its head — had no influence on the behaviour of the local élites in the Roman provinces. Indeed, in one instance, we can see the influence of Augustus’ promotion of Livia as princeps femina on the behaviour of the civic élites of Asia Minor very clearly. At Eumeneia in southern Phrygia, a small bronze coinage was minted during the reign of Augustus with the portrait and name of Livia on the obverse; the mint-magistrate, whose name appears on the reverse within a wreath, was a woman, Kastoris ‘sotira’.Footnote ⁶² This is, to all appearances, the earliest instance of a coinage minted by a female magistrate anywhere in the Greek world. In the Phrygian Pentapolis, east of Eumeneia, a bronze coinage was minted after Augustus’ death with the portrait and name of ‘Augusta’ (Σεβαστή, i.e. Livia) on the obverse, and the name of another woman, Apphia ‘hierea’ (‘priestess’) on the reverse.Footnote ⁶³ A generation later, during the reign of Nero, a brass and bronze coinage was minted at Eumeneia with the names and portraits of Nero and Agrippina II; the coins in the name of Nero were minted by Iulius Kleon ‘the high-priest of Asia’, while those in the name of Agrippina were minted by Kleon's wife Bassa ‘the high-priestess’.Footnote ⁶⁴ Kleon's coins carried on the reverse an image of the deity Apollo Propylaios with his characteristic attribute, a double-axe, while Bassa's coins depicted the goddess Kybele and her attributes, a tympanon and lion's head; no doubt Kleon and Bassa had at some point served as high-priest and high-priestess of the Eumeneian civic cults of Apollo and Kybele respectively. Similar examples of ‘paired’ coinages minted by men and women in the name of emperors and empresses continue in later periods.Footnote ⁶⁵

The decree of the women of Akmoneia in honour of their benefactor Tatia could be interpreted as another kind of local response to the new Augustan ideological programme. At Rome, Livia had been placed in an unprecedented and highly visible position as the princeps of a nominal ordo of women, the female equivalent of the male populus Romanus at whose head the princeps Augustus now sat. For the Akmoneian ordo matronarum to pass a decree in honour of their own local princeps femina, the high-priestess Tatia, may have seemed like an appropriate way of reflecting this ideological system at the civic level. In fact, at Rome, Livia's ideological prominence was not accompanied by any real auctoritas or political power, since the Roman ordo matronarum of the early Principate remained an entirely passive body, devoid of autonomy and existing solely for the purpose of receiving benefactions from their female princeps; indeed, it is possible to interpret Livia's sharply and restrictively defined public rôle as ‘really the reverse of a movement towards a serious change in the social role of women, and so … no exception to the repressive stabilizing intended by Augustus’ programme as a whole’.Footnote ⁶⁶ For a collective body of women to be licensed to engage in active, quasi-political behaviour of the kind attested in the Akmoneian decree for Tatia was not part of the new Augustan gender ideology at all.

Nonetheless, there is no reason to expect that the normative purpose of the Augustan social programme would necessarily have been instantly and accurately understood and assimilated in a small town at the opposite end of the Roman Empire. It seems to me at least possible that the male inhabitants of Akmoneia, in licensing this unparalleled outbreak of female political action, were attempting to replicate social developments in the metropolis in their own small provincial community. If this interpretation is broadly correct, the assembly of the Greek and Roman women of Akmoneia is perhaps best read as a short-lived misunderstanding of what was going on in Augustan Rome. At any rate, better counsels soon prevailed; the ‘Greek and Roman wives’ are not heard of again, either at Akmoneia or anywhere else.