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Epigraphic Evidence for the Water-Supply of Aphrodisias1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

J. M. R. Cormack
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Extract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 49 , November 1954 , pp. 9 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1954

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References

2 Vagts, R., Aphrodisias in Karien, 1920, 46–7.Google Scholar

3 Ramsay, , CB 189Google Scholar (accepted by Ruge, in RE VI A, col. 1250Google Scholar, s.v. ‘Timeles’): ‘It was certainly the second (Carminius Claudianus) who introduced the water of the Timeles into Aphrodisias by means of an aqueduct. In honour of this important event, the city struck coins with the legend ΤΙΜΕΛΗС, which belong, as M. Waddington writes to me, to the age of the Antonines. The name could not be put on coins of the city until the aqueduct was made, for the riverdoes not belong to the territory of Aphrodisias, but to that of Herakleia Salbace.’ For an example of a coin with the legend ΤΙΜΕΛΗС see BMC Coins, Caria 29, no. 22. For a discussion of the Timeles and its relation with the water-supply of Aphrodisias, see L., and Robert, J., La Carie (1954), II 48–49.Google Scholar

4 See PIR 2 II 103, no. 433. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor, seems to place him in the Flavian period on p. 587, and in the age of the Antonines on p. 657.

5 See Liermann, , Analecta epigraphica 76 and 82Google Scholar, and Le Bas-Waddington, III 374, no. 1602 b.

6 American Council of Learned Societies, Bulletin 23, June, 1935, 29, 119–21.Google Scholar

7 JdI XIX (1904), 91–2.

8 Loc. cit. 49, n. 5.