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The Hadrianic Inscription from the Caesareum at Cyrene

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Extract

In the Journal of Roman Studies, XL, 1950, 88–90, Mr. S. Applebaum published a number of inscriptions from Cyrene recording Hadrian's work in restoring the city after the devastation caused by the Jewish revolt late in Trajan's reign. One of these (D 1) consists of fragments of an inscription from the Caesareum, which Mr. Applebaum read as follows:—

[– –DIVI N]ER[V]AE NE[POS] TRAI[AN]VS H[ADRIANVS] AVGV

[STVS – –]/TP I[I COS] II BASILIC[AM – –]

The inscription was carved on the re-used limestone blocks of the Doric architrave which crowned the longitudinal porticos of the Basilica. But traces of the earlier, erased inscription are still visible in several places between the letters of the inscription now under discussion, and it is in the light of this fact, which was not noticed by Mr. Applebaum, that two alterations are here suggested in his reading of the inscription.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © E. Mary Smallwood 1952. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 On the Caesareum, , see Arch. Anz. LVI, 1941, 702–3Google Scholar, and JRS XXXVIII, 1948, 62–3Google Scholar.

2 For a plan of the site, see JRS l.c., fig. 7.

3 This was brought to my notice by Mr. J. B. Ward Perkins, who kindly provided photographs of the inscription. A grant was made towards the cost of the block for plate VII by the Cambridge Women's Research Club.

4 The blocks now lie on the site in the reverse order to that in which they are shown on plate VIII.

5 cf. the inscription from the Forum at Wroxeter, on which the surviving figure XIII has a superscript bar extending to the right beyond the last vertical stroke to the break in the stone, thus indicating that the figure was XIII and not XIII (see D. Atkinson, Report on the Excavations at Wroxeter (the Roman City of Viroconium) in the County of Salop, 1923–7 (1942), plate 1 and pp. 179–181, and JRS XIV, 244, pl. XXVII).