Epigraphy and Civic Identity

The earliest evidence for the Koinon of the Cities in Pontus, comprised of a group of cities in coastal Paphlagonia, is a Trajanic honorific inscription, which happens to be one of two lost "official documents – as Søren Sørensen (2016) describes them – that provide the full title of the koinon’s existence, as well as some indication that their findspots at Amastris and Heraclea were likely the metropoleis of the koinon (Sørensen 2016, p. 73-74).

In 2014 a new fragmentary epigram from the late sixth century BCE from Thebes was published that appears to record the retrieval of a shield dedicated by Croesus, the king of Lydia, an incident that is also mentioned in Herodotus 1.52 (Papazarkadas). A recent article argues, the offering was made by an Athenian Croesus, thought to be an Alcmaeonid, rather than the Lydian (Thonemann 2016).

The goal of this paper is to examine the model of Ptolemaic hegemonic control at work in Cyprus from the perspective of Hellenistic state formation and the epigraphic representation of power in imperial and local terms. In 313/12 BCE, Ptolemy I arrested or killed four of the seven Cypriot city-kings (Diodorus 19.79.3-4) and, following the death of Nikokreon of Salamis in 311/10, took control of the island by installing Menelaus, his own brother, as the king of Salamis and the commander of Ptolemaic forces on the island.

I present new results in the digital analysis of inscriptions through a case study focused on IG XIV 1, the early sixth-century BCE text carved into the stylobate of the temple of Apollo at Syracuse. Over the past 150 years, scholars attempting a restoration have been challenged by the text’s unusual letterforms and location—on the first extant Doric temple in Sicily—and the lack of formulas found in later dedicatory inscriptions (Oliverio 1933; Guarducci 1949; 1982; and Svenson-Evers 1996 no. 42 compile the full bibliography).

In his 2004 book on Greek mercenaries in the Archaic and Classical periods, Matthew Trundle argues that a fighter could only be considered a mercenary if he was under contract to fight. Within this model, the label “mercenary” – that is, a fighter whose interest in a conflict is solely the fact that he is being paid to be there – becomes a temporary status, not a permanent identity.