Epigraphy and History

Sanctuary management in the Classical and Hellenistic period presented complex administrative challenges. Sanctuary officials held copious responsibilities including conducting sacrifices, protecting sacred property, documenting dedications, and auditing sanctuary finances. Many times, these officials had to publish detailed records of sanctuary holdings and finances as a responsibility of holding office.

An unpublished Greek inscription at the University of Mississippi, acquired by David M. Robinson sometime before 1958, lacks, frustratingly, any information about its modern history. Its importance for ancient history, however, is revealed through the names of Philip V, the Lysimacheians, and the key clauses of their treaty of 202 BC. What was the function, though, of a 40-gram gold tablet, the size of your palm, inscribed with the epitome of a treaty?

In the Roman province of Bithynia et Pontus, village settlements dominated the landscape, with cities located only intermittently between them, such that we might speak of cities as “islands” among the countryside. Yet scholarship to-date on Bithynian culture almost exclusively focuses on its major cities and the ascent of Bithynian elites to key political offices in the Roman government (e.g. Bekker-Nielson 2008; Madsen 2009).

This paper examines a Sinopean victory list of the boxer Marcus Iutius Marcianus Rufus (French 2004: 76-77 no. 105) and the implications of counting the number of victories he won. Inscribed and set up by the Sinopean boule, the list represents an official recognition of the athlete's successful boxing career, which not only included victories in the four periodoi of mainland Greece, but also the Capitoline and Neapolitan games in Italy.

The practice of renaming traditional Greek months, which almost always bore the names of annual festivals for the 12 gods or Dionysos or lesser divinities, after deified Macedonian rulers, took hold in the Seleucid Empire, with the months Seleukeios, Antiocheon, and Stratonikeon.

Lesbian dialect is employed in Roman times in two different sets of documents: