AIUK8 no. 5 Sarcophagus for Aelius Epikrates of Berenikidai

Sarcophagus for Aelius Epikrates of Berenikidai

AIUK 8 (Broomhall) no. 5 Date: ca. 125-150 AD (chest); ca. 200-250 AD (lid, with inscription)

Aelius Epikrates Berenikides, son of the exegete Aelius Zenon.^[1]

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Greek text

References:

AIUK 8 (Broomhall) no. 5 (Translated text) (AIUK) (AIO)

IG II² 5875 (PHI)

Translation by: Peter Liddel, Polly Low

AIO Images: 1

Monument type: Sarcophagus

Inscription type: Funerary

Findspot: Athens (Broomhall 5)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] Sarcophagi (stone coffins, usually highly decorated) were used by the Athenian elite as receptacles for the deceased from the second century AD until the mid-third century AD. The long (front) side of this example is decorated with luxuriant garlands carried in the centre by a young boy (probably an Eros). The ends of the monument each feature a similar, single, garland hanging from bulls’ heads. The style of the decoration suggests that the chest was manufactured during the second quarter of the second century AD. The inscribed lid is moulded as a pitched roof covered with flatly-rendered leaf-effect tiles. The inscription on it, and perhaps the entire lid, date to about a century later. About 1500 complete and fragmentary Attic sarcophagi survive, a good number of them deriving from Athens (Attic sarcophagi were also exported in large numbers), but inscriptions on sarcophagi discovered in Athens are very rare (IG II² 6093 is another example discovered at Athens). Aelius Epikrates of Berenikidai is known only from this inscription. The nomen Aelius indicates that his family possessed Roman citizenship. The next designation, Epikrates, suggests that he was a Greek. His family is very well known. His mother was Iulia – of Paiania, who was the daughter of another prominent Roman citizen, Caius Iulius Sabinos Platonikos. His father, Aelius Zenon, was a prominent citizen in the early 3rd century AD: he was granted honorific citizenship by the Delphians, and styled as pythochrestos exegetes (F.Delphes III 2, 114 line 3), a term used for the Athenian magistrate who acted as an interpreter of the Delphic oracles. Other sons of Aelius Zenon are also known. For a fuller discussion of this monument, see AIUK 8 (Broomhall), no. 5. On the Attic inscriptions at Broomhall see AIUK 8, no. 1.

Added: 21 Oct 2019
Updated: 12 Jun 2020
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ID: AIO_1964