CILIII 7281 Dion honours Hadrian

Dion honours Hadrian

CIL III 7281 Date: 132 AD

In Latin To Emperor Caesar, son of the God Trajan Parthicus, grandson of the God Nerva Trajan Hadrian Augustus, pontifex maximus, tribunician power 16 times (132 AD), consul 3 times, father of the fatherland, (5) Olympius the colony (colonia) Julia Augusta Diensium (erected this statue), through an envoy, Gaius Memmius Lycus In Greek (9) Of the Dionians

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References:

CIL III 7281 (Translated text) (EDH)

IG II² 3289 (PHI)

CIL III 548

SIA VI 1 (PHI)

Højte, Statue Bases 208

Translation by: Chris de Lisle

Monument type: Base

Inscription type: Statue base (Other city)

Findspot: Athens, Church of St Nicolas (= Panagia Aragabi = St. Ioannis in Academy) (EM 10302)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] This statue base is part of a group erected for Emperor Hadrian (r. 117-138 AD) in the precinct of the Temple of Olympian Zeus by delegations from cities throughout the Roman Empire to celebrate Hadrian's consecration of the temple in 132 AD (see IG II² 3290 with notes). Hadrian’s titulature in ll. 1-4 confirms the date. On epigraphic evidence for Hadrian at Athens, see IG II² 5185 with notes.

The dedicator was the Roman colony (colonia) of Julia Augusta Diensium, established on the site of Dion in Macedonia under Augustus. During the Republican and early Imperial periods, a colony was a community of Roman citizens, often military veterans, settled outside the city of Rome. During the first century AD it evolved into an honorific status, to which communities could be promoted (cf. M. Boatwright, Hadrian and the Cities of the Roman Empire, 1997, 36-56). In this case, the colony emphasises its Roman status by inscribing most of the text in Latin. The final line in Greek is probably a gloss, explaining the text for people who could not read Latin, rather than an indication that there was a separate Greek community at Dion that had joined in the erection of the statue (F. Papazoglou, Les villes de Macédoine a l’époque romaine, 1988, 110). Three other bases from the temple precinct are also inscribed in Latin with a Greek gloss and have similar dimensions (CIL III 7282-7283 and perhaps 7285). These are probably the set of statues that Pausanias 1.18.6 says stood in front of the columns of the temple and were known as "colony cities" (apoikoi poleis). There may originally have been ten of them, one for each column of the front façade, perhaps limited to the colonies which held the prestigious privilege of the "Latin right" (ius Italicum). They may have inspired other cities of the East to erect the other non-Latin statue bases in the precinct (F. Camia, A. Corcella, and M. Monaco in What's New in Roman Greece, 2018, 477-483). There is a rectangular cutting in the top of the base for the statue.

Added: 17 Aug 2024
Updated: 17 Aug 2024
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