IEleus 361 Honours for the first high priest of the Augusti

Honours for the first high priest of the Augusti

I Eleusis 361 Date: ca. 57-61 AD

They dedicated (this statue of) . . . . . . having dedicated the statues in it of the Augusti from his own resources and having become the first high priest of the Augusti.^[1]

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References:

I Eleusis 361 (Translated text) (PHI)

Ameling, Herodes Atticus II 39

Translation by: Chris de Lisle

Monument type: Base

Inscription type: Statue base

Findspot: Salamis (Lost)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] This is the bottom part of a statue base, dedicated to an unknown individual who had decorated a structure with statues of the Roman emperors and had become the first high priest of the Augusti. The inscription was seen in 1871 by the German art historian Karl Bernhard Stark on Salamis, incorporated into a wellhead, and is now lost. It was probably brought to the island from Eleusis as building material sometime after antiquity. The structure mentioned in this inscription was perhaps a sanctuary at Eleusis dedicated to the Imperial cult. I Eleusis 363, an inscribed architrave block from a structure erected by a high priest of the Augusti, perhaps also derives from this structure. Clinton in M. C. Hoff and S. I. Rotroff, Romanization of Athens, 1997, 170-72 proposes to identify this structure with the colonnaded building to the south of the sanctuary (usually identified as a gymnasium, see images on Commons) and further proposes that the small Augustan temple next to it, known as the Mithraeum, was a shrine of Augustus and Livia (images on Commons). A statue of Tiberius (images on Commons) and a female figure (Demeter or an empress?) were found in the colonnaded building. I Eleusis 354, the entablature block for a structure in honour of Agrippina the Younger, was also found nearby. On commemoration of Roman emperors and their families at Eleusis, see I Eleusis 296 with notes; K. Clinton in M. C. Hoff and S. I. Rotroff, The Romanization of Athens, 1994, 161-82.

The name of the honorand is not preserved, but the first known high priest of the Augusti is Tiberius Claudius Novius (see IG II² 1990 with notes). Before this, there had been several priests of individual members of the Imperial family and whichever one was senior held the title of high priest. The change happened sometime between ca. 47/8 or 51/2 AD, when Novius appears as high priest of Antonia Augusta (SEG 21.742) and 61/2 AD, when he is named as high priest of the House of the Augusti (IG II² 1990, l. 5). On this reform, see A. J. S. Spawforth in M. C. Hoff and S. I. Rotroff, Romanization of Athens, 1997, 188-191. On the development of the idea of the "Imperial house" as a separate, more expansive concept than the gens Julia (i.e. the male-line family of Julius Caesar, which Claudius and Nero did not belong to), see M. Kantiréa, Les dieux et les dieux augustes, 2007, 73, 76-78. Similar high priesthoods of the emperors appear elsewhere in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean around the same time (e.g. IG II² 3538). After Novius, the title was held by three generations of the same family: Claudius Hipparchos, Claudius Attikos, and Herodes Atticus, then by Aelius Ardys, Tiberius Claudius Lysiades of Melite, Furius Marcellus of Gargettos, and Flavius Asklepiades of Diomeia. On priests of the Roman emperors and their family at Athens, see IG II³ 4, 1928 with notes.

Added: 24 Jul 2026
Updated: 24 Jul 2026
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