IGII2 3270 Honours for Claudius

Honours for Claudius

IG II² 3270 Date: 41 AD

(This statue of) Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, emperor,^[1] (was erected by) the Council of the Areopagos and the Council of the Six Hundred and the People, when the hoplite general and also the first competition-director (agōnothetou) of the Augustan games (Sebastōn agōnōn) was Novius son of Philinos of Oion.^[2]

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References:

IG II² 3270 (Translated text) (PHI)

Højte, Statue Bases Claudius 85

Schmalz 145

Translation by: Chris de Lisle

Monument type: Plaque

Inscription type: Statue base (Areopagos, Council, and People)

Findspot: Athens, a church north of the Acropolis

Transliterations on Places on

[1] This plaque comes from a statue base erected for the Emperor Claudius (r. 41-54 AD), shortly after his accession. On the evidence for Claudius at Athens, see IG II² 3268 with notes. This is the first attestation of Novius, who received Roman citizenship from Claudius shortly after this and remained the dominant figure at Athens into the reign of Nero (see IG II² 1990 with notes). [2] This is probably the first attestation of the Augustan Games (Sebasta), which appear intermittently through the first century AD. Schmalz, Augustan and Julio-Claudian Athens, 2009, p. 116 argues that the inscription is only claiming that Novius was the first to hold the games under the new emperor, but there is no certain evidence for the games before Claudius. For other instances of these games, see F Delphes III.1 534, col. 2, l. 18, IG II² 1069 (which is sometimes dated to the Augustan period). Several other games in honour of emperors are also attested, mostly also organised by Novius: Games of Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus (IG II² 4174), the Great Caesarea Augusta (I Eleusis 358, IG II² 3571), the Great Panathenaia Augusta and Caesarea Augusta (IG II² 3535, I Eleusis 356), and the Games of the Augustan House (Agora XV 460, ll. 15-16, possibly SEG 59.135). It is unclear whether all of these are distinct festivals or variant names for the Augustan Games (see M. Kantiréa, Les dieux et les dieux augustes, 2007, 132-34; F. Camia, Theoi Sebastoi, 2011, 105-6). Similar festivals were inaugurated at Corinth in 43 AD and in other cities of Achaia under Claudius (Corinth VIII.3, 153 with J. Wiseman in E. R. Gebhard and T. E. Gregory, Bridge of the Untiring Sea, 2015, 238-39). There was also a Hadrianeia festival established under Hadrian (see S. Follet, Athènes au II^e et au III^e siècle, 1976, 348-49), a festival celebrated "among the ephebes" under Augustus (SEG 29.167), and a range of ephebic festivals for Imperial figures, which started with Germanicus in the mid-first century AD and proliferated in the second and third centuries AD (see AIO Papers 12, pp. 40-44).

Added: 24 Jul 2026
Updated: 24 Jul 2026
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ID: AIO_3786