IGII2 3697 Statue base (?) for Marcus Ulpius Eubiotos

Statue base (?) for Marcus Ulpius Eubiotos

IG II² 3697 Date: ca. 230 AD

For good fortune, (this image of) the most brilliant consular and eponymous archon Marcus Ulpius Eubiotos Leuros of Gargettos (was erected) on account of all his excellence (aretēs) and his love of honour (philoteimias) regarding the fatherland, (5) both in the grain funds, to which he gave bountifully two hundred and fifty thousand (denarii), and in the provisions, which he provided in the great famine, by decree (dogmati) of the mighty Areopagites, the priest of Apollo Patroos, Publius Aelius Zenon (10) of Berenikidai (erected it for) the common benefactor and his own patron (prostatēn).^[1]

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References:

IG II² 3697 (Translated text) (PHI)

Translation by: Chris de Lisle

Monument type: Base?

Inscription type: Statue base?

Findspot: Athens (Lost)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] This statue base was erected for the benefactor Marcus Ulpius Eubiotos Leuros, a Roman senator and former consul, in honour of his benefactions at Athens while serving as eponymous archon. The Areopagos' decree is preserved, along with a decree of the Council and People, in two fragmentary copies (SEG 30.82). A date around 230 AD is indicated by the prosopography of Eubiotos' family and by Aelius Zenon, who was an ephebe in IG II² 2193 ll. 27, 69 (201/2 AD) and should be in middle age at the time of this inscription.

Eubiotos' family came from Hypata in Thessaly, where they had been prominent in the Thessalian League since the mid-first century BC and in wider provincial politics since Domitian (see Sekunda, ZPE 118, 1997, 207-26). Eubiotos' maternal great-grandfather had been archon of the Panhellenion in the mid-second century AD (OGIS 504; SEG 25.211). His father, Leuros, seems to have been a Roman suffect consul (see IG II² 3696), as was Eubiotos himself (ll. 20, 25, 44-45). The name of Eubiotos' younger son suggests a family relationship to the senator Marcus Clodius Pupienus Maximus, who was briefly emperor in 238 AD (see IG II² 3702 with notes). Several other statue bases survive from Athens honouring Eubiotos (IG II² 3698-3699, I Eleusis 644), his sons (IG II² 3701-3703), and his parents (IG II² 3695-3696), most of which are linked with this decree. A throne for him in the theatre of Dionysos also survives (IG II² 3700), as does a statue base erected at Demetrias by the Thessalian League (SEG 37.492).

This inscription is known only from a report by 18th-century scholar Ludovico Muratori (Novus thesaurus veterum inscriptionum, 1739, p. 566, no. 2), who states that he saw it "on a triumphal arch" in Athens. It is not clear what or where this structure was nor whether this was this inscription's original setting. Since SEG 30.82 provides for several statues of Eubiotos, but no arch, the inscription was probably a statue base in secondary use. The status designation "the most brilliant" (lamprotatos) translates the Latin vir clarissimus to which Senators and their families were entitled.

Added: 28 Jul 2023
Updated: 28 Jul 2023
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