IGII2 1072 Honours for Antonius Oxylos of Elis, 99/100 AD

Honours for Antonius Oxylos of Elis, 99/100 AD

IG II² 1072 Date: 99/100 AD

In the archonship of Titus Coponius Maximus, son of the sacred herald (hierokērukos), of Hagnous (99/100), twenty-third of Boedromion, in the third prytany, of Antiochis^XI, fifteenth day of the prytany, for which Nikias son of Dorion of Phlya was secretary, sacred Council at Eleusis.^[1] Of the presiding committee, Herakleitos of Piraeus was putting to the vote and his fellow members of the presiding committee. The hoplite general (5) for the second time and gymnasiarch for the second time and priest of Ares Enyalios and Enyo and Zeus Geleon, sacred herald Titus Coponius Maximus of Hagnous proposed:^[2] since it is ancestral custom for the Council to honour those from Greece who are good and well-born men, both while they are living and when they depart from life, and since Antonius Oxylos of Elis, son of Antonius Samippos, a fine and good (kalos k’agathos) youth, honoured by our city since the time of his earliest ancestors, (10) has died before his time,^[3] for good fortune, the Council of 600 and the People shall decide^[4] to permit a statue (andrianta) to be set up on the Acropolis on account of his excellence (aretēs), so that, when this is done, the generosity (philanthrōpia) of the city to those men who are fine and good shall become clear to all.

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References:

IG II² 1072 (Translated text) (PHI)

SEG 3.105 (l. 3) (PHI)

Translation by: Chris de Lisle

Images: Krateros - (1)

Monument type: Base

Inscription type: Decree (Council)

Original location: Acropolis

Findspot: Acropolis (Acropolis Museum 13216)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] Textual note:: AIO follows P. Graindor, Album d'inscriptions attiques d'époque impériale (1924), 28, n. 36 (= SEG 3.105) in reading ἐν Ἐλευσεῖνι "at Eleusis" rather than ἐν Ἐλευσεινί[ωι] "in the Eleusinion" in l. 3.

This consolation decree for Antonius Oxylos, an aristocrat from Elis, who had died young, is inscribed on a statue base from the Acropolis. The decree was passed at Eleusis, shortly after the Eleusinian Mysteries in 99/100, by the Council (ll. 3 and 7), but the motion formula in l. 10 attributes the decisions to the People as well (l. 10). This might indicate that the decree was a probouleuma, a preliminary proposal intended to presented to the People subsequently, or that the Council considered itself capable of passing decrees on its own in the name of the People. On either interpretation, the fact that the Council’s decree is the one to be inscribed is a striking indication of the Council’s control over the Assembly in this period. The date is fairly close to the other Athenian consolation decree (IG IV² 1, 82-84), similarly emphasising the good birth of the honorand and Athens’ ancestral connections with his family. Perhaps the crowds of visitors made the festival an appropriate occasion for honouring foreigners (in this case, attendees of the festival may also have brough the news of Oxylos' death). On public decrees of the first two centuries AD, see SEG 21.499, with notes. For the date, see Byrne, Roman Citizens (2003), 501-508. [2] The proposer (ll. 4-6) and the eponymous archon (l. 1) are father and son. This 'teamwork' between father and son is typical of the prominent role of family connections in Athenian public life in the Imperial period. Titus Coponius Maximus senior is attested as manager of the city (epimeletes tes poleos) from ca. 83/4 until 101/2 and was honoured by the Areopagos, Council and People with a statue around 95 AD (IG II² 3573). The sacred herald (hierokeryx) was the Eleusinian priesthood after which the genos of the Kerykes was named (K. Clinton, Sacred Officials, 1974, 76-82). The priesthood of Ares Enyalios and Enyo is probably associated with the Temple of Ares that was moved to the Agora in the Augustan period, which Pausanias 1.8.4 says contained statues of Ares and Enyo (cf. SEG 63.155). Zeus Geleon is not otherwise attested; the name recalls the pre-Cleisthenic Attic tribe of the Geleontes (cf. AIO 1189, frg. 3, ll. 34, 47; Herodotus 5.66), but could be an archaising creation of the Roman period (cf. A. J. S. Spawforth, Greece and the Augustan Cultural Revolution, 2012, 142-206). The junior Coponius was honoured with a statue, as priest of the People and the Graces, competition director of the Caesarea, and head of the Stoic school in Athens (IG II² 3571), around the date of this inscription. A third generation appears as an ephebic liturgist around 120 (IG II² 2029, l. 21) and then the family disappears (S. Byrne, Roman Citizens, 200-202). [3] Antonius Oxylos belonged to an important family at Elis, which claimed descent from Oxylos, the mythical seer who accompanied the Dorians in their invasion of the Peloponnese, and founded Elis ([Apollodorus], Bibl. 2.8.3; Paus. 5.3.5-4.5; Strab. 8.3.33. Suda Τ 996). A forebear, Samippos, had already been honoured with a statue on the Acropolis in the first century BC (IG II² 3827 with J. Ma and S. V. Tracy, ZPE 150, 2004, 122-24). Although Oxylos’ father, also called Samippos, is the first member of the family to be attested with Roman citizenship, they appear to have received it from Mark Antony in the 30s BC, (cf. Vipsanius Aiolion in AIUK 11 (Ashmolean), no. 5). Oxylos’ sister Antonia Baibia was honoured as priestess of Demeter Chamyne by Elis and the Olympic Council in 157 AD (IvO 456). For a full discussion of the family, see S. B. Zoumbaki, Elis und Olympia in der Kaiserzeit, 2001, 359-61. [4] With the motion formula “the Council and the People shall decide,” the Council apparently asserts the power to pass decrees on behalf of the People. This formula first appears at Athens in IG II² 1025+1040, l. 33 of ca. 20 BC. It is the normal form for decrees of the People thereafter (AIUK 4.2 (BM, Decrees), no. 17 is the only exception). The formula conforms to normal practice in other Greek cities (where it had been common from the fourth century BC, e.g. RO 40, ll. 9, 26), and it may also have been a new way of indicating that a decree was probouleumatic (cf. SEG 30.82, l. 31; on probouleusis in the Imperial period, see D. Geagan, Athenian Constitution after Sulla, 1967, 66-67; S. Lambert in E. Mackil and N. Papazarkadas, Greek Religion and Epigraphy, 2020, 102-3).

Added: 20 May 2023
Updated: 17 Aug 2024
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