Ephebic date
created: Transcription (Reynolds).
source date: First century BCE to first century CE
language: ar; en; fr; de; grc; grc-Latn; el; he
availability: Creative Commons licence Attribution UK 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/uk/) All reuse or distribution of this work must contain somewhere a link back to the URL http://inslib.kcl.ac.uk/

Bibliography

[...], 507 (31), p. 249; [...] 9.390, [...] 324239.

ἔτους ιβ

Πρ

Apparatus

Translations

Anno 12. P-

i: Year 12. ii: Pr- ?

Commentary

This group of informal texts were found in situ in the walls of the towers of the West gate. North tower, North wall: P.1, P.2, P.3, P.4, P.5, P.6, P.7, P.8, P.9; West wall: P.10, P.11, P.12, P.13, P.14, P.15, P.16; South wall: P.17, P.18, P.19, P.20, P.21, P.22, P.23, P.24; South tower: P.24, P.24, P.24

They have sometimes been regarded as the work of soldiers on garrison duty, but they are indistinguishable from those of ephebes (e.g. P.35 etc.). Since they contain no specific military title but do employ certain formulae which seem to be ephebic, e.g. φίλος and σύγκοιτος, linking pairs of names (see on P.3, P.9) it seems likely that they are in fact ephebic. For other groups of such texts see discussion at P.35 and at T.27. One challenge with all these groups of ephebic names is to determine when one name in the nominative and one in the genitive represent name and patronymic (as in the formal ephebic lists) and when they indicate the names of a pair of friends.

Since the gymnasium was probably close to the Gate (see P.29) the cutters may have been ephebes at leisure, but it is also possible that they were on duty, cf. the function of ephebes to garrison the walls at Athens (PW V, s.v. Ἐφηβία, col. 2738). Their date is uncertain, since there is normally no means of deciding whether the year named in some is a regnal or an Actian year, and if regnal to what reign each refers, though one obscure text, P.7, appears to mention year 100, CE 69/70. The letter-forms of such texts are peculiarly insecure evidence, but it should be noted that among the more carefully cut, the graffito of the Rhodian Hippomachus P.20.ii) suggests 1st - 2nd century BCE, but could be later, while several recall the forms of Augustan and early Julio-Claudian lettering. The only unequivocal evidence is the number of Latin names P.2, P.4, P.5, P.9, P.10, P.12) which is unlikely before the Augustan period. See also ον P.35. In addition to the informal inscriptions presented here there are a number of isolated letters, some monograms which might be mason's marks, or the marks of ephebic groupings, some Arabic and some Italian graffiti, all of which we have ignored.