Dedication of a wall to Apollo and Artemis
created: Transcription from stone (CDL).
source date: Second half of second century AD
language: ar; en; fr; de; grc; grc-Latn; el; he
availability: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Deed Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. All citation, reuse or distribution of this work must contain a link back to DOI: https://doi.org/10.60760/unibo/igcyrgvcyr2 and the filename (IGCyr000000 or GVCyr000), as well as the year of consultation. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)

Never published before [...] 031, whence [...] 67.1493 and [...] 2017.1657. Cf. mentions by [...], p. 125 and fig. 67; [...], p. 374; [...], p. 139, footnote 135.

Ἁγνείης ἀνάθημα μέλον Φοίβῳ καὶ ἀδελφῇ
ἀρητήρ Νεικόδαμος ἔδειμα πρὸς ἀμφιθεάτρῳ
τεῖχος ἀναστήσας ἱροῖς κτεάτεσσι [...]
μουνομάχοιο θέης ἀποκλείσας ἄλσεα θεῖα

C'est une offrande visant à la pureté que, pour Phoibos et sa soeur,

moi le prêtre Nikodamos, j'ai fait construire contre l'amphithéâtre,

en érigeant un mur [...] pour les propriétés sacrées

isolant ainsi du spectacle des gladiateurs les bosquets divins.

An offering aiming at purity for Phoibos and his sister,

I, priest Nikodamos, built close to the amphitheatre,

erecting a wall [...] for the sacred estates,

shuting out of the view of gladiators the divine bushes.

Un'offerta che aspira alla purezza per Febo e sua sorella

io, il sacerdote Nikodamos, ho fatto costruire, vicino all'anfiteatro

erigendo un muro [...] per le proprietà sacre

che esclude dalla vista dei gladiatori i boschi divini.

On basis of the lettering alone, the inscription might be dated, in J.M. Reynolds' opinion, from the second or third century. However, given the precise explanation provided by the epigram about the purpose of building the wall, it is possible to connect it with the transformation of the ancient Greek theatre into an amphitheatre. The latter is dated on archaeological grounds to the second half of the second century AD.

The priest Nikodamos here mentioned is probably the grand-father of Anaxo daughter of Euphranor, priestess of Artemis about 180 AD (IRCyr2020 C.221, l. 24). She is also mentioned with father's and grandfather's name in a dedication found in the Market Theatre, but possibly moved from elsewhere (IRCyr2020 C.210, in the original publication of which J.M. Reynolds, through a slip of the pen mentioned Nikodamos as her father, an error later reproduced by Ensoli).

This inscription, which remained hitherto unpublished, has been long since in sight for visitors. Those who mentioned it unanimously guessed its main meaning. We do not hazard in restoring the last word of line 3, which should be a noun or an adjectif appended to τεῖχος and connected with ἱροῖς κτεάτεσσι; however this phrase may also be related directly to ἀναστήσας. We restore as a climax of the epigram the adjective θεῖος in assonance with θεῆς at the caesura.

Metrical analysis: in spite of the missing parts, we can hold for sure that there was a series of four hexameters, a composition that is a little less common than two elegiac couplets. Two poetic licences appear in the first distichon of line 2: 1) ἀρητήρ has a long first syllable, a lenghthening that is common since the Homeric poetry; 2) the rhythm of the personal name Νικόδαμος (written Νεικ- through iotacism) is ametric (+-+-); the first syllable may thus be taken as short.