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A Cypriot Oath of Allegiance to Tiberius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Extract

My friend Mr. M. R. Popham, of the Government of Cyprus, was kind enough to inform me in a letter dated 9th July, 1959, of his discovery in the village of Nikoklia, some 2 km. to the north of Kouklia, site of the ancient Palaipaphos, of this important inscription.

A slab of fine white marble, 0·545 m. high, 0·605 m. wide, and 0·08 m. thick (pl. x), found during the spring of 1959 in the renovation of a floor of the village church and removed on 3rd May to the Epigraphic Museum at Kouklia: undoubtedly transported from the famous site of the Aphrodite temple of Palaipaphos, the source of so many inscriptions alike of Ptolemaic and of Roman date, it has thus now been restored approximately to the place from which it came. The stone preserves original surfaces above, to right and left, but below it is broken away.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © T. B. Mitford 1960. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 To him I also owe photographs and squeeze (which, however, I was later able to check against the original stone). To Mr. A. H. S. Megaw, the then Director of Antiquities, I am grateful for permission to publish a document certainly unique in the epigraphy of the island and (as I believe) of a wider significance. It is a pleasure to record yet once more the generous and friendly treatment which I have received at the hands of those who have long and wisely cared for the antiquities of Cyprus.

2 The stone, to all appearances intact above, cannot have carried a heading which included the noun ὃρκος. For the plural, however, we may compare ὃμνυμεν in the oath of Assos to Augustus, IGR IV, 251.

3 Strabo XIV, 682. An inscription of Karpasia, recently discovered and as yet unpublished, also names the goddess.

4 Collitz u. Bechtel 15, 16. Keryneia, an independent kingdom in late Classical times and a πόλις certainly under Ptolemy Epiphanes, is of doubtful status in the early Empire, cf. below, n. 6.

5 For the inscription concerning the Dioskouroi, cf. JHS LXVI, 1946, 39, no. 15; for their two heads, cf. Temples of Soli, p. 150, and pl. XIX, 4, 5. Westholm remarks ‘that the group was certainly placed in the cella (of his Temple E), possibly on the altar near the rear wall’. For Demeter and Kore at Curium, Murray, Smith, and Walters, Excavations in Cyprus 64—an inscription of the late fourth century B.C.

6 The larger communities of Roman Cyprus are discussed by A. H. M. Jones in his Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces 489, nn. 14, 15, and by Sir George Hill in his History of Cyprus I, 231. Roman Cyprus had no civic coinage, so that we are deprived of what elsewhere is often a valuable source of information; but epigraphic and literary evidence now permits us to give full civic status to New Paphos, Kurium, Amathus (Tacitus, Ann. III, 62; Ptolemy V, 13 (14), 5), Kitium, Salamis, Karpasia (JHS LXXVIII, 1958, 313 f.), Lapethus, Soli, and Arsinoe (on the testimony of the milestones, JRS XXIX, 1939, 191, no. 3, 192, no. 4). Old Paphos, however, by then was doubtless little more than the ίερόν of the new city; while Idalium, already subordinated to Citium in the fourth century B.C., there is no reason to regard as a πόλις under the Ptolemies and still less under the Romans. Keryneia received, indeed, an aqueduct in the reign of Claudius (Opusc. Arch. VI, 1950, 17, no. 9) and is named by an inscription seemingly of Flavian date (Opusc. Arch. VI, 1950, 20, no. 10)—but the phrase there used, ὁ Κερυνητῶν δῆμος, while inconclusive, is distinctly against civic status. For Tamassus and Ledra, cities as late respectively as Epiphanes and Philopator, we have no evidence for the Empire.

7 Ptolemy V, 13 (14), 5. For the Paphian conventus, cf. Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus 1940–48 (Nicosia, 1954), 9.

8 Tacitus, Ann. III, 62.

9 cf. here the useful comments of E. Ziebarth, P-W v (1905), s.v. Eid, col. 2077.

10 M. N. Tod, Greek Historical Inscriptions no. 157.

11 For the Hellenistic βασιλικὸς ὃρκος, cf. Wilhelm, A., Österr. Jahresh. 1, 1898, 156Google Scholar.

12 Buckler, W. H., JHS LV, 1935, 78Google Scholar; Sir George Hill, o.c. 186; Mitford, T. B., Opusc. Ath. I, 1953, 152Google Scholar, and n. 71.

13 Or. Gr. Ins. 164, 165.

14 I list these nine inscriptions in Opusc. Arch. VI, 1950, 26, and n. 2.

15 BM Coins, Cyprus pp. CXXI ff.; E. Oberhummer, Sitz.Ber. bayr. Ak. 1888, 340, n. 2 (citing Mionnet).

16 D. G. Hogarth, Devia Cypria 8, no. 1 (Opusc. Arch VI, 1950, 29 f.), an inscription of New Paphos, now lost.

17 Opusc. Arch. VI, 1950, 25, no. 13, of Lapethus.

18 Bull. Corr. Hell. III, 1879, 173, no. 24; IGR III, 961 (where, however, the actual honorand is the wife of the local High Priest) of the Salaminian Kouklia, and Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch. IV, 1878, 42, of Citium. Both I revise in Opusc. Arch. VI, 1950, 74, no. 7.

19 Provincial High Priests: IGR III, 994, 981, both of Salamis; Opusc. Arch. VI, 1950, 72, no. 41, of Citium. To the civic High Priests of the imperial cult listed by me in Opusc. Arch. l.c. 74 f. may now be added from Old Paphos an [ἀρ]χιερέα διὰ βίου τῆς σωτηρίας τοῦ οἴκου τῶν Σεβαστῶν (unpublished), from Karpasia an ἀρχιερέα διὰ βίου τῆς ἀθανασίας τῶν Σεβαστῶν (JHS LXXVIII, 1958, 313 f.).

20 cf. the note preceding. This absence of any single title for Cyprus has long been observed (Eph. Epig. I, 1872, 208)—and subsequent evidence has done nothing to alter the position. A Cypriarch does, indeed, occur in the service of Aritiochus Epiphanes, but once only and the term would seem to have been coined to denote command of a body of Cypriot mercenaries.

21 I discuss the evidence for the cult of Roma in Cyprus in Opusc. Arch. l.c. 75, n. 1.

22 cf. JHS XVIII, 1898, 97; MAMA IV, 142.

23 IGR III, 997 (BSA XLII, 222, no. 9).

24 IGR III, 993.

25 κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ ὤμοσαν καὶ οἱ ἐ[ν τῆι χώραι] πάντες ἐν τοῖς κατὰ τὰς ὑ[παρχίας Σε]βαστήοις παρὰ τοῖς βωμοῖ[ς τοῦ Σεβαστοῦ].

26 Cicero, ad Fam. XIII, 48. For the introduction of the Imperial calendar, cf. Sir George Hill, o.c. 235 f.; T. B. Mitford, Opusc. Arch. l.c. 49 f.

27 JHS IX, 1888, 242, no. 61; BSA XLII, 227, no. 11.

28 JHS IX, 1888, 253, no. 116; BSA XLII, 228, no. 12.

29 IGR III, 940.

30 Unpublished.

31 IGR III, 939.

32 Unpublished. The rustic temenos at Amargetti, some 8 miles due north of Old Paphos, could also boast statues of Gaius and Lucius, in addition to one of Augustus himself (unpublished).

33 Opusc. Ath. I, 1953, 155 f. But the same promise of military aid recurs in the Oath of Phazimon, IGR III, 137, and was in fact traditional.

34 Suetonius, Tiberius 26.

35 IGR III, 942. The later inscription, ibid. no. 941, carries the regnal dating L i', not noticed by its editors.

36 IGR III, 941. But Tiberius at the outset of his reign (as Suetonius informs us in the passage cited in n. 34 above) refused to allow the seventh month to be renamed after himself.