Votive dedication of Artemidoros Jonathan Prag Jonathan Prag John Fell OUP Research Fund ERC Advanced Grant no.885040 Jonathan Prag original data collection and editing Marta Fogagnolo editing, translation and commentary James Cummings conversion to EpiDoc James Chartrand site construction and encoding Valeria Vitale editing of geo data Michael Metcalfe museum data collection Simona Stoyanova standardisation of template and tidying up encoding Francesca Prado autopsy and measurement system automated or batch processes I.Sicily ISic003004 645353 http://sicily.classics.ox.ac.uk/inscription/ISic003004 10.5281/zenodo.4357068 Licensed under a Creative Commons-Attribution 4.0 licence Italy Sicily Catania Museo Civico di Catania Ancient Greek

A small marble base with a circular depression in the middle of the upper face (10cm in diameter) that must have housed a statue.

marble base 7 25.5 16

Text set out over two lines on the front face, the name in line 1 in larger letters

chiselled

Letters with apices, lunate Ε and Σ, cursive Ω, K with slightly extended upright. Triangle-shaped interpuncts after and before δ.

Line 1-2 15-20 Interlineation line 1 to 2 13 Catina Catania 37.49223, 15.07041 Imperial: lunate sigmas and omegas Found in 1950 near the Chiesa dei Minoritelli37.504758, 15.082564, during excavation of the foundations of the Collegio Maria Immacolata (so Manganaro 1961: 191 n.91). Observed by Manganaro in Museo del Castello Ursino and later transferred to the storage of the Museo Civico. Located and measured by Francesca Prado 2021-10-15.

Encoded following the latest EpiDoc guidelines

Taxonomies for ISicily controlled values

ISicily glyphs authority list

Julian Calendar

 English Italian Ancient Greek Latin Hebrew Phoenician Punic Oscan Elymian Sikel Sikan dedication James Cummings autogenerated EpiDoc output from database Jonathan Prag edited from original publication Jonathan Prag added bibl and minor revision to interpretation Simona Stoyanova normalised Unicode Simona Stoyanova updated list of languages Simona Stoyanova restructured bibliography Updated Zenodo DOI renumbered files, uris and references Jonathan Prag updated file with measurements after autopsy by Prado Marta Fogagnolo revised the text encoding, translations and commentary I.Sicily with the permission of the Assessorato Regionale dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identità Siciliana - Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identità Siciliana I.Sicily with the permission of the Assessorato Regionale dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identità Siciliana - Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identità Siciliana
Ἀρτεμίδωρος Κλήμεντος · δ οῦλος · κατ' ὄναρ
Text based on photograph Manganaro 1961 interpreted δ as a numeral; Manganaro 1988 tacitly revised this view, interpreting δ as an abbreviation of δ(οῦλος)

Artemidoros, son of Clemens, slave, (dedicated this) on account of a dream.

Artemidoro, figlio di Klemes, schiavo, (ha dedicato questo) in sogno.

This dedication is on the long side of a marble base with a circular depression that must have been of support for a statue of the deity to whom the dedicant has addressed. Although seen by Manganaro in the museum at a date no later than 1961, the stone has not been observed since. This is the only occurrence of the name Artemidoros in Catania, although the name is widely attested in other Sicilian inscriptions (see LGPN 3a: 72-73), whereas Klemes is not attested elsewhere in Sicily. Manganaro (1961) interpreted δ as a numeral assuming that Κλήμης was the fourth with this name in his family, but later he considered δ to be an abbreviation for δ(οῦλος). Δ is located between two triangle-shaped interpuncts with a strike above that isolates the preceding word from the following one. The abbreviation δ for δ(οῦλος) is attested in Asia Minor and Syria (TAM IV,1 213, IGLSyr 3,1 814), while the abbreviation δοῦλ(ος) is more frequent and also appears in western regions (at Reggio in the Christian inscription IG 14.629). Here δοῦλος, rather than indicating the social status of the dedicant, could indicate his extreme devotion to the deity, whose identity is unknown, although it probably was a health deity such as Asclepius or Apollo or an oriental deity such as Isis (as Manganaro believed) or Demeter and Persephone (see the dedication to Persephone from Catania SEG 38.942 = ISic001275).

1962.0388 https://biblio.inscriptiones.org/epig10001282 Manganaro 1961 190-191 fig.12 https://biblio.inscriptiones.org/epig10001852 Manganaro 1988 49 and 68 n.346 https://biblio.inscriptiones.org/epig10001427