Inscription in honour of Valentinian II, Theodosius I, Arcadius, Honorius from Side by Tatianus praet. praefect
source date: 388/392 AD
edition published: 2021-05-14
availability: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)

τοὺς τῆς ὑφ’ ἡλίῳ γῆς αὐτοκράτορας, τροπεούχους, δεσπότας ἡμῶν, Οὐαλεντινιανόν, Θεοδόσιον, Ἀρκάδιον τοὺς αἰωνίους Αὐγούστους καὶ Φλάουιον Ὁνόριον τὸν αἰπιφανέστατον, Φλάουιοςτῶν εἱερῶν πραιτωρίων, τῇ συνήθει καθοσιώσει ἀφιέρωσεν, ἐπὶ [...] τοῦ λαμπροτάτου ὑπατικοῦ.

Edition based on the text edited in IK 43, Side, 52.

“Agli imperatori della Terra sotto il sole, trionfanti, i nostri signori Valentinianus, Teodosius, Arcadius, perpetui Augusti, e Flavius Honorius, nobilissimo, il chiarissimo Flavius Eutolmius Tatianus, prefetto dei sacri praetoria, realizzò con la consueta devozione, quando era governatore…, il chiarissimo consolare”.

“To the emperors of the Earth under the sun, triumphant, our masters Valentinian, Theodosius, Arcadius, the eternal Augusti, and Flavius Honorius, the most noble, Flavius Eutolmius Tatianus, of clarissimus rank, prefect of the sacred praetoria, set this up with the customary devotion, when ... was consularis (i.e. the governor of Pamphylia) of clarissimus rank”.

“Aux empereurs de la Terre sous le soleil, triomphateurs, nos seigneurs Valentinianus, Theodosius, Arcadius, Augustes perpétuels, et Flavius Honorius, le très noble, Flavius Eutolmius Tatianus, clarissime préfet des prétoires sacrés, a réalisé avec la dévotion habituelle, quand il était gouverneur..., le clarissime consulaire”.

The inscription was carved on a statue base as a dedication in honour of the emperors Valentinian II, Theodosius I, Arcadius Augusti and Honorius nobilissimus (puer). It was found in the ruins of the ancient city of Side, near the roman theatre (on the theatre of Side, see İzmirligil 2007 and 2012). The Greek text of the inscription was copied by the British architect Charles R. Cockerell (1788-1863) who traveled in the eastern Mediterranean between 1810 and 1817 and who visited the southern coast of ancient Anatolia (Turkey) in 1811 (see Robert 1948, p. 51; Pearce, Ormrod 2017). The transcription by Cockerell was published by Johannes Franz (1804-1851) in the third volume of Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum (p. 175, nr. 4350). After its discovery, the inscription disappeared, and is still lost today. Louis Robert (1948, pp. 51-52) and Johannes Nollé (1993, pp. 329-330) provided appropriate integrations. The monument in honour of the four emperors (listed in order of seniority as Augusti: Valentinianus II, Theodosius, Arcadius, and to the end Honorius, who was only nobilissimus puer / iuvenis) was erected in Side by order of the Praetorian prefect Fl. Eutolmius Tatianus, during his prefecture, in 388/392 AD, and it was made by the governor of Pamphylia whose name was erased (see below; for a possible dating to 388/390, see PPRET 86). Another inscription in Antinoupolis (Thebais, PPRET 86) is dedicated to the same four emperors: it is a ‘twin’ inscription, identical to ours in Side in Pamphylia. The praetorian prefect Tatianus also dedicated similar inscriptions individually to each of the four emperors in Aphrodisias (Caria) (three survived: PPRET 82 for Honorius, 83 for Arcadius, 84 for Valentinianus II). Tatianus seems to have won the collaboration of provincial governors and cities in different provinces of his prefecture in order to create a series of monuments to the emperors during his office (388-392 AD). Dedications made by the same praetorian prefect Tatianus, in three different and quite distant provinces (Caria, Pamphylia, Thebais) confirms that they are all of the same date. The wide diffusion of monuments also reveals a systematic celebratory strategy (see Robert 1948, p. 52): Aphrodisias was the capital of the province of Caria, Antinoupolis was the capital of the province of Thebais (Keenan 2000, p. 617; Palme 2012), and it remains uncertain whether Side in the second half of the 4th Century was the capital of Pamphylia, but this primacy still seems to be reserved for Perge (Nollé 1993, pp. 134-135; Arena 2004, pp. 45-47, 125-131, 136-143; Brandt, Kolb 2005, pp. 25-26, 119-132; Brandt 2010). The inscription celebrates four rulers, and the base on which it was engraved is lost. The number of letters per line copied by Cockerell and published by Franz (15/16 per line) and the comparison with the base of the ‘twin’ inscription from Antinoupolis (PPRET 86) suggest that our inscription was engraved under the single statue of one of the four rulers (see Nollé 1993, p. 330: «Wahrscheinlich existieren drei weitere Basen mit der gleichen inschrift»; Gehn in LSA 0267). Moreover, in the late empire single dedications to several emperors from the period 383-393 AD are usually reproduced below the individual statues of each one (LSA 0519; LSA 0528; LSA 0529; LSA 1275; LSA 1659; LSA 2729); this practice is attested from the Tetrarchic age (Eck 2006) and during the late Empire (see Porena 2021). At Side and at Antinoupolis we thus have to imagine a series of four bases with a statue of an emperor on each one of them, that is to say Valentinianus II and his colleagues belonging to the Theodosian dynasty. The lost first line of the inscription from Side can be easily integrated thanks to a comparison with others put up by Tatianus, namely the second line of the inscription for Arcadius (PPRET 83), and another for Valentinianus II (PPRET 84) at Aphrodisias and with the first line of the inscription for the four emperors from Antinoupolis (PPRET 86). At the beginning of these texts the formula τῆς ὑφ' ἡλίῳ γῆς precedes the term αὐτοκράτωρ /-ορες. The formula is of course different in the case of the inscription of Tatianus at Aphrodisias for Honorius who was not emperor (see PPRET 82). The formula τῆς ὑφ' ἡλίῳ γῆς seems to be isolated (on γῆς και θαλάσσης δεσπότης see Ritti 2002-2003; for orbis in imperial titulature, see Borhy 1999; the emperor Julian as dominus totius orbis in PPRET 50). The titling τροπεούχους δεσπότας ἡμῶν τοὺς αἰωνίους Αὐγούστους (in Latin: domini nostri triumfatores perpetui Augusti) is very common (see Chastagnol 1988, pp. 21-23; Rösch 1978, pp. 34, 39, 46; recently Kajava 2011; Benoist 2016; on Αὔγουστος, see Salway 2007). About Honorius, styled at lines 7-9 only as αἰπιφανέστατον, see PPRET 82. At lines 10-11 the name of the praetorian prefect Tatianus was erased. Robert (1948, p. 52) was able to restore this name through a comparison with the dignitary's other surviving inscriptions and a careful re-reading of the transcription published by Franz in the CIG. As we have said, the inscription from Side was erected by order of the Praetorian prefect Fl. Eutolmius Tatianus, during his prefecture, in 388/392 AD, and was made by the governor of Pamphylia whose name was erased. After an important career, which began in 358 AD, Eutolmius Tatianus became praetorian prefect of the East from 388 to 392 AD, residing in Constantinople during the long stay of the emperor Theodosius I in Italy (the emperor only came back to Constantinople in July 391 AD; for Tatianus’ career see PLRE I, pp. 876-878; Delmaire 1989, pp. 62-67; Olszaniec 2013, pp. 394-407; his cursus honorum is recorded in the inscription carved in his honour in Sidyma, see PPRET 87). Shortly after his return to Constantinople, the emperor Theodosius I deprived Tatianus of his office and sent him into exile in Lycia, while his son Proculus was sentenced to death (for a recent study, see Mecella 2015). This fall from grace caused Tatianus’ name to be erased from many inscriptions (PPRET 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88), as also shown by the erasion on our inscription. Many years later a (homonymous) descendant of Tatianus ordered a Greek inscription in verse to be engraved in honour of his ancestor Tatianus, the praetorian prefect, in the city of Aphrodisias (PPRET 91). At the lines 13-14 the expression τῇ συνήθει καθοσιώσει “with the customary devotion” does not refer to purification or public or pagan sacrifices (such as Nollé 1993, p. 331; U. Gehn in LSA 0267 and LSA 0876; Ogus 2018, p. 165). As in the inscriptions by Tatianus in Aphrodisias and in Antinoupolis, καθοσίωσις (lat. devotio) means loyalty to the emperors (for ex. Eus., HE 09, 09a, 07; Eus., HE 10, 05, 18; Nov. Iust. 134, 13, 03; De Cerim. 01, 101 (92), p. 419 Reiske; ACO 02/01, 02, p. 60,39, Conc. Chalced. 451). The five inscriptions erected by Tatianus to the emperors reigning in the years 388/392 (PPRET 82, 83, 84, 85, 86) always uses this same peculiar formula. At line 15 the name of the governor of Pamphylia, who probably was the man responsible for the monument in Side, has been deeply erased. He is unknown, but he was probably a client of Tatianus. It is interesting that in all inscriptions put up by Tatianus in honour of emperors, the name of the governor who was in office when the monument or series of monuments was built is always indicated at the end (it seems likely that the governor was the supervisor of the construction of the monuments). Not all the names engraved on the inscriptions have survived. In the ‘twin’ inscription from Antinoupolis (PPRET 86) it is noticeable that the name of Fl. Septimius Eutropius, praeses Thebaidos (PLRE I, p. 318), remained intact. Antonius Priscus, governor of Caria (PLRE I, p. 730), is mentioned at the end of the series of the three inscriptions dedicated by the prefect Tatianus at Aphrodisias. In the same city of Aphrodisias on the inscription in honour of Honorius (PPRET 82) his name is preserved, but in the two inscriptions in honour of Arcadius (PPRET 83) and Valentiniaus II (PPRET 84) his name has been erased. This anomaly is without explanation.

CIG 03, 4350 Robert 1948, pp. 51-52 = AE 1949, 0221 = BE 1949, 189 IK 43, Side, 52 (quoted also as Nollé 1993)

LSA 267 PH 276367 TM 867988

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