Ten hexameter verses, corresponding to lines on the stone, framed by a tabula ansata:
[μ]άρτυσιν εὐύμνοισι πολύλλιτον ἄνθετο νηό̣ν
[π]ολλὸν ὑπ’ αἰθούσσηισι καὶ ἕρκεσιν εὔκτιτον ὧδε
[λα]μπρότατος Σιλβανὸς ἀεὶ κρατέων ἐν Ἐρεμβοῖς·
[πά]ντα δ’ ὑπ’ ἐννεσίησιν ἀποιχομένης θέτο παιδός,
[πα]ντοίηισ’ ἀρετῆισιν ἀοιδοτάτης Χασιδαθης (ivy leaf)
[νύ]μφης φυλάρχοιο νέης, ἣν ζεῦξαν ἄνακτες.
[ἣ κ]αὶ πένθος ἔπαυσε τὸ πάτριον· οὐδ’ ὑπ̣ό[τρυ]̣νε
[και]ρῶι, ὑφ’ αἱματόεντι λαχεῖν γέρας οὔ̣χ[ὶ ἄδα]κρυ,
[-˘]οσον ψαλμοῖσιν ἐπ’ εὐχωλαῖς τεκ̣ο[-]̣ο
[--] θειοτάτηισι γραφαῖς εχεμετ̣α̣σ[- - -]
1. νηό̣ν Feissel, νηόμ IGLS || 2. ὑπ’ αἰθούσ{σ}ηισι Robert, ὑπ αἴθους IGLS || perhaps θετόπαιδος Shahîd || 6. [νύ]μφης φυλάρχοιο νέης, ἣν ζεῦξαν ἄνακτες Feissel, [ἀ]μφὶ φυλαρχ<ε>ί<ου γε>νεῆς, ἣν ζεῦξαν Shahîd, [νύ]μφῃ[ς] φυλάρχ[ο]ιο νέῃς ἣν ζεῦξαν ἄνακτες Peek, [ἀμ]μφὶ φύλαρχοι <οἶ>ον ἐῆς ἤνζευξαν IGLS || 7-10. [ἣ κ]αὶ πένθος ἔπαυσε τὸ πάτριον· οὐδ’ ὑπ̣ό[τρυ]̣νε | [και]ρῶι, ὑφ’ αἱματόεντι λαχεῖν γέρας οὔ̣χ[ὶ ἄδα]κρυ, | [-˘]οσον ψαλμοῖσιν ἐπ’ εὐχωλαῖς τεκ̣ο[-]̣ο | [--] θειοτάτηισι γραφαῖς εχεμετ̣α̣σ[- - -] Feissel, [ὡς κ]αὶ πένθος ἔπαυσε τὸ πάτριον· οὐδ’ ὑπ’ ο[ἴωι τε | και]ρῶι, ὑφ’ αἵματο<ς> ἐντὶ λαχεῖν γέρας, οὔχ[ι σέσωται (?) | ὅστις] ὅσον ψαλμοῖσιν ἐπ’ εὐχωλαῖς τε κο[ρέσθη (?) | ἄλλ’ ὃς] θειοτάτηισι γραφαῖς ἔχε μετα[νοῆσαι (?)] Shahîd IGLS || 8-10. [σταυ(?)]ρῶι ὑφ’ αἱματόεντι λαχεῖν γέρας ουχ [˘ ˘ - ˘ | ἀλλὰ τ]όσον ψαλμοῖσιν ἐπ’ εὐχωλαῖς τ’ ἐκο[ρέσθη | ὅσσον] θειοτάτηισι γραφαῖς ἔχε μείλ[ια θυμοῦ] Peek || 8. [σταυ]ρῶι ὑφ' αἱματόεντι Merkelbach & Stauber || 9. [ἀλλὰ τ]όσον Merkelbach & Stauber, τ’ ἐκο[- - -] Merkelbach & Stauber || 10. ΜΕΥΛ copy = μειλ Peek || [ὅσσον] Merkelbach & Stauber
'Silvanos, of clarissimus rank, perpetual ruler of the Eremboi (= Arabs?), dedicated to the highly praised martyrs this most prayerful temple, well-built here with halls and precincts. He completed all this to the memory of his deceased daughter, Chasidathe, who was famous for all kinds of virtue, the young spouse of a phylarch, to whom she was betrothed by kings. [She] ceased the grief of her father, and did not encourage him to attain glory by bloody encounters, which would not be tearless, [but] by psalms and prayers [- - -] the most divine Scriptures [- - -]'
Text: Feissel 2002, 218. Translation: E. Rizos, P. Nowakowski.
Evidence ID
E01618Saint Name
Unnamed martyrs (or name lost) : S00060Saint Name in Source
μάρτυρεςType of Evidence
Inscriptions - Formal inscriptions (stone, mosaic, etc.)
Literary - PoemsEvidence not before
380Evidence not after
700Activity not before
380Activity not after
700Place of Evidence - Region
Syria with PhoeniciaPlace of Evidence - City, village, etc
AnasarthaPlace of evidence - City name in other Language(s)
Anasartha
Thabbora
ThabboraCult activities - Places
Cult building - independent (church)Cult activities - Non Liturgical Practices and Customs
Bequests, donations, gifts and offeringsCult Activities - Protagonists in Cult and Narratives
Women
Children
Officials
Soldiers
Aristocrats
Monarchs and their familySource
A large basalt lintel. Broken and lost on both sides and at the bottom. Preserved dimensions: H. 0.61 m; W. c. 2.4 m; Th. 0.63 m; letter height 0.04-0.06 m. The script is very densely laid out, and the letters are in low relief, as is common with inscriptions carved in basalt.
Found and copied by a sergeant of the French camel corps in 1935, in the ruins of Anasartha/Theodoroupolis, within the city walls, c. 20 m to the southeast of the citadel (but probably originally located c. 200 m to the northwest of the fortress, at the site of a church, see: Mouterde & Poidebard 1945, 193). First published by René Mouterde in 1939 (based on his own examination of the stone, the earlierer copy, and a photograph). An improved reading of the first five verses was offered by Louis Robert (advised by André-Jean Festugière) in the fourth volume of Hellenica in 1948. Further remarks were made by Werner Peek and Irfan Shahîd.
The stone was revisited by Denis Feissel in 1982 (see: Bulletin épigraphique (1987), 508). His examination of the slab allowed him to identify the fragment published in IGLS II, no. 296 (another find of the same sergeant) as originally positioned in the lower right-hand corner of our inscription (lines 7-9). In 2002 Feissel offered a new edition of the complete text, challenging many of the restorations and interpretations by Shahîd.Discussion
The inscription commemorates the construction of a martyr shrine within the city walls by a certain Silvanos, in honour of his deceased daughter (or less probably wife), Chasidathe. The text is a poem, consisting of ten hexameter verses, strongly inspired by the wording of Homer's Odyssey. It can be divided into three paragraphs: verses 1-3 describe the beauty of the sanctuary; verses 4-6 praise the deceased girl, and verses 7-10 describe Silvanos' grief and contain considerations on salvation and piety. The last three lines are very poorly preserved, and three restorations have been suggested, the most widely accepted being the one by René Mouterde. Based on this completion many unjustified and often contradictory conclusions have been drawn by subsequent scholars concerning the identity of the persons mentioned, and even the political and social nature of the relationship between the Romans and pre-Islamic Arabs. The most convincing reconstruction, and the most prudent commentary, is, however, offered by Denis Feissel in his own edition of the inscription (2002), which we decided to follow.
In verse 3 Silvanos, the founder, is named 'perpetual ruler of the Eremboi', which René Mouterde interpreted as a poetical metaphor for the governor of the Roman province of Arabia, or possibly also the governor of the province of Phoenicia. 'Eremboi' is a term used by Homer for a certain ethnos (Od. IV 84), which Strabo (I 2) and Stephanus of Byzantium (ed. Westermann 1839, p. 121/36) identified as Arabs, and so it is plausible that the late antique author of our poem had the same meaning in mind. In further comments, published in 1945, Mouterde and Poidebard suggested that this Silvanos might have been Silvanos, dux limitis and comes, praised for the construction of a water supply in an inscription found at Khān al-Abyạd between Damascus and Palmyra (Prentice 1908, 280, no. 355). They also noted that a certain Silvanos was father of Rufinus, magister militum per Orientem in 514/515 and the envoy of the emperor Justinian to Chosroes in 532, mentioned by Procopius in the History of the Persian Wars (BP I 11). Mouterde was unsure whether the inscription dated to the 6th c., and thus referred to the Ghassanid/Jafnid Arabs, or to an earlier period (which he eventually considered more probable, based on the forms of the letters), when the eastern frontier was guarded by other tribes, especially the Salikhids and Tanukhids.
In 1984 the inscription was extensively commented on by Irfan Shahîd. He found the earlier attempts to identify Silvanos implausible. In his opinion it was unlikely that Silvanos was the governor of Arabia or Phoenicia, as the inscription comes from much further North, in northern Syria. He noted that the Silvanos, attested by the inscription from Khān al-Abyạd, was clearly a pagan, and therefore, a different person than our Silvanos. Likewise, the figure, known by Procopius, is too late to be identified with our founder. According to Shahîd the deceased girl was not a daughter, but the wife of our Silvanos who was identical with a certain Victor (his full name might have been Flavios Victor Silvanos), magister praesentalis, to whom Mavia, the Arab warrior-queen (375-425), betrothed her anonymous daughter (see: Socrates HE IV 36,12). Shahîd's supposition is based mostly on the fact that the marriage of Victor and Mavia's daughter is the only attested marriage of a high-ranking Roman official with an Arab woman. Though interesting, the theory is highly hypothetical, and in our opinion implausible, as it is based mostly on arguments from silence and on the unjustified identification of two probably different couples (Silvanos and Chasidathe, with Victor and his anonymous spouse). Furthermore, Chasidathe, the deceased girl, was almost certainly daughter, and not wife, of Silvanos, and, as Shahîd noted himself, Chasidathe may be a Greek rendering of a Syriac name, ̣Hāsīdta, and not of an Arabic one (see also the criticism in Fisher 2011, 107).
A more reasonable approach was offered by Denis Feissel (2002). He argued that Silvanos was an Arab phylarch himself, but also a well-educated man, raised in the Graeco-Roman culture. This possibility was accepted by Liebeschuetz (2015), who added that phylarchs were awarded with the dignity of clarissimi under the emperor Justinian. Other conclusions of Liebeshuetz are much more speculative. He translated verse 6 as 'in accordance with the will of the sovereigns' and argued that the marriage of Chasidathe was arranged by an emperor himself, and that this means that emperors carefully planned the marriages of phylarchs. In his opinion the last verses of the poem might mean that Silvanos, father of the prematurely deceased girl, influenced by this tragedy 'gave up the life of a leader of raiding nomads to become a Christian ally of the Empire'. Needless to say, this reasoning finds little support in the text of the inscription itself. We think that Chasidathe is Silvanus' daughter. He was probably a federate phylarch of a desert tribe, married to a woman from another leading family, and he probably bore the title of a tribal king. Lines 7-8 probably refer to his life after the death of Chasidathe: inspired by her pious life, he quenched his grief not in bloody battles, but in prayers and piety (i.e. he became a benefactor, and founder of religious institutions, like the one discussed here).
Mouterde and Poidebard said nothing on the identity of the martyrs, to whom the sanctuary was dedicated. Nor did Louis Robert in his comments on the meaning and readings of the first part of the poem. The question was first discussed by Irfan Shahîd. Given the fact that other 4th/early 5th c. martyria in Anasartha were constructed by Arab phylarchs (E01620) and that these sanctuaries are dedicated to numerous unnamed martyrs (see: E00714), which, he says, is 'striking', Shahîd suggests that these holy figures were Christian Arab warriors who fell in a rebellion of the Nicene foederati tribes (Tanukhids) against the Arian Roman emperor Valens. They believed, they were “soldiers of the cross”, fighting and dying for the 'orthodox' religion, and therefore were equal to martyrs. According to Shahîd the death of Chasidathe was associated with the deaths of these 'martyrs', and he even argued that she might have participated in the revolt herself (as her supposed mother Mavia did). Despite some chronological correlations (see the comments in E00714), all these ideas are very hypothetical and seem implausible to us.
Dating: Based on the letter forms, Mouterde dated the inscription to the late 4th or early 5th c. and Denis Feissel suggests 'the Theodosian period'. Any attempts at dating, based on the identity of the figures mentioned, are illusory.Bibliography
Edition:
Feissel., D., "Les martyria d'Anasartha", in: Mélanges Gilbert Dagron (Travaux et Mémoires 14, Paris: Association des Amis du Centre d'Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, 2002), 202-205.
The Packard Humanities Institute database: PH322271.
Steinepigramme aus dem Griechischen Osten IV 20/21/01.
Mouterde, R., Jalabert, L., Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie, vol. 2: Chalcidique et Antiochène: nos 257-698 (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1939), no. 296+ 297.
Further reading:
Fisher, G., Between Empires: Arabs, Romans, and Sasanians in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 107.
Fisher, G., "Arabs and martyria", in: G. Fisher and others, Arabs and Empires before Islam (Oxford: OUP, 2015), 312.
Liebeschuetz, J.H.W.F., East and West in Late Antiquity: Invasion, Settlement, Ethnogenesis, and Conflicts of Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 253-254; 304-305.
Mouterde, R., Poidebard, A., Le limes de Chalcis: organisation de la steppe en haute Syrie romaine: documents aériens et épigraphiques (Paris: P. Geuthner 1945), 193-194.
Peek, W., "ΠΕΙΡΑΤΑ ΤΕΧΝΗΣ. Grundsätzliches und kritisches zu neuen Büchern über griechische Epigramme", Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. Gesellschafts- und sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe 4 (1954-1955), 220.
Prentice, W.K. (ed.), Greek and Latin inscriptions (Publications of an American archaeological expedition to Syria in 1899-1900 3, New York: Century 1908), 280, no. 355.
The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 2, Silvanos 8.
Robert, L., Hellenica, Recueil d'épigraphie, de numismatique et d'antiquités grecques, vol. 4: Epigrammes du Bas-Empire (Paris: Librairie d'Amerique et d'Orient, Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1948), 136-137 (improved reading, lines 1-5).
Shahîd, I., Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1984), 227-238.
Reference works:
L'Année Epigraphique (2002), 1506.
Bulletin épigraphique (by error listed as a martyr shrine of *Sergios); (1940), 172; (1949), 192; (1987), 508.
Chroniques d'épigraphie byzantine, 312, 582.
Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 15, 845; 39, 1570; 52, 1544 (full text with improved readings).
