Exchanging Gladiators for an Aqueduct at Aphrodisias
By Kathleen M. Coleman
Acta Classica, Vol. 51 (2008)
Abstract: A letter of Hadrian to the magistrates, council, and people of Aphrodisias (SEG 50.1096) has been interpreted as evidence that nominees for the high priesthood became reluctant to assume the office, when the traditional liturgy of sponsoring gladiatorial shows was replaced by a financial contribution towards the building of an aqueduct. This article proposes that, instead, the nominees’ reluctance was caused by the burden of providing gladiators, and that the alternative of contributing to the aqueduct was intended as a more attractive option to boost the pool of available candidates.
Introduction: Excavations at Aphrodisias in 1994 turned up fragments of a single slab of marble that had been re-used as a paving-stone. The upper face contained the text of four letters written by Hadrian to the magistrates, council, and people of Aphrodisias. The third letter, which can be dated by the emperor’s titles to AD 125, runs as follows:
In (the stephanephorate of) Claudius Hypsikles, heros. The emperor Caesar Trajan Hadrian Augustus, son of the deified Trajan Parthicus, grandson of the deified Nerva, pontifex maximus, holding tribunicia potestas for the ninth time, consul for the third time, greets the magistrates, council, and people of Aphrodisias. The funds which you have reserved for the aqueduct I confirm. And since there are certain of your citizens who say that they have been nominated for the high priesthood when they are incapable of undertaking it, I have referred them to you to examine whether2 they are able to undertake the liturgy and are evading it, or are telling the truth; if, however, some of them were to appear to be better off, it is fair that they should hold the high priesthood first. I concede that you should take money from the high priests instead of gladiatorial shows; not only do I concede but I praise your proposal. The supervisors who will be chosen by you for the water-channel will be able to get advice and help on those matters on which they need them from my procurator Pompeius Severus, to whom I have written. Farewell.
The editor of the ‘editio princeps’, Joyce Reynolds, interprets this letter as evidence that the high priests at Aphrodisias were reluctant to give up funding gladiatorial shows in order to contribute to the aqueduct, summing up as follows: ‘Certainly Hadrian seems to me to associate the unwillingness of the recusants with the diversion of money from gladiators to water-supply’. She concedes that the shows were expensive, but stresses the prestige that accrued to their sponsors. She points out that, whether they funded an aqueduct or gladiators, the priests still had to shoulder a financial burden, but she suggests that the shows might accommodate ‘some unobtrusive costcutting’, in contrast to a fixed contribution to the aqueduct. This interpretation is followed by the author of a subsequent contribution, Domitilla Campanile, who answers Reynolds’s doubts about the necessity of obtaining imperial permission for such a scheme by stressing that the close link between gladiatorial shows and the imperial cult would make it imperative for the city to gain Hadrian’s permission before commuting the liturgy.
This interpretation is cogent, but I believe that another is possible. In what follows, I propose instead that, in relation to the dearth of nominees for the high priesthood in Aphrodisias, contributions to the aqueduct were not the problem but the solution.
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