Latin Epigraphy made under Roman supervision. It is equally possible that this tax collector
is an immigrant Greek, with Roman citizenship, who is acting for the city.
One may note as a parallel from the second century abouleutēsfrom Antioch,
also a Roman citizen, who wasτεταρτώνης(collector of a percent tax),
evidently at Palmyra. He is recorded on a bilingual inscription of...^23
In either case the significance of inscription as a sign of the way in
which Palmyra was being rapidly drawn into the orbit of Graeco-Roman
culture is far outweighed by that of , which represents the earliest appear-
ance of theboulēanddēmosof Palmyra. Unlike the earlier three, this is the
base of a statue (ṢLM’—‘‘image’’), erected to the same Hairan as in inscrip-
tion by the (as it seems) newly formed, Greek-style deliberative bodies of
the city. Given difficulties with the text, whether he is being credited with
contributing to the building, or decoration, of temples remains uncertain;
but the notion of beingphilopatris(RḤYM MDYNTH) is present in all these
texts. It is of some significance that the Palmyrene equivalent is a translation,
whereas that in the Latin—[phi]lopatrin—is a transliteration (not, alas, to be
foundintheOxfordLatinDictionary). By contrast, the standard transliteration
BWL’ WDMS now takes its established place in Palmyrene public inscrip-
tions, while the Latin equivalent is an awkward mixture of transliteration
and translation, ‘‘bu[le et civi]tas Palmyrenorum.’’ As so often, both versions
are derivatives of the Greek.
Inscriptions and evidently concern the same man, L. Antonius Cal-
listratus. The fact that he is a Roman citizen of Greek origin, given the dating
of the inscription in the s, should cause no surprise. He too, like Spedius
Chrysanthus, is a tax collector, concerned with a percent tax, apparently
on goods being traded or transported. This role is described in markedly dif-
ferent ways in the three languages:τεταρτώνηςin Greek, and DY RB’ in
Palmyrene (as in the inscription of mentioned above); both thus give the
level of the tax but do not indicate its object (and again the Palmyrene can
hardly have been intelligible without the Greek). In Latin we have ‘‘manceps
of the fourth part[?] of themercatura,ormercatusormercedes[?].’’ Again it is
clear that the conceptsπραγματευτήςin Greek andactorin Latin are inde-
pendent equivalents; but the Greek goes into Palmyrene in transliteration,
PRGMṬT’—but is helped out by a Palmyrene gloss, DYDH, literally ‘‘who
[is at] his hand.’’
Inscription is conspicuously ‘‘Roman,’’ in giving, as well as the Seleu-
cid year in Greek, a dating in Latin by the consuls of , a feature which
would not reappear in the inscriptions of Palmyra as acolonia. But it is also
. J. Cantineau,InventaireX, no. .τεταρτώνηςhere is translated as DY RB‘ ’.