sophists and governors: here Damianos himself put up a statue of the
Proconsul Marcus Nonius Macrinus in 170/71, calling him ‘‘savior of
the province’’ (though the largest lettering was used for Damianos’s
own name).^64 In the Auditorion of Ephesos, Roman government and
Asian oratory were intermingled, inseparable.
What do we have, then, when the whole plaza is assembled, just before
the earthquake in 262 that may have sent all the delicate architecture and
statues tumbling? A developing story of the intersection between Greek
and Roman culture. It begins with a startling novelty, introduced by a new
element in provincial society; this it absorbs, translates into its own
traditions, and domesticates. Buildings attract further building, texts
attract texts, whether on those buildings or standing around them, clus-
tered in a new civic nexus which in the process became a focus for speech
as well.
65
This cluster at Ephesos emphasizes and aggrandizes a burgeon-
ing Helleno-Roman cultural ideal.
These buildings, sculptures, and texts are not simple products of ‘‘Ro-
manization,’’ a concept that has lately been examined, dissected, and
widely rejected.
66
If Greek and Roman were polar opposites (and I do
not think they were), these monuments at Ephesos would all fall some-
where between the two.^67 The earlier ones, like the Gate of Mazaeus and
Mithridates, are hybrids from which disparate elements can be isolated,
but the Library of Celsus is a blended architecture that its viewers prob-
ably read, not as ‘‘Greek’’ or ‘‘Roman,’’ but as ‘‘modern’’ and ‘‘expensive’’
and ‘‘theatrical,’’ its hero as ‘‘cultured’’ and ‘‘official’’ and ‘‘important.’’
Those who were inspired by these buildings toward further building
came from various elites. There was certainly the directing class of the
city: magistrates, priests, liturgists, and other benefactors, from the first
centuryC.E. increasingly acquiring Roman citizenship.^68 Imperial freed-
men got a look in too, especially in the times of Caesar and Augustus.
From the last third of the first century onward, once Ephesos got its first
64.IvE3029. For Damianos and his inscriptions, Puech 2002, 190 200. She observes of
this one (199, no. 84) that it painstakingly translates the Latin formulae (‘‘avec leurs
ge ́rondifs de ́concertants’’) of Macrinus’s offices and priesthoods into Greek, but is not so
careful at numbering Roman legions: it makes Macrinustribunus laticlaviusof XVII, one of
Varus’s legions, wiped out in 9C.E. and never reconstituted.
- Van Nijf 2000 on clustered benefactors’ inscriptions and the prominence they give to
dedicators as well as dedicatees; cf. the dedication by Damianos, supra n. 64. - For example, Woolf 1992 and 1994; Freeman 1993 and 1997; Mattingly 1997;
Majbom Madsen 2002. Dench (2005, esp. 30 5, 61 92, 166 221) shows the difficulty of
even defining what it is to be ‘‘Roman.’’ - For example, Whitmarsh (2001) studies the complexities of Roman Greek ‘‘cultural
identity’’ through literature. I do not advocate the theory of ‘‘harmonious cultural
equilibrium’’ that Woolf (1994, 117) warned against, but emphasize that architecture
was less ideologically ‘‘loaded’’ than, for example, language, law, and literary culture
(ibid. 127 8). - Campanile 2004a.
88 Situating Literacies