The Hellenistic World and Rome
the festival for the Nabataean God, Dousara) Gerasa, and Tyre; in Cappa-
docia and all of Asia Minor; in Egypt (but only at a modest local level); at
Puteoli, Naples, and (from Domitian onwards, with the Greek-style Capito-
line games which he founded) Rome itself; at Massilia (but also at any other
western Greek cities?).
Their distribution in space was also, at least as regards the more impor-
tant contests, an allocation in time, as two inscriptions from Aphrodisias ex-
plicitly state. One of them, concerned with the setting-up of a festival in a
manner quite close to that at Oenoanda, seems to schedule the festival ‘‘be-
fore the [departure of the competitors] to Rome.’’ In another, a high priest
of Asia also makes regulations for a festival and lays down that it will be held
‘‘in the period between the celebration of the Barbilleia at Ephesus and [? the
provincial games] of Asia.’’^81
The games set up at Oenoanda, like so many others, were due to thephilo-
timia(love of fame) of a local notable who was also a Roman citizen; the
procedures for ratifying it involved other locals who were also Roman citi-
zens; the terms were approved both by the governor and by Hadrian himself,
whose letter opens the inscription; and images of the Emperor were to be
deployed in the proceedings.
But perhaps the most telling detail in the great inscription from Oenoanda
relates to the golden crown which theagōnothetēswas to wear, with ‘‘re-
lief portraits of the emperor Nerva Trajan Hadrian Caesar Augustus and our
leader, the ancestral god Apollo.’’^82 This passing allusion has much greater
significance than might appear at first sight. The crown combining images
ofadeityandtheemperor,tobewornbyanagōnothetēsat a festival, might
be taken as a symbol of that whole ‘‘Romano-Greek’’ complex of beliefs,
customs, and communal observances which constituted the collective life
of the ‘‘Greek’’ city in the imperial period. In archaeological terms it is also
noteworthy that comparable crowns are worn by some of the local notables
portrayed in the remarkable statuary from Aphrodisias of this period.^83 But,
more significantly, a crown of precisely this type appears in one of the most
brilliant of literary evocations of the challenge which Christianity offered to
the beliefs, customs, and collective values of the Greek city, theActs of Paul
and Thecla, of which one version at least was already in circulation by the
end of the second century. When Paul and Thecla reach Antioch (apparently
. Reynolds,Aphrodisias and Rome(n.),no.,l.;no.,ll.–.
. Lines – (trans. Mitchell, above, n. ).
. For a photograph and brief account of one of them, see K. T. Erim,Aphrodisias: City
of Venus Aphrodite(), .