Lunch at Cyrene in A.D.106 and the closing incidents of Trajan's Second Dacian War

Abstract

Among the inscribed stones brought from Cyrene to London by R. M. Smith and E. A. Porcher, and now in the British Museum, is a group of four marble fragments which deserve renewed consideration. They were found in ruins to the north of the Temple of Apollo, which must either be the Temple of Artemis or a structure closely associated with it. They concern the activity of a priestess of Artemis during the reign of Trajan. As A. Wilhelm was the first to notice, the future tense of the verb ἀριστιϵῖ in A, l. 21 shows the text to be an invitation to ἂριστον (= approximately lunch), issued by the priestess to the maidens of the city and its territory. In view of its subsequent inscription the occasion must have been one of unusual importance; certainly no similar text has been found in Cyrene. The last full edition was by F. H. Marshall in 1916; a re-examination of the stone suggests some new readings and restorations: