Description: Wall of stage building. The blocks were left rough, with a smooth outline along the edges.

Text: Scratched on a small space which has been smoothed, on an otherwise rough surface, but is not filled by the inscription (0.12 0.13).

Letters: Small letters, 0.01-0.018; rough, irregular, and difficult.

Date: First to sixth centuries CE (context)

Findspot: Aphrodisias: Theatre: stage, skene frons, on the stretch of wall between the fifth and sixth doorways from the north

Original location: Theatre, stage buildings

Last recorded location: Findspot

English translation

Translation source: Roueché, PPA

?The first pyrrhich(istes), Aur(elius) Sym[ . ..

Commentary

The reading and interpretation of this text is extremely uncertain; but it does seem likely to be a reference to the Pyrrhiche, a kind of war-dance which was very popular in the Roman imperial period, and is attested in contests at Aphrodisias (11.305.IV.i.5, 11.21.iii.9; see also Robert, Helines I, 151-2, J. and L. Robert, Claros I, 58-9, W. Slater, ‘Orchestopala’, ZPE 81 (1990), 215-20). ὁ α´ can probably be taken as ὁ πρῶτος ‘the first’. If the phrasing has been interpreted correctly, the performer’s name was never completed. See Performers and Partisans, ad loc..

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