PRAGAE 2014

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ISSN 1212-5685

STUDIA HERCYNIA XVIII/1–2

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10. Database of Greek inscriptions ‘Hellenisation of Ancient Thrace’: a final

report on investigations during 2013-2014

Petra Janouchová

With Pls. 30–32

Abstract: The article discusses the purpose, design and development of an epigraphical database

created for a dissertation project with the title "Hellenisation of Ancient Thrace". The database

has been populated with epigraphic data from a geographic area broadly conceived as falling

within Ancient Thrace in a manner that crosses national and linguistic boundaries, and with an

emphasis on the spatio-temporal attributes of individual inscriptions. The database makes

possible the quantified analysis of more than 4000 inscriptions and their attributes, and is

available for use and reuse by other scholars in epigraphy, philology, archaeology and other

disciplines.

Keywords: Greek epigraphy; Ancient Thrace; hellenisation; epigraphical database; identity

Project rationale

Epigraphy offers a unique view into the life in Ancient Thrace, informing the political

organisation of cities, political agreements and treaties, existence of road communications and

documentation of migration processes within the society. Epigraphy complements archaeology

and historiography in providing an insight into the past and has its place in interdisciplinary

research (BODEL 2001, 1). A database of published Greek-language inscriptions from Ancient

Thrace thus contributes to and facilitates a historiographical and archaeological study of the area.

The need for a database with a comprehensive and structured dataset arose from by my

dissertation project ‘Hellenisation of Ancient Thrace based on epigraphical evidence’, conducted

at Institute for Greek and Latin Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. The

dissertation aims to reevaluate the process of hellenisation of Ancient Thrace using the post-

colonial approach to material evidence from a broadly defined area of Ancient Thrace (e. g.

TSETSKHLADZE 2006, xxiii–lxxxii; DANOV 1976, 348–368; MIHAILOV 1979, 267; ISAAC 1986,

136, 291–292; BOUZEK 2005, 6). The dissertation proposal stipulated the development of a

database of all published and accessible inscriptions, which was designed and populated with

data over the course of 2013 and 2014.1 The resulting 'Hellenisation of Ancient Thrace'

(henceforth HAT) database represents the empirical basis for my dissertation. As every database,

the design of the structures and concepts used in the HAT database is driven by the needs and

aims of my dissertation research.

The HAT database aggregates all major published corpora of Greek inscriptions from

1 The project was supported by the Grant Agency of the Charles University in Prague, project GA UK No. 546813.

I would like to thank my collaborators Barbora Weissová, Markéta Kobierská and Jan Ctibor for their help with the

project and the data entry, and to Adéla Sobotková for her useful suggestions and instructive comments to the HAT

project from its inception and also for the introduction to the FAIMS project.

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Thrace and represents the best digital source of structured epigraphic data from the region. The

corpora that form the bulk of the database include (with their abbreviated form): MIHAILOV 1956

– 1997 (IGBulg 1–5); LOUKOPOULOU et al. 2005 (IAegThr); KRAUSS 1980 (ISestos); SAYAR

1998 (IPerinthos); LAJTAR 2000 (IByzantion). The structured and normalized nature of database

records allows for their quantification, spatial and temporal analysis, and makes possible the

statistical assessment of aspects traditionally associated with the concept of 'hellenisation'. The

aspects associated with 'hellenisation' include the spatio-temporal occurrence of personal names,

collective group affiliations, identity markers as well as terminology for political and social

organisation or professed religious association. Besides the raw data extracted from the editions

of corpora, the database contains additional attributes with my own qualitative interpretation of

the primary data.

In the beginning of January 2015, after two years of database development, the database

contained 4282 inscriptions, from ten different epigraphical sources, spanning across three

modern countries.

The research areas

The spatial definition of Ancient Thrace is ambiguous as the geographic boundaries were vague

already in contemporary Greek historiographical sources, such as Herodotus or Thucydides. The

territory was generally outlined by the Strymon River (Struma) in the West (Thuc. 2. 97), the

Aegean coast in the South, the Bosporus in the Southeast (Thuc. 2. 97), the Black Sea coast in the

East (Thuc. 2. 96–97), and the Stara Planina mountain range and Danube River in the North

(Istros; Hdt. 5.10). Translating this to modern political boundaries, the region of Ancient Thrace

is located on the territory of modern-day states of Bulgaria, European part of Turkey and north-

eastern Greece.

The modern state division does not respect the extent of Ancient Thrace and as such, it

often puts a restraint on the epigraphical corpora. They are published on a national scale, which

means that inscriptions are often excluded from national-scale research. What is more, the

corpora are often published in languages of the particular state, which further poses an additional

barrier. The HAT database combines sources from all available sources from Greek, Bulgarian

and Turkish Thrace (Pl. 30), and provides them all with English as the unified output language to

facilitate an accessibility. Similar idea of trans-national and trans-linguistic collection of primary

data has already been undertaken by Dumont and Homolle in 1892, but without any academic

followers until now (DUMONT 1892, 307–581).

The HAT database aims to cover the entire area of Ancient Thrace, though some parts are

yet to be covered, as can be seen on Pl. 30. These existing geographic gaps between the research

areas are caused by the absence of published material and not by the lack of epigraphical

evidence per se. This is mainly the case in the area between Hadrianopolis and Byzantion, which

has not been systematically published, and most likely inscriptions from this part of Thrace are

hidden in local museums and inventories. However, the overall number of corpora and

inscriptions provide a sufficient statistical sample with fair coverage over 130 000 sq. km.

Therefore, the statistical relevance of the data is not ideal, but represents well the state of

available epigraphic data as of 2014.

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Methodology and technical challenges

The basic purpose of creating any database is to be able to handle large amount of data

effectively (STONES – MATTHEW 2005, 2–42). There are various systems enabling data

management together with basic analysis of stored information, each with its own advantages and

shortcomings depending on its user. For the purpose of this project, I have chosen online data

management software ‘Heurist’, developed specifically for Humanities researchers by Ian

Johnson and the Arts eResearch unit at the University of Sydney.2 My main reason for choosing

Heurist was the possibility to have several people editing the database at the same time from

different locations via a web browser. Using a web browser for data entry, Heurist is platform-

agnostic and places no constraints on the types of computers and operating systems used. All in

all Heurist fitted my requirements, was simple to use and offered the service free of charge for

academic purposes.

One of the main advantages of Heurist and similar databases is the ability to handle

spatial data and to visualise it with Google maps, and export it to other GIS software. As GIS

software I use QGIS, version 2.0 Dufour. For combined statistical analysis I use software R,

version 3.1.2., both of them are also open source and free of charge for any researcher. The focus

on spatial information was one of the goals of the HAT database in order to analyse the spatio-

temporal relations in Ancient Thrace, the socio-economic development and nuances in migration

among the population.

Unfortunately, as the corpora have been created over many years by many people, the

spatial data have not been provided consistently. Thus, I had to create a methodological approach

how to deal with often incomplete or missing spatial information, or uncertainty concerning the

find spot of each inscription. Every database record, representing an inscription, has a set of

geographical attributes, providing the information of the findspot with assigned geographical

coordinates, further specified by the ‘Position accuracy Index’. The ‘Position accuracy Index’

presents the radius of a circular buffer in which the inscription was most likely found, in other

words, how far from the geolocated point is the area with the most probable findspot of the

inscription (with values up to one, five, 20, and more than 20 km radius). The ancient names are

recorded (if known) together with the modern name of the location. Any available information

about archaeological context, or possible reuse on an inscription are also important as they affect

the precision of the provenance (reused inscriptions are likely to be transferred to the nearest

village, church and the proximity of archaeological site indicates possible provenance of

inscription).

Inscriptions often help to date an archaeological site and together with coins are used as

the most precise date determining factor. Thus, recording the date is one of the most important

features every epigraphical database should have. But similarly as in the case of spatial data, the

data provided by various corpora are of different quality and levels of completeness. Moreover,

some inscriptions can be dated to one year’s precision, but mostly they are dated to centuries or

even to periods. This heterogeneity of data is very typical; it nevertheless requires a tailored

methodological solution which enables further analysis. The HAT database stores a date in three

different formats: the first format stores an absolute date as an interval between the two years,

where any historical period is transformed into this two year interval, e. g. the Classical period is

marked by years -479 and -338, 2nd

c. AD by years 100 and 199, for the detailed guideline see the

Tab. 1. The second format stores the date as numeric value representing the century to which a

2 Version 3 available at http://heurist.sydney.edu.au/h3 (accessed 01/01/2015).

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particular inscription belongs, e. g. date 2nd

–3rd

c. AD is stored as two and three value, 4th

c. BC

as -4 value. The second format is a reduction of the first format for the purpose of later analysis

in GIS. The third format uses a coded value, representing a relative date, mostly applicable only

to polarize Roman and not-Roman date on the basis of used nomenclature and the letter shapes

(the relative date has not been determined previously in the case of IGBulg at all). The third

format mostly consists of my personal interpretations, as the dating criteria by letter shapes and

occurrence of personal names have been omitted by some editors. By using the relative date, I am

trying to overcome the fact that large part of inscriptions remained undated.

An overview of the database contents

The total number of inscriptions is 4282 from ten epigraphical corpora, covering the area of

130 000 sq. km in parts of modern Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. Tab. 2 shows their division with

the basic data, such as the area in sq. km, number of inscriptions and the density/ 100 sq. km. The

coverage of all studied areas is displayed on Pl. 30, together with the locations (find spots of

inscriptions). The total number of locations is 650 (represented by dots), covering known ancient

cities, smaller sites, random finds or inscriptions coming from secondary context, see Pl. 30. The

largest clusters of inscriptions come from the area of Philippopolis in central Bulgaria, Serdica in

West Bulgaria, Odessos on the Black Sea coast, Mesambria Pontica, Apollonia Pontica,

Byzantion, Perinthos in Propontis and from Maroneia on the Aegean coast, as can be seen on Pl.

31, with the largest densities of over 200 and 300 inscriptions respectively.

When compared to the system of Roman roads, the majority of inscriptions cluster not

only around major sites, but also along main communication routes. These roads had been fully

documented by the Roman period, but their existence is the previous periods, is more than likely

and in some cases mentioned already by Greek historiographers of the Classical period (DANOV

1970, 135–144; ISAAC 1986, 143–144). For example, Herodotus’ description of the Persian

march through Thrace mentions the road from the Propontic region to Apollonia Pontica as

taking four days (4. 90–92). Thucydides (2. 97) explains that a healthy man could walk through

the territory of the Thracian tribe, the Odrysai, in 11 days, going straight from Abdera to the

Danube (Istros) River. Appian (BC 4.11.87) mentions the only known route from Asia to Europe

at the time leading through the territory of the Thracian tribe, the Sapaioi around Abdera and

Maroneia. Another important connection of the Thracian inland with both coasts was provided by

the river transport network (BOUZEK 1996, 221–222; ISAAC 1986, 2–4, 143–144). Ancient

Tonzos (Tundzha), Hebros (Maritsa), Strymon (Struma) and Nestos (Mesta) were most probably

navigable during Antiquity, or at least facilitated transport of some kind in their proximity. It is,

therefore, not surprising that the majority of inscriptions was localised in the immediate vicinity

of these rivers.

As to the date of inscriptions, in 1746 cases the original corpus provided an absolute date,

which represents 40 % of the total number (Fig. 1). The dated inscriptions span from the 7th

c.

BC to 7th

c. AD, with the majority (42 %) dated to the 2nd

-3rd

c. AD. Unfortunately, the

quantification of the date was influenced by different approaches of editors: some corpora

provided date for more than 80 % of the dated material (IAegThr (98 %, IByzantion 86 %,

IPerinthos 81 %). On the contrary, the IGBulg 2 provided dates with 19 % of inscriptions, and the

IGBulg 3,1 only 7 %. The average availability of dated inscriptions from Bulgaria is on average

very low (less than 20 %). Due to these limitations, a new dating strategy was applied: the

occurrence of Roman nomenclature and the letter shapes were applied as secondary dating

criteria. This way, I was able to determine the date at least relatively as Roman where the criteria

71

have been met. This way I was able to assign a relative date to 836 inscriptions (20 % of total).

The number is only to increase, as I will consult visual documentation when available. At

present, only about 60 % of all corpora provided visual documentation of any kind (photos,

drawings, squeezes) and it is more than likely that some of the inscriptions with missing visual

documentation could be relatively dated on the basis of letter shapes. In this way, the percentage

of dated inscriptions increased from 7 to 50 % in the case of IGBulg 3,1. Similar increase was

recorded also in the rest of IGBulg 2, 3,2 and 4. Nevertheless, even after application of the

relative dating method, 40 % of texts remain undated.

The spatial distribution of dated inscriptions (Pl. 32) confirms that the first inscriptions in

Thrace come from the Greek colonies on the Black Sea coast, the Propontic and the Aegean

coast, already in the Archaic and Classical period, with only occasional occurrences inland.

During the Hellenistic and Early Roman period inscriptions started to appear around major roads

connecting inland regions with the coasts. This trend only increased under Roman rule, as the

major roads such as the Via Diagonalis (Singidunum – Serdica – Philippopolis – Hadrianopolis –

Byzantion) were used frequently. More detailed study of spatio-temporal distribution will be an

inherent part of my dissertation.

The typology of recorded inscriptions reveals the following pattern: the majority of

inscriptions are private texts (77 %), official texts are less common (15 %) and the rest is

indeterminable due to its fragmentation (8 %). The official inscriptions are mostly honorary

decrees (45 %), milestones (20 %) lists and religious regulations (17 %) and other documents

issued by political authorities (18 %). The private texts are from approximately one half

dedications to the deities (52 %) and from approximately one half funerary inscriptions (47 %).

The remaining 1 % is mostly the ownership marks. The dedicatory inscriptions are more

dispersed in the landscape than the funerary inscriptions. This may be due to the existence and

availability of local sanctuaries, often located in the mountains or other remote areas.

The majority of inscriptions consists of only 1-2 lines of text (46 %), or 3-5 lines (29 %)

but yet the short inscriptions provide valuable information about the people involved in the

inscribing of the texts (dedicants, the deceased or their families etc.). The study of personal

names and personal statements is very useful for describing the structure of the society and

underlying processes. Every individual is identified by personal name, kinship, geographic origin,

in some sense also ethnicity, and personal achievements. The HAT database contains records of

4700 individuals, over 200 collective group affiliations and over 200 geographic names often

pointing to the origin of individual persons. However, the detailed study of the society of Ancient

Thrace is out of the scope of the current, but will form an integral part of my dissertation.

Future of the project

The records in the HAT database will be made available for public viewing and download after

the completion of my dissertation. Moreover, I have made the structure (data schema and forms)

of the HAT database available to other researchers by converting it to a mobile application on the

FAIMS Mobile Platform3 as of January 2015. The HAT - Inscription Recording Module is freely

available for download from the FAIMS Mobile Platform Demo Library of modules. All Android

4.1+ users can download this module after they have downloaded the FAIMS app 2.0 version

from Google Play. Please see the instructions for trialing this app on the FAIMS User Guide.

They can use this module to record epigraphic inscriptions and assess the overall design of

3 www.fedarch.org (accessed 01/01/2015).

72

database as well as the utility of its mobile version. Besides my dissertation, the HAT database is

being used in several archaeological projects in Thrace, such as the related Tundzha Regional

Archaeological Project4, the Yambol regional study

5 and the Stroyno excavation project

6 as a

comprehensive source of comparative material. The HAT database aims to be a collaborative

interpretative tool for such regional-based studies.7

Bibliography

BODEL, J. 2001: Epigraphy and the ancient historian. In: BODEL, J. (ed.): Epigraphic Evidence:

Ancient History from Inscriptions. London, New York, 1–56.

BOUZEK, J. 1996: Pistiros as a river harbour: Sea and river transport in antiquity. In: BOUZEK, J. –

DOMARADZKI, M. – ARCHIBALD, Z. H. (eds.): Pistiros I: Excavation and Studies. Praha,

221–222.

BOUZEK, J. 2005: Urbanisation in Thrace. In: BOUZEK J. – DOMARADZKA, L. (eds.): The Culture

of Thracians and their Neighbours. Oxford, 1–7.

DANOV, C. 1976: Altthrakien. Berlin, New York.

DUMONT, A. 1892: Inscriptions et monuments figurés de la Thrace. In: DUMONT, A. – HOMOLLE,

T. Mélanges d'archéologie et d'épigraphie. Paris, 307–581.

ISAAC, B. 1986: The Greek Settlements in Thrace until the Macedonian Conquest. Leiden.

KRAUSS, J. 1980: Die Inschriften von Sestos und der Thrakischen Chersonesos. Bonn.

LAJTAR, A. 2000: Die Inschriften von Byzantion I. Bonn.

LOUKOPOULOU, L. D. – PARISSAKI, M. G. – PSOMA, S. – ZOURNATZI, A. 2005: Inscriptiones

Antiquae Partis Thraciae Quae ad Ora Maris Aegaei Site Est: Praefecture Xanthes,

Rhodopes et Hebri. Athens.

MIHAILOV, G. 1956 – 1997: Inscriptiones Graecae in Bulgaria Repertae, vol. 1–5. Sofia.

MIHAILOV, G. 1979: Documents épigraphiques de côte bulgare de la mer Noire. In: PIPPIDI, D. M.

(ed.): Actes du VIIe congrès international d’épigraphie grecque et latine, Constantza, 9-

15 Septembre 1977. Paris, 263–271.

SAYAR, M. H. 1998: Perinthos-Herakleia (Marmara Ereğlisi) und Umgebung. Geschichte,

Testimonien, griechische und lateinische Inschriften. Vienna.

STONES, R., MATTHEW, N. 2005: Beginning Databases with PostgreSQL. Berkeley.

TSETZKHLADZE, G. 2006: Revisiting Ancient Greek Colonisation. In: TSETSKHLADZE. G. (ed.):

Greek Colonisation: An Account of Greek colonies and Other Settlements Overseas, Vol.

1. Leiden, Boston: xxiii–lxxxii.

4 Info available at www.tundzha.org (accessed 01/01/2015). The project is conducted by Adéla Sobotková and

Shawn A. Ross at the Macquarie University, Sydney. 5 Conducted by Barbora Weissová at the Institute of Classical Archaeology, Charles University.

6 Conducted by Petra Tušlová and Barbora Weissová at the Institute of Classical Archaeology, Charles University.

7 For any questions or access to the database, please contact me via email petra.janouchova@gmail.com.

73

The term used in corpus StartYR EndYR

half of the 3rd c. BC -260 -240

first half of the 3rd c. BC -300 -250

second half of the 3rd c. BC -250 -200

last third of the 2nd c. AD 270 299

end of the 2nd c. BC -215 -201

beginning of the 2nd c. BC -300 -285

after mid-2nd c. BC -250 -230

last years of 2nc c. BC -210 -201

Archaic period -700 -479

Classic period -479 -338

Hellenistic period -338 -30

Early-hellenistic -338 -280

Mid-hellenistic -280 -150

Late-hellenistic -150 -30

Roman -30 476

Imperial -27 284

Principate -27 284

Dominate 284 476

ante anno 212 -27 212

post anno 212 212 476

ante ABC -700 ABC

post XYZ XYZ 476

Tab. 1. The translation of corpus provided date to numeric values used in the HAT database.

Tab. 2. HAT study areas and density of inscriptions.

Name Area sq. km Inscriptions Density per 100 sq. km

IAegThrace 9704 501 5

IByzantion 2499 452 18

IPerinthos 1248 266 21

ISestos 1039 72 7

IGBulg 1 7667 658 9

IGBulg 2 50161 413 1

IGBulg 3,1 15072 653 4

IGBulg 3,2 23137 319 1

IGBulg 4 19490 442 2

IGBulg 5* not applicable 506 not applicable

*covering the same area as IGBulg 1-4

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Fig. 1. The summary of dated inscriptions.