The Vedii Antonini: Aspects of Patronage and Benefaction in Second-Century Ephesos

DURING HIS EXCAVATIONS OF THE ODEUM OR BOULEUTERION at Ephesos between 1864 and 1866, John Turtle Wood discovered a group of monumental inscriptions. The thin slabs of marble had fallen from their original places, affixed to the proscaenium, onto the stage proper.l Wood was able to identify five inscriptions, which he later published in an appendix to his Discoveries atEphesus.2 Additional fragments of these and other inscriptions from the bouleuterion were found by Wood later in his excavations and were published by C. Curtius and E. L. Hicks.3 Three of the inscriptions from the bouleuterion, IE 1491, 1492, and 1493, form a distinct group (Plates 1, 2, 3), inscribed in the same hand on two panels which join in the middle of IE 1492.4 They concern a dispute that arose between Publius Vedius Antoninus and the citizens of Ephesos concerning a promised building project, and its resolution by the emperor Antoninus Pius in favour of Vedius Antoninus. Because these inscriptions deal with buildings, this man has been widely identified as M. Claudius Publius Vedius Antoninus Phaedrus Sabinianus (Vedius II), who, with his wife Flavia Papiane, is known from the epigraphic record to have built the bouleuterion and a bath-gymnasium complex at Ephesos. Since Wood's discovery of the bouleuterion inscriptions, numerous further finds have made the Vedii one of the most epigraphically commemorated families in Ephesos. About fifty-five more inscriptions representing six generations of this family have come to light. Of these, some twenty have been assigned to M. Claudius Publius Vedius Antoninus Phaedrus Sabinianus (Vedius III), though not without controversy.5 He is the best known of the family, due as much to his

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