Burial Fees in the Lycian Sepulchral Inscriptions

Abstract

The Greek inscriptions of Lycia frequently indicate specific monetary penalties to be imposed upon any person guilty of tomb violation, and a parallel has often been drawn with certain of the indigenous inscriptions which also contain specific monetary sums, expressed as various multiples of the ada. The passages in which ada occurs have generally been thought to indicate penalties directed against wrongful use of a tomb. But this assumption is open to several serious objections, and can now perhaps be discarded in favour of a rather different interpretation, which may cast a new light on the function and purpose of the texts in question.As a general rule, ada is found in a number of short, self-contained statements at the end of the sepulchral inscriptions.