Festivals of Mên Askaênos in the Roman Colonia at Antioch of Pisidia

Abstract

In the following article I propose to discuss a series of inscriptions discovered in the course of the excavations conducted in 1912 by Sir W. M. Ramsay, with the aid of Mr. W. M. Calder and myself, at the sanctuary of Mên on the hill of Karakuyu, which lies a little distance to the south of Pisidian Antioch. At first sight the subject might seem to lie outside the scope of a journal devoted to Roman studies: the documents are almost entirely Greek, and Mên was not a Roman god. But the Roman empire transcended nationality: it carried out in the east the work of civilisation which the Hellenic race did no more than begin, and that part of its history is the most varied and not the least important which deals with the diffusion of western culture over lands little affected, or wholly unaffected, by Hellenism. The foundation of Roman colonies was one of the means employed by the early empire to help on that work. In doing it these colonies lost themselves: they gradually lost their individuality and their Roman character; they adopted the local religion, as they were bound to do, and their descendants forgot the old Roman gods. Yet they left their mark behind, and the history of their fortunes is one of peculiar interest. Antioch was one of those Roman colonies, and my subject is a chapter of that history.