Ramsay, William Mitchell: The cities and bishoprics of Phrygia: being an essay of the local history of Phrygia from the earliest time to the Turkish conquest (Band 1,2): West and West-Central Phrygia (Oxford, 1897)

2. FOUNDATION AND RELIGION OF AKMONIA. 627

familiar in Akmonia. It is represented on coins \ and, probably, in
a relief of wbich a fragment (p. 636) was seen by Hamilton. This deity
approximates in character to Zeus Bronton, who is so frequently
mentioned in N. Phrygia.

The Neokorate on coins of Akmonia begins under Alexander Severus ;
but is more likely to have been conferred by Caracalla, who was very
liberal with that honour. A coin described by M. Imhoof-Blumer
represents that Emperor on horseback approaching a hill on which
stand two female figures : this would almost suggest that Caracalla
visited Akmonia on its hill2.

The title Stephanephoros (no. 536), according to the theory which we
follow, was applied to the magistrate who wore the garland, and repre-
sented the authority in political matters, which originally belonged to
the priest of the supreme god, Manes-Zeus.

There was a cultus of the Emperors in Akmonia, as in every city
of the Empire. In an early inscr. no. 534, the priest is styled Sebado-
phantes, i.e. Flamen Augusti; about a.d. 60 (coins, p. 639) and 200, he
has the dignity of a high-priest, no. 5312; and we find Poppaea,
no- 53°> honoured as Sebaste Eubosia, ' Imperial Fertility,' and on
coins the ' Goddess Rome' appears in the features of Agrippina the
mother of Nero.

The epitaphs at Akmonia are engraved either on stones of the
' Door' type, described in Gh. XIII § 5, or on single blocks from heroa
of a more pretentious kind. The latter seem to have been in some
cases small temples3, to judge from the style of the stones that remain.
The former were often of a very elaborate and artificial kind ; and the
illustration from a drawing by Mr. A. C. Blunt (see next page) may be
taken as a fair specimen. Such stones were prepared in the trade,
and kept on stock, a blank tablet being left to contain the inscription,
which in this case (and in some others that I have seen) was never
added. In other cases there was no special tablet prepared to receive
the inscription, which was incised round the edge of the stone, or even
irregularly across the carving of the door. Many of the ' Door-stones'
are surmounted by a pointed or semi-circular pediment, in which case
the inscription usually runs round the edge of the pediment, or across
the division between the pediment and the ' Door,' or both.

In 1881 we saw on the site of Akmonia a torso of a statue of
Herakles, of full life-size, evidently a copy of the Farnese Herakles

1 PI. II 3, 4. as at Smyrna.

2 MG- p. 391. He suggests that the s On this kind of grave-monument
Wo women may be the Nemeseis, double see Ch. X § 4 and p. 99.