MAMA XI 138 (Pentapolis)

The monument, recorded by Ballance at Otluk, now (2011) situated in the garden of the Hudaï Kaplıcası near Sandıklı, is said to have been brought from nearby Yanıkören (see also MAMA XI 153 [1955/30]). The underlined letters depend on a copy made between 1930 and 1954 by Calder’s friend Habip Zebir, a tinker living at Sandıklı (Calder 1956: 49), who saw the stone when it was still in use as a well-head.

For the spelling Ἀσίννιος with a geminate nu, see Salomies 2007: 66. His cognomen could be restored [Ἱππό]λυτος (the name is attested in Phrygia: MAMA IV 68 [Synnada]), were it not that the name seems a little short for the lacuna. For τεκοῦσα = ‘mother’, see the commentary to MAMA XI 123 (1955/93: Akmoneia). After τεκοῦσα, we would expect the woman’s name; this may have been inscribed on the abacus of the right-hand pilaster (compare the layout of two other doorstones of this type from Akmoneia, MAMA VI 288 [Waelkens 1986: 173, no.434] and MAMA XI 118 [1956/43]) or in the tympanum, although no trace of it is visible (compare MAMA XI 116 [1955/103]). Φιλοδέσποτος is a typical slave name (Robert 1969: 357-8). Τhe man was probably a freedman; cf. MAMA IV 336 (Eumeneia), where an ἀπελεύθερος is described as φιλοδέσποτος, ‘master-loving’.

The expression τῷ ἰδίῳ ἀνδρὶ καὶ κυρίῳ is also attested in SEG 28, 1041 (Nikomedeia); in both cases, the phrase is simply an expression of courtesy (‘sir husband’), synonymous with τῷ κυρίῳ ἀνδρί (Cameron 1939: 43; Robert, OMS III 1607-11; BE 1974, 573, 593). For the phrase ἡδέως ζῆν or συμβιοῦν as a means of describing a happy marriage, often of a stated number of years (Robert, OMS V 314-5), cf. IGUR II 786, συνβίῳ κλυκυτάτῳ, μεθ’ οὗ ἔζησα ἡδέως ἔτεσι ιδ΄; TAM V 1, 717 (Julia Gordos), τὴν γλυκυτάτην γυναῖκα συνβιώσασαν ἔτεσι λζ΄ ἀμάχως, ἡδέως, εὐσεβῶς; Körte 1900: 427, no.44 (Dorylaion), γυναι[κὶ γ]λυκυτάτῃ συνζη[σάσῃ] ἔτη · κ΄ · ἡδέως καὶ [ἀμ]έμπτως.