Estates and the Land in Hellenistic Asia Minor: An Estate Near Antioch on the Maeander

Abstract

This paper publishes two substantial new fragments of a large inscribed stēlē from the Samian Heraion, the lower part of which (IG XII 6, 1, 6) was published in 1957 by the late Christian Habicht. The new fragments demonstrate that this stēlē carried a treaty between Antioch on the Maeander and an extended family-group, who possessed a large estate to the east of Antioch, near the confluence of the Lykos and Maeander rivers. The inscribed treaty is concerned with the incorporation of this estate into the polis-territory of Antioch, and the future rights of the estate-holding family. The author argues that this estate is likely to have been granted to the family’s ancestors by one of the Seleukid monarchs, and suggests that the new treaty might reflect a wider pattern of private estates being incorporated into polis-territories in western Asia Minor in the course of the second century BC.