A new Antonine inscription and a new imperial statue-group from the bouleuterion at Ephesos

This paper presents a new inscription from Ephesos, one not discovered through recent excavation or survey, but rather through archival research in the papers of John Turtle Wood, the first excavator of the site. Wood discovered this inscription and several others during his excavations of the bouleuterion. The stone, a low statue-base inscribed with three short lines of text, is lost. It exists only as a sketch in one of Wood's letters archived in the British Museum. When taken in the context of the other inscriptions from the bouleuterion at Ephesos, this statue-base inscription suggests that an imperial statue-group stood in the building. It also may be added to the corpus of inscriptions concerning P. Vedius Antoninus III, the well-known benefactor of Ephesos. The first part of this paper discusses the discovery of the new inscription in the archive; the second part discusses its significance.