Distortion of Reality in the Prosopographical Model of Urban Community and Its Consequences
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The relevance of further advancing the theory of prosopography as an auxiliary historical discipline—particularly the development of prosopographical models of urban communities in ancient poleis—is beyond question. The synchronization of the Olbian eponym catalogue (IOSPE I² 201), i.e., the reconstruction of its chronology for the 4th–1st centuries BC, carried out by the author in 2008–2014, opened qualitatively new perspectives for both Olbian prosopography and the general theory of the discipline. On the basis of Olbian evidence, the author has advanced a prosopographical hypothesis that heterogeneous synchronous written sources referring to the same name (homonymous individuals) can, with a high degree of probability, be attributed to one and the same person. The purpose of the present article is to provide a theoretical justification of this hypothesis. The research is grounded in the written records of the Olbian civic community, with particular attention to the representation of different social groups of citizens. Methodology. The study employs general scholarly methods alongside those of auxiliary historical disciplines, with a primary focus on prosopography. Originality. The theoretical contributions to prosopography proposed in this article are presented for the first time. Beyond the case of Olbia Pontica, they may also be applied to other ancient poleis. Findings. The simplest model of the civic body comprises three groups: the upper elite, the middle elite, and ordinary citizens. Their numerical proportions are highly asymmetrical, differing by an order of magnitude. In Olbia Pontica, for instance, the upper elite encompassed seven families, the middle elite nearly forty families, while the number of ordinary citizens’ families amounted to several hundred. There are strong grounds to assume that these proportions were typical for other Greek poleis as well. An analysis based on elementary prosopographical models shows that certain sources—such as lapidary funerary monuments, graffiti, and magical inscriptions—reflected the demographic structure with reasonable accuracy. By contrast, decrees, dedications, high-value funerary monuments, and legends on ceramic stamps, agoranomic weights, and coins attest almost exclusively to the numerically limited groups of the upper and middle elites—the “makers of history.” Accordingly, the representation of the civic body through these categories of inscriptions is significantly skewed, as the “background noise” of ordinary citizens is effectively filtered out. This distortion, which privileges the upper and middle elite, has profound implications for the theory of prosopography. It allows the formulation of a central theoretical proposition of general relevance to the ancient world: homonymous names attested in synchronous decrees, dedications, high-value funerary monuments, and other prestigious inscriptions—such as legends on ceramic stamps, agoranomic weights, and coins—can, with high probability, be attributed to one individual belonging to the numerically restricted upper or middle elite. For example, the prominent historical figure Πρωτογένης Ἡροσῶντος, in addition to being honored in decree IOSPE I² 32, is attested in synchronous agoranomic ceramic stamps [ἀγορανομοῦντων?] Δαϊκράτους, Ἀλεξάνδρου, Πρωτογένου and [ἀγορανομοῦντων] Πρωτογέν(ους), Δη[μητ]ρίου, Δημητρίου, as well as in the coin legend ΠΡΩ.
Author: Mykola Nikolaev
Institution: Central Ukrainian National Technical University
Language: English
Topic: Classical Antiquity Studies
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7133196774