A New Pankration Inscription from Attouda

This paper presents the editio princeps of a newly discovered agonistic inscription from Attouda, commemorating Marcus Aurelius Eutykhos II, recorded as victor in the men’s pankration at games designated as Olympia. The inscription, carved on a marble base unearthed during the 2025 excavations in the area known as Aşağı Mezarlık (“Lower Cemetery,” cadastral block 126, parcel 82), constitutes the fourth known pankration text from Attouda. To date, eleven agonistic inscriptions, most of them relating to combat sports (pankration and pale), have been documented from the site, marking an unusually prominent epigraphic interest in athletic commemoration for a modest inland city. The new text, taken together with the three previously published pankratiasts (M. Aurelius Attikos Alexandros, M. Aurelius Karminios Kataplous, and Alexandros, grandson of Attikos), points to a sustained local tradition of athletic training and success over a period of roughly five decades (ca. 215-265 CE). Onomastic evidence places this group in the post–Constitutio Antoniniana era, when the gentilicium Aurelius became widespread across the eastern provinces. The inscription of Eutykhos, with its concise formula and absence of civic honorifics, illustrates both the prestige attached to these contests and Attouda’s participation in the broader agonistic networks of Roman Asia Minor most plausibly at the level of regional isolympic festivals rather than the Panhellenic games.