The Late Milestones of Asia Minor

The impressive corpus of milestones recently edited by the late David Henry French and set online by the British Institute at Ankara provides an extensive and in-depth knowledge of more than 1200 stones erected alongside the Roman roads of Asia Minor from the late Republic to the Later Empire. Even if milestones were the commonest epigraphic display of power in the Roman world, modern activity tends to obliterate them, and consequently it was more than urgent to collect the remains before they vanish. This paper studies the unbalanced geographical and chronological distribution of milestones. They seem to be more or less scattered throughout Asia Minor, but they are mainly concentrated in the north-western part of the Anatolian plateau. Besides most of them were built, inscribed or frequently reused in Late Antiquity, especially between the late third century and the early fourth century, that is from Diocletian to Constantine, both emperors overrepresented in this medium although they rarely journeyed in Asia Minor. According to the study of late milestones found in the region, it did exist a close relation between the advent of a ruler and the multiplication of milestones, which had merely become dynastic monuments erected by local communities in honour of a new emperor. For this reason, they lost any practical purpose and completely disappeared from Asia Minor at the beginning of the sixth century.