Acknowledgments
Over a period of roughly forty years we have had more help and encouragement than it is possible to acknowledge here; but we cannot omit to thank those to whom we owe the privilege of working on such a rich archaeological site - the Turkish archaeological authorities, whose overriding responsibility it is, the Institute of Fine Arts in New York and the Faculty of Arts and Science of New York University, who sponsor the excavations, the generous supporting bodies, of whom we name particularly the National Geographic Society (whose highly gifted photographers sometimes provided us also with a fresh outlook on the inscribed stones) and the Friends of Aphrodisias in New York, Izmir, London, Paris and Istanbul; but above all Professor Kenan T. Erim of New York University, who launched and established the excavations in 1961 and continued them with commitment and vigour until his premature death in 1991. To this list we add the team appointed by New York University to continue excavation on the site —Professor Christopher Ratté, until recently of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York, and Professor R. R. R. Smith, now Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology at Oxford. Nor should we forget the several Directors and the staff of the Archaeological Museum at Aphrodisias, into whose care the inscribed stones have passed, and whose help has been needed for their subsequent study.
For the electronic publication of the texts now made available, we give warm thanks to the British Academy, who financed Charlotte Roueché’s research leave to explore the possibilities; to the Leverhulme Trust, who provided our first grant which enabled us to develop a pilot project; and to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, who gave us a Resource Enhancement Grant, which has made this publication possible. We must also thank for their support in various ways Newnham College, Cambridge and the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, the Institute of Classical Studies University of London, the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London, which has housed and supported this project, and the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, which sponsored three conventional studies of these texts (with particular thanks to Averil Cameron, Michael Crawford and Fergus Millar).
For the photographs we are grateful to the British Academy, who gave us a grant for the high quality printing of our photographs, and to the photographers, Elizabeth Alföldi-Rosenbaum, Mossman Roueché, Mehmet Ali Dugenci and other photographers in the excavation team, and, among our other colleagues, Abigail Graham and Robert Pitt; also to the CNRS for photographs of the squeezes made by Paul Gaudin. For the images of excavation notebooks see Notebooks.
In addition we are heavily indebted to a very large number of colleagues who have asked us questions, answered our questions, given us advice and offered their insights. They are more than we can easily count, and we think it appropriate, therefore, not to attempt to list them all, but only those whom we know are not able to witness this publication: Andreas Alföldi, Elizabeth Alföldi-Rosenbaum, Peter Brunt, Robert Coleman, Robert Cook, J. M. R. Cormack, Mehmet Ali Dugenci, Sir Moses Finley, Martin Frederiksen, Martin Harrison, Peter Herrmann, Jale Inan, Reinhard Merkelbach, John Morris, H.-G. Pflaum, Elizabeth Rawson, Jeanne and Louis Robert, A. N. Sherwin-White, Sir Ronald Syme, Robert Tannenbaum, Jocelyn Toynbee, Eric Turner, Denis Van Berchem.