Note 93 — Chapter IX · THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER AND THE PARTHIANS. (continued 2)

These caravans (συνοδίαι) appear on the Palmyrene inscriptions as fixed companies, which undertake the same journeys beyond doubt at definite intervals under their foreman (συνοδιάρχης, Waddington, 2589, 2590, 2596); thus a statue is erected to such a one by “the merchants who went down with him to Vologasias” (οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ κατελθόντες εἰς Ὀλογεσιάδα ἔνποροι, Waddington 2599 of the year 247), or “up from Forath (comp. Pliny, H. N. vi. 28, 145) and Vologasias” (οἱ συναναβάντες μετ' αὐτοῦ ἔμποροι ἀπὸ Φοράθου κὲ Ὀλογασιάδος, Waddington, 2589 of the year 142), or “up from Spasinu Charax” (οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ ἀναβάντες ἀπὸ Σπασίνου Χάρακος, Waddington, 2596 of the year 193; similarly 2590 of the year 155). All these conductors are men of standing furnished with lists of ancestors; their honorary monuments stand in the great colonnade beside those of queen Zenobia and her family. Specially remarkable is one of them, Septimius Vorodes, of whom there exists a series of honorary monuments of the years 262–267 (Waddington, 2606–2610); he, too, was a caravan-head (ἀνακομίσαντα τὰς συνοδίας ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων καὶ μαρτυρηθέντα ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρχεμπόρων, Waddington, n. 2606 a; consequently he defrayed the costs of the journey back for the whole company, and was on account of this liberality publicly praised by the wholesale traders). But he filled not merely the civic offices of strategos and agoranomos, he was even imperial procurator of the second class (ducenarius) and argapetes (p. 104, note 1).