Abstract:

The impressive milthas corpus, recently edited by the dead David Henry French and placed online by the British Institute in Ankara, offers a deep and comprehensive information of more than 1200 stones built along the roads of Rome from the late Republic to the late Empire. Though the militias are a frequent epigraphic appearance of the power of the Roman world, modern activities tend to destroy them and as a result, it is more urgent than ever to gather these remains without they disappear. This article examines the imbalanced geographical and chronological spread of their milths. These seem to be dispersed throughout almost all of the Little Asia and are mainly concentrated in the northwestern part of the Anadolu plateau. Moreover, many of them were built in the Late Ancient Age, especially between the late 3th century and early 4th century, i.e. from Diocletianus to Constantine, and were often reused. These two emperors, though they rarely travel in Little Asia, are excessively represented in this way. According to the study on the late Ancient Mills in the region, there was a close relationship between the arrival of a man and the increase of his mills. These milths were only works of the dynasty built by local communities in honor of a new emperor. This is why they lost their practical purpose and completely disappeared from Little Asia at the beginning of the 6th century.

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