chapter 8 Being Termessian: local knowledge and identity politics in a Pisidian city Onno van Nijf getting to know them: the cemeteries of termessos Anyone approaching an ancient city would first be confronted with the deceased members of the community. Each city buried its dead conspicu- ously along the main roads leading into the city. Streets of tombs and cities of the dead often surrounded the cities of the living, and the small city of Termessos, high up in the mountains of Pisidia was no exception. In fact owing to limitations of space, the dead and the living inhabited areas in even closer proximity than was usual. Termessos, which is now the centre of a Turkish national park, was at the turn of the second and third centuries ce a thriving, though perhaps unexceptional provincial city. An old Pisidian settlement, it had been drawn into the Greek world only after the conquests of Alexander, and under his successors it slowly turned into a Greek city. It was a staunch supporter of Rome in the late republic, and it maintained a high degree of independence. In the imperial period it was incorporated into the province of Lycia et Pamphylia. The site was never formally excavated, but it was explored by travellers and surveyed by teams from Vienna and more recently from Istanbul, which has resulted in extensive publications of its more than a thousand inscriptions. Termessos may have been unremarkable, but to us it is unique because of this exceptionally rich epigraphic record. This paper is part of a wider project on the study of the epigraphy and society of Roman Termessos. I shall discuss the honorific spaces of the city and their connection with the political culture in a forthcoming paper: van Nijf (in press). Cf. van Nijf (); van Nijf (b) I have presented versions of the current paper in Groningen, Paris, Hamburg, Nijmegen, Istanbul and Athens. I would like to thank my hosts at these occasions, as well as the participants in the seminars for their comments. I have greatly benefited from comments or help by Sofia Voutsaki, Rens Tacoma, Christina Kokkinia and Christina Williamson. For a discussion of this phenomenon see von Hesberg and Zanker (). See the map in Fig. . on p. . The cemeteries are immediately north and south of the city centre. The best discussion of Termessos remains Heberdey in RE (zweite Reihe) v.a.: –. For Roman Termessos see Heberdey (). The inscriptions were published by Heberdey in TAM . and in I . plikc ¸ioˇ glu et al. (), I . plikc ¸ioˇ glu et al. (), I . plikc ¸ioˇ glu et al. () and I . plikc ¸ioˇ glu et al. ().