The most interesting picture of
the Lycaonian presbyter’s duties is contained in the following epitaph:--
The help of widows, orphans,
strangers, and poor, [Nestor?, son of Nestor?], presbyter in charge of the
sacred expenditure: in remembrance.
(Garland
in relief)
This remarkable inscription is
mutilated, and (besides the personal name) two of the words, viz. “strangers”
and “expenditure,” are not quite certain.
. . .
I feel in reading this metrical
epitaph that the phrase just quoted springs from the same root as the prose
epitaph previously quoted. Either they both relate to the same presbyter (in
which case the name “Nestor, son of Nestor” would have to be restored), or the
expression, “help of widows, etc.,” first devised for the prose epitaph, came
to bs used for subsequent presbyter (just as we shall find below a form of
metrical epitaph, employed for any priest, with the name thrust regardless of
metre into the verse). The former supposition is perhaps more probable, for the
long metrical epitaph seems to have been specifically composed for this
particular presbyter Nestor, and to be of much higher rank than most of the
metrical epitaphs of this region. (William M. Ramsay, “The Christian
Inscriptions of Lycaonia,” The Expositor sixth series12, no. 6
[December 1905]: 444, 446)
