Soru

In mid-twentieth-century epigraphic scholarship, classical historians held that official civic inscriptions in second-century CE Roman Anatolia were exclusively funded through public treasury allocations (aerarium). However, recent re-examinations of honorific stelae from the Roman province of Lycia and Pamphylia reveal a more complex financial architecture. Inscriptions recording the benefactions of elite citizens demonstrate that while public decrees authorized the erection of such monuments, the physical carving and procurement of marble were frequently underwritten by private liturgies (liturgiai) or voluntary personal subscriptions. Crucially, epigrapher Elena Rostova notes that this private funding did not diminish municipal administrative oversight: urban councils (boule) retained absolute editorial veto power over the final engraved text, requiring stonecutters to submit plaster squeezes for verification prior to execution. Consequently, the presence of standard civic honorific formulas did not necessarily signal state-financed production, but rather reflected strict public regulatory control over privately funded civic displays.

According to the passage, stonecutters carving honorific inscriptions in Roman Lycia and Pamphylia were explicitly required to take which of the following actions prior to executing the text?