Leiden conventions rendered as EpiDoc: restorations as supplied(reason=lost), gaps as gap, abbreviations as expan(abbr+ex), omitted letters as supplied(reason=omitted), surplus as surplus, corrections as corr. Critical apparatus as listApp. The facing translation is div type=translation; the historical commentary is div type=commentary.
King Seleucus to Theophilos and the magistrates and the city of Seleucia in Pieria, greeting. As Aristolochos, one of the 'honoured Friends', has rendered services with all good-will to our father and our brother and ourself, and has at the most critical times given assiduous demonstrations of his attitude toward our state, we both take thought for him in other matters worthily of the good-will which he displays, and we have now honoured him with a bronze statue [...] which we wish to have set up among you [...].
'Resolution of Theophilos the epistates and the magistrates. Since from the king an ordinance (prostagma) was delivered concerning Aristolochos, one of the Friends honoured at his court, of which the copy is appended below …' — the decree then enacts the royal request, voting the bronze statue its place in the city. The city's reply quotes the king's letter as a πρόσταγμα whose ἀντίγραφον (copy) it appends: royal instruction → civic ratification, the same dossier shape as the Eumenes-I and Ptolemy-II editions.
Seleucus IV writes jointly to the city's royal overseer, the epistates Theophilos, and to the magistrates and people — the standard double address of Seleucid civic management. His subject is Aristolochos, ranked among the 'honoured Friends' (τῶν τιμωμένων φίλων), who 'rendered services with all good-will to our father and our brother and ourself' (τῶι τε πατρὶ ἡμῶν καὶ τῶι ἀδελφῶι καὶ ἡμῖν) and 'at the most critical times gave assiduous demonstrations of his attitude toward the (royal) state'. The king has honoured him with a bronze statue and asks that it be set up in the city. One Friend serving three of the royal house in turn — Antiochus III, the brother, and the reigning king — is a vivid measure of how the philos-network held the dynasty together through the lean decade after Apamea (Seyrig, Syria 1932; Welles 1934, 185–188). The close, with the statue's siting, is lost.
Above the letter the stele carried the city's decree, and its heading completes the picture of Seleucid civic governance: 'Resolution of Theophilos the epistates and the magistrates' — the city's presiding officer is the king's own overseer. The decree styles the royal letter a πρόσταγμα (ordinance) 'concerning Aristolochos … of which the copy is appended below' (οὗ τὸ ἀντίγραφον ὑποτέτακται), and proceeds to enact the honour. Royal instruction → civic ratification, with the appended copy: the same dossier shape as the Eumenes-I finances letter and the Ptolemy-II Miletus letter, here with the royal overseer presiding over the 'free' city's vote.