Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus (Greek: Τιβέριος Ἰούλιος Κέλσος Πολεμαιανός, romanized: Tibérios Ioúlios Kélsos Polemaianós),[1] commonly known as Celsus (c. 45 CE – before c. 120 CE), was an Ancient Greek military commander and politician of the Roman Empire who became a senator,[2][3] and served as suffect consul as the colleague of Lucius Stertinius Avitus.[4] Celsus Polemaeanus was a wealthy and popular citizen and benefactor of Ephesus, and was buried in a sarcophagus beneath the famous Library of Celsus,[5] which was built as a mausoleum in his honor by his son Tiberius Julius Aquila Polemaeanus.[6]
Λέοντας Τιβερίου Ιουλίου Κέλσου Πολεμαιανοϋ δούλος
By contrast, Greek senators were more than free to lavish their wealth on their own cities or other ones…Celsus Polemaeanus of Sardis endows a library at Ephesus in which he is honored both as a Greek and a Roman; the library itself may have had a similar dual character, recalling the twin libraries of Trajan at Rome.
Sardis had already seen two Greek senators ... Ti. Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, cos. Suff. N 92 (Halfmann 1979: no 160), who endowed the remarkable Library of Celsus at Ephesus, and his son Ti. Julius Aquila Polemaeanus, cos. suff. in 110, who built most of it.
…statues (lost except for their bases) were probably of Celsus, consul in A.D. 92, and his son Aquila, consul in A.D. 110. A cuirass statue stood in the central niche of the upper storey. Its identification oscillates between Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, who is buried in a sarcophagus under the library, and Tiberius Julius Aquila Polemaeanus, who completed the building for his father
Apart from the public buildings for which such benefactors paid – the library at Ephesos, for example, recently reconstructed, built by Tiberius Iulius Aquila Polmaeanus in 110-20 in honour of his father Tiberius Iulius Celsus Polemaeanus, one of the earliest men of purely Greek origin to become a Roman consul