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An Unnoticed Official: The Praepositus Saltus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

David Woods
David Woods
Affiliation:
Belfast
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Extract

The Passio Typasii survives in only one manuscript and was published for the first time in 1890. It purports to describe the trial and death of a Mauretanian martyr, a military veteran by the name of Typasius, during the Diocletianic persecution. However as recently demonstrated its literary borrowings, from the Breviarium of Eutropius and the Vita Martini of Sulpicius Severus, suggest that it is a mere fiction and that it should be dated after c. A.d. 396. It is the purpose of this note to draw attention to its preservation of an otherwise unattested title, that of the praepositus saltus, and to expand upon the significance of this title for the interpretation of the work. This title only occurs fully in one passage, being elsewhere abbreviated to praepositus, and this passage is of some interest therefore.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , May 1994 , pp. 245 - 251
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1994

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References

1 Smedt, C., ‘Passiones Tres Martyrum Africanorum’, Analecta Bollandiana 9 (1890), 107Google Scholar–34. In my references to this text I follow Smedt's chapter headings, but also refer to the sentences which his text does not number.

2 Woods, D., ‘A Historical Source of the Passio Typasii’, Vigiliae Christianae 47 (1993), 78–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, developing upon Stancliffe, C., St. Martin and His Hagiographer (Oxford, 1983), pp. 144–8Google Scholar, and Monceaux, P., ‘Etude critique sur le Passio Tipasii Veterani’, Revue Archéologique 4 (1904), 267–74Google Scholar. See also Fontaine, J., ‘Suplice Severe a-t-il travesti Saint Martin de Tours en martyr militaire?’, Analecta Bollandiana 81 (1963), 31–58, pp. 43–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Barcellona, F. S., ‘Sogni e visioni nella letteratura martirologica africana posteriore al III secolo’, Augustinianum 29, 193–212, pp. 208–10Google Scholar. It is the date of composition of the Vita Martini which provides the terminus post quem of c. A.d. 396 for the Passio Typasii. It should be pointed out now also that the Vita Martini spread across North Africa, from Carthage to Egyptian Thebes, within a remarkably short period, within a year of its production even, Sulpicius Severus, Dial. I.3, 23.

3 C. Smedt, art. cit., p. 119.

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6 Passio Typasii 2.9: Et continuo eum praepositus cunei eius accepit atque in ferrea vincula conjecit.

7 J. Helgeland, art. cit., p. 787.

8 The pro-Roman nature of the text rules out the possibility that this praepositus and the decurion are ‘cases, perhaps, not of actual Roman officials, but of local dynasts who had assumed Roman military titles’, as described by Matthews, J., ‘Mauretania in Ammianus and the Notitia’, 157–88, p. 172, in Aspects of the Notitia Dignitatum (Oxford, 1976), edd. Goodburn, R. and Bartholomew, P..Google Scholar

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11 Not. Dig. Oc. XII. 25: Procurator rei privatae per Mauritaniam Sitifensem.

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15 J. Helgeland, art. cit., p. 787, simply following C. Smedt, art. cit., p. 119.

16 C.Th. 12.1.33.

17 C.Th. 10.3.4.

18 A. H. M. Jones, op. cit., pp. 615–19, for what follows.

19 C.Th. 7.13.7 (A.d. 375).

20 C.Th. 7.13.2 (A.d. 370); an exception being C.Th. 7.13.12 (A.d. 397).

21 A. H. M. Jones, op. cit., p. 1252.

22 Ibid., p. 617.

23 Historia Monachorum In Aegypto VIII.10; Orosius, Hist. Adv. Paganos VII.33.

24 C.Th. 12.1.11 (A.d. 325), 13 (A.d. 326), 22 (A.d. 336), 37 (A.d. 344), 38 (A.d. 346), 45 (A.d 358), 56 (A.d. 362), 87 (A.d. 381), 88 (A.d. 382), 95 (A.d. 383), 113 (A.d 386), 137 (A.d. 393), 147 (A.d. 416).

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30 Passio Typasii 1.3: Praeterea in Sitifensi provincia gentiles, qui semper pacati fuerant et Quinquegentiani vocantur, direptis provincialium facultatibus atque universis possessoribus incolisque prostratis, latrocinia perpetrabant.

31 Claudian, De Bello Gildonico 197–200.Google Scholar

32 Passio Typasii 1.5: Tanta erat desperatio ut Africa Romanis necata videretur imperio.

33 Passio Typasii 1.4: Contra quos multi iudicesproduxerant, et universi cum magnis exercitibus victi perierant, in tantum ut terribili horrore nullus iam comes ad ipsas partes auderet accedere et, duces, qui ad Sitifensem provinciam mittebantur, aut aegritudinem fingerent, aut veluti naufragia formidantes, in vicinas Italiae insulas residerent.

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35 T. D. Barnes, art. cit., p. 499.

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