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Memory, Money, and Status at Misenum: Three New Inscriptions from the Collegium of the Augustales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2012

J. H. D'Arms
J. H. D'Arms
Affiliation:
American Council of Learned Societies and Columbia University
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Extract

More than thirty years — a generation of man — have passed since the chance discovery in 1968 of what has been referred to since as the collegium of the Augustales at Misenum. In addition to statuary and architectural elements of exceptional interest, the excavations, which presented formidable technical problems, have yielded a rich epigraphical dossier pertaining to the local Augustales, and to political, social, economic, religious, and administrative aspects of their organization from the Julio-Claudian and late Flavian periods to the end of the Antonine age. One of these inscriptions has at last received appropriate scholarly attention; it both whets the appetite for more and reveals the inadequacies of the cursory accounts of the dossier published previously. Now that all the material recovered from the site has been transported to the Castello Aragonese di Baia, and is attractively displayed in the new Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei, one dares to hope that the entire complex and its contents will soon receive the comprehensive archaeological and historical treatment that they so richly deserve.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 90 , November 2000 , pp. 126 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © J. H. D'Arms 2000. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 De Franciscis, A., ‘L'attività archeologica nelle provincie di Napoli e Caserta’, Atti Convegno di Studi Magna Grecia 10 (1970), 421 ff.Google Scholar; Zevi, A. Gallina, Fasti Archeologici 23 (1972), 5049Google Scholar; Borriello and D'Ambrosio (1979), 137–9; 137–9; Boriello, ‘L'edificio degli Augustali da Miseno’, in Domiziano/Nerva, Exhibition Catalogue, Soprintendenza archeologica per le provincie di Napoli e Caserta (1987), 13–24; De Franciscis, Sacello, 15–16. Ceci, F., S. V., ‘Miseno', Enciclopedia dell’ Arte Antica, Suppl. 2 (1995), 712–13Google Scholar. The site is c. Im below sea level.

2 Camodeca (1996b), 161–8 (AE 1996.424), a dedication to Trajan of 112 c.E. and, on the right side, a decree of the Augustales dated 9 November 113 C.E.: a vast improvement over the two (incomplete) versions in De Franciscis, Sacello, 24–8 and 84; cf. AE 1993.468. De Franciscis, who was Soprintendente alle Antichità di Napoli e Caserta at the time of the site's discovery, assumed responsibility for the publication of the complex but was unable to complete the task before his death in 1989. It is doubtful whether he would have approved the posthumous work appearing under his name, however conscientiously undertaken (at the request of his family) by Nella Castiglione Morelli, a former student. Cf. the comments of the editors of AE on the epigraphical portions of the book as a whole: ‘Le manuscrit, … correspond à un état provisoire de la lecture, avant le transfert des inscriptions qui n'étaient pas alors entierement degagées de la terre et de l'eau.’ (AE 1993.129; for a more severe but justified critique, cf. Boschung, D., Gnomon 67 (1995), 569–70Google Scholar). The ‘controllo’ of these texts later undertaken by Guadagno (1994), 245 ff. (cf. AE 1994.426a–f) also leaves much to be desired, as will be seen below.

3 But the contents of the drawing have unfortunately not been integrated into the only published plans of the site, for which see Borriello and D'Ambrosio (1979), 138, fig. 289; the same plan has been reproduced in De Franciscis, Sacello, as illustration no. 5; neither is easily legible. In discussing individual inscriptions, I provide each with the number assigned by the superintendency to the base in the courtyard on which it appears.

4 Bases 2 and 6 (= De Franciscis, Sacello, 28) dedicated to Nerva in 97 c.E. by the Augustales C. Volusius Atimetus and P. Herennius Callistus, respectively; Base 1, carrying an equestrian bronze statue of Trajan, records on the face a dedication to Trajan sometime in 112 c.E. by three L. Kaninii, Augustales; the right side bears a decree of the Augustales dated 9 November 113 c.E., recording the Augustales' gratitude to, and bestowal of honours on, the Kaninii; on the left side appears the relief of the Tutela Classis, on the right that of the Genius Municipii: Camodeca (1996b), 161 ff. (= De Franciscis, Sacello, 25–7, 84).

5 Base 3, dedicated to Apollo by the curator (Augustalium) M. Calpurnius Narcissus ( = De Franciscis, Sacello, 23); Base 4, a dedication to Liber Pater by L. Laecanius Primitivus curator (Augustalium), assignable to 161 c.E. owing to the reference to the third consulship of Antoninus Pius and the second of Verus, on the left-hand side (= De Franciscis, Sacello, 24); Base 5, dedicated to Asclepius by L. Avidius Eleuther imm(unis); the decree on the left side was enacted in 102 c.E., but the face is probably later (see below) (De Franciscis, Sacello, 21 ff.); and Base 8, dedicated to Venus by Sex. Sextilius Demetrius, cur(ator) (= De Franciscis, Sacello, 29). The letter forms and sizes of all four of these dedications are strikingly similar, suggesting that they were nearly contemporaneous in date, and also that they should be interpreted as a religious ensemble.

6 Base 10, dedicated by the Augustales to C. Iulius Phoebus, curator perp(etuus) ( = De Franciscis, Sacello, 47); the inscribed panel on the right side, not recorded by De Franciscis, indicates that Phoebus marked the occasion with an epulum and cash distribution of twelve sesterces to the Augustales, in the consulship of A. Cornelius Palma and Q. Sosius Senecio (99 c.E.); for Base 9, see below.

7 De Franciscis, Sacello, 47.

8 Guadagno (1994), 247.

9 See Champlin (1991), ch. 9, ‘Memory’, 169 ff., emphasizing that ‘the concern of the testator is always with memory, to the exclusion of all else’ (182).

10 See Beard, M., North, J., and Price, S. (eds), Religions of Rome, vol. 1 (1998), 357–8Google Scholar, with references ad loc; Abramenko, (1993) (‘Mittelschicht’); A. Los, ‘La condition sociale des affranchis privés au première siècle’, Annales HHS (1995), 1040 (Augustales among ‘categories intermediaires qui possedaient … une autonomie par rapport aux élites et un poids réel’); D'Arms, Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome (1981), 127–8 (libertina nobilitas); q.v. also for earlier bibliography.

11 A new study clearly establishes on the left of the temple podium the presence of a dedication to Domitian, dated either in late 94 or during the first eight months of 95 c.E., and thus very likely promotional ideology for the gens Flavia: see the forthcoming article by G. Camodeca, ‘Domiziano e il collegio degli Augustali di Miseno’, in Studi in onore di L. Gasperini (2000), 169–86.

12 Porta Capena: CIL VI. 10243, on which see Champlin (1991), 177; actio de sepulchro violato: F. de Visscher, Le Droit des tombeaux romains (1963), 139–46; fines and their non-enforcement: N. Purcell, ‘Tomb and suburb’, in H. von Hessburg and P. Zanker (eds), Römische Graberstrassen (1987), 40–1. For the attitudes of beneficiaries towards testators' desires for permanent commemoration, see also Hopkins, K., Death and Renewal: Sociological Studies in Roman History, vol. 2 (1983), 250–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Ettlinger, L. D., ‘The liturgical function of Michelangelo's Medici Chapel’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 22 (1978), 287–304Google Scholar; to be discussed in M. A. Lavin and I. Lavin, The Liturgy of Love. Images from the Song of Songs in the Art of Cimabue, Michelangelo, and Rembrandt (forth coming).

14 Camodeca (1996b), 165, reached a different conclusion. His starting point is a donation to the Augustales of a capital sum of 30,000 sesterces, attested in the decree of 102 C.E. (Base 5, = De Franciscis, Sacello, 22), from the interest on which an annual viritim distribution was to occur. Noting that twelve sesterces are assigned to Augustales in five of seven instances in which specific sportulae are mentioned, and assuming an interest rate of 6 per cent, or 1,800 sesterces (which figure he derives from the rate supplied in Text B, mentioned above), he concludes that there were 150 members of the college.

While one hesitates to disagree with the scholar who has studied these new inscriptions more carefully than has any other, Camodeca's arguments seem to me to rest on weak foundations. Whereas, on our base, both the amount of individual sportulae (Text A) and an interest rate (Text B) are recorded, neither is mentioned in the decree of 102; it seems hazardous to make inferences from a text in which two of the critical variables are completely unknown. Camodeca, indeed, recognizes that the evidence of the Cominius text would support a membership of 100; finding that lower number unacceptable he prefers to believe that in 148 the Augustales received only 8 sesterces at each annual divisio — despite the fact that, as we have seen, Cominius' formula seems explicitly to call for them to receive twelve. We need to ask which text is more probably anomalous: that of 148, where the variables are spelt out with unusual precision, or that of 102, where two critical variables are unknown? The former text seems to me much the more reliable guide in establishing the number of members of the college; and I conclude that, at least in 148, membership stood at 100. We could reconcile the discrepancies in the two texts by supposing that the capital foundation of 102 was invested at 4 per cent interest, or that the 100 Augustales received individual donations of eighteen sesterces, or that the corpus Augustalium was larger in that year — all tenuous hypotheses, to be sure, since we have no evidence. In any case, inferences as to numbers should rest on the strongest possible foundation, where most of the variables are known. The indicators pointing to a corpus of one hundred members in 148 are all good ones.

15 Decurions: 20 × 100 = 2,000 HS; Augustales corporati: 12 × 100 = 1,200 HS; Augustales non corporati: 8 × 100 = 800 HS; ingenui corporati: 6 × 50 = 300 HS (for the numbers of the last two groups, see commentary on line 17, above); municipes: 4 × 800 = 3,200 HS; these sums total 5,100 sesterces.