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R.E.C.A.M. Notes and Studies No. 5 A Roman Family in Phrygia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Stephen Mitchell
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Extract

The history of Roman and Italian businessmen in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, and especially in Asia, during the first century B.C. is a familiar one. There is ample evidence of many kinds for their emigration and activities after the formation of the province of Asia, interrupted by the hegemony of Mithridates, but resumed on a larger scale after he had been driven back from Asia into Pontus. This evidence can be placed into two broad categories. First, there are allusions in the contemporary literature, inscriptions and historical accounts of the period which provide direct information about individuals and families active in the province. Then there is the evidence of inscriptions of the Imperial period, especially the second and third centuries AD., which reveal both established settlements of resident Romans in the cities and an extraordinary number of families with Roman and Italian names, which could clearly trace their origins back to the Republican period of emigration and settlement. Opportunities to study particular families or groups of emigrants at both periods are unfortunately rare, since usually one or the other category of evidence is lacking. Although the record is far from complete, and it is necessary to rely more on conjecture than one would wish, the object of this study is to investigate one such emigrant family, the Sestullii, whose presence in Asia is attested both in Republican literary sources and in Imperial inscriptions. It is clearly impossible to write a continuous history of the gens, or even to reconstruct its stemma in outline, especially since there is a notably large gap in our knowledge between ca 50 B.C. and A.D. 150, a two hundred year span from which only a single relevant inscription survives, but the family name is so rare that it can reasonably be assumed that all its bearers are related to one another in some way. It must be stressed that this assumption underlies the whole reconstruction offered here.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 29 , December 1979 , pp. 13 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1979

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References

1 I have been able to find no examples outside Italy and Asia Minor. From Italy there are Sestullii at Nuceria (CIL X 1100Google Scholar), Fundi (X, 6273) and Rome (VI, 26472). We can add two Sestuleii at Rome (VI, 7160, 29681) and one at Alba Fucens (IX, 4028). I have noted eleven examples on coins and inscriptions in Asia Minor, all discussed below. These figures emphasise how important it is for any study of Italian nomenclature and prosopography to include material from outside Italy, above all from Asia Minor and Africa.

2 A. C. Clark, Oxford 1909; L. Fruechtel, Teubner 1933; A. Boulanger, Budé 1938.

3 Clark, , Inventa Italorum (Anecdota Oxoniensia, 1909), 3 ff.Google Scholar; Fruechtel, xxi.; Boulanger, 68–72.

4 For an account of this manuscript see R. G. M. Nisbet's introduction to his edition of Cicero In Pisonem (1961), xxi–xxiiiGoogle Scholar.

5 For the text, which is preserved in a palimpsest of the fifth century, see Stangl, T., Ciceronis Orationum Scholiastae (1912, repr. 1964), 75 ffGoogle Scholar. esp. 93–108 for passages relating to the Pro Flacco. For the relationship with V and B/β, see Fruechtel, xxiv.

6 Broughton, T. R. S., Supplement to the Magistrates of the Roman Republic (1960) 60Google Scholar; Wiseman, T. P., New Men in the Roman Senate (1971), 261 no. 399Google Scholar; these manuscript variants were also noted by Münzer, F., RE zweite Reihe II, 2036Google Scholar s.v. Sextilius 18.

7 Pro Flacco § 84 ff.

7a At a late date after writing this paragraph, I see that the argument is confirmed in detail by the analysis of Marshall, A. J., “The case of Valeria: an inheritance-dispute in Roman Asia”, CQ XXV (1975), 82–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Pro Flacco § 34: ‘Dixit (Asclepiades) publice data drachmarum CCVI, …sed adiunxit, id quod certe, quoniam erat domesticum, docere debuit, se privatim drachmarum CCVI dedisse, tantum numquam est ausus ut haberet optare. (35) Ab A. Sestullio dicit se dedisse et a suis fratribus.’ For the sense of this passage I follow the interpretation suggested by T. B. L. Webster in his commentary on the speech (Oxford, 1931).

9 Another link between the two groups is that neither came to Rome to act as a witness. See Pro Flacco § 35 (‘“non deduxi” inquit “Sestullium” ’) and 88 (At iste Andro spoliatus bonis, ut dicitis, ad dicendum testimonium non venit). This, however, can hardly be pressed.

10 See Robert, L., Journal des Savants 1975, 155–60Google Scholar.

11 Linderski, J., Historia XXIII (1974), 463–80Google Scholar.

12 Linderski, 469 n.30 can find only two other examples, a senator of A.D. 45 and a suffect consul of A.D. 58, who may be identical with one another.

13 Cicero, , ad Att. I.16.13Google Scholar, cf. 18.3, with Linderski 470–2 and Bailey, D. R. Shackleton, Cicero's Letters to Atticus I (1965), 323Google Scholar.

14 Varro, , RR 3.6.1Google Scholar; Pliny, NH X.45Google Scholar.

15 Tertullian, , De anima 33Google Scholar. §4 with Horace, , Sat. 2.4.24–7Google Scholar, elucidated by Linderski, 468.

16 Tertullian, , De pallio 5.6Google Scholar.

17 Pro Flacco §89; Linderski 472 nn. 41–3.

18 Suetonius, , Caligula 23.2Google Scholar.

19 See Linderski, passim.

20 Linderski, 465 nn. 10–11.

21 Linderski 465 n.11 cites CIL XII, 4357 for L. Aufidius L.f. who held magistracies at Fundi and CIL X, 6248Google Scholar for C. Alfidius Cf. Rufio.

22 Sat. 1.5.34–6Google Scholar. An Aufidius who was certainly Aufidius Lurco is the butt of Sat. 2.4. 24–7Google Scholar, see n.15.

23 Pro Flacco §88.

24 For the lacunae in the speech, see Fruechtel, xxvi–xxviii and Boulanger, 68–72. There are two lengthy gaps in the preserved text, one from §75 to 83, and a second, of equivalent length after §5.

25 CIL X, 6273Google Scholar (found ‘ad Fundos’), P. Sestullius P.l. Salvius.

26 The text has most recently been published by Sherk, R. K., Roman Documents from the Greek East (1969), no. 27 lines 9–10Google Scholar; for comment see Broughton, , Supplement to MRR, 60Google Scholar; Taylor, L. R., Voting Districts of the Roman Republic (1960), 255Google Scholar; Wiseman, , New Men in the Roman Senate, 261Google Scholar no.399. The name was corrected by Badian, E., Historia XII (1963), 140Google Scholar.

27 L. R. Taylor, op. cit., 273, 275.

28 Badian, , Historia XII (1963), 140Google Scholar associates the senator of 39 B.C. with the area round Fundi; Wiseman, loc. cit., cautiously suggests either Tarracina or Fundi.

29 See, e.g., Gruen, E. S., The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (1974), 287–92Google Scholar.

30 The best text of this inscription is that of Rostovtzeff, M. I., Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (ed.2, 1957), 741 no.26Google Scholar. I carelessly omitted to refer to this in JRS LXVI (1976), 112Google Scholar, 16. For a discussion of the estate, and a useful map marking Zemme (Çayırbaşi), see Strubbe, J., Ancient Society VI (1975), 230–6Google Scholar. None of the evidence for this Imperial estate certainly predates the mid-third century, and it is possible that land belonging to the Sestullii in the second century was acquired by the Emperors and incorporated into their large possessions in the area.

31 The notebooks compiled by Ramsay during the course of his travels in Asia Minor are now housed in the Ashmolean Library, Oxford.

32 For a recent list of the high priests of Asia see Rossner, M., Studii Clasice XVI (1974), 101–42Google Scholar.

33 For Iulia Severa see Levick, B. M., Roman Colonies in Southern Asia Minor (1967), 106–7Google Scholar and Mitchell, S., JRS LXIV (1974), 37–8 with nn.73–4Google Scholar.

34 MAMA IV no. 25.

35 Munsterberg, R., Die Beamtennamen auf den griechischen Münzen (1911 repr. 1973) 171Google Scholar. The complete list of five types bearing the formulaαἰτη(σαμένου) Φλ. Σηστυλλιανοῦ has been compiled by Robert, L., Hellenica XI/XII (1960), 53–60Google Scholar.

36 MAMA V no. 67.

37 Published in Mouseion I (1873/1875), 96 no.91Google Scholar, cited by Hatzfeld, J., Les trafiquants italiens dans l'Orient hellénique (1919), 110Google Scholar. I am grateful to Dr Georg Petzl for sending me a text of this inscription derived both from the original publication and from an unpublished notebook of J.Keil.

38 Suggested by Hatzfeld, loc. cit. The full Roman nomenclature, with details of filiation and tribe, provides the best argument for an early date.

39 Ballance, M. H., AS VII (1957), 147–51, lines 14–5Google Scholar.

40 IGR III no. 97; Robert, L., Les Gladiateurs dans l'Orient grec (1938), no.78Google Scholar.

41 Reinach, Th., Rev. Arch. I (1916), 338 no. 5Google Scholar, who compares CIG 3829 (no. 1 above) and correctly recognises the name Sestullius there. The top part of this inscription was apparently seen at Sinop by J. G. F. Hind and published in a Soviet journal (Sovetskaja Arkheologija 1964, 180Google Scholar n.40 no. 17, non vidi), whence it was republished by Lifshitz, B., Grazer Beiträge 1974, 100 no. 17Google Scholar. Lifshitz reproduces the text (without transcript or photo) as a funerary inscription reading Γ(άιος) Σηστύλαιος Μάξιμος and comments that the second name is a transcription of the gentilicium Sextilius. In misinterpreting the nature of the inscription, misreading the nomen and wrongly transcribing it into Latin this marks a major step back from the original publication by Reinach.