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Roman Senators in Cappadocia1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

R. P. Harper
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Extract

An inscription at Comana Cappadociae (Şar köyü, Mağara, Adana), hitherto unpublished, provides the evidence for this note (Pl. XLIIa, Fig. 1). The stone is now in the yard of the school at Şar. It is a white marble slab, 0.90 × 0.40 m., recut below and at the lower right corner. The building which now houses the school was a church when the village was inhabited by Armenians and seems to have been built by them entirely out of ancient materials. This stone is said to have formed the door-sill of the church and to have been taken out when the position of the door was changed recently. Lines 4 and 5 certainly appear to have been worn by the passage of feet.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 14 , December 1964 , pp. 163 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1964

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References

2 Pflaum, H.-G., Les Carrières Procuratoriennes Équestres sous le Haut-Empire Romain (1960), p. 63 f.Google Scholar, no. 24 bis.

3 Année Épigraphique, 1927, nos. 1 and 2.

4 Pflaum, loc. cit.

5 BCH. VII (1883), p. 128Google Scholar, no. 3 = IGR. III, no. 125Google Scholar.

6 Cf. Magie, D., Roman Rule in Asia Minor (1950), p. 1437Google Scholar.

7 ILS. 8971, from Ephesus.

8 Fränkel, M., Inschriften von Pergamon (1890), 451Google Scholar. A good example of the many inscriptions of Quadratus at Pergamum.

9 AÉ., 1905, nos. 132 and 133.

10 Pflaum, , Historia II (1954), p. 444Google Scholar.

11 578.5.

12 Magie, op. cit., p. 1560, n. 11. Comment on some of these is necessary. AÉ. 1941, no. 163, from near Başmakcı, is dated to 222 in AÉ. on the reading TRIB.POTEST/IMP.I.I.COS.-P.P.PRO.COS with the comment: “La mention de la seconde salutation impériale de Sévère Alexandra est anormale.” Professor Birley comments that it is not only unusual but impossible. The inscription must be understood to read II cos. (iterum consul) and so to refer to the precise year of Alexander's second consulship, 226. This incidentally alters the date of the governorship of Asinius Lepidus, elsewhere unattested; cf. Degrassi, , I Fasti Consolari (1952), p. 62Google Scholar: “Prima del 222–224?” AÉ. 1922, no. 129, from near Adana, now in Adana Museum, is dated to 230. It reads TRIBVNI/POT.X.IMP.X./COS. III. P. P. PRO/COS and should be dated, along with the present inscription to 10th December, 230–9th December, 231. The strange IMP.X., which is definitely on the stone, must be a lapicide's error, probably derived from a desire for symmetry with POT.X. The milestones of Severus Alexander on the military road between Caesareia and Melitene do not specify a year or governor, though they are before 226, and so may be taken to represent normal repair work.

13 AÉ. 1905, nos. 132 and 133.

14 Herodian, VI, 5, 5.

15 CIL. VI, 1684–1695Google Scholar.

16 ILS. 5025; PIR 2 A 1016.

17 ILS. 3937–8; PIR 2 A 1017: “potest idem esse qui praecedit.”

18 Communicated to me by Mr. R. P. Duncan-Jones. The full name, Q. Aradius Rufinus Optatus Aelianus, is given. He was indeed both consul and sodalis Augustalis. The career is in descending order. When the inscription was set up he was acting in place of the proconsul of Africa. Previously he had been governor of three provinces, in a normal type of sequence. Firstly praetorian Galatia (without a legion), followed by praetorian Syria Phoenice (with one legion). On the present state of knowledge of the fasti of these two provinces he could comfortably have governed both between 212 and 217. Most recently he had governed …… , presumably consular Cappadocia, this would be after c. 218, when M. Munatius Sulla Cerialis was recalled and tried by Elagabalus, Cassius Dio, LXXIX, 4, 5, and before Asinius Lepidus, attested in 226, v. sup. n. 12. He cannot have succeeded Cerialis immediately as he should have been at Rome receiving his priesthood and holding the consulship. Also the governorship of M. Ulpius Ofellius Theodorus has to be fitted into the reign of Elagabalus, , CIL. III, p. 2063Google Scholar, so Rufinus probably governed Cappadocia in the early years of Severus Alexander. His early career is missing, but praef. aerarii and another prefecture are recorded.

19 AJ. XLI, p. 224 (Richmond)Google Scholar; JRS. LI, p. 191 (Wright)Google Scholar.

20 It will be sufficient here to point out how many governors of consular provinces are shown below the line in Degrassi, their appearance as such being the only evidence and terminus ante quem for their holding the consulate.

21 Drawings at the Department of Archaeology, University of Durham.

22 Compare JRS. XVIII, p. 112Google Scholar, from Bowes and ILS. 2618 from Risingham, both of Alfenus Senecio, one with and the other without a praenomen.

23 Waddington, W. H., “Inscriptions de la Cataonie,” in BCH. VII, p. 135Google Scholar; Sterrett, J. R. S., An Epigraphical Journey in Asia Minor (1888), p. 239Google Scholar; de Jerphanion, Père G. and Jalabert, Père L., “Taurus et Cappadoce,” in Mélanges de la Faculté Orientale de l'Université Saint-Joseph (1911), Vol. V, fasc. 1, p. 287Google Scholar.

Bell, G. L., Amurath to Amurath, 1911, p. 348, Figs. 226Google Scholar (plan) and 227 (photograph). Miss Bell cannot, I think, have been inside the vault, of which she gave a plan, but probably peered through a small hole above the entrance now in use. At all events she missed the Hermodorus inscription, which may of course still have been covered with rubble, for she published notes by Hogarth on five others which she had seen in the same area (pp. 351–2). Her description (pp. 349–50) of the state of the village of Şar at the period indicates perhaps why the Titus inscription (above, no. I) lay unnoticed by the travellers of the time.

24 In Kilise, Kırık: MFO. III, 1, p. 459, no. 28Google Scholar; V, 1, p. 311, no. 1; p. 313, no. 3. From a similar building, adjacent to the south, now entirely ruined, whose chief architectural feature consisted of columns: Wadd., , BCH. VII, p. 135Google Scholar, no. 15; MFO. V, 1, p. 313, no. 2Google Scholar; p. 314, no. 4; also probably Wadd., , BCH. VII, p. 136, no. 17Google Scholar.

25 Stemma: PIR 2 C 1037.

26 I follow here the new dating of the constitutio Antoniniana by MrMillar, Fergus in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XLVIII (1962), pp. 124–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Souter, in Anatolian Studies presented to Sir W. M. Ramsay (1923), p. 400, no. 1Google Scholar.

28 MFO. V, 1, p. 320Google Scholar, no. 17, and Wadd., , BCH. VII, p. 134, no. 12Google Scholar.

29 MFO. V, 1, p. 313, no. 2Google Scholar.

30 Wadd., , BCH. VII, p. 136, no. 17Google Scholar, and MFO. V, 1, p. 313, no. 3Google Scholar.

31 MFO. III, 1, p. 459, no. 28Google Scholar.

32 Wadd., , BCH. VII, p. 135, no. 14Google Scholar.

33 Inscriptiones Graecae in Bulgaria Repertae, Vol. I (1956), p. 34, no. 14Google Scholar.

34 I should like to thank Professor Eric Birley for much advice, generously given, in the preparation of this article.