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Municipium Flavium Irnitanum: a Latin Town in Spain*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Hartmut Galsterer
Hartmut Galsterer
Affiliation:
Historisches Institut, Rhein.-Westf. Technische Hochschule, Aachen
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Extract

It is understandable that the small town of Irni attracted no attention from historians and geographers in Antiquity. Pliny the Elder, whose lists of cities in the provinces include so many insignificant as well as important communities, eschews any mention of it; in his eyes it will have been neither ‘dignum memoratu’ nor ‘Latio sermone dictu facile’ (NH III, 7). It was left to the enterprise of amateur archaeologists equipped with modern metal-detectors to bring to light the city law, and with that the existence of the city itself. The story of the find and of the stages leading to publication is recounted by J. González in the original publication of two years ago, and need not be repeated here. It is beyond question that it represents an extraordinary enrichment of our knowledge of the Roman city, not just in the Iberian peninsula but throughout the Roman Empire.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 78 , November 1988 , pp. 78 - 90
Copyright
Copyright ©Hartmut Galsterer 1988. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 González, J., ‘The Lex Irnitana: a New Copy of the Flavian Municipal Law’, JRS 76 (1986), 147–243Google Scholar, with an English translation of the law by Michael Crawford; henceforth cited as González. The following works are also cited in abbreviated form:

Galsterer, ‘Loi municipale’= Galsterer, H., ‘La loi municipale des romains: chimère ou réalité?’, RHD 65 (1987), 181–203Google Scholar.

Galsterer, Städtewesen = id., Untersuchungen zum römischen Städtewesen auf der iberischen Halbinsel (1971).

Mackie = Mackie, N., Local Administration in Roman Spain, A.D. 14–212 (1983)Google Scholar.

Mommsen, ‘Stadtrechte’ = Mommsen, Th., ‘Die Stadtrechte der latin. Gemeinden Salpensa und Malaca in der Provinz Baetica’, Ges. Schriften 1 (1905), 113–382Google Scholar.

Spitzl = Spitzl, Th., Lex municipi Salpensani (1984)Google Scholar.

A subsequent edition by d'Ors, A., La ley Flavia municipal (texto y comentario) (Studia et documenta 7, 1986)Google Scholar, reached me too late to be used here; cf. the review by W. Simshäuser, ZSS (in the press).

2 Cf. here Williamson, C., ‘Monuments of Bronze: Roman Legal Documents on Bronze Tablets’, Class. Ant. 6 (1987), 160–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Publication of these fragments was planned for JRS 77 (1987), but has unfortunately had to be postponed.

4 If the attribution of the so-called Fragmentum Italicense to Cortegana, as argued by A. Canto (op. cit., n. 51 below) proves to be correct, this would represent the first known fragment from the north of Baetica.

5 The now available beginning of ch. 21 will necessitate a striking reassessment of Latin rights (see below). At the end of ch. 29, as in the Lex Irnitana the words are written out in full, a certain adjustment as against Mommsen's interpretation imposes itself.

6 González designates these by letters A–L. They correspond with a fair degree of certainty to chs. 38–49 (see below).

7 González, 147 reports the discovery of a fragment of the bottom right-hand corner of Tablet II; unless it is the missing heading of ch. 19, it must concern the duties of the duumviri.

8 Cf. ch. 21: ‘quot ex h.l. magistratus creare oportet’, and ch. 51: ‘tot quot creari oportebit’.

9 Ch. 51: ‘quibus per h.l. eum honorem petere licebit’; cf. ch. 54, ‘ex eo genere ingenuorum hominum de quo h.l. cautum comprehensumque est’. If the institution of the summa honoraria existed in Irni, and if it is mentioned in the law, this would be an appropriate place.

10 Ch. 24: ‘si eum IIvirum ex h.l. solum creari oportuisset’.

11 Cf. Ladage, D., Städtische Priester- und Kultämter im lateinischen Westen des Imperium Romanum zur Kaiserzeit (Diss. Köln, 1971)Google Scholar.

12 Lex Urson. (FIRA I2, no. 21), chs. 66–8; Arva: CIL 11, 1064.

13 On the institution of the Imperial cult see Deininger, J., ‘Zur Begründung des Provinzialkults in der Baetica’, Madr. Mitt. 5 (1964), 167–79Google Scholar and now Fishwick, D., The Imperial Cult in the Latin West 1. 2 (1987), 219 ff.Google Scholar; A. Stylow (personal communication) expresses strong reservations as to its foundation in the Flavian period. For representation on the concilium of another province cf. the Lex de flamonio provinciae from Narbo (FIRA I2, no. 22).

14 ‘Cuique per h.l. licebit’ in ch. 58 and elsewhere. The relevant chapter was perhaps comparable in construction to Ulpian, Dig. L, 1, 1: ‘municipem aut nativitas facit aut manumissio aut adoptio’, cf. González, 200.

15 Mourgues, J.-L., ‘The so-called Letter of Domitian at the End of the Lex Irnitana’, JRS 77 (1987), 78–87Google Scholar, interprets this as a subscriptio of the Emperor in reply to a libellus which is not reproduced.

16 Inscr. ant. Maroc 11, 369 f. Vittinghoff, F., ‘Militärdiplome, römische Bürgerrechts- und Integrationspolitik der Hohen Kaiserzeit’, in Eck, W., Wolff, H. (eds), Heer und Integrationspolitik. Die römischen Militärdiplome als historische Quelle (Passauer Historische Forschungen 2, 1986), 535 f.Google Scholar, esp. 552 f., draws attention to the fact that with grants of the Roman citizenship or of Latin rights, the beneficiaries were always the entire citizen body of the community concerned; the grant of conubium to the citizens of Volubilis is to be explained in terms of the exceptional conditions prevailing in Mauretania in the aftermath of the war against Aedemon. On the other hand, we are naturally entirely ignorant of the rules which governed the composition of the citizen body in an Iberian-Roman community like Irni in the pre-Flavian period; it remains possible that many inhabitants, previously in a dependent status, did not benefit from the new rights, but became incolae. Ch. 94 shows that incolae gained equality in private law, but enjoyed only limited rights of political participation.

17 Cf. Brunt, P. A., JRS 71 (1981), 163 fGoogle Scholar.

18 Mommsen, ‘Stadtrechte’, 323; cf. Galsterer, Städtewesen, 56 f.

19 The census-regulations in the Tabula Heracleensis (FIRA I2, no. 13), 11. 142 f., which, however, related explicitly to Italy, envisage fulfilment of the relevant obligations before whoever ‘maximum mag(istratum) maximamve potestatem ibi (in the city) habebit’.

20 CIL II, 1256. The suggestion by Mackie, 159, n. 6, that the findspot, S. Juan de Aznalfarache, should be identified with the Caesarian(?), Latin(?) municipium(?) ‘Osset quod cognominatur Iulia Constantia’ (Pliny, NH III, 11), is by no means certain, cf. Wiegels, R., Die Tribusinschriften des römischen Hispanien (1985), 52Google Scholar. J. González, Ath. 65 (1987), 328, cites coins, now lost, with COLON IUL CONSTANTIA OSSET; doubts must remain.

21 A comparison of liability-periods is also instructive, even when these are not directly analogous. In section 6 of the Lex Tarentina (FIRA I2, no. 18) former magistrates of the municipium are forbidden to leave for a period of five years after holding office. The Lex Irnitana, ch. G, makes it illegal to send anyone on an embassy within one year after his tenure of a magistracy, unless he has settled the accounts relating to his office.

22 It remains unclear whether the law dealt also with sub-divisions of the town's territorium. The law does contain an allusion to the oppidum, the urban centre (ch. 19), but none to any vici or pagi—and not all Flavian municipia were as small as Irni. The absence of the curator rei publicae is also noteworthy, although it is even more uncertain whether we should expect an allusion to one in a city law of this period, if indeed this institution actually existed under Domitian, above all in Latin communities.

23 FIRA I2, no. 13,1. 89; note also 1. 83, the provision that new decuriones should be selected only ‘in demortui darnnative locum eiusve qui confessus erit’.

24 Cf. Galsterer, ‘Loi municipale’, 192.

25 Cf. for what follows Galsterer, ‘Loi municipale’.

26 Lex Urson. chs. 62 f.; Irnitana, chs. 73, 78.

27 ‘De is rebus et inter eos, de quibus et inter quos duumvirorum iurisdictio erit, ad H[S M] iurisdictio … esto’ (ch. 19, 11. 13 f). Cf. ch. 84, 11. 23 f. ‘… IIviri qui ibi i.d. praeerit, iurisdictio … item eadem condicione … aedilis qui ibi erit iurisdictio’, cf. González, 201.

28 Cf. the (somewhat controversial) treatment by Behrends, O., Die römische Geschworenenverfassung (1970)Google Scholar, and the review in Gött. Gel. Anz. 225 (1973), 29 ff.

29 ILS 112 = Ehrenberg and Jones, no. 100. The reference is not, as Dessau, ad loc. took it, to political mediation between council and people, but to the institution of a curia of ‘plebeian’ iudices in Narbo, as already argued by Behrends, op. cit., 134, n. 44.

30 On the date of the Lex Iulia see Kaser, M., Das röm. Zivilprozessrecht (1966), 115 f.Google Scholar

31 Lex Urson., 1. 99. For the organization of city aqueducts, and in general for the management of underground engineering-works in municipalities, see Ect, W., ‘Die Wasserversorgung im römischen Reich: Sozio-politische Bedingungen’, in Die Wasserversorgung antiker Städte (1987), 51–101Google Scholar.

32 AE 1972, no. 268 f. Of the designation of the office held by Valerius Firmus all that appears to survive is bis; the restoration [IIvir] bis is very probable.

33 Cf. ch. 83 on munitio.

34 I cannot subscribe to the opinion expressed in the commentary (223), ‘the only thing actually banned is a coetus’. If that were so, sodalicia and collegia would not also have been listed in the heading.

35 As it seems, the proconsul of Baetica, like many other senatorial governors, will have had one or more auxiliary units at his disposal, see Eck, W., ‘Prokonsuln und militärisches Kommando’, in Heer und Integrationspolitik (n. 16 above), 518 fGoogle Scholar. (for Baetica see p. 520).

36 Note by way of illustration in this connection Hadrian's rescript to the concilium Baeticae, Dig. XLVII, 14, 1 pr. = Coll. II, 7, 1–2.

37 Even if it was largely taken over from the Lex Iulia de annona, cf. González, 224.

38 At Tritium Magallum, a place which seems on the basis of CIL II, 4227, to have been incorporated in the tribe Quirina, and therefore was perhaps a Flavian municipium, a grammaticus paid by the city is attested in the second century; see CIL II, 2892 and cf. U. Espinosa, ZPE 68 (1987), 242.

39 Cf. Oliva, Rodriguez, ‘Malaca’, in Ciudades Augusteas de Hispania II (1976), 59–61Google Scholar.

40 Chs. J and 63. On the ultro tributa, regularly listed along with vectigalia, cf. Mayer-Maly, RE IXA (1961), cols. 579–81, and Spitzl, 83 f. Note the significance in this connection of Titus' letter to Munigua (AE 1962, 288). In a legal dispute with a contractor for its revenues the city had appealed to the Emperor from the judgment of a proconsul, without success.

41 In contrast to Mommsen's restoration in FIRA I2, p. 204.

42 Cf. most recently Talbert, R. J. A., The Senate of Imperial Rome (1984), 11 fGoogle Scholar.

43 Ch. C. Similarly the reading-out of the litterae of Domitian, published as an appendix to the law, perhaps took place in the curia. In Egypt records of the proceedings in town councils were sent to the governor's archives, see Cockle, W. E. H., ‘State Archives in Graeco-Roman Egypt’, JEA 70 (1984), 115Google Scholar; however, there is no word of any such procedure in the law.

44 Ch. 24. Up to the reign of Tiberius male members of the Imperial family could still hold honorific duumvirates in Spanish towns, as is shown by the coins of Carteia, Acci, Carthago Nova and other places; cf. the indices in Farrés, O. Gil., La moneda hispánica en la edad antigua (1966), 427 fGoogle Scholar. Subsequently this honour was confined to the Emperor and his sons, for example Domitian himself in A.D. 73 at Interamna Lirenas (ILS 6125); cf. Mommsen, ‘Stadtrechte’, 308. If we follow the strict sense of the law even sons were now excluded from such an honour.

45 This was the case already in Urso, Lex Urson., chs. 97 and 130. However, in that period, as the relevant sections show, the choice of a patronus was a major political question; but now, given the absence of the opportunity to vote, this was no longer the case.

46 Ch. 86. In this instance the governor is fulfilling a role analogous to that of the Emperor, who from the beginning of the Imperial period onwards had been responsible for the membership of the V decuriae, cf. Gött. Gel. Anz. 225 (1973), 29 f. It is striking that according to the strict sense of ch. 86, neither the proportion between decurion-iudices and ‘plebeian’ iudices nor the total number appears to have been fixed once and for all, but seems to have varied year by year.

47 Interestingly, neither here nor anywhere else in the law is there any reference to a lex provinciae, a further argument for the view that there were no such leges for the Spanish provinces, cf. Galsterer, ‘Loi municipale’, 193 f.

48 Cf. Johnston, D., ‘Three Thoughts on Roman Private Law and the Lex Irnitana’, JRS 77 (1987), 45 f., esp. 46Google Scholar. The poena iniustae appellationis alluded to in Titus' letter to Munigua (AE 1962, 288) will hardly have fulfilled its purpose if the Emperor responded as a matter of routine with indulgentia.

49 FIRA I2, no. 74.

50 On Pliny in Bithynia see most recently Garnsey, P. and Sailer, R., The Roman Empire (1987), 36 fGoogle Scholar.

51 Apart from Irni, Malaca and Salpensa, the relevant places are Basilippo and Ostippo, as well as the socalled Fragmentum Italicense, cf. González, 150; and for its attribution to Cortegana, A. Canto, ZPE 63 (1986), 217 f. (counter-arguments by González, ZPE 70 (1987), 217 f.). It would be reasonable to speculate as to whether the covering law for Flavian municipia was not applied somewhat differently in an Imperial province like Tarraconensis.

52 Cf. Millar, F., ‘The Emperor, the Senate and the Provinces’, JRS 56 (1966), 156 fGoogle Scholar.

53 That is shown, for example, by the allusions to Imperial edicta, decreta and constitutiones in the law (chs. 19 f.).

54 Millar, F., The Emperor in the Roman World (1977)Google Scholar, and earlier in ‘Emperors at Work’, JRS 57 (1967), 9–19Google Scholar. In the light of the Irnitana Millar's thesis gains more plausibility than I was willing to concede in my review in Gött. Gel. Anz. 232 (1980), 72 fGoogle Scholar.

55 Op. cit. (n. 48).

56 Ch. 71 presupposes the Lex Iulia iudiciorum publicorum; ch. 56 the Lex Iulia and Lex Papia Poppaea; and ch. 64 the procedures for the pledging of property that were in operation at the Aerarium in Rome. Closer study would certainly bring to light further ‘background material’ of this sort.

57 Cf. Galsterer, H., ‘Roman Law in the Provinces: some problems of transmission’, in L'impero Romano e le strutture economiche e sociali delle province (Biblioteca di Athenaeum 4, 1986), 13 ffGoogle Scholar.

58 Galsterer, , Städtewesen, 44 fGoogle Scholar. To the evidence cited there in n. 44 add also the Lex de Flamonio Narb. (FIRA I2, no. 22), 1. 19.

59 My previous suggestion that peregrinatory commissioners acting on the instructions of the governor will have put together these laws now seems to me very improbable.

60 In view of the local context of ch. 31, this formula cannot derive from one of the Roman leges serving as precedents, to be discussed shortly; but neither can the term rogatio be an allusion to the popular assembly of Irni itself. The most probable solution is that a thoughtless copyist found the abbreviation POST H.L.D. in the text before him, read D. as R., and expanded it as R(OGATAM).

61 Galsterer, ‘Loi municipale’. The reflections by Mourgues, op. cit. (n. 15), seem to me unnecessarily complicated. I hope to return to this question elsewhere.

62 The Imperial letter from Tymandus, ILS 6090 = MAMA IV, 236, see Millar, ERW, 395, shows clearly that the provincial governor had sent a dossier to Rome; by contrast Orcistus seems to have gained city rank by a direct appeal to the Emperor, who communicates his decision in a letter addressed to Ablabius, the vicarius of Asiana (ILS 6091; see A. Chastagnol, MEFRA 93 (1981), 381–416).

63 In the Municipium Flavium Arva we find eight centuriae with local names (Oresis, Nanensis, Erquesis etc.) putting up an honorific inscription for a patronus of the municipium at a point designated by the town council (CIL 11, 1064). It is at least a very reasonable hypothesis that these centuriae are the equivalent of the curiae at Irni.

64 Dessau, H., Wiener Studien 24 (1902), 240Google Scholar, concluded that, as the only surviving tablet of the Lex Salpensana was found in Malaca, and as the name of Domitian is nowhere erased, the law could not have been formally published in Salpensa. Now, however, the Irnitana is at our disposal; it was found in Irni and here too Domitian's name is not erased. Dessau's arguments are therefore not valid; but the reason why the Emperor's name was allowed to remain in both laws, while it was erased at Malaca, remains unclear. Was it that Irni and Salpensa lay so far from the major political centres that there was no need to pay heed to the order for the erasure of the name?

65 Strabo IV, 1, 12 (on Nemausus); Appian, BC 11, 26 (on Novum Comum).

66 The minimum age of twenty-five, valid for magistrates (ch. 54) and iudices who were not decuriones, is probably to be presumed for decuriones also, cf. Mommsen, ‘Stadtrechte’, 311, n. 73. For average expectations of life see the tables given by Hopkins, K., Death and Renewal (1983), 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 Why the translation and commentary (p. 215) take this disqualification as applicable also to the duumvirate I cannot understand; in that case it would have been simple to lay down the preconditions of eligibility for all magistracies together, without taking them in two separate sentences. We do, however, have a series of inscriptions referring to IIviri civitatem Romanam per honorem consecuti (CIL II, 1945; 2096; AE 1981, 496). But like all such inscriptions they derive from a limited geographical area and from a brief space of time, from A.D. 75 into the reign of Domitian (cf. Stylow, A., ‘Apuntes sobre epigrafia de epoca flavia en Hispania’, Gerión 4 (1986), 290 fGoogle Scholar.), therefore probably from before the issuing of the city laws under Domitian. We do not know in what way, if at all, the succession of offices was regulated in the edictum of Vespasian, the only relevant Imperial constitution then in force. These inscriptions are therefore not relevant to the interpretation of ch. 54.

68 The interpretation of ch. 21 adopted by me in Städtewesen, 49 f., that the purpose was to limit the number of new Roman citizens, is thus definitively controverted. I still, however, find the meaning of this chapter unclear.