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Some Inscriptions from Lepcis Magna

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

J. M. Reynolds
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Extract

In 1816 the Bey of Tripoli presented to the Prince Regent a cargo of antiquities from Lepcis Magna. They were brought to England in 1817, and, after a sojourn in the courtyard of the British Museum, went to Virginia Water with material from other sources, to be disposed in a sham ruin. One inscribed stone was subsequently returned to the British Museum. Its findspot is certain, for it was seen c. 1806 at Lepcis Magna by J. D. Delaporte, among the remains of a building since identified as, possibly, the Temple of Jupiter Dolichenus.

It is a block of the grey limestone typical of public building at Lepcis in the first and early second centuries A.D., part of an entablature, with mouldings above and below, a socket for a roofbeam at the back, and a monumental inscription on the face. Previous publications of the text are incomplete. There are two lines of Latin, followed by one in neo-Punic. The Latin text reads:

… VESPASIAN]I F DOM[ITIAN… (erased)

…] AVG SVFE[…

Type
Research Article
Information
Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 19 , November 1951 , pp. 118 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © British School at Rome 1951

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References

1 Information kindly given by Messrs. G. E. Chambers and I. Colquhoun, who are preparing a history of the antiquities at Virginia Water.

2 Republished here by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

3 Journal Asiatique, April 1836, p. 315. The temple is a Severan construction; but the block was doubtless brought here in late antiquity, cf. one block of IRT (see note 4) 370, brought from the Forum Vetus, perhaps in the sixth century.

4 See pl. XX, I; measurements, width 0·67 × ht. 0·53 × surviving depth 0·51. The text is no. 349a in the forthcoming volume of Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania, hereafter cited as IRT.

5 CIL VIII, 7, with bibliography.

6 Libya (già Rivista della Tripolitania), III (1927–1928) p. 92Google Scholar.

7 In fact until it became a Roman colony, c. 109; see IRT 412.

8 Goodchild, R. G., Papers of the British School at Rome, XVIII (1950) p. 72 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 c. A.D. 109–110, see IRT 353.

10 Dioniso, XII (1949) p. 83 ffGoogle Scholar. = IRT 318; for the neo-Punic text see Vida, G. Levi Delia, Rendiconti dell' Accademia dei Lincei, series VIII, vol. IV (1949) p. 404Google Scholar.

11 Vida, G. Levi Delia, Africa Italiana, VI (1935) p. 27 ffGoogle Scholar.

12 SHA, Vit. Sev., 15. In view of the similar case recorded at Oea in the mid-second century by Apuleius, Apol. 98, this cannot be dismissed as malicious gossip. Before the Flavian period, only two Lepcitanian families are directly attested to have had Roman citizenship. Under Domitian, however, there was a change: all prominent persons known to us were Roman citizens; and there was a marked tendency to imitate Roman and Italian institutions, e.g., ordo et populus and the latus clavus in IRT 318.

13 See IRT 412, a municipal career which bridges the change. Lepcis may have been a civitas libera in the first century (M. Grant, Imperium to Auctoritas, p. 340).

14 Statius, , Silvae, IV, 5Google Scholar.

15 PW XIII, col. 1874.

16 For the Senate, see P. Lambrechts, Antiquité Classique, 1936, p. 105 ff. Of 60 equestrian procurators known to the writer to have served under Trajan, 17 are demonstrably provincials, 11 of them from the Eastern provinces and 2 from Africa. Of 52 who served under the Flavian emperors, 11 are demonstrably provincials, 4 of them from the Eastern provinces and none from Africa.

17 Ten building inscriptions of Flavian date have been found at Lepcis: IRT 300, 341, 343, 344, 345, 346, 348, 349, 349a, 350.

18 See note 12.

19 E.g., T. R. S. Broughton, Romanisation of Africa Proconsularis, p. 132.

20 IRT 232. The quaestor at Oea mentioned by Apuleius, Apol. 101, is not necessarily evidence that there was an Italian-type constitution there at this time; AE 1916, no. 42, from Volubilis, seems to show that junior officers in Punic cities were sometimes known by a Latin title appropriate to their functions, rather than by a transliteration of their Punic titles.

21 IRT 120, 121. The other recorded curial names at Sabratha are derived from the names of divinities.

22 IRT 391, 411, 413, 414, 416, 417, 421, 436, 541.

23 ILS 8918 = IRT 432.

24 Published by Prof. Caputo, Giacomo in Fasti Archeologici, IV, 1949Google Scholar, no. 3985 = IRT 315a. I have to thank Prof. Caputo for his kind permission to use the text Four other dedications to Venus, made by officers of the IIII p. A. at Bisica (ILS 1654), Cuicul (AE 1925, no. 73), Mactar, (CIL VIII, 23404Google Scholar) and Thuburbo Maius (AE 1923, no. 22), suggest that she was regarded as a patroness of the revenue in Africa.

25 IRT 302; see pl. XX, 2. Prof. Pietro Romanelli, who first published the text in Leptis Magna, p. 134 read ‘Marii’ for ‘marit’: Cagnat and Besnier, in AE 1926, no. 164, proposed ‘marm(orum)’ It will be clear from the plate that ‘marm’ is not a possible reading; but the stone is badly water-worn, and it is difficult at this poin to distinguish between the letters I and T.

26 Portorium, p. 247 ff.

27 See note 25.

28 Compare the division of portoria in the Lex Antonia de Termessibus, ILS 38: portoreis terrestribus maritumeisque. A vilicus of the same rank as these at Lepcis is found in the office of the IIII p. A. at Cuicul (AE 1925, no. 73), but there is no similar specification of duty.

29 For this date, see IRT 353. In both the texts under discussion Lepcis has the adjective Magna, which seems to be a title of the colony. It is used by Pliny, (HN V, 27Google Scholar) to distinguish the city from that of Leptis in Byzacena; but it is not found in local first-century epigraphy, whereas ‘colonia Lepcis Magna’ is in regular local use in the second century.

30 M. I. Rostoftzeff, Geschichte der römischen Staatspacht, p. 402.

31 See note 23.

32 IRT 309.