ISic000582: Dedication to the emperor Augustus by the municipium

Copy of 2nd edition of Gualtherus
ID
ISic000582
Language
Latin
Text type
honorific
Object type
block
Status
No data
Links
View in current site

Edition

Loading...

Apparatus criticus

  • Text after Prestianni Giallombardo 1993;
  • line.3: Gualtherus 1624: P.O..; Mommsen P.P

Physical description

Support

Description
no description is preserved
Object type
block
Material
stone
Condition
No data
Dimensions
height: unknown cm, width: unknown cm, depth: unknown cm

Inscription

Layout
no description is preserved
Text condition
No data
Lettering

Letter heights
Lines 1-4: unknownmm
Interlinear heights
Interlineation line 1 to 2: unknownmm

Provenance

Place of origin
Halaesa
Provenance found
First recorded by Antonio Agustín c.1559 (Prestianni Giallombardo 1993b)

Current location

Lost.

Date

Augustan, after 12 BCE (12 BC – AD 14)
Evidence
office

Text type

honorific

commentary

The text was first (and best) recorded by Antonio Agustín c.1559 (Matritensis 5781 f.22 no.3), and as Prestianni Giallombardo (1993b: 531) has made clear, he recorded the letters P.M. at the end of line 3. Gualtherus instead marked the letter(s) after the P as unclear, and in his edition of 1624 proposed reading O after the P, which Mommsen in CIL in turn emended to a P, to give P(ater) P(atriae) (i.e. ‘father of the fatherland’, an honorific title of Augustus from 2 BC). P.M. is entirely possible however, and Augustus held the office of pontifex maximus (chief priest of the Roman state) from 12 BC onwards, which in turn provides a terminus post quem for this text, which should date therefore between 12 BC and AD 14. A parallel text is known from Haluntium (San Marco d’Alunzio), in CIL 10, no.7463 = ISic000587. This is one of several texts from Sicily erected simply in the name of the municipium (compare CIL 10, no.7463=ISic000587 and 7464=ISic000588 from Haluntium; AE 1945 no.64=ISic000622 from Segesta), and the formulation is unusual, with occasional south Italian examples (Prag 2008: 78 nn.80-82), most likely reflecting Greek traditions of erecting honours, e.g., in the name of the polis (this possibility is made more likely by the example in Greek from Haluntium (IG 14, no.367 = ISic001190, honours set up by τὸ μουνικίπιον τῶν Ἁλοντίνων). The text provides important evidence, alongside the Augustan coinage from Halaesa, that the town had the status of a Latin municipium by the later Augustan period.

Agustín and Gualtherus both note the use of distinctive hollow triangular interpuncts in the text (just once in Agustín, repeatedly in Gualtherus). Interpuncts of this precise form are also found in the dedication by M. Aimilios Rhodon (ISic000770), which probably belongs in the second half of the first century BC and is therefore nearly contemporary. Solid triangular interpuncts are found in several of the first-century AD texts such as ISic003576, ISic003577, and ISic003575

Bibliography

Digital editions
Printed editions

Citation and editorial status

Editor
Jonathan Prag
Principal contributor
Jonathan Prag
Contributors
Last revision
1/19/2021