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The Consulate of the Elder Trajan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Extract

Fragment XI of the Ostia Fasti relates to the early years of Vespasian. It contains a few letters entire from four lines, with the upper half of a fifth line, and reads:—

.. Caesarem Vespasianum

…Sallinius…

..Vespasian…

(vacat) Licin…

…iusTr..

The fragment is one of the few which Degrassi was unable to trace, and the text depends on a MS. copy supplied to Wickert by Kristoferson.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright ©John Morris 1953. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Degrassi, , Inscriptiones Italiae, XIII, 1, p. 190 Google Scholar; cf. pp. 176 and 220.

2 Degrassi presumably means … ne … (L. Cornelius Pusio ?) of the Fasti Feriarum Latinarum, and perhaps Petilius Cerialis, whose consulate in the summer of 70 may with great probability be inferred from Tac. Agr. 8, where he is described as ‘consularis’ in Germany in the latter part of the year: cf. Degrassi, Fasti consolari dell' Impero Romano, A.D. 70.

3 Fasti Feriarum Latinarum, fragment XIX (Degrassi, p. 150) gives Mucianus III and T. Flavius Sabinus II as the consuls of June 72.

4 The MS. copy shows no punctuation marks. In the next comparable fragment (XIId of A.D. 92) the nomina and praenomina of the consuls are crowded together, without any separating space. They are separated by a punctuation mark half-way up the line, which, if it existed in fragment XI, might or might not have survived on the broken edge of the fragment. The evidence does not suffice to show whether it was there or no.

5 Jos., BJ, 3, 7, 31, 289; 3, 9, 8, 458; 3, 10, 3, 485.

6 ibid., 4, 8, 1, 450.

7 ibid., 6, 4, 3, 237.

8 ILS 987.

9 ibid. 1035.

10 ibid. 1002.

11 cf. Dessau, ad l.c.: but cf. Ritterling, P-W XII, 2, 1649–1650, s.v. Legio.

12 IGR IV 845.

13 The exceptions, for the most part due to the workings of ‘ius liberorum’, do not amount to more than a very few among the scores of instances known.

14 Jos., BJ, 4, 9, 2 (499); Tac. Hist. 2, 1, cf. 1, 10: Suet. Titus 5.

15 I am much indebted to Professor Degrassi for kind advice on various points and to Professor A. Momigliano, Professor A. H. M. Jones and Mr. R. Meiggs for helpful comments. I would wish to record an uncertain recollection that the interpretation of the letters ‘… ius Tr…’ as Vlpius Traianus first dawned on me while I was discussing the Fasti for these years with a colleague. I cannot be sure that it was so; I have failed to discover any colleague who recalls such a conversation; nor, if it were so, can I recollect whose words first prompted the identification. But it is better to admit the weakness of a feeble memory than to risk the incivility of an unacknowledged plagiarism.