Newly Published - RIB III

Roman Inscriptions of Britain III

Landed on my desk yesterday, and well worth the wait. The definitive publication of Roman inscriptions discovered in Britain over the last 50+ years. Handsomely produced, with photographs as well as drawings of (virtually) all of the inscriptions, as is now standard practice in such corpora. Discussion is rather more comprehensive than in RIB I with extensive critical apparatus. The longer entries and additional illustration have led to some odd layout decisions with acres of white space leading to illustrations over the page but on the whole the expansive treatment makes RIB I now seem rather compressed (by contrast it dispenses with its first 550 entries in 183 pages).

The only real quibble? No indices (other than place of discovery). With only 550 entries (compared to the 2400 items in RIB I) it wouldn't seem a vast labour (unless of course someone's working on a consolidated index as we speak!).

Expect some further comment on individual entries as I work my way through...

Available now from Oxbow. Although as of today it's still listed as Not Yet Published!

RIB III - coming soon?

Roman Inscriptions of Britain Volume III: Inscriptions on Stone.
Not so nearly here, after all.

July publication became August publication becomes now 'Not yet published'. Shall just have to exercise some patience (it's Oxbow, after all...)

The pre-publication offer survived into August but if you didn't get in there while you had the chance, hard luck.

New Inscriptions from Vindolanda

These discoveries have hit a number of sources.

An altar to Jupiter Dolichenus:

I O M Dolocheno Sulpicius Pudens praef coh IIII Gall V S L M

To Jupiter Best and Greatest of Doliche, Sulpicius Pudens, prefect of the Fourth Cohort of Gauls, fulfilled his vow gladly and deservedly.

As Anthony Birley notes on the Vindolanda website, this must surely be the same Pudens as previous recorded commanding the cohors IIII Gallorum on a further altar RIB 1688 found re-used at some distance from the fort:
I O M COH IIII GALL CVI PRAEST II...GIVS PVDENS PRAEFECT ARAM POSVIT V S M L
This find now providing the correct nomen for the prefect.

The bottom half of a second altar has also been discovered in the shrine apparently dedicated by a prefect of the Second Cohort of Nervians but no further details seem yet to be available.

RIB III - Nearly here

Been waiting for this for a long while! Expected soon...

Roman Inscriptions of Britain Volume III: Inscriptions on Stone

Sign up for a copy while it's cheap(ish). Of course this will mean updating a lot of references (but I shall want to go through all the new entries anyway; my idea of fun.)

Inscriptions database update

A fairly invisible change (at least to most users), but one long overdue. The text file forming the database of inscriptions was derived from a very early version of the full dataset informing my thesis (and subsequent publication). Most of the changes were minor, but often significant nonetheless, some more extensive. These have now all been incorporated into the database accessible through the website. What I haven't done is flag up those where I have proposed variant readings. Next on the list...

Fearsome and Immoderate

I did say I might expand on the title, so by way of trying to get back into more regular posting...

Tacitus, Agricola 7. 'quippe legatis qouque consularibus nimia ac formidolosa erat'
'even governors of consular rank found the legion more than they could manage and were afraid of it' (trans. Mattingly); or alternatively
'This legion had been unmanageable and formidable even to the consular lieutenants' (Harvard 1897)

The context of this requires some elaboration. During the upheavals of AD69 'the year of the four Emperors', the army of Britain had sided with Vitellius. However, internal tensions existed, the precise details of which elude us. Roscius Caelius, the legate of the Twentieth had some long-standing grievance with the governor Trebellius Maximus and disagreements rose almost to the level of general mutiny. Maximus left the province to join Vitellius, while Caelius effectively governed in his absence but it seems the army of Britain remained in the Vittelian camp nonetheless.

The second Battle of Cremona resulted in victory for the Flavian side (and defeat for the British vexillations present) and a new governor and new legates were sent to Britain. To the Twentieth was sent Cn Julius Agricola, subject of a glowing biography by his son-in-law Tacitus. He seems to have had difficulties with his new legion - the Twentieth had shown some reluctance to take the oath of allegiance to the new emperor - which Tacitus characteristically excuses. The Twentieth, we are told, was unmanageable and formidable and its previous commander had been unable to control it.

This description, nimia ac formidolosa, is the only direct description of the character of the legion in surviving sources - although the events of AD6 show the legion in a better light (we'll come back to that). Tied to specific events at a specific time, it is true - it may have been meekly obedient for ever after - but still, I rather like it. Formidolosa is easy enough, 'capable of inspiring fear', so Fearsome; nimia is more difficult 'too much for', 'more than they could manage' are not very snappy. Transgressing correct behaviour is the gist; Immoderate seems to fit the bill. So, Fearsome and Immoderate [(c) me by the way!].

Temple or Altar

A brief note on the last entry. I've been meaning to edit it, but a few additional thoughts occur.

Aedes matri deum et isidi should of course be the Temple of the Mother Godesses and Isis. Julia Tiberina would have had to have been very well connected for the wife of a legionary centurion to have endowed a Temple. Instead I opted for 'altar' as the more normal object of ex voto dedication. However, we do see such as ex voto restituerunt or ex voto refecerunt in respect of temples (still potentially a large expense!).

(Almost) New inscriptions

I add here two inscriptions which have been found or come to light in recent years (but which have yet to make it into the online database). The first was discovered after submission of my thesis, but made it into the publication. The second came to my notice later, courtesy of Andreas Schaub, city archaeologist for Aachen. It was apparently found as long ago as 1974, but never previously shown to an historian or an archeologist and I am not sure if it has even yet been formally published (over to someone with better access to recent editions of L'Annee Epigraphique than myself). [now to be found in AE2006; this entry edited in accordance]

L(uci) Octavi / L(uci fili) Pol(lia) / Martialis / Eporedia /
m(ilitis) leg(ionis) XX
‘Lucius Octavius Martialis, son of Lucius, of the Pollian
voting tribe, from Eporedia, soldier of the Twentieth legion’
Britannia 36 (2005), 476 no. 3 (Gloucester)

numinibus / divor(um) Aug(ustorum) in / [h]onorem domus /
[d]ivinae Iul(ia) Tiberina Q(uinti) Iul(ii) / [.]avi uxo(r)
c(centurionis) l[e]g(ionis) XX Val(eriae) Vic(tricis) ae/
des Matri d[eu]m et Isidi ex voto / de [s(ua) p(ecunia)?] s(oluit) l(ibens) m(erito)
'To the divine spirits of the deified emperors and in honour of the divine house, Julia Tiberina, wife of Quinus Iulius [Fl]avus centurion of the Twentieth Legion Valeria Victrix, [dedicated? set up?] this altar to the Mother godesses and to Isis (out of her own funds), willingly and deservedly fulfilling vow'
AE2006.864 (Aachen in the area of the Bücheltherme Roman baths)
5 [N]avi? The name is less usual. A Q. Iulius Flavus, centurion of leg I Minerva, is known from the Rhine CIL XIII 8172; AE 1930.23

Recent publications

Some recent publications of interest listed by Oxbow:

Feeding the Roman Army: The Archaeology of Production and Supply in NW Europe
edited by Sue Stallibrass and Richard Thomas

The Republican Roman Army: A Sourcebook by Michael M. Sage

A Roman Miscellany: Essays in Honour of Anthony R. Birley on his Seventieth Birthday
edited by Hans Michael Schellenberg, Vera Elisabeth Hirschmann and Andreas Krieckhaus

Inscriptions database fixed

And yes, I was failing to get my path statements right.

The personnel listed under Roll on the website will now link to the text of the source inscriptionand the Search page will allow further searching of the database. The first of these still opens in a pop-up window, so you may have to change your settings. The database needs some updating (and some corrections here and there) which will happen gradually. Medium term aim is to insert googlemaps links for the findspots, which I notice both Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg and Epigraphik-Datenbank Clauss/Slaby now offer.

ZPE

The Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik is a mine of information on things epigraphic. Not, by and large, things epigraphic and military, however, but there is quite a lot of interest. There are two indices available on their website, which are useful up to a point (ie only so far as a list of articles arranged alphabetically by author can be considered an index). What they do do, and all credit to them, is provide access to pdf copies of their content from Volumes 73-133 (1988-2000).

To make things easier, for myself (and perhaps for others), I have extracted titles of legionary interest. The list can be found on the legio xx website (via Bibliography), with links to the pdf articles. In the absence of a real index, I have only been able to search on key words in titles, so some will doubtless have slipped the net. The deeper I delve, the more I hope to add.

Fixing Things

or not fixing things. If you ever visited the old version of the legio xx site, you might have noticed that the lists of legionary personnel under Roll provided links to a database of incriptions giving the primary sources for each individual. This no longer works. It was a tweak of an old cgi script designed for something else entirely (what it gave me was a way of extracting information from a simple text file and formatting the output as html). On past experience (having had to move it to a different server once before) I'm probably just failing to get my path statements right, but the error message "The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set of HTTP headers" is entirely unhelpful (are they ever otherwise?) and leaves me wondering if the html output of the script no longer conforms to expected standards...

What I don’t know about website design would fill a very large book. Do I comply with all the right standards? I doubt it. Does this work just as well in other browsers? Erm…
I am aware, however, that it doesn’t even work that well on the 15” screen of my work computer. Just taking the ClusterMaps map out of the sidebar would help. (I kind of like it there.) One tip for IE users, which eluded me for a long time: Press F11 and you get to see the page in all its glory without toolbars taking up all of the vertical space (the Tabs will reappear if you move the mouse to the top of the screen; F11 will bring everything back again).

Saturnalia

With time on my hands over Christmas, I picked up Lindsey Jones's Saturnalia (aptly). I don't propose to offer much of an opinion here (later perhaps). I'm not a great fan, having read only a handful of her voluminous output, but it was enjoyable enough.

I was struck, however, by her characterisation of the Praetorians encountered at the start of Chapter XLI: '...every one was an ex-centurion. Many had made it to the top: first-spear, chief centurion in a legion...'

This is to significantly underplay the prestige of the legionary centurionate, and to completely reverse its relationship with the guard (when it comes to the 'first-spear', the postition is even worse).

Former centurions did not enrol in the Praetorian Guard. In all recorded instances, soldiers progressed in the other direction (see Dobson and Breeze 1969 'The Rome cohorts and the legionary centurionate' Epigraphische Studien 8). A miles Praetorius if selected for continued service after his 16-year term (evocatus) would have the prospect of then gaining a legionary centurionate (eg CIL XI 5960, to pick an example from among centurions of the Twentieth). Direct promotion was open to the cornicularius to the Praetorian Prefect (XI 3108 ditto). An evocatus advancing via centurionates in the Vigiles, Urban cohorts and the Guard (trecenarius) could then move to a senior legionary centurionate with expectation of promotion to primus pilus, chief centurion (X 5064=ILS2667). He would certainly not see return to service in the ranks of the Guard as a positive career move!

The position of primus pilus guaranteed equestrian status and led to much higher things. Far from serving in the Guard, the primus pilus could aspire to a tribunate commanding a Praetorian cohort and a number are known to have ultimately become Praetorian Prefect (Dobson 1978 Die Primipilares).

A surprising slip, since her lead character is a former legionary, and soldiers and former soldiers figure prominently in the novels (or is that just the ones I've read?). It's a fairly obscure point, perhaps, but you'll find 'praetorian guard, promotion to the centurionate from' in the index of Webster's Roman Imperial Army if you're looking for an accessible source.

Incipit

This blog, in case you haven't arrived by that route, is an offshoot of my Twentieth Legion website, itself a byproduct of my PhD research (now completed and already seeming like an age ago). The title is something I may get round to explaining later.

The theme (on the whole) will be Roman military epigraphy, legionary histories and hierarchies (rangordnung), with a side-order of onomastics. Military equipment, re-enactment and the like has never been my thing (unless someone can come up with some convincingly unit-specific equipment or decorative styles, in which case I will start to get very interested).

I rather let the website die early last year, having done little to maintain it for a while. Changing ISPs was a rather more drawn out process than it should have been. On top of that acquiring a new computer which then lived in a box for 18months didn't help (change of personal circumstances; we've built the library/office now at last). Backups, backups, backups. If not for the Wayback Machine this would have been a whole lot harder. Still some things to fix. Still some new ideas to try (watch this space).

Starting somewhere...

Not sure if this is a good idea. Searching for a half decent URL only brought home how many of these are set up and then languish forever unused. And I know I don't bother to follow anything that isn't updated rather more frequently than I'll probably manage. Still...