Ancient Documents and their Contexts First North American Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy (2011) Edited by John Bodel and Nora Dimitrova LEIDEN | BOSTON This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV Contents Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations x List of Figures and Tables List of Contributors xiv Introduction xii 1 Part 1 Greek Epigraphy 1 Athens in Crisis: The Second Macedonian War Stephen V. Tracy 13 2 From Coast to Coast: Epigraphic Evidence for Cult and Religion in Coastal Demes of Attica 27 Ilaria Bultrighini 3 Beyond the Three-Barred Sigma: IG I3 11 Sarah Bolmarcich 4 Xenocratia and the Hieron of Cephisus Arden Williams 54 67 5 The Stoichedon Arrangement of the New Marathon Stele from the Villa of Herodes Atticus at Kynouria 82 Patricia A. Butz 6 The Nemesia in Lycurgan Athens John L. Friend 98 7 Women Members of a Gymnasium in the Roman East (IG IV 732) 111 Georgia Tsouvala This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV vi contents part 2 Latin Epigraphy 8 Documents on Bronze: A Phenomenon of the Roman West? Werner Eck 127 9 Roman Gaia and the Discourse of Patronage: Retrograde C in CIL VI 152 Peter Keegan 10 Praefecti Fabrum in the Inscriptions of Roman Corinth Bradley J. Bitner 11 The Rituals of Hospitium: The Tesserae Hospitales John Nicols 174 190 12 “Pliny Country” Revisited: Connectivity and Regionalism in Roman Italy 199 Carolynn E. Roncaglia 13 Nasty, Brutish, and Short? The Demography of the Roman Imperial Navy 212 Steven L. Tuck 14 Military Epitaphs in Mogontiacum and Carnuntum in the First and Early Second Centuries CE 230 Nadya Popov 15 AE 1998, 282: A Case Study of Public Benefaction and Local Politics 248 Jinyu Liu 16 Vergil and Ovid at the Tomb of Agnes: Constantina, Epigraphy, and the Genesis of Christian Poetry 263 Dennis E. Trout 17 Michelangelo’s Marble Blog: Epigraphic Walls as Pictures and Samples of Language 283 Kevin McMahon This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV vii Contents Index Locorum 307 Literary Sources 307 Epigraphical, Numismatic, and Papyrological Sources Index Nominum 317 General Index 320 309 This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV CHAPTER 8 Documents on Bronze: A Phenomenon of the Roman West?* Werner Eck To the memory of my friend Hartmut Wolff † 4. 2. 2012 Inscriptions were a mass phenomenon in the ancient world and as such their proper assessment can profoundly influence our understanding of the culture and history of the classical world. This observation applies not only to inscriptions written in Greek and Latin but also to texts in other languages long employed in the epigraphic tradition of the Roman Empire. Hence we have inscriptions composed, for example, in Punic, Syriac, Hebrew, Aramaic, or Demotic.1 How many such documents have been preserved in all languages from the Greco-Roman world cannot be stated with any certainty. Even for the Greek and Latin inscriptions, it is not possible to give a precise number. The Clauss epigraphical database, which is the most extensive of its type in the world today, includes more than 469.000 Latin texts. Of these more than 112.000 are short texts inscribed on ceramics, instrumentum domesticum.2 Even this collection is not complete, however, since many Latin texts have not been included in larger collections, in epigraphic corpora, or in L’Année Épigraphique. That is, many inscriptions have been published only in local or regional periodicals and are therefore to many scholars not easily accessible. Even if such ijigures allow only an approximate insight into the quantity of surviving inscriptions, they nevertheless show very clearly that inscriptions represent a formidable mass phenomenon; indeed the volume of such * In the preparation of this contribution, I have made extensive use of the “Datenbank Clauss” and of the Heidelberger Datenbank. I am indebted to Peter Eich for his useful comments and to the participants of the asgle Congress in San Antonio, notably Kevin Clinton, John Morgan, and Jim Sickinger; to Linda Gaus for the translation, to John Nicols, who did much to polish it, and not least to John Bodel. 1 See now the ijirst volumes of the Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae (= ciip), Vol. I 1, Berlin 2010, Vol. ii, Berlin 2011, Vol. I 2, Berlin 2012, Vol. III, Berlin 2014. 2 See: http://www.manfredclauss.de/ (seen 21 August 2014). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004273870_010 This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV 128 ECK texts for speciijic questions can today only be mastered with data processing. Admittedly, with such large quantities of data, a certain caution is required. The number of these documents easily inspires the impression that one could approach very directly the reality to which they once belonged; in other words the large number of documents might be construed to represent accurately the content and the historical context in which the inscriptions were once created. But is this really the case? Do we really have a representative picture of the former epigraphic reality? One may be skeptical, and that skepticism is justiijied. We must indeed recognize that entire types of once extant inscriptions have been lost and that, of other types, only a few examples have survived. These few items are completely misleading in comparison to the reality that they once represented. A few examples will illustrate this phenomenon. From many sources we know, for example, that many inscriptions were written on wood, usually on a tabula albata or a λεύκωμα.3 In all cities organized according to the Roman model, e.g., an album of the names of the local iudices had to be published each year – as the word album indicates, on a tabula albata. The preserved municipal laws of the Iberian Peninsula regulate this process very clearly.4 For several hundred communities in the three Spanish provinces, this must have amounted to thousands of alba in the course of several centuries. And yet not a single fragment of these has been preserved, which, given the material, is not all that surprising. The thin wooden tablets like the ones used for all kinds of written documents in Vindolanda demonstrate that wood was certainly a common medium for writing, and not just there but in many other places.5 Until the discovery of the documents preserved under very special circumstances in Vindolanda, however, we did not have even an inkling of how extensively this medium was employed.6 Of the countless tabulae ceratae, viewed as a whole, only a very few have survived to be discovered. Presumably, no other material was used as often for inscriptions as wood. Yet wooden records hardly appear in the surviving record; they represent rather only an extremely small portion of our epigraphic documents. That inscriptions on wood are no longer preserved has not only to do with the fact that wood is an organic material that can only survive under extraordinary conditions but is also owed to the fact that those who prepared such texts probably 3 Eck 1998. 4 Lex Irnitana § 85 and 86, which follows the example of the city praetors at cil I 592 = xi 1146 = ae 1993, 726. 5 In the most recent excavations in Cologne, some of these wooden tablets have been found, but writing has not been preserved; so Hartmut Galsterer has informed me. 6 Cf. http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/ and Birley 2005. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV DOCUMENTS ON BRONZE: A PHENOMENON OF THE ROMAN WEST ? 129 did not envision that they would enjoy a long life.7 They had in mind the everyday use, not the permanent preservation of the information. Non-organic material necessarily had greater chances to survive. Many of the museums in the countries around the Mediterranean proudly display numerous inscriptions in rooms called lapidaria in reference to the material upon which most of the inscriptions were written. Stone in many forms is nearly the only material that has allowed our epigraphic documents to be preserved, and for similar reasons it was also the medium of choice for those who wished to preserve the content of these inscriptions in the public realm: hence, texts written on stone survived on buildings, on altars, under statues, on mausolea, on simple graves, and so on. What was written on stone was meant for the ages, and was supposed keep alive the memory of people, and also of events. Inscriptions on stone do not, however, provide us with much information about daily life.8 The intention of permanence was also associated with inscriptions on bronze. Bronze can outlast time just as easily as stone – if people permit it to do so. But ever since ancient times, people have been responsible for its destruction. Bronze is a valuable material. It is easy to melt down, and it can then be used for many other purposes. And old bronze can be precious even today. Many fake antique works of art created in the last decades have been made of old bronze melted down. These facts suggest that relatively few inscriptions on bronze have survived. The transmission of the records of the Augustan secular games may be symptomatic of this phenomenon. According to the decision of the Roman Senate, the records of the ludi saeculares were supposed to be written on two columnae in Rome in order to preserve for the future the memoria of this special event.9 One of the columnae was supposed to be ahenea, the other one marmorea. It is no accident that parts of 7 This is naturally not to claim that inscriptions were never produced in wood and intended for longer use; cf. Meyer 2004: 35. This observation is only relevant in the cases when the characters were cut into the wood so that they would look like inscriptions cut into stone; it does not apply to tabulae albatae, the mass of inscriptions that were publicly visible on wood. That such inscriptions, if they were deposited in an archive, might have a long life is self-evident. In such cases, however, these texts were not open to public inspection. The same applies also to the accounts that were sometimes preserved on bronze and deposited in an archive, e.g. seg 54, 427. 8 Formulated more sharply, one may argue that “everyday life” is hardly present in our epigraphical sources, nor should we expect to ijind it. 9 cil vi 877 = 32323 = 32324 = ae 2002, 192: quod G(aius) Silanus co(n)s(ul) v(erba) f(ecit) pe[rti-] nere ad conservandam memoriam tantae r[eligionis - - commentarium ludorum] saecularium in colum[n]am aheneam et marmoream inscribi st[- -] eo loco ubi ludi futuri [s]int q(uid) d(e) This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV 130 ECK the columna marmorea have been preserved, whereas the columna ahenea has gone the way of most bronze inscriptions: namely, it was destroyed, probably melted down. Of the two pila aenea on which the Res Gestae Divi Augusti could be read in front of the mausoleum of the ijirst Princeps in Rome, not a single fragment has been found.10 Only the embedded traces of the two pila can still be seen in front of the mausoleum Augusti today. Three examples of the Augustan res gestae, engraved in stone in three cities of the province of Galatia, survive in fragments.11 In Narbo, in the provincia Narbonensis, the will of a certain Sex. Fadius Secundus Musa (expressed in an epistula) was engraved on the left side of a statue base that was erected by the collegium fabrum; however, Fadius Secundus also requested the presentation of his voluntas, inscalpta on an aerea tabula . . . ante aedem. The marble base has survived to date, but not the bronze tablet (cil xii 4393 = ils 7259 = ae 1992, 1225). But we should not forget that the massive destruction of documents on bronze, in contrast to inscriptions on stone, does not just affect individual monuments with extremely varied content, but sometimes whole categories of inscriptions. One example may sufijice: consider the imperial constitutions about Roman citizenship for soldiers of the Roman army, for praetoriani, urbaniciani, equites singulares, the fleets in Italy, and especially the auxiliary troops in the provinces. We do indeed have more than 1.000 individual military diplomas. All these diplomas are copies of the respective imperial constitutions: the originals were initially published in Rome on the Capitol Hill, and, following the redesign of the Capitol under Domitian, always in muro post templum divi Augusti ad Minervam.12 According to a conservative calculation such constitutions were issued regularly for more than two hundred years; so too were more than 5.000 larger and smaller tabulae aeneae with the privileging texts and the names of all the new citizens.13 Of this enormous mass of bronze documents not a single small piece has been found in Rome – nothing at all. Four small 10 11 12 13 e(a) r(e) f(ieri) p(lacuerit) d(e) e(a) r(e) i(ta) c(ensuerunt) uti co(n)s(ul) a(lter) a(mbo)ve ad f[uturam memoriam tantae religionis columnam] aheneam et alteram marmoream in quibus commentari[um ludorum inscriptum sit eo loco ubi ludi futuri sint] locent praetoribusque q(ui) [a(erario)] p(raesunt) inperent uti redemptoribus ea[m pecuniam dandam adtribuendam curent]. Rerum gestarum divi Augusti quibus orbem terra[rum] imperio populi Rom[ani] subiecit et impensarum quas in rem publicam populumque Ro[ma]num fecit incisarum in duabus aheneis pilis quae su[n]t Romae positae exemplar . . . Most recently: Scheid 2007 and Mitchell – French 2012: no. 1. See the most recent list of places in rmd IV p. 617; cf. Eck 2010b: 41-43. Eck 2008. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV DOCUMENTS ON BRONZE: A PHENOMENON OF THE ROMAN WEST ? 131 excerpts from such tabulae have come down to us, because in the third century people in Rome reused the larger tablets cut into smaller pieces to provide diplomas for veterans, and these items survived outside of Rome in the provinces.14 This re-use shows that the original tablets in Rome disappeared in Roman times, and not just in the allegedly dark Middle Ages. The chances for inscriptions on bronze to survive were thus extremely poor; whenever they were found, they were usually melted down. The troves of old metal found throughout the empire further suggest that even in the Roman period, bronze was collected for the purpose of reuse. Such troves are known, for example, from Rome itself, from Andalusia near Irni, where the lex Irnitana and one copy of the s. c. de Cn. Pisone patre were found in the same trove, from Lauriacum in Noricum, and from Nijmegen in the province Germania Inferior.15 Occasionally, too, we ijind bronze inscriptions that have already been partially melted down; that is, they only escaped the ijinal melting process by accident.16 If one takes all of this into consideration, then it becomes clear that only an extremely small portion of all once-extant inscriptions on bronze have survived to date. The low percentage of surviving military diplomas, small bronze tablets that were handed out to the soldiers, hints at the magnitude of the loss. If our estimates are correct, the survival rate of diplomas lies between 0.3 and approximately 1 percent.17 Bear in mind also that these documents were of a private nature and, though important to the “owners”, were not displayed in public and were therefore less accessible to those who wanted to re-use them as metal. Only when the owner ceased to assign “value” to them could they be re-used. The situation was different for bronze tablets, such as those that were publicly visible in Rome by the thousands on the Capitol and in other places, ijixed on walls of sanctuaries, honorary arches, the aerarium militare, and tribunalia, and 14 15 16 17 cil xvi 147, 153; Weiß 2000: 283; Eck – MacDonald – Pangerl 2002; cf. rmd v 464, 465. Rome: cil vi 3828 = 31692 = ils 6105 is such a case; also vi 31693a-k; cf. cil vi, viii 3, pp. 4766 and 4775–76 (Alföldy). Andalusia: note the short and not particularly informative indications in the respective publications of the lex and the senatus consultum. Lauriacum and Nijmegen: Eck – Veen 2010. See, for example, Eck – Lieb 1992; Eck – Pangerl 2006, ijirst diploma; Eck – Veen 2010. John Nicols informs me that it is possible to heat bronze tablets to the point where the surface becomes soft enough to “restore” a clean surface on which a new text might be engraved. Actual examples of such re-surfaced tabulae aeneae, where the remains of the original text seem identiijiable, are not known to me. That the back sides of bronze tablets were inscribed with other texts is well known, e.g., cil ii2/ 7, 187 and 188. Eck 2003; Eck – Pangerl 2008. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV 132 ECK on the back sides of the bases of large statues.18 The same applies to Baetica, where the s.c. de Cn. Pisone patre was exhibited in nearly every city in the province.19 This applies still more to the municipal laws of the Baetican communities, for which, in general, eight to ten large tablets were required.20 The Museo Archeologico in Seville provides a clear impression of how the long rows of tabulae aeneae must have looked in Roman times in most municipal centers in the province on the long walls of porticos or the walls of other public buildings. In Troesmis during the last years of Marcus Aurelius, the municipal law for the newly-founded municipium was presented to the citizens on perhaps 100 bronze tablets that were each approximately 60 to 67 cm. high and around 50 cm. wide.21 A long wall, perhaps in a portico, must have been plastered full of these. All of these documents lost their signiijicance with time, especially when the autonomy of individual communities became increasingly less signiijicant. Here it is tempting to think that the valuable metal might have been used more sensibly in another way: when the military threat from outside increased the need for metal weapons of all kinds and the productivity of the mines was concurrently in decline, the demands of the armies for equipment could only be met by melting down and reusing all available metals, including public and private documents. In the end, enemies who conquered a city took all the metal in order to re-use it. On the Rhine, at Neupotz and Hagenbach in southern Germany, several wagonloads of metal objects were found, in total more than 700 kg., which had been accumulated by plundering Germans during their raids in Gaul. In this case especially the metal came from buildings and villae rusticae outside the urban centers.22 The same fate also befell monumental inscriptions whose letters were cast or cut of bronze. Their letters were torn off and the metal re-used, and only the embedded traces of the bronze letters, as for example on the Arch of Titus, or sometimes only the dowels on the surfaces that once bore the inscription, have been preserved. Noteworthy examples are the building inscription for the Flavian amphithe18 19 20 21 22 See the notation about the place of publication for diplomas up to 88 AD, mentioned above at n. 12. Eck – Caballos – Fernández 1996: 279-87. See the collection of municipal charters from Baetica in Caballos 2009: 147-57; also Tomlin 2002; Stylow – López Melero 2014. One can reckon with this number of tablets for the Troesmian law, if the number of chapters was similar to that of the Flavian municipal law for Spain. On the two surviving tablets from Troesmis two and a half chapters are preserved. The text was presented at the Fourteenth International Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy in Berlin in August 2012; cf. also Eck: 2013. Bernhard – Petrovsky 2006; Petrovsky 2009. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV DOCUMENTS ON BRONZE: A PHENOMENON OF THE ROMAN WEST ? 133 ater in Rome or a stone tablet robbed of its letters, which was discovered in the city of Scythopolis in Palestine.23 As one reflects on this pattern, it becomes clear that inscriptions on bronze that were visible to the public in this manner were much more endangered than the privately held diplomas and were also much more likely to be destroyed. Moreover, this means that among the publicly visible inscriptions, only a fragment of the percentage that that is known of the diplomas has survived until today – a very minimal legacy of what was once reality. This transmission situation is analogous to that of statues in marble and bronze. An example may clarify this point. At Caesarea Maritima, at least ijifty to sixty inscriptions have been preserved whole or in fragments, which were once associated with a visual depiction of individuals – under the statues of emperors, governors, procurators, and other people honored by the cities, and even under the statues of freedmen.24 More or less complete marble statues have also been preserved, admittedly, which is crucial for understanding the following conclusion: except for a single portrait of one emperor, these are almost all idealized sculptures.25 In my opinion, the discrepancy between idealized statues and statues of living people can only be explained by the fact that most of the statues honoring real individuals were made of bronze. At Caesarea, at least, almost all of these have disappeared completely. How many inscriptions on bronze have survived to date cannot be determined with the means currently available to us. In the inventory of the Heidelberg Epigraphic Database, the material on which each inscription is written is speciijied; this was not done systematically, however, in the early days of the database. Hence, despite the current inventory of about 65.000 inscriptions, it is not possible to determine representative percentages.26 When one searches for inscriptions on bronze, 539 numbers come up, of which around 190 are military diplomas. That number, however, also includes stones that 23 24 25 26 Flavian amphitheater: cil vi 40454a, with a very plausible reconstruction of two superimposed inscriptions by Géza Alföldy. The stone from Scythopolis has not yet been published; whether it is possible to deduce the words from the dowels is very uncertain. In an inscription from the aqueduct of Segovia only the holes for the fasteners have been preserved, and the reconstruction of the text remains problematic (Alföldy 1992 and 1997), since there is no evidence that a Princeps could issue an order to municipal magistrates, formulated in an inscription with the word iussu; ideologically and “legally” this seems impossible. On this, see now ciip ii 1210 ff. Cf. Eck 2008b. See Gersht 2008; Holum 2008. So Christian Witschel, the one now overseeing the Heidelberg database, who kindly informed me of the details. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV 134 ECK once bore inscriptions with letters made of bronze. From the point of view of content, this body of texts represents a type of texts completely different from those that were written on bronze tablets.27 Nevertheless, if one establishes a relation between all inscriptions and those written on bronze, then of the inscriptions recorded in the database, including the diplomas, approximately 0.8% are written on bronze; without the diplomas the ijigure is around 0.53%. If one were to apply these ijigures to the inscriptions collected in the Clauss database, which, excluding the instrumentum domesticum, has approximately 357.000 texts, then in relation to all known Latin inscriptions, there should be approximately 2850 inscriptions on bronze, including the diplomas.28 Because the number of known diplomas is approximately 1.000, then according to this calculation, the other inscriptions on bronze would hardly exceed 1850. This number is certainly too low. But by how much it is too low cannot yet be determined. However one calculates the total, the quantity of preserved bronze inscriptions will never be very impressive when compared to the total number of all Latin inscriptions. It would be wrong, though, to conclude that the meaning and signiijicance of these texts was insigniijicant either in the Roman period or in the present. Quite the opposite is the case: many of these texts recorded on bronze are of absolutely central historical importance, precisely because of the distinctive nature of the information recorded. Of course there is hardly any inscription type that cannot also appear on bronze. Numerous bronze tablets, especially small ones, have been preserved, which belong to dedications to gods.29 They were usually attached to the base of the dedicated gift, often in the form of a tabula ansata; the letters are often only punched into the bronze tablet. Such indeed is the case with a small inscription from Apulum: M(arcus) Aurel(ius) Sila actar(ius) eq(uitum) sing(ularium) pro se et suos v(otum) l(ibens) s(olvit) (ae 1962, 208). Another one from Sarmizegetusa bears the following text: Eup[r]epes L(uci) Val(eri) 27 28 29 In this case the group is virtually restricted to inscriptions on buildings and dedications, that is, relatively short texts. Laws, senatus consulta, political and ideological texts, etc., the focus of this contribution, are not presented this way epigraphically. In the Heidelberger Datenbank inscriptions on instrumentum domesticum are not systematically included. Moreover there is uncertainty about what objects should be counted as instrumentum domesticum and how their texts should be deijined. That there is no standard deijinition is also part of the problem. In general, see Meyer 2004: 102. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV DOCUMENTS ON BRONZE: A PHENOMENON OF THE ROMAN WEST ? 135 Eu[ty]- chi Asclepio e[t] Hygiae d(ono) d(edit) (ae 1977, 679).30 If the gift was larger, then the bronze tablets were larger too, as is the case with a dedication to Iupiter Optimus Maximus Turmasgade: the tabula is 13.2 cm. high and approximately 27 cm. wide.31 Its place of origin is unknown. Texts with this content are found in much greater numbers on stone. The corpus of bronze plates that were attached to individual objects as ownership marks, especially to pieces of military equipment such as shields, swords, and lances, is also relatively large.32 A signiijicant portion of these items originated in the camps of the Roman army. In recent times, these are to be found especially in the catalogues of antiquities dealers, typically without any indication of origin. The bronze tablets that were superimposed on masonry bases underneath honorary statues do not survive in any number. There were however also inscriptions of this type, which probably existed in greater numbers than has previously been assumed. Such tabulae aeneae are known from Spain as well as from Rome, as the inscription for Cn. Cornelius Pusio indicates, which was found together with the bronze statue of the honoree in his house on the Quirinal.33 Another fragment of such a bronze inscription from Rome has only been preserved to date because the tablet was cut up, and a military diploma, dating from the years between approximately 202 and 206, was created out of it – an example of a very early re-use of an inscription on bronze.34 Such bronze tablets were also placed under statues for emperors. In Rome this is attested in the schola of the aenatores tubicines liticines cornicines Romani, who dedicated a statue of Tiberius in this manner before he became emperor.35 A recently published bronze fragment from Naaldwijk in the 30 31 32 33 34 35 Cf. also cil xiii 1191 and 1992: dedications to the god Mercury. Eck 2010c = ciip ii 1129. ae 1935, 109 (Arcidava): Coh(ortis) I Vindelico(rum) Iuli Martialis (centuria) Clemen(tis): the inscription is in punched letters. idr 2, 378 is the ownership label for a parade mask on which is written: T(iti) Pii Prisci. T(iti) Pii Prisci // Vitalis t(urma) Crispini (two successive owners). A similar mark of ownership may be found in Eck – Pangerl 2004. Spain: aa vv. Los bronces romanos en España 1990: 179, 226–35. Pusio: cil vi 31706 = 37056; cf. further cil ii/7, 279, for a procurator Cornelius in Corduba; ils 1353, for C. Iulius Pacatianus from Vienna; cil v 1838, for C. Baebius Atticus from Iulium Carnicum. ae 1916, 77 = ILAfr 449, from Bulla Regia, mentions an ara aerea; the inscription itself, however, is on a statue base. rmd iv 304 with Eck 2000. Further remains of such bronze tablets may be found in cil vi 31693a-k; cf. pp. 4775–76. Morizio 1996 = cil vi 40334. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV 136 ECK Netherlands comes from a statue that the classis Germanica probably erected for Hadrian somewhere in Germania Inferior.36 If only inscriptions with such content had been presented to the public on bronze, then bronze inscriptions would neither be worth highlighting nor treating as a special category: there is of course a sufijicient number of inscriptions of these types on stone. However, many important texts from the state and municipal or public realm and some from the world of collegia have been published only on bronze. This group is represented early on by the senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus, which was found in modern Calabria (cil i2 581). It continues with a series of legal texts from the later Roman Republic, such as the lex repetundarum and the lex agraria (Italy), the lex de xx quaestoribus, and the lex Antonia de Termessibus (Rome), the tabula Heracleensis (Pisticci in southern Italy), the lex de Gallia Cisalpina (Veleia); and goes on through the lex Valeria Aurelia of the tabula Hebana (Heba and, in part, Siarum in Spain), to the lex de imperio Vespasiani (Rome).37 A whole series of senatus consulta on bronze tablets is known, such as the s.c. de Asclepiade Clazomenio (Rome), the s.c. de aediijiciis non diruendis (Herculaneum), the s.c. de Cn. Pisone patre (various places in Andalusia), and others.38 All the municipal laws of the Iberian peninsula, of Lauriacum in Noricum, and of Troesmis in Moesia inferior are on bronze tablets, as are a series of decisions of the Roman Principes, such as the Augustan edict of Bierzo found in northern Spain (ae 1999, 915 = ae 2000, 760), the edicts of Claudius about imperial possessions in the Alps and about the civil law of the Anauni found in Cles near Trento (fira i2 no. 71), the regulation of the subseciva of Falerii by Domitian found in Falerii (fira i2 no. 75), a decretum of Antoninus Pius for Obulcula found near Obulcula in Spain, and also a part of the speech of Claudius about the ius honorum of the Gauls found in Lyon (ils 212), and other texts.39 A complete compilation of such groups of texts does not yet exist, either for laws or for senatus consulta, or for imperial decisions in the form of edicts, decrees, or letters. The collection of Oliver, to which we will return later, contains only imperial writings in the 36 37 38 39 Derks 2010. Places of discovery are recorded in parentheses; texts are conveniently found in Crawford 1996. Collected in fira i2 and elsewhere; for the scpp see Eck – Caballos – Fernández 1996 and below, n. 42 (Bartels). Iberian península: González Fernández 1990; Caballos Ruijino 2006. Lauriacum: ae 1907, 100 = ae 1953, 124 = ae 1971, 291; Wedenig 1997: no. 2. Troesmis: above n. 21. Obulcula: cil ii2/5, 1322; Eck 1993 = ae 1993, 1003b. See also the texts published by Eck-Pangerl 2011, where, apparently, we have a senatus consultum from the early imperial period. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV DOCUMENTS ON BRONZE: A PHENOMENON OF THE ROMAN WEST ? 137 Greek language, a distinction that from the point of view of contents never made much sense. In addition to these “state” rulings, reference must also be made to other private legal documents that are written on bronze, relating, for example, to the irrigation of a large area such as the one in the Ebro Valley (ae 2006, 676) or to an unknown place in Dalmatia (cil iii 14969, 2 = ILJug 2959), to an album of the decurions of Canusium (cil ix 338), to an index of the members of a Mithras association from Virunum (ae 1994, 1334), as well as to numerous tabulae patronatus that were hung up in the houses of patrons.40 The number of preserved texts of this type is not all that large, but this does not mean much with respect to the number of texts that once existed. For precisely with these mostly publicly accessible documents, it is important not to forget that the rate of loss for texts in bronze was disproportionately high. The very high loss rate, or very small survival rate, can be observed by considering a few examples. Of the municipal law of the municipium Troesmis, which was probably engraved on up to a hundred bronze tablets, only two have been preserved.41 The s.c. de Cn. Pisone patre was probably displayed publicly on bronze tablets in all cities in Baetica, yet, except for the two complete or at least largely preserved copies, A and B, only ijive small fragments of the text are known; in that province, however, were far more than one hundred communities.42 The small fragments of the s.c. de Cn. Pisone show how valuable even mini-fragments can be for the reconstruction of the former publication density of a document such as this s.c., since they each represent an 40 41 42 See also Beltran Lloris 2006, about an irrigation decree from the Ebro valley, Piccottini 1994, about a collegium of Mithras in Virunum, and a decree of the collegium centonariorum in Regium Lepidum, cil xi 970 = ils 7216, about the election of patrons. On this subject, see also Nicols 1980 and in this volume, ch. 11; Beltran Lloris 2010. For a list of documents on bronze from the Iberian Peninsula, see Caballos 2009. See above, n. 19. See Eck – Caballos – Fernández 1996: 279–87.; further Stylow – Corzo Pérez 1999. An additional fragment of the s.c. has been identiijied by Bartels 2009. Uncertain, however, remains the meaning of the statement: itemq(ue) hoc s(enatus) c(onsultum) in hibernis cuiusq(ue) legionis at signa ijigeretur. Does it mean that the troops had also to exhibit the s.c. on a bronze tablet, or were they given a relatively free hand to engrave it also on other materials? Precisely that fragment of the s.c. published by Bartels and found in Geneva suggests that the legions too presented the text on a bronze tablet. It seems possible that this fragment found in Geneva was once exhibited at the colonia Iulia Equestris; but since the fragment was apparently recycled in the context of the collection of old metal, that could mean that it once belonged to one of the legionary camps near the Rhein or (in the Tiberian age) even to a inner-Gallic legionary camp. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV 138 ECK individual copy of the text used throughout Andalusia. Admittedly, the assignment of the fragments to this s.c. has been possible primarily because the complete text is known. In other cases, there are some uncertainties of interpretation for fragments. Thus recently, a bronze fragment from Nijmegen, which could be put together from four smaller fragments, was published and interpreted with caution as part of an imperial speech or a comparable statement by the emperor. The content cannot be determined clearly, but it relates to the Roman army; the interpretation that the fragments once belonged to an imperial document is justiijied, since the letters, which are two centimeters high, are exceptionally large.43 Still more noteworthy is the unusual thickness of the tablet (0.8 cm.), which allows an inference about its overall size: it once bore a long, continuous text. Thus, from its material value alone, the tablet must have been quite expensive.44 Such effort is not expended on a banal document, but rather only on a text that has great factual or political signiijicance. All of this speaks for an imperial document that was once displayed in Nijmegen, perhaps even in the legionary camp there. This is not the only such evidence, however, for this region in lower Germany, in which more or less nothing about such inscriptions on bronze was previously known; indeed, in recent years several such fragments have been found. They all have comparable content, including a document on which the name of an emperor was carefully scratched out.45 If in a region such as the Netherlands, which had very little metal on hand, so many indications of larger bronze inscriptions are nevertheless still being found today, then these must have been displayed in great numbers in cities and army camps during the ijirst three centuries of Roman rule. Presenting a complete list of all of these larger documents on bronze here would take up too much space. However even the previously named places of discovery make a very clear statement: all of these inscriptions on bronze come either from Rome, from Italy, or from one of the provinces in the West or the Danube lands in which Roman culture was a determining principle of public life and where, in addition, Latin was the ofijicial language of public communication. Aside from Rome and Italy in general, Spain is the place where a large number of these documents on bronze has been discovered. Especially in Baetica, numerous more or less fragmentary municipal laws have 43 44 45 While the letters of the inscriptions on honorary statue bases are signiijicantly larger, they belong to a completely different type of inscription. Eck – Veen 2010. See, for example, Derks 2010: no. 2; ae 2004, 984; other texts from the Netherlands will need to be reviewed again to determine if their full meaning has been comprehended. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV DOCUMENTS ON BRONZE: A PHENOMENON OF THE ROMAN WEST ? 139 been found; according to the latest estimates, there could be more than forty locations to which these fragments are to be assigned. Added to these from this province are twelve copies of senatus consulta, including the tabula Siarensis, which is complemented in terms of its content by the tabula Hebana, found in Heba in Etruria; ijive imperial letters; eighteen declarations of hospitium and clientelae; in addition, at least sixty further fragments on bronze are known, of which many have legal content.46 An imperial oath was also recorded on bronze (ae 1988, 723 = HEp 13: 586). If one checks the discovery locations of the 539 inscriptions on bronze that can be identiijied in the Heidelberg database, one ijinds that, apart from the military diplomas, they, like the previously-recorded documents, almost all come from the Latin-speaking provinces of the Empire. This result is of course not entirely representative, since the Heidelberg database has up until now recorded fewer inscriptions from the eastern provinces. Yet from Ephesus, with its approximately three thousand inscriptions, not one inscription on metal is known, except for an accounting of temple money from the sixth century bc, which is engraved on a thin silver plate.47 This situation can be regarded as representative; Ephesus has been excavated systematically to a large extent. An identical observation arises for the area of modern Israel, for which the material is largely collected in the archive of ciip. Except for a few medallions from late antiquity, no inscriptions on bronze are known, either in Latin or in Greek or in any other – indigenous – language used there for inscriptions. Only curse tablets of lead are known, but that is another category.48 All this means that an important type of Roman inscription on bronze known from the West is generally not found in the Roman provinces of the East. There are no Republican laws on bronze tablets (which is no wonder, since they were mostly relevant only for the ager Romanus), no contracts with poleis, senatus consulta, municipal laws, or imperial letters, but many inscriptions with exactly such a content are known from the East. Indeed, the majority of imperial letters and edicts known to us comes from the Greek-speaking provinces. The collection of R.K. Sherk, entitled Roman Documents from the Greek East (1969), shows this. Among seventy-eight entries, only a single text written in Latin or Greek and recorded on a bronze tablet relates to a city in 46 47 48 Caballos 2009: 147–70. I. Ephesus I 1; in contrast, I. Ephesus nos. 4 and 7 note that the respective documents were to be published on a whitened wooden tablet or on stone (a reference made to me by Helmut Engelmann). See now, for Jerusalem and Caesarea, ciip i–III, which contain more than 2.600 inscriptions, not one on a bronze tablet. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV 140 ECK the East of the empire, namely Clazomenai. But the tabula aenea with the s.c. was displayed in Rome, not in the East.49 The other seventy-seven texts in his collection (including the Republic and the Augustan era) are all written on stone. This applies analogously to the collection of Oliver, who only included imperial letters and edicts in Greek: aside from the papyrological evidence, all of them are engraved on stone. These pieces of evidence, which are numerous, have multiplied since the posthumous publication of Oliver’s collection, and they are all written on stone.50 Bronze was used only for two imperial letters intended for public presentation found recently in Achaia and Macedonia. One comes from the city of Naryx in the north of the province of Achaia; for it, at least, the form of a stone stele typical for the East has been retained.51 Given all of this information, two pieces of evidence are downright sensational. A contract sworn under oath in 46 bc between Rome and the ethnos of the Lycians has been discovered. That it is written in Greek is not as noteworthy as that it is inscribed on a bronze tablet, which was certainly posted in a city of Lycia, perhaps in the Letoon in Xanthos (ae 2005, 1487).52 Why this form of public presentation was chosen here cannot be determined directly; perhaps this copy was made in Rome and brought from there to Lycia. Such a double publication on bronze in Rome and in the province can also be assumed for a contract with Maroneia (seg 35, 823); for another treaty between Rome and the Lycians that dates from the pre-Sullan era, to judge from a fragment that has been found in Tyberissos (ae 2007, 1504); and for a corresponding fragment of the treaty from Kibyra (ogis 762).53 The last, indeed, mentions publication on bronze at Rome, while the text itself in Kibyra has been placed on the base of a statue of the goddess Roma. Here one must reckon with an ofijicial presentation on stone. It is at all events certain that the only preserved texts of these documents in the East are those that were engraved on this material. A second surprising bronze fragment comes from Sagalassos in Pisidia; only two small fragments of a lengthy inscription are preserved.54 The exceptional aspects here are, ijirst, that Latin was used in a city in which we are familiar with several hundred inscriptions, of which only ijive are written in Latin; second, 49 50 51 52 53 54 Sherk 1969: no. 22 = cil i2 588 = 40890 = igur i 1. Oliver 1989; Souris-Anastasiadis 2000. seg 51, 641. The other imperial letter, also from Hadrian and also on bronze, comes from Macedonia and is still unpublished (see Birley 2005b: 309). Cf. Mitchell 2005. Cf. Frederiksen 1965: 185. Eck 2008c. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV DOCUMENTS ON BRONZE: A PHENOMENON OF THE ROMAN WEST ? 141 that the thickness of the bronze tablet preserving only a few words and which corresponds to that of the large inscriptions from Spain, suggests that the original tablet must have been quite large. None of these traits ijits what we know about the publication of ofijicial imperial writings or other state documents in the entire region of Asia Minor, but they correspond completely with what we know from Rome and the West of the empire. Since the few factual hints in the text itself most likely point to the Augustan or Tiberian era, it stands to reason that the fragment belongs to a document that was composed in Rome in which the text recommended or even ordered an appropriate publication on a tabula aenea. The documents that are contained in the tabula Siarensis and in the s.c. de Cn. Pisone patre require this form of public announcement, e.g.: item hoc s(enatus) c(onsultum) in cuiusque provinciae celeberruma urbe eiusque i<n> urbis ipsius celeberrimo loco in aere incisum ijigeretur.55 Assuming that this was the case also in Pisidia, the strange fragment in Sagalassos would be understandable. In some contracts from the late Republic the Senate also ordered this form of public presentation for cities in the East of the Empire; one may therefore assume that these commands of the Senate were normally followed.56 Admittedly, such commands are found in only a few contracts. This was not, then, the general practice. In any case, the cities in the East did not regard this process as a challenge to change their general practice of engraving important documents in stone, so that they might be preserved and accessible for a longer time. People remained true to their own traditions. All of this demonstrates that there was a marked difference between the West and the East in the public presentation of large, public, especially legal and political, texts.57 In the West, the organs of the res publica itself, not only the Emperor, but also the ofijice holders of the autonomous cities and frequently also private individuals, used bronze tablets in order to announce texts to the public and especially to preserve them for the future.58 These are texts that were important for all citizens of a community or particularly for those 55 56 57 58 Eck – Caballos – Fernández 1996: scpp lines 170–171. See Meyer 2004: 96 with n. 16. On this point more fully: Eck 2009a. Joseph. bj 2.216 reports a ruling of Claudius conferring on Agrippa the royal authority over Judaea and specifying that the order was to be preserved on a bronze tablet on the Capitol at Rome. Nothing is said about the method of publication in another edict of the emperor sent to the provinces to be set up there, except that the text was to be available for reading for at least thirty days (Joseph. aj 19. 291). Here is a clear reference to publication that was not expected to be permanent. For private publication, see, e.g., a document from Lavinium in which it is noted at the end that on the birthday of Servilius Diodorus, This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV 142 ECK groups that would continue to be affected in the future. In the East, this practice was almost unknown under Roman rule. Moreover, it was not emulated by the locals, nor was it forced upon them by the central government. When it is speciijied in an edict of the late-antique praefectus praetorio Pusaeus from the year 480 that the edict should be published either on stone or on bronze so that the people then alive or those who would live in the future could be familiar with it, then this is in the Roman tradition; the edict itself, however, which is known from both Mylasa and from Stratonikeia in Asia Minor, was, of course, published on stone there.59 This is not to say that bronze tablets were not used sometimes in the Eastern provinces for such texts, but this occurred only under very special conditions, as in the contract with Lycia in Caesar’s time or with the text from Sagalassos. Naturally, Roman magistrates sometimes published texts on bronze in the manner familiar to them, as a prefect of Egypt under Domitian did with an edict of the emperor. This edict could be read in Alexandria on a tabula aenea, quae est ijixa in Caesareo magno escendentium scalas secundas sub porticum dexteriorem secus aedem Veneris marmoreae in pariete (ae 1910, 75 = ils 9059). But for the provinces in the Greek East in Roman times, publication on bronze always remained a foreign practice. Nothing can demonstrate this more clearly than the epigraphic presentation of a speech that a senator under Marcus Aurelius gave in the Senate in Rome about the excessive prices for gladiators. The text of the inscription is preserved in Italica in Spain and in Sardis in the province of Asia. In Italica, the text is inscribed on a big bronze tablet (fira i2 no. 49); in Sardis it is written on stone (ils 9340). To judge from the documents published thus far, bronze military diplomas reveal a marked difference in the selection of bronze as the material of choice for inscriptions, and that difference cannot have been conditioned by accident of transmission or the state of excavations in the eastern provinces. Diplomas have been found in all parts of the empire, including the eastern provinces, as the following table shows: 59 the patron of the dendrophori, sportulae should be distributed according to the stipulation quae in tabula aenea, quam schola in quam convenimus perscribtum (!) posuit (ae 1998, 282). I. Mylasa 613 + ii pp. 5–6: λίθῳ ἢ χαλκῷ τὸν ἡμέτερον <γ>εν[ικὸν τοῦτον τύπ]ον ἅπασιν δῆλον προκῖσθαι τοῖς τ(ε) [νῦν] οὗσιν καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα γενησομένοις; cf. I. Stratonikeia 200; also, I. Mylasa 613, and more comprehensively Feissel 1994; the inscription has been rediscovered, see Blümel 2004 (I thank Wolfgang Blümel for this information). This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV DOCUMENTS ON BRONZE: A PHENOMENON OF THE ROMAN WEST ? Diplomas found in Asia / Galatia / Lycia-Pamphylia / Cilicia in Syria in Iudaea/Syria Palaestina in Arabia in Aegyptus 143 rmd I 55. 74; ii 100. 110. 131. 133; iii 160 173; rgzm 22. 41; ae 2005, 1730; Eck – Cotton 2011 cil xvi 117; rmd i 9. 69 cil xvi 87; Eck 2010a (?) unpublished cil xvi 29. 122. 184; rmd iii 185; Eck 2011. This is not a very large number, given the total inventory of diplomas, yet it is a sufijiciently large one, especially if one considers that the mass of the diplomas found in the last two decades (and this group constitutes more than half of all such pieces) had to be published without a precise speciijication of their origin, or at best with an indication of a larger region.60 However, the diplomas just mentioned, for which the place of discovery is known, show that documents on bronze are also nowadays found in the East if they existed there in Roman times. One must assume that the newer diplomas were mainly discovered with the help of metal detectors. The fact that no other documents on bronze from this region are being sold in the antique market, suggests that they did not exist in large quantities, since a metal detector does not distinguish between diplomas and other texts on bronze.61 Diplomas, however, are found there because they were produced in Rome and sent from the center to the soldiers in the provinces, also in the East. If they have been preserved there until the present, then this would also apply to documents on bronze, that were produced in these provinces themselves in Roman times.62 However, this is obviously not the case. Therefore it cannot be an accident of transmission or the intensity of the excavations that leads to our conclusion, as has sometimes been suspected. For precisely the larger metropoleis of western Asia Minor, from which the mass 60 61 62 See, e.g., the indications about the ijind-spots in rmd iv p. 617. For two or three diplomas issued for soldiers in Galatia–Cappadocia it is also very likely that they were found somewhere in Asia minor: see Eck–Pangerl 2014. With other imperial documents from emperors or governors, the content usually provides guidance as to which region or city was intended as the recipient, even if the context of the discovery is unknown. That was actually anticipated by the Senate in several treaties of the late Roman Republic: see above, p. 136. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV 144 ECK of ofijicial documents transmitted on stone – laws, senatus consulta, imperial letters, and governor’s edicts – derive, have been excavated with special intensity and care. We have comprehensive publications of the inscriptions of such well known cities as Ephesus, Pergamon, Miletus, Priene, Sardis, and Alexandria Troas. Also, places such as Antioch, Beirut, Heliopolis in the province of Syria, Caesarea Maritima in Judaea, and Petra and Gerasa in Arabia have all been well-researched, but documents on bronze have not been discovered there.63 The logical conclusion is that the pattern described here captures an essential difference in the epigraphic culture in the Roman Empire. The transmarinae provinciae, which represent themselves differently in many respects, also distinguish themselves clearly from the provinces of the West and the Danube region from this point of view – so deeply, in fact, that centuries of a Roman presence in these provinces did not change anything essential about their practice of recording. This is almost comparable to the usage of the two languages of the Empire: in the East, Latin did not become the dominant language anywhere except in the military realm, and then only to a certain degree and for a certain period of time in some Roman colonies. Greek always remained the lingua franca in the eastern parts of the empire.64 But why was this form of presentation of important texts on bronze tablets so characteristic for the West so widely avoided or even rejected in the East, even if in the later Republic the Roman senate had sometimes ordered or initiated it also in the East? And why, vice-versa, was the practice so natural in the West that the large majority of all longer texts of the described type preserved in that part of the empire are on bronze and only rarely on stone?65 For the deep-rooted traditions of Rome, Italy, and eventually the entire West, the beginning of Roman normative legislation with the Twelve Tables was probably decisive. According to Livy, the laws were published: leges decemvirales, 63 64 65 This is the view of Haensch 2009b:177, who maintains that one cannot determine whether or not the over-representation of stone still today in the documents of the east is due to the better conditions that existed for the preservation and transmission of inscriptions on stone, but such a position seems very unlikely, given the overall evidence. See also the various contributions in Cotton – Hoyland – Price – Wasserstein 2009. Ofijicial documents on stone from the west survive only in small numbers: e.g., the s.c. de saltu Beguense (fira i2 No. 47); the regulation of an imperial saltus in Africa (cil viii 25943, 26416; ae 2001, 2083; cf. Schubert 2008); the dossier with several epistulae from various ofijice holders engraved on a gate in Saepinum (fira i2 No. 61 = ae 1962, 92); and the edictum Augusti de aquaeductu Venafrano (fira i2 67). This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV DOCUMENTS ON BRONZE: A PHENOMENON OF THE ROMAN WEST ? 145 quibus tabulis duodecim est nomen, in aes incisas in publico . . .66 And Pliny the Elder explains quite clearly that “the use of bronze to secure the perpetuity of monuments by means of bronze tablets, on which the records of ofijicial acts were incised, has been handed down from long ago”.67 Publicae constitutiones and publication on metal (i.e. bronze) had become intrinsically connected in the perception of the Romans. Nothing else was conceivable. And this concept was transferred from leges to other normative texts, such as senatus consulta and, later, decisions or letters of the Principes. The Lex Tappula, a parody of legal codiijication, shows just how natural the concept was that a law was to be published on bronze: it too is written on a bronze tablet.68 In the Greek world, developments took a distinctively different course.69 There, already in the archaic period in certain cities, bronze was used in addition to wood and stone as a medium for the display of many texts of a normative character.70 Hence, when Porphyrio writes in his commentary on the Ars Poetica of Horace, aereis enim tabulis antiqui non sunt usi, sed roboreis. In has incidebant leges. Unde adhuc Athenis legum tabulae axones vocantur (Comm. ad Hor. Art. Poet. 399), that is only partially true, if we consider the inscriptions on bronze preserved from archaic Greece. Nonetheless, over the course 66 67 68 69 70 Livy 3.57.10. The notice of Pomponius, Dig. 1.2.2.4, that the leges may be carved into tabulae eboreae is not relevant here. The same may be said about the assumption that there were originally tabulae roboreae. When such tabulae roboreae are mentioned in the Commentary of Porphyrio, to Hor. Ars Poetica 399, namely that leges should be carved into them, the connection is rather to the Greek customs: Horace himself is speaking about Orpheus and Amphion as the creators of culture, just as does Porphyrio, as is clear in his notation (4, 15 to verse 399): Aereis enim tabulis antiqui non sunt usi, sed roboreis. In has incidebant leges. Unde adhuc Athenis legum tabulae axones vocantur. The only time that the tabulae roboreae appear in a Roman context is at Gell. na 2.20.5, and they are oak tablets relating to the fencing of a vivarium; these tabulae have no connection to inscriptions. Plin. hn 34.99 . . . usus aeris ad perpetuitatem monimentorum iam pridem tralatus est tabulis aereis, in quibus publicae constitutiones inciduntur. ils 8761; cf. Meyer 2004: 67. Precisely this phenomenon of the use of bronze in Greek epigraphic culture was a major subject of discussion among the participants of the congress in San Antonio, and I very much appreciate the suggestions received in that context. It would be a worthwhile project to examine the use of bronze for inscriptions and to consider the virtually universal preference for marble in the Greek East in later times, and why the Roman practice of using tabulae aeneae established no pattern of use, despite the political domination of the Romans in the East from the late Republic on. On this point, see for example, Robert 1936: 47–48; Hellenica 10: 289–290; 1966; be 1971, 45; Klaffenbach 1960: 25; Stroud 1963; van Effenterre – Ruzé 1994; Hölkeskamp 1999. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV 146 ECK of time bronze was employed less frequently as a means for the formal publication or presentation of documents. Hence we have no correspondence or other proclamations of Hellenistic kings that survive on bronze tablets.71 Marble, rather, was the material employed with ever greater frequency during the classical period to preserve decrees and public records. It is symptomatic, then, that from Athens only one such decree of the assembly written on a bronze tablet has been found (ig i3 49). According to the editors of ig3, the document preserved in this manner is actually a private proclamation, and the polis was not responsible for its public presentation.72 Apart from that, public decrees recorded on bronze survive in Entella (Sicily) from the third century BC, and we ijind bronze employed for other types of Greek inscriptions in later periods.73 Nonetheless, as far as we can determine, for normative texts, which in later periods include treaties with Rome, senatus consulta, and letters and edicts of the emperors, bronze disappears as a medium for the presentation of public documents. For Greek city-states it was increasingly the norm to preserve public access to these texts on stone. Indeed, this practice persisted after the second century BC, despite the political domination of Rome and its models for publication of a range of documents. In the late Republic, as already mentioned, there is evidence that Rome sometimes ordered analogous publication in the East.74 But these mandates did not lead to a change in the style employed by the Greek cities for displaying in public even such texts as came from Rome. 71 72 73 74 See Welles 1934. Other indications of bronze as the medium for preserving public inscriptions in Stroud 1963 and Clinton 2005 no. 13 (= ig i3 5) and plate 3. Decrees: see the exhibition catalogue Da un’antica città 2001. Other types of inscriptions on bronze: on Corcyra, we have rulings of the Halia that decrees about proxenia should be published on a chalcoma, but only decrees preserved on stone stelae survive (ig ix 1, 685–688). At Byllis in Illyria an honorary decree is to be erected in a locus celeberrimus (seg 38, 521); at Rhegion, in the Bouleuterion (ig xiv 612); in Magnesia on the Maeander one was found in the sanctuary of Apollo (Kern 1900 no. 45). These are not normative texts but rather decrees in honor of persons or to record an extension of proxenia; moreover they are neither laws nor treaties nor letters from kings and later from emperors. On this point, see Butz 2000; Manganaro 2000. Note too that decrees of proxenia, functionally equal to tesserae hospitales in the West, could also be found on bronze: e.g., Manganaro 1963. Impressive also is the archive of about one hundred ijifty bronze tablets from Argos (seg 54, 427, 429). These tablets are related to ijinancial transactions of political or religious organizations concerning sacred funds of Athena and Hera. Presumably these tablets were not publicly displayed. Meyer 2004: 96 and n. 16. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV DOCUMENTS ON BRONZE: A PHENOMENON OF THE ROMAN WEST ? 147 That is, Roman intervention did not produce a fundamental change in the epigraphic culture of the Greek East, despite the fact that it would have led to a return to an earlier form of publication and presentation. The two worlds touched and influenced one another to a large extent, but each retained characteristic features that did not change at all. The publication and presentation of normative texts on bronze is an immutable part of Roman culture. Aes was regarded as perenne. Ironically, however, the use of this permanent and at the same time valuable material caused the disproportionate destruction of the cultural monuments entrusted to it, whereas in the East many ofijicial Roman documents survive because they were cut into stone. Horace believed that his poems were aere perennius (Hor. Carm. 3.30.1). 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