Miszellen 379

already present in Tacitus' mind. The struggle for the courts was the only theme available
which involved (a) the knights (b) ius in some form (c) interference in the sphere of the
senate. Therefore it had to suffice.
In short the excursus nam... bellarent is not an organic whole and its context is niot
purely equestrian. Rather, it gradually transfers the emphasis from the delegation of
judicial power to the nefarious activities of the ordo equester. This once achieved, the rest
is easy. The way lies clear for a simple contrast between public and private influence.
(The full force of publice and the implied antithesis with what follows are often overlooked.)
By now ius has vanished from the picture,'0 and after much labour Tacitus can, by an
elementary rhetorical device, make his long-awaited point about the freedmen. The
development of the thought may be tabulated as follows: specific instance of judicial
delegation - judicial delegation in general - public influence of equites (connected with
what precedes by equestrian interference in the judicial sphere) - private influence of
equites - private influence of liberti.
The analysis offered above, though it reduces and postpones the pre-eminence of the
equites in the structure of the digression, does not destroy the argument that the procurators
referred to must be equestrian. If the reference to procurators is not restricted to knights,
the passage is unintelligible; clumsy enough as it is, the digression would become pointless
as well as awkward if the original measure were not concerned precisely with the equestrian
order. Moreover, Stockton has demonstrated conclusively that the liberti referred to at
the end of the chapter are not procurators, and the clarification of this point removes the
chief ground for disagreement with a conclusion which must commend itself to common
sense.

Lincoln College, Oxford ROBIN SEAGER

ISIDORE, ETYM. 1, XXIV

De notis militaribus
In breviculis quoque, quibus militum nomina continebantur, propria nota erat apud
veteres, qua inspiceretur quanti ex militibus superessent quantique in bello cecidissent.
Tau nota in capite versiculi posita superstitem designabat; E Theta vero ad uniuscuiusque
defuncti nomen apponebatur. Vnde et habet per medium telum, id est mortis signum.
De qua Persius ait (4, 13):
Et potis est nigrum vitio praefigere theta.
Cum autem inperitiam significare vellent, Labda littera usi sunt, sicut mortem significabant,
cum ponebant Theta ad caput. In stipendiorum quoque largitione propriae erant notae.
inper. LK (a K) B Rem.: inpuritiam UC:1 inpueritiam T Mon.' Quae ad inperitiam
(u suprascr.) refero lauda KL: lauta B significant KL.
So Lindsay.' In a well-argued article J. F. Gilliam2 has proposed to restore the reading
inpuritiam, favoured by Grial and Arevalo, and printed in Migne.' The interpretation of
Labda which this reading requires is well expressed by the note in Migne ad loc.: Qui
inpuritiam malunt XeapL&6eLV, aut aliud obscoenum verbum ex Aristophane in Con-
cionatricibus intelligunt. This meaning is clear and well-attested: Gilliam produces other

10 Stockton, p. IIQ.
1 OCT (igio).

2 Notae militares in Isidore, Etym. I, xxiv, Hommages d Llon Hermann, (C

Latomus Vol. XLIV), Brussels ig6o, pp. 408-415. 3 PL LXXXII, col. zoo.

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 380 Miszellen

instances.4 What is not so clear is how this can conceivably be regarded as a nota militaris.
Gilliam himself does not believe that it was, and suspects "that Isidore in his self-inter-
polating way introduced in this paragraph material that does not belong here."5
Isidore, of course, had a habit of digressing: we may well ask, however, whether his
(ligressions are normally so wild and flagrant as this. The context will bear closer investi-
gation.

In an earlier article" I suggested that the passage Vnde et.... Theta ad capitl was from
a different source from that used for the preceding portion, both on stylistic grounds and
because some of the words are repeated from an earlier passage.7 Gilliam is inclined to
accept this suggestion, adding that "the fact that a sentence is actually repeated from an
earlier passage makes it more probable that Isidore himself, and not a predecessor, is
responsible for the insertion."8 Gilliam goes on to say, "Nevertheless, when Watson
comes to explain Labda, he assumes a close connection with what precedes."9 Yet one
would naturally expect even an interpolation to have some relevance to the context.
The final sentence of the chapter is perhaps crucial: in stipendiorum quoque largitione
propriae erant notae. Gilliam comments :10 "In the final sentence he returned to his subject,
and presumably to his first source." On this interpretation we have the sequence: first,
a reasonably detailed quotation from a common source, to which we may refer as source
A,"1 as is proved by the very similar language of Rufinus,12 then an explanatory interpo

pp. 4T2f. and n. 2. p. 414-

6 'Theta nigrum', JRS XLII (1952), pp. 56-62, see p. 57.

7 Etymt. I, iii, 7-9: r litteram Pythagoras Samius ad exemplum vitae humanae primus
formavit; cuius virgula subterior primam aetatem significat, incertam quippe et quac
adhuc se nec vitiis nec virtutibus dedit. Bivium autem, quod superest, ab adolescentia
incipit: cuius dextra pars ardua est, sed ad beatam vitam tendens: sinistra facilior, sed
adl labem interitumque deducens. De qua sic Persius ait (3,56):
Et tibi qua Samios deduxit littera ramos,
surgentem dextro monstravit limite callem.
Quinque autem esse apud Graecos mysticas litteras. Prima rf quac humanam vitam
significat, de qua nunc diximus. Secunda 0, quae mortem significat. Nam iudices eandem
litteram 0 adponebant ad eorum nomina, quos supplicio afficiebant. Et dicitur Theta
a&r6 to5 Oocvakrou, id est a morte. Vnde et habet per medium telum, id est mortis signuim.
De qua quidam:
0 multum ante alias infelix littera theta.
The sentence Vnde et... mortis signum is repeated in the chapter De notis militaribus.
It is interesting that both passages contain quotations from Persius.
8 p. 41 n. 2. 9 P. 4Irf. '0p. 4I4f.
11 For an attempt to discover this source, cf. Watson, art. cit., pp. 59-6i, and Gilliam's
comments, o.c., p. 41I, n. i. I had concluded that the common source of Isidore and
Rufinus (see next note) for this passage was probably a third century military jurist.
Gilliam allows that this possibly may have been true of the ultimate source, but he suspects
that the immediate source was an account of notae of various kinds, which included a
section on notae militares. He claims that in other passages of Isidore which deal with
military matters (IX, III, 29-64; XVIII, i-xiv: to these add V, vii; XV, ix, x) direct
knowledge of military jurists is not immediately obvious. But one of these sections (IX,
iii, 36) reads: Vnde et tirones dicti, quique antequam sacramento probati sint, milites non
sunt. Cf. Ulpian in Dig. XXIX, i, 42: proinde qui nondum in numeris sunt, licet etiam
tirones sint et publicis expensis iter faciunt, nondum milites sunt. (For enrolment in
general see J. F. Gilliam, "Enrolmenit in the Roman Imperial Army, Eos XLVIII,

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 Miszellen 38I

lation ending in an irrelevancy by Isidore himself, and lastly a vague recollection of

something else in source A. If, however, we ascribe the final sentence to Isidore himself,
we should have what would seem to be a more natural sequence: first, source A followed
meticulously, and next an explanatory digressioni which brings in another nota militaris,
Labda, and the recollection that still further notac existed which concerned pay. Had
Isidore known precisely what these notae were, it is hard to believe that he would have
failed to describe them. The fact that he does not do so suggests strongly that they were
not in his immediate source.
The upshot is that whatever word is represented by inperitiam, inptritiam, inputeritiam,
or any of the other variants proposed,'3 it should have some connection with military
conditions. We can therefore discard inpuritiam, which appears to have intruded as the
correction of a copyist who could not understand inperitiam, and who was also aware of
the use of Labda as a coarse abbreviation. Inpueritiam is clearly a conflation of the other
two readings. How then do we interpret inperitiam ?
I have proposed elsewhere'4 that Rufinus and Isidore are dealing with annotations
used in casualty-lists. Modern casualty-lists contain the categories of 'killed', 'wounded'
anid 'missing'; why should not the same have been true in Roman times? Superstes is
then explained, not as merely 'surviving', but as 'wounded and alive', whereas inperitia
in the same context would refer to the authorities' lack of knowledge of the whereabouts
of the missing. This leads to an easy expansion of r as 'r(pocOeq) or r(epcoo); for X a
rather less convincing one was proposed - X(bricav) (= & e(tnwv, 'wanting'), or perhaps
?>( LWOaTp TL@'r'v) or X(L7ror&Kx'r') 'deserter'.
This explanation was accepted in general and still further developed by James H.
Oliver.15 Tau, he suggested, meant not merely 'wounded', but 'wounded but not lost in
respect to future service': inperitiam he took to be a corruption of ineptiam, and this to
represent 'a physical disability like the loss of a limb or the fingers'. Labda then admitted
an easy expansion as X(o-Oretg). Yet this requires a considerable emendation, and tha
in a direction not supported by variants.
Gilliam has two basic criticisms of the general theory that the notae are marginal anno-
tationis of casualty-lists. His first objection is that the lists are described simply as nominal
rolls (breviculi quibus mtilitum nomina continebantur, in Isidore's wording), which dis-
tinguish the superstites from the defuncti. "As a glance at the lexicons will slhow," he
writes,16 "the first group are those that have survived, those that remain after deduction
of losses. One would have to have compelling reasons to believe that the stuperstites here

(Syinibolae Raphaeli l'aubenschlag dedicatae), 1957 pp. 207-2i6). This whole section of
Isidore (IX, iii, 29-64), however, reads almost like a parody of Vegetius, II, 7-8.
12 adv. Hieron., 2, 36 (= Migne, PL XXI, 392, col. 614f.): ea quae apud illos (sc.
ludaeos) sunt addita vel decerpta ... ad versiculorum capita designavit ... Quod tale
esset, quale si quis accepto breviculo, in quo militum nomina continentur, nitatur in-
spicere, quanti ex militibus supersint, quanti in bello ceciderint; et requirens qui inspicere
missus est, propriam notam, verbi causa, ut dici solet, 0 ad uniuscuiusque defuncti nomen
adscribat et propria rursus nota superstitem signet. Nunquid videbitur is, qui notam ad
defuncti nomen apponit, et propria rursum nota superstitem signat, quod egerit aliquid
ut vel hic defuncti, vel ille viventis causam acciperet? Note that Rufinus' change from
source to comment is marked also by his change in choice of words from ruysus to rursum.
13 Breul, for instance, read pueritiamn. 14 OX., p. 58.
15 "Disability in the Roman Military Lists," Rheinisches Museum, C, 1957, pp. 242-244.
16 O.C., p. 410.

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 382 Miszellen

were confined to "wounded" anid the like.. . It will be observed that Rufinius took superstes
to be equivalent to vivens."
His second objection is closely connected with his first. It is that both Rufinus and
Isidore begin by giving two categories, superstikes and defuncti, and Rufinus mentions
only two notae, Theta denoting delunctus and another propria nota, which he does not
specify, signifying superstes. "There is no suggestion in Rufinus of Labda or any third
nota, and there would be nothing for it to designate." He concludes that whatever Labda
may signify, it need not be related in meaning to the first two notae. Tau, therefore, which
is attested by Isidore, and by him only, as the nota for superstes, has to be expanded to
be the equivalent of superstes in its normal sense,17 not 'wounded' however qualified.
Gilliam does not attempt this expansion.18
Too much trust should not be placed in the argumentum ex silentio Rufini. Rufinus'
sole purpose was to produce a parallel to the annotations in Origen's work on the Old
Testament: he was not in the least concerned to give a full account of orderly-room
procedure in the Roman Army. Isidore, on the other hand, though admittedly two cen-
turies later, is professing to be dealing directly with notae nmilitares. Therefore, assuming,
as seems probable, that Rufinus and Isidore were using a common source, we need not
suppose also that Rufinus is giving a truer picture of its contents. Yet Gilliam is undoubtedly
right in stressing that there are initially only two categories, superstites and defuncti, and
that whatever Labda may signify, it need not be related in meaning to the first two notae.
It must, however, pace Gilliam, be some form of nota militaris.19 Now we may answer the
question asked before, "How do we interpret inperitiam? I admitted elsewhere, without
accepting the necessary conclusion,20 that "the natural interpretation of the term is
'lack of skill', which can suit only the meaning of 'recruit' for whatever word is represented
by the symbol X." The rendering of inperitia favoured instead, "the authorities' lack of
knowledge of the whereabouts of the missing," is, as Gilliam justly points out, hard to
accept, and, as I now realise, hardly possible: the parallel from Minucius Felix (Octavius,
XXXV, 5: quamquam inperitia Dei sufficiat ad poenam, ita ut notitia prosit ad veniam)
is inadequate. The natural interpretation, therefore, now appears to me inescapable.21

17 He cites for instance Caesar, BC, iii, 87: perexigua pars illius exercitus superest;
magna pars deperit. But in Veget. iii, 25, which he cites also, the meaning of the word is
coloured by the contex: tfrequenter iam fusa acies, dispersos, ac passim sequentes, repa-
ratis viribus interemit. nam nunquam exsultantibus maius solet esse discrimen, quam
cum subito ferocia in formidinem commutatur. sed quicunquc eventus fuerit, colligendi
superstites bello, erigendi adhortationibus congruis, et armoruin inistauratione refoveildi.
Here superstites is practically synonymous with dispersos.
18 Gilliam rightly points out that our knowledge of Greek technical terms is incomplete.
Earlier attempts to explain Tau in terms of vivens have included (i) v(ivus), by Justus
Lipsius, De recta pronunciatione Latinae linguae dialogus, ed ult., Antwerp, 1628, chapter
I4, where Xr is viewed simply as a corruption of v. This is highly improbable, and the MSS
tradition is too strong. (ii) from '(Qip&o), suggested by Joannes Rutgers, Var. Lect. V, I7
(Leiden, i6i8), followed by Caspar von Barth, Advers. comment. XLIV, 7 (Frankfurt,
I624), with the remark that the letter is described by Ennodius, carm. II, I 7, as dux recti.
But this refers to the mystical interpretation of Tau - the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet
- as the Cross. (Cf. JRS XLII, p. 57 and n. 8.) (iii) u'(yLj), proposed by Thomas Reinesius.
Var. Lect., I, 7 (Altenburg, I637), followed by Nicolas Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana vetus,
V, iv, 97 (Rome, I696), where r is viewed as a corruption of Y. This is open to the same
objection as (i). 19 v. supra. 20 Oc.C, p. 58f.
21 For imperitus in this sense cf. Veg., de re mil. iii, i8: Clamor autem (q

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 Miszellen 383

Moreover, since all recruits were required to pass proficiency tests in basic training,22 the
abbreviation Labda may well have had some such meaning as 'failed'. In that case a
possible expansion would be X(eLvpOet) used in the sense of 'faling short'.2
We can now re-interpret the whole section as a conflation of two kinds of evidence:
the first, a source used also by Rufinus, dealt with casualty-lists, and contained the notae
used to distinguish the dead from the superstites. Since, however, any man not dead
must necessarily be alive, there is little point in having a special abbreviation to signify
'living' when one already exists to signify 'dead' - a fact which was not realised by Rufinus
and possibly not by Isidore either. Those of the superstites whose names were marked
with a Tau must surely have been the wounded. If further proof be needed it is surely
given by the extreme difficulty of finding an expansion of Tau with the meaning of viv s,Y
whereas the expansion into 'r(poOeEq) seems both easy and natural. The second part of the
section is the confused product of Isidore's own memory, and we may owe its details to
more than one original source. He begins by adding other abbreviations of which he has
heard: Labda, which he remembers as having something to do with the recruits, though
he does not know quite what, and finally some notae concerning pay-lists the symbols of
which he cannot recall. What these notae were we can only guess: possibly the sign for
the denarius, and perhaps those for quadrans and dodrans.25

Nottinghani G. R. WATSON

CONTRIBUTION A L'ETUDE DES ONZE (ol 'Ev8cxm).'

Clir. Habicht a recemment publi6 les d6crets saniens de 1'epoque lielliiistique.2

L. Robert a souligne la valeur de cette publication.3
Le numero I surtout offre beaucoup d'interet.4 Les Ath6niens avaienit ordonne a leur
stratege a Samos d'arretcr les Saniens revenaiit d'Anaia, de les eiivoyer 'a Athbnes (1.4-6)
ou ils furent incarceres et condamne's a mort (1. 9-13). Grce 'a l'intervention d'Antileon,

qui corrompit le Conseil et les Onze, les condamnes furent sauv6s: Xp.%ta&' &t7c[o]q:La()
eX -riuv t&cV e 'Ac 'vaq vcz t i)[tj] P3ou),y xal touq Ev8c?x WLa eC v ro1jb]q &v8poc; xzl
& ?Xg?'j?V DNr' 'A4)[Lvcxicov &]7roa4vve xoc r &v v8p v& AA}Lkv'r&] ?1v X X 8X (1 . 1( I 4).

vocant) prius non debet attolli, (quam acies utraque se iunxerit. Imperitorum enim, vel
ignavorum est, vociferari de longe; cum hostes magis terreantur, si curm telorum ictu
clamoris horror accesserit. Auctar bell. Hisp. 31: ita cum clamor esset ilitermixtus gemitu
gladiarumque crepitus auribus oblatus, imperitorum mentes timore praepediebat. Livy,
XXIV, 34, 5: ex ceteris navibus sagittarii funiditoresque et velites etiam, quorum telum
ad remittendum inhabile inmperitis est, vix quemquam sine vulnere consistere in muro
patiebantur.

22 Vreg., de re mil., i, 13: ita autem severe apud maiores exercitii disciplina servata est,
ut et doctores armorum duplis remunerarentur annonis, et milites, qui parum in illa
prolusione profecerant, pro frumento hordeum cogerentur accipere; nec ante eis in tritico
redderetur annona, quam sub praesentia praefecti legionis, tribunorum vel principiorum,
experimentis datis ostendissent se omnia quae erant in militari arte complesse.
23 cf. L-S-J s.v. B II 3. 24 vide n. i8 supra.
25 cf. Robert Marichal, L'Occupation romnaine de la Basse Egypte: le statut de
Paris, [945, pp. 72ff.
I Cf. G. Busolt, Griech. Staatskunde3, p. 487, Io62, 3 et 1107.
2 Samische Volksbeschlusse der Hellenistischen Zeit, MDAI (A), 1957 (paru 1959),
pp. 152-274, pl. 121-136. 3 REG, 1960, no 3I8. 4 pp. 156-i64.

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