A Roman Senator under Domitian and Trajan

Author(s): H. Dessau
Source: The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 3, Part 2 (1913), pp. 301-309
Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
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 A ROMAN SENATOR UNDER DOMITIAN AND TRAJAN.1

By PROFESSOR
H. DESSAU.

Sir W. M. Ramsay has honoured me with a commission to publish

in the Journal of Roman Studies the following fragmentary inscription
which he discovered under various difficulties, in July, I913, close
to Yalowadj, the site of the ancient (originally Phrygian) Antiochia
Caesarea, which belonged to the Roman province of Galatia. The
text of the inscription is given on page 302; the circumstances of
the discovery are thus described to me by the finder:
The inscription is on a block of stone built into the pier of a bridge at the village
of Gemeu, about two hours by road south-east from Yalowadj. The stone is broken on
the right, complete on the other three sides. When we found the stone it was almo?t
wholly covered by the soil of the river-bank, but a few letters of the right-hand titulus
stood clear. In front of the left-hand titulus is a column which forms part of the bridge.
It was very difficult to cut away the soil, as the column stands close to the letters, and
after the soil was removed, it was not easy to read the letters, as one had to look at them
sideways from a little distance. The letters are, fortunately, as sharp and distinct as
when they were first engraved; had it not been for this, it would not have been possible
to attain certainty about many of the letters in the left-hand titulur. At least one line
of each titulus has been lost at the top. The missing line or lines were engraved on
another stone, which stood upon this one. Part of the left-hand titulus is lost; this also
must have been engraved on an adjoining block. The entire inscription, therefore, was
incised on a wall of some building.

The times are long past in which Latin epigraphy was a body of
esoteric knowledge, and only the veteran Bartolomeo Borghesi, on
the heights of San Marino, was competent to help Italian and
German scholars out of their difficulties, to clear up the abbrevia-
tions used in the inscriptions, to explain the peculiarities of the
official careers which obtained in the Roman empire, and to
distinguish proconsuls, procurators, legati, and curatores. Thanks
to the work of two generations of enquirers, these details, if not
yet exactly common knowledge, are certainly more or less familiar
to many, and there is no lack of students, old and young, who can
interpret correctly a 'cursus honorum' of the empire. That which
I have to consider here, incomplete as it is, offers, however, peculiar
difficulties, and I fear that some of them will remain unsolved until
Sir William or one of his pupils or colleagues succeeds in tracing
the lost parts of the inscription.

1 am indebted to an English friend for the translation of this article from its original German.

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 L...

302 A ROMAN SENATOR UNDER DOMITIAN AND TRAJAN.

Like other of the complimentary inscriptions of Antiochia,1

this is a double inscription, set up to a high official, governor of
the Galatian province, and to his wife. Of the somewhat lengthy
name of the husband, only the last part (Frontinus) survives. But
the inscription to his wife shows that his praenomen was P(ublius),
that his nomen began with the letter C, and that he bore the
cognomen Ruso. We may complete his name as P. Calvisius Ruso
L. Iulius Frontinus. He has been known to us for some time under
the shorter appellation of P. Calvisius Ruso, governor of Cappadocia,
and his name, with the additional cognomina Iulius Frontinus,
appears on an inscription of Genne, the ancient Kanna, on the
road from Ephesus and Laodicea Combusta to Cilicia, which was

p caluisio p ....
rusoni I iulio FRON TFN---( VI-R
CFAM/
a aaa seuiroequi-!' VM ROMANT RMI L
leg . . . adlec-J!TOINTERPAT R ICIOS VXORIP\
ab imperatorediuo ICA ESVESPAS IANOA/G
5 quaestori aug prae- TORICOSGVRATV IAE
RVSONlSI
...... xv uiro SFSODALIAVGVSTALI
..... (?) ad sac- RAPROCOSASIAECVRA
-tori aedium
-rumque publ
sac- IRARETOPERVM LOCO
leg !PROPR IM PN ER\AETRA
DOMIT
Io-iani augusti ge- RM DAC PAT RO NOCOL AVGP

FIG. 74. INSCRIPTION FROM ANTIOCHIA (p. 30I).

Survivingletters, copied by Sir W. M. Ramsay,are in capitals; restorationsof lost parts in italics.

Owing to the position of the stone it was not possibleto see the stops.at the ends of words.

copied by Ramsay and Callander.2 The L which survives in the

wife's inscription after Rusonis,shews further that we must insert
before lulius Frontinusa second praenomenL(ucius). Such second
praenominawere often omitted even when a man'snameswere other-
wise given in full; it is indeed left out of the inscription of Genne
just referredto. 3
1 For example, Sterrett, Wol/e Expedition, 3 The well-known lawyer of Hadrian's reign,
no. Io8 = Cagnat, Inscr. Graec. ad res Rom. pert. P. Salvius Iulianus, is usually thus called. But
iii, 300, to which Ramsay calls my attention; at in the complimentary inscription set up to him in
the end, we must supply rods eavcro[Ov yove6s. See Africa, he is described as L. Octavius Cornelius P. f.
above, p. 262. Salvius Iulianus Aemilianus (Mommsen, Ges.
2 Aberdeen Studies in the History and Art of the Schriften, ii, p. I, and my Inscr. Lat. Sel. vol. iii
Eastern Provinces (Aberdeen, 1906), p. i62. [not yet published], 8973).

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 A ROMAN SENATOR UNDER DOMITIAN AND TRAJAN. 303

The official career of our Calvisius Ruso Frontinus was as follows :

(I)iii vir [a.a.a. f. f.]. This is the probable restoration of the
beginning of line 2, not iii vir capitalis. As is well known, the
tresviri aere argento auro flando feriundo (or monetales), with the
tresviri capitales, the quattuorviri viarum curandarum, and the
decemviri stlitibus iudicandis, formed the vigintivirate which was the
first step in the senatorial career under the empire. But the young
men of patrician birth and those who were created patricians in
the course of their career, as we shall see that Ruso was, seem hardly
ever, from the days of Vespasian onwards, to have held any of these
alternative offices except that which is connected with the mint.
The epigraphic evidence is far too full to let us suppose that this is
chance.1 On the other hand, we cannot speak of a precise rule,
since casual exceptions are not wanting.2 It is not likely that the
office of ' mint-master' counted as more aristocratic than the
other alternative posts. As is well known, the ' mint-masters'
in the reign of Augustus lost the right to place their names on the
coins, and they can hardly have been so prominent as the decemviri
stlitibus iudicandis who took part in the centumviral law-court.
I conjecture that under the Iulio-Claudian emperors it was left to
the young candidates to choose for which of the four equivalent
offices they would stand, and under this system no regular practice
could arise, especially as the emperor did not use his ' commendatio
to control these insignificant posts as he did in respect of the offices
beginning with the quaestorship. But the upheaval of 69 brought
small as well as great changes. The hitherto freedom in the
candidature for the vigintivirate was given up; men seem to have
stood for all the posts indifferently, and the electoral body, the
senate, allotted the posts among the selected candidates. This was
bound to result in the observance of some sequence in the distribution
of the posts, and some cause-unknown to us and probably quite
unimportant-put the mint-mastership at the top. The three mint-
masterships were now allotted to the three men at the head of the
list, that is, to sons of distinguished houses, and above all to young
patricians. It would be wrong, I think, to seek any further reason
for the preponderance of patricians in the mint-mastership.

1 In period is given by Carl -Heiter, de patPiciis gentibus

my Inscr. sel. most of the important
inscriptions relating to this point are collected.
They include the following examples of patrician
tresviri monetalesfrom the empire: 964, 975, 1032
1122, 1137, 1198, expressly described as patricians;
999, 1044, 1049, 1072, 1075, 1104,112, I I49, 171;
986, 1112, 1145, 1155, I175, 118I, 1185, 7198,
earmarked as patricians by their priestly offices, or
by the omission of the aedileship or tribunate,
which patricians were permitted to miss. A list
of the patrician prerogatives existing in the imperial
quac saec. i. ii. iii. juerint (Berlin, 1909). See also
Groag, Arch. cpigr. Alitth. aus Oest. UIngarn, xix
(1896), 145, who was the first to tnotice the prc-
ponderance of the mint-mastership in the ' cursus'
of the nobles.
2 Patriciandecemviri stlit. iud. occur in Inser.
sel. 959 (but before Vespasian), 1126, 1127, Ii86
(these three, however, created patricians later),
I197, II99 (these two quite young); C.J.L. vi,
1553, I559, 31774; Vii, 14312.

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304 A ROMAN SENATOR UNDER DOMITIAN AND TRAJAN.

(2) Sevir equi]tum Romanor(um). Which of the six turmae of

equites Romani equo publico Ruso had to lead in the solemn review
of this order is omitted in this inscription, as indeed in many others. 1
(3) Tr(ibunus) mil(itum) leg(ionis) .... In what legion and in
what province Ruso served his year or half-year as military tribune
remains unknown to us through the loss of part of the inscription.
(4) Adlec]tus inter patricios [ab imperatore divo] Caes(are)
Vespasiano Aug(usto). Ruso was created patrician by Vespasian
in 73 or 74. Caesar, and after him Augustus (29 B.c.), increased by
new creations the number of patrician gentes, which had become
very small in the later republic; the step was taken on the authority
of special laws. They were compelled to do this if they were to
provide patricians to hold the primaeval, though politically unimpor-
tant, priesthoods. But they clearly also aimed at lessening, by
admitting new elements, the unique prestige which attached to the
few surviving families of the oldest Roman nobility. After Augustus,
Claudius and Vespasian created patricians in connection with their
censorships. The next creation was carried out by Trajan, when
the censorship had been connected for good with the imperial
position. 2 Vespasian was censor in 73 and 74. This is the first
fixed point in Ruso's life. According to some authorities Vespasian's
son Titus, who was his colleague as emperor and as censor, acted
also with him in the creation of patricians, but in our inscription
and in others, and sometimes in literature, Vespasian alone is
named.3 The form of supplement suggested above, [ab imperatore
divo] Caes. Vespasiano Aug, is of course, irregular. A divo Fespasiano
would be the usual rformula, but the word Caes, which survives on
the stone, does not permit this, and we may quote on the other
side an inscription lately found by Ramsay in Antiochia and
belonging to the same period, on which Caristanius Fronto is called
leg. imp. divi Vespasiani Aug. and leg. pro pr. imp. divi Titi Caes.
Aug. People did not always trouble in the provinces about the
precise style of the emperor.
(5) [Quaestor Jugusti]. This title is not preserved on the
surviving inscription, but it may be restored with confidence. The
inscriptions prove that in the quaestorship, just as in the vigintivirate,
the patricians had some kind of privileged position. Two of the
'
quaestors4each year were allotted to the emperor, the quaestores
Augusti.' For these two posts patricians were chosen by preference.
The numerous ' cursus honorum ' of patricians which are preserved
on inscriptions contain no example of a patrician acting as a simple
quaestor urbanus, or as going to a province during the quaestorship.

1 Inscr. Lat. sel. sel. IoI9, vita Marci, I, 2; Vespasian appears

989, 1039, 1055, Io64, etc.
2 alone Inscr. sel. 1032, Tac. Agr. 9.
Mommsen, Staatsrecht (ed. iii), ii, IIoI.
3 Both Vespasian and Titus are named Inscr. 4 Mommsen, Staatsrecht (ed. 3), ii, 569, note 4

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 A ROMAN SENATOR UNDER DOMITIAN AND TRAJAN. 305
Most of the patrician quaestors are definitely styled quaestoresAugusti,
with or without the name of the emperor concerned.1 It is only
at the outset of the empire that P. Cornelius Scipio (consul in I6 B.C.)
served as provincial quaestor in Achaia. Of course the emperors
did not always and invariably confine themselves to patricians in
choosing their quaestors. Trajan, for example, chose his kinsman
Hadrian for his quaestor in A.D. IOI, although Hadrian was not a
patrician, as his tenure of the tribunate proves. 2
(6) [Prae]tor. From the quaestorship Ruso doubtless proceeded
straight to the praetorship, without holding either of the intervening
alternative offices of aedile or tribune as re quired by the arrangement
of Augustus. There were each year two curule and four plebeian
aediles and ten tribuni plebis, and according to the original order
fourteen of the sixteen places were not open to patricians. The
choice lay, therefore, between leaving only two places (the two curule
aedileships) to the patricians, or in permitting them to escape this
step in their career. The inscriptions prove, as is well known, that
the latter course was adopted. The tribunes and aediles of the
plebs had, of course, long lost their connexion with the plebs itself,
but the patricians, and even the new patricians, were not to hold
these offices. 3
(7) Cos. Ruso was consul and indeed consul suffectus
(since he does not appear in the list of consules ordinarii),
with Caesennius Paetus or L. lunius Caesennius Paetus on
Ist March-presumably for March and April-in an unknown
year. This year cannot be later than A.D. 79, since a document
mentioning these two consuls has been found at Pompeii. 4 It has
even been put as early as A.D. 6i, in which year one L. Caesennius
Paetus was consul. But his colleague was P. Petronius Turpilianus
and the date is otherwise clearly impossible. Ruso must have passed
from quaestorship to consulship very quickly, since he was quaestor
in 73 or 74 and consul by 79. This may be connected with the
omission of the aedileship or tribunate.
(8) Curat(or) viae . . . The supervision of one of the main roads
out of Rome was mostly undertaken before the consulate, occasionally
(as here) after it.5 The name of the road-Ae-miliae, Appiae, or

1 Inscr. sel. I cannot entirely

948, 949, 955, 986, 999, 1032, I043,
1049, 1063, 1072; these persons are marked as
patricians, partly by definite mention, partly by
their names (as in 949, 955), partly by their priest-
hoods, and partly also by their escape from aedileship
or tribunate (for example, 948, 986 and I 55). We
cannot decide on the cases in Inscr. sel. 1075, II04,
I1112, II27, 1149, II55 and 117I ; the title quaestor
candidatus Augustorum in 1104, 1149 and I171,
tells us nothing about the position of the officers
during the quaestorship. Attention was first
called to this question by Brasloff, Hermes, xxxix
(I904), 618, with whom, however,
agree.
2 Vita Hadr. 3; Inscr. sel. 308; other examples
are 928, 980, I025, 1057, etc.
3 This was a very pretty discovery of Mommsen's
(Staatsrecht i, 537, ed. z).
4 For ist March see C.I.L. vi, 597; Inscr. sel.
3534. For the Pompeian inscription see C.I.L. iv,
suppl. p. 401, no. clv [also edited by Mommsen,
Hermes, xxiii (i888), p. I57, and Bruns, Fontes
(ed. 7), p. 332].
5 Mommsen, Ges. Schriften, iv, 382, note 3.

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306 A ROMAN SENATOR UNDER DOMITIAN AND TRAJAN.

whatever it was-is lost on the stone. Sir William Ramsay observes

that the spacing seems to suggest a long name.
(9-II) XV vir s.f.-sodalis Augustalis-... [ad sac]ra ? These
titles present some little difficulty. It seems to me most probable
that Ruso belonged not only to the two most illustrious priestly
colleges of the quindecimvirisacris faciundis and the sodalesAugustales,
but also held some third priesthood the title of which has disappeared,
save for two final letters,...RA. I cannot think of any secular office
which would yield these two final letters, and the rule that abbrevia-
tions do not end with the end of a syllable forbids us to think here
of an abbreviation; for example, the otherwise excellent suggestion
of Sir William Ramsay, praef. aera(rio), is excluded on this ground.
Further, while a single priesthood is a common accessory of consular
rank, triple priesthoods are not unusual in the case of consuls of
high birth or great public services. So Galba, subsequently emperor,
received from Claudius, for his successes in Africa and Germany,
the ornamenta triumphalia et sacerdotium triplex, inter quindecimviros
sodalesque Titios item Augustales co-optatus, while inscriptions record
that P. Memmius Regulus, consul in A.D. 31 and a distinguished
though not a high-borni administrator, received three priesthoods
under Claudius; that L. Volusius Saturninus under Tiberius
was augur, sodalis Augustalis and sodalis Titius, and that Fabricius
Veiento under Domitian was quindecimvir sacris faciundis, sodalis
Augustalis, sodalis Flavialis, and sodalis Titialis, in which case the
two last offices, the Flavian and the Titial, may practically have
formed one. These examples belong to the first century: many
more could be quoted from the second.2 Patricians especially held
these plural preferments because even under the empire patricians
only could be appointed to certain priestly offices. The posts which
had not been opened fo plebeians during the republic seem to have
remained reserved for patricians even in the empire. Such posts
were in particular the two colleges of, the Salian priests (salii Palatini
and Collini) and the flamens called Dialis and Martialis and Quirinalis.
To these were added, a little oddly, the flamens of the deified emperors
(flamen Iulianus, Augustalis, etc.) and also the single priesthood of
the ' rex sacrorum.'
This last priesthood may be perhaps the third priesthood of
Ruso, described under the title of rex ad sacra, a title which I

1 about a detail of Roman usage in spelling or in the

[My suggestion is that the engraver erred,
omitting the final R before PR and writing AERA-PR
when he should have written AERAR-PR. Such an
error is no doubt, improbable in this very carefully
engraved inscription, but we are confronted with
difficulties every way. If the people of Antioch
were careless about the exact titles of the emperor
p. 304, above), they may also have been careless
name of an official.-W. M. R.]
2 For Galba see Suet. Galba, 8. For Regulus,
Inscr. sel. 88I5. For Saturninus, 9z3, 9z3a.
. y
in 1043, Io44 1075L 1081exag le 50d
3 See my remarks, Eph. Epigr. iii, 223.

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 A ROMAN SENATOR UNDER DOMITIAN AND TRAJAN. 307
must admit does not occur elsewhere. Three other imperial
inscriptions in the reigns of Tiberius, Claudius and Trajan, mention
' reges sacrorum,' and two of them show that these priests were now
under no disability to hold other offices which, for example, took
them to the provinces. The ' rex sacrorum ' of the reign of Claudius
appears engaged in warfare in the far East, and was also employed
in Britain. The ' rex' of Trajan's reign, however, so far as we know
his history, seems never to have left Italy.1 Though the title rex
ad sacra does not recur, it has many parallels. We find, for example,
praetor ad aerarium instead of the more usual praetor aerarii, and
triumvir ad monetam instead of monetalis.2 One might, of course,
suppose that some other priesthood is here described under an
unusual form. Such variations from the conventional style are
not altogether unusual. Thus, the priest generally called curio is
entitled in one lately found inscription curio p(opuli) R(omani) sacris
faciundis, in another curio sacrorum faciundorum, and in a third,
sacerd(os) curio sacris faciendis.3 It had also occurred to me that
the letters RA might be part of an abbreviation FR'A, unusual but
not abnormal, for frater Arvalis, just as on an inscription of Hadrian's
time S'A' stands for sodali Augustalis.4 That would involve the
assumption that the stop between FR and A was illegible or-quod
minime reris-was omitted by Sir William Ramsay. 5 It involves, too,
other difficulties. Ruso had certain ties with the Arval Brotherhood.
It was the custom that four sons of senators with father and mother
both alive (pueri patrimi et matrimi, senatorumfilii, as the inscriptions
put it) should serve the Brothers at the feasts in the house of their
' Magister ' on the three days sacred to Dea Dia, and in A.D. 87
P. Calvisius, son of Ruso, was one of these ministrants.6 Curiously
enough this ministry hardly ever fell to sons of the Arvals, though
that may be chance, for a college of twelve noblemen cannot often
have included at once four fathers of sons ten or fifteen years old with
their mothers alive. But if Ruso himself was an Arval, we should
surely meet his name in some section of the " Proceedings " of the
brotherhood during the reigns of Domitian and Trajan, which are
fairly well preserved. For the present then, I prefer to explain ..RA
by connecting it with the ' rex sacrorum.'
(1I2) Proco(n)s(ul) Asiae. Ruso is named as proconsul of Asia
also on an inscription of Ephesus and on ' alliance' coins of Smyrna

1 See Inscr. sel. 971 (Claudius), 1043 (Trajan)
and C.I.L. vi, 2122 (Tiberius). The reges
mentioned in Inscr. sel. 4016, 4942, 6196 and
6607 belong to small towns (especially old settle-
ments in the neighbotrhood of Ronme)and not to
Rome itself. No. 4941 is uncertain.
2 Inscr. sel. 964, 1028.
3 See
Eph. Epigr. ix, 897 = Inscr. sel. 901 ;
Wiener Studien, xxv (1903), 326 = Inscr. sel.
8902; Inscr. sel. I45I. For ordinary examples of a
Cutrio, see 233, 1064, II64, 5009.
4 Eph. cpigr. iii, 302, p. 520.
5 Since I wrote the above, Sir William has told
me that at this point of the stone it was especially
lifficult to be sure of the punctuation marks.
6 C.I.L. vi,
2z65, col. ii, v, 51, Henzen, Acta
fratrsssms Arvaliumn, p. cxx. The rest of the boy's
name is not preserved on the stone.

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308 A ROMAN SENATOR TNDER DOMITIAN AND TRAJAN.

and Ephesus with the head of Domitianus Germanicus (A.D. 83-96).1

The proconsul of Asia immediately before or immediately after him
was the P. Caesennius Paetus who had been consul with him and
whose name appears on similar coin-issues.2 The two were, as we
saw, consuls at latest in A.D. 79. If the normal interval between
the consulship and the consequent proconsular governership in
Asia or Africa was fourteen or fifteen years in the later years of Domitian
and the earlier years of Trajan,3 we may place the governorships of
Ruso and Paetus about A.D. 92-95.
(13) Cura[tor aedium sac]rar(um) et operumloco[rumquepublicorum].
This post was often held before, more often after the consulship,
and in many cases two years after it. Thus Lollianus Avitus and
Statilius Maximus, consuls in I46, became curators in I48, and the
lawyer Salvius Iulianus was consul in 148, curator in I50.4 But I
know no other example of an ex-proconsul of Asia or Africa becoming
curator operumlocorumquepublicorum.
(I4) Legatus pro pr. imp. Nervae Traiani Augusti Germ. Dac(ici).
Our inscription shews that Ruso was governor of Galatia under
Trajan and indeed between 102 (when Trajan became Dacicus) and
116 (when he added the name Parthicus); so too the inscription of
Kanna mentioned above (p. 302). That he was at the same time
governor of Cappadocia is proved by a coin of Kybistra5 and by a
further coin of Sebastopolis, which town also belonged to this pro-
vince6; the year-mark on this latter coin also proves that his term of
office covered the year I09 in the era of Sebastopolis, that is, A.D. Io6-7.
Ruso was, then, one of the governors who, under the Flavians and
Trajan, administered the two wide areas of Galatia and Cappadocia,
that is, all central and eastern Asia Minor as far as the Euphrates.
The right-hand side of the inscription offers many puzzles. In
the first place, the name of Ruso's wife is uncertain. Her nomen
is altogether lost, though her father's praenomen survives in the
letters C.F, and of her cognomen we have only the initial two and
a half letters, AML.., AME... or AMB... The only completion of
these letters which I can suggest as giving a cognomen fit for a lady
of rank in this age is Ambibula; she might have been akin to the
C. Eggius Ambibulus who was consul in 126 or to the Q. Planius
Sardus...Ambibulus of a lately discovered African monument, whom

1 For the inscription see Jahreshefte des osterr.
archaeol.Instituts, i (1898), app. p. 76, and Heberdey,
ibid. viii (I905), p. 235, note 7. For the coins,
Catal. of Greek coins in the British Museum, Ionia,
p. IIo, and Prosopogr.Imp. Rom. i, p. 292, no. 285.
2 Catal.
of Greek coins, lonia, p. I I I; Prosopogr.
i, p. 266, no. I38.
3 So
Heberdey, Jahreshefte, viii, 236. The
interval naturally tended to increase as time went
on, since there were many more than two consuls a
year.
4For the former see Inscr. sel. I062, and
Prosopogr. ii, p. 293, no. 222, and iii, p. 26I, no. 602;
for the latter, ibid. iii, p. I66, no. 103.
5 Wroth, Greek coins of Galatia and Cappadocia,
p. 95-
6 Babelon and Reinach, Recueil general des
monnaies grecques d'Asie mineure, i, p. Ioz, no. I.

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 A ROMAN SENATOR UNDER DOMITIAN AND TRAJAN. 309
Cagnat takes to be identical with the Eggius just mentioned ;
the rest of her inscription, as has been said above, gives parts of
her husband's name.
It is, lastly, quite unintelligible how, below this and divided from
it by a clear space of two or three lines, the name of the emperor
Domitian appears, Domit[iano] Aug(usto)p(atri) p(atriae). Was Ruso's
wife a relative of Domitian and has some word describing her kinship
-say, sobrinae-been destroyed between her husband's name and
the emperor's ? This is not likely. There is no indication that any
letters have been lost here, or that any such statement of relation-
ship formed part of the inscription, and if she was daughter of Flavius
Sabinus, Domitian's uncle, as was possibly the wife of Caesennius
Paetus, her father's praenomen in line 2 would have been the Flavian
praenomen T, not C. Moreover, if she was related to Domitian,
she was also related to Vespasian and Titus, and they might well
have been named, even where mention of Domitian was disliked.
Nor is it credible that Domitian's name would have been thus
honourably and prominently included in an inscription set up a
dozen years after Domitian's fall. After his death, his name was
erased everywhere; we have a case of such deletion actually in
Antiochia (p. 262, lines 8, 9). Even Domitian's widow, who long
survived him, never bore the title of 'Domitia Domitiani Augusti,'
and she used that of Domitia Domitiani (without Augusti) only
on inscriptions of her freed men and slaves and the like in the reign
of Hadrian.2 We are therefore driven to suppose that the stone,
or perhaps the wall to which the stone belonged, originally bore
a bust or statue of Domitian with appropriate inscription, and
that after the emperor's overthrow the lettering was hidden by
some other stone placed in front-which might be an easier way
of obliterating it than actual erasure. But I should be grateful if
any reader of the Journal o/ Roman Studies could put forward any
better explanation.

1 Inscr. sel. 1054; times it was used for convenience in dating, etc.
Prosopogr. ii, p. 31, no. 4;
Cagnat, Anneegpigraphique,I9II, no. II. But so formal and prominenta mention as would
2Prosopogr. ii, p. 27, no. 156. No doubt the have to be assumed here is unparalleled in Trajan's
hated name sometimesescapederasure,and some- reign.

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