judaism_and_rome 2026-07-22T01:30:46+02:00 1 145 Inscription https://heurist.huma-num.fr/heurist/?recID=145&db=judaism_and_rome 2022-08-16 23:18:38 2025-07-22 16:56:39 public Imperial rescript from Antoninus Pius (CIL III, 411) An inscription that duplicated the text of an imperial rescript issued by the emperor Antoninus Pius. According to the description recorded in the CIL entry for the inscription, the stone on which it was inscribed was ‘solid marble’, and situated on a lane that led to a gate in the city. The upper part of the inscription, which was already missing when the text was copied down, contained the text of a petition from a private individual to the emperor, whose response was recorded below in Latin. Three lines of Greek were inscribed beneath the Latin subscript, that were not related to the Latin text, followed by the name of the consuls and the names of seven individuals. The inscription is now lost and the text known only from a manuscript copy. 0139-04-08 0139 4 8 5511 Latin 5255 2159 5254 3905 5253 5325 5252 5251 5301 <p>It was possible for the inhabitants of the Roman Empire to appeal directly to the emperor through the form of a <em>libellus</em>, or letter, to which the emperor might issue his personal reply, or <em>subscriptio</em>. The majority of these imperial rescripts have survived in the form of papyri, but there are a number of lapidary versions of the texts that those who had originally petitioned the emperor were permitted to have copied out in permanent and monumental form. This inscription is one such attested copy; it reveals the difficulties faced by the inhabitants of the empire in accessing imperial decisions, as well as the legal status that such decisions bore. It is also a good example of how the emperors of Rome used such petitions to communicate with their subjects on a personal and individual level, as well as through the local governments of municipal centres.</p><p>The inscription is now lost and the text is known only from a manuscript copy made in 1676. It seems that the original petition, in Greek, was also inscribed on the stone above the Latin reply, but only the very last sentence of the petition can be made out in entirety. It appears that a private citizen in Smyrna, named in the Latin reply as Sextilius Acutianus, had asked to make a copy of a judgement of Hadrian, concerning the institution of games in Smyrna, based on the proposed reconstruction of line 1 as: [Ὀλυμπίςὼ]ν τῶν Ἀθην[ησιν] (<em>Olympison ton Athenesin</em>), or “the Olympus of Athens” (see Petzel, <em>Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien</em> 24.II, n. 597, p. 81). Antoninus Pius’s response is short, as is characteristic of the <em>subscriptiones</em>, and gives permission for his predecessor’s decision to be copied down (<em>si quid pro sententia dixit describere tibi permitto</em>). The subscript is dated as having been given on the 8^th April 139 CE, with the description ‘nineteenth’ (<em>undevicensimus</em>) believed to refer to the number of the sheet within the ‘roll’ in which the petition was to be stored in the archives in Rome (Wilcken, “Zu den Kaiserreskripten,” p. 40-1; Williams, “Epigraphic texts of imperial subscripts,” p. 183-184). Following this are three lines of Greek, which give the date on which the copy of the subscript given to Sextilius Acutianus was witnessed and sealed, in order to attest its authenticity (Williams, “Epigraphic texts of imperial subscripts,” p. 185). The final line of Latin appears to instruct two men, possibly imperial slaves or freedmen, Stasimus and Daphnis, to provide a copy of the earlier judgement of Hadrian and to give it to Acutianus, who presumably required it in order to settle a civic matter in Smyrna (Williams, “Epigraphic texts of imperial subscripts”, p. 186). It is noteworthy that the inscription was recorded in two languages; the Latin text is indicative of the ‘official’ nature of Antoninus Pius’s response, but the original petition had been made in Greek, the ‘official’ language of Smyrna. Although it is impossible to determine the extent to which the local community engaged with the content of the Latin text, the fact that their petition had received such an official reply was a matter of civic pride, with the documentation of the names of the witnesses given in Greek a further indication of the text’s authority to potential readers.</p><p>This copy of the imperial subscript is also notable for what it reveals about the difficulty faced by private individuals of access to official documents. Acutianus had had to appeal directly to the emperor in order to obtain the detail of the imperial pronouncement made by Hadrian, meaning that the original <em>libellus</em> and its answer was not returned to the original petitioner, but rather sent to the imperial archives in Rome where they were numbered (e.g. <em>undevicensimus</em>) and stored (Williams, “Epigraphic texts of imperial subscripts,” p. 187). According to Ulrich Wilcken, this was an innovation from the time on Hadrian onwards; previously the <em>libellus</em> was returned along with the subscription, but from the early second century CE the answer to the petition was displayed in public before being sent to the archives (Wilcken, “Zu den Kaiserreskripten,” p. 9). As accessing the archive once the <em>libellus </em>and its rescript had been stored appears to have been so difficult, Acutianus must have had a copy made before it was included there, before returning to Smyrna where it was inscribed in permanent form in the civic centre. The attestation of <em>recognovi</em> – “I have certified it” – at the end of the Latin text therefore acted as confirmation of the accuracy of the copy that had been made. As Adriaan Sirks rightly noted, this method of copying and archiving petitions and answers did not work to make the contents of them available to the general Roman public, with only those petitioners who submitted their questions at the same time knowing of outcomes outside of their own requests (“Making a request to the emperor,” p. 127). This point is important if we consider the legality of the rescript, which has been the subject of much discussion. The emperor’s answers to private requests of this type have in fact been “considered a source of law if they contained the formulation of a general rule,” but this cannot be the case if access to them was so difficult to obtain (Sirks, “Making a request to the emperor,” p. 121-127). Their function has been debated as authoritative replies to legal questions (see Honsell, Mayer-Mely and Selb, <em>Römisches Recht</em>, p. 19-20) and as instruments of the institutional centralisation of legal procedure (Coriat, <em>Le Prince législateur</em>, p. 338). Anthony Honoré suggested that the rescripts acted in three ways: as a social service that provided citizens with essentially free legal advice, as a definitive ruling of law, and to promote the unity of Roman law by adapting it to the needs of the empire’s complex society (<em>Emperors and Lawyers</em>, p. 33-41). Finally, Adriaan Sirks has proposed that the rescripts evolved out of the custom of <em>salutatio</em> – morning greeting – that existed between patrons and clients, and during which it was possible for clients to approach their patrons for advice or help; the emperor was the supreme <em>patronus</em> of the Roman <em>clientela</em>, making the rescripts a continuation of the patron’s advisory duty (Sirks, “Making a request to the emperor,” p. 129). Given the limited publication of the rescripts, and the resulting impossibility of easily disseminating decisions affecting individual communities across the entire empire, it is perhaps unlikely that these imperial rescripts had the ability to change private law in anything but a minor and gradual way; it was only later, once those who had access to the imperial archives were able to gather and publish the rescripts in collected volumes, such as the <em>Liber Constitutionem</em> of Papirius Iustus in the second century CE, that the decisions could be sufficiently integrated to affect an actual change of law (Sirks, “Making a request to the emperor,” p. 132).<br /><br /></p><p>What is clear, however, is that the continued practice of asking the emperor for his assistance in the form of a <em>libellus</em>, and the formal response issued in return, was an important social exchange that brought the emperor into contact with those he governed. It was “one of the primary forms of communication between emperor and subject,” and a key facet of the imperial court’s public image (Millar, <em>Emperor in the Roman World</em>, p. 252). The fact that so many of these <em>libelli</em> contained requests of relative insignificance, or of seemingly little interest to the emperor, was irrelevant; indeed, Fergus Millar has argued that it was precisely the inconsequential nature of so many of the petitions that confirms the importance of the process and the emperor’s role in it in the eyes of the empire’s inhabitants (<em>ibid</em>). Although the growing centralisation of Rome’s administration in the second century led to problems of access to official decisions, as this text demonstrates, the act of responding to such individual requests was an important part of dealing with provincial communities. The <em>subscriptio</em> issued here by Antoninus Pius made no attempt to understand or examine the issue under discussion in Smyrna, but it did promote an image of the emperor that was personal, accessible and generous towards all his subjects.</p> Antoninus Pius Hadrian Smyrna imperial letter Roman law province provincial elites communication subject imperial rescript Now lost. Marble Unknown. 2nd CE 40 Unknown location, Smyrna. 233 246 161 Roman CIL III, 411 CIG 3175 = IGRR IV 1397. PHI Smyrna 31 Petzl, Georg, Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien, Bd. 24, 1: Die Inschriften von Smyrna. Teil II, 1. Hrsg. von Georg Petzl (Bonn: Habelt 1987), no. 597 No <div style="text-align: justify;">[—] ΝΤΩΝ Ἀθην [—]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;">[—]Δ ἐν Ῥώμῃ εἰλημμένων τῶν ἀντιγράφων ἐν[—]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;">[—] καὶ νεωκόρου τοῦ Διός, τῷ αὐτὸν μὴ δύνασθαι χωρισθῆναι [—]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;">[—] ὑπάρχειν.  τὴν περὶ τούτου πρόνοιαν ποιήσασθαι δι’ ἃ προδηλοῦται? ΟΝΕΣ[—]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;">[—] τοῦ θεοπρόπου, ἥτις ἱερωσύνη ἀκολουθεῖ τοῖς τοῦ θεοῦ μυστηρίοις· διὸ [— ὦ]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;">φιλόθεε καὶ φιλάνθρωπε Καῖσαρ, κελεῦσαι δοθῆναί μοι τὰ ἀντίγραφα τῶν ὑπομνημάτων, ὡς καὶ ὁ θεὸς πατὴρ</div> <div style="text-align: justify;">συνεχώρησεν.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;">Imp(erator) Caesar T(itus) Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus Pius Sextilio Acutia-</div> <div style="text-align: justify;">no sententiam divi patris mei</div> <div style="text-align: justify;">si quid pro sententia dixit describere tibi permitto rescripsi recog(novi) undevicensimus    act(um) VI Idus April(es) Romae Caes(are)</div> <div style="text-align: justify;">Antonino II et Praesente II co(n)s(ulibu)s</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><br /> ἐσφραγίσθη ἐν Ῥώμῃ πρὸ τριῶν νωνῶν Μαΐων, Αὐτοκράτορι Καίσαρι Τ(ίτῳ) Αἰλίῳ Ἁδριανῷ Ἀντωνείνῳ τὸ βʹ, Γαΐῳ Βρουττίῳ</div> <div style="text-align: justify;">Πραίσεντι τὸ βʹ ὑπάτοις. παρῆσαν Τ(ίτος) Φλ(άουιος) Μακρεῖνος Σιμωνᾶς, Λ(ούκιος) Ἀτάνιος Φλάουιος Δημοσθενιανός, Λ(ούκιος) Αἴτιος Ἑρμογένης Αἰλια[νός,]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;">Μ(ᾶρκος) Ἀντώνιος Κρίσπος, Λ(ούκιος) Λικίννιος Ἀλβεινιανός, Μ(ᾶρκος) Κοσκώνιος Καρικός, Τι(βέριος) Κλαύδιος Ἄκτιος.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;">Stasime Daphni edite ex forma sententiam vel constitutionem</div> <div style="text-align: justify;">(The translation is my own)</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;">[---] Athens [---] of the copies preserved in Rome in [---] and temple attendants of Zeus, in that he can not leave [---] to be present. The care for this is to be borne in view of the above (?) [---] of the prophet, which priesthood follows the mysteries of the god. Therefore (?) [I ask you (?)], Emperor, friend of the gods and humans, to give the order that the transcripts of the (decision on) the <em>commentarii</em> be given to me, as your divine father had allowed.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;">Imperator Caesar Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus Pius, to Sextilius Acutianus.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;">The opinion of my deified father, if he gave anything as a decision, I permit you to copy. I have written back in reply. I have certified it. The nineteenth.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;">Carried out in Rome, April 8^th, in the second consulship of Caesar Antoninus and Praesens.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;">It was sealed in Rome on May 5. Present were: T. Flavius Macrinus Simonas, L. Atanius Flavius Demosthenianos, L. Aetius Hermogenes Aelianus, M. Antonius Crispus, L. Licinius Albianus, M. Cosconius Karikos, Ti. Claudius Aktios.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;">Stasimus, Daphnis, issue the opinion or the constitution according to form.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> Translation by author of the database record Yes pater permitto rescribo recognosco Roma constitutio δέος Ἀθηναῖος προνοέω θεοποιέω Καῖσαρ ἀντιγραφή Hadrianus Antoninus Pius sententia divus Caroline Barron English Imperial rescript Yes 1