Together with literary texts such as forensic speeches and the writings of jurists, inscriptions constitute the most important source for legal history, especially for public law and interstate law, and to a lesser extent for private law.
In the small town of Gytheion in southern Laconia two marble blocks were found, containing the regulations for a trust fund from the year 42 AD (IG V.1 1208; SEG 13.258). The text will be presented with new emendations and an English translation. In my commentary I present the general background of the donor, Phaenia Aromation, and concentrate on a discussion of juridical problems that the text poses. A detailed analysis of the procedural prescriptions forms the centre of this paper.The inscription that I would like to discuss in the following article had been found in a vinery in Gytheion in southern Laconia consisting of two marble blocks. The stones had been copied by P. LeBas and were then edited by P. Foucart. 1 A new edition was provided by W. Kolbe, enriched with comments by U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and presented in IG V.1. The latest emendations of the Greek text were made by A. Wilhelm (SEG 13.258). Unfortunately his article does not state clearly, whether he was able to read the squeezes or to see the stones in original, or whether they had already been lost at his time. 2 The inscription provides interesting information on the administration of imperial Gytheion, especially when you combine the information taken from this stone with SEG 11.923, the famous hieros nomos on the imperial cult in Gytheion, stemming from the year 15 AD. Since the text can be taken as a good example of a description of daily life of Romans in a Greek town, I would like to illustrate the general background before concentrating on legal aspects of the text and presenting some new readings.The inscription clearly stems from imperial times. P. Foucart dated it to the second century AD because of the mentioning of the Sebastoi in l. 37, whom he believed to be Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus 3 . A. Wilhelm solved the problem differently. The two letters in l. 64, ΟΒ, had up to his time been read as the abbreviation of a name Ophellius Bomation, who was a member of the family of the donor Phaenia. Still the identity would not have been clear: the name of the phrontistēs is Ophellius Crispus, the name of the freedman Phaenius Primus. The combination of the two letters did not make much sense. A. Wilhelm found out that the name of the donor should be read Aromation instead of Bomation (l. 61). He took the two letters in the last line to be a date, which brought him to the 72nd year to be counted from the battle of Actiumas it is commonly done on the Peloponnesos in imperial times -resolving in the year 41/2 AD as the date of the inscription. 4 Since in l. 36 Livia is called Σεβαστή Θεά, we can restrict the possible date to the year 42 AD, the time after her consecration. 5 1 LeBas -Waddington 1837: 124 (243a); this text was presented with slight alterations by B. Laum ) Livio Maximo parentibus et / fratri et filio et sibi et / libertis libertabusque suis / posterisque eorum omnium. Cf. d'Arms 1981: 167-168.
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