FUNCIONES DEL PLC

Smet and G ruter’s classification system s are surveyed b y I. Calabi L im entani, “N o te su classificazione ed indici epigrafici’, pp, 183-5 and 191-3,

Fabricius’s first edition o f the A n tiq u ita tu m m onum enta, published in 1549, included o n ly a small selection o f legal inscriptions. Subsequent editions o f 1555, 1560, and p o sth u m o u sly in 1587 were gradually expanded, and included a selection o f epitaphs (on Fabricius’s w orks, see W , Stenhouse, ‘G eorg Fabricius and Inscriptions as a Source o f Law ’), G ruter’s w o rk is based closely o n that o f Smet, and he indicates that this is on e o f th e o n ly differences in his classification o f the inscriptions Q, Gruter,

included inscriptions featuring the Caesii, Caesonii or Caesellii gentes and that of Alfonso II d’Este an inscription featuring an ‘Atestia Ide’/^ Indeed, loannes Baptista Fonteius later wrote a lengthy discussion of inscriptions connected w ith the Cesi family, which he dedicated to a younger m em ber of the family, Donato Cesi/° Pio da Carpi, however, acquired and organized his inscriptions w ith a more sophisticated intent, according to the account of Ulisse Aldrovandi, who w rote in 1550 that a particular feature of that collection was the num ber of inscriptions featuring offices, some of which did not appear in literary accounts/^ Pio was particularly interested in collecting together inscriptions that recorded individuals in the imperial household, and they may have been classified according to the office m entioned/^

In the collections on paper, w ithin the classification categories some chronological division was possible, especially for emperors and their families, inscriptions to w hom are invariably ordered according to their reigns. In 1546 and 1547 fragments of chronological lists of republican magistrates, particularly consuls, and generals w ho had received a trium ph, were found at Rome, know n as the Capitoline and Trium phal Fasti. These provided the inform ation necessary for ordering inscriptions to consuls in the same way, and both Smet and G ruter include these Fasti

For th e Cesi, see C. H iilsen, Romische Antikengarteriy pp. 5-8 and H . W rede, ‘R om ische

A ntikenprogram m e’, pp. 87-91; the Este inscription was CIL V.5148: see E. Corradini, ‘Le raccolte estensi', p. 167. O n an even m ore basic level, Panvinio was com m issioned by Francesco de’Medici to purchase for him inscriptions m entioning T lorentia’: see K. Gersbach, ‘O n o frio P anvinio, O S A , and his Florentine C orrespondents’, pp. 224-37.

Io. Baptista Fonteius, D eprisca Caesiorum gente com m entariorum lib ri duo (expanded for publication b y lulius lacobonius in 1582). T his w ork should also been seen in th e context o f geneaological w ork produced by scholars for other fam ilies such as Panvinio's D e Fabiorum fa m ilia , D e M axim orum fa m ilia . D e gente Sabella, and D e gente Fregepania, w h ich survive in manuscript copies (for details, see J-L. Ferrary, Onofrio P an vin io, p. 215, and R. B izzocch i, Genealogie incredibili, esp. pp. 17-18). F or p rom otion o f a gens in earlier collection s, see P. Falguieres, ‘La cité fictive’, p. 255.

U . A ldrovandi, D i tutte le statue antiche, p. 208, ‘In diverse parti di detta stantia & studii, vi è

grandissima quantita di epitafii, dove si vegono m olte sorte di Caratteri che dinotano il num éro antico, & varii n om i di ufficii n on piu veduti appresso li authori, ci son o ancho gran quantita de m ani, braccia, teste, gambe, & piedi, dove si ved on o diverse sorti di calciam enti, che vi usavano in quel tem p o, con m o lti altri fragm enti.’

after inscriptions to emperors, w ith other dedications mentioning consuls.” W ithin two broad categories of material mentioning living people and that m entioning dead people, Justus Lispius tried in his addendum to Smet to order his inscriptions entirely chronologically. Lipsius’s task was made easier by the fact that he was selective: he did not include all the material at his disposal, he wrote, ‘sed electa maxime & edecumata, quae usum & m om entum habere visa ad H istoriam aut mores antiquos.’” According to these criteria, his selection of inscriptions tended to include a large p roportion m entioning the em peror, m aking chronological ordering simple, but even here, Lipsius found the task difficult, and asked for his readers’ understanding.”

O ne problem compilers seem to have encountered w hen focussing on the individual person or god m entioned in an inscription was where to put inscriptions from public buildings. Invariably, these m entioned the name of the individual w ho erected the buildings on which they were placed, but we see in collections of the period a tendency to classify inscriptions from m ajor buildings separately. In his first category of material, Smet w rote, he w ould include ‘quicquid ad rationem locorum , operum atque aedificiorum, seu publicorum seu privatorum pertinere videbatur,’ which included inscribed laws.” G ruter m aintained the prom inence of inscriptions of this type, classifying them second, after inscriptions to the gods; Panvinio, on the o ther hand, in the twelve-fold division of inscriptions of his Antiquitates, based closely on Smet’s classification in the Carpi manuscript, places these inscriptions last.” Scholars may have been following the lead of M azochi’s com pilation in giving prom inence to this sort of material. The fact that they do so also seems to show that th ey are sensitive to the purpose of the m onum ent: while em perors are regularly m entioned in the inscriptions from public w orks that they commissioned, the fact that these are dedications of buildings seems to have encouraged compilers to treat them separately from dedications to the em perors in question. A lthough

In Sm et’s N ap les m anuscript, th e Fasti were classified separately, along w ith inscribed calendars. The discovery o f and scholarly reaction to the Fasti are exam ined b elow in chapter 5.