I GLESIA, TESTIGO DEL PODER DE LA CRUZ

In addition to these accounts of Caracalla in court, several of his judgments survive in epigraphic form; these similarly emphasize Caracallan exceptionality or novelty, and show that these tropes were not merely important to the emperor personally but actually informed his representation in public-facing media. The most instructive of these judgments, found in the Syrian city of Dmeir, records the idiosyncratic proceedings of an embassy from the citizens of the small village of Gohaira.24 According to the document, the villagers were concerned with an Avidius Hadrianus usurping priestly duties and privileges;25 this proceeding, while addressing a problem that could

24 _{SEG 12.759, first published in Roussel & de Visscher 1942: 173-94; see also Arangio-Ruiz} 1948: 46-57, Kunkel 1953: 81-91, Wankerl 2009: 203-26, Wenger 1951: 469-504.

25 _{See lines 41-44; Lewis’s restoration of the privileges in question as ἀτελεία, ἀλιτουργία, and} permission to wear a crown in the προεδρία strikes me as persuasive. Lewis 1968: 255-58.

appear frequently in an emperor’s regular administrative work, is both well preserved and quite idiosyncratic in its particulars. Firstly, both the Gohairians and Avidius were very well represented; Egnatius Lollianus and Iulianus Aristaenetus are listed as the parties’ advocates.26 Secondly, the actual proceeding seems oddly bombastic and abstract, before terminating abruptly; while the end of the inscription is damaged, only 22-24 lines of text could have separated the last surviving material—Lollianus’ claim that the case implicates questions of piety, and thus bears a special connection to Caracalla—from Caracalla’s resolution of the case (presumably in favor of the village, given the monumental inscription).27

The Dmeir inscription provides an example of formally rule-bound adjudication serving as an opportunity for aesthetic display and for the satisfaction of specific entertainment needs rather than traditional, legally mediated dispute resolution. As Wynne Williams has noted, the embassy provides few of the facts which might be salient for determining the legal rights of the Gohairians on one hand, or of Hadrianus on the other; the case moves immediately from an oddly constructed debate about jurisdiction to a highly rhetorical discussion of Caracalla’s own religiosity and relationship to the divine.28 While some of the relevant material could be provided in the part of the inscription that has now been lost, fitting all of it into this small space would only be possible if the orators were to have changed their styles dramatically.29 However, while this document is

26 _{Williams identifies Egnatius Lollianus with L. Egnatius Victor Lollianus, on whom see} Leunissen 1989: 163, PIR2 _{E 36, Williams 1974a: 664. Iulianus Aristaenetus is less} straightforward, but Kunkel has persuasively argued that “Iulianus” is a stonemason’s erroneous representation of “Sallius,” and C. Sallius Aristaenetus is attested as an Italian curator viae later in his career. CIL 6.1511 (=ILS 2934); Kunkel 1953: 84-85.

27 _{Wankerl 2009: 226; see also Arangio-Ruiz 1947: 47, Williams 1974a: 667.} 28 _{Williams 1974a: 666-67.}

29 _{I should note that this argument presumes victory for the Gohairians; our surviving record does} not include a final decision as to jurisdiction, outside of a somewhat cryptic rhetorical question by Caracalla on lines 33-34 that could be seen as dismissing the question but that Lollianus responds to with further jurisdictional arguments. Caracalla could have simply refused to hear the case

an outlier from widely understood models of imperial adjudication, it is remarkably concordant with the decisionmaking processes discussed above in Philostratus. While it is no particular shock that those embassies which interested Philostratus would involve heightened rhetorical display,30 both the Heliodorus and Philiscus narratives described above show Caracalla’s treatment of ambassadors hinging less upon their presentation of facts satisfying abstract or depersonalized decision criteria than they do upon the emperor’s own aesthetic or personal response. In Philiscus’ case, Caracalla is depicted as manipulating the structure of the hearing in order to punish Philiscus for perceived disrespect; Heliodorus, on the other hand, received legal benefits due to his ability to entertain and impress.

Wynne Williams is correct to argue that the Dmeir inscription is “more valuable as evidence for the character of Caracalla and the history of his court than for the juristic problems of the rules of appeal;”31 nevertheless, the tropes developed in this hearing were not merely personal idiosyncrasies, but core components in public representations of the emperor and of imperial practice. In this representational context, the unusual processes of the Dmeir inscription are more easily intelligible; the hearing was transformed into a venue for oratorical display, which appears to have ended not when the rhetoricians involved had completed their arguments but when the display ceased to meet specific entertainment needs. In other words, the trial was complete when it became boring. The Dmeir inscription records an administrative process that had become a substrate through which drama, spectacle, and exceptionality could be produced. Whether this

without needing more specific information, but it is by no means clear why the Gohairians would inscribe a record of Caracalla refusing to consider their petition on jurisdictional grounds. Instead, Caracalla would have needed to accept jurisdiction and also reach a decision on the merits in approximately one-and-a-half columns of text.

30 _{After its introductory address, The Lives of the Sophists begins by discussing the necessary} components of Τὴν ἀρχαίαν σοφιστικὴν ῥητορικὴν; Philostr. V S 1pr. [480].

behavior reflects Caracalla’s own disinterest or a more considered attempt to communicate a specific idea of how imperial intervention into nonelite lives might be perceived, the monumental inscription suggests that the Gohairians were grateful, if not necessarily entertained.