parti Apalones (that is, Apollinis) dederi (that is, dedere)” (C.I.L. i.
187; Orel. 1433). Many, but not substantial, varieties arise, when
old offerings are restored (e.g. C.I.L. i. 638, 632 = Orel. 2135, and
Wil. 48; C.I.L. i. 803; Henz. 5669, 6122); or the source of the
offering (e.g. de stipe, C.I.L. i. 1105; Henz. 5633 a; ex reditu
pecuniae, ex patrimonio suo, ex ludis, de munere gladiatorio, and so
on); or the motive (ex jusso, ex imperio, ex visu, ex oraculo, monitu,
viso moniti, somnio admonitus and the like), or the person or object,
for which the offering was made (C.I.L. i. 188, pro poplod; Ephem.
epigr. ii. 208, pro trebibos, in the British Museum; pro se, pro
salute, in honorem domus divinae, &c.), are indicated; or, as in the
tituli operum publicorum, the order of a magistrate (de senati sententia,
C.I.L. i. 560 = vi. 1306; Orel. 5351; i. 632 = vi. 110; Orel. 2135;
Wil. 48; decurionum decreto, &c.), and the magistrates or private
persons executing or controlling the work, the place where and the
time when it was erected, are added. On all these details the indexes,
especially that of Wil. (ii. 675), give further information. The
objects themselves which are offered or erected begin to be named
only in the later period just as in the tituli operum publicorum
(“basim donum dant,” C.I.L. i. 1167; “signum basim,” C.I.L. i.
1154; “aram,” C.I.L. i. 1468; Orel. 1466; Wil. 52; C.I.L. i.
1109; Wil. 54); in the later period this custom becomes more
frequent. It is hardly necessary to observe that all kinds of offerings
have very frequently also been adorned with poetry; these carmina
dedicatoria are given by Buecheler, Anthologia Latina, ii.; cf. Wil.
142-151.
3. Statues to mortals, whether living or after their death (but not on their tombs), with honorary inscriptions (tituli honorarii), were introduced into the Roman republic after the Greek model and only at a comparatively late date. One of the oldest inscriptions of this class comes from Greek soil and is itself Greek in form, with the name in the accusative governed by some (suppressed) verb like “honoured” (C.I.L. i. 533; Wil. 649), “Italicei L. Cornelium Scipionem (i.e. Asiagenum) honoris caussa,” lost and of not quite certain reading, belonging to 561 A.U.C. (193 B.C.); the same form (in the accusative) appears in other (Latin or Latin and Greek) inscriptions from Greece (C.I.L. i. 596 = iii. 532; Wil. 1103; C.I.L. iii. 365, 7240; compare also C.I.L. i. 587, 588; Orel. 3036). The noble house of the Scipios introduced the use of poetical elogia in the ancient form of the carmina triumphalia in Saturnian verses (from the 6th century in elegiac distichs). They were added to the short tituli, painted only with minium on the sarcophagi, giving the name of the deceased (in the nominative) and his curulian offices (exclusively), which were copied perhaps from the well-known imagines preserved in the atrium of the house (C.I.L. i. 29 sq; Orel. 550 sq.; Wil. 537 sq., and elsewhere). They hold, by their contents, an intermediate place between the sepulchral inscriptions, to which they belong properly, and the honorary ones, and therefore are rightly styled elogia. What the Scipios did thus privately for themselves was in other cases done publicly at a period nearly as early. The first instance preserved of such a usage, of which Pliny the elder speaks (Hist. nat. xxxiv. § 17 sq.), is the celebrated columna rostrata of C. Duilius, of which only a copy exists, made in or before the time of the emperor Claudius (C.I.L. i. 195 = vi. 1300; Orel. 549; Wil. 609). Then follow the elogia inscribed at the base of public works like the Arcus Fabianus (C.I.L. i. 606, 607 and 278, elog. i.-iii. = vi. 1303, 1304; Wil. 610), or of statues by their descendants, as those belonging to a sacrarium domus Augustae (C.I.L. i. elog. iv.-vi. = C.I.L. vi. 1310, 1311) and others belonging to men celebrated in politics or in letters, as Scipio, Hortensius, Cicero, &c., and found in Rome either on marble tablets (C.I.L. i. vii.-xii. = C.I.L. vi. 1312, 1279, 1283, 1271, 1273; Wil. 611-613) or on busts (C.I.L. i. xv.-xix. = C.I.L. vi. 1327, 1295, 1320, 1309, 1325, 1326; Wil. 618-621; see also C.I.L. i. 40 = vi. 1280; Wil. 1101; and C.I.L. i. 631 = vi. 1278; i. 640 = vi. 1323, vi. 1321, 1322, where T. Quincti seems to be the nominative), and in divers other places (C.I.L. i. xiii., xiv.; Wil. 614, 615). This custom seems to have been resumed by Augustus (Suet. Aug. 31) with a political and patriotic aim, praised by the poet Horace (Od. iv. 8. 13, “incisa notis marmora publicis, per quae spiritus et vita redit bonis post mortem ducibus”); for he adorned his forum with the statues of celebrated men from Aeneas and Romulus downwards (C.I.L. i. xxiv., xxv., xxvii., xxxii. = C.I.L. vi. 1272, 1308, 1315, 1318; Wil. 625, 626, 627, 632), and other towns followed his example (so Pompeii, C.I.L. i. xx., xxii. = Wil. 622, 623; Lavinium, C.I.L. i. xxi.; Wil. 617; Arretium, C.I.L. i. xxiii., xxviii., xxix., xxx., xxxi., xxxiii., xxxiv. = Wil. 624, 625, 629-633). All these elogia are written in the nominative. In the same way in the colonies statues seem to have been erected to their founders or other eminent men, as in Aquileia (C.I.L. i. 538 = v. 873; Wil. 650; compare also C.I.L. v. 862; Orel. 3827) and Luna (C.I.L. i. 539 = Wil. 651).
But along with this primitive and genuine form of the titulus honorarius another form of it, equivalent to the dedicatory inscription, with the name of the person honoured in the dative, begins to prevail from the age of Sulla onwards. For the oldest examples of this form seem to be the inscriptions on statues dedicated to the dictator at Rome (C.I.L. i. 584 = vi. 1297; Orel. 567; Wil. 1102a) and at other places (Caieta and Clusium, C.I.L. i. 585, 586; Wil. 1102b, c), in which the whole set of honours and offices is not enumerated as in the elogia, but only the honores praesentes; compare also the inscription belonging to about the same date, of a quaestor urbanus (C.I.L. i. 636). Within the Greek provinces also, at the same period, this form is adopted (C.I.L. i. 595 = iii. 531; Henz. 5294; Wil. 1104). Similar dedications were offered to Pompey the Great (at Auximum and Clusium, C.I.L. i. 615, 616; Orel. 574; Wil. 1107) and to his legate L. Afranius (at Bologna, but erected by the citizens of the Spanish colony Valentia, C.I.L. i. 601; Henz. 5127; Wil. 1106). They are succeeded by the statues raised to Caesar (at Bovianum, C.I.L. i. 620; Orel. 582; Wil. 1108), and, after his death, iussu populi Romani, in virtue of a special law, at Rome (C.I.L. i. 626 = vi. 872; Orel. 586; Wil. 877). With him, as is well known, divine honours begin to be paid to the princeps, even during life. In this same form other historical persons of high merit also begin to be honoured by posterity, as, for example, Scipio the elder at Saguntum (C.I.L. ii. 3836; Wil. 653), Marius at Cereatae Marianae, the place which bears his name (C.I.L. x. 5782; Wil. 654). Of statues erected by the community of a municipium to a private person, that of L. Popillius Flaccus at Ferentinum seems to be the oldest example (C.I.L. i. 1164; Wil. 655, and his note). In Rome, Augustus and his successors in this way permitted the erection of statues, especially to triumphatores, in the new fora, including that of Augustus (C.I.L. vi. 1386; Orel. 3187; Wil. 634; C.I.L. vi. 1444; Henz. 5448; Wil. 635) and that of Trajan (C.I.L. vi. 1377; Henz. 5478; Wil. 636; vi. 1549; Henz. 5477; Wil. 639; iv. 1549; Orel. 1386; Wil. 637; C.I.L. 1565, 1566; Wil. 640); and this custom lasted to a late period (C.I.L. vi. 1599; Henz. 3574; Wil. 638), as is shown by the statues of Symmachus the orator (C.I.L. vi. 1698, 1699; Orel. 1186, 1187; Wil. 641), Claudian the poet (C.I.L. vi. 1710; Orel. 1182; Wil. 642), Nicomachus Flavianus (C.I.L. vi. 1782, 1783; Orel. 1188; Henz. 5593; Wil. 645, 645a), and many other eminent men down to Stilicho (C.I.L. vi. 1730, 1731; Orel. 1133, 1134; Wil. 648, 648a), who died in the year 408. In similar forms are conceived the exceedingly numerous dedications to the emperors and their families, in which the names and titles, according to the different historical periods, are exhibited, in the main with the greatest regularity. They are specified in detailed indexes by Henzen and Wilmanns, as well as in each volume of the Corpus. In the provinces, of course, the usages of the capital were speedily imitated. Perhaps the oldest example of a titulus honorarius in the form of an elogium (but in the dative), with the full cursus honorum of the person honoured, is a bilinguis from Athens, of the Augustan age (C.I.L. iii. 551; Henz. 6456a; Wil. 1122); the honours are here enumerated in chronological order, beginning with the lowest; in other instances the highest is placed first, and the others follow in order.[1] In the older examples the formula “honoris causa,” or virtutis ergo (Hermes, vi., 1871, p. 6), is added at the end, as in an inscription of Mytilene belonging to the consul of the year 723 A.U.C., i.e. 31 B.C. (C.I.L. iii. 455; Orel. 4111; Wil. 1104b); the same, abbreviated (h.c.), occurs on an inscription of about the same age from Cirta in Africa (C.I.L. viii. 7099; Wil. 2384). Shortly afterwards the honour of a statue became as common in the Roman municipia as it was in Athens and other Greek cities in the later period. Each province furnishes numerous examples, partly with peculiar formulae, on which the indexes of Wilmanns (pp. 673, 696 sq.) may be consulted. Special mention may be made of the numerous honorary inscriptions belonging to aurigae, histriones and gladiatores; for those found in Rome see C.I.L. vi. 10,044-10,210.
He who erects a temple or a public building, or constructs a road, a bridge, an aqueduct or the like, by inscribing his name on the work, honours himself, and, as permission to do so has to be given by the public authorities, is also honoured by the community. Therefore the tituli operum publicorum, though in form only short official statements (at least in the older period) of the origin of the work, without any further indications as to its character and purpose, partake of the style of the older honorary inscriptions. Of the ancient and almost universally employed method of erecting public buildings by means of the locatio censoria one monument has preserved some traces (Ephem. epigr. ii. 199). The oldest instance of this class is that commemorating the restoration of the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter, begun, after its destruction by fire in the year 671 (83 B.C.), by Sulla and continued five years later by the well-known orator and poet Q. Lutatius Catulus, but completed only about twenty years afterwards. Here, after the name of Catulus in the nominative and the indication of the single parts of the building (as, for example, substructionem et tabularium), follows the solemn formula de s(enati) s(ententia) faciundum coeravit eidemque probavit (C.I.L. i. 592 = vi. 1314; Orel. 31, 3267; Wil. 700). With the same formula the praetor Calpurnius Piso Frugi (of about the same period) dedicated an unknown building (C.I.L. i. 594 = vi. 1275), restored afterwards by Trajan. On a work executed by the collegium tribunorum plebis (C.I.L. i. 593 = vi. 1299; Wil. 787), perhaps the public streets within the town, the sum employed for it is also inscribed. Precisely similar is the oldest inscription of one of the bridges of Rome, the ponte dei quattro capi, still preserved, though partly restored, on its original site, which commemorates its builder, the tribune of the year 692
- ↑ This observation, applied to a large number of monuments, gave rise to many of the splendid epigraphical labours of Borghesi (see e.g. his dissertation upon the inscription of the consul L. Burbuleius, Œuvres, iv. 103 sq.).
