Description: Brown limestone stele, badly damaged
(w:
0.70 x h:
1.85 x d:
0.38).
Text: Inscribed on three faces; a, the front face, whose surface is almost completely lost;
b to the left of a; c, to the right of a, with two inscriptions (i and ii), the lower one erased.
The vacant spaces shown in c.i, lines 4 - 6 mark holes in the stone avoided by the mason.
Letters:
Date: i: CE 74ii: CE 54-68
Findspot:
Gebel Akhdar: East of Cyrene:
Ras al-Hilal; found in 1961.
Original location: Unknown
Last recorded location:
Apollonia Museum, 2008.
Apparatus
a: The surface is almost completely lost and this is the only legible letter.English translation
Translation by: Editors
i: (b) Vespasian . . . ] emperor, father of the fatherland, consul for the fifth time, by the action of Quintus Paconius Agrippinus (c) his personal envoy restored royal land to the Roman People.
ii: (c) . . . . Claudius or Nero . . ? land occupied by] private people restored to the Roman People.
Commentary
b. line 4: Vespasian, presumably in the first half of 74, cf. M.232, M.165, M.229
Q. Paconius Agrippinus, for whom see PIR2 P 0027, was active in Cyrenaica under Vespasian, 71-74 CE: see C.147, C.428, C.429, C.430, C.438, C.747, M.68, M.165, M.229, M.230, M.232, M.238, M.239, P.397.
c. ii, line 3: In all known Vespasianic texts these words are abbreviated to Δ. Ρ. whereas in all known Claudian / Neronian ones they are written in full. It threfore seems a likely inference that this is the only instance so far discovered in which Q. Paconius Agrippinus demonstrably re-used a stone inscribed by Acilius Strabo.
For Acilius Strabo see PIR2 A 0082, and addenda; he was active in Cyrenaica under Claudius and Nero: A.25, A.50, A.68, C.434, C.748, M.125, M.141, M.143, M.153, M.172, M.238, M.251, M.275, and perhaps M.68; for his appointment see on M.141.
Bibliography: Reynolds, 1971c, 2, whence SEG 26.1840, PHI 324731, AE 1974.683; discussed Struffolino, 2014, 363.
Text constituted from: Transcription (Reynolds).