Description: Brown limestone stele broken above and in poor
condition all over
(w:
0.55 x h:
1.30 x d:
0.35).
Text: Inscribed probably only on one face, which was already rough and damaged;
the vacant space at line 5 masks a hole in the stone avoided by the mason. In line 7 a hole was cut later.
There are no visible traces of letters on the two other surviving faces, but they are too worn for certainty.
Letters: ave. 0.03; freehand and variable.
Date: CE 71
Findspot: South of Berenike:
Minţaqat al Khuwaybīyah ("El Khweibia, south of Guarshia, near Benghazi"),
reused as a water trough in the garden of Ali Ben Arus; first transcribed in 1959 by
Dr Fawzi Gadullah.
Original location: Unknown.
Last recorded location:
Findspot (1992).
English translation
Translation by: Editors
[Vespasian . . . ] holding tribunician power for the third time, imperator for the eighth time, father of the country, consul[for the third time], designated for the fourth time, by the action of Quintus Paconius Agrippinus, his personal envoy restored public land to the Roman [People].
Commentary
Erected in the reign of Vespasian as part of a programme to reclaim land belonging to the Roman People which had been illegally occupied. The text is the translation of a Latin original, which probably occupied the front; if a third face was inscribed, it may have contained the text of L. Acilius Strabo (as on the boundary stone M.238) or a lease of the land to a private person (as in A.51). For fuller discussion see Reynolds art cit.
Line 5: 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.
Line 7: Probably δη[μόσ]ιον], a translation of agrum publicum in the lost Latin version; this is the first evidence for ager publicus extending as far to the west as Berenike.
Bibliography: Reynolds, 2000a, 1, whence Dobias-Lalou, Bulletin Épigraphique, 2001.565, AE 2000.1590, SEG 50.1630; discussed Struffolino, 2014, 363.
Text constituted from: Transcription (Reynolds).
Images
Fig. 1. Front view