English translation

Translation by: Charlotte Roueché

(Text 1, A with B): For our masters [liberators and] preservers [of the Roman world], Gal[erius Valerius Maximi]nus, [pious fortunate] invincible Augustus, [and] Flavius Valerius Constantinus, pious fortunate [invincible Augustus, and] Val[erius Licinianus Licin]ius, [pious fortunate invincible Augustus]: the cities of the province of Libya Superior [also known as Pentapolis] (scil. dedicated this), [being devoted to their divinity] and majesty.

(2: i to the left): For prayers: 20 years. (ii to the right): For many (scil. years): 30 years.

Commentary

1. The text honoured several members of an imperial house, two of whom, given the order in which their partially surviving names appear in A can be identified as Maximin Daia and the elder Licinius.

Version A: The condition of the stone strongly suggests that it was never exposed and the bad quality of the workmanship is the only obvious, and indeed a sufficient, explanation for its rejection - the cutters, we suppose, being required to produce a better version on the reverse side of the panel.

Version B. The final version of the text, honouring several members of an imperial house (the space available, if the emperors are correctly identified, allows for three only), of whom the first and the third names were subsequently erased, the space left by the first being overwritten. The second, unerased, name which began Flavius Valerius (line 2), must be either Constantius I or Constantine the Great, and if it is correct to take this as a repeat of the first text can only be Constantine. The arch was then dedicated between the death of Galerius in May 311 and the outbreak of war between Maximinus and Licinius in March 313, when there were three reigning Augusti, Maximin Daia, Constantine and the elder Licinius, whose names regularly appear in that order (cf. ILS 663, 664). Possible occasions for the erection of the arch are the initiation of the joint reign of the three Augusti after the death of Galerius in May 311 and the defeat and death of Maxentius in October 312.

Line 1: filled exempli gratia only; further formulae of this sort were no doubt written over the name of Maximin, erased after his defeat in 313.

Line 3 is incompletely filled if the province was simply named Libya Superior; the gap disappears if Pentapoleos is added. In Diocletian's reorganisation of the province, the Pentapolis became Libya Superior; but the name Pentapolis also appears thereafter, even in official usage, as e.g. in Anastasius' decree, P.116, col. II, lines 52/3, so that it would not be surprising if both names stood here. That the cities of the province made their communal dedication to the emperors at Ptolemais demonstrates that Ptolemais had now replaced Cyrene as the governor's seat; the change was probably made by Diocletian.

Text 2: Probably flanking B to the left and right ; in ii the spacing demands the restoration of the third x.

Parallels for these acclamations are almost entirely on coins but see e.g. for votis AE 1990, 343, (whence EDH 016683) , and for multis AE 2002, 1563, (whence EDH 008139). On decennalian vota in general see the collection and discussion of the coin material by H. Mattingly, Proc. Brit. Acad. XXXVI (1950) 155 f. (Pt. I), XXXVII (1951) 219 f. (Pt. II), and on the particular formula used here add S.H.V. Sutherland, The Roman Imperial Coinage VI (London, 1967) 20, n. 7. The texts should mean that vicennalian vows had been paid (or were about to be) and trecennalian promised - with the implication that the trecennalia are foreseen as involving an increase in prosperity. Coins show the occasional anticipations of payment of vows as e.g. Maximin in 307/8 (Mattingly, Pt. II, no. 59 b and note, p. 253), but neither Maximin nor Licinius ever issued coins referring to trecennelia and Constantine not before 325/6 (Mattingly, Pt. II, no. 70 and note, p. 257) when in fact the vows for his vicennalia had been properly paid. It seems probable then that the flanking inscriptions were added sometime after the main text was in position, perhaps in 325/6; this may also have been the occasion of the erasure of the name of Licinius, who was defeated and disgraced in 324, unless it occurred earlier during his war with Constantine in 314, and was never reversed.

Images

   Fig. 1. Text A, lines 2-3, fragments (Reynolds NS.XIII.20)

   Fig. 2. Text B, lines 2-3, fragments (Reynolds NS.XIII.21)

   Fig. 3. Text A, lines 1-2, 2-3, fragments (Reynolds NS.XIII.22)

   Fig. 4. Text B, lines 1-4