Military funerary inscription
created: Transcription (Reynolds).
source date: Augustan - Julio-Claudian
language: ar; en; fr; de; grc; grc-Latn; el; he
availability: Creative Commons licence Attribution UK 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/uk/) All reuse or distribution of this work must contain somewhere a link back to the URL http://inslib.kcl.ac.uk/

Bibliography

[...], 257, and pl. LXXXV,c; also [...], 1, whence [...] 1983.940, [...] HD000835; discussed [...]

Caio Sempronio Caii filio Longo duplicario cohortis Hispanorum Venusta liberta

Translation

For Caius Sempronius Longus, son of Caius, duplicarius of the cohort of Spaniards. Venusta his freedwoman set this up.

Commentary

Lines 1-2: a likely name for an enfranchised Spaniard, in view of the Gracchan connection with Spain.

Lines 2, 3: certainly used in the sense of a grade within the mounted section of his unit. The grade is uncommon but not unknown on early inscriptions, and here probably indicates the privilege of a cavalryman in an infantry regiment with a cavalry section.

Line 3: For a cohors Hispanorum, with a mounted section, stationed in Cyrenaica see C.726 and C.552 at Cyrene, where lettering and formulae again suggest the Augustan or Julio-Claudian period. No cohort number is given in C.552; in C.726, as here, it would be possible to read I, as suggested by Le Glay (art. cit.) but the stones are both too worn at this point for certainty. The unit is usually identified with the Cohors II Hispanorum scutata Cyrenaica equitata, attested in Dacia Porolissensis in 159 (CIL XVI.110, available at EDH 005845); see further the discussion on C.552.

This is the first clear indication of a garrison of Ptolemais in the first century.