Fragmentary prayer for the safety of the Emperor
created: Transcription (Reynolds).
source date: Perhaps first century CE
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/

[...], 2.

Iupiter Optime Maxime te precamur quaesumus que ut tu imperatorem [...] saluom incolumem que conserues et in reliquom malae ualetudinis primo quoque tempore in urbem Romam sistas astu ea ita faxis tum tibi boue aurata uouemus esse futurum Iuno Regina quae in uerba Ioui Optimo Maximo boue aurato uouimus esse futurum quod hodie uouimus astu ea ita faxis tum tibi in eadem uerba boue aurata uouemus esse futurum Minerua quae in uerba Ioui Optimo Maximo boue aurato uouimus esse futurum quod hodie uouimus astu ea ita faxis tum tibi in eadem uerba boue aurata uouemus esse futurum Salus publica populi Romani quae in uerba Ioui Optimo Maximo [...] Salus publica [...] [...]

Apparatus

Translation

[Too fragmentary for a useful translation]

Commentary

Clearly from a series of prayers formulated in terms similar to those used by the Arval Brothers for vota pro salute principis, see W. Henzen, Acta fratrum Arvalium, 89f. (available at Hathi Trust) cf.P.97, P.339, and, at Cyrene, C.146. By comparison with the Arval formulae for the vota offered annually for the princeps on 3rd January, lines 2-8 can be reconstructed as shown.

Line 1 must be from the end of the prayer to Iupiter, but in the normal Arval formula for this, the letter-group OQ appears only in the phrase te precor quaesoque and Populo Romano Quiritibus which occur too far from the end to be appropriate here. Possibly a variant formula was used in Ptolemais; or the cutter may have made a mistake; or the occasion of the prayers may have been some special situation cf. the Vota extraordinaria, Henzen p. 122f. (at Hathi Trust), where the words primoque tempore occur towards the end of the end of the prayer to Iupiter.

Line 2 will have contained the name of the emperor concerned.

Line 9 should complete the prayer to Salus Publica in the same terms as those to Iuno and Minerva that precede it; instead the name Salus Publica reappears and the only obvious explanation of this is that the cutter repeated the line above - an error that is not perhaps so difficult to understand in such a monotonously repetitious text.