Articles

• Ein Blick auf die Gesellschaft in Ratiaria (Obermoesien)

  5–13.

  Radu Ardevan

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  A look at the society of Ratiaria (Upper Moesia). An inscription from Timacum Minus is analyzed, which mentions an imperial freedman of Hadrian, P. Aelius Aprio, who became augustal in the colony of Ratiaria. Of his sons, two even entered the ordo decurionum of the colony. Both facts are totally unusual for provincial Roman society, and they highlight a very high social mobility here, in the first part of the 2 nd century AD. It is possible that Timacum Minus originally belonged to Ratiaria.

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• Curses in Aeschines’ Against Ctesiphon

  15–27.

  Dániel Bajnok

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  This paper examines the role of curse language in Aeschines’ Against Ctesiphon and argues that such vocabulary should not be understood as mere invective or metaphorical ornament. Terms such as γόης, μιαρός, and ἀλιτήριος, together with the invocation of the Amphictyonic oath, situate Demosthenes within the institutional logic of public conditional curses (arai). By associating him with ritually polluted persons and oath-breakers subject to divine destruction, Aeschines transforms forensic accusation into a form of civic and religious sanction. The speech thus demonstrates how curse discourse, rooted in oath and civic religion, functioned as a mechanism of political exclusion in fourth-century Athens.

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• From Father to Son: Multi-Generational Service in Legio II Adiutrix

  29–70.

  Gábor Berecz

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  This study investigates the patterns of multi-generational military service and the accumulation of social capital within Legio II Adiutrix, primarily based on 38 inscriptions found in Pannonia. The research identifies the father-son relationship as the most common kinship structure, though several families maintained military traditions across three generations. A significant portion of these multi-generational lineages consists of families of Oriental origin, specifically from Hemesa, Syria, for whom migration to the Danubian frontier and enlistment constituted a well-established career path.
  The analysis explores how military service provided substantial socio-economic advantages, including honesta missio, economic security, and social prestige. These benefits often served as a foundation for descendants to transition into civilian spheres, attaining positions in municipal administration. Despite the high risks of the profession—with epigraphic evidence recording soldiers falling in Parthian, Germanic, and Dacian campaigns—the persistent intergenerational transmission of the military career suggests that the long-term social and economic rewards outweighed the inherent dangers.

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• Magic in the Cosmopolis of Rome

  71–97.

  Richard Gordon

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  Using examples from anthropological studies of radical shifts in the imaginaire of magic in modern African and Asian societies, this paper outlines the consequences both for small time ritual practitioners themselves and for the stereotypes of a specifically urban magic that followed the decision to move to the megacity of Rome, taken as emblematic of the case with other large cities in the ancient Mediterranean world. Given the highly dispersed nature of religious authority in the Greek and Roman political formations, and the attraction of religious entrepreneurship in hierarchically-organised societies with very limited social mobility, the religious field of larger conurbations was characterised by competition for social and religious capital between official and unofficial ritual practitioners, whereby the former were in a position to dominate the relevant discourse in their own interests. This domination produced new accusations of misuse of religious symbols associated with specifically urban magic, focused on the manipulation of emotions, child-snatching, and the use of human body-parts for nefarious ends. Historically, however, the major significance of the transition from the rural to the complex urban world was increased competition between practitioners, leading to innovation in methods and media, above all in the production of new types of protective amulet, and recourse to textuality.

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• Lenaion, Ikria, and the Old Agora - Theatrical Spaces in Archaic Athens

  99–113.

  Gyula Lindner

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  The research of recent decades has made the topography of archaic Athens increasingly clear. However, there are some questions in the 7th/6th century cityscape that even the ongoing excavations cannot aswer. One such unclear point concerns the theatrical spaces used before the construction of the Dionysos Theatre: it is not clear where the sanctuary area called Lenaion, or the orchestra and ikria mentioned by the lexicographers were located. It is also unclear whether in Athens, besides the theatre on the southern slope of the Acropolis, there were other venues for theatrical performances and choral competitions. The study examines the above issues in the context of the topographical problems of archaic Athens through the available literary, archaeological and epigraphic sources.

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• From Cato to the Bronzes of Ticinum: Magical-religious Healing Rituals in Ancient Rome

  115–124.

  Francisco Marco Simón

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  This paper focuses on two very different rituals  in their respective contexts, which provide valuable insights into magical-religious practices in ancient Rome. The first is found in Cato the Elder which contains a series of incantations – characteristic of early Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri, gems and execratory tablets – dating as far back as the early 2nd century BCE. The second ritual is documented on two bronze inscriptions found at Pavia/Ticinum, dating from the 3rd century CE, in which a series of deities are invoked to grant protection to the bearer of these objects. Both pieces of information illustrate the importance of magical-religious healing practices in Roman-Italic societies over a long period.

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• El reflejo epigráfico de las tristes vicisitudes personales de un procurator Augusti: Sextus Truttedius Clemens

  125–132.

  Marc Mayer

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  3

  The career of Sextus Truttedius Clemens provides us not only with important prosopographical data on provincial procurators, but also with an exceptional number of personal details about the private life of this procurator, which we have studied in detail here. We also present an alternative reading for an inscription from Fanum Fortunae, Fano, which may alter the interpretation found in scholarly literature. Furthermore, we assert that all the epigraphic references, and particularly one from Ancona, refer to procurator under study.

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• Pindar, Pelops and Myrtilos Reconsidered

  133–143.

  András Patay-Horváth

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  The main mythological narrative in Pindar’s first Olympian ode was often taken in isolation and the poet’s declaration about his intentions in modifying the traditional tale were also taken at face value. Based on the recent clarification of the famous mythological revision concerning the banquet of Tantalos, this paper offers a new overall interpretation of the poem and concludes that Pindar’s handling of the myth did not derive from some personal desire or moral conviction of the poet but from the necessity to praise his patron appropriately. By ingeniously revising the banquet of Tantalos and by exaggerating a relatively small modification he made, Pindar managed to divert the attention of his audience and concealed another change of fundamental importance, i.e. the elimination of Myrtilos from the chariot race of Pelops and Oinomaos.

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• Civitas Eraviscorum und Aquincum

  145–165.

  Ioan Piso

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  The author presents his position in the highly complex debate on the relationship between the civitas Eraviscorum and the Roman city of Aquincum. He believes that Mount Gellért is the direct predecessor of the Roman settlement of Aquincum and that, therefore, it bore the same name. He then agrees with those who believe that, with the establishment of the municipium of Aquincum, the civitas Eraviscorum ceased to exist as a legal entity and was preserved in inscriptions only as a symbol. The latter aspect could perhaps be explained by the personal relationship between the future emperor Hadrian and this civitas when, in 106/108, he was governor of Lower Pannonia and later, in 118, when, as emperor, he was personally active on the Middle Danube.

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• Cursing Smertuccus: Some Thoughts on the (Mis)Use of the Patronymic in Latin Defixiones

  167–174.

  Celia Sánchez Natalías

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  This paper focuses on a defixio against Smertuccus, a text that was found in modern-day Vechten (Fectio, Germania Inferior) under unknown circumstances. This extremely concise inscription was written in capitals following an unusual ordinatio, which runs from bottom to top and right to left. The curse, which written for unknown reasons, merely contains the cognomen of the target together with his paternal filiation. This contribution offers some considerations on these features (i.e. the layout and the presence of the patronym), which are rarely attested among Latin defixiones from the Roman West.

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• Marc-Antoine Muret commentant les obscénités de Catulle

  175–205.

  Ülo Siirak

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  The French humanist Marc-Antoine Muret published his commentary on Catullus in the mid-16th century in Italy, where he had fled after teaching courses on the same poet in Bordeaux and Paris, and after associating with members of the Pléiade. Although his commentary follows the existing tradition, it also introduces several innovations, namely the treatment of Catullus' poetic and aesthetic aspects, even including his personal appreciation of the poet. Since almost half of Catullus' work contains passages which could be considered as obscene, Muret must address them in his commentary. In the following, we shall discuss, what to understand under obscenities in Catullus and the tactics of Muret in dealing with them. For exemple, at times, he avoids commenting on these passages - we cannot always establish the true cause of it - while at other times he adopts a strategy to create distance between himself and the text being commented upon, or he even comments with interpretations which increase the level of obscenity. In such case, his commentary is accompanied by a rather severe moral judgment.

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• Représentation particulière d'un dieu du vent dans la Pannonie romaine

  207–213.

  Ádám Szabó

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  A fragment of a grave stele was found in the area of Pannonia inferior, Campona (Nagytétény, Budapest, Distr. III). A wind god depicted alone, facing forward can be seen on its ornamentation between two lions. This type of representation of one wind god is considered rare. Wind gods in the Roman sepulcral symbolic probably represent the vertical plane of the afterworld, while the frequently occuring sea creatures represent the horizontal plane within the known world (Cosmos).

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• Trauma, Memory and Witnessing in Seneca’s Moral Epistles

  215–232.

  Zsuzsanna Várhelyi

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  Spurred by the recent identification of fragments from Seneca the Elder’s historical work, ab initio bellorum civilium, this paper investigates how Seneca the Younger navigated Roman memory culture in light of the enduring, intergenerational trauma of selective imperial silencing.  It examines the complications heirs faced when preserving banned texts in an atmosphere of imperial censorship in a twist on traditional pietas that required one to preserve their father's memory. Against this historical background, and given emperors’ claim to absolute exemplarity while alive and the speedy reversal of those honors upon their deaths, Seneca’s Moral Epistles can be seen as a strategic attempt to reclaim some control over his own posthumous reception, entrusting the image of his life and of his death to a future community of like-minded individuals.

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• Pázsint, A.-I. Prosopographia Ponti Euxini: Callatis et Odessus. Cluj-Napoca 2024. Editura Mega, 308 pages. ISBN: 978-606-020-707-8

  233–237.

  İbrahim Melih Çilingir

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  This review presents Annamária-Izabella Pázsint’s Prosopographia Ponti Euxini: Callatis et Odessus as a methodologically rigorous and highly valuable prosopographical study that reconstructs the social structures, mobility patterns, and civic hierarchies of Callatis and Odessus through a systematic analysis of literary and especially epigraphic evidence.

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