Géza Alföldy

Tausend Jahre epigraphische Kultur im römischen Hispanien: Inschriften, Selbstdarstellung und Sozialordnung

This contribution is a revised, updated and considerably expanded version of the author’s article published under the title «La cultura epigrafica de la Hispania romana: inscripciones, auto-representacion y orden social» [«The epigraphic culture of Roman Hispania: inscriptions, self-representation and social order»] in the two editions of the volume Hispania. El legado de Roma, [Hispania. The legacy of Rome] edited by M. Almagro-Gorbea and J. M. Alvarez Martinez et alii in 1998 and 1999. The objective of the study is to give a general overview of the history of the epigraphic culture of the Romans in the Iberian Peninsula over almost a thousand years, with special reference to epigraphic problems that the author has been studying for more than forty years, which show first of all that the inscriptions relate to Hispania citerior, while epigraphs appear in Baetica and Lusitania only incidentally. More than 400,000 inscriptions are attributed to the Roman Empire; some 25,000 of them come from the Iberian Peninsula, where the number is continually growing as a result of new finds. However, reviewing inscriptions that have been known for a long time can also yield important new information. Amongst the most recent epigraphic finds are documents of major importance such as the lex Irnitana, the new fragment of the lex Ursonensis, the Tabula Siarensis, the Senatus consultum de Cnaeo Pisone patre and recently the edict by Augustus found in El Bierzo and the lex rivi Hiberiensis. A new edition of volume II of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum is justified to classify the vast number of inscriptions in Hispania (the last supplement to appear is: CIL II2, Pars XIV, Conventus Tarraconensis, Fasc. 2, Colonia Iulia Urbs Triumphalis Tarraco, 2011). The oldest lapidary inscription from Roman Hispania and the whole of the Roman West is the inscription dedicated to Menrva, i.e., to Minerva, in Tarraco during the second Punic war. There are relatively few Hispanic inscriptions belonging to the republican era, and those that are known belong mainly to its final decades; the most important concentration is from Carthago Nova. As a result of the foundation of colonies and municipia under the reign of Caesar, and more particularly that of Augustus, the epigraphic culture in Hispania increased considerably. Good examples showing the origin and extension of the epigraphic habit can be seen in Saguntum and Segobriga, amongst other cities. In the fora of these municipia, established under Augustus, there are pavement inscriptions with gilded bronze lettering. They reflect the spread of this new epigraphic technique developed in the Augustan period for glorifying the new aurea aetas; the fora and the other public buildings were filled with honorary inscriptions, carved in the pedestals of statues of emperors, representatives of the Roman government and members of the local elites. Tomb monuments were frequently erected, not just for the members of the upper echelons, but also for members of the social strata dependent on the aristocracy, including their freedmen and slaves who, like the lower classes of Roman society in general, imitated their master’s methods of self-representation. The epigraphic culture spread in the Augustan and Julio-Claudian period not only in the eastern part of Hispania citerior and Baetica, i.e. in heavily Romanised parts of the Iberian Peninsula, but also in the interior and the northwest of Hispania. In the Flavian and Trajanic period a real «epigraphic explosion» took place in Hispania: in this period there was a surprising increase in the number of inscriptions in many cities and their territories, and new types of epigraphic monuments appeared. In Tarraco, for example, only 100 of the approximately 1600 inscriptions in the city date to the Republican, Augustan and Julio-Claudian period; the rest are later, and most belong to the Flavian and Antonine period; from Vespasian’s reign onwards we can see, amongst other things, the mass production of pedestals for statues with honorary inscriptions, which was not previously seen. It could almost be called a «cultural revolution». The reason for this radical change in the epigraphic habit was the changing mentality of the elites and that of the great masses of the lower ranks who emulated them. For Tacitus, Hispania was already in omnes provincias exemplum in the time of Tiberius; when Galba was declared emperor the ancient prophecy that one day Hispania would represent the dominus rerum was fulfilled; Vespasian’s extension of the ius Latii to all the communities of Hispania meant that the country became a region almost like Italy; and the rise of many Hispanics to the senatorial order and, in the case of Trajan and Hadrian, even becoming emperor, gave the Hispanic elites the impression that they were true Romans. Inscriptions had to express their ‘Romanness’, their power and their splendour – conduct that also encouraged the lower classes to imitate the epigraphic habit of the elites as far as they could. However, from the mid-second century onwards the epigraphic representation of social elites declined. From the time of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus the custom of erecting honorary monuments for members of the upper echelons ceased almost entirely and from the end of the second century the epigraphic habit practically disappeared from many cities, including towns such as Saguntum, Segobriga and Segovia with very different social structures that had previously had a considerable epigraphic heritage. By the third century Tarraco, a city that had had an impressive epigraphic tradition, produced only tomb inscriptions. It is true that in the third and fourth centuries the obligatory honorary statues with inscriptions on their pedestals were dedicated to emperors, but from the mid-third century onwards these pedestals come – not only in Tarraco – from previous monuments that were reused (as the statues evidently were too). The general decline of the epigraphic habit in a city such as Carthago Nova, which had once been so rich, even before it fell out of favour in other cities, is explained on one hand by the major economic difficulties already affecting many Hispanic cities by the mid-second century, and on the other by the changing mentality of the elites, who lost interest in depicting themselves with expensive monuments and instead displayed their social rank mainly by funding public spectacles. In some Hispanic cities the epigraphic culture endured into the late imperial era as a Christian epigraphic culture. The main focal point of Christian epigraphy in the Iberian Peninsula was Tarraco, with about 140 inscriptions, not only in the fourth and fifth centuries, but also under Visigoth rule before the Arab invasion at the beginning of the eighth century. Christian inscriptions, including those of the Visigoths, were almost without exception funerary and still preserved elements of the earlier epigraphic tradition and, with it, Roman culture, but its main intention was to express the Christian faith.

Die Alte Geschichte in Heidelberg

Die Tatsache, das in der Vortragsreihe „Geschichte in Heidelberg“ auch die Althi-storie zu Wort kommt, erscheint naturlich, ist jedoch im Rahmen einer Jubilaums-veranstaltung des Historischen Instituts nicht ganz selbstverstandlich. Die Alte Geschichte, die sich gerne als eine „historische Altertumswissenschaft“ bezeichnet, entfaltete sich zwar nicht nur aus Wurzeln in der Klassischen Philologie und in der Archaologie, sondern auch im Rahmen der Universalhistorie. Zumindest ein Teil unserer Studien- und Prufungsordnungen bringt zum Ausdruck, das wir an dem Prinzip der Einheit der Geschichtswissenschaft auch heute festhalten. Die Vor-schriften fur das Studium des Lehramtsfaches Geschichte sind jedoch die einzige institutionelle Klammer, die das „Gesamtfach“ in Heidelberg zusammenhalt. Die Alte Geschichte einerseits und die ubrigen Disziplinen der Geschichte andererseits werden in getrennten Instituten betrieben; sie gehoren zu verschiedenen Fakultaten. Das die Lehrenden sich regelmasig zu dem oft anregenden Historikerkolloquium treffen und die Instituts- bzw. Fakultatsgrenzen auch durch vielfache personliche Kontakte zu uberwinden wissen, ist gewis erfreulich. Der heute beinahe als „Normalstudent“ geltende „Magistrand“ belegt jedoch nur noch in Ausnahmefallen die beiden Facher „Alte Geschichte“ sowie „Mittlere und Neuere Geschichte“. Auch sonst steht es mit der vielbeschworenen Einheit der Geschichte nicht zum besten.

Soziale Konflikte im Römischen Kaiserreich

Selten begegnet der Historiker der romischen Kaiserzeit einer solchen Fulle sich ubersturzender Ereignisse innerhalb einer so kurzen Zeit wie in den wenigen Monaten, die im Jahre 238 zwischen dem Ende des Winters und dem Hochsommer vergingen. Die Geschichte dieser rund funf Monate ist eines der deutlichsten Beispiele fur jene „fieberhaften Wandlungen“in der Geschichte Roms, die A. Alfoldi schreiben liesen: „Der Verlauf des historischen Geschehens gleicht nicht dem regelmasigen, stetigen Ticken einer Uhr, sondern vielmehr dem menschlichen Pulsschlag, der je nach Inanspruchnahme und Gesundheitszustand sehr schnell oder auch ganz langsam sein kann.“1) Gegen die „Tyrannei“des Soldatenkaisers Maximinus Thrax brach in Afrika eine Revolte aus, und die Aufstandischen proklamierten den Prokonsul der Provinz, Gordianus, zusammen mit seinem gleichnamigen Sohn zum Kaiser. Wie ein Lauffeuer verbreitete sich die Revolte. In Rom erkannte der Senat die Gordiane als Herrscher an, und das Volk veranstaltete eine Hetzjagd auf die Anhanger des Maximinus. Italien und die meisten Provinzen folgten dem Beispiel. In Afrika endete zwar der Aufstand, nach der Intervention der numidischen Armee, schon nach drei Wochen mit einer blutigen Niederlage und mit dem Tod der Gordiane. In Italien jedoch, wo der Einmarsch der Truppen des Maximinus aus Pannonien zu erwarten war, nahm der Senat den Kampf auf. Er proklamierte zwei eigene Kandidaten, Pupienus und Balbinus, zu Kaisern und traf Masnahmen zur Verteidigung Italiens.