Roman History I

What’s in a name? Nomenclature and the translation of political power in Roman Corinth

By Simone A. Oppen (Dartmouth College / University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)

The agonistic inscriptions of Roman Corinth have been almost entirely published in the magisterial volumes of Meritt 1931, West 1931, and Kent 1966 (one exception is noted by Wiseman 2015: 237n.211; the other–I 1973 4–we will publish in an expanded version of the twenty-minute paper we propose). Our paper asks a new question of this dossier: what can be gleaned from the epigraphy of the rising Corinthian elite as they construct hybrid political lineages?

The legiones vernaculae of the Late Republic Revisited

By François Gauthier (University of British Columbia)

This paper wishes to reexamine the evidence concerning legions allegedly raised among non-Romans in the last decades of the Republic (the so-called legiones vernaculae). Whereas some modern historians have understood this as part of a phenomenon foreshadowing the reforms of Augustus and the formal inclusion of auxiliary forces in the Roman army, others have been more reluctant to believe the testimony of some of the literary sources.

Letters of the Law: Inscriptions and the Experience of the Roman Voter

By Christopher Erdman (University of California, Santa Barbara)

In 62 BC, the tribune Metellus Nepos proposed a law to the assembly, but was vetoed by his colleagues before he could read the text aloud to the voters. In response, he recited it from memory instead (Plut., Cat. Min. 28.1; Dio 37.43.2). Nepos’ feat of memory seems remarkable.

Lampreys and the Birth of Imperial Jurisdiction

By Zachary Herz (The University of Colorado-Boulder)

In this talk, I argue that an oddly persistent urban legend of Vedius Pollio feeding people to lampreys can shed light on the gradual accumulation of imperial adjudicative power over the first century C.E. According to a story preserved or referenced in several imperial authors (e.g., Fasti 6.643-48, de Ira 3.40.2-4, de Clem. 1.18.2, NH 9.77, Ann. 1.10.5, Dio Cass. 54.23, de Pall. 5.6.2), Augustus prevented his courtier Pollio from feeding an enslaved child to specially trained man-eating lampreys.