A Sailor's Discharge and the Consuls of A. D. 209

Abstract

T HE IMPORTANCE OF THIS TEXT is the establishment of the names of one of the consuls of the year 209 as Aurellius Commodus Pompeianus (a grandson of Marcus Aurelius). Acquired by purchase from a dealer in 1972, the text is now housed in the Rare Book Room of Perkins Library at Duke University. Originally 18.5 cm. high and 14.5 cm. wide and ranging in thickness from 1.5 to 2.5 mm., the bronze tablet is now missing its lower left-hand corner. There is one large fragment and a smaller fragment which joins at the left in the middle of the plaque. Both outer and inner surfaces have suffered damage. As is generally true by this date the outer surface is more carefully inscribed and is much more easily read. Unfortunately at a crucial point in line 23 the surface is badly rubbed and unreadable. Likewise it is now not possible to recover the name of the sailor whose diploma this was. Over much of the outer surface a good deal of encrustation makes reading the text difficult. I have used a number of photographs taken in various degrees of raking light and have used a binocular microscope equipped with low power (3.5X magnification) lens illuminated by raking light. I report below all that I can see. One is helped most, of course, by parallels; the text of diplomata militaria was conservatively maintained over the centuries, and the wording of this text is similar to that of other discharges from the fleet.