R.E.C.A.M. Notes and Studies No. 5 A Roman Family in Phrygia

Abstract

The history of Roman and Italian businessmen in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, and especially in Asia, during the first century B.C. is a familiar one. There is ample evidence of many kinds for their emigration and activities after the formation of the province of Asia, interrupted by the hegemony of Mithridates, but resumed on a larger scale after he had been driven back from Asia into Pontus. This evidence can be placed into two broad categories. First, there are allusions in the contemporary literature, inscriptions and historical accounts of the period which provide direct information about individuals and families active in the province. Then there is the evidence of inscriptions of the Imperial period, especially the second and third centuries AD., which reveal both established settlements of resident Romans in the cities and an extraordinary number of families with Roman and Italian names, which could clearly trace their origins back to the Republican period of emigration and settlement. Opportunities to study particular families or groups of emigrants at both periods are unfortunately rare, since usually one or the other category of evidence is lacking. Although the record is far from complete, and it is necessary to rely more on conjecture than one would wish, the object of this study is to investigate one such emigrant family, the Sestullii, whose presence in Asia is attested both in Republican literary sources and in Imperial inscriptions. It is clearly impossible to write a continuous history of thegens, or even to reconstruct itsstemmain outline, especially since there is a notably large gap in our knowledge betweenca50 B.C. and A.D. 150, a two hundred year span from which only a single relevant inscription survives, but the family name is so rare that it can reasonably be assumed that all its bearers are related to one another in some way. It must be stressed that this assumption underlies the whole reconstruction offered here.